Discuss and Rate the Last Film You Watched

[PsychedelicDiamond]

A Minecraft Movie (2025)

Adaptation of the popular game Minecraft, natch. Jack Black plays default protagonist Steve, a guy who discovered a portal to the Minecraft world in an old mine. He got captured by a bunch of evil pig people and sent his pet wolf Dennis to hide away some McGuffin's which end up in the hands of washed up speedrunner Garrett, played by Jason Momoa. Who, I don't know, I get he's supposed to dress like a washed up 80's rocker but I think his fashion sense just makes him look like a massive pervert. He, along with two kids and a sassy black lady go to the Minecraft world to help Steve with his predicament.

I dunno, I don't particularly recommend it but this was perfectly watchable. Maybe it's because I expected much worse or maybe it's because I've been watching some really unengaging nonsense on the side lately but I'm not exactly in the mood to dunk on something that's short, fast paced and, dare I say it, on occasion actually funny. It's very much in the tradition of recent video game based kids movies, the best of which is probably still Detective Pikachu. It got a lot more genuine laughs out of me than the Mario movie and I know a lot of people are sick of him at this point but I still find Jack Black to be a likeable presence.

There's honestly not a whole lot to say about this. I never played Minecraft much, so I'm sure some of the jokes went over my head. But the ones not directly related to the game had their moments. Mostly the ones relating to the vaguely homoerotic dynamic between Jack Black and Jason Momoa. Actually, I think you could have pretty easily removed the rest of the main cast and just left it a (b)romantic buddy comedy between two large bearded men. This was directed by Jared Hess, director of Napoleon Dynamite and by all means, I think he's a guy who knows his way around an inoffensive quirky comedy. Make no mistake, this has mostly all the beats of a post Shrek, faux Dreamworks kids movie, it just avoids most of their most annoying tendencies. Would you believe it, I think there wasn't a single overplayed classic pop song on the soundtrack and not a single contrived conflict between main characters in the second act. Looking at you, Mario.

I went into this expecting a pretty miserable experience and honestly, it really wasn't. There isn't any reason I'd particularly recommend this, I couldn't really think of why you should ever go out of your way to watch it but if you do end up seeing it, you could do a lot worse. In terms of mining the property for decent jokes and crafting an adequate kids movie out of it... Okay, no, let's not do this. What I'm saying is, this was fine and I didn't mind it.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Cast a Deadly Spell 1991

and the sequel

Witch Hunt 1994

What if HP Lovecraft was a detective in the 40s and everyone used magic? The first has a sort of charm, as a stock film noir with as much low budget magic and as many references to Lovecraft et al they could put in. The second is the usual sequel that fails to live up, getting randomly political (oh hey, the dodgy guy wants to become PotUS by attacking a minority group, how original, then they drop all that). Eh.

 

[BrawlMan]

Hostel: Part II

I remember seeing that opening weekend with my older brother. I was somewhat disappointed and didn't know what else to expect from it. It was when I really learned I didn't like these type of movies as much as I thought I did. I'll give the ending credit for being unique, but it's when I hadstarted to realize I didn't like Eli Roth's films at all. I never touched any of his movies again after that.

 

[thebobmaster]

I remember seeing that opening weekend with my older brother. I was somewhat disappointed and didn't know what else to expect from it. It was when I really learned. I didn't like these type of movies as much as I thought I did. I'll give the endings. I'm credit for being unique but it's when i've started to realize I didn't like Eli Roth at all. I never touched any of his movies again after that.

Thanksgiving is a pretty solid slasher, but with Eli Roth, I've never vibed with him in general. To me, he's the kind of director who adds a lot of chocolate syrup to a sundae to try to hide the fact that there's not really any ice cream, if you catch my drift.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I remember seeing that opening weekend with my older brother. I was somewhat disappointed and didn't know what else to expect from it. It was when I really learned. I didn't like these type of movies as much as I thought I did. I'll give the endings. I'm credit for being unique but it's when i've started to realize I didn't like Eli Roth at all. I never touched any of his movies again after that.

The movie is weirdly "tame" compared to the first one. There's the Elizabeth Bathory scene in the middle, but other than that it doesn't do gore until like the final 24 minutes, ending on that castration scene. And even then of the two girls, we don't see the one's death, and the other one leaves completely unscathed.

I'm not into gore but I imagine anybody coming in to Hostel 2 for the bigger and better sequel package would leave disappointed. The movie isn't just tamer, it's also considerably goofier and much less grim.

Like @thebobmaster says Roth made his best movie with Thanksgiving where he gets the violence and the comedy exactly right, but he's still far from making me a fan of his.

