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Movie Time 2.0: TT mini reviews
- Thread starter Rascally Badger
- Start date
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- Tags
- movies
I watched Crimes of the Future. It's very much a return to form for Cronenberg and easily slots in amongst Videodrome and eXistenZ. This one felt like it had a bit more "world-building" than is typical for his movies. The way the story played out reminded me a bit of A Scanner Darkly, interestingly enough. If you read the description and know about his other movies, then I will say it's pretty much what you'd expect to see in terms of body horror.
Johnny Unusual
(He/Him)
Vicious Fun has SOME fun but not a lot of fun and I wish there was more fun. It's a horror comedy about a guy who accidentally stumbles onto a support group for serial killers. It's a movie that feels miscalculated to be a fun midnight movie but as a horror comedy it is neither scary nor terribly funny outside of one or two moments. It tries to be meta at times but they are all obvious and fall flat, the film is set in the 80s because "shrug" that seems like something horror fans like. I feel like I can go on about it's problems but at the end of the day it's biggest one is that it's just kinda a middle-of-the-road movie in terms of quality and while occasionally has some fun bits, the leads are not compelling and the male lead is downright unlikable. Granted, he's set up to have unlikable qualities but I think we are also supposed to think of him as a lovable loser but he's just a loser.
Hey, David Koechnir is in this for a bit, so that's nice.
Hey, David Koechnir is in this for a bit, so that's nice.
I don't know that 3000 Years of Longing quite works. The highs are very high, but it is kind of lumpy. The movie moves in fits and starts, feeling occasionally padded or too spare. I liked it; it is very interesting.
But is it vicious?
So the outerheaven movie last night was Yes, Madame! and It was... Huh.
Like it's your standard 80s hong kong hot girl cop movie, except sometimes no, it's a weird comedy about this trio of doofus crooks stealing the wrong thing and getting into trouble.
And then the ending is the most pitch black tonal shifts I've ever seen. A genuine "everything's fucked you're never coming back from this so may as well do it" moment.
Fuckin weird.
Like it's your standard 80s hong kong hot girl cop movie, except sometimes no, it's a weird comedy about this trio of doofus crooks stealing the wrong thing and getting into trouble.
And then the ending is the most pitch black tonal shifts I've ever seen. A genuine "everything's fucked you're never coming back from this so may as well do it" moment.
Fuckin weird.
You can see the outline of a pretty good movie in Samaritan. Samaritan is not that movie. There are some at least mildly interesting ideas here, with the villains outright idolizing the dead super-villain because he 'helped the little people,' while referring to the super-hero as just another cop, but then instead of interrogating anyone's position, especially after the twist near the end, it just has the bad uy become cartoonishly evil so Stallone can beat him up.
Johnny Unusual
(He/Him)
I feel like Jojo Rabbit is one of those films that got praise then some critical backlash after. I kind of get it, in that it is a movie that can be very broad and goofy and also very maudlin but for me, it actually completely works. I was worried this would be the first Taika movie that didn't work for me... well, half-first, Eagle Vs. Shark is a movie with big laughs but left me a bit cold as an overall thing. But anyway, I really did like this very silly movie and I get it to an extend in the same way that I can see similar problems with Harold and Maude, a movie I think is good but also has moments that risk feeling a little self-satisfied or on the nose. It actually really does remind me of 70s cinema despite more obvious visual comparisons to Wes Anderson and I think that does mean a weird tone mix but frankly, stem to stern it worked. Maybe my mind will change in a few years but for now, thumbs up, though it won't be revisited nearly as much as Hunt for the Wilderpeople.
It may honestly be my favourite movie of the year
Johnny Unusual
(He/Him)
A Quiet Place to Kill AKA Paranoia is an Italian giallo thriller that has very little blood and tits surprisingly. It's a genre that's associated with perv-murder but really it means pulpy in general and this one is. But don't worry, it is still lurid. After an accident, a race car driver meets her cheating and emotionally abusive ex-husband whom she tried to murder years before after surviving a fiery car crash. She also meets his new wife and it becomes clear he's still a shitty husband and develops a rapport and maybe something more with her. And soon they begin to conspire to kill the husband... but things go awry and as you might imagine, things aren't always as they so on and so forth. It's a fun if slight little thriller and one that is so so very Italian.
I've wanted to watch this for a while. It's been sort of a holy grail of HK Kung Fu movies for me. I could probably slum it with the old transfers, but I'm waiting for the 2K remaster to come out that's slated to drop in a few months. Cynthia Rothrock is this fascinating bit of HK cinema history.
