Yeah, this is exactly why I ignore the sequels in general, aside from Halloween III.
Discuss and Rate the Last Film You Watched
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I give it an 8/10 personally. I found it more engaging than NoES 4, 5, and Freddy's Dead. Though 5 is not that bad, but most could already tell franchise fatigue was setting in.
Also, while Krueger is not in the movie as much, it works to the movie's effect and makes him all the more scarier and frightening. Another thing, Freddy's Revenge isn't ignored as much as it used to be. Especially by the mid 2010s.
To Catch a Killer
I'm always rooting for any Argentine who makes it in Hollywood. Campanella won the Oscar for the great El secreto de sus ojos but that only landed him a smattering of TV gigs. Santaolalla made it big scoring Brokeback Mountain and The Last of Us. Muschietti is a hack who got lucky with the It movies, made the horrible The Flash and, because in Hollywood you fall up, is now somehow in charge of a Batman movie. Then there's Anya Taylor Joy, who to the average American looks as Latina as I do, and Viggo Mortensen, who is everyone's favorite honorary Argentine and shows up in his friend's movies from time to time. Cool dude.
All this to say Damián Szifrón's new movie is kind of a letdown. It's his first one in 10 years after breaking out worldwide with Wild Tales, and having been given a blank check to do absolutely anything... he chose this? Silence of the Lambs but reinterpreted as an expensive episode of CSI?
And it's so awkwardly written too. Every other line sounds like the actor is mugging for a future trailer. Characters communicate in speeches and awkward metaphors. And everyone is so annoyed all the time at each other. Again: the Halloween II theory of bad direction, which has characters behaving irritably because the actors are told to pretend to have more important things to do in every single scene.
This is also a case of a movie looking too good for its own good. It's going for a cold, nocturnal, detached David Fincher or Dennis Villeneuve look. Limited light sources, urban desolation. Everyone is lonely or miserable but determined. It looks too good for what ends up being such a boilerplate procedural hopping across a variety of soap boxes (gun control, mental health, racial profiling, media fearmongering, animal rights, office politics, a whole bunch of we live in a society). All in the name of such a dull end result.
I'm always rooting for any Argentine who makes it in Hollywood. Campanella won the Oscar for the great El secreto de sus ojos but that only landed him a smattering of TV gigs. Santaolalla made it big scoring Brokeback Mountain and The Last of Us. Muschietti is a hack who got lucky with the It movies, made the horrible The Flash and, because in Hollywood you fall up, is now somehow in charge of a Batman movie. Then there's Anya Taylor Joy, who to the average American looks as Latina as I do, and Viggo Mortensen, who is everyone's favorite honorary Argentine and shows up in his friend's movies from time to time. Cool dude.
All this to say Damián Szifrón's new movie is kind of a letdown. It's his first one in 10 years after breaking out worldwide with Wild Tales, and having been given a blank check to do absolutely anything... he chose this? Silence of the Lambs but reinterpreted as an expensive episode of CSI?
And it's so awkwardly written too. Every other line sounds like the actor is mugging for a future trailer. Characters communicate in speeches and awkward metaphors. And everyone is so annoyed all the time at each other. Again: the Halloween II theory of bad direction, which has characters behaving irritably because the actors are told to pretend to have more important things to do in every single scene.
This is also a case of a movie looking too good for its own good. It's going for a cold, nocturnal, detached David Fincher or Dennis Villeneuve look. Limited light sources, urban desolation. Everyone is lonely or miserable but determined. It looks too good for what ends up being such a boilerplate procedural hopping across a variety of soap boxes (gun control, mental health, racial profiling, media fearmongering, animal rights, office politics, a whole bunch of we live in a society). All in the name of such a dull end result.
Interstellar (2014)
In the near future Earth has become near uninhabitable due to environmental neglect, leaving a risky expedition into space through a wormhole the only hope for mankinds survival. Widower and single father Cooper, played by Matthew McConnaughey ends up the last pilot of this expedition.
I never particularly liked Nolan and I don't particularly like this movie but I'll give him that, unlike most of his stuff, this has traces of that James Cameron excitement and wonder that he otherwise consistently fails to capture. Interstellar is still bogged down by Nolan's, frankly, hideous, colour palette and stiff writing but it presents the closest he ever allowed himself to get to sincere sentimentality, not to mention some interesting world building that I wish got to shine some more.
