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

sornars wrote: Introducing MCU-esque post credit scenes in everything better not be a new trend.

*Young Sherlock Holmes has entered the chat*

Superman - This was super boring. I actually think I'd have preferred another origin story. Why is it always about him being an alien now? When I grew up, Superman was symbolic for being the quintessential good guy. In this and the first Snyder movie, they make it more about him being an alien and dehumanize him. But remember Superman II, when Clark gave up his powers to be with Lois? That was human Superman in stupid human love. I want to root for that hero again. Now get off my lawn!

The latest Mission Impossible can now be seen legally on Amazon prime.

In related news. we are cancelling Amazon prime because we stream too many movies. I'm hoping that gap isn't replaced by doomscrolling through Youtube hot takes on Trump hijinks.

This weekend I watched both Den of Thieves and Den of Thieves 2 on Netflix. I think the first one is leaving soon, but don't worry about it because these movies are TERRIBLE. The writing is bad, and Gerard Butler is lucky he is good looking because he can't act for shit.

Both are elaborate heist films with plot holes and inconsistencies that you could drive a truck through, and sometimes they do! Sometimes the action is fairly entertaining, but any time someone talks, you can expect them to say something stupid, particularly if it's Gerard Butler's character speaking.

I feel confident you can find something better to watch, avoid at all costs. 1/5 for both

You should just rewatch Heat twice instead of those films.

Heat is clearly an inspiration for these, particularly in the first film. There is even a shootout that tries hard to channel the one in Heat, but it's of course not as good. It's also absolutely insane that the cops endanger civilians in the way they do in this scene.

The second Den of Thieves is channeling Heat in how ungodly long it is.

ChristopherMD wrote: Superman - This was super boring. I actually think I'd have preferred another origin story. Why is it always about him being an alien now? When I grew up, Superman was symbolic for being the quintessential good guy. In this and the first Snyder movie, they make it more about him being an alien and dehumanize him. But remember Superman II, when Clark gave up his powers to be with Lois? That was human Superman in stupid human love. I want to root for that hero again. Now get off my lawn!

I was originally planning on watching a bunch of horror movies this month, but Scream 2 was so disappointing that I lost my enthusiasm for the whole genre for now. So I finally watched the 2025 Superman movie. I'm a big fan of Marvel and DC comics, but never had great enthusiasm for Superman. His personality is pleasant but very bland. His powers are extreme, but he constantly holds back, especially on the superhuman speed. He has some interesting junk in his Fortress of Solitude, including pet alien creatures, the bottle city of Kandor, and access to the Phantom Zone, but that stuff usually gets overlooked by the movies.

This version of Superman left me ambivalent. The pacing was decent and there was plenty of action, so I am surprised that you found it "super boring." But this was an unusually soft and weak Superman, and not always because of the proximity of kryptonite. And yet I was very moved when he told Lois that he was going to surrender himself in hopes of finding where they had his dog. Not so much by the concept of it, but the exact words that he used were so kind and caring. Lois and Lex were very well cast. Nathan Fillion was perfect as Guy Gardner. I'm glad to finally see Mister Terrific on the big screen, even though his presentation was slightly undermined by his less than intellectual dialogue. It was great seeing these other heroes, but maybe there should have been greater focus on Superman. Overall, I liked the movie, but I didn't love it.

Picked up a set of the 30 classic Universal horror films for dirt cheap a while back and have begun watching them, one a day in October because obvsly. I've seen most of them before, but there will be a few along the way that I haven't (and are usually pretty low quality, but whatevs.) I'm watching them in production order, so I've now gone through Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy, The Invisible Man, Bride of Frankenstein, and Werewolf of London (Warren Zevon!); the last one because I'll be busy tonight so I jumped ahead one day.

