What MOVIE(s) have you been....seeing? watching?

hotseatgames wrote:

It's okay to like something created by / featuring a douche bag.

Otherwise, prepare to live in a world without art.

I think it's also okay to say 'fuck that guy/girl' at some point, too.

Mad Dog wrote: Belko Experiment - Basically its Battle Royale in an office building with co-workers forced to kill each other. Only watched it because a co-worker recommended it which maybe I should be concerned about. It was direct-to-video level stuff with absolutely no suspense or underlying themes and nothing to say about anything. You'd think it would at least dig at corporate culture a little but nope. Just dudes killing other dudes at the office.

Belko Experiment was an old James Gunn script and was produced by him, I believe (and that explains Michael Rooker's bit part), but it was very disappointing. The creeping dread that's introduced when the intercom voice starts talking is pretty much dissipated by the fact that there's no sense of escalation; it just jumps immediately to, "Kill X number of coworkers in Y amount of time." And then when the deadline passes the voice is all like, "Now you have to, get this, kill more of your coworkers!" It's weird how this movie could be this bland and forgettable while having this much mayhem.

Speaking of which, I also watched Mayhem as part of a double feature with Belko Experiment. Mayhem takes place in a world where there's a rage virus (a la 28 Days Later) where the virus unleashes your id (basically, you're horny and homicidal) but it's not fatal. It takes place at a law firm where there's an outbreak and there's a 16 hour (or whatever) quarantine. Steven Yeun is a junior partner who gets fired due to bullshit office politics so he plans on fighting his way to the top floor where he can confront his boss and the board of directors. He teams up with Samara Weaving's character who also has a beef with the firm.

Yeun's voiceovers think they're more clever than they are, but at least this film knows what kind of movie it is and there's some variety in the carnage. There's more satire of corporate culture than Belko (which isn't saying much) and it's more of a dark comedy than a grim thriller. It's slightly less forgettable than Belko so if you have to see a movie about cowork-on-coworker violence in a corporate setting, Mayhem is easily the better of the two.

I also watched Happy Death Day which is what you get when you cross Groundhog Day with a slasher film while removing the former's point. It's also kind of forgettable, but it has some clever bits and is funny in parts which is all I wanted from it. Its novel premise tempers its mediocrity such that the film kept my attention the whole time instead of the narcolepsy-inducing Friday the 13th movies. I didn't think the ending was as bad as hinted at in reviews and while the explanation (for the killer, not the time travel) was far fetched it was certainly more internally consistent than most slasher films with their invincible, teleporting antagonists.

hotseatgames wrote: It's okay to like something created by a douche bag.

Otherwise, prepare to live in a world without artFacebook.

Fixed.

Josh Look wrote: PACIFIC RIM: UPRISING

This movie was big, loud, dumb, and tons of fun. In a lot of ways better than the first (Boyega > Hunan, plot, if you can call it that) but didn’t quite have del Toro’s finese. It ain’t high art, it’s giant robots punching giant monsters and every character is a cartoon, but if you were expecting anything else, you’re looking at the wrong movie. Great fun!

Agreed. ∆

I think a lot could be said in comparison between the two, and which has better X during Y resulting in Z.

But this ain't that kind of movie to nit pick. As honest trailers said of the first:
"I don't know if this is so awesome that it is dumb, or so dumb that it is awesome".

The answer, of course is: " Yes"

Does the apocalypse get cancelled in it?

Abraham Lincoln was a racist?

Got to be the stupidest fucking thing I've read in a long time.

Right behind "only a producer"...you know...only the guy who gets movies made in the first place and has an immense amount of creative and financial control...

Weinstein was an asshole long before the sex accusations. The guy butchered countless foreign movies before releasing them in the US. Re-editing them, changing subtitles, cutting scenes, etc.

repoman wrote: Abraham Lincoln was a racist?

Got to be the stupidest fucking thing I've read in a long time.

Well... he did pursue re-colonization, which I still have a hard time reconciling with everything else that this man successfully navigated at that time. It seems like such a simplistic, blunt solution to a problem that he had to have known was much larger and more complex than simple relocation. I'm no historian but it seems like this time period was rife with this weird emulsion of old world ideas with the volatile realities of the day.

repoman wrote: Abraham Lincoln was a racist?

Got to be the stupidest fucking thing I've read in a long time.

While I don't personally believe Lincoln to be a racist in the way we think of the term today, I still think the man had a difficult time reconciling his abhoration of slavery to the statement he made about not necessarily being equal.

I agree though, the statement is dumb, and it was meant to illustrate common spoken dismissing sentiments that don't look further into a matter before judging a man or woman.

We all too frequently read a snippet, then pass judgement. No need to take into account his great deeds, let's just concentrate on the one thing we as a different society view as abhorrent and just fuggidaboudit.

www.abraham-lincoln-history.org/colonization/

repoman wrote: Right behind "only a producer"...you know...only the guy who gets movies made in the first place and has an immense amount of creative and financial control...

If that was a comment on my post, that's neither what I meant nor what I wrote. My point was that it's very easy to avoid movies by Woody Allen or Roman Polanski or featuring a star you'd rather not see because those big names are used to attract viewers. Finding out a movie you just enjoyed was a Weinstein movie is a different thing and very creepy.

Nah, I was the lucky receipent of that gem of insight and knowledge.

I started watching The Gift on Netflix, but after about 20 minutes I felt like I had seen the film 5 times already, under different titles. So I turned it off. If anyone has seen it and it really picks up, let me know.

Instead I watched a decidedly average French zombie film called Ravenous. It's okay, nothing special... it also does something that is perhaps annoying, in which many characters get bitten / mortally wounded off camera. In fact, almost every person who dies, does so off camera.

hotseatgames wrote:

I started watching The Gift on Netflix, but after about 20 minutes I felt like I had seen the film 5 times already, under different titles. So I turned it off. If anyone has seen it and it really picks up, let me know.

Does The Gift really pick up? I'd go so far as to say it gets interesting. I saw it when it came out, because my daughter wanted to see it; she thought it would be a horror movie. It's not.

Watching Valerian right now. It’s a chase scene with two uncharismatic characters leading it.

Any chance they’re both killed before the second half of the film?

Can someone go see A QUIET PLACE this weekend please? it looks SOOOOOOOO good. I think this might be the first thing that Jim from the Office is actually good in.

I would like to see ISLE OF DOGS too as a Wes Anderson fan but I didn't get out to see Grand Budapest and I have a feeling I'll miss this too.

Still haven't seen Black Panther or Shape of Water. Having trouble getting motivated to go see movies, i don't know why. I signed up to a Yammer group at work where I volunteered to be a movie reviewer and how it works is someone asks about a movie they would like to see, and then the assigned reviewer has to go see it and let everyone know. Sounds like fun. There are volunteer review positions available for movies, video games, board games, card games, TV shows... all sorts of stuff. Sounded like fun so I threw my name in as an excuse to go see more movies. I just hope someone doesn't ask me to go see Love, Simon. ...which i hear is good