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

I wish I was going to see Halloween this weekend. Instead I’m very likely going to see Goosebumps2. Ugh, I hope Jack Black isn’t in it at least


I’m going to try and make an effort to see A Star is Born in the next couple of weeks

Michael Barnes wrote: Wow Josh- coming from you, a fellow horror fan of taste and dignity...

It’s still very much a terror film and not a horror film. I know what you like and I’m not sure this is it.

I’d also like to point out that when I say “objectively the best slasher film ever made,” keep in mind that that’s a low bar to clear. The only thing I would say is anywhere near as competently made is, well, the original Halloween.

Also, I’m not taking into account Italian stuff that inspired the sub genre. I’m all too unfamiliar with that entire scene.

Barnes, we’ll have to compare notes come time for the Suspiria remake. I was so not open to that movie but the trailers have really sparked my interest.

And as far as “taste and dignity” go...well, I did just put out a podcast where I talk about Basket Case for the better part of 40 minutes, so let’s not get too serious with my accolades.

Ha! Basket Case! I saw that in the theater when I was really little...my parents sometimes made questionable movie choices...

So excited about Suspiria- it looks incredible. I like that he’s really kind of done his own thing with it rather than try to redo the original.

As you noted, there are some giallo that were kind of the template for the slasher genre...but they tend to be more kinky, highly stylized, and baroque, not so much the teenybopper slaughter-fests...more detective-y with spectacular murders. Would definitely recommend:

1) Blood and Black Lace
2) Deep Red
3) Black Belly of the Tarantula
4) What Have You Done to Solange
5) The House With Laughing Windows

Thank you, that’s exactly what I needed. I think I’ve seen several of these on Shudder. Looks like I’ve got a busy week ahead of me.

Due to events in Australian politics I felt compelled to watch Eurotrip last night. I had a vague memory that the only funny thing was the Scotty Doesn't Know song (when the lead goes to a party and the band there sings a catchy song about how the lead singer is sleeping with the lead's girlfriend) and I was right as I don't think I laughed apart from that scene and was generally quite bored. I think there were at least 4 sexual assaults for humerous purposes which isn't funny now as times have moved on. Maybe because I recently watched Buffy completely through I wasn't comfortable with Michelle Trachtenberg as a sex symbol.

Finally got my girlfriend and her son to sit down and watch Audition with me, since they were looking for a Halloween-type film. They were appropriately weirded out by it.

Watched mother! yesterday. Fantastic, really fantastic. Wish we had more movies like that.

Watched Man of Tai Chi which was directed by Keanu Reeves, who also plays the villain, and choreographed by Yuen Woo Ping. It was good and not at all what I expected going in as far as the plot goes.

Black Barney wrote: I’m going to try and make an effort to see A Star is Born in the next couple of weeks

I saw it on Saturday and I have mixed feelings about it.

I have not seen any of the previous versions, so I went in completely cold. I thought the performances were very good, Lady Gaga especially. I thought the directing was mostly very good. The scenes on stage were very visceral and effective in making you feel like you're right on stage with them.

My problems were with two elements that are pretty integral to the movie: the story and the music. The story itself was fine, but it just didn't seem to flow very well. It felt like there were large narrative leaps from one status to another. Maybe it just didn't portray the passage of time well enough? The music was a very mixed bag. Two of the original songs were really, really, good, so that should be enough. But unfortunately there are so many others that were just bland and forgettable, that I had to strain to remember the good ones.

So, would I recommend it? Yes. It has more going for it than against it. Is it deserving of all the accolades it's getting? Not really. Prediction: It will end up one of the most Oscar-nominated films this year. If it wins Best Picture, it will be one of those years where later everyone says the Academy got it wrong.

Black Barney wrote: I’m going to try and make an effort to see A Star is Born in the next couple of weeks

My wife hated it. Said it was long and dragged on forever.

yeah knowing the Academy, A Star is Born is exactly the type of movie that might win Best Picture. I'd rather see that win than, say, First Man, which would be too safe.