Nolan and my preferences when it comes to the presentation of fantastical ideas couldn't be more different and I'm not ashamed to admit it but Interstellar depicts a struggling but hopeful future that despite all its obsession with believability and scientific plausibility still has some feeling of adventure to it. It doesn't have that space cadet glow directors like Cameron or Scott or Spielberg or the Wachowski's have brought to similar subject matters but it's as close someone like Nolan can get to it.
Interstellar's fascination with the perception of time, and the dilation thereof inside various galactic phenomena, provides a very comfortable fit for Nolan's mechanical style of film making. More light than is warranted has been made about Interstellar's thesis that love transcends space and time, but honestly, that's one of the very rare occasions that I actually got the impression he sees film as more than just little clockwork toys playing out elaborate plays with cold, mechanical efficiency.
As expected from a Nolan movie, Interstellar didn't offer me much in terms of characters or creative ideas or the type of visuals I enjoy, but you compare it to something like Tenet or Dunkirk, it just feels so much more like real cinema and so much less like extended demo reels for directorial parlor tricks. It's sort of sad that Nolan has to literally reach for the stars to infuse his movies with the least bit of pathos but at least there's some of it there.
I'm still planning to see Oppenheimer, it should be interesting to see what he makes of material that's both historical and kept to a mainly personal scope. Interstellar was better than I expected from him, backhanded as that may sound. It's not a movie I'm gonna revisit anytime soon, but it was probably the first time I was positively surprised rather than dissapointed by something he directed.
In the near future Earth has become near uninhabitable due to environmental neglect, leaving a risky expedition into space through a wormhole the only hope for mankinds survival. Widower and single father Cooper, played by Matthew McConnaughey ends up the last pilot of this expedition.
I never particularly liked Nolan and I don't particularly like this movie but I'll give him that, unlike most of his stuff, this has traces of that James Cameron excitement and wonder that he otherwise consistently fails to capture. Interstellar is still bogged down by Nolan's, frankly, hideous, colour palette and stiff writing but it presents the closest he ever allowed himself to get to sincere sentimentality, not to mention some interesting world building that I wish got to shine some more.
Nolan and my preferences when it comes to the presentation of fantastical ideas couldn't be more different and I'm not ashamed to admit it but Interstellar depicts a struggling but hopeful future that despite all its obsession with believability and scientific plausibility still has some feeling of adventure to it. It doesn't have that space cadet glow directors like Cameron or Scott or Spielberg or the Wachowski's have brought to similar subject matters but it's as close someone like Nolan can get to it.
Interstellar's fascination with the perception of time, and the dilation thereof inside various galactic phenomena, provides a very comfortable fit for Nolan's mechanical style of film making. More light than is warranted has been made about Interstellar's thesis that love transcends space and time, but honestly, that's one of the very rare occasions that I actually got the impression he sees film as more than just little clockwork toys playing out elaborate plays with cold, mechanical efficiency.
As expected from a Nolan movie, Interstellar didn't offer me much in terms of characters or creative ideas or the type of visuals I enjoy, but you compare it to something like Tenet or Dunkirk, it just feels so much more like real cinema and so much less like extended demo reels for directorial parlor tricks. It's sort of sad that Nolan has to literally reach for the stars to infuse his movies with the least bit of pathos but at least there's some of it there.
I'm still planning to see Oppenheimer, it should be interesting to see what he makes of material that's both historical and kept to a mainly personal scope. Interstellar was better than I expected from him, backhanded as that may sound. It's not a movie I'm gonna revisit anytime soon, but it was probably the first time I was positively surprised rather than dissapointed by something he directed.
Violent Night - Last year's action Christmas movie. I didn't see it in theaters in 2022, but it's free on Amazon Prime and just finished it. Why did critics hate this movie again? This one of the best Die Hard movies ever made. It's the real Die Hard 5, but Santa is the kick-ass action hero this time. See the movie for the season and many more!
Knock at the Cabin
Home invasion. Four doomsayers tie up two dads and their daughter and tell them they have to pick a sacrifice (one of the dads or the daughter) to stop the apocalypse. To prove their point, the doomsayers start sacrificing their own and "unleashing plagues" unto Earth, which they aim to prove by turning on the news. Are they telling the truth, does the family believe them and would they actually go along with a sacrifice if they did? That's the movie for you.
The typical Shyamalan awkwardness actually goes well with characters who may or may not be religious nuts. I'll say that much for the writing and the performances. I don't think it's a great M. Night movie buy I enjoy his 'problem play' phase. This is also better than Old, but probably isn't going to develop into a cult movie like Old.
