Discuss and Rate the Last Film You Watched

[Casual Shinji]

Jurassic Park - 10/10

The movie is actually guilty of a shitload of continuity errors, and most of them are sort of on purpose. The T-Rex paddock goes from being level with the road until the thrilling escape is needed and suddenly its so damn deep that there'd be no way to see Rexy without sticking your head dangerously close to that 50,000 volt fence. Then there's the massively improbably situation where no one sees OR hears the Brachiosaurus and the dozen other sauropods and hadrosaurs over the same hill when they're driving ostensibly towards them.

My fav is where wounded Ian Malcom is sitting in the back of the jeep clearly on the asfalt road with the tour track infront of the T-rex fence as he notices the rumble of the dino approaching, but is then instantly transported to a dirtroad in the middle of the jungle as the Rex shows up.

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

Oxygen

A woman wakes up in a cryo chamber. Oxygen is running low, and she don't know what she's doing there! The computer is helping.. or is it?!

French sci-fi horror. Good stuff, recommended.

 

[PsychedelicDiamond]

Gozu (2003)

Surrealist Yakuza tale, directed, once again, by prolific Japanese film maker Takashi Miike. Gozu's story, or set up, rather, follows low level grunt Minami as he's ordered by his boss to drive his fellow gang member Ozaki to the provincial town of Nagoya and kill him, after his paranoia and insubordination has become an increasing liability for the clans operations. When Minami leaves the seemingly unconcious Ozaki in his car while he has a coffee, Ozaki dissapears and Minami finds himself stranded in Nagoya, trying to track down Ozaki and finish his job. That's the beginning of a very strange journey, taking the setup of a more or less conventional gangster movie and taking it right into the realm of dream logic and Japanese mysticism.

Gozu is a movie that would appear to be entirely allegorical and doesn't try to make sense on any literal level. A woman sells her breast milk, a man with a cows head appears to the protagonist, a man turns into a woman and then, eventually, gives birth to a fully grown man. Meanwhile, the dialogue is vague and reptetive, and frequently scored with an ominous drone that invokes David Lynch. Some of its themes are relatively obvious, mainly the the inescapable, "Always look over your shoulder" paranoia that accompanies a life in organized crime, where, whereever you know, people appear to recognize you, expect you or simply stare at you. For most of the movies runtime, it's unpredictability keeps it moving along pretty well. Gozu's Nagoya is a uniquely strange and alienating place, it's unassmuming provinciality hiding something deeply uncomfortable. Meanwhile, Minami makes for a pretty compelling viepoint character, his leather jeacket and toned glasses making him come off as a transplant from a much more conventional gangster movie. The interesting thing about Gozu's surrealism is it's very gradual buildup. While it hardly starts off from a place of normalcy, its explicit shift from off beat realism to all out surrealism happens fairly slowly. Probably too slowly, for a lot of people, there is a great amount of "downtime" in Gozu and large stretches where the plot that's been set up doesn't seem to progress in any meaningful way. That slowness, however, makes its eventual descent into absurdity all the more effective.

I found Gozu to be a pretty engaging watch and a compelling take on the Japanese gangster movie from a surrealists point of view. It paints a picture of a world where a facade of mundanity hides an underbelly of profound oddity. Odd people having odd conversations and doing odd things behind closed doors, culminating in a baffling climax that will leave you scratching your head. There is probably not a great deal of discernible substance between its slow moving parade of oddities, narrative and characterization are relatively barebones, letting its surreal setpieces do the talking but these setpieces are definitely quite inventive. Gozu is not a great movie, but one I found pretty engaging and one that deserves a lot of credit for its methodical pacing.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Uncharted

Green screen extravaganza that somehow looks faker than in the games. Chloe from 2 is in it (well the Nickelodeon version) and they do the plane stunt from 3 but by and large this is an adaptation of 4 (makes sense - saw Druckman credited as a producer): the orphanage flashback with Sam, the auction scene, the Rafe and Nadine expies and the pirate cove ending are all lifted from 4, as well as a complete disregard for any supernatural element and the shadow of Sam sort of driving the plot.

