Movies - you've seen recently?

[Mando Pandango]

Justice League
shit

Wonder Woman
Pretty decent movie but I have no urge to watch it again. Why are all these fuckin flicks so long?

Mars Attacks!
now this is art

Mothra vs. Godzilla
Honestly? Maybe the best movie out of this bunch. Godzilla baybee

[Samus Aran]

mars attacks scared the shit out of me as a little kid

[Mando Pandango]

mars attacks scared the shit out of me as a little kid

Yeah I bet

As an adult it's delightful though. It's mostly flavor, but it's so much fun. The best part is how all the martians are dated CGI but then you'll see a practical skeleton dummy in a wheelchair whiz by in the background. Shit like that

[YPrrrr]

Watched Fiddler on the Roof. I'd seen the play, hadn't seen the movie.

The movie is great, highly recommend

[Mando Pandango]

Watched Grease last night

Been a while since I've watched some goddamn cinema. Gotta fix that.

[Mando Pandango]

A while ago I watched all the Final Destination movies. All worth watching except for the 4th. Power ranking:

5
2
1
3
The (4)

Much more recently I started watching the Saw series and gave up after the 4th. Power ranking:

1
3
2
4

1 was the only one I really enjoyed tbh.

I also recently watched Fantastic 4 (2015) and boy. Oh boy. It's like watching a dream die in real time. It falls apart so quickly and so thoroughly. It's incredible. I can't stop thinking about it. I've never seen anything like it.

[The artist formally known]

A while ago I watched all the Final Destination movies. All worth watching except for the 4th. Power ranking:

5
2
1
3
The (4)

Much more recently I started watching the Saw series and gave up after the 4th. Power ranking:

1
3
2
4

1 was the only one I really enjoyed tbh.

I also recently watched Fantastic 4 (2015) and boy. Oh boy. It's like watching a dream die in real time. It falls apart so quickly and so thoroughly. It's incredible. I can't stop thinking about it. I've never seen anything like it.

I've seen all the Saw movies, they don't get better.

[Samus Aran]

here's all the movies i've watched this year so far starting with the most recent


Little Women (1994) - decent. wholesome. slightly cringe. winona ryder!

Curious Case of Benjamin Button - decent, but aggressively cringe. really wants me to hate it. almost succeeded. why is this shit so fucking long?

Open Range - good movie. climactic shootout sequence one of the best i've ever seen in a western. great cinematography.

Con Air - surprisingly decentish considering how aggressively stupid this movie is. nic cage's fake accent is so fucking funny. put the bunny down.

Jiro Dreams of Sushi - good documentary. my man is a true artist of making good ass sushi.

In A Lonely Place - great, but kind of only great because Bogart is great? i feel like this is an average film that just happens to have a GOAT as the lead delivering lines like his life depends on it

Unbreakable - one of the weirdest "super hero" films ever but it's also really cool tbh. good movie. not great but yknow. representative of a time when people actually experimented with super heroes as a concept and they weren't just a blockbuster snore.

Thief - this movie fucking rules. michael mann is a nerd who makes movies about insane people who are insanely talented at being criminals. immaculate vibes, ost by tangerine dream. pre-Drive but arguably cooler. incredible night cinematography, any shot involving a car is extremely good and i love the detailed shots of the vault-breaking process. the fucking shot where james caan's character just sits back and admires his handiwork with a smug look on his face as the camera zooms in is divine.

The Quick and the Dead - fun fucking movie. it's pretty good too! it's sam raimi, so the camera work and over-the-top drama of these western gun duels is pretty bonkers. this is also the hottest Sharon Stone has ever been. she should have played sharpshooting cowgirls her whole career. also god i love gene hackman and russell crowe. also, wait, is that a really young leonardo dicaprio? and his character is really fucking funny? hell yeah

Creep - as inventive as this film is, i hate it. it's a decent movie i guess, but i hate it. i hate jumpscares. i hate movies that are about nothing but jumpscares. fuck this. i dont like being jumpscared. anyway the ending is wild

Speed Kills - holy shit this movie is bad. like actually terrible. nothing about this movie is any good at all. not even john travolta's hairpieces.

Hustle - after making the banger that is Uncut Gems, i guess Sandler wanted to prove he can also make good popcorn flicks. this is a good movie. it's a feel good sports drama with some comedy, and heck, it's not bad! the basketball players that play as bo and kermit in this movie are actually pretty darn good actors.

10 Things I Hate About You - good movie. is this the only truly good teen high school comedy? it might be. funny stuff. heath ledger and julia stiles were great.

