Discuss and Rate the Last Film You Watched

[BrawlMan]

If those two are still raking in the money, I'd not expect them to stop there.

And I'll continue to be focused on something better. Not the first time Cameron sold out on something. Giving his 'blessing' on Terminator Genesys. In the business we call that becoming what you hate or dislike.

 

[Bartholen]

The Wiz (1978), 7/10

This is a weird film even for the 70s. It's the Wizard of Oz Story, reimagined as an urban fantasy tale set in a 70s New York-influenced Oz, starring Michael Jackson, Diana Ross and Richard Pryor, directed by Sidney Lumet and written by Joel Schumacher. Sounds like a fucking madlib, right? Well it's also a musical, originating on Broadway, with its soundtrack consisting of absolutely slap-tastic disco and funk. It's wildly weird, flamboyant and over the top. I enjoyed it quite a lot, but it has some pretty big issues also.

The acting in this is surprisingly great, especially when you consider some of the main cast aren't even actors. Michael Jackson is especially charming as the Scarecrow, and in a world where he didn't become the biggest popstar in history he'd probably have had a good acting career. Diana Ross is a very good Dorothy (here reimagined as a 24-year old kindergarten teacher), and Nipsey Russell is great as the Tinman. Overall there isn't a weak link here acting wise, and everyone brings that manic, over the top camp energy this stuff calls for. Visually the film is completely bonkers: it's equally whimsical and grotty, mixing elements from the original books with 70s urban decay. The result is a film that looks unlike any other, and I'm not sure how intentional it was. One could ponder on maybe there being some sort of unspoken social commentary juxtaposing all the whimsical acting with these run-down buildings, but if there is it's so subtle as to be unnoticeable. The writing is also surprisingly great in spots, using this weirdly poetic and eloquent language that's quite unlike anything I've heard. The reframing of Dorothy's journey as one of a young adult's self-discovery and placing her in a more active role also works quite well.

The film has some serious issues though, and they mostly have to do with its musical aspect and pacing. This is based on a Broadway production, but Lumet was clearly the wrong choice of director here: he has no idea how to make this stuff work in film form. On the surface it's all great: there's clearly a ton of effort, production value and talent on display, and some of the numbers are huge with dozens of extras singing and dancing. But it's basically all shot pretty flatly, with very little dynamic camera movement or creative editing to bring the energy across. Lumet shoots these scenes as if the characters were just talking. It just goes to show that film musicals are a medium all of their own. The pacing is probably where this film suffers the most. It's about 130 minutes, and could honestly be cut by like 20. The Wicked Witch doesn't even show up until over 90 minutes into it, and is killed off less than 105 minutes into it, meaning there's almost half an hour of the film left when the main antagonist is dispatched. The first half is pretty well paced and has good momentum, but the second half just draaaaags.

I still enjoyed it for its unabashed absurdity, and the mere fact that it exists. Nothing like this will ever be made again.

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

One Battle After Another

It's also kind of awful.

Okay, no, polemics aside, it's well acted and well shot but for a quirky 70's throwback movie with a comically inflated budget that misunderstands the book it was inspired by, feels politically stuck in the Bush era and bungles both its satire and and its action, it's a miracle it made its money back at all.

Maybe Tarantino could have made it an actual hit. He sure as hell would have made it less dull.

First of all, Tarantino can f*** off already.

Second Welp, hard disagree.

Not about all of the criticisms- because it's politics are a confused stupid mess, but this movie was entertaining as all hell, which is hard for me to say about a 3 hour movie these days.

I feel like we kind of take DiCaprio for granted but my god does he work his ass off on screen. He does this perfect balance of brave, naive, bad-ass, and stupid.
For me the mess of this movie holds together based on a similar vibe that the TV show The Lowdown has: think of the try-hard SJW white man- isn't he annoying? But then what if they actually are right, actually do something about what they complain about, actually put their lives on the line. Unless you're really stone-hearted, you have to respect that. And in both stories, the people of color, the other even more effective revolutionaries, and people who are calling him out on his nonsense- they recognize his courage and help him.

Of course it's Benecio Del Torro who personifies that and the whole sequence from when DiCaprio shows up to his dojo until his capture is the kind of action comedy I really miss from movies.

I haven't read Pynchon's novel Vineland, the basis for it (I have never made it through one of his books, quitting halfway through both V and Lot 49. I guess my brain was not built for post-modernism), but my understanding is that it's "inspired by" not really an adaptation.

