Discuss and Rate the Last Film You Watched

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Casual Shinji

Should've gone before we left.
Legacy
Jul 18, 2009
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If you ever intend to watch this movie, don't read my review. This is the kind of movie you get the most out of by going in as blind as possible.
I remember watching this with my sister and I had to almost physically restrain her from running out of the room.
 
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Bob_McMillan

Elite Member
Aug 28, 2014
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Couldn't make it past the halfway point of The Boy and the Heron. Was just too bored. I stopped right when all the fantastical shit was going on. but by then I felt like I just wanted to play some videogames instead.
 

Piscian

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Apr 28, 2020
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Strange Darling (2024)

Finally got to see this today. I missed it in theaters and RLM raved about it. I really don't want to say too much about it. Lot of surprises. Suffice to say it was excellent. The movie skips back and forth between 6 chapters in the style of The Hateful 8 where you get a WTF scene and then it'll skip back to the previous chapter to show you what was happening to get to this point. The movie does a good job of keeping you on your toes throughout the run time. The trailer speaks for itself. 9/10 for me. In this case you don't even need to listen to me it's got an 95/85% on RT between critics and audiences it's a real banger.

I really recommend going in blind, the trailer keeps it under wraps and includes a note to go in without reading about it first if you can, though maybe just skip the trailer if you're already excited for it.

 

thebobmaster

Elite Member
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Apr 5, 2020
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Johnny Novgorod

Bebop Man
Legacy
Feb 9, 2012
18,980
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Anyone but You

A romcom that makes the most out of casting two insanely attractive people who're obviously attracted to each other but have to pretend that they're not...and then pretend that they are... and then pretend that they're not... etc.

You're required to believe that their (potential) hooking up would take the spotlight at a destination wedding they're both attending; that every guest would have a veiled interest in either setting them up or driving them apart; that they would reject each other for as long as they do.

Sydney Sweeney and Glenn Powell are very good at having fun and embarrassing themselves in one scene but looking godly in another and playing into the cutesy cattiness of the genre. Movie doesn't have a cynical bone in its ribcage, snd it's a nice change of pace from all the MILFcoms I've been watching this year. There's always a sense of sadness and an almost apologetic tone to them even as they're supposed to work as wish fulfilment.

The American Society of Magical Negroes

Like American Fiction, it's about Black culture shaping into stereotypes and playing into White perception as a means of survival and/or success, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy that breeds resentment on one end and prejudice on the other.

How it goes about this, is we're introduced to a Kingsman-esque secret society (see title) that assigns magical negroes to potentially White "clients" to keep their "White tears" in check (a meter shows up floating next to them, the arrow slowly ticking dangerously towards red). The logic here is to placate potential threats by mumbling fortune cookie platitudes and serving as selfless, guiding influencers, as seen in The Legend of Bagger Vance and Green Mile (which get spoofed here).

The movie would've worked better as a Key and Peele sketch (and it has). I *get* it, it's just that it's not very funny or insightful. Get past the opening stretch, which is teeming with gags and ideas and world building that never quite gels, and you're stuck in a tediously conventional romantic triangle between a manic pixie dream girl, some dude and the third wheel who has pledged to get them together even as he falls for the girl. All of this taking place in one of those bullshit Google knockoff companies where you get paid to play foosball and lounge about in bean bags. You'll forget what movie you're supposed to be watching before long.
 
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Bartholen

At age 6 I was born without a face
Legacy
Jul 1, 2020
780
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Finland
The Substance, 9/10

I saw this getting a fair bit of buzz, and deliberately decided to keep myself as unspoiled as possible. It's not a very complicated or twisty movie in terms of its plot, so turns out I'd pretty much guessed correctly where it was gonna go. But good god, never could have I predicted how it would get there. I do believe this movie is best experienced knowing as little of it as possible, so suffice to say that it's one of my favorite films of the year, and absolutely go see it with a good crowd if possible, because it elevated the experience massively.

The Substance is a body horror satire comedy starring Demi Moore as a fading, once-beloved actress. One day she gets into an accident, and ends up hearing about "The Substance" through mysterious channels. It allows her to create a younger, sexier duplicate of herself, and live a double life to reliven her career. From that description I think you can guess where the movie's gonna go from the words "body horror".