Home invasion. Four doomsayers tie up two dads and their daughter and tell them they have to pick a sacrifice (one of the dads or the daughter) to stop the apocalypse. To prove their point, the doomsayers start sacrificing their own and "unleashing plagues" unto Earth, which they aim to prove by turning on the news. Are they telling the truth, does the family believe them and would they actually go along with a sacrifice if they did? That's the movie for you.
The typical Shyamalan awkwardness actually goes well with characters who may or may not be religious nuts. I'll say that much for the writing and the performances. I don't think it's a great M. Night movie buy I enjoy his 'problem play' phase. This is also better than Old, but probably isn't going to develop into a cult movie like Old.
Three things Interstellar has going for it are its scope, score and like you said, an enduring bit of sentimentality. I also read Kip Thorne’s The Science of Interstellar out of pure intrigue after seeing the movie, and while a lot of it is beyond my intellect it went to pretty great lengths justifying the plausibility, however loosely in some areas. The black hole stuff especially, which epitomizes the term “far out”.
I thought his version of a robot pretty amazing: less humanoid than most with a personality more human than most. But not my favorite Nolan movie by far. But do see Oppenheimer. The 1st 2/3 are just fantastic. I thought the last 3rd was largely unnecessary. I did love the very last scene.
The biggest problem with this movie for me is the party scene. Freddy Kreuger running rampant on a bunch of teens is the least scary way to present him. It's also not very Freddy. At his core Freddy is a coward. He preys on children. Isolates them. Torments them and kills them. He's actually kind of a *****. But he is scary when he's in lurking in the shadows. Catching you at your weakest.
It kind of contrasted with the new Scream in that regard. Problems with that movie aside, Ghostface just going ham on a convenience store full of people actually made him scarier. Than other iterations of the character. Just a shame that Scream has become so dependent on legacy characters that they are afraid to actually kill anyone who matters. What's the point of a slasher with no stakes?
Other than that I think Nightmare 2 is in contention for best movie in the franchise. The original and New Nightmare are the only other movies in the franchise I would consider "good". The rest are all varying degrees of fun, the 3rd being the best in that regard with 4,5 and 6 best watched with beer and friends.
It still works for Freddy either way. He preys on kids and teens, and knows when they can't fight back or too scared to do so. I've seen people complain about the scene, but for this movie it works. It's literally Freddy lashing out because Jesse is fighting him from the inside. You could see it as him still spreading fear and trying to maintain and control. The method sloppy, but he got what he wanted.
The original will always be the best for me, followed by 3 taking second place. Nightmare 2 takes third place. Most of the sequels are more the same, mainly Dream Warriors, but worse. New Nightmare is fine, but I don't see myself watching it that often.
Yeah I can see that reasoning alright. It just doesn't hit right for me. Freddy isn't an imposing figure so a slaughter rampage just kinda felt weird to me. Plus Freddy wasn't super fleshed out at that stage and was in new hands. So I understand them trying new things. But apart from that scene I think Nightmare 2 is Freddy at his most frightening. And the subtext makes it one of the more engaging movies for me.
Really? Freddy's Dead is the one I'm always least likely to return to. Edged too far into the silliness and wasted a potentially cool idea. I would have liked to see a movie dealing with the town after Freddy had killed all of or most of the children. Roseanne Barr's scene is admittedly weird but a town full of parents driven mad by all their children mysteriously dying is an interesting plot. A less fucking insane version of the later Ring novels where the supernatural entity becomes almost endemic.
Don't get me wrong, New Nightmare is a good movie and it's in my number four spot, but I don't watch it that often. Freddy's Dead while definitely the worst in the franchise, has it's many entertaining moments. Really, the only ones I barely ever bothered to watch anymore is the fourth movie, because it's literally just the third movie but slightly worse, most interesting, and Freddy more or less comes back for no reason. I know it's implied Alice kept thinking about him at some point, but the way he resurrects it's just kind of stupid and at that point they were just writing whatever came out of the seat of their pants. The dream master does have some good moments and there are things that are genuinely scary and make me laugh, but it's just more of the same. Nightmare 5 is not perfect, but at least has some interesting ideas when it comes to dreams and fighting in your dreams. The aspect of a pregnant woman's baby dreaming while they are still inside of her, is interesting and at least something's done with it.
Yeah. The dog piss is definitely a choice. Well I think we can agree the remake is trash at least. The one cardinal sin for a Freddy Krueger movie. It's fucking boring. Even Freddy vs Jason is fun in really dumb ways.