I like this movie but due to its confused if any messaging, mess of a story, and reliance on some tropes and representation that didn't always land for me (still dunno what to feel about Sean Penn's ridiculous character; and the way the villain Christmas group did not land well with me), I didn't love it, I just had a good time with it. My wife said she's worried it will be a like Crash where dumbass white libs make it into some great political commentary before they realize how dumb that is. I think because it's a comedy that won't happen but then, you know, who knows.

I do think some of the glowing reception is in the context of Hollywood being afraid of movie theaters ending are always looking for the next Barbenheimer, the movies that get people excited about the medium and are a Big Deal. It's in conversation as a top movie of the year along with Sinners and to me that's silly, as Sinners really is as good as the hype, while Battle was just... well, it was a Paul Thomas Anderson movie! And those are always an entertaining mess.

 

[thebobmaster]

A ★★★½ review of Saturday Night Fever (1977)

“There's ways of killing yourself without killing yourself.” This film was inspired by an article written in the New York magazine purportedly detailing the lives of Italian-American men working dead-end jobs during the day and living it up in discotheques at night. It emerged about 20 years...

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[thebobmaster]

A ★★★★½ review of Ip Man 4: The Finale (2019)

“Winning or losing, does it really matter? Shouldn’t we use Chinese martial arts to change the biases against us?” There are two production notes I have for this film. The first is that unlike the other films in the series, this one actually raised a bit of controversy due to the timing. You...

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[Bob_McMillan]

Let’s just say it’s the sequel no one really expected, and feels like the movie equivalent of good album’s lighter b-side. But, since the action was still good and Connie Nielsen’s in it, that was good enough for me.

I had to ask my girlfriend what an album's b-side was lol. I dunno, I didn't really like this one so much.

Nobody 2 is about Hutch Mansell taking his family on vacation after his return to "business" puts a strain on the family. He returns to the destination of the only vacation he ever had as a child, and hijinks ensue.

The action is taken up a notch, but to the detriment of the movie. Bob Odenkirk is still a surprisingly impressive action star, all the hand to hand stuff was great. Much more brutal than the first movie. But the larger the setpieces get, the stupider they become, the more obvious Hutch's plot armor is, and the silliness of it all just kind of makes it feel cheap. The first movie worked because the big silly setpiece finale was payoff for a slow burn and Hutch getting his ass kicked. But this movie is just silly 100% of the time, so we spend more time thinking about how stupid it all is. Meh.

 

[Bob_McMillan]

As I promised my girlfriend, we watched Wicked 2 on Christmas day. Which actually isn't as bad as it sounds, we were travelling in a new country where everything was closed for Christmas.

But fuck this movie. I need to rant because I didn't want to unload all the hate I have for this movie onto a person who more or less enjoyed this movie. I'mma need bulletpoints for this.

• The music. I don't particularly care about music in general. But even I could recognise that the first movie had fun musical numbers, that they did their best to adapt to the movie screen. This movie didn't fucking bother. People will sing for 5 seconds, do regular dialogue, then go back to singing. There's like one or two musical numbers that were more than just two people singing in a room, but one of them was purely foggy CGI. This was my girlfriends main complaint as well.
• The visuals. This movie looks fucking cheap. There's like three or four real sets, and they are all so tiny and unimpressive it made me suspect they used the Volume technology for this. Absolutely soulless.
• The story. I completely forgot why Jeff Goldbloom is evil. Yes, he's doing a big fascism on the talking animals, but why? I know they said it in the first movie, but they don't reference it all in this for all I know. So many major plot points come off as incredibly stupid, not because of the writing, but because of the student film-level camerawork and directing. Oh, this character is going to heroically sacrifice themself? Uh, why? They are in a position of total power and could very easily escape as well? Oh, the main villain is completely helpless and at the mercy of the hero? So why the fuck are you just letting him get away scot free? You could get away with these in a real musical, but look absolutely stupid on screen.
• The characters. The core characters do not spend nearly enough time together to justify the emotion they supposedly have for each other. The romantic pairing in the movie have like one scene together. Their idea of giving characters emotional depth is playing the same flashback of college friends frolicking in a field.

