Films Recently Watched

[Nebraska]

loved this

Spoiler

cate blanchett and jennifer lawrence looked fire in this. also loved the insider joke of treating JL like shit. the black dude (head of NASA) was perfection. his character always threw me off because despite being the most serious- he seemed to be the most easily distracted based on how quickly he could change topic. and leo was on point- until he got media training and transformed into leo di caprio.

only thing i hated was the arianna grande concert and kid cudi romance thing (despite those being just after thoughts of sorts to show societies disconnect from the seriousness of the plot.

 

[Alcofribas]

the very idea of this film - Hollywood liberals doing social commentary - is just a huge pass from me. 

[Nebraska]

3 minutes ago, Alcofribas said:

the very idea of this film - Hollywood liberals doing social commentary - is just a huge pass from me. 

i agree. i actually didn't think i could have lasted 20 minutes- except i found myself enjoying the script. this film is almost a bigger budget version of this film (which i also love) with some added "modern american" humor and cynicism. it definitely knows it alienating partially because it realizes; some people will hate it purely based on who it's coming from i.e. hollywood/netflix and at the same time, it has the double whammy of being a film talking about earth conservation while making a commentary about how we do not take such issues seriously. 

 

[exitonly]

1 hour ago, Nebraska said:

i agree. i actually didn't think i could have lasted 20 minutes- except i found myself enjoying the script. this film is almost a bigger budget version of this film (which i also love) with some added "modern american" humor and cynicism. it definitely knows it alienating partially because it realizes; some people will hate it purely based on who it's coming from i.e. hollywood/netflix and at the same time, it has the double whammy of being a film talking about earth conservation while making a commentary about how we do not take such issues seriously. 

 

but it wasn’t funny

[Nebraska]

24 minutes ago, nikisoko said:

but it wasn’t funny

Spoiler

i really loved how easily everyone got distracted eg: JL's character constantly disturbed by the guy that charged them for the free snacks, or how, despite dr. mindy going on tv to talk about a giant comet hurtling towards earth to destroy all life- everyone seemed more concerned about dj chelo's (kid cudi's) relationship with arianna grande's character. i found little moments like that to have a lot of truth and speak a lot about modern culture.

not sure how i felt about some of the cast: eg jonah hill and tyler perry. perhaps this was to give the film more weight with a bigger "star" cast, but again, almost wish they kept it smaller, but due to the film's message and end- i guess it also doesn't matter.

 

[Rubin Farr]

Ghostbusters: Afterlife - Not much better than the female version. The first hour is a draaaag, nothing happens and it’s way too similar to Stranger Things. Paul Rudd disappears for long portions of the movie until you forget he’s even in it, the 60s rock music soundtrack was disorienting and didn’t fit at all. Really, if you are a fan of the 80s Ghostbusters, skip to the last 5 minutes and post credit scene, and you’re good.

Spoiler

Nerd rant: overusing the Ghostbuster soundtrack cues was an attempt to remind the viewer what movie franchise they were watching, which should not have been necessary. I liked the Egon ghost, it worked. They found a face/body double similar enough they could mask over it with Ramis' face, and he didn't have to speak. Seeing the 4 OGs lined up was successful as nostalgia, and made me smile. Gen-X wasn't the target market, but we needed some morsel of nostalgia, and the short scene of them finding closure really felt good. Plot hole: why wouldn't Ray believe Egon about a supernatural event, Ray was crazy, he owns a fucking occult book store, and surely not all supernatural happenings occur in Manhattan. Putting JK Simmons into a movie for 10 seconds so he can be ripped apart seems like a poor use of casting budget. WTF were those mini marshmallow men, anyway? No attempt was made to explain that, seemed like an opportunity to sell merch, and I guess Walmart sponsored this film.

Contagion - This seemed even creepier this year than last, because the whole anti-vax angle didn’t really materialize until 2021, Jude Law sounds hauntingly like Alex Jones, et al. Cliff Martinez from Red Hot Chili Peppers did an excellent electronic score.

[dcom]

Encanto was supposed to be the best new Disney feature-length since Frozen - but no, it isn't. It's not a complete disaster, but yet another Lin-Manuel Miranda vehicle, the songs are easily forgotten, the plot rather forced, simple harmless waste of time.

Ron's Gone Wrong, also on Disney+, was way more entertaining than Encanto - more personality, more fun, more laughs, somewhat off-kilter and less bland as most animation features are. Worth watching.

Don't Look Up was cringy in a good way, I actually moaned with frustration due to the over-the-top depiction of modern societal idiocy.

Ghostbusters: Afterlife, well, yeah, no. Goosebumps in disguise, riding on the coattails of 80s brand cinema nostalgia. Watch once with prejudice.