A couple things stand out if you haven't seen them in a while. One is the length, since none of them are more than 75 minutes, which is barely a major TV episode in this day and age. Another is the transition after The Mummy with James Whale's films (Invisible Man and Bride) where he clearly started arcing away from the serious, dire horror atmosphere more toward camp and "Monster adventure!" angles. The music becomes more upbeat. The comedy moments are more in play (without, it has to be said, much in the way of humor.) And he was unfortunately fond of Una O'Connor, who is a very expressive actor, but is also highly annoying if you're not into the whole screeching laughter/screams/yelps of excitement every time she's on screen. Thankfully, Bride seems to be her last entry in the collection. That's not to say that the rest of the cast in most of them aren't guilty of overdramatizing (Exclamations delivered without the least bit of subtlety; playing to the camera; etc.) But O'Connor was OTT.

Werewolf of London arced back more toward the tragedy/horror theming and also spent a long time circling around the still mildly taboo issue of divorce and infidelity. You can see the film noir impacts in some of the presentation there. Next up is Dracula's Daughter, which was the first of the films to spend a fair amount of time on sexual roles (specifically, women attracted to women), which most contemporary critics gave the ol' "Wink, wink. Nudge, nudge."

In an industry that is swamped with sequels, prequels, spin-offs, re-boots, and re-makes, Under the Silver Lake (2019) got overlooked for being original. It's a conspiracy movie that takes place in and around Hollywood the geographic location, but only peripherally engages with Hollywood the industry. Andrew Garfield is the very suitable star, credibly playing a character that could almost be based on him: unemployed and on the verge of eviction, motivated primarily by seducing every attractive woman that crosses his path. And because this is Hollywood, there is no shortage of attractive young women who came to become famous and instead are just getting by. Garfield himself seems handsome at first glance, but actually a bit odd and and unimpressive in the close-ups. This works well for the movie, as he stumbles through a variety of mishaps with almost desperate horniness. He doesn't want to solve the mystery around the conspiracy for the sake of knowledge, he just wants to find a woman who is the current object of his obsession.

This movie is worth watching because the story repeatedly defies expectations and wanders in some interesting directions. About halfway through, I realized that Under the Silver Lake seemed like the work of a young Gen X or older millennial who was inspired by Hitchcock. Except it can't really be a Hitchcock movie without a Hitchcock cameo. Just as I was thinking that, the lead character steps away from a tombstone engraved with the name Hitchcock, so there's the cameo! I also detected influences from Chinatown and The Big Lebowski. Turns out that I was right about the director, who happens to be David Robert Mitchell, a younger member of Gen X who is best known for the horror movie It Follows.

On the other hand, the clues to the nature of the conspiracy rely on nearly absurd levels of serendipity, and the resolution is disappointing. The tone is uneven, veering from humor to horror to intrigue. The musical selections are oddly inspired, but don't work together to create an overall atmosphere to the movie.

See it anyway. Though the movie runs over 2 hours, Under the Silver Lake moves at a good pace and the startling twists kept me engaged. The humor isn't laugh out loud funny, but made me smile at times. Everything is visually interesting because you never know when a detail might prove relevant to the conspiracy. The director is very focused on showing you the story instead of telling you the story, though some aspects remain cryptic at the end. The closing scene is oddly satisfying.

EDIT: Under the Silver Lake is currently available via Amazon Prime.

I watched Found Footage on Prime. This is heavily inspired by Blair Witch Project, and it's pretty up front about it. In this movie, a scrappy director and two of his friends set out to make a found footage film about Sasquatch. They are themselves being filmed by a separate documentary crew, thankfully, which means most of the film is not a grainy shaky cam.

Anyway, as you might expect, things go awry out there in the woods.

This film is probably a 2 out of 5... it's not that it's unpleasant, but it's mostly boring and I think goes on about 5 minutes too long. A perfect ending is right there, but no, there's more film.

The Man in the Basement, on Hulu. The guy who played Dr. Dre in Straight Outta Compton lives alone in the family home, and has been slowly letting his life spiral out of control... until Willem Dafoe shows up and offers to rent out his basement for 2 months, for a rather large sum of much needed money.

Things quickly get weird, but I was never quite sure where the film was heading, and it did not go where I thought it would. The acting is on point, particularly from Dafoe, like you'd expect any less. Still... I wanted to like it a lot more than I did. I'd say 3 out of 5.