The moment I just absolutely checked out of the movie was when Dorothy arrives in Oz and kills Elphaba's sister. Already an awkward scene to begin with, because they have to shoehorn (heh) Glinda giving Dorothy Nessa's magic shoes. Yup, just looting clothes from the recently deceased body of your best friend's younger sister. This ought to have been the darkest moment in the film, but the ENTIRE thing is turned into comedy. Elphaba half heartedly pays her respects to Nessa, despite blueballing Fiyero out of concern for her sister like 30 seconds ago. She then has a stupid catfight played for laughs with Glinda, right in front of her sister's probably still warm corpse.

I hated this movie. The only thing good about it was it made me really hate a villainous character in a wheelchair. Not something you see so often.

 

[thebobmaster]

A ★★★★½ review of The Sandlot (1993)

“Even though none of us had seen a Playboy magazine, which we constantly lied about, we figured going to the pool was the next best thing to being there.” Of all films you'd expect a defamation lawsuit against, this coming-of-age comedy is not one of them. However, Michael Polydoros did just...

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[thebobmaster]

A ★★★½ review of Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006)

“Man, you’ve gotten big. How long’s it been, 3, 4 months?” “Ten years.” “Ten years? Man, I gotta lay off the peyote.” Adam McKay came up with the concept of this film while Will Ferrell was working on Elf, and the two began working on a script soon after he finished filming for that movie. The...

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[Dirty Hipsters]

Avatar: Fire and Ash (2025)

Third, out of a planned five, installment in James Cameron's Avatar series, the ongoing saga of humanity trying to conquer the alien moon of Pandora and it's native Na'vi people, lead by former human soldier Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and his family, fighting back.

Fire and Ash is different to the previous two movies in that it does little to particularly advance any ongoing narrative, besides cataloguing one more large battle between Pandora and Earth, this movie is, when it comes down to it, almost solely dedicated to developing the characters. So what it deals with is on one side Sully's family working out some of their differences, particularly regarding Spider (Jack Champion), their designated Adopted Human Sibling, who is the biological son of recurring antagonist Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang) whom Quaritch himself would like to take back from them and their daughter Kiri (Sigourney Weaver) who's, like... Sexy Alien Jesus, born from a virgin and the great spirit Eywa. Meanwhile Quaritch himself reaches out to a different, more war like tribe of the Na'vi who let Cameron indulge in some of the less wholesome parts of native iconography, dancing around camp fires, snorting hallucinogenics, wearing white face paint that makes their heads look like skulls and certainly more than eager to become acquainted with that human invention called "gunpowder". Their leader the crazed priestess Varang (Oona Chaplin, for good reason noted to be the standout performance of the movie)who takes on the role of Quaritch's love interest and renders them a parallel to Jake and Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) which kinda factors into this movies story but seems to be setting up some greater payoff in the sequels.

Avatar: Fire and Ash is an impressive effort. Not to repeat myself, but in a time where action films have come to be written and, even worse, look like television productions a lot of the time, James Cameron is a director trying his hardest to give theatrical audiences their money's worth. Avatar 3 is once again a big dumb movie with big dumb effects and big dumb action setpieces and big dumb emotions, this one in particular certainly being the one to lean the hardest into outright melodrama. But honestly, that is what I kinda liked about it. Seeing how many recent action movies have their characters primarily communicate in smarmy one liners, it feels refreshing to have a movie where people cry, yell at each other, hug each and tell each other they love each other. Basically the entire plot is in how peoples feeling towards each other develop, to the point that the actual battles have a tendency to feel a bit incidental, lavishly directed and exhaustively long as they may be.

And to be fair, this movie is probably a good bit longer than it ought to be. During its climax I often caught my mind wandering, thinking about what I was planning to have for dinner over what it was that I was watching. James Cameron obviously really expects the audience to be invested in Pandora's other civilization, the race of alien whales (or, you might say, whaliens) they established in the last movie and straight up, I really wasn't. Matter of fact my reaction whenever they cut back to them was "Holy crap, can we please be done with this shit already."

That aside though, there is some rather good stuff in this movie, make no mistake. For what it's worth, it did make me care about these characters. Everyone just felt really fleshed out. There wasn't any of that "We'll just establish that they exist now and flesh them out in the sequels or their own spinoff" that a lot of modern franchise movies have, almost everyone had an arc that went somewhere, went through some sort of emotional transformation. The closest it comes to sidelining a character for later was probably Varang, as I've pointed out before. But Particularly the character of Quaritch deserves po be singled out here, this movie really turns him from the stock macho military man villain he was in the first two movies into a character with a surprising amount of nuance.