 

[BrawlMan]

Thanksgiving is a pretty solid slasher, but with Eli Roth, I've never vibed with him in general. To me, he's the kind of director who adds a lot of chocolate syrup to a sundae to try to hide the fact that there's not really any ice cream, if you catch my drift.

The movie is weirdly "tame" compared to the first one. There's the Elizabeth Bathory scene in the middle, but other than that it doesn't do gore until like the final 24 minutes, ending on that castration scene. And even then of the two girls, we don't see the one's death, and the other one leaves completely unscathed.

I'm not into gore but I imagine anybody coming in to Hostel 2 for the bigger and better sequel package would leave disappointed. The movie isn't just tamer, it's also considerably goofier and much less grim.

Like @thebobmaster says Roth made his best movie with Thanksgiving where he gets the violence and the comedy exactly right, but he's still far from making me a fan of his.

Thanksgiving I know came out a few years ago, but I'll leave that one be too. I got Fear Street, so I am good. Thank you both for the introspection.

 

[laggyteabag]

Just got back from watching a re-release of 28 Days Later at the cinema.

Its a great film, but let me tell you, sitting in the front row really exposes the fact that this film was shot in sub-HD.

 

[thebobmaster]

A ★★ review of Tomb Raider (2018)

“Yours, if you get me to Yamatai.” “What would I spend it on, a coffin?” This film had some issues in production. Partial film rights were obtained by Warner Bros. Pictures in 2007 from Paramount, after plans for a film reboot fell through on their end. However, the other half of the film rights...

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[thebobmaster]

A ★★★½ review of Sin City (2005)

“I can only express a puzzlement that borders on alarm.” This film seems to have had a fairly smooth production overall, with one little wrinkle. The Director's Guild of America refused to allow two directors that weren't already an established team share credit, so Robert Rodriguez offered to...

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[thebobmaster]

A ★★★★★ review of American Psycho (2000)

“I feel lethal, on the verge of frenzy. I think my mask of sanity is about to slip.” This movie definitely had some issues getting made, with one rather surprising area in retrospect. The rights to the Bret Easton Ellis novel were bought in 1992 by producer Edward S. Pressman, with Johnny Depp...

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[thebobmaster]

A ★★★★ review of The Little Mermaid (1989)

"Hm. Teenagers. They think they know everything. You give them an inch, they swim all over you." If you want to get technical, the first attempt to make an adaptation out of the Hans Christian Andersen story was way back in the 1930's, shortly after Snow White, when Walt Disney made plans to...

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[hanselthecaretaker2]

Fear Street: Prom Queen.

Ugh. Figures the movie follow up to a decent miniseries would fall well short. Dumb and derivative, with only some silly gory bits, a few overlooked eighties tunes and a decent unmasking to carry most of the dead weight to its conclusion. At least the new Final Destination is apparently good, and I somehow have some hope for the upcoming IKWYDLS remake or whatever it will be.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Aterrados ("Terrified")

Argentinian horror film. It picked up some momentum a few years ago (2017) in the festival circuit, and because of some story about Guillermo del Toro helming a remake. The man has jinxed so many projects that it might as well be true, but frankly, after finally seeing the movie, what even would be the point? There's no lore to appropriate, no story or characters to adapt. Browse the horror category in any streaming service, pick a random paranormal horror B-movie and call *that* a remake if you like.

The movie is a series of random horror vignettes taking place across three houses in the suburbs. A woman gets poltergeisted to death. The husband winds up in custody. Their neighbor reenacts Paranormal Activity (the found footage movie) with a camcorder. Another neighboring kid dies. The mother goes into catatonia. The kid's body makes it back home and sits at the breakfast table to almost no effect on the people who come investigating. We get the typical assortment of weirdoes. Halfway through the movie we eventually settle on a protagonist, a cop who'd rather not be there, and will continue to say so apropos of a personality. When the movie does end - abruptly - we don't know what happened, who died, how everything connected or why these people were targeted in the first place.

I give the movie points for actually having monsters (who look like something out of Outlast or that videogame where you have to decide whether to let creepy people into your house or not) and devicing a couple of neat gotcha moments, but it has nothing else going for it.

 

[thebobmaster]

A ★★★★ review of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007)

“At last, my arm is complete again!” This film was something that Tim Burton had been interested in making for quite some time, ever since he saw the play as a student in 1980. When his directing career began really taking off in the late 1980's, he approached Stephen Sondheim to discuss making...

