I can marathon all three movies without much trouble. They're all about the same quality, but I do favor 3 more than 1 & 2, but not by much.
Discuss and Rate the Last Film You Watched
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Good Luck to You, Leo Grande
(alternate title: My Love Sesh with Andre)
I put this as a joke to my girlfriend, having already watched two movies this year in the "MILF achieves self-actualization by getting dicked by a hot young stud" (A Family Affair and The Idea of You) and accidentally ended up watching an actual good movie. Go figure.
Emma Thompson plays the MILF, a stuck-up, sexually repressed widow who's never had an orgasm in her life. She books "Leo Grande" and they meet in a nice, asceptic hotel for some hard fucking (she makes a list). Leo's an emotionally intelligent young man who uses words like "empirically" and "reductive" and is able to connect with her, so they mostly just talk. He's a whore with a heart of gold, although he's clearly holding back something.
This is basically two people in one room for the duration of three acts (and I was surprised to find out it is not based on a play), exchanging poignant stories about their lives, describing their relationships to people we will never see and engaging in heated/comical debates about society and the human condition, man. It's very good, well written, well acted and well directed or I would've been bored of that fucking room around the hour mark.
I wanna point out of the three three "MILF gets dicked" movies I've seen this year so far, this is the one where they finally delivered on the nudity. The irony is that the other two movies have plenty of dialogue referring to what amazing bodies Anne Hathaway and Nicole Kidman have, while being very coy about nudity, but then when we get to the Emma Thompson movie she does nothing but constantly put herself down, yet she's the only one to actually get nekkid for the camera. You go girl.
(alternate title: My Love Sesh with Andre)
I put this as a joke to my girlfriend, having already watched two movies this year in the "MILF achieves self-actualization by getting dicked by a hot young stud" (A Family Affair and The Idea of You) and accidentally ended up watching an actual good movie. Go figure.
Emma Thompson plays the MILF, a stuck-up, sexually repressed widow who's never had an orgasm in her life. She books "Leo Grande" and they meet in a nice, asceptic hotel for some hard fucking (she makes a list). Leo's an emotionally intelligent young man who uses words like "empirically" and "reductive" and is able to connect with her, so they mostly just talk. He's a whore with a heart of gold, although he's clearly holding back something.
This is basically two people in one room for the duration of three acts (and I was surprised to find out it is not based on a play), exchanging poignant stories about their lives, describing their relationships to people we will never see and engaging in heated/comical debates about society and the human condition, man. It's very good, well written, well acted and well directed or I would've been bored of that fucking room around the hour mark.
I wanna point out of the three three "MILF gets dicked" movies I've seen this year so far, this is the one where they finally delivered on the nudity. The irony is that the other two movies have plenty of dialogue referring to what amazing bodies Anne Hathaway and Nicole Kidman have, while being very coy about nudity, but then when we get to the Emma Thompson movie she does nothing but constantly put herself down, yet she's the only one to actually get nekkid for the camera. You go girl.
I don’t blame Anne Hathaway for not wanting to do nude scenes considering how weird people can get with them. I figure Emma Thompson is just cut from the same ‘I got it and I’ll flaunt it’ cloth as Helen Mirren.
Yeah, she looks great in this. Not that it matters, it's all about being comfortable doing the nudity.
I'm pretty sure Anne was nekkid in that movie she has Parkinson's, and Kidman in Eyes Wide Shut.
Kidman really finally overdid it with the surgeries, by the way. Like it's finally interfering with the acting. She looks like Starlight's mom in the movie. Paired with Zac Efron's own bespoke visage they end up looking equally waxy and ageless, which goes against the sauciness in the age difference.
A ★★★★ review of Spiral: From the Book of Saw (2021)
“John Kramer didn’t target cops. This guy has a different motive.” This film actually developed from a pitch Chris Rock made to Michael Burns, the vice chairman of Lionsgate Studios, after a chance meeting at a mutual friend's wedding. Apparently, Chris Rock had been considering a horror movie...