Tom Holland exhudes precisely 0% confidence as a cocky treasure hunter named Nathan Drake. He does what he always does, his puppy-eyed aw shucks shtick whenever he isn't deep-faked into the action. When he finally fires a gun at the end you can tell it's just for the poster and he's not gonna hit anybody with it. Wahlberg looks super zoned out as Sully. None of the avuncular warmth that made the character. He's once more a passive aggressive douchebag, but can't be bothered to bring in the energy.

Banderas is the only good one in the movie, and he looks like he's actually having fun. But he's severely underused. Chloe looks the part the best but I thought she had no more chemistry with Holland than he did with Wahlberg. Marky Mark can be very effective in a double act (see Will Ferrell, Denzel). Here you couldn't pay him to look Holland in the eye.

 

[Xprimentyl]

Uncharted

Green screen extravaganza that somehow looks faker than in the games. Chloe from 2 is in it (well the Nickelodeon version) and they do the plane stunt from 3 but by and large this is an adaptation of 4 (makes sense - saw Druckman credited as a producer): the orphanage flashback with Sam, the auction scene, the Rafe and Nadine expies and the pirate cove ending are all lifted from 4, as well as a complete disregard for any supernatural element and the shadow of Sam sort of driving the plot.

Tom Holland exhudes precisely 0% confidence as a cocky treasure hunter named Nathan Drake. He does what he always does, his puppy-eyed aw shucks shtick whenever he isn't deep-faked into the action. When he finally fires a gun at the end you can tell it's just for the poster and he's not gonna hit anybody with it. Wahlberg looks super zoned out as Sully. None of the avuncular warmth that made the character. He's once more a passive aggressive douchebag, but can't be bothered to bring in the energy.

Banderas is the only good one in the movie, and he looks like he's actually having fun. But he's severely underused. Chloe looks the part the best but I thought she had no more chemistry with Holland than he did with Wahlberg.

I knew it. Thanks for telling me what I intrinsically felt without watching a minute of the film. Now to talk the gf out of wanting to see it...

 

[BrawlMan]

I knew it. Thanks for telling me what I intrinsically felt without watching a minute of the film. Now to talk the gf out of wanting to see it...

We all knew it, @Xprimentyl. We all knew it!

 

[BrawlMan]

Tarzan does get points for being pretty dark by Disney standards. For example, the villain's death.

Not the first dark death done on a human Disney villain before, but I appreciate it.

 

[Hawki]

The Emoji Movie (6/10)

The Emoji Movie isn't bad. A fair bit of the time, it's actually fairly good.

I'm sure a lot of you are staring at that in shock, but sorry, it's the truth. When the film was announced, I found the backlash to it perplexing (what, emojis are where you draw the line, as opposed to stuff like toys and lego?), but post-release, I took it on faith that the film genuinely was a turd. Having finally got round to watching it, to my shock, I found that not only was it not bad, a lot of the time, it was reasonably fun. Not perfect by any means, and I'll deal with the issues as we go along, but to claim this is "one of the worst movies of all time?" I...no. Just no. Of course, there's no shortage of despised movies that I'm more reciprocal to than most (such as The Last Avatar and Battlefield Earth), so maybe I'm just a weirdo.

Anyway, the film takes place in a kid's phone, starting in Textopolis, where every emoji has to be "one thing" based on their nature (happy, sad, laughing, crying, etc.). Cue Gene, who's a "meh" emoji, but can't help but have all these other pesky emotions, which gets him and the phone into trouble when he's scanned. Cue a journey with a high-five emoji across the phone, and Jailbreak, to accomplish their respective goals.

Okay, none of that's particuarly original, but none of it's "insidious" either. Smiler, the 'always smiling' emoji is pretty hilarious, as she's literally always smiling even while trying to commit murder, brushing those smiling teeth of hers with a scythe for instance. I don't think the 'emoji world' aspect is all that interesting, but what I will give the film credit for is its anthropomorphization of the Internet, such as Internet trolls (actual trolls), a Trojan horse, viruses, and spam. It's frankly done better than Ralph Breaks the Internet. In fact, I'd be willing to bet that if the film simply had a shift in focus to the Internet and programs in general, the backlash would be less severe. I mean, no-one complained about Tron for instance (that I'm aware of) for giving programs personalities.