[Squee]

21 hours ago, Rubin Farr said:

Ghostbusters: Afterlife - Not much better than the female version. The first hour is a draaaag, nothing happens and it’s way too similar to Stranger Things. Paul Rudd disappears for long portions of the movie until you forget he’s even in it, the 60s rock music soundtrack was disorienting and didn’t fit at all. Really, if you are a fan of the 80s Ghostbusters, skip to the last 5 minutes and post credit scene, and you’re good.

  Reveal hidden contents

Nerd rant: overusing the Ghostbuster soundtrack cues was an attempt to remind the viewer what movie franchise they were watching, which should not have been necessary. I liked the Egon ghost, it worked. They found a face/body double similar enough they could mask over it with Ramis' face, and he didn't have to speak. Seeing the 4 OGs lined up was successful as nostalgia, and made me smile. Gen-X wasn't the target market, but we needed some morsel of nostalgia, and the short scene of them finding closure really felt good. Plot hole: why wouldn't Ray believe Egon about a supernatural event, Ray was crazy, he owns a fucking occult book store, and surely not all supernatural happenings occur in Manhattan. Putting JK Simmons into a movie for 10 seconds so he can be ripped apart seems like a poor use of casting budget. WTF were those mini marshmallow men, anyway? No attempt was made to explain that, seemed like an opportunity to sell merch, and I guess Walmart sponsored this film.

 

I feel quite the opposite.
I actually liked the first 40-50 minutes. Not much happened and I liked seeing Egon's secret basement and the stuff he had been working on. It was like a warm blanket of nostalgia. But then that blanket got suffocating. Once the movie gets going the whole thing fell apart.
 

Spoiler

Ivo Shandor was just a throwaway character in the first movie who happened to have built the building Dana lived in and now he made an entire city in the middle of nowhere and his body is resting underground? Hey, remember the Nestle Crunch bar? Remember the Twinkie? Remember the terror dogs? Remember the stacks of books in the library basement? Remember Gozer? Remember revelations 6:12? Remember the Staypuft Marshmellow Man?

The scene where Phoebe talks to Ray over the phone was sufficient because he summed up what had happened to all of them perfectly and the scene worked perfectly. They should have stopped there and we should have never seen the old Ghosbusters crew in action.

And that CGI Egon ghost? No. Egon moving the lamp in the basement was fine.

This movie was the complete opposite of The Matrix Resurrections. The Matrix was stomping around on its predecessors corpse while laughing, whereas this movie was one long nostalgia tribute.

[Rubin Farr]

 

 

[Brisbot]

On 12/22/2021 at 3:50 PM, Nebraska said:

terrible. and i mean- TERRIBLE

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wtf? this film is like a $50 remake of the first film with budget actors except for the 3 returning cast members. everything about this was terrible- from the TERRIBLE costumes, cheesy dialogue, sfx, lighting, stunts, fight choreography- what the hell was that terrible low frame rate crap they tried to pull with the bullet time conversations? and how many times did they have to repeat neo stopping bullets? wtf was this? oh and jada pinkett? really? she's the entire elder council for io? really? her? oh- and how bad was her acting? and some of the machines are pets? wow

 

After watching it twice. I realized that this movie is supposed to be an epilogue for Neo and Trinity. A lot of people were disappointed that it didn't set up the universe for bigger and better heights. But the whole movie is literally Neo saying he is done fighting and just wants to go retire with Trinity. But also work on freeing people who want or need to be free. However his time as the One is over.

I was thinking another war was coming. But old Niobi wasn't saying war was coming, she was saying that the noise in the matrix was just as bad as the noise of war. As in, yeah you are not in the matrix, but what you are walking into may be no better.

The reason I think this is because Lana made the movie grieving over her parents both. So she felt the need to take the ending of the third movie and give Neo and Trinity a happily ever after. Because that is something she can control. Visiting old characters and making them 'happy' and alive.

Edited January 8, 2022 by Brisbot

[Brisbot]

On 1/3/2022 at 1:28 PM, T3551ER said:

Matrix 4 - the penultimate moment in which I almost lose all credibility on WATMM (I liked it) followed by the final nail (I have to confess I liked Cowboy Bebop too - but that's for a diff thread). There is a high degree of jank present in this film that is befuddling -

FLOL. This is exactly how I felt about both of them. I think for me I think it depends on how much you like the characters over how good the plot was. For both. Cowboy Bebop live shined for me when they were just out doing random bounties. The Viscious thing needed to be stretched out for season 2 and of course done better. With it's cancellation it is a bummer for me as i felt in better hands the characters would have shined enough for people to think it were good.