Surprisingly, the Remake didn't bore me too much, but it did play it safe. The best things about the Remake is really Jackie Earl Haley, and the micro dreams. The problem with both the Friday the 13th Remake and The Nightmare on Elm Street Remake, is that both play it safe and rely too much on jump scares. The Friday the 13th Remake is basically an abridged movie and covers the first three in quick succession. This may be my bias talking, but I did enjoy the Friday the 13th remake more than a Nightmare on Elm Street Remake. The Texas Chainsaw Remake stands head and shoulders above those remakes, and is a good horror film in its own right.
Freddy versus Jason the audience is there for those two guys and nothing else. I only cared about two of the teen characters (not the main leads), and I knew they were going to die at some point. The director knew what type of movie he was making.
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I thought the Friday the 13th remake was legitimately good. I liked some ideas in Nightmare on Elm Street, and Jackie Earl Haley was excellent in it. The problem was that every time it dipped back to the original, it was weaker in literally every way, and I really wish they had run with the concept that Freddy was innocent and a victim of mob justice, instead of just teasing the idea only to be like "just kidding, he really has always been a monster."
First Blood (1982), 10/10
I had only seen this movie once ages ago, and I'm not even sure I saw it all the way through back then. So going back to it it turned out to be perhaps the best movie I've seen all year. It's a really brisk watch, but absolutely action packed, expertly paced and full of genuinely engaging subject matter despite all the gunfire and explosions. The movie is as lean and mean as Rambo himself, with the first half being laser focused on him with no subplots or side characters whatsoever. When things start to escalate and broaden in the second half you start to get more of the political and thematic side of the movie. When Rambo enters his kill mode, he's more akin to a robot or a trained animal: he's acting as if programmed. You really get a sense that this man has nothing left, which is driven home when we find out that he'd just found out that the last of his friends had died of cancer when the cops start hassling him.
It feels shockingly relevant to this day, with the power tripping asshole cops making everything worse feeling as timely as ever. It's one of the very rare action movies that not only has a strong, well explored thematic core, but where the action is critical for those themes. Rambo turning into basically a domestic terrorist in the third act feels very purposeful: the machine of unstoppable destruction has turned on its creator, and bringing the chaos with him. The movie's practically screaming "Fuck America!" as Rambo blows up shops, gas stations and police stations. The only person with some understanding of Rambo is the colonel, who's a really interesting character: you feel both a sense of pity but also pride for what Rambo's doing. The colonel's basically watching his favorite pet dog let loose, feeling both accomplishment and sadness for his creation's work. He, and the war machine he represents, are being shown what they truly created: a broken wreck of a man no longer capable of functioning in society, cursed with the burden of his trauma and little else.
The movie looks fantastic. It hasn't aged a day visually, and there's some great cinematography that really drives home the dark loneliness Rambo finds himself in. The stuntwork and effects are fantastic, and in a couple of scenes I genuinely went "wait, how did they do that?" When it goes full "boom kapow" at the end, I honestly couldn't tell if they were blowing up real buildings or just really well-made miniatures.
I could go on but you get the point. This is truly exceptional cinema, and absolutely deserves its place as an all-time classic.
I had only seen this movie once ages ago, and I'm not even sure I saw it all the way through back then. So going back to it it turned out to be perhaps the best movie I've seen all year. It's a really brisk watch, but absolutely action packed, expertly paced and full of genuinely engaging subject matter despite all the gunfire and explosions. The movie is as lean and mean as Rambo himself, with the first half being laser focused on him with no subplots or side characters whatsoever. When things start to escalate and broaden in the second half you start to get more of the political and thematic side of the movie. When Rambo enters his kill mode, he's more akin to a robot or a trained animal: he's acting as if programmed. You really get a sense that this man has nothing left, which is driven home when we find out that he'd just found out that the last of his friends had died of cancer when the cops start hassling him.
It feels shockingly relevant to this day, with the power tripping asshole cops making everything worse feeling as timely as ever. It's one of the very rare action movies that not only has a strong, well explored thematic core, but where the action is critical for those themes. Rambo turning into basically a domestic terrorist in the third act feels very purposeful: the machine of unstoppable destruction has turned on its creator, and bringing the chaos with him. The movie's practically screaming "Fuck America!" as Rambo blows up shops, gas stations and police stations. The only person with some understanding of Rambo is the colonel, who's a really interesting character: you feel both a sense of pity but also pride for what Rambo's doing. The colonel's basically watching his favorite pet dog let loose, feeling both accomplishment and sadness for his creation's work. He, and the war machine he represents, are being shown what they truly created: a broken wreck of a man no longer capable of functioning in society, cursed with the burden of his trauma and little else.
