Discuss and Rate the Last Film You Watched

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Johnny Novgorod

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Cold Pursuit

The only half-decent action dad movie Neeson has ever done (and probably his last one, given that one press junket). This is more parody than the legit thing too. It's like Taken meets Fargo meets Takeshi Kitano, although nowhere as biting, funny or clever as those last two.
 

Johnny Novgorod

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Bombshell

It's Spotlight but for sexual harrassment in the workplace: a very noble but kinda tedious exercise in slowly catching up to what I already know. I don't remember a time in my life when I wasn't aware that priests molest kids or the powerful prey on the powerless with pretend accountability at best. What, I was supposed to be shocked? Also thought the movie kinda shot itfself on the foot by insisting on how all of these people are real, yet the lady who suffers the brunt of Ailes' harrassment is completely made up. Anyway, good acting from Kidman, Robbie and Lithgow. Theron felt like an actress playing a news anchor. Good makeup though.
 

Dirty Hipsters

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The Equalizer.

Watched it with my dad. It is very much a dad movie, and not a particularly interesting or clever one. Just an incredibly standard 2 hour movie where you can predict every scene from the first 5 minutes.

Also, why are Russian bad guys never actually Russian? The accents are wrong, the fake prison tattoos are wrong. It's like they didn't decide that the evil henchmen are going to be Russian when they started filming and just tell the actors to mumble their lines and then they'll decide what county they're supposed to be from in post.
 

Xprimentyl

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The Equalizer.

Watched it with my dad. It is very much a dad movie, and not a particularly interesting or clever one. Just an incredibly standard 2 hour movie where you can predict every scene from the first 5 minutes.

Also, why are Russian bad guys never actually Russian? The accents are wrong, the fake prison tattoos are wrong. It's like they didn't decide that the evil henchmen are going to be Russian when they started filming and just tell the actors to mumble their lines and then they'll decide what county they're supposed to be from in post.
The Equalizer never meant to be clever; it's not one of those films that tries to twist and turn so it can wow you around the next corner. It knows exactly what it is, a tale about one man's willingness to escalate his retaliation to incredible heights for the safety of a friend and because it's the right thing to do. So yeah, nothing particularly new or unique, pretty much your stock Denzel Washington affair, but still entertaining on its own merits. Unlike...

The Town: Yadda/yadda, yadda

Boston accents are already pretty terrible; Ben Affleck faking one is the worst. It's a thriller about a guy who's a part of a 4-man bank heist gang who grows a conscience after meeting a woman and tries to get out, but of course "all the reasons he can't." The camera is shoved so far up Affleck's ass the whole time, you learn next to nothing about anyone else. Also, they paint him as such a pathetically sacrificial lamb, even the good guys (cops/FBI) come off as bad guys. Not the worst film; it's just so damned predictable, it felt like a waste of time.
 
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PsychedelicDiamond

Wild at Heart and weird on top
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Tenet

There is an, often overlooked, difference between depth and complexity. A movie that's deep, yet not very complex is, for example, The Straight Story. A movie that's both deep and complex is, for example, Synecdoche, New York. And here we are with Christopher Nolan's Tenet, a movie that's rather complex, yet not, in my opinion, very deep. Tenet is, so far, 2020s only big theatric blockbuster and may very well remain its only one. Under those circumstances I would have loved nothing more than to tell you that it singlehandedly redeems what has been a less than satisfactory year for cineasts but... it doesn't.

Tenet follows John David Washington's nameless protagonist investigating a mystery concerning bullets that travel back in time and pursuing an arms dealer with an evil plan that threatens the continued survival of all mankind. What follows is a globetrotting thriller, featuring dull men in suits, dull women in elegant dresses, action scenes with planes in them, comically stilted dialogue, elaborate heists and everything else one has come to expect from a Christopher Nolan production. Co-starring next to Washington are Robert Pattinson, as his partner, Kenneth Branagh as the main antagonist and Elizabeth Debicki as the main antagonists wife, a femme fatale who feels like she's from a Bond movie. They... sure are Christopher Nolan characters. By which I mean, about as emotionally engaging as a bunch of refrigerators with googly eyes glued to them. Washington and Pattinson are stoic men on a mission, with little to humanize or emotionally ground them. It's hard to care.