Nightcrawler - this movie rules. jake gyllenhaal is so good at being so fucking unnerving and weird and creepy. this movie has a good sense for keeping a sort of perpetually building tension. things just get worse and worse. the concept for the film is something i didn't even know was a profession tbh, so that's very fascinating. fantastic nighttime cinematography.

Seven Samurai - immaculate. an absolute beast of a movie. a long, sprawling epic that explores every element of its story to the point where, truly, this movie's only flaw is its length. this is fucking kurosawa. can't believe i started with rashomon. this film kicks the shit out of rashomon. there are elements of this epic present in so, so much media i have seen before and there's a good reason. also holy fuck i love takashi shimura and toshiro mifune. mifune's character of kikuchiyo is timeless. will i rewatch this behemoth any time soon? fuck no, it's so long. but every fucking good action movie for the past seven decades has been copying this film to some degree or another because it really is that good and it really is that dense. and its approach to action is painfully honest. so is its portrayal of samurai - in the end, many of them were just village destroying, pillaging soldiers. motherfuckers.

Revue Starlight: The Movie - great. go read my review of the series in the anime thread and you will have my thoughts on this movie as well.

The Power of the Dog - great film. a slow burn of a modern, revisionist western. think films like "There Will Be Blood" and you get the idea. but this is a much less grandiose film that's more focused on a few specific characters and things like extremely toxic masculinity and sexuality. i think some of its extremely high praise is a bit unwarranted but it is really good.

The Social Network - great film. everyone already knows that and so i won't really explain why in detail. it's just a really good, dramatized, semi-truthful biopic carried by a really good film structure and solid acting all around.

Punch-Drunk Love - fantastic. the Uncut Gems before Uncut Gems. what i mean is that this is the other really good movie Sandler starred in, but it's been kinda forgotten unfortunately. this is an extremely strange, very tense film. i won't pretend to know if Sandler's portrayal of an autistic man with extreme social anxiety is truly accurate or good for awareness but i can at least say that i found it compelling and deeply affecting. i've seen some detractors say that the central love story of this movie is unbelievable and corny but tbh i love that about this film. it's so strange and dreamy, a really good application of the concept of "true love"

Crimson Peak - this film is nothing but a long exploration of a really, really beautiful set. i swear, everything outside of the mansion on the titular Crimson Peak is dull in comparison. this is not really that good of a film, it's at least pretty good though and its visuals are entirely what sells it tbh. the mystery comes really late into the film and it's not that interesting. but damn if del Toro can't make a film look really fucking good. the constant use of goopy blood-red clay is so cool.

Marriage Story - really fucking good. at times oppressively sad, at other times just so, so bittersweet. a struggle of a film about two people who really do love each other, but not everything in life works out. and they are continuously forced into worse and worse situations that strain the remnants of their relationship even worse. adam driver and scarlet johannson are utterly fantastic here, their portrayals are intensely real and painful (but delightful) to watch. i'll think about the scene where driver sings "being alive" in the restaurant for a long time.

127 Hours - a pretty good but ultimately pretty shallow film about the real story of Aaron Ralston's struggle to survive trapped in a Utah canyon. eh.

Little Miss Sunshine - this is such a mid 00s hipster kid film. from the color palette to the soundtrack to the quirky dialogue and one-liners. but it's also a great fucking movie tbh. it's often just really cute, but it also has its moments of real human emotion too. man, i dont wanna spoil, but that scene with dwayne where they have to stop the van? you know the one if you've seen it. it's heart wrenching.

Slumdog Millionaire - kind of great? kind of just good? honestly i'm not sure. the Millionaire aspect is...weird. and definitely a product of its times. but the core story is pretty great. but then sometimes it kinda falters, and again, the Millionaire aspect is just...weird. also, something something Danny Boyle extremely westernized kinda racist depiction of India etc etc

Uncut Gems - yes, that's right, i watched three fucking Adam Sandler movies this year and they were all good. starting with this absolute banger. what a ride. what a massive build up of horrible unease and tension that just fucking explodes at the end. and Sandler is so fucking good when he's playing a fucking dickhead that spends most of the movie speaking at a volume somewhere between speaking and screaming. the soundtrack is also fucking immaculate, well done mr. lopatin. the opening and closing bookend shots of this film are incredible too. btw don't forget that this movie is what caused The Weeknd to hit it off with Lopatin and as a result make better music later

A Separation - amazing. one of the best three films i've seen this year (along with Seven Samurai and Parasite).  a full fucking five stars. this is a painful film about a continually worsening situation made worse by human decisions that are, on their own, totally justifiable. a pile of mistakes and lapses of reason and momentary bouts of selfishness that just build and build and strain the relationships of very real people. it's a colossal achievement about Iranian society, the struggles of being poor and raising a family, about the difficulties of dealing with the hardheadedness of the law, about the disconnect between religious beliefs and the practicality of living. it's just a really good movie.

