Movie News, Reviews, and Discussion Super-Thread

[team filler]

chappy wasn't great, but it was still entertaining. love blomkamp, all his stuff on youtube is cool too.

[Bebpo]

Kinda bummed, but expected that the Conjuring 3 reviews are pretty bad if you read the text. Going from Wan to the guy whose only directed The Curse of La Llorona (28% RT) was never likely to work out too well.

Will still watch it because as one of the reviews I read said "the two leads are enjoyable enough that I can enjoy watching them in an occasional bad episode"

[Madrun Badrun]

It was Okish.  In the lower half of the conjurverse movies though.  They have all been Christian movies but this was more in your face about which was my biggest problem.  Think it would do them a lot of good to stop pretending like this real story shit.   

[Bebpo]

How else would you read the review but the text?

Eh, mostly just look at scores.

[Bebpo]

Lol, The Conjuring was entertaining and this is definitely the fault of the script and not the director.

I have no idea how this made it past the first draft. It's so stupid in concept and total jumping the shark for the series. It feels like a 90s Roberta Williams Sierra adventure game.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

Going from spooky haunting stuff to a movie about a human badguy using voodoo hex magic to commit murders is so fucking stupid.

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[Quaker]

Wrath of Man

I thought Guy Ritchie stealth dropping a Jason Statham bank truck heist movie would totally be my shit but I was pretty disappointed by this one. The action is merely so-so but my biggest gripe is it's missing whatever charm/"wit" Guy Ritchie movies usually have. Instead it's largely humorless and has some of the corniest dialogue I've heard in a bit that always manages to calls attention to itself. My biggest hope was that the main secondary character is played by that anvil-headed FBI motherfucker from Mindhunter and he's fantastic, but he's let down by the writing. It's watchable but I was hoping for more. It's not as slick, but I think "Armored" from like 10 years ago was more fun.



Riders of Justice

A slightly off-beat Danish take on the Death Wish/Taken/John Wick revenge thriller with Madds Mikkelsen as a solider whose called home after a family tragedy. It feels self-aware and makes an effort to consider the consequences of violence/anger/revenge as a coping mechanism to loss/tragedy. His tech support team(for tracking down The Bad Guy) is basically The Lone Gunmen, except they bring some levity due to their dynamics(think: the Hobbits/Dwarves in the Peter Jackson movies.) The "action" is very minimal and has almost none of the slick choreography of John Wick but is well done and graphic enough to carry some weight. Would recommend as long as you don't expect any CGI gun-kata.

[chronovore]

[Nintex]

Woah that looks fantastic, and Rebecca Ferguson 

[Madrun Badrun]

The Block Island Sound was bad and dumb. 

[GreatSageEqualOfHeaven]

The Block Island Sound was bad and dumb.

I liked some of what it was going for, but it could have leaned a little more into either the early onset dementia / guy worried hes going crazy with what his dad had aspect, or the 2spoopy mystery of the island and animals showing up dead all over aspect more because the two aspects obviously cancel each other out; hard physical evidence of weird shit happening that everyone can see and comment upon automatically makes 'I might be imagining things and won't tell anyone about weird shits happening to me' dumb.
Also the actor for the dad was fucking terrible, but I guess they cast him specifically for looking like a fucked up zombie and not for being able to read his lines intelligibly given most of his role is just standing there like a ghost going HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONK.

Having said all that, it was nice that it ended up

spoiler (click to show/hide)

an alien abduction film - they've sort of gone out of fashion recently, and I was expecting some cult shit as thats the current hotness.

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[D3RANG3D]

https://www.cartoonbrew.com/feature-film/kenji-kamiyama-to-direct-lord-of-the-rings-anime-prequel-205933.html

[Potato]

Philippa Boyens is consulting? Fuck that, I'm pretty sure she's responsible for many of the bad decisions they made in LotR and The Hobbit.

[Don Rumata]

Every animated project of this kind is shit, because they can't afford good animation.
Even those that start decent like Castelvania, turn bad as soon as they stretch them thin.
Attack on Titan season 4 another example.