[cichlisuite]

Mosfilm has a movie repository on yt https://www.youtube.com/c/Mosfilm_eng/videos

There's also an archive of older films https://www.youtube.com/c/MosfilmRuOfficial

I've watched a couple of ww2 movies recently

The White Tiger set on the eastern front, a ghost German tank (yes, a ghost tank) prowls the Russian wilderness and wreaks terror. It appears no one and nothing can stop it, but then one young tankist claims he understands how to fight it. All realism thrown out the window, the generals are now facing the fact that there is a ghost tank behind their lines. It's hilarious like that, and it's a typical Russian emotionally intense drama. For a larger-than-life surrealism drama, I rather enjoyed it by not taking it completely seriously, but at the same time, the actors are very good, and overall the movie is well made, and it takes the matter seriously. 7 bounced shells / 10

(But this is nothing compared to the movie T-34 which is a hilarious exaggerated bro melodrama on steroids with most of the movie made of bullet-time (emm, shell-time?) scenes. A Russian Fury/10)

Aggression: The Battle for Moscow , and Liberation (a movie about the Kursk battle in 43): curiosity drove me further down this Mosfilm rabbit hole, and I was surprised how epic and huge the productions are. Definitely very ambitious and some scenes are really fantastic live action stuff. What I loved most about these two movies is that they really tried to find actors that look like real persons: Model, Zhukov, Vasilevski, Vatutin (lol he's the SAME!). The dialogues are swinging between corny, time-capsule-propagandist melodrama and realistic-abridged.

Too bad they were trying to condense such big historical time frames into a movie length, as most of story-telling "juice" gets lost right there. You can't escape a Russian way of telling a story as well, which has its own typicality, as Hollywood does. Someone needs to make a good Russian/Hwood collaboration.

 

 

 

[T3551ER]

On 1/7/2022 at 7:23 PM, Brisbot said:

FLOL. This is exactly how I felt about both of them. I think for me I think it depends on how much you like the characters over how good the plot was. For both. Cowboy Bebop live shined for me when they were just out doing random bounties. The Viscious thing needed to be stretched out for season 2 and of course done better. With it's cancellation it is a bummer for me as i felt in better hands the characters would have shined enough for people to think it were good.

haha we can both go down in flames together   Agree on this, the Vicious plot should have been stretched but I understand why they did it (trying to close a loop w/ the character) - it's a show that wasn't perfect, but you got the feeling that if they were given a 2nd season it would have really found its legs. By the end I really connected with the characters as a collection - it almost needed a first season to just get things set up, shame we'll never know what comes next... 

EDIT: Oh, right, I watched Censor and everything everyone said here was spot on. I should have listened, because it was total dogshit. Seemed like it was going to go somewhere interesting and then just got less and less interesting over time - it's a shame because it seemed like it COULD be an great movie but.... yeah, just sank like a lead balloon... 

Edited January 10, 2022 by T3551ER

[cichlisuite]

On 1/8/2022 at 1:51 PM, cichlisuite said:

Someone needs to make a good Russian/Hwood collaboration.

On a second thought, not really.

[beerwolf]

28 Weeks Later. Seen the first one but not this. Thought it was well ‘executed’ but the story/script was kind of nonexistent and fairly horseshit. 6/10

Edited January 10, 2022 by beerwolf

[Silent Member]

I'm pretty sure you're talking about 28 weeks later.

[beerwolf]

I’m pretty sure you’re correct!

[Rubin Farr]

I’d have to agree, bad noodle.

[Alcofribas]

liquorice pizza - delightful 

[Himelstein]

On 12/26/2021 at 11:13 PM, yekker said:

I finally watched star wars episode 9. It was fun enough, I dunno. I watched it on cable tv with commercials it was three hours long. 

Yeah, it’s not the best, but just that alone isn’t reason to hate it. It was fun enough, that’s the best description 

New spiderman was pretty solid. But going in cold and not watching almost everything marvel has made in the last 20 years could probably put a damper on it. It’s a tough call, because as a stand-alone movie- idk how I would actually rate it- but these just aren’t stand-alone movies, you know?

[T3551ER]

On 1/10/2022 at 6:59 PM, Brisbot said:

I guess it's time we make like the 1980's The Incredible Hulk tv show and start hitchhiking  down random country roads for greener pastures.

 

Spoiler

 

EDIT: actually something in the spoiler tag now omg wtf bbq

Edited January 12, 2022 by T3551ER

[Rubin Farr]

Till Death - hilariously bad FX, shot almost entirely on a soundstage, all of the snowy backgrounds were CG, styrofoam ice, even their breath was fake. Mannequin acting.

[Silent Member]

Just watched Caveat. Tense. Great.

[thumbass]

Taken aback by No Country for Old Men. Just watched it for the first time.

[Brisbot]

11 hours ago, T3551ER said:

  Reveal hidden contents

 

EDIT: actually something in the spoiler tag now omg wtf bbq

i just deleted it. I assume people here havve already seen it or don't care for whatever reason but yeah