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[Johnny Novgorod]

Cuando acecha la maldad ("When Evil Lurks")

Demián Rugna's second horror feature after Aterrados. It's the more coherent, technically superior and vastly more repulsive of the two, although the movie staunchly maintains a humorless tone that I find at odds with the obvious Sam Raimi influence. A little humor would've gone a long way with this.

So this is a Pampean version of Evil Dead, with embichados (creatures of rural folklore) doubling for Raimi's Deadites. Two brothers catch wind of a bloated embichado that's festering in a neighboring farm, decide to haul it away before it poisons the town but they lose him along the way and all hell breaks loose after. You know the deal: people die in grisly ways, then come back as trickster ghouls to taunt or gaslight the living into fucking up. Cannibalism, axe murder and kiddie deaths ensue. It's quite brutal.

 

[laggyteabag]

I rewatched Rogue One after having finished Andor, and my opinion on the film hasn't really changed.

The first 20 minutes are paced at a breakneck speed, then it really slows down toa crawl for the next hour or so, and then as soon as they start flirting with the idea of going to Scarif, it really becomes excellent.

It does also retroactively suffer from the fact that there is now a lot of supplemental media that is completely ignored in the film (because it didn't exist yet). It is bizarre within the context of Andor that certain characters don't show up or aren't mentioned, when they were so consequential in what is now the build up to this film. But not much can be done about that.

I think if I could make one change, I probably would have written out Chirrut and Baze. As iconic and cool as Chirrut can be, I don't think either of them really meaningfully contributed to the plot, and I think a tighter-knit group of Jyn/Cassian/K2/Bodhi would have benefitted their character development.

 

[hanselthecaretaker2]

Heretic.

Hugh Grant proves that aging too much to be in romcom’s or whatever anymore is a good thing. A bit hokey in the last half, but overall an intriguing examination of humanity’s relationship with religion(s), and is punctuated by how impending death can have the most profound effect on the last remaining characters.


The Do Over.

Adam Sandler and David Spade do a buddy flick, and it’s about what one would expect. It ultimately does have some heart and gravity to it when the kicker is revealed, but yeah. It falls squarely in the middle of their best and worst outings, regardless of co starring.


Final Destination: Blood Lines.

We got a rare adult movie night, and chose this over the new M:I because the IMAX was full at the only time we could’ve gone. Anyways, I was under the impression this would be some kind of prequel to the original. Maybe it is and I don’t remember all the original details, but that term seems to have been applied very loosely here. Sure, it starts in the sixties but it’s been confirmed that none of the characters are related to those in the other movies. The only thing that’s different is how death chooses its victims, which ultimately felt meaningless when the same, or often more extreme levels of metaphysical absurdity that came before are once again on display. As well as the old, “I don’t believe this bullshit” from all the characters being told they’re on death’s “hit list”.

In short, it was fun and certainly better than the last few, but in the end still the same old song and dance. Maybe it’s been long enough since the fifth one that it all feels kinda fresh to a new generation, or something.

 

[McElroy]

Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning
An incredible movie bogged down by lots of expositionary dialogue and plain exposition. The first third of the movie sucks the life out of the viewer, but the rest of it thankfully blows it back. It's edited very well together but knowing it's all on purpose it gets a bit weird in my opinion a couple of time like when the same character saves themselves from peril off-screen twice. A good watch in the theater. I'd say Dead Reckoning and Fallout are better films though. 6/10

 

[hanselthecaretaker2]

One more note on Bloodlines that I meant to touch on earlier, is Tony Todd’s cameo.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9619824/trivia?tab=tr&item=tr7688742&ref_=ext_shr_lnk

He was noticeably in a dire physical condition but realizing it was his final performance makes it much more impactful, to the point it almost doesn’t fit given how ridiculous and outlandish the bulk of the movie’s events are. At least he got the chance to say what he wanted to, and the franchise owes him a debt of gratitude for containing it.


Back on topic, Lilo & Stitch.

Ironically has the same IMDb rating as Bloodlines currently. It was cute, occasionally too silly but also had heart, especially near the end. Best scene was probably Stitch stating his case to the Grand Councilwoman (nicely played by Hannah Waddingham of Ted Lasso fame). This one worked pretty well as a live action flick but unlike Sonic I thing it works better if it remains a standalone outing.

 

[thebobmaster]

A ★★★½ review of Red Eye (2005)

“I never lied to you, Leese. You know why? Because it doesn’t serve me.” While Cillian Murphy was apparently enthusiastic about taking part in this movie at the time, with Wes Craven recalling him flying in for a meeting two days before his wedding, Murphy has since shown a bit of disdain for...

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