They should probably keep animated shows in the OVA range, maybe do 6 amazing episodes, instead of 4, 20-episodes seasons of shitty cardboard puppets.

Now look at that Blade Runner anime tie in, that had fantastic animation, but was, like, 2 minutes of footage.

[Great Rumbler]

Attack on Titan season 4 another example.

Season 4 of Attack on Titan had a completely different crew and animation studio than the first 3 seasons, though.

But the LotR prequel is a movie anyway, not a series.

[Don Rumata]

Attack on Titan season 4 another example.

Season 4 of Attack on Titan had a completely different crew and animation studio than the first 3 seasons, though.

But the LotR prequel is a movie anyway, not a series.

I know but that's the case a lot of times when the quality decreases, as they look to go for cheaper studios.

[Madrun Badrun]

Luca was good.  Not in the top half of Pixar movies but still good.

[Bebpo]

Watched Censor - a trippy psychological horror film (think Perfect Blue-lite) that takes place in the 80s "video nasties" setting of England when the censors were censoring and banning horror movies. I didn't like it as much as the reviews. Still a thumbs up and looks nice and is trippy, but as someone that NEEDS MAH PLOT EXPLANATIONS and hates vague unanswered stuff I'm not fully satisfied. The story concept is fine though.

[Joe Molotov]

Luca was good.  Not in the top half of Pixar movies but still good.

He’s a great player, but I think they should at least wait until he wins a playoff series before making a movie about him.

[Bebpo]

So I watched In the Heights and I feel weird talking about it because as a white person it's not supposed to be a film for me and there's a lot of inner workings I'll never understand to the themes.

I thought it was kind of uninteresting. Like from a plot-point the romance story between the main two is pretty awful and because it covers multiple characters a lot of them feel really underdeveloped. Like like Hawkins as Benny steals the show because he's a fantastic singer with a ton of charisma, but his character's story is just so small and underdeveloped.

I liked most of the music and thought they were good musical sequences, but as a story, there's the community story and story of ancestry home vs new home which are good, but then there are the traditional plotlines like romances and stuff which are not great writing. A lot of the non-musical segments just felt weak.

It doesn't help that I thought Chu's direction was pretty by the book and boring. There were a couple musical sequences with some nice style but a lot of it just felt very plain and made the non-musical parts of the movie a bit boring.

I'd still say it was good and mildly thumbs up, but coming from Hamilton's stage show with all its originality and even better songs it really didn't compare.

[Madrun Badrun]

Watching Congo for the first time ever

However 20 mins in and this honestly feels as stupid as the two Michael Crichton books I have read.  Like it feels like how I think his books read. 

[chronovore]

ARMY OF THE DEAD

OK, my dislike of anything outside visual style for all things Zak Snyder is well documented. This movie deserves praise for an interesting visual style, and the remarkable technical feat of near-flawlessly swapping out some canceled comedian for Tig Notaro. Impressive.

However, that's the only praiseworthy bit. Bits. Zak once again includes a pastiche of things he liked in other movies, without the slightest sign that he understands why they worked in the original context. Everything is homage, nothing is original. This could have been (should have been) Ocean's Eleven and Zombies, a la Seth Grahame-Smith's Pride and Prejudice and Zombies adaptation.

It is actually ALIENS remade, except in lieu of the Hive Queen, we have Conan, Zombie King. Sentient Zombies. Married and pregnant zombies. Inexplicable and, again, showing that Snyder just doesn't understand what makes the source material compelling. Sentient zombies and class warfare zombies have previously been done better elsewhere.

The cliché choice of using acoustic covers for most of the songs grates and grates with its maudlin, saccharine, overly on-the-nose choices until it culminates in The Cranberries' acoustic ZOMBIE over the final credits.

Snyder has all the subtlety of a circus clown with an airhorn.

[chronovore]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Army_of_Thieves

Actually, this is co-written by Snyder, but directed by someone else, and sounds like the movie I was hoping to get. I am a fool: I am actually hopeful.

[GreatSageEqualOfHeaven]

Even though I thought overall Army Of The Dead was only okay - and coulda shoulda used a more ruthless editor to bring the runtime down, although I guess hes still high on snyder cut creative freedom - it actually did have a couple of interesting elements beyond just his usual ａｅｓｔｈｅｔｉｃ that I'll defend.