Still, it's after this point that the film loses its status from "good" to "okay," and never gets it back. You can actually pinpoint the exact moment when this happens, when the characters fall (literally) into Candy Crush, and have to play a game to release Gene from the candy. Even if we assume that no product placement was involved, none of this actually progresses anything in terms of story. The same, however, cannot be said for when the characters have to make their way through Just Dance, which does progress some story elements, namely that Jailbreak is a princess emoji in disguise, and the app gets deleted, along with High-Five, and a quest to the recycle bin app to rescue him. Meanwhile, in the real world, the phone is acting up because of these shannanigans, hindering the owner's ability to talk to a girl he likes (apparently turning off the phone is something that never occurs to him), which prompts him to make a booking to reset it. Good news for him, bad news for all the programs in the phone who will be erased, prompting Smiler to use malware to upgrade her bot that's chasing the protagonists.

After this, the product placement aspects become more or less tedious, depending on how you see it. The protagonists pass through YouTube (cat videos distract the pursuing bots), Spotify (sailing on 'waves' of music), and after reaching the cloud, Jailbreak summons a Twitter bird to fly back into the phone (how it's handled got a smirk out of me). Unlike before, though, the movie doesn't 'stop' to accomodate these elements. Anyway, disheartened that this emoji he's known for a few days (at most) isn't into him, Gene becomes "meh" all by himself, losing all his emotions, hence why he willingly returns to Smiler. But fat lot of good that's going to do, since the owner is resetting his phone anyway, and everyone's gonna die.

This brings me to a series of gripes, actually. I'll spoil things for you and say that no, they don't die, but all the emojis seem way too passe about how Gene nearly got them killed. I mean, he's the one that didn't get scanned correctly, and he's been making trouble on the phone as he's headed to the cloud, which prompted the reset. Some of the blame goes on Smiler, who sought to delete him in the first place rather than letting him be an individual, but even so...

Two, the finale is...eh? The idea is that as the phone is being erased (which is actually well-represented visually - walls of data closing in from all around the phone) is that if they get Gene to send his emoji to the phone's owner, he'll talk to the girl he likes and that'll...fix everything? I mean, sure, that's what does happen. Gene has an emoji that's constantly shifting his perspective, which is sent to the girl he likes, who sees it as indicative of complicated feelings, many emotions in one, etc., which prompts the owner to stop the reset, because of this one emoji that's given the phone character and...what? Even if you leave aside the whole "I can only talk to a girl because the right emoji was sent," the train of logic is so far-stretched that I'm left to ask who, in-universe, thought it would work.

Anyway, day is saved, everyone in Textopolis is free to be anyone now that Smiler's gone, etc. Yay.

So that was The Emoji Movie. As you might tell, I'm far more critical of its latter sections than the first ones. The first has a fair bit of creativity to it, while the later half...not so much. But is this the worst (animated) film of all time?

No. Just no. It's not even close. I won't blame anyone for not liking this movie, or to having issues with it, but the amount of hatred and vitirol directed towards this is...no. Just no. Let's at least have a bit of perspecitive as to what a bad movie actually is. I'm hardly going to die on a hill for this movie, but at the end of the day, for a movie that's simply "okay" and manages to be enjoyable a reasonable amount of the time? Yeah, I'll stand by that.

 

[Hawki]

I wouldn't go that far...but I do think Tarzan is the most unfairly overlooked Disney movie.

*Cough*Treasure Planet*Cough*

Tarzan does get points for being pretty dark by Disney standards. For example, the villain's death.

Yeah, but loses them because let's be honest, Clayton just isn't an interesting villain.

Compare him to, say, Scar. Both die grizzly deaths, but when you compare them as characters, and their relationship to the protagonist, it's like night and day. Or if we're talking about kitty kats going after people in jungles, I'd rank Shere Khan above Sabor, since even if his motivations are simple, Khan at least has a defined personality and some witty dialogue.

