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Discuss and Rate the Last Film You Watched
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I've seen The Howling, I guess I don't consider it a great werewolf movie. There's some cool scenes in it though.
Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, 6/10
Hadn't seen this in at least a decade and a half, so this was a major trip down memory lane for me. Seeing it now with more analytical and adult eyes it's a frustrating but ultimately satisfying film. It's easily the best of the prequels, and probably better than any of the sequel trilogy, but it could have been just so much more. As it stands it feels like it skips an entire act, or an entire movie, and just speedruns into its climax. The escalation of action feels completely unreasonable. The whole movie feels like it takes place over like 3 days, when in-universe it's more like 6-8 months. Information is simply communicated poorly: there's basically zero sense of time passing or things taking time whatsoever. As such it feels like Anakin Skywalker has one nightmare, is slightly nudged to the dark side by Palpatine, and then is ready to slaughter children en masse. Side characters feel like they just sit on the sidelines, unconnected to the plot, until it's time for them to have their big emotional moment. It's so unearned.
What makes it frustrating is that the climax of the film genuinely manages to feel like the culmination of 6 films and decades of buildup: it's grandiose, it's operatic, the music and overall presentation is top of the line. Ewan McGregor is acting his heart out with this hokey script, and manages to wring some genuine emotional weight out of it. Ian McDiarmid is obviously the best actor in the entire series, and his legendary meme status in this film is well earned: every line out of his mouth is pure camp gold. But throughout it you can't help but think of how it could have had such a bigger impact if any of the things had been set up properly. In the final version it feels like watching the truncated version of a director's vision, which is just bizarre because Lucas famously had complete creative control over all the prequels. It just goes to show why editors and secondary writers exist: sometimes they really are needed to refine and bring out the best aspects of a diamond in the rough. As it stands Revenge of the Sith is like 1/3 a fantastic movie hidden underneath the other 2/3 of a mediocre movie.
Hadn't seen this in at least a decade and a half, so this was a major trip down memory lane for me. Seeing it now with more analytical and adult eyes it's a frustrating but ultimately satisfying film. It's easily the best of the prequels, and probably better than any of the sequel trilogy, but it could have been just so much more. As it stands it feels like it skips an entire act, or an entire movie, and just speedruns into its climax. The escalation of action feels completely unreasonable. The whole movie feels like it takes place over like 3 days, when in-universe it's more like 6-8 months. Information is simply communicated poorly: there's basically zero sense of time passing or things taking time whatsoever. As such it feels like Anakin Skywalker has one nightmare, is slightly nudged to the dark side by Palpatine, and then is ready to slaughter children en masse. Side characters feel like they just sit on the sidelines, unconnected to the plot, until it's time for them to have their big emotional moment. It's so unearned.
What makes it frustrating is that the climax of the film genuinely manages to feel like the culmination of 6 films and decades of buildup: it's grandiose, it's operatic, the music and overall presentation is top of the line. Ewan McGregor is acting his heart out with this hokey script, and manages to wring some genuine emotional weight out of it. Ian McDiarmid is obviously the best actor in the entire series, and his legendary meme status in this film is well earned: every line out of his mouth is pure camp gold. But throughout it you can't help but think of how it could have had such a bigger impact if any of the things had been set up properly. In the final version it feels like watching the truncated version of a director's vision, which is just bizarre because Lucas famously had complete creative control over all the prequels. It just goes to show why editors and secondary writers exist: sometimes they really are needed to refine and bring out the best aspects of a diamond in the rough. As it stands Revenge of the Sith is like 1/3 a fantastic movie hidden underneath the other 2/3 of a mediocre movie.
Dog Soldiers is well worth a look.
A ★★★½ review of The Ring (2002)
“So they just went crazy.” “Seems that way. Or maybe they sensed things before we did.” Ironically enough, Gore Verbinski was inspired to do this remake of the Japanese film Ringu, itself based off of a novel, when producer Walter F. Parkes sent him the film on a videotape. While Ehren Kruger is...
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'Salem's Lot (2024)
Haven't seen either of the two previous adaptations. This one has exactly two problems: it's paced like an SNL show that's running out of time and losing skits on the go, and the vampire schtick has been long dulled by its own motions (I would imagine even by 1975, when the King book came out) to the point it feels unremarkable. It basically plays like the second half of any one version of Nosferatu, but drenched in the usual Stephen King pathos of writers, alkies and smalltown Maine. It's not a horrible 2 hours but it stays precisely in the middle of the road the whole way through.