Not only was it Cynthia Rothrock's cinema debut, but it was also the first time Michelle Yeoh was cast in a leading role. Historically significant for that if nothing else. So it's understandable that they might want to hedge their bets a bit with unproven talent.
Rothrock does a really good job physically with all of the stuff I've seen her in. She's an immensely talented martial artist. I don't know if it's the language barrier while filming, or that she's kinda a martial artist first and an actress in a distant second, but yeah the lack of personality there isn't all that surprising to me.
Well in the interest of NOT posting spoilers I have other shit to say about this weird fucking movie, namely that it felt like TWO movies and the one other person I noticed that fact with had opposing opinions on which movie we'd have liked to have seen more of.
I liked the movie about two bit crooks who stole the wrong thing and got in over their heads more.
But that's sort of a THING for me.
I liked the movie about two bit crooks who stole the wrong thing and got in over their heads more.
But that's sort of a THING for me.
I really enjoyed it, but it definitely had a very unusual flow and pacing. I kinda agree that I'm not sure it quite works, but I still think it was good, if that makes sense.
I did, but it's never a bad time to say it again! It's the best Predator movie since the original; honestly, I think it's better than the original if you're not looking at it through 80s nostalgia/placing it in its time period.
I gotta give the original credit for having a lot of the ideas that Prey uses.
Yer nuts!
"This song is about you? And you wrote it?"
"Yes"
"Derisive laughter"
Fave movie of last decade
From Beyond; the 1986 horror movie starring Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampston, and adapted from a story by that racist guy who was scared of fish, was a bit of a mixed bag. Front half was good; with Combs being the lone survivor of an experiment that decapitated his partner and left him driven mad, and Barbara Crampton and a cop trying to piece it together.
These parts work pretty well, not as well as Prince of Darkness, which was doing something similar, but the creature effects were amazing.
Then the back half of the movie changes gears to being about a just absurdly badly run insane asylum escape and it’s… not long enough to say it’s a slog but it’s definitely the weakest stretch of the film.
Also; lots more sexual assault than i want in a film (which is, y’know, none) but less than you might except from a horror movie from the 80s where all the monsters are piles of tentacles.
These parts work pretty well, not as well as Prince of Darkness, which was doing something similar, but the creature effects were amazing.
Then the back half of the movie changes gears to being about a just absurdly badly run insane asylum escape and it’s… not long enough to say it’s a slog but it’s definitely the weakest stretch of the film.
Also; lots more sexual assault than i want in a film (which is, y’know, none) but less than you might except from a horror movie from the 80s where all the monsters are piles of tentacles.
I really enjoy the Gordon / Combs / Crampton movies: Re-animator, From Beyond, Castle Freak and Evil Clergymen. Evil Clergymen was on Tubi at one point; don't know if it is still there. The video quality is very low but Evil Clergymen is an interesting short film if you like the other three films.
Johnny Unusual
(He/Him)
The trailer for The Empty Man makes it look like a stupid creepypasta thing but it's actually a really damn good cosmic horror movie.
So I watched the 1987 Horror Comedy, Blood Diner.
I went in with no expectations; certainly no lofty ones for a horror comedy from 1987.
So saying those expectations were *tremendously* exceeded isn't saying much, but BY GOD, what a film.
I... have no idea how to best summarize the tone and content of this film. It's like if Garth Marenghis Darkplace, Danger 5 and Wellington Paranormal came together into one film, and it predates all of them by decades. Every single decision this movie made, from casting, to plot, to dialogue to audio quality is deliberate and perfectly invokes exactly what kind of movie this is. It sounds like every single character is dubbed over, people say things like "Quiet, I'm thinking about our master plan", there's multiple scenes involving a sentient dummy which is never acknowledged, one of the main characters is a brain in a jar, two mismatched detectives are awkwardly flirting in a violent crime scene which the captain is describing poetically.
It's... perfect.
I went in with no expectations; certainly no lofty ones for a horror comedy from 1987.
So saying those expectations were *tremendously* exceeded isn't saying much, but BY GOD, what a film.
I... have no idea how to best summarize the tone and content of this film. It's like if Garth Marenghis Darkplace, Danger 5 and Wellington Paranormal came together into one film, and it predates all of them by decades. Every single decision this movie made, from casting, to plot, to dialogue to audio quality is deliberate and perfectly invokes exactly what kind of movie this is. It sounds like every single character is dubbed over, people say things like "Quiet, I'm thinking about our master plan", there's multiple scenes involving a sentient dummy which is never acknowledged, one of the main characters is a brain in a jar, two mismatched detectives are awkwardly flirting in a violent crime scene which the captain is describing poetically.
It's... perfect.