I guess my other main problem is that I just don't vibe with Nolan's visual style at all. Tenet is filmed in that iconic Nolanian color palette of steely blues, earthy browns and concrety greys that make almost all of its locations look like the same sterile urban hellscape. I will give the movie some credit for, at least, looking like a live action movie rather than a CGI cartoon, which is more than I can say for many popular recent action flicks, the CGI didn't stick out at all. I will also say that some of the action scenes were visually impressive and I have no doubt some of the later ones that are actually built around the time travel gimmick must have been an utter ***** to choreograph.

That being said... the narrative is quite hard to follow and I don't think it's worth the effort. Writing an action movie based on nonlinear time sure is an accomplishment Nolan can take some pride in, despite all the painfully inelegant technobabble and rushed pacing it suffers from. But in the end what it amounts to is a fairly basic plot about stopping a not especially compelling villain from activating a doomsday device. That's what I mean when I accuse Tenet of having complexity, but lacking depth.

Much like Inception, Tenet is an example of a Science-Fiction movie that uses its speculative elements for the benefit of its plot but not at all for that of its themes. Putting that plot together must surely have been a balancing act but while I admit the effort, I can't say I admire the actual product of that effort. Tenet is a clunky Rube Goldberg device of a movie, a whole lot of gears turning, levers flipping, balls rolling and buttons being pressed to produce... well, an emotionally and thematically sparse spy thriller that's hard to follow and easy to forget. I'm sure there's an audience that will find it enjoyable, rather than tedious, to figure out Tenet's timeline and sequence of cause and effect but there was just not much in it for me. It's a bit sad to think it might be the only movie I'm gonna see in the theater this year.
 
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Johnny Novgorod

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Hercules in New York

The Thor movie, but with Greek gods and Arnie playing Hercules: mythological beefcake gets in a row with his dad and walks around modern times, acting like a fish out of water and generally being unable to interpret anything other than literally. And that's about it. Instead of meeting Natalie Portman the hero meets a Jewish caricature who looks like the turtle from Rocko and sounds like Mort Goldman from Family Guy. I think it's going for a buddy movie but there's zero chemistry - Arnie looks the part but can barely act and the other guy overacts the stereotype - and the story doesn't really develop them as a duo. Arnie barely notices the other guy. There's also a romantic interest: the actress looks terrified in every shot and the relationship doesn't pay off either.

Scenes skip ahead briskly and the movie feels like it's in "summary montage" mode for most of its running time. Characters act schizophrenically from one scene to another. Relationships don't make sense, there's generally little care for continuity in terms of plot or character. The movie looks and sounds sooooo cheap and you feel this was more out of laziness or ineptitude than budgetary constraints. It's bad enough that "Olympus" looks like some raggedy nook in Central Park but in those scenes you can hear the traffic and cars honking in the background even though there would've been no reason to record direct sound for the scenes, let alone leave it in post.

Also the fakest looking bear suit I've ever seen. It's bad enough the suit looks more gorilla than bear, the dude inside also postures and walks around like a gorilla. And that shitty Spanish guitar plays EVERY time in EVERY scene no matter the tone or purpose, I swear.

 
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gorfias

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I went to the movie theater for the first time in about 6 months last night. I got to see the new Bill and Ted movie. I never laughed once, but I grinned a lot. I would only recommend it to fans of the one or both of the previous movies. For anyone else? I cannot see them appreciating a thing in it. If you have seen it and not the other two and enjoyed it, I'd be interested in hearing why. But for me? I liked the 2nd one enough to enjoy this one. And Kudos to Keanu. I doubt he did this for the $: I think he likely enjoyed revisiting these characters.
 

