Movie Review Thread

[Kyle]

[mimekiller]

Ever watch The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada? Mexicans are presented as brown LOTR elves

[Phoebe]

Planning to short Comcast stock on Monday just on the strength of the CATS trailer.

[mimekiller]

I showed the chica a trailer for Cats as a ha ha look how weird this is and she LIT UP like the ding dang fourth of July and now I think I have to see this movie.

A complete and total act of self ownage.


I Trapped the Devil
A fairly mediocre film from IFC midnight but still fun with a brother and his wife making a surprise visit to his brother to find out he earnestly and truly believes he has the devil trapped in the basement. Its a LEAN AND MEAN FILM at a hair under 90 minutes and its worth watching but its not going to blow your ears back. *** out of *****

[Phoebe]

Aha, yes, don't show that trailer to anybody you know who might there by want to see it with you!

[mimekiller]

kind of a review

My new QT ranking:

1. Jackie Brown
2. Inglorious Basterds
3. Pulp Fiction
4. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
5. The Hateful Eight
6. Kill Bill Vol. 2
7. Kill Bill Vol. 1
8. Reservoir Dogs
9. Deathproof
10. Django Unchained

[El Jefe]

Got a chance to see Far from Home recently. It was a blast, continued with Holland's lovely performance as Peter Spidey, and also remembered that it helps a great deal when Spidey flicks are actually fun.

Into the Spider-Verse was amazing, as well, and deserves all of the movies, more movies, and to never stop making sequels. I rarely notice visuals, particularly in animation, but this shit was fucking art. Additionally, the casting head deserves all the awards for finding the absolutely perfect way to cast Cage: limited role, effectively playing himself, in a much bigger and more dynamic ensemble cast. He worked so well in this.

Between these two and Homecoming, they'll forcibly manage to make me a Spidey fan yet. I'm still waiting for the Petey Umbrella dance fight sequence though. Until then, I can't give any of these projects that fifth star.

[poorpete]

National Velvet - I didn't know when I started watching it that it was an infamously feminist movie, and it would be very by the numbers if I knew it was. But it was joyous surprise to see a film put up gender road blocks and see Velvet jump over all of them. They've been making this movie for 75 years now, but I had my doubts that they'd follow-through in a studio film from the 40s.

Liz Taylor is great, anytime on the horse is great, the climax is thrilling, the message is thankfully timeless. Otherwise it was fine.

[mimekiller]

Decided to fill in some movie knowledge gaps and downloaded a handful of films from 1930.

First up is

ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT
A cinema classic for a reason that holds up very well, a lot more gags and stunts then I was anticipating but I guess you need to show the brotherhood aspect of war as well as the horror. The end is a absolute GUT PUNCH of a ending...just a fantastic film. ***** out of *****

[Phoebe]

The Wife

Glenn Close is SO great, and the movie was really good, though nothing like expectations (which made it better). I do think, however, it would be better as a stage play than as a movie (was it ever one? Have not yet searched...).

[mimekiller]

Serenity(2019)
Threw this on last night after a long weekend and this movie is just ABSOLUTELY INSANE. I dont blame you for forgetting such a recent release, trailer made it seem like sunny noir, Matthew McConaughey is a fish captain chasing a giant tuna fish in some no name island in the carbian, he's approached by his ex wife and mother of his son with a offer, kill her abusive husband and make it look like an accident and he will get 10 million. Standard stuff eh? ITS NOT, ITS ABSOLUTELY NOT(invisible text)



Go in blind like I did if you want a treat! Read my invisible text to see a twist that you absolutely can't guess in a billion years.