• Richard Cheese song fits perfectly with the Las Vegas setting, and is also a nice callback to Dawn
• Both openings were great. Army truck flipped by blowjob is straight from an 80s 'video nasty' pre-credits, and the Escape From LV montage was also great - you know exactly what that film (that doesn't exist) was just from the 'supercut', and there's probably a lot of truth too to 'escaping a zombie outbreak' not meaning shit out in the 'real world'.
• Some political satire, albeit heavy handed; the refugees in camps jumping the border via coyote and the abusive treatment by the guards supposed to be there to protect them, the president thinking a nuke would be a fine July 4th celebration then getting pissy at complaints and just steam rolling ahead early, Not-Weyland-Yutani not learning shit and getting ready for a do-over because they think theres money involved
• A couple of generally interesting ideas; zombies being left alone long enough gaining sentience and forming their own society, the 'time loop' speech - are zombie flicks a metaphor for limbo? Is there an actual time loop going on in this very videogamey feeling film? Are the archetypes of the kinds of people you'd send on this kind of mission basically cookie cutter caricatures, which is also why they're also basically the Aliens marines?

spoiler (click to show/hide)

he shoulda used this Richard Cheese track though, Viva Las Vegas was TOO on the nose

[close]

[Mupepe]

Watching Congo for the first time ever

However 20 mins in and this honestly feels as stupid as the two Michael Crichton books I have read.  Like it feels like how I think his books read.

The book is actually even dumber and more outrageous

[Joe Molotov]

Eat laser, you stupid monke fucks!

[Tuckers Law]

I thought Congo was awesome when I saw it as a teen, but I’ve not gone back and watched it since.  I still remember liking when Delroy Lindo shouts at Tim Curry for eating his sesame cake.

[MMaRsu]

chappy wasn't great, but it was still entertaining. love blomkamp, all his stuff on youtube is cool too.

I liked Chappy and the guy from Die Antwoord was cool in it too

[GreatSageEqualOfHeaven]

chappy wasn't great, but it was still entertaining. love blomkamp, all his stuff on youtube is cool too.

I liked Chappy and the guy from Die Antwoord was cool in it too

Hugh Jackman was pretty much the saviour of that film... but it was still a poor mans Short Circuit 2.

I can't think of anyone who's 'fallen off' so far from their debut, because District 9 is genuinely great, but Elysium and Chappie... not so much.
I don't think its a problem of creativity, as his Oats Studios Vol 1 anthology has some pretty cool stuff in it, but I guess he needs better scripts?

Something like a Blomkamp Ready Player One would have been interesting, I think.

[Transhuman]

https://twitter.com/vineyille/status/580036338164039681

[Bebpo]

Lol, I was just talking about Chappie yesterday while out on the town. It's a movie that forever lives in everyone's mind apparently.

I like Chappie, but Die Antwoord guy is bad. Copley's Chappie voice and dialogue makes the movie. I don't think Blomkamp has made anything bad yet. At worst his stuff is just sorta alright/solid/videogame-ish. Looking forward to Demonic.

[Nintex]

Watched the anniversary edition of Independence Day.

Dat bromanship between Smith and Goldblum, dat speech

[team filler]

"my david!" 

[Bebpo]

No Sudden Move was another great Soderbergh flick. I think the script, which is essentially a fun Elmore Leonard-esque crime caper is great until it gets a bit overdone with the backstabbings by the end.

Visually it's nicely directed as Soderbergh's direction is always tight, but it's another goddamnit Soderbergh did you shoot this whole thing on your iphone using a goofy fisheye lens kind of thing. It really feels like he shot this on the iphone 12 with the .5x wide angle lens. I need to look up if that's what he actually did.

Definitely a good watch, though I think High Flying Bird is my favorite of his post his "I'm done with films I'm gonna retire and do TV with The Knick...oh wait lol, nah now I'm back to movies yearly again" films.