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Johnny Novgorod

Bebop Man
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I went to the movie theater for the first time in about 6 months last night. I got to see the new Bill and Ted movie. I never laughed once, but I grinned a lot. I would only recommend it to fans of the one or both of the previous movies. For anyone else? I cannot see them appreciating a thing in it. If you have seen it and not the other two and enjoyed it, I'd be interested in hearing why. But for me? I liked the 2nd one enough to enjoy this one. And Kudos to Keanu. I doubt he did this for the $: I think he likely enjoyed revisiting these characters.
How much screentime do the daughters take away from Bill & Ted?
 

Johnny Novgorod

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The Bling Ring

Every Sofia Coppola movie always seems to be about people who've got their every material need sorted for the rest of your life - because they've made money, were born to money or married money - to the point they've become emotionally stunted and are motivated in their (in)action primarily by boredom. The one exception would be The Beguiled, but then that was a remake (and I liked that movie). The Bling Ring is based on a series of burglaries on celebrity mansions (no locks or alarms on anything, Christ) perpetrated by a crew of SoCal dipshits with just enough IQ to post pictures of their loot on Facebook. Wish the movie would go harder on them. The guy of the group was involved in a stalking/rape case a few years ago, wonder if Sofia would still make him the center of her movie.
 
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Thaluikhain

Elite Member
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Jan 16, 2010
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Nothing But the Night

Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing weird horror/thriller from some decades back. Not well regarded but I liked it.
 

Gordon_4

The Big Engine
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The Mummy (1999) - 9/10

Imhotep's CGI hasn't aged massively well but this is still a great, rip snorting adventure tale. Its got all the classics. Roguish gun-for-hire with a heart of gold, the sexy librarian (who becomes the sexy adventurer in movie 2), the lovable coward who can still do brave things, the leader of a secret society of brave warriors. Ancient curses, traps and magic artefacts.

Well worth a look.
 

BrawlMan

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The Mummy (1999) - 9/10

Imhotep's CGI hasn't aged massively well but this is still a great, rip snorting adventure tale. Its got all the classics. Roguish gun-for-hire with a heart of gold, the sexy librarian (who becomes the sexy adventurer in movie 2), the lovable coward who can still do brave things, the leader of a secret society of brave warriors. Ancient curses, traps and magic artefacts.

Well worth a look.
Still love the first two Mummy movies. The third was not that bad, but very meh. The cartoon was decent from what I remember. The Mummy movies from the late 90s to early 2000s were the Indiana Jones films of that generation.
 

xmbts

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I'm trying to remember, it's been a bit since I've watched anything. I forced a friend to watch Return of the Living Dead, and we also watched VVitch.

Actually thinking on it the most recent movie I watched was Harbinger Down, a film that was made by the special effects studio responsible for the practical effects in the 2011 prequel to The Thing. I'm to understand the film was an effort to demonstrate that practical effects are superior in the wake of them being largely blotted over with CGI in the prequel. However, Harbinger has an incredibly barebones script with paper thin characters, the monster doesn't look bad by any means but unfortunately knowing how to make practical effects and knowing how to *shoot* practical effects aren't exactly the same skill. A lot of shaky cam is employed to cover up effect limitations.

As for a rating, I suppose I'll give it a "not great", I can only hope the effects studio doesn't lose work over it.
 

gorfias

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How much screentime do the daughters take away from Bill & Ted?
To answer your question directly, they are reasonably fleshed out individuals with a plot line and course of action of their own, so it is considerable.

To digress if you are interested (I sometimes write too much stating things I was not asked so I don't want to waste your time: feel free to skip but if you're interested) Have you seen Cobra Kai? Many call that doing this sort of thing correctly. The show has a sort of character consistency with the 1st Karate Kid movie. You could see Daniel and Johnny becoming these adults. The show is reverent of the material and does not disrespect its fans. But they also develop young new characters to introduce you to and one becomes happily invested in their story lines as well.

Us older nostalgia fans have been pretty battered in this millennium. Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Ghost Busters 2016, the new Doctor Who, Terminator Woke Fate: they seem to hate their fans. Their characters are disrespected. "Forget the past. Kill it if you have to." Many fear that happening in Bill & Ted. I would write that this fear is mostly unfounded. There is one line I object to but it is kind of irrelevant or quickly dropped and not enough to spoil my enjoyment of the movie. Like Cobra Kai, this movie does not hate its fans. It is respectful of its characters. The daughters do not roll their eyes at their dad's every word. They are respectful and pleasant characters.