[mimekiller]

the fanatic with john travolta: its like they remade the king of comedy with simple jack

[Phoebe]

How has it been so long since a review?
Lately I have seen a few random streaming movies. One was called the Game Changers, and it's about a former MMA fighter and trainer who discovers the myriad advantages of a vegan diet. Some of this literature was familiar to me from reading disputes between advocates of ketogenic and/or "paleo" vs. higher carb lower fat diets. The research presented is sometimes a bit one-sided and limited, in that context, but the athletes featured are highly entertaining and the overall point sticks and is very important, including for environmental reasons. I am now infatuated with some man named Patrik who can squat hundreds of kg and move his powerful eyebrows independently, and if you take off your glasses for all you know it's El Jefe:

[Next, spoilers for a movie you don't want to see...]
I watched a horrid movie that initially appealed because the heroine had a nice short haircut, and was tall and athletic and generally unlike most kitschy romance movie heroines. She was a writer spending Christmas in her family's mountain cabin in order to come to terms with grief over relatives who had passed away, and because she wanted to be all alone to work on her writing. I'm already making it sound way more coherent and reasonable than it was. A man shows up to lay claim to the property, or part of it, or some bullshit I never understood, because his family owned the adjacent land and something something the grandparents dated but no they're not cousins (or are they? the obvious question never really explored adequately, because believe me if you run across a guy whose grandpa allegedly had an affair with your grandma, you're going to be cautious before copulating with him, right?). Well, never fear, there was no copulating, just getting stuck together in a blizzard in the cabin, and learning to get along by playing Yahtzee together. At one point they went for a hike and decided to visit a beautiful forest area and frozen waterfall, but we got only a few shots of snowy pines. They were good shots, yes, but hardly the best of what was on offer. These movies have to generate some kind of temporary conflict to part our lovers, and this one was no different, but its mechanism was among the stupidest ever. The man discovered, upon regaining cell service, his big deal with company z was falling through, he had to get back, etc. Somehow the woman resented this deeply, don't ask me why. How do you expect to eat without someone in this couple making money... But then I realized: they had eaten only popcorn and bacon and eggs for like three days straight. The movie had less sex, and definitely WAY less sexual frisson, than the Jennifer Ehle version of Pride and Prejudice, and that's fairly pathetic.

[WillyGilligan]

If you haven't seen Knives Out, you should. A ton of strong performances of fairly decent characters that would be memorable if it wasn't for Daniel Craig chewing scenery like a traumatized terrier. That might sound bad, but I found it glorious. Some of the foreshadowing helped me predict things that would happen, but I still missed things.

Bonus: i did not like The Last Jedi for several reasons, mostly to do with hard left turns in the plot that looked like they came from, and were going, nowhere. i took that to mean that I don't like Riann Johnson (plus I forgot he did Looper). This movie changed my mind. The misdirection in this movie felt organic and plausible, which is what you need in a mystery.

[Mike]

Knives Out rocks.

[Eliahad]

[El Jefe]

[Phoebe]

Maybe I should list all the crap movies I've tried to watch recently on Netflix and had to turn off in horror after five min.?
Anyway, a GOOD standout was The Spectacular Now, with Shailene Woodley (main character 2). The main character 1 is a guy about to graduate high school who has no idea where he's headed and hasn't really come to terms with his family situation or understandable problems with the demands of typical adulting. The writing and portrayal of these characters is EXCELLENT, and the movie shows how different kinds of people can have problems with alcohol on different levels, for different reasons. The plot flounders a bit at the end, perhaps struggling to draw all the threads together in a manner consistent with what we've learned about the characters so far. But I found this problem easy to forgive - I started the movie expecting a fairly simplistic romance but ended up getting a much more insightful and interesting character study.

[Phoebe]

Rachel Getting Married (2008, Jonathan Demme)

I should have known better than to watch a movie about Anne Hathaway playing a recovering drug addict, but Debra Winger was in it and I was so shocked and intrigued by this that I ended up trying. I should have known after the first five minutes when an absolutely ridiculous scene involving completely unrealistic dialogue among the female characters was presented to us. Still, I was folding laundry so I kept watching. I ended up feeling like I had been slightly damaged mentally in the process, and totally repulsed aesthetically, but there's no way of getting my money back.

[Phoebe]