 

[thebobmaster]

*Cough*Treasure Planet*Cough*

Shoot, I forgot a word. I meant to say "one of the most unfairly overlooked Disney movies". I'd say the holy trinity of overlooked Disney films are Treasure Planet, Tarzan, and Atlantis: The Lost Empire.

 

[Gordon_4]

The Big Short - 10/10
The only movie I’ve ever liked Steve Carell in. Also man this really is the sort of movie you wish was lying to you.

Margin Call - 10/10
Great cast, nice sense of time and geography. Lean and no bullshit scripting.

 

[BrawlMan]

Fistful of Vengeance - See this fucking movie! If you have not see Wu Assassins, see the 10 episode series first. Then jump straight to the movie sequel! Definitely the better and best of the two. Cool action, you know all the characters, and little exposition to get in the way.

@Gordon_4, have you seen the movie yet?

​

 

[Gordon_4]

Fistful of Vengeance - See this fucking movie! If you have not see Wu Assassins, see the 10 episode series first. Then jump straight to the movie sequel! Definitely the better and best of the two. Cool action, you know all the characters, and little exposition to get in the way.

@Gordon_4, have you seen the movie yet?

​

Literally tagged it this morning.

 

[Xprimentyl]

Antlers: Meh / Great

After being attacked by a mysterious creature, a man and his young son return home where he forces the older son (still a child himself) to board them up as they're succumbing to a mysterious illness which is turning them violent.

Guillermo del Toro suckered me in on this one. Not a horrible film, but certainly not a great one. Its pacing is a little slow after an obvious reveal, and when shit finally goes down, it's over in like 15 minutes. He does make good on the gore, though. And this movie suffers from something a lot of horror movies do: people lacking common sense and making painful dumb decisions resulting in their demise. Let's end this now, Hollywood. No one in their right mind follows disturbing and threatening sounds whilst calling out "hello?" How many more white woman need to be killed after walking into a dark hallway and politely asking the threat to announce itself do we need before you find another way to build tension and suspense?

 

[gorfias]

snip to avoid errors: In Time on Amazon Prime

I saw this one at the theaters. A good message is not enough in a piece of art. You have to make the artwork itself function. This failed in many ways.

Spoiler

Example: you find that Timberlake's dad's story adds mystery here. So , what happened? Who was he? How does he impact the story? Other critics noted this first. To bring dad up and not flesh the idea out is a failure. You wasted my time and attention bringing him up and dropping it. A bigger failure to me was the gambling scene. It reminds me of John Rambo Last Blood. Rambo is walking into what he knows should be a trap. More and more people follow him to a meeting place making me think, "wow, he is in trouble! I wonder what his plan is!" and then... his plan is nothing. Same with the gambling scene. But the concept is a hoot. Earn time or die.

I think movies like Looper far more competent and complete.

And Daybreakers is an under appreciated miracle of a film.

 

[Hawki]

Hey Arnold!: The Jungle Movie (6/10)

0/10. You can't put an exclamation mark before a colon.

Alright, being serious, I may as well come clean and say that Hey Arnold! was never that big for me. I watched a reasonable amount of episodes way back in the day, but for all the talk about the show being mature and having significant themes, I can't say I noticed. Not saying they aren't there, but that if they were, they went over my head. So watching this now, while I was familiar with a reasonable no. of characters, I have the feeling that this is more for longtime fans. Certainly there's a recap of Arnold's deeds that at least in part, are taken from the show, some of which I even recalled.

So, anyway, Arnold wins a competition through the help of his friends to go to a South American country, where he hopes to find his parents. In large part due to Helga, though not that she'd ever admit it. I'll actually give the movie credit here - it's obvious to even a kid that Helga's crushing on Arnold hard, but here, it's not so much that, it's like she's actually physically incapable of expressing herself a lot of the time. This due to childhood trauma? I assume so, going by Wikipedia, but whatever the case, it's well done. What's less well done is Gerald and Phoebe, who are characters I remember more than others, but don't have much to do in this film. I get that this is Arnold's story, but if this is the grand conclusion to the entire series, seems they don't get as much time as they should.