So to most fans I would write that, no, this movie does not hate you.
 
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Xprimentyl

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Replicas: Missed opportunity/Great premise

Keanu Reeves plays Keanu Reeves, I mean, a neurological scientist experimenting in ways to transfer human consciousness into a machine with his partner who has an extensive background in biological cloning technology. Ethics and morality of such things aside, Reeves' wife and children are killed in a crash aaaaaaaand... Yeah, shocked me too.

Anyways, could have been a fairly decent watch if they'd stayed the path of a sci-fi drama and actually delved more into the emotional and mental ramifications for all parties involved, but instead, goes all "Jason Bourne" towards the end. I mean, when he's forced to tell his wise that she and their children were killed and are existing now as clones, she literally sheds a single tear and forgives him and accepts the situation. Oh, then when he mentions to her that the reason the name "Zoe" keeps coming up throughout the house is because she was their youngest child, and since he didn't have enough "cloning" pods for all four of them, he drew her name out of hat, and opted to wipe all memory of her from his wife and their cloned children. She makes one comment to the effect og 'how could you erase the memory of my child,' and it's back to business as usual; Zoe's never mentioned again. Instead of dealing with ANY of that in more than a nominal way, it all becomes the heavy secret between him and his "new" wife as they try to evade capture by "evil corporation #47,882." Reeves ends up being played as the sympathetic hero when, by most standards of decency, he's an absolutely terrible person. Oh, and the very end just throws the whole movie directly on top of the "trash sci-fi movie" pile.

Really dumb in the end; I got myself geared up for some intellectual stimulation when I should have just watched John Wick again.
 

Dirty Hipsters

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The Old Guard.

Yet another incredibly predictable action movie where you can pretty much guess everything that's going to happen from the word "go." I went in with pretty low expectations and was pleasantly surprised.

If you're not looking for anything "smart" it's a fun enough movie with some pretty good action. I wasn't bored and the runtime didn't feel overly long. Overall probably one of the better netflix original movies.
 

Ezekiel

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Weathering with You (2019, Makoto Shinkai)

I rarely watch new anime anymore. Pretty much only movies now. It's been three years since the last couple.

This was alright. Fine. Which is how I feel about most of Shinkai's work.

Things happen so conveniently here, and the plot just lacks believability. Not the fantasy elements. Those are fine, mostly. I mean things like the circumstances under which characters meet, like being there right as the one girl who was nice to you is being prayed upon by a thug after you found a gun in some trash or running into Natsumi right after somehow escaping the police. The premise, about a runaway boy who meets a sunshine girl who clears the skies in an especially rainy summer, was, overall, enjoyable, but I didn't buy the plot (which also felt longer than two hours). It feels naive and wishful.

This style present in 95 percent of modern Japanese animation really doesn't hold up under different angles. Not enough jaw and nose. Makes them look like animals.



When you look up pictures from this movie, the characters look much more normal, but because of the lack of shape, these flaws will always be there if you look from the wrong sides. I find the older styles (Akira, Gunsmith Cats, Monster, Legend of the Galactic Heroes, Ghost in the Shell, Ninja Scroll, Wicked City, the works of Satoshi Kon and Hayao Miyazaki) more unique and charming than the standard look that's in almost every modern anime, partly because the heads are usually fuller/shapelier.

Score: 6/10

Might honestly watch it again in a couple of years, after I've forgotten most of it.
 
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Hawki

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Star Fox: The Battle Begins (6/10)

It's dubious as to whether this counts as a movie or not, but meh, reviewing it.

Anyway, you're probably all aware of the animated short that was released to promote Star Fox Zero, but, yeah. It isn't the first time I watched it, but it is the first time I've given it a "proper watch," so to speak. And, yeah, I enjoyed it. If anything, it makes me pine for a Star Fox animated series or at least a comic series. But, yeah. It's fun, and I smirked a lot, but can only call it "okay" rather than "good." Which funnilly enough, is how I feel about Zero as well.