The movies I loved this year (there are 9) are not the types that the Oscars will likely recognize. I just hope BlacKkKlansman gets nominated for Best Picture. That would be really cool.

I'm late to the party, but I just watched Shape of Water on HBO. Wow.... this movie is a triumph. The story, the visuals, the performances, the music... everything is perfect. Honestly, I don't think I've ever seen a film that so strikingly challenges what you would expect from film as a medium. Guillermo del Toro has shown up pretty much everyone with this one. 10/10

My daughter fell in love with the romanticism of the little ships of Dunkirk when the movie came out but the timing was never right to take her to see it so she missed out. While I could have shown it to her on our tv, a local cinema acquired a 70mm print and they have been periodically screening it and I finally managed to take her yesterday.

I hadn't realised that she hadn't seen a harrowing war film before, only light hearted fun war movies like The Great Escape, so she was really blown away and overwhelmed by it. When I saw it last year I thought it was good but not up there with Nolan's best, but this time I realised that it is Nolan's third best film (hard to really compete with Inception and Dark Knight) and it is now my favourite war film. The intercutting of the three stories on my first viewing didn't feel as clean and clever as it is, mainly because you often see stuff that isn't important in one story before it becomes important in a different story so it's importance doesn't resonate as much as it should on first viewing (in the same way Boromir's death in Fellowship of the Ring only started to tug on my heartstrings once I had seen the scene with Boromir and Denethor in the extended Two Towers).

I am curious as to how many viewings it will take before I stob blubbering uncontrollably when the little ships arrive, because both viewings that has reduced me to a mess.

I saw Coco and came out thinking that the protagonist's family is terrible, both living and dead. They are controlling to the point of being abusive. Seriously, destroying what your kid loves because you don't "approve" is textbook abusive behaviour and asking for your great-grandniece to stop doing what he loves OR DIE would be the apex of controlling behaviour if it weren't too contrived to be taken seriously.

I can't help but think that the scene where his grandma shatters his guitar is reflective of how we view children on a societal level: Bad, but not too bad.

Given how awful Miguel's family is, it seems almost required for Ernesto to be a murderer. He wouldn't even be the film's villain otherwise.

This is not meant to be a full analysis of the film, just something that bothered me. It seems to me the film could have done with one or two additional drafts. Perhaps that would have gotten rid of the overabundance of secondary characters, too. I mean, do we really need two groups of 4+ family members with just a couple lines hanging around? Was the dog really necessary? What about the flying spirit thingy? It seems very uneconomic when the story could have been much simpler.

Re-watched The Crow: City of Angels. It wasn't nearly as disappointing as when I saw it in the theater 22 years ago. No, they didn't find a way to resurrect the actor Brandon Lee, but this wasn't a linear sequel so it was okay to use a different star. Unfortunately, they used Vincent Perez, a mediocre actor who has kept busy since then without ever doing anything as high-profile. The whole movie is a hazy, grimdark affair washed out in sepia tones. Aside from brief action scenes, the pacing is slow. Perez occasionally displays flashes of an appealing sense of humor that seems tone-deaf in a story about getting vengeance on the criminals who killed his young son. I also disliked the short scene of animal torture. The soundtrack was also inferior to that of the first Crow movie. Iggy Pop steals all of his scenes.

And yet, this was an influential movie. The hero seems to have actually influenced the way that Heath Ledger later played the Joker, with a mixture of hobo chic and playful menace. That may sound extremely far-fetched, except that David S. Goyer wrote both this movie and The Dark Knight. Also, for you Firefly fans, the main villain in this movie is Judah Earl, a strange drug lord with a mystic advisor. He is played with a certain panache by Richard Brooks, who also played a somewhat crazier Jubal Early as a Firefly villain.

Goyer has worked on a number of movies and tv shows that I have enjoyed, including Blade, Dark City, and Constantine. Though his grimdark style is a good match for shows based on supernatural comics, he was a questionable choice for the modern Batman trilogy, and definitely the wrong guy for the modern Superman movies.