Anyway, it's okay. I realize I'm probably not the intended audience for this, but meh, decent.

 

[Thaluikhain]

You can't put an exclamation mark before a colon.

Is that a medical rule?

 

[Piscian]

Is that a medical rule?

It's a breach of my hippa rights.

 

[Dwarvenhobble]

I saw this one at the theaters. A good message is not enough in a piece of art. You have to make the artwork itself function. This failed in many ways.

Spoiler

Example: you find that Timberlake's dad's story adds mystery here. So , what happened? Who was he? How does he impact the story? Other critics noted this first. To bring dad up and not flesh the idea out is a failure. You wasted my time and attention bringing him up and dropping it. A bigger failure to me was the gambling scene. It reminds me of John Rambo Last Blood. Rambo is walking into what he knows should be a trap. More and more people follow him to a meeting place making me think, "wow, he is in trouble! I wonder what his plan is!" and then... his plan is nothing. Same with the gambling scene. But the concept is a hoot. Earn time or die.

I think movies like Looper far more competent and complete.

And Daybreakers is an under appreciated miracle of a film.

See I think with In Time the film was either cut short before being all it was meant to or was hope to spin off into something more and the Dad's story was part of that. I entirely agree that it doesn't really get fleshed out fully and the film does have issues but I felt it handled it's themes better than Looper and better than Daybreakers even if not as complete a film though Daybreakers itself has it's share of weird plot holes about.

 

[Bartholen]

Paper Moon (1973), 9/10

A movie I'd never heard of by a director I'd never heard of, this is a cute road trip comedy drama taking place during the Great Depression about an orphaned little girl being taken to her aunt by a man who could potentially be her father. It sounds like a depressing premise, but the movie is anything but. It's incredibly cute, charming, heartwarming, funny and really, really well written. It reminded me a lot of Ed Wood with its general vibe. It makes these rather amoral people and quite harsh situations appear just friendly, bright and wonderful. The way how nobody ever seems in any real serious danger, despite there being many scenes where it could go that way, goes a long way to reinforce the overall friendly atmosphere. The period detail is spot on, it looks great, the characters are fun and memorable, there's some great understated comedy, it's just fantastic overall. This was a massively positive surprise, and I heartily recommend it to anyone.

Saaho (2019), 2/10

I watched this with friends as a "so bad it's good" movie. I honestly don't know if I could recommend it in that sense, because this movie absolutely fried my brain. Saaho is an almost 3-hour long Indian action epic about... some guy who's tied to crime families, and there's something about succession, and also some mixed identity shenanigans, and also a MacGuffin hunt... I honestly couldn't begin to try to summarize the plot. It's one of the most incomprehensible and nonsensical things I've ever seen, and I've seen every Neil Breen movie. The movie makes the most sense if you view it as the self-insert Gary Stu wish fulfilment action hero fantasy of the main actor. It crams just about every action cliche under the sun into its runtime, and then takes off on a rocket ship to Neptune.

Things happen without setup, logic or comprehensible reason, the protagonist is both the hero, the villain and the antihero in the same film, it constantly one-ups itself with one ludicrous plot twist after another while you're still trying to parse the previous one, it's amazingly poorly shot with little to no sense of geography, location or continuity, it rips off just about every single major action movie made in the last 25 years and the result is as scrambled as that sounds. It also turns from time to time into a music video due to being a Bollywood movie. You can make it into like 5 different drinking games, each one of which will kill you on their own. The editing would make Michael Bay himself throw up. The costume design is truly something to behold, as just about everyone is dressed like they're a main character, and it makes group scenes incredibly hard to focus on. This truly is something that defies description. I can only hope I've been able to convey even a fraction of just the whirlwind of absolute madness this movie is. You have to see it yourself to get the full picture. But I will take no responsibility for potential damage to your mental qualities you may suffer by watching it.