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

hotseatgames wrote: I watched Barbarian on HBO. This movie is fucked up and the best thing I can say about it is that there were multiple moments in which I thought I knew where the plot was going, and it went another direction. Being surprised by a film is always appreciated.

Just watched it myself and yeah, it is a weird film that takes a LOT of swings that don't all connect. I LOVED the first act, that was just masterclass, but the tonal shift, while interesting, was just riding on the momentum of the first act. Then the third act felt a little lazy even though the wife thought it was quite touching at the end. Very 70's horror vibe versus 80's slasher and 90's-00's asian vengeful ghost.

Great performances though, and I appreciated that they found pretty organic reasons for the characters to act the way they do versus the usual "we are gonna stay in this house with the creepy attic NO MATTER WHAT!" attitude.

jason10mm wrote: Great performances though, and I appreciated that they found pretty organic reasons for the characters to act the way they do versus the usual "we are gonna stay in this house with the creepy attic NO MATTER WHAT!" attitude.

My all-time favorite pretext for WHY are we gonna stay in this obviously haunted house was American Horror Story season one. They bought a house they could barely afford just before the housing crash and big recession, so they couldn't afford to sell the house and move.

Sure, they couldn't move, but after the third or fourth time some human sized spider crawls across my bedroom ceiling I think I'm gonna sleep in the car down the street at least

Barbarians used weather, locked doors, and human relationships (good and bad) as justification. Good cell phone management as well, I feel like that tech kinda ruined 95% of horror film set-ups without a lot of hoop jumping to have "poor cell coverage" areas or deliberately break/low battery/lose phones.

Still, there is a reason none of these films go down in Texas (TCM aside, I suppose because NO ONE here is rolling without a 500+ lumen flashlight and at least a 9mm

I did like the police interactions in Barbarian as well. Novel way to deal with it versus the usual methods in these types of films.

Pleasantly surprised by Thor: Love and Thunder. Probably because of low expectations. It really seemed of a piece with Ragnarok. Yeah, there were jokes that went on too long or just weren't as funny as the rest of the crew thought they were, but Waititi's Marvel debut had the same issue. Then it just rolled into the next one. There were some great visuals in the Shadow Realm, and Portman stole the show balancing pathos with heroics and geek-into-prom-queen awkwardness.

Except for that absolute bunk ending. Thematically it was fine, but narratively it just came out of nowhere and felt like a last-minute patch to get Thor into position for whatever movie or series he appears in next because Portman didn't want to sign over the next ten years of her life to Disney.

Rewatched PRINCE OF DARKNESS, which has such cool moments in it. I’d never seen it in this kind of fidelity, so it was a treat. Very Argento-inspired tale of evil and its minions creeping into our world. Carpenter overdoes the soundtrack a little, and the idea might be better executed in THE PROPHECY, but it’s a good time.

jeb wrote: Rewatched PRINCE OF DARKNESS, which has such cool moments in it. I’d never seen it in this kind of fidelity, so it was a treat. Very Argento-inspired tale of evil and its minions creeping into our world. Carpenter overdoes the soundtrack a little, and the idea might be better executed in THE PROPHECY, but it’s a good time.

"Have you seen Nancy?"

Watched Run, sweetheart, RUN! off....amazon I think? It's a blumhouse joint so it leans heavily into a small cast and a "you think this film is about this but its REALLY about this..." message like a lot of their films. In fact, I'd say this was a precursor to The Invisible Man and is inferior in every possible way. FAR more ham fisted with "the message", a third act that is as clumsy as it is eye rollingly preposterous, yet for all that the lead is quite engaging, the villain has some great scenery chewing moments, and the first act or so is actually pretty good as it slowly spirals out of control.

It kinda pairs well with Barbarian from a thematic perspective, even the leads are strikingly similar in many aspects. However, while Barbarian balances the ridiculous with the shocking, RSR deflates the villain far too much by making him simultaneously too grand yet too petty.

And there is a LOT of menstruation talk, like wow, never quite seen it as such a significant plot point outside of a teenage girl coming of age film perhaps.

On Halloween we drove forty miles to the art house theater in Salt Lake and watched Decision to Leave. It engaged in all sorts of interesting, wacky direction, like when the detective is observing a suspect from afar, he would appear in the same frame as the subject. The movie felt surreal and absurd but reached total, heartbreaking lucidity by its conclusion. My wife and I often turned to each other to say "I have no idea what is going on right now." It made sense by the end and was a fun ride--definitely a movie you'll talk about on the drive home.