It's one of the most revolting, stomach-churning and unique films I've ever seen. I have a pretty strong stomach for gore and gross-out stuff, but my limits were absolutely tested with this one. It's up there with Braindead in terms of its squick factor, both gore and gross-out. But it's just a total fucking blast. I was reminded of Under the Skin and Poor Things the most, but there's a fair bit of Requiem for a Dream and obviously Cronenberg movies in there as well. And those are all excellent things to be compared to.

The acting's fantastic, the cinematography is extremely unique with a lot of repeated still shots, the soundtrack is unique and energetic, and it just oozes with theme and subtext in every scene. This will absolutely have several dozen hour-long video essays made about it on Youtube. But the sound design is what truly makes this movie, and it's absolutely out of this world. The movie is squelching, cracking and scrunching in almost every scene, which in conjunction with the extreme closeup-focused shooting style makes it one of the most visceral viewing experiences of this decade. Whether someone's eating shrimp or sticking a needle in something, you will hear every agonizing nano-decibel of it. It's also very funny. It's incredibly over the top in its style and presentation, which goes a long way to keep it from being really sad and gross (well it's still gross, but in a fun way). The unsubtle digs about show business, sex appeal and how we value a person based on it all land right on the bullseye. It goes so over the top with its sexuality that it kind of goes all the way around and becomes uncomfortable and even grotesque.

The special effects are just incredible, from the makeup to the prosthetics to the digital effects, I was staring at a lot of it just slack-jawed. At a point I was pretty sure the movie couldn't get any crazier, but holy fuck was I ever wrong. The finale of this movie is like jumping from 100 mph to like mach 5.0. It's worth seeing for the climax alone, you will not be prepared for what's coming.
Total blast from beginning to end. Go see it.
 
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thebobmaster

Elite Member
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Apr 5, 2020
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118
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United States
 

thebobmaster

Elite Member
Legacy
Apr 5, 2020
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And with that, I'm done with this series for the time being. Remake's not streaming anywhere, and I do not feel the urge to find a way to even rent it just to complete the series.
 
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Dirty Hipsters

This is how we praise the sun!
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Feb 7, 2011
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'Merica
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3 children in a trench coat
Late to this one, but I just watched IT parts 1 and 2.

I'm not a huge horror movie person and didn't go out of my way to see them on release, figuring I would eventually catch them on streaming, and since it's October it felt appropriate.

Overall pretty enjoyable. I think part 1 is better. While I'm usually not a huge fan of child actors the kids did a great job and are generally more charming than their adult counterparts.

I feel like part 1 is also more of a horror movie whereas part 2 feels like it has a lot more slapstick, like they got Sam Raimi to direct. It's still good, but not as good. This might also have something to do with Stephen King's books always kind of falling apart halfway through because he seems to get bored of writing them (a joke that's used multiple times in the second movie).

Bill Skarsgard does a great job as Pennywise, and while I prefer the Tim Curry version, I don't think Bill Skarsgard's version is lesser, just different.
 
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Casual Shinji

Should've gone before we left.
Legacy
Jul 18, 2009
20,224
5,005
118
I watched Challengers. Pretty much a sports anime brought to the big screen and starring Zendeya. It is very good, but I can't help but feel like I'm missing something. Somehow the performances aren't as strong as I feel they should be for a movie like this. I just didn't get the intensity that the movie was trying to get across in alot of these scenes. It could also be that I'm just a great big straight guy and the homo erotic tension not landing. Less for the homo eroticism and more for me finding the two main dudes kinda gooberish looking. Apparently they're seen as pretty hot, but yeah, I seriously couldn't really see it.

Still a very entertaining movie regardless though. Cool shots and a fun soundtrack.
 

Johnny Novgorod

Bebop Man
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Feb 9, 2012
18,980
3,555
118
Brothers (2024)

A Raising Arizona-esque comedy written by Etan Cohen (no not that one) and starring Peter Dinklage and Josh Brolin as twin brothers and smalltime crooks. Brolin is trying to reform - wife, shitty job, baby on the way - when Dinklage is released from prison and recruits him for one last gig, involving stolen emeralds buried decades ago by their runaway ma (Glenn Close, finally playing live-action Mona Simpson).

The movie doesn't quite nail the tone of Arizona but it gets halfway there with a cast of affable hicks and its cartoon approach to violence. Brendan Fraser plays a crusading cop on the brothers' trail, Marisa Tomei is an astrological loony who may or may not be fucking a monkey, M. Emmet Walsh is a wheelchair-bound judge propelled exclusively by shotgun recoil.