That said, one does wonder. This is the third time we got to visit Pandora and while it's certainly setting up some things to pay off in the future, it's the one where the least is accomplished by either side of the conflict, giving Fire and Ash a somewhat aimless feeling. And it makes me question, does James Cameron view Pandora more than anything as a place to escape to? No to get too lost in the weeds, one does wonder if Avatar's main theme embodied by Sully and here reiterated in the character of Spider, of making amends for the cruelty and greed of humanity, matter of fact of shedding your own humanity to be embraced into something more pure, more innocent, more beautiful, something worth living and dying for is rooted in some personal longing on his part. If Cameron's meticulous obsession with bringing it to life with his, on occasion rather unreflected seeming, enthusiasm for state of the art technology, modeling and animating all these bioluminescent plants and turquoise seas and pretty, almost naked alien people (though, make no mistake, despite everything the CGI in this still is a long way from passing as photorealistic) isn't tinged by a certain desperation. Because Fire and Ash feels like an excuse to spend time in this world and with these characters more than an effort to advance some grand, epic five part narrative.

All things considered, make no mistake, I overall liked this. I personally wouldn't mind spending more time in this world and with these characters either, I enjoy them fine. I don't begrudge these movies their success, even if there is a small, resentful part inside of me that thinks it should be Rebel Moon in their place. This will probably make its 1 billion+ dollars at the box office and there've been worse things to do so. This movie has had character moments and action setpieces and visuals that will stick with me, I did find some parts emotionally affecting, it's a perfectly good movie. If you're at all interested in seeing this, by all means, go ahead and see it. The worst I could say about it is that it had some pacing issues. But I don't feel burned out on this series yet, I am perfectly willing to watch the next two movies.

Just, please, can we finally put that whole whale stuff behind us? Come on, Jim...

Just watched this last night in Imax.

I have to say, I liked it significantly more than Way of Water.

I think the issue with The Way of Water is that it covers the exact same beats as the first Avatar. They were so focused on introducing the water culture that it was the complete focus of the movie and ultimately the story barely progressed because of it. Avatar 1 had already spent the majority of its runtime introducing Navi culture, and the second movie doing so again with the water tribe cheapened the experience. I do appreciate that James Cameron wants the world to feel lived in, and for the inhabitants to have their own distinct cultures and religions that feel thought out and established, but in Way of Water it felt like that overshadowed everything else and was overindulgent.

I appreciated that in Fire and Ash while they introduced a new culture, the volcano people, they didn't feel the need to fixate on the details of their culture and practices for half the runtime, and that significantly improved the pacing.

That's not to say that Fire and Ash isn't without its own problems, the biggest one being that this movie doesn't really have a beginning or end. It kind of just carries forward all of the plot lines from the second movie, and ends without resolving anything. It really just serves to create new plot lines for the next movie, and to introduce a new macguffin for the humans to fight for.

Overall though, this is exactly the kind of movie that theaters need. It's a big dumb beautiful spectacle that you can't truly appreciate without being in a theater. It's gorgeously shot and directed and the entire movie is lovingly crafted with mesmerizing detail. Is it especially well written? No. Does it have to be? Also no. This is the kind of big budget box office buster that gets people into movie theaters. It's the entire entire reason for the existence of theaters, to provide you with an experience that you can't get at home. I have a 75" 4K TV and a nice sound system. I can watch the vast majority of movies in my house and be more than satisfied with the experience, and this is one of the movies that will get me to a theater, even at $33 for an Imax movie ticket.

And you know what I appreciated about it even more? I didn't need to watch 3 TV shows and read a comic book between Avatar 2 and Avatar 3 to understand the plot, nor did they introduce a multiverse.

 

[BrawlMan]

And you know what I appreciated about it even more? I didn't need to watch 3 TV shows and read a comic book between Avatar 2 and Avatar 3 to understand the plot, nor did they introduce a multiverse.

Part of the reason why I enjoyed Megan 2.0, Havoc, The Running Man Remake, and Predator Badlands so much.

 

[hanselthecaretaker2]

MI: The Entity: The Entity Final The Entity Reckoning… THE ENTITY!!!