From the NYT review:

[A]s someone once cautioned me about visiting Venice, you will get lost. But navigating a mystery’s enigmas, sifting through its clues and unlocking its secrets are what draw us to stories like this, and here, even if you find yourself at an apparent dead end, Park will guide you back on track. Both times that I’ve seen “Decision to Leave” I questioned whether the movie was overly addled or I was, both being possible. Who’s the lovelorn gangster, I wondered. What does this or that plot kink have to do with the mystery woman? And why does one detective keep thumping his partner with an electric massager?

I'm eagerly awaiting the Youtube explainer that will come out in six months.

It's Alice Cooper's best performance since Monster Dog.

Weird: the Al Yankovic story is actually pretty weird, in that friendly Al way. A lot of love went into making this one. I was very much entertained. Radcliffe is so good.
I am not ok with pronouncing his name 'Yankovick', but if that's what the man wants, so be it. My wife fell asleep, which is an endorsement.

Saw The Banshees of Inisherin tonight. Will write more about it tomorrow, but safe to say that it's as feckin' brilliant as anything else McDonagh has done, if a shade darker.

Hocus Pocus is absolutely terrible. It does not work as a film nor as a script. It's a complete mess where the characters run from one location to another because it's the only way writers could keep things going. Nobody who made this film sat down to figure out what characters wanted to do, why or how. Hence, whenever anything would happen, they just change the scene by whatever contrivance the hacks behind this movie could think of. This goes on and on and on for more than two hours. At some point, they burn the witches alive and, not being able to figure a way to continue, the smoke just goes back in, and they come out unscathed.

But what's most baffling about the film is how ghastly many of the scenes are. Early in the picture, they murder a child alive on screen. And yes, it's supposed to be funny. As the witches breathe her lifeforce, they burp which I guess excuses the death of a 6 year old on a chair. After a timeskip of hundreds of years, the focus shifts to shaming a 15 year old boy for being a virgin. They don't shame his romantic interest, though, perhaps because the people who wrote this film may have called her a slut if she did. And when they burn the witches alive - I'm sorry, but they burn them holocaust style. There's no other way to describe it, they lock them up in what looks like a gas chamber and our dear protagonists stick their faces to the little window so they can see them die. What the fuck?

Beyond the film's own artistic failures, I'm increasingly uncomfortable with the way the Salem witch trials and other similar events are depicted in English speaking media. Ultimately, they take what was the institutional murder and torture of innocents and jokingly turn the tables on them. They were really witches, you see? I'm told that in the actual city of Salem, the city has increasingly used "witch" imaginery in its official institutions, including the police. I can't help but think it's a way of dodging an uncomfortable aspect of the history of the United States.

I also cannot help but compare this treatment with the one given to the Spanish Inqusition. Contrary to popular culture, the Catholic Church did not believe in witchcraft and, hence, did not persecute it. Witches were seen by religious authorities as victims, of either conmen or their neighbours. While civil tribunals did persecute "witches", such events remained rare in Spain, unlike the waves that could be seen in Central Europe. So when I see these movies, or other similar media, I feel there has been a transfer of guilt. That is, the dark past of Protestantism and witch trials has been "given" to Spain, which is a conveninent target, being foreign and religiously opposed. Meanwhile, the void left behind is filled with a fantasy interpretation that take away the edge of the crimes and sugarcoat the actual history.

But that's enough of a rant. If you want a good family movie that covers this subject, ParaNorman, by the studio of Coraline, is a very good one. It hits this topic head on and is quite fun.

Saw The Banshees of Inisherin: dichotomouspurity.blogspot.com/2022/11/f...ingered-parable.html

A really excellent film if you're willing to stay with it.

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is by far the best Marvel film of phase 4, and I think better than the first one. Much more of a cohesive, emotional and dramatic story than we have seen from Marvel in quite a while

Nodens wrote: Weird: the Al Yankovic story is actually pretty weird, in that friendly Al way. A lot of love went into making this one. I was very much entertained. Radcliffe is so good.
I am not ok with pronouncing his name 'Yankovick', but if that's what the man wants, so be it. My wife fell asleep, which is an endorsement.

Yea we really enjoyed this one too. A few bits hewed kinda close to Walk Hard, but for the most part it was it's own thing. The solo accordion cover of Beat in the Brat was a highlight.

Watched two horror films yesterday, which in itself is very rare for me.
X - One of those A24 joints... a group of young people in 1979 rent a house on an old farm plot so they can film their very own porno. The old farmer and his wife don't take kindly to this display of smut, and things go awry.

I liked it enough, and it's got that classic "lots of tits and ass" feel to it, and while there is some gore, it's not TOO over the top. My biggest criticism is that it feels very formulaic and you are not likely to be very surprised by it, if at all.

Scream (2022) - this is the most recent film, not really a reboot, in the film itself they call it a "requel". It is light and fun, as Scream films generally are. I liked it. I think I missed a film in the franchise somewhere, as some of the things they were talking about didn't trigger any memories.