Watch if you want to see an excavator vs. golf carts remake of Fury Road, death by Christmas tree and Josh Brolin jacking off an orangutan.
 

Xprimentyl

Made you look...
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Aug 13, 2011
6,691
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Plano, TX
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Strange Darling (2024)

Finally got to see this today. I missed it in theaters and RLM raved about it. I really don't want to say too much about it. Lot of surprises. Suffice to say it was excellent. The movie skips back and forth between 6 chapters in the style of The Hateful 8 where you get a WTF scene and then it'll skip back to the previous chapter to show you what was happening to get to this point. The movie does a good job of keeping you on your toes throughout the run time. The trailer speaks for itself. 9/10 for me. In this case you don't even need to listen to me it's got an 95/85% on RT between critics and audiences it's a real banger.

I really recommend going in blind, the trailer keeps it under wraps and includes a note to go in without reading about it first if you can, though maybe just skip the trailer if you're already excited for it.

We watched this last night, and I'll say it was decent, but "excellent" is a stretch. It's not bad, but it think it should have been told in the more natural, linear way. The jumping around felt like pretention for pretentiousness' sake. Read about it on Wikipedia afterwards, and in fact, the producers (Miramax) had actually hired another editor to re-cut the film in a linear fashion without the writer's knowledge, but ended up releasing what the writer intended.

Mostly, I think it underwhelmed me because it's one of those films that if you know to expect twists, you never trust what you see, so nothing holds any weight from moment to moment. And with such a small cast, there was only so many ways this could have gone; I had it pegged pretty early on. It's not a bad film, but knowing there will be twists alone is spoiler enough. "I recommend it," but for anyone not having read this post this far, I'd leave it at that to let the film have its true punch.
 

PsychedelicDiamond

Wild at Heart and weird on top
Legacy
Jan 30, 2011
2,084
946
118
House (1977)

Japanese horror comedy by Nobuhiko Obayashi. A bit of a cult classic and now one of most widely recognized examples of "goofy japanese stuff".

And god, is it goofy. House (or "Hausu") follows a clique of girls as they stay overnight in the old house of an aunt of one of theirs which, you guessed it, turns out to be haunted by an evil spirit. And its extremely fluffy cat. It's about the most generic premise for a horror movie but it serves as the setup for something that's anything but. What Hausu is, is a campy, slapstick haunted house ride, oversaturated with quirky direction and editing tricks and ridiculous setpieces that feels weirdly ahead of its time to the point that even now mainstream comedy is just barely catching up to it. It's an incredibly colourful, fast paced exercise in sensory overload that utilizes every trick in the book, and a bunch it probably invented, to make the viewer laugh. If you had told me this had come out around the same time as Hundreds of Beavers, I would probably believe you.

It uses the cookie cooker setup of a haunted house movie to play with some classic, and at that point already unapologetically campy, horror iconography. I swear, there's a dancing plastic skeleton prominenlty featured in this. It's an absolutely classy production. Plus, some really barmy setpieces. There's a scene in there that I'm almost sure was the inspiration for man eating piano in Mario 64. There is another scene, allegedly directly inspired by the writer/directors then kid daughter (who actually has a writing credit on this) where a girl is being attacked by rabid futons. I'm pretty sure Obayashi invented an entirely new cinematic language in there and while it's more restrained in some of his later work, it followed him for his entire career. Honestly, I think it can't be overstated how gorgeous this movie looks. The colourls are bright and poppy, it works a lot with elaborate sets and matte paintings, it's beautiful!

There is sort of a comprehensible ghost story somewhere in there but this is firmly on the "comedy" side of the "horror comedy" genre. Even its most morbid scenes feel very much like what a child trying to tell a scary story would come up with. That is, aside from a somewhat awkward aside that references World War 2, feels like a bit of an idiosyncratic addition to the script and oddly foreshadows what would primarily occupy the latter part of Obayashi's career.

Hausu is an incredibly entertaining live action cartoon that must have felt like an artefact from another world when it came out, a candy coloured parade of rapid fire non sequiturs. And, yes, most of them are really funny. It's the "if one joke falls flat, the next one's coming 10 seconds later" type of comedy where a big part of what makes it funny is just how much its overwhelming the viewer with absurdity. It's funny in a way that doesn't feel specific to any culture or time period. Again, if anything it feels like it should speak more to modern comedic sensibilities than it did to those of its time. That said, despite being mostly dismissed by critics of the time, it was a hit in Japan and is now finally getting the acknowledgement it deserves in the rest of the world. It's some pretty good shit.
 