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I just never got the whole Zack Snyder thing- the fandom, the hate, the extreme emotions. I guess Man of Steel was ok but... eh, whatever. I kind of slept through the whole "Snyder Cut" controversy and diAn't care. I mean sure I just don't take the superhero stuff seriously and don't have this deep connection to that stuff, to me it's just more entertainment- I'll watch a superhero thing if it looks good and that's it, Superman isn't like some important thing in my life he's just... there, like Mickey Mouse. The whole premise/promise/threat of Rebel Moon made no sense to me- it's like Star Wars but not? Come on. Even watching those kind of bad movies to make fun of it didn't have any appeal because it's not like Plan Nine From Outer Space where there's something actually funny or quaint or interesting.
My read on Snyder is that he's... fine? But not great at everything, so who cares? But people care. It's a whole thing I don't get- emotionally, anyway.
Anyway I haven't posted what I'm watching because I really haven't been watching new stuff, just old Murder, She Wrote episodes with my wife. But the one new thing we tried was:
Manhunt episode 1, AppleTV
It's about the manhunt for John Wilkes Boothe after he killed Lincoln, so if you like your gritty historical drama they got you. It was recommended to my wife by a friend though she wasn't into it after the one episode. The whole men with beards grumbling about IMPORTANT THINGS is more my style than hers so I may just continue it on my own. It didn't wow me but I understood that the first episode had to focus on setting things up so we'll see. Worth checking out if it's your thing though cause AppleTV has, up until their recent announcement, delivered on the production.
My read on Snyder is that he's... fine? But not great at everything, so who cares? But people care. It's a whole thing I don't get- emotionally, anyway.
Anyway I haven't posted what I'm watching because I really haven't been watching new stuff, just old Murder, She Wrote episodes with my wife. But the one new thing we tried was:
Manhunt episode 1, AppleTV
It's about the manhunt for John Wilkes Boothe after he killed Lincoln, so if you like your gritty historical drama they got you. It was recommended to my wife by a friend though she wasn't into it after the one episode. The whole men with beards grumbling about IMPORTANT THINGS is more my style than hers so I may just continue it on my own. It didn't wow me but I understood that the first episode had to focus on setting things up so we'll see. Worth checking out if it's your thing though cause AppleTV has, up until their recent announcement, delivered on the production.
My personal beef with Snyder arises from the fact that he is a man of exceedingly limited talents bordering on no talent, yet he's been allowed to helm some of the biggest franchise films in history for some utterly inexplicable reason. The Rebel Moon films have also shown that whatever merits his previous films have had, none of them can be accredited to him. My guess would be that he's an easy and reliable person to work with, which can go a long way in Hollywood if your films are even slightly bankable.
To compare Snyder to another massively hated director, Michael Bay, I still respect Michael Bay more as a filmmaker. Bay's films are crass, excessive, exhausting and massively stupid. But they're not pretending to be anything else. They're loud, insubstantial popcorn enterntainment for the people who like that sort of thing, and that's perfectly fine. Snyder's films are different. Every film where he's had significant creative control (his DC films, Sucker Punch and Rebel Moon being the foremost examples) just exudes an aura of self-importance and pretentiousness. They're dour, humorless and replete with bombast and melodrama, yet completely hollow and shallow. The scores are hugely dramatic and the cinematography goes to its utmost extreme to try to convey a sense of importance. Characters speak all their lines with a level of Shakespearean grandeur like it's their death scene. But none of it is ever earned or justified. His films are filled with concepts and ideas that should have huge impact, but they're never explored at any depth. His films seem more like excuses to create Boris Vallejo -style paintings on screen without understanding why Boris Vallejo's style is the way it is, why it works, and why they're paintings and not films. Snyder movies are book covers without the book: all surface, zero depth. Metaphorically speaking, Zack Snyder makes films like he's painting the Sistine chapel with crayons.