Haven't seen either of the two previous adaptations. This one has exactly two problems: it's paced like an SNL show that's running out of time and losing skits on the go, and the vampire schtick has been long dulled by its own motions (I would imagine even by 1975, when the King book came out) to the point it feels unremarkable. It basically plays like the second half of any one version of Nosferatu, but drenched in the usual Stephen King pathos of writers, alkies and smalltown Maine. It's not a horrible 2 hours but it stays precisely in the middle of the road the whole way through.
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Watched the first half of Megan 2.0 before falling asleep. Gimmicky enough to warrant a sequel I guess? Maybe the second half will keep me awake.
In slight fairness to Stephen King, he's always been open that Salem's Lot is completely inspired by Dracula. His entire inspiration was the fact that as an English teacher, one of the books the class he was teaching was assigned reading for was Dracula, and either a student directly or indirectly (can't recall which off the top of my head) posed the theoretical of Dracula coming back, but this time in a small quiet town instead of a larger city, where the vampire could live without anyone outside the town knowing because of the insular nature of small towns.
Watched a couple of Prime Video action-comedy money laundering schemes.
Play Dirty
A heisty shooty talky Marky Mark vehicle with a perfunctory Christmas setting, courtesy of Shane Black. Mark gets GTA 3'd at the beginning of the movie and must subsequently forgive and/or forget when the following job has him working side by side with the Catalina in question. Co-stars Lakeith Stanfield, who's not around that often to elevate it into a buddy movie, but shows up just long enough to make it weird how little he gets to do. It has a couple of neat moments but it's maybe a little too blasé to be all that cool or interesting.
The Pickup
Eddie Murphy and Pete Davidson are armored truck drivers who get robbed/kidnapped by Keke Palmer. Not terribly funny. Eddie brings his low wattage talk show energy and mostly just sneers at Pete, who is a little too desperate for laughs and keeps trying all these things but nothing sticks. I get Eddie doing legacy sequels, he's clearly passionate and protective of them, but don't understand why he subjects himself to these buzzkill parts where he gets paired with a floundering younger comedian.
Play Dirty
A heisty shooty talky Marky Mark vehicle with a perfunctory Christmas setting, courtesy of Shane Black. Mark gets GTA 3'd at the beginning of the movie and must subsequently forgive and/or forget when the following job has him working side by side with the Catalina in question. Co-stars Lakeith Stanfield, who's not around that often to elevate it into a buddy movie, but shows up just long enough to make it weird how little he gets to do. It has a couple of neat moments but it's maybe a little too blasé to be all that cool or interesting.
The Pickup
Eddie Murphy and Pete Davidson are armored truck drivers who get robbed/kidnapped by Keke Palmer. Not terribly funny. Eddie brings his low wattage talk show energy and mostly just sneers at Pete, who is a little too desperate for laughs and keeps trying all these things but nothing sticks. I get Eddie doing legacy sequels, he's clearly passionate and protective of them, but don't understand why he subjects himself to these buzzkill parts where he gets paired with a floundering younger comedian.
A ★★★★½ review of Poltergeist (1982)
“They’re here!” This is a film with not so much a troubled production (although there were issues, don't get me wrong) as much as an interesting one. One of the most interesting parts of production is that it is somewhat unclear who really directed this movie. You see, officially the movie was...
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Finished Megan 2.0
Back half was better.
“You wouldn’t give your child cocaine. Why would you give them a smart phone?”
This and a couple other notes on the dangers of AI gave it a pulse and made me wish it wasn’t surrounded be so much nonsense.
Back half was better.
“You wouldn’t give your child cocaine. Why would you give them a smart phone?”
This and a couple other notes on the dangers of AI gave it a pulse and made me wish it wasn’t surrounded be so much nonsense.
Megan 2.0 I found a much better film than the first. The first movie is not bad, but I didn't find it scary. I do admit, I am in the minority here compared to the film going audience, but I don't care, and they weren't ready for such awesomeness. Also, Megan's actor/voice actor carries this entire film. I love the sass.
A ★★★½ review of Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight (1995)
“Vaya con dios.” “And a vaya con diablos to you, too.” This film had quite an interesting road to getting made. It was initially written in 1987, with plans to be Tom Holland's follow-up to Child's Play, but those plans fell through. The script then ended up going to Mark Carducci, writer of...