[Quaker]

It was okay. At first I was enjoying just watching Benicio and Don Cheadle chewing the scenery but eventually I recognized it as trying to be somewhere between Kubrick's The Killing and Out of Sight and ended up disappointed when it didn't really come close.

The obnoxious hyper-wide lens didn't help. Why would you put all this effort into the production design and hire Julia Fox and have her look like she's in a fun-house mirror.

I think I'm just an asshole who watches too many movies, tho. I felt the same disappointment with Inherent Vice and The Big Lebowski when I first watched them and came around on them on rewatches.

I will say, as a wannabe "car guy", I absolutely loved what the MacGuffin turned out to be.

[Nintex]

"my david!" 

"I'm an exotic dancer"

"I'm sorry"

"Don't be, I'm not"

Now that movie had strong female characters

[Madrun Badrun]

Oxygen -- French movie.  Really dumb and derivative.   Basically a bad outer limits episode.  Very strange this is 88% on RT. 

[naff]

huh, i put that on my watchlist the other day. had a lot of decent reviews from my friends on letterboxd :p

[team filler]

no sudden move wasn't good enough for me to care about finishing. I fell sleep at some point near the end, woke up and paused. then just never went back to it. feel like it would have been better with some unknowns in the starring roles. seemed like the starring crew were just jerking themselves off. then again, maybe they just enjoy their jobs and were having fun making a movie together 

[Potato]

Watched The Tomorrow War.

Big dumb action movie with great set pieces and good tension. Entertaining for what it is, but god damn the script has some holes you could drive a truck through.

Go into it for the great action, just leave your brain at the door.

[Nintex]

Since Fast saga is apparently pretty bad I'm glad someone else has picked up the brainless shoot bang mantle

[GreatSageEqualOfHeaven]

Describing Oxygen as basically an Outer Limits / Twilight Zone movie is fair enough, but tbh that's all I really want from a 'thinky' sci-fi flick.

The 'twist' thats revealed about half way through is pretty obvious if you know your scifi tropes, but it was nice to see the AI be at the end.

Since Fast saga is apparently pretty bad I'm glad someone else has picked up the brainless shoot bang mantle

Fast saga is AMAZING if you can just tune your brain out for a few hours.

Hobbes and Shaw just showed up on UK netflix, and no wonder Vin Diesels supposedly pissed about it, because its basically a fucking 90s Bond film but with Stallone and Schwarzenegger as the leads

They have a fucking Idris Elba Bionic Man.
They have an actual fucking Super Villain Lair full of mooks to gun down.

If you enjoyed shit like True Lies back in the day, I have almost zero doubt you can slide right in on Hobbes & Shaw and not need to know shit about the FF movies, because there is zero fucking reason why a body building FBI man tasked with looking into a car theft ring is now globe trotting with a burnt MI6 agent to obtain a programmable bioweapon 

[Nintex]

Hobbes and Shaw was dumb stupid fun.

But it was clear that after one film they already ran out of ideas and if there's a next one it'll be about Ryan Reynolds playing Ryan Reynolds

[Don Rumata]

With MI7, the Cruise Missile will definitively sink the FF ship. 

[Joe Molotov]

Being streaming some scurries this weekend.

Willy's Wonderland - Having Nic Cage play a mute character certainly is a stylistic choice, but I can't say I hated it. The ridiculousness of him mopping up a filthy bathroom, then curb stomping a robot Gorilla into a toilet, then going right back to the mopping is delightfully absurd. I'm glad they never bothered to explain his character. It's not as unhinged as Mandy, but me and my bad movie night co-pilot got a chuckle out of it. 18 cans of Pop Punch out of a 24-pack.

Superdeep - This wanna-be Russian The Thing is a bit too talky and not enough goopy for it's own good. There's some decent effects of people getting melted by alien spores, but then long boring stretches of people talking or walking around and all the tension just deflates. The lack of any physical monster for most of the movie means that they're basically just trying to avoid mold. I give this movie a Nyet.

Fear Street Part 1: 1994 - A lot better (and more R-rated) than I thought it would be. It was a fun watch. I clapped and pointed at the screen when I saw things I recognized (kid playing Castlevania: Bloodlines on the Genesis :soyjack ). My one major complaint is that the movie needed more cannon fodder characters to get murdered. There's really only one decent kill, where a girl eats the business end of a deli bread slicer. Most of the characters survive Part 1. I have high hopes for Part 2 though, which is a flashback to the 1978 Camp Not Crystal Lake Massacre, and every character except the Last Girl that we already know survives should be fair game for Sackhead Not Jason. I give it a Friday the 13th 3D out of Jason Lives.

The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It - I'm not a real Conjuring head, I've only seen the first movie in the Conjurverse. I thought it was dece, though. It takes a few twists before it finally settles in to what kind of movie it wants to be, starting out with this ridiculously over the top exorcism scene that makes you think it's going to be The Exorcist on crack, before swerving into some courtroom sheningans that made me think "Oh no, oh no no no no", before finally just settling into a comfy supernatural mystery. I thought the two leads were the best part of the original Conjuring, and they're still good here. 3/4ths of a thumb up.

Come True - Creepy movie about nightmares and dreamscapes. A runaway teen attends a sleep study to avoid going home or sleeping in the park, and the doctors monitor her increasingly erratic dreams about a dark figure with glowing eyes. It's seriously creepy, but it gets a little repetitive when we POV through these similar looking Silent Hill locations 6 or 7 times that are a mixture of body parts and stone structures, and you really do have to be be prepared to buckle in for a movie where where very little actually happens for most of it's nearly two hour run. By far the creepiest thing that happens is...

spoiler (click to show/hide)

the late 20's grad student creeping on the 14-y/o looking high school girl. At one point he tells her that she's pretty smart for her age, she replies that she's 18, then smash cut (no pun intended) to them banging on his couch. 

spoiler (click to show/hide)

The scene is some what mitigated by the ending...

spoiler (click to show/hide)

That reveals that she's actually been in a coma for 20 years and the entire movie has been a dream.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

But come on, Canada. You ain't slick. 

[close]

[close]

[close]

[close]

Some atmospheric scenes that remind me a little of Twin Peaks Return, but you ain't quite David Lynch. Try Not to Come/10

Edit: Forgot, I also watched Censor last Friday. 'ate censorship, luv scurry movies, simple as.

[team filler]

just finished justice league dark. it was decent. dat zatanna 

[Potato]

Black Widow was alright. Although, it felt more like a really long Disney+ episode than a full-blown MCU film.

Surprisingly funny, good action and a passable story.

[Madrun Badrun]

Just finished it.  It's not great and I think it's comparable to Iron man 2.  I feel like it would have been better as a 6-episode D+ series.  I also wish they would have had the grit to actually make the tone as dark as the story they wanted to tell.  I had enough fun with it though and Yelena was really great.   

[Straight Edge]

Bill & Ted Face the music...I feel embarrassed for everyone in this. Looks like a low budget Sy Fy TV show.

I can't believe it only has a 25 million budget. Bogus Journey was made for 20 million 30 years ago.

[Madrun Badrun]

Bill & Ted Face the music was good.  When I think Bill & Ted I really think of production values. 

[Straight Edge]

Well they definitely didn't spend any of it on direction or the script. Excellent adventure had a mediaeval castle, a battle with Napoleon and tons of exterior shots. Bogus Journey had Station and the robot Bill and Ted. Face the music has a bunch of static green screen shots and a guy in a foam robot costume.

[bork]

Black Widow was alright. Although, it felt more like a really long Disney+ episode than a full-blown MCU film.

Surprisingly funny, good action and a passable story.

Just finished it.  It's not great and I think it's comparable to Iron man 2.  I feel like it would have been better as a 6-episode D+ series.  I also wish they would have had the grit to actually make the tone as dark as the story they wanted to tell.  I had enough fun with it though and Yelena was really great.   

Exactly how I felt about it- this would have made for a better TV series that better fleshed-out the whole Red Room thing.  As a movie, it felt like it should have been released around the time it was set and not post-Infinity War/Endgame.  Just didn't feel as big or as "important" with what has come since then.  Loki has been far more enjoyable- I didn't see this past week's episode and I think I'm just gonna watch it and the last one this week back to back this weekend instead.  Looking more forward to that.