There is a place for Snyder's style, but it's not whatever he's been doing ever since Man of Steel. From everything I've seen the guy seems to have little to no self-awareness. If he just stuck to making loud, bombastic, basic entertainment like 300 or even Owls of Ga'Hoole, I would take almost no issue with him. But if his films are anything to infer from, he really seems to think he's George Lucas and Stanley Kubrick put together, with the strengths of neither.
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Rebel Moon: Bigger, Longer and Uncut (2024)
The long awaited (...at least by me) uncut release of Zack Snyder's space fantasy epic Rebel Moon. I saw, and greatly enjoyed, the first movie when it came out and decided to hold out on the second one so I can watch the uncut releases back to back.
I expressed some of my misgivings with the release method of these movies back when I wrote a review on the first one, and perhaps it is redundant to reiterate them now, but hear me out. Film critic Armond White, previously one of the few defenders of Snyder's work among the critical establishment, stated, that in resigning himself to making two versions of each of his movies, Snyder had "become his own Joss Whedon". Referencing, of course, the director Warner Brothers hired to cut Justice League into something almost no one involved wanted anything to do with. While that is a cruel thing to say, I can't in good conscience say it's necessarily wrong. Snyder seems to some extent have resigned himself to compromise. What I think White doesn't want to concede, though, is that that compromise is more than most other directors ever get.
So, here's the long version of Rebel Moon. The real version of Rebel Moon. The first movie extended by about one hour and 20 minutes, the second one by a bit under an hour. Will it win over anyone who hated the short versions? Hell no! It's, in essence, more of what they didn't like in the first place. Characters get more screentime, plot points and world building are expanded upon and god knows, there's a lot more violence. And some more sex, but mostly more violence. It's probably the goriest semi-mainstream action movie since 2021's The Suicide Squad, easily. It's funniest change is probably that a sequence set in what, in the censored version, was described to be a bar turns out to have been set in a brothel all along.
I have summarized the plot in my review for the short version, but for those who are new here: Sophia Boutella plays Kora. She's a fugitive former elite soldier of a totalitarian galactic empire. She's hiding out in a farming village. The farming village is threatened by the imperial army. Kora travels the galaxy to recruit its greatest warriors to protect the village. They face off in a great battle. Something something Seven Samurai, something something Star Wars.
Now that we got the whole thing I finally feel ready to articulate my thoughts on it. And let's be honest, you all know what they are: I binged all of it, I adored it, I want more of it. I know what the general critical response to these movies is, I can't relate to it at all. This feels like some displaced artefact from the mid 00's, a time when blockbuster film making was saturated with lavish, indulgent, adventurous and earnest to a fault genre pieces that, in retrospect, everyone took for granted. This is coming from exactly the same place movies like Lord of the Rings, Pirates of the Carribean or... well, 300 came from. Unapologetically genre. Unapologetically pulp. Unapologetically unwilling to not take themselves 100% seriously.
And here's the thing. I don't even disagree with the detractors, Rebel Moon asks you to take a lot of extremely goofy worldbuilding and plotting completely seriously. A villain reads a dead man's memory from his leaking brain matter after he bashed his head in. The chief of a farming village tells his people to "fuck for the harvest" at a village festival. A woman assembles the greatest warriors of the entire galaxy to protect a tiny village. Imperial space ships are powered by people shoveling the dead remains of their enemies into a furnace like in a coal powered train. There are characters with names like "Darrian Bloodaxe" and "Atticus Noble" and "Nemesis". The extended cut of the first movie adds an entire subplot about a robot having a religious awakening while strolling through wheat fields and delivering Terrence Malick monologues and, I swear, it's the most kino shit you're ever gonna see.
Believe it or not, Rebel Moon is Snyder's most spiritual film. All those mildly awkward musings about "faith" and "myth" that Justice League suddenly found itself tremendously interested in after putting aside Batman v Superman's more political preoccupations are now the backbone of Rebel Moon. I have previously mentioned that there is a flashback in the movie where employs straight up fairy tale imagery but so much backstory is relayed by characters telling their stories to each other. There is an extended sequence in the second movie where, I swear to god, all the warriors Kora recruited sit at a table and individually recite how they were wronged by the Imperium with each of them getting their own little flashback sequence. Hell, also in the second movie is this wonderful montage, probably one of the best things Snyder ever directed, where all the people Kora assembled, farmers and soldiers and rebels and even an orphaned prince, work on the fields harvesting grain in harmonious unity with the people of the village, now all equal as farmers and labourers, that feels like something from a communist propaganda movie. It damn near brought a tear to my eyes, man.
Listen, I know people don't like these movies, I know they're somewhere at around 15% on Rotten Tomatoes or something. I'm not here to tell them they're wrong or that they need to fix their heart. I've been a hobby film critic for a while and if there's anything I know about this most lowly form of writing it's that its sole product are overly personal, elitist expressions of subjective opinion, devoid of purpose or interest to practically anyone but their author. But straight up, I'm all in on this series and I really hope that Netflix is as supportive of it as Snyder claims they are because, I'm gonna be honest, seeing another series of his abandoned before it's finished would break my greasy heart.
The long awaited (...at least by me) uncut release of Zack Snyder's space fantasy epic Rebel Moon. I saw, and greatly enjoyed, the first movie when it came out and decided to hold out on the second one so I can watch the uncut releases back to back.
I expressed some of my misgivings with the release method of these movies back when I wrote a review on the first one, and perhaps it is redundant to reiterate them now, but hear me out. Film critic Armond White, previously one of the few defenders of Snyder's work among the critical establishment, stated, that in resigning himself to making two versions of each of his movies, Snyder had "become his own Joss Whedon". Referencing, of course, the director Warner Brothers hired to cut Justice League into something almost no one involved wanted anything to do with. While that is a cruel thing to say, I can't in good conscience say it's necessarily wrong. Snyder seems to some extent have resigned himself to compromise. What I think White doesn't want to concede, though, is that that compromise is more than most other directors ever get.
So, here's the long version of Rebel Moon. The real version of Rebel Moon. The first movie extended by about one hour and 20 minutes, the second one by a bit under an hour. Will it win over anyone who hated the short versions? Hell no! It's, in essence, more of what they didn't like in the first place. Characters get more screentime, plot points and world building are expanded upon and god knows, there's a lot more violence. And some more sex, but mostly more violence. It's probably the goriest semi-mainstream action movie since 2021's The Suicide Squad, easily. It's funniest change is probably that a sequence set in what, in the censored version, was described to be a bar turns out to have been set in a brothel all along.
I have summarized the plot in my review for the short version, but for those who are new here: Sophia Boutella plays Kora. She's a fugitive former elite soldier of a totalitarian galactic empire. She's hiding out in a farming village. The farming village is threatened by the imperial army. Kora travels the galaxy to recruit its greatest warriors to protect the village. They face off in a great battle. Something something Seven Samurai, something something Star Wars.
Now that we got the whole thing I finally feel ready to articulate my thoughts on it. And let's be honest, you all know what they are: I binged all of it, I adored it, I want more of it. I know what the general critical response to these movies is, I can't relate to it at all. This feels like some displaced artefact from the mid 00's, a time when blockbuster film making was saturated with lavish, indulgent, adventurous and earnest to a fault genre pieces that, in retrospect, everyone took for granted. This is coming from exactly the same place movies like Lord of the Rings, Pirates of the Carribean or... well, 300 came from. Unapologetically genre. Unapologetically pulp. Unapologetically unwilling to not take themselves 100% seriously.
And here's the thing. I don't even disagree with the detractors, Rebel Moon asks you to take a lot of extremely goofy worldbuilding and plotting completely seriously. A villain reads a dead man's memory from his leaking brain matter after he bashed his head in. The chief of a farming village tells his people to "fuck for the harvest" at a village festival. A woman assembles the greatest warriors of the entire galaxy to protect a tiny village. Imperial space ships are powered by people shoveling the dead remains of their enemies into a furnace like in a coal powered train. There are characters with names like "Darrian Bloodaxe" and "Atticus Noble" and "Nemesis". The extended cut of the first movie adds an entire subplot about a robot having a religious awakening while strolling through wheat fields and delivering Terrence Malick monologues and, I swear, it's the most kino shit you're ever gonna see.
Believe it or not, Rebel Moon is Snyder's most spiritual film. All those mildly awkward musings about "faith" and "myth" that Justice League suddenly found itself tremendously interested in after putting aside Batman v Superman's more political preoccupations are now the backbone of Rebel Moon. I have previously mentioned that there is a flashback in the movie where employs straight up fairy tale imagery but so much backstory is relayed by characters telling their stories to each other. There is an extended sequence in the second movie where, I swear to god, all the warriors Kora recruited sit at a table and individually recite how they were wronged by the Imperium with each of them getting their own little flashback sequence. Hell, also in the second movie is this wonderful montage, probably one of the best things Snyder ever directed, where all the people Kora assembled, farmers and soldiers and rebels and even an orphaned prince, work on the fields harvesting grain in harmonious unity with the people of the village, now all equal as farmers and labourers, that feels like something from a communist propaganda movie. It damn near brought a tear to my eyes, man.
Listen, I know people don't like these movies, I know they're somewhere at around 15% on Rotten Tomatoes or something. I'm not here to tell them they're wrong or that they need to fix their heart. I've been a hobby film critic for a while and if there's anything I know about this most lowly form of writing it's that its sole product are overly personal, elitist expressions of subjective opinion, devoid of purpose or interest to practically anyone but their author. But straight up, I'm all in on this series and I really hope that Netflix is as supportive of it as Snyder claims they are because, I'm gonna be honest, seeing another series of his abandoned before it's finished would break my greasy heart.
Eh, I would still take most of Snyder's films over almost anything Bay related. Not counting Rebel Moon, Snyder know how to do kick ass action and actually keep the camera fucking still with dynamic movement. The only films of his genuinely hate are Sucker Punch and Rebel Moon.
Giggity!
I highly doubt they're going to cancel mid-production on these considering the filming for the sequels starts soon. I get it's Netflix, even it's in their best interests not do so. What you have if they did or didn't cancel? Live moves on.
It would be nice if modern pop culture stopped being so gross and encouraged women to age more gracefully vs injecting their mugs with plastic and whatnot. Monica Bellucci, Sofía Vergara, Salma Hayek and hell, maybe even Helen Miran seem to still be carrying the torch at least.
A ★ review of A Good Day to Die Hard (2013)
“It was all about money?” “When is it ever not about money?” Unlike the other movies, this one actually did start production as a Die Hard movie. However, due to the initially announced title of "Die Hard: 24/7", it was speculated at the time that this was to be a crossover between Die Hard and...
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Told ya.A ★ review of A Good Day to Die Hard (2013)
“It was all about money?” “When is it ever not about money?” Unlike the other movies, this one actually did start production as a Die Hard movie. However, due to the initially announced title of "Die Hard: 24/7", it was speculated at the time that this was to be a crossover between Die Hard and...
View attachment 11623
I take it you're in a good mood?
If it's any consolation, I went back to my Die Hard 4.0 review halfway through this one and bumped up the score.
Thank you kindly.
I'll do you one even better: Die Hard 5 never happened, and McClane happily retires by 2010 after 4.0.
I initially wrote that I'd still rather watch a Bay film than a Snyder one, but decided against it. I haven't ultimately seen that many Bay films so I can't really speak to the entirety of his oeuvre, but I do distinctly remember enjoying Bad Boys 2 on a purely "crash boom bang" level. I do, however, have to contest the claim that Snyder knows how to do action. I used to believe the same, but if anything Rebel Moon, where he's the DP, should prove that he clearly does not. The camera stays still, sure, but there's zero flow or cohesion to any of the action scenes, they're just a smattering of random bits where characters shoot, punch and run with close to zero indication of whose favor the battle is going in. It's also riddled with hackneyed conveniences like
- being able to take down a spaceship with a spear because the cockpit was conveniently placed
- fighting with handaxes bare-chested, in the open and in direct line of fire is somehow a feasible strategy because reasons
- the protagonist sees the bad guy standing upright in direct line of fire, and decides to charge him instead of riddling him with bullets.
