-
Welcome to Talking Time's third iteration! If you would like to register for an account, or have already registered but have not yet been confirmed, please read the following:
- The CAPTCHA key's answer is "Percy"
- Once you've completed the registration process please email us from the email you used for registration at percyreghelper@gmail.com and include the username you used for registration
Once you have completed these steps, Moderation Staff will be able to get your account approved.
Movie Time 2.0: TT mini reviews
- Thread starter Rascally Badger
- Start date
-
- Tags
- movies
Watched Transformers One a few nights ago and kinda can’t get over it. It was, without exaggeration or exception, the greatest piece of Transformers media ever made. It’s also just a legitimately good movie in and of itself.
If you’ve ever held fondness in your heart at any moment of your life for Transformers, you owe it to yourself to find a way to watch this movie. From what I can tell, it’s available on Paramount+, Prime Video, and various On Demand places for rental.
If you’ve ever held fondness in your heart at any moment of your life for Transformers, you owe it to yourself to find a way to watch this movie. From what I can tell, it’s available on Paramount+, Prime Video, and various On Demand places for rental.
Purple
(She/Her)
So I have been... trapped in my apartment for a month with basically no one to talk to and no paid services, and have accordingly been really plumbing the depths of Tubi seeking out undiscovered gems. So yeah, I have watched Some Stuff lately:
Novocaine- This is a neo-noir thriller from 2001, and apparently another dimension, because Steve Martin plays a dentist married to Laura Dern, running a business with Lynne Thigpen, who gets involved with some Stuff beginning with Helena Bonham Carter stealing various pain killers from him, prompting a police investigation led by Keith David (and also involving Kevin Bacon). So, you know, that's a cast list. Also it goes some kind of interesting places. The ending is... certainly something, and I do kinda wish I could go back to a world where I haven't seen Steve Martin in a sex scene but... yeah, this exists turns out!
The Phantom Empire- Lemme just be visual a moment here...
Plus wow, the contrast of Jeffrey Combs actually taking this seriously vs. everyone else understanding they're in a Fred Olen Ray movie. Magical.
The Primevals- I... kinda wish I'd seen this before The Phantom Empire, because this is ALSO a bit of a stop motion hollow earth anything goes thing (with a hell of a story behind its production, look it up) but the last one had Jeffrey Combs!
Harlem Nights- I guess this is more of a "good" movie than the rest of these so it kinda breaks the pattern but hey I'd never seen it and I was getting ready to see Sinners, so sure let me also watch this other movie with a mostly-black cast and a plot that involves screwing over the mafia in the 1930s. Quite enjoyable! Starts off like a standard mobster sort of thing but kinda shifts into a super upbeat heist movie sorta deal by the end, which is arguably a spoiler but like, it's starring Richard Prior and Eddie Murphy, of course that's where it's going.
Seed People- If you're gonna do a Bodysnatchers knockoff, why not fill it with wacky Full Moon productions puppets? That actually works pretty well. Unlike the ending which in all seriousness at this point I would love to see a horror movie be this obvious about it and then have it turn out the heroes actually DID get a nice clean win. That would legitimately be surprising and refreshing.
Sorceress- OK so this sucