Maryokutai Posted March 10 Share Posted March 10 Damsel, this new Netflix thing with Stranger Thing's Eleven. Wasn't expecting much and it still managed to disappoint, it's your typical Netflix movie fluff that has zero redeeming qualities. Except for one absolutely hilarious plot hole that creeps up in the first third and kept me laughing through the entire movie: Spoiler Protagonist gets thrown into a dragon's cave where she quickly finds out she's not the first sacrificial maiden through some not-subtle cave drawings she finds. One of those drawings is a map that shows how to get to the exit, which in itself is already incredibly stupid when you think about it. But when she follows that map only to find out that it does indeed not lead to freedom but into a dead end where she gets ambushed by the dragon, and discovers the words 'not safe' on the wall, I just burst out laughing at the ludicrous notion of it all. How on earth can a writer put this on paper and think it's fine? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mmmark Posted March 10 Share Posted March 10 Who drew that and wrote that? The dragon? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
one-armed dwarf Posted March 16 Share Posted March 16 Zone of Interest (2023) - I got it on Apple TV, but I think it might be on other streaming services. This is by Jonathan Glazer, director of Under the Skin which if you've seen is a very visceral film which eschews standard narrative forms. So does this film, the trailer gives you the idea of what it is tbh. It's about the family of Rudolf Hoss, commandant of Auschwitz, trying to live a normal family life while people are being incinerated at industrial scale over the wall from their house, the chimney always visible above the gazebo (no amount of vine coverage can reach that). I think the film should be seen without knowing too much beyond that, so I'll just say a lot of what the film is is about how is uses sound and juxtaposes it with visuals and character performances. It's not subtle about it either, it doesn't want people to leave a screening without having got the message and its relevance to modern events. Because of that imo you should watch with headphones, or a proper sound setup (not a flatscreen TV's speakers), and without a phone in hand. It is mainly about Spoiler psychological suppression, and the banality of evil. There's a particularly noteworthy scene where Hoss is at a Nazi conference in Berlin and they are discussing the logistics of murdering 700000 Hungarians and while he is wandering around the city you can faintly hear the churns of the furnace and occasionally faint screams of its victims, despite being miles away from the camp, like a form of tinnitus that can't be ignored no matter where you are Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maryokutai Posted March 16 Share Posted March 16 I keep wanting to watch it and keep forgetting its name, so maybe this will make for a good bookmark. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mmmark Posted March 16 Share Posted March 16 Sounds like a hoot! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nag Posted March 16 Share Posted March 16 2 hours ago, mmmark said: Sounds like a hoot! Prime Saturday night viewing that...🥳🎊🍻 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
one-armed dwarf Posted March 16 Share Posted March 16 Well if you want to really treat yourself, make it a double bill with The Act of Killing Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nag Posted March 16 Share Posted March 16 Think I'll just waste my time watching The Flash tbf...😉 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mmmark Posted March 18 Share Posted March 18 I watched two films I’d seen before. Matrix Resurrections is on Netflix and I recall not enjoying it the first time but I couldn’t bring myself to watch DUNE while I was drinking as it was hard to follow sober. Anyway I really enjoyed it the second time. Expectations were dampened I suppose but it seemed to never slow and the action was great. I’d say as good as the first which doesn’t hold up well (come get me). 8/10 Everything, Everywhere, All at Once was every bit as excellent as the first time. They really turned up and made a perfect and by far the best multiverse movie with a great story to boot. 9/10 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
one-armed dwarf Posted March 19 Share Posted March 19 I really liked the first half of Matrix 4, but the second half did not work for me cause it just couldn't carry those action scenes as well as the original 2 did (I barely remember Revolutions). The camera and the way it frames all that bullet time stuff in the original has never stopped being cool imo, even as a late 90s time capsule of what 'cool' means (which if you look at it, just encompasses what 'The Matrix' is supposed to be anyway on a story level) I would have much preferred tbh if the whole movie was just about a game developer working through his shit, that it was just a way more low key film (it sort of is, but not as much as I'd have liked). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mmmark Posted March 23 Share Posted March 23 American Fiction is brilliant and I can’t recommend it enough. 9/10 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nag Posted March 23 Share Posted March 23 We watched The Flash last night and it wasn't the absolute car crash I was expecting... I've no real feelings for the character itself, apart from it's a bit of a shit super-power and I think a lot of the positives I felt about the film were more from seeing Michael Keaton in the Batsuit again (can't believe that he's in his 70's)... made me want to watch Batman Returns again. Talking of Batman I just can't like Ben Affleck as him, the cowl does something weird to his face and makes it look all fat and puffy... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mmmark Posted March 23 Share Posted March 23 Mad Max Fury Road I bought on 4k a few months ago and lately after the trailer to Furiosa was released seemed a good a time as any to watch it for maybe the third time. Needless to say it still holds up and remains the best vehicle chase movie ever thanks to it all being practical fx. 9/10 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mmmark Posted March 24 Share Posted March 24 Saltburn is a great movie that doesn’t quite live up to the hype that is nether the less well worth your time. It has some stretches of the imagination regarding deaths and how easily they’d be shown to be murders and all the talk about scenes being shocking aren’t really all that. But coming in without any expectations this is a solid odd little film that breezes by. 8/10 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maryokutai Posted March 24 Share Posted March 24 Watched Dark Waters, a legal thriller about the affair with DuPont corporation, who has been poisoning the entire planet with a chemical substance applied in various household items, of which the most commonly known are probably Teflon pans and such. I remember not being aware of this at all until the movie came out in 2019 but I've only recently been reminded of it when it appeared on Netflix. The movie itself is relatively standard legal fare, with a muted visual look, slow pacing, the usual dramatic back-and-forth between lawyer business and family life. There are some rather effective, borderline disturbing scenes (the cows) and Ruffalo does a good job at portraying a lawyer whose ideals are turned on its head and who then almost succumbs under the pressure (likely some creative freedom taken here for the movie). Not sure why they cast someone like Anna Hathaway for the housewife though – she's great as always, but only has two or three major scenes. Overall a nice dose of depression, anxiety and increasingly growing lack of faith in humanity in movie format. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mmmark Posted March 25 Share Posted March 25 Poor Things isn’t as good as I’d hoped but also well worth a watch. Preferred The Lobster. 8/10 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DANGERMAN Posted March 25 Share Posted March 25 I watched the animated Turtles movie from last year, it's good. They've made a bit of a mess of Raph as his only characteristic is that he's angry, which doesn't really make sense given they're all naive and young. It's fun though, some good characters. I also watched Censor. It's a horror film set around someone who censors films for a living during the video nasties scare of the 80s. It was alright, I'm not really sure why it needed that premise, they don't really use it, I suppose at the end, but it was that bit highlighted how little most of the film mattered. It's not bad though, well acted, it just lacks something Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nag Posted March 30 Share Posted March 30 Watched Barbie last night and I never expected to be writing this but I really enjoyed it... the first 10 or 15 minutes were a bit like "what the fuck am I watching" but after that it was fine. Also last weekend we watched the new Road House film with Jake Gyllenhaal and Conor McGregor... I can't say what it's like compared to the Swayze film as I've never seen it but I enjoyed this version enough... it nails the 80's film vibe it's going for. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mmmark Posted March 30 Share Posted March 30 Funnily enough last night I watched.. Road House (2024), the first half or more is pretty good. Jake is fantastic and the fights are brutal. The story itself and set up is so far removed from the original I’m unsure why they even bothered with the name. There’s a bar and a bad guy wanting it closed so bar hires muscle is as far as it goes to being similar. There’s a moment in the film though which seems like they decided to rush to the end and include an action scene in water with a couple of boats and try to make it just as compelling as the rest of the action. It doesn’t really work. Worst of all the main villain doesn’t own a home, he just bobs up and down on a boat in the sun that’s not even that big so a majority of the film takes place at the bar as the hero can’t exactly rock up to a little boat to confront anyone. The road house itself is like something you’d find somewhere touristy. It’s a beach bar and looks nice throughout rather than by a road and a bit grimy. Most of the characters look like nice hotel staff rather than people with any sort of history or reason of being there. So yeah it’s not a bad film by any means, I quite enjoyed it throughout, but for some reason they decided to want to call it a road house movie and have everyone compare it to a classic. It’s not as good as the original unsurprisingly, but it is a good film that loses its way for 1/4 of the time towards the end before satisfyingly finishing off the bad guys in the finale. 8/10 (I don’t think it has or tries to have an 80s vibe @Nag ?) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nag Posted March 30 Share Posted March 30 2 hours ago, mmmark said: I don’t think it has or tries to have an 80s vibe @Nag ?) I mean the lone tough nut who kicks everyone's head in that pretty much all 80's film were. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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