That's one of the worst of his films as far as I'm concerned. It has good action, but there are so many unfunny parts or skits that drag or go on for way too long. I don't hate it as much as I used to, but I have that skip/fast forward button at the ready. I find it funny BB3 and BB4 are much better written and directed movies than BB2 ever could be, and Bay had nothing to do with those two sequels.
Bay's later movies are full of themselves, but it in a different way. Especially Transformers 4 & 5. Bay acts like he wants to say something, but none of it works, is hypocritical, or is a sucking off China's genitals in Age of Extinction. 6 Underground actually avoids this and is decent, but I was mainly there Ryan Reynolds.
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Snyder films are captivating in that way thats its difficult to look away from a grisly car wreck. He fails so specularly that its interesting to watch. Its like if a small child was given 200 mil to film a dream they had.
Most of the time his script choices are just kinda dumb, but then you watch Batman vs Superman and can't help but ask "what the fuck even happened here?"
Michael Bay does not have a "What the fuck even happened here?" in his credits. His films just range from dull shit a fratboy with 200 mil would film, or entertaining shit a fratboy would film with 200 mil. Sometimes he makes Armageddon and sometimes he makes transformers 3 which I literally fell asleep during, in theaters.
At this point Im more likely to watch whatever train wreck Snyder does than Michael Bay simply because I feel like Ive seen all Michael Bay has to offer.
Snyder might wake up tomorrow and decide to make a Live Action MechWarrior adaptation and I would watch it because why not, itll be weird, where as if Michael Bay did the same it would just be another Michael bay generic action movie with One mech that Crashlands on earth and it would be piloted by billie ellish who learns the true meaning of friendship in-between the mech, voiced by kevin hart, constantly complaining about crazy white people while farting nervously.
Most of the time his script choices are just kinda dumb, but then you watch Batman vs Superman and can't help but ask "what the fuck even happened here?"
Michael Bay does not have a "What the fuck even happened here?" in his credits. His films just range from dull shit a fratboy with 200 mil would film, or entertaining shit a fratboy would film with 200 mil. Sometimes he makes Armageddon and sometimes he makes transformers 3 which I literally fell asleep during, in theaters.
At this point Im more likely to watch whatever train wreck Snyder does than Michael Bay simply because I feel like Ive seen all Michael Bay has to offer.
Snyder might wake up tomorrow and decide to make a Live Action MechWarrior adaptation and I would watch it because why not, itll be weird, where as if Michael Bay did the same it would just be another Michael bay generic action movie with One mech that Crashlands on earth and it would be piloted by billie ellish who learns the true meaning of friendship in-between the mech, voiced by kevin hart, constantly complaining about crazy white people while farting nervously.
A ★★½ review of Firestarter (1984)
"Woodchips, they should have given me something harder." This film was originally intended to be directed by John Carpenter, with drafts of the script written by The Thing scribe Bill Lancaster and Christine scribe Bill Phillips. In addition, Carpenter would have had the role of Andy McGee be...
letterboxd.com
This is why book loyalty isn't always a good thing for an adaptation.
" and it is my personal ending that he died of cancer 5 years later due to fighting through Chernobyl without any radioactive protective gear. "A ★ review of A Good Day to Die Hard (2013)
“It was all about money?” “When is it ever not about money?” Unlike the other movies, this one actually did start production as a Die Hard movie. However, due to the initially announced title of "Die Hard: 24/7", it was speculated at the time that this was to be a crossover between Die Hard and...
But the bad guys cleaned up all the radiation in Chernobyl with their magic machine...which was just sitting round not being used to clean up radiation.