Blood Simple - pretty great movie. this is the directorial debut of the Coen and most of everything you'd expect from them is present to some degree, although this is further removed from the darkness or outright whimsicality of their later films. the soundtrack is really fucking good, sounds like Tangerine Dream or something at times. there is a great attention to detail in the shots, namely with movement - the red converse on the bar-top, the dragging shovel. fascinating uses of usual Coen camera tricks.

Nomadland - great, but definitely not for everyone and it's understandable that a lot of people think this movie is pretty boring. because it is just a really quiet movie where Frances McDormand just gets by living out of her van in various parts of the country. there is often not much dialogue, and what dialogue there is is mostly just people having normal ass conversations. and there is not a lot of drama or plot continuity in the shot style, much of it feels like a documentary instead. but there is poignancy in this film's depictions of places in the middle of nowhere and the struggles of a decidedly nomadic lifestyle. i enjoyed it a lot.

Parasite - complete banger. this film is a total beast and went places i never expected it to. it's sad, it's funny, it's outright bizarre. a film about class disparity? sure. a film about the joy of pretending to be something you're not? absolutely. a film about the joy of crossing lines and giving a royal finger to the societal expectations thrust upon you? yeah, bloodily so. this film is about a lot. the interior shots of the Kim family home are incredible. and man, once everything just falls apart, literally goes to shit. i love the flooding scenes. the shot of Park So-Dam just kind of giving up, sitting on top of the toilet lid to try to keep it from belching more water out, just having a smoke. it's too good. utterly phenomenal film.

[Hiro]

The fact that you watch/listen to/play about 20x more media than I do and are able to keep track of and write about it is pretty impressive.

But yeah Parasite is fantastic but I thought Nomadland sucked ass, kettu identified with quite a bit of it and also agreed

[Samus Aran]

one movie i forgot to include on that list that i watched this year also is Raw. insane film, pretty great too. extremely good soundtrack.

The fact that you watch/listen to/play about 20x more media than I do and are able to keep track of and write about it is pretty impressive.

But yeah Parasite is fantastic but I thought Nomadland sucked ass, kettu identified with quite a bit of it and also agreed

it's because i hyperfixate on things and obsess over cataloguing and writing things down to better encase them in my memory

however, i generally bounce around between fixations. i actually watched all those movies between april and july, and havent watched a movie since. right now i am more fixated on revisiting music and rating/cataloguing that on rym, as well as ofc listening to new stuff too. right before this i was definitely on a bit of an anime/manga binge, although i'm always at least watching *some* anime, that one is a constant even if it's just a small one in the background

[YPrrrr]

Just rewatched Ferris Buellers Day Off. Still a great movie.

But the ending is kind of weird especially with Cameron. How he strangely and quickly gets over the complete destruction of the car when it seems like his dad is pretty abusive. Given that he just faked a suicide like an hour ago at the pool it seems like he already had that thought going through his head. Maybe the car going over the edge is the last push for him in that direction. His sudden serenity coming from the realization that it won't matter if he's dead. That maybe even though his father doesn't care about him, the simultaneous death of his car will make him feel that grief and maybe even regret about how he treated Cameron.

Although I'm probably also thinking this because Hollywood abuses the fuck out of suicide and characters kill themselves all the time over the stupidest shit for cheap drama. But for Cameron it would make sense since he's portrayed as depressed and possibly suicidal for the whole film.

Anyway sorry for cringe Ferris Bueller theories but dang it's weird how he just gets over that at least verbally. Guess when you're out of runtime you've gotta wrap things up

[Samus Aran]

recently saw The Thing. the 1982 one. fucking fantastic tbh

also rewatched with the gf recently - Fargo, Trainspotting, and Parasite

she absolutely loved Parasite, as she should. she loved Fargo too, just not as much as i do. she seemed to only mildly enjoy Trainspotting unfortunately, i've always loved that movie

[Kalahari Inkantation]

my roommate and i just finished BL*CKED Panther 2™ (she cute )

That was bomb AF, I'm quite pleased to report.

and frankly i literally did not expect that at all

it's much better than the first one, even

[YPrrrr]

Watched All Quiet on the Western Front

I knew it would be depressing and it was