[Madrun Badrun]

Fear Street Part 1:  I don't even know what this was.  I don't think I liked it.  I will watch the other two. 

[Bebpo]

Black Widow

Honestly my least favorite MCU film. It played it too serious and lacked the constant goofy marvel quips, but as a serious action thriller the story was stupid and Scarjo can't carry a film. Was just a weak Bourne movie but even that comparison feels bad because Bourne films were way better than this.

It looked nice visually, had a few good action bits and the best thing to come out of this film is that Florence Pugh's Black Widow is so much more fun and better than Scarjo's Black Widow which is a good thing since going forward Pugh is the new Black Widow. Upgrade total there. Harbour is also fun too.

But I might just be overly negative because they character assassinated Taskmaster who is one of my favorite comic characters. This is like Wolverine Origins sew up Deadpool's mouth character assassination. It's one thing for Fox to do it, but I can't believe Marvel at this stage would totally fuck over one of their quippy funny loser villains. Someone said it's because now that they have Deadpool, Taskmaster is too similar to Deadpool and so they didn't want to use him. So lame. Avengers game Taskmaster sucked too. Pretty much the only non-comic thing that has done a good Taskmaster was Spider-Man 2018 and even there he's just an optional side thing.

For a first movie to try out on a new 4k HDR tv it was decent enough because of how good it looked. But it was also pretty boring. Falcon and the Winter Soldier was essentially the same thing but despite having terrible antagonists it was a much better written action thing, Anthony Mackie carries better than ScarJo and it also had much better action than Black Widow. Black Widow definitely would've worked better as a 6-ep thing.

[Nintex]

https://twitter.com/VancityReynolds/status/1414987701502218244

[Bebpo]

A Quiet Place II - This was a good middle trilogy movie. It's really, really short and story-light. Essentially just a few set pieces and then it's over. But it's exciting and tense and fun and the lead deaf girl does a fantastic job and Cillian Murphy is excellent as well. Surprisingly Emily Blunt gets sidelined for Murphy which is weird since A) Hollywood needs more strong women leads and B) She's John K's (the writer & director) wife and you'd think he'd want to give her a leading role. But still, good movie, reminded me of a Jurassic Park film since the monsters are basically Dinosaurs.

My two complaints are that the monsters look way too Resident Evil videogame monsters and aren't scary looking and that the movie is rated PG-13 and there's like zero deaths shown on-screen. The combination of the two makes the monsters feel a lot less of a threat than say a Xenomorph which does take away from the tension a bit. I also don't really understand why the monsters attack people? Do they eat people? Do they just try to kill everything they hear? Or do they just slash at everything in their way because they are dumb?

Also the story gets a little janky which may affect the 3rd film

spoiler (click to show/hide)

So these things can't swim. Seems like a pretty big weakness people around the world would figure out really fast and then just get on islands/waterworld outposts?

Between that and feedback fucking them up, these monsters really don't seem that threatening which makes the state of the post-apocalyptic world one or two years later not very believable.

[close]

[Madrun Badrun]

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/pig_2021

[Tuckers Law]

I haven’t seen the movie, but I think it’s perfectly okay, great even, for Emily being sidelined in this for more Cillian.  Both are excellent actors, but between the two I’d be surprised if Emily didn’t get more strong lead offers than Cillian; that man is criminally underused in movies.  Yes, even with him being a Nolan staple!

[Bebpo]

Yeah, he's a great actor.

I found out the other day that his debut film is John Carney (Once, Begin Again, Sing Street)'s first solo directed movie called On the Edge. Kinda interested in checking it out since I like both of them and never seen it.

[Bebpo]

Fear Street 1994 - Was fine. Hope the other two are more interesting. Was kind of surprised with some of the gore/swearing since I never read the books but thought they were for early teens.

[GreatSageEqualOfHeaven]

I rewatched Split because it was on Netflix and enjoyed it a lot more this time around... I must have been in a bad mood or something when I first watched it. Maybe I'll rewatch Glass, and see if my opinions changed on that too.

Also gonna get a lot of use out of this in the shit thread