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Play Dirty (2025)
Bewildering and charmless action movie starring Mark Walhberg. It's supposed to be a sort of light-hearted, wisecracking caper, but much of it misfires significantly. Even the prologue section to set up the film is just so stupid and bizarre it virtually killed my interested before the film went anywhere. I guess it's a sort of heist-cum-revenge film, with a load of generic hijinx and action before it comes to a conclusion. It is liberally slathered in plot holes, absurdity and nonsense - which some films can get away with but this mostly doesn't. Wahlberg plays ruthless, master thief Parker (a character who has cropped up in plenty of better movies before now, e.g. Point Blank) who goes and does stuff. Parker himself is not a likable guy - very practical, callous, self-interested, and I don't know that particularly fits the atmosphere of an otherwise fun movie. His crew seems to be around to hold the fun end up rather more, and at least they actually achieve that.
Overall, This seems like pretty typical streaming film territory (it's backed by Amazon) where reasonably solid names get given decent budgets to produce second-rate outcomes: think The Old Guard, Red Notice, Extraction, etc. Shane Black was the not-premium talent teed up to direct, and this sort of middle-zone actioner is prime Wahlberg territory. It's not that this is an outright bad movie, but it isn't very likeable or engaging either.
Bewildering and charmless action movie starring Mark Walhberg. It's supposed to be a sort of light-hearted, wisecracking caper, but much of it misfires significantly. Even the prologue section to set up the film is just so stupid and bizarre it virtually killed my interested before the film went anywhere. I guess it's a sort of heist-cum-revenge film, with a load of generic hijinx and action before it comes to a conclusion. It is liberally slathered in plot holes, absurdity and nonsense - which some films can get away with but this mostly doesn't. Wahlberg plays ruthless, master thief Parker (a character who has cropped up in plenty of better movies before now, e.g. Point Blank) who goes and does stuff. Parker himself is not a likable guy - very practical, callous, self-interested, and I don't know that particularly fits the atmosphere of an otherwise fun movie. His crew seems to be around to hold the fun end up rather more, and at least they actually achieve that.
Overall, This seems like pretty typical streaming film territory (it's backed by Amazon) where reasonably solid names get given decent budgets to produce second-rate outcomes: think The Old Guard, Red Notice, Extraction, etc. Shane Black was the not-premium talent teed up to direct, and this sort of middle-zone actioner is prime Wahlberg territory. It's not that this is an outright bad movie, but it isn't very likeable or engaging either.
And already I lost interest. Walhberg's action films I am either apathetic towards, or acively dislike. The exceptions are Four Brothers and Two Guns. Mainly because there are other leads/stars carrying the film or are more interesting.
A much better movie. Give me both Extraction films or Havoc (2025) any day of the week over another Marky Mark action film.
Shane Black has a pretty good track record for enjoyable and polished b-grade action movies, and has even been involved in some bonafide classics. So I’m going to blame this on Mark Wahlberg because most of his films lately have him acting like a total prick and thinking it makes him look like a badass. And there was a few movies where he did come across as badass but he doesn’t have the grit to make the direction you describe work for him. Pity about this movie.
Shane Black also made the worst Predator movie, so it's not like he has a completely flawless record.
I got True Lies on 4K. I'd heard things about the transfer, but god dammit I was sick of only owning this thing on DVD. So I got it, and I watched it, and... yeah, you can spot the A.I. It's primarily the faces, since A.I. is deathly afraid you'll not see wrinkles and face creases. It sticks out, and for most of the movie my brain was on a mission to notice it whenever a face was on screen, which unfortunately with a movie filled with humans - as most movies are - was a lot.
Other than that (which was nearly impossible to ignore) the movie actually looked quite good. A little too good even in places - there were some clothing patterns that were stupidly high in detail, like Simon's turtleneck.
Also, they got rid of the '(perfect Arabic)' subtitle joke. WTF?!
Other than that (which was nearly impossible to ignore) the movie actually looked quite good. A little too good even in places - there were some clothing patterns that were stupidly high in detail, like Simon's turtleneck.
Also, they got rid of the '(perfect Arabic)' subtitle joke. WTF?!
Which is why I'll never ever get 4k versions of old movies from the 80-2000s. Especially if it's live action. I'll stick with my blue ray release. Cameron pretty much sold us all out on these. Fuck him.