The movie looks fantastic. It hasn't aged a day visually, and there's some great cinematography that really drives home the dark loneliness Rambo finds himself in. The stuntwork and effects are fantastic, and in a couple of scenes I genuinely went "wait, how did they do that?" When it goes full "boom kapow" at the end, I honestly couldn't tell if they were blowing up real buildings or just really well-made miniatures.
I could go on but you get the point. This is truly exceptional cinema, and absolutely deserves its place as an all-time classic.
I'd also mention the young "good cop", the one who questions what the others are doing a few times...but then they or his boss yell at him and he falls right in line.
Which is why I used the word "understanding" instead of "empathy". It's not that people just want to treat Rambo like shit by default, but they simply don't know what kind of man they're dealing with. The colonel does.
Labyrinth (cinema) - 10/10
Its Labyrinth. In all its David Bowie tight pants, Jim Henson puppet, and David Bowie sounding glory. Everything works beautifully. Jennifer Connelly manages to channel being a totally believably selfish ***** and sounding just like a teenager. Helped I'm sure in no small part by still being one - indeed she was 14 and Sarah is meant to be 16 - yet manages to not come across as totally overwhelmed by the presence that is Jareth.
But lets be real, what people remember about this sucker is mainly two things: the songs performed (mainly) by Bowie and the set design and puppets. The songs (aside from Chilly Down) are all bangers: 'Magic Dance' is especially impressive since its done (in the movie) as a group song with all the Goblins and somehow Bowie looks completely normal dancing around these muppets. I love 'As the World Falls Down' in isolation a love song, if one that errs towards meloncholy, but in context of the film its actually rather sinister.
Oh but the set design and puppetry. Oh, fuck me swinging. Hoggle. Ludo. Sir Didymus. The Wise Man. The Alarm Faces. The Helping Hands. That fucking MECHA! The Goblin City. The Bog of Eternal Stench. The Cyrstal Ball Dance. The Castle and its Escher Stairs. You will never ever mistake anything in this movie for anything else ever and the fact that this movie was a bomb and to my knowledge didn't get any recognition for its VFX is a crime of such magnitude I want it to be tried at the Hague.
So yeah, good movie.
You remind me of the babe......
Its Labyrinth. In all its David Bowie tight pants, Jim Henson puppet, and David Bowie sounding glory. Everything works beautifully. Jennifer Connelly manages to channel being a totally believably selfish ***** and sounding just like a teenager. Helped I'm sure in no small part by still being one - indeed she was 14 and Sarah is meant to be 16 - yet manages to not come across as totally overwhelmed by the presence that is Jareth.
Speaking of our impressively packaged Fae King, its interesting just how little actual villainy he does; sure he does kidnap Toby and threaten to turn him into a Goblin but he only did it AFTER Sarah - who was being a miserable ***** - deliberately invoked his magic to do so. He didn't just do it for shits and giggles or even to make the pretty girl (she's 14, bad Fae King!) notice him. This gives the impression that for all his old-school fairytale jackassery, Jareth is very strict on how he does his thing. And given the state of things in the world as we know it, both then and now, its not hard to imagine that for all his mercurial moods some of his Goblins had to be children who were in the direst of straits. Equally distressing as a thought is how many creatures of the Labyrinth might also be people who failed to beat the challenge: that one Goblin who's carrying loads of shit on her back and tries to do the sam to Sarah could well be another sister or parent who made such a wish but failed and this was their fate. Hoggle also mentions the Labyrinth is full of oubliettes: Sarah's was - mercifully - empty but what about the others?
But lets be real, what people remember about this sucker is mainly two things: the songs performed (mainly) by Bowie and the set design and puppets. The songs (aside from Chilly Down) are all bangers: 'Magic Dance' is especially impressive since its done (in the movie) as a group song with all the Goblins and somehow Bowie looks completely normal dancing around these muppets. I love 'As the World Falls Down' in isolation a love song, if one that errs towards meloncholy, but in context of the film its actually rather sinister.
Oh but the set design and puppetry. Oh, fuck me swinging. Hoggle. Ludo. Sir Didymus. The Wise Man. The Alarm Faces. The Helping Hands. That fucking MECHA! The Goblin City. The Bog of Eternal Stench. The Cyrstal Ball Dance. The Castle and its Escher Stairs. You will never ever mistake anything in this movie for anything else ever and the fact that this movie was a bomb and to my knowledge didn't get any recognition for its VFX is a crime of such magnitude I want it to be tried at the Hague.
So yeah, good movie.
You remind me of the babe......