Whether or not it’s the final outing here for Cruise and Co, this was long overdue. Surely an impressive run; especially considering Cruise’s dedicated nature, but time to move on. Anyways, aside from the pacing, the sub diving sequence had so many issues; whether it’s the hypothermia, depressurization, lack of gear, etc. Total disregard for the audience’s general intelligence from a writing standpoint, which unfortunately clashes with the very real stunt performances from Cruise. The first half was a drag, and could have done with about a hundred or so less mentions of The motherfucking Entity. The finale was pretty tight, with some nigh impossible timing, fitting the theme almost too well.

Some long weekend I’d like to binge watch them all, but not until Cruise is old enough to be in a nursing home.

 

[thebobmaster]

A ★★★ review of Jason X (2001)

“Hey, you want to drink some beer?” “Or smoke some pot?” “Or maybe have premarital sex? WE LOVE PREMARITAL SEX!” This film was made during the ridiculously prolonged production of Freddy vs. Jason, as Sean Cunningham and Jim Isaac wanted to make sure Jason was fresh in the minds of moviegoers...

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[FakeSympathy]

Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle

I am punching myself for not watching the theatrical release. Because goddamn, the animation and the sound effects are so crisp.

The only bad things is since I read the manga series and know how each sequences would go, I did not have that on-the-edge-of-my-seat suspense. However, the animation team did add tons of details during each fights that is not in the manga, which made them all the better!

I am excited for the next movie!

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

12 Angry Men (1997)

The William Friedkin made-for-TV remake. This was 40 years after the 1957 Lumet movie, so if my calculations are correct we're 11 years away from another remake with Tom Hanks as Juror #3 (yes, #3). Superficially the 1997 version is more or less the same. 4 of the 12 (angry) men are Black now, including the vitriolically racist #10, so there's more of an emphasis on race (which was still present in the original). The judge is a lady. You hear the city bustling outside. You get more handheld camera, and shots dutch and twist dramatically. It's a great cast (which also seems more elderly than the 1997 one), and it's the second time George C. Scott (#3) successfully subs for Lee J. Cobb (both played Kinderman in the Exorcist movies). I'm not 100% sold on Jack Lemmon as #8. Not that Lemmon isn't as wholesome a personality as Henry Fonda but here he comes across as somewhat more calculating yet weaker, less certain. There was an ease to Fonda, he never felt like he was channeling an agenda. Fonda was the embodiment of that Freedom of Speech painting by Norman Rockwell people use ironically when communicating supposed hot takes.

 

[thebobmaster]

A ★★★★★ review of Chicken Run (2000)

“They’re going to kill themselves! Wanna watch?” “...Yeah, all right.” The idea for this film dates back to 1995, when Aardman co-founder Peter Lord got together with Wallace and Gromit creator Nick Park with the idea of a spoof on the 1963 film The Great Escape. The first feature-length feature...

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[thebobmaster]

A ★★★★★ review of Zodiac (2007)

“Not many people have basements in California.” Based off of the book by the same name by Robert Graysmith, he sold the rights first to Shane Salero, who in turn made a deal with Ricardo Mestres to co-write and produce a film for Touchstone Pictures. However, this script ended up falling...

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[thebobmaster]

A ★½ review of Apollo 18 (2011)

“There's just a lot at stake here, you know? We're talkin' nation versus nation, and the race is still on. There's lots to discover out there, man.” As hard as it is to believe that studios were still trying to push this angle, this film was marketed to some level as actual found footage. As in...

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[thebobmaster]

A ★★ review of Staying Alive (1983)

“Guys like you aren’t relationships. You’re exercise.” The production process of this sequel was Rocky in more ways than one. While the success of the original movie made a sequel quick to get the go-ahead, with producer Roger Stigwood and writer Norman Wexler getting to work and taking the...

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[Phoenixmgs]

A ★★★ review of Jason X (2001)

“Hey, you want to drink some beer?” “Or smoke some pot?” “Or maybe have premarital sex? WE LOVE PREMARITAL SEX!” This film was made during the ridiculously prolonged production of Freddy vs. Jason, as Sean Cunningham and Jim Isaac wanted to make sure Jason was fresh in the minds of moviegoers...

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I'm surprised you didn't mention that Jason X is technically the first movie that was digitally color corrected. O Brother, Where Art Thou was the first film released with digital color correction but Jason X was done first but sat on a shelf for awhile before actually being released.