What is the highest priority for a movie adaptation of a book? Should it strive to be faithful to the book, or should it strive to be a good movie that is based on a book? Inherent Vice (2014) by Paul Thomas Anderson is based on Inherent Vice (2009) by Thomas Pynchon, and Anderson reportedly hewed close to the book. But there are a lot more movie viewers than book readers, so I feel that the better choice is to make a good movie.

Inherent Vice is the convoluted story of an investigation into a missing person report by private investigator and stoner Doc Sportello, set in Los Angeles sometime in the 1970s. Though there was potential for a great movie soundtrack, Anderson instead put the money into a strong ensemble cast starring Joaquin Phoenix and featuring Josh Brolin, Owen Wilson, Reese Witherspoon, Benico del Toro, and Martin Short. Though the story is complex and somewhat noir in style, the tone is instead one of dark comedy. It would be easy to describe Inherent Vice as a less funny version of The Big Lebowski, but it actually plays more like a story arc in The Rockford Files, except that tv wasn't doing story arcs back then. And instead of the affable and witty James Garner, we get a perpetually stoned and perplexed Joaquin Phoenix. And instead of proactively following leads and clues, much of Doc's investigation actually consists of new and repeat characters popping up and telling him clues. Doc also has a very odd frenemy relationship with Brolin's character, an aggressive and vengeful bad cop who alternately abuses Doc or works with him.

Is it a good movie? Not exactly, especially considering the talent of both the director and the cast. But if you relax and just go with the flow, the pacing is decent and the story is engaging. Things pick up in the final reel and become somewhat compelling. There is even a moment near the end where Phoenix confronts a bad guy and delivers an unimpressive threat but immediately follows it with a series of remarkable facial expressions that actually convey strong menace.

dichotomouspurity.blogspot.com/2025/10/u...-foundation.html?m=1

Re: Watching all the old Universal horror films, that's the first post about my adventure through 30 of them in the month of October. Will have four more posts on that topic in short order.

Weapons (2025) is a very good new horror movie. The underlying threat is a traditional one, but the setup is so unusual that it will be quite a while before you identify it. Instead of telling the story from the standpoint of a single protagonist, we get mulitple interlocking perspectives, complete with character-named chapter titles like in the Game of Thrones books. The cast is solid, the story is interesting, and there is a steady build-up in tension.

I was finally able to watch the last installments of two good action movie franchises, at least without paying extra for pay per view.

Mission Impossible: the Final Reckoning part 2 (2025) was a disappointment. As the second half of the movie begun in 2023, it also serves as a capstone to the entire franchise. And what a franchise that was... with each installment surpassing the previous one in quality. At least until this final installment, which reverts to the sloppiness of the first movie. Exciting things happen, but the setup for each exciting scene is some sloppy word salad with keywords that link to specific elements in the scene. The stunts are still amazing, even moreso when you consider that the star performing his own stunts is in his early 60s. It isn't a waste of time to see this movie, and action movie fans should definitely watch, but don't think too hard about what you see. Despite all the tension, the ending is exactly what the viewer probably expected by the midpoint of the movie.

John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023) was also a bit disappointing, as this was another franchise that kept improving with each new movie. There are still things to enjoy: lovely cinematography and lighting, stylish clothes, and plenty of action. But once a movie goes over the two hour mark, I am often left a bit resentful of any wasted time onscreen, and this movie has multiple action sequences that go stale with repetition long before they conclude. There is often a video game quality to the too-long action scenes, where the first dozen or so attackers are dispatched with entertaining briskness, but then more and more keep coming as the stunt coordinator runs out of ways to make each death different.

The movie has a strong cast, but Reeves himself delivers an unusually wooden performance (even by his standards) in most scenes. Although there are flashes of deliberate humor here and there, the movie devolves into self-parody with a couple of overly long action scenes in the final reel. In one, Wick is struck by at least six different vehicles in the space of 15 minutes, though not at high enough speed to be automatically lethal. In the other scene, Wick gets struck hard and falls down a couple of hundred stone steps, despite large landings at regular intervals. You can literally see him rolling himself to get to each new flight of a dozen or more steps. With a nearly a three-hour run time, both of those scenes could have easily been edited for the sake of brevity and entertainment.