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Gordon_4

The Big Engine
Legacy
Apr 3, 2020
6,503
5,761
118
Australia
House (1977)

Japanese horror comedy by Nobuhiko Obayashi. A bit of a cult classic and now one of most widely recognized examples of "goofy japanese stuff".

And god, is it goofy. House (or "Hausu") follows a clique of girls as they stay overnight in the old house of an aunt of one of theirs which, you guessed it, turns out to be haunted by an evil spirit. And its extremely fluffy cat. It's about the most generic premise for a horror movie but it serves as the setup for something that's anything but. What Hausu is, is a campy, slapstick haunted house ride, oversaturated with quirky direction and editing tricks and ridiculous setpieces that feels weirdly ahead of its time to the point that even now mainstream comedy is just barely catching up to it. It's an incredibly colourful, fast paced exercise in sensory overload that utilizes every trick in the book, and a bunch it probably invented, to make the viewer laugh. If you had told me this had come out around the same time as Hundreds of Beavers, I would probably believe you.

It uses the cookie cooker setup of a haunted house movie to play with some classic, and at that point already unapologetically campy, horror iconography. I swear, there's a dancing plastic skeleton prominenlty featured in this. It's an absolutely classy production. Plus, some really barmy setpieces. There's a scene in there that I'm almost sure was the inspiration for man eating piano in Mario 64. There is another scene, allegedly directly inspired by the writer/directors then kid daughter (who actually has a writing credit on this) where a girl is being attacked by rabid futons. I'm pretty sure Obayashi invented an entirely new cinematic language in there and while it's more restrained in some of his later work, it followed him for his entire career. Honestly, I think it can't be overstated how gorgeous this movie looks. The colourls are bright and poppy, it works a lot with elaborate sets and matte paintings, it's beautiful!

There is sort of a comprehensible ghost story somewhere in there but this is firmly on the "comedy" side of the "horror comedy" genre. Even its most morbid scenes feel very much like what a child trying to tell a scary story would come up with. That is, aside from a somewhat awkward aside that references World War 2, feels like a bit of an idiosyncratic addition to the script and oddly foreshadows what would primarily occupy the latter part of Obayashi's career.

Hausu is an incredibly entertaining live action cartoon that must have felt like an artefact from another world when it came out, a candy coloured parade of rapid fire non sequiturs. And, yes, most of them are really funny. It's the "if one joke falls flat, the next one's coming 10 seconds later" type of comedy where a big part of what makes it funny is just how much its overwhelming the viewer with absurdity. It's funny in a way that doesn't feel specific to any culture or time period. Again, if anything it feels like it should speak more to modern comedic sensibilities than it did to those of its time. That said, despite being mostly dismissed by critics of the time, it was a hit in Japan and is now finally getting the acknowledgement it deserves in the rest of the world. It's some pretty good shit.
Holy shit this sounds amazing.
 
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Jun 11, 2023
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It's an extremely fun movie. I can absolutely recommend it.

I watched the trailer on IMDb and it was like...

*Wtf is going on here?*

Houuseh”

*…Ok but WTF is going on here for real?*

”Houuusseh!!”

Etc. etc. and yup, on my watchlist now.


OT, finally got around to watching Terrifier (2016 feature, not the 2011 short it’s based on).

Ehh…for those with a gore porn fetish and love of clowns, this one is right up that alley. My personal affinity is to neither in particular, but as a general fan of horror it’s piqued my curiosity. David Howard Thornton who portrays Art the Clown described his character as an “evil Mr. Bean”, and I can see that at least. But the comic relief isn’t going to matter much to the squeamish. After one scene involving a hacksaw I kinda checked out over the shock value of it all. Any suspense or tension thereafter is also muted by the fact these victims behave about as idiotically as one might expect in these types of flicks.

This one sits at a 5.7 on IMDb and overall that’s about where I’d peg it myself. The two sequels trend a bit higher, at 6.1 and 7.0 respectively, so I’m mildly curious to see what warrants these increments. With eight days til Halloween I guess now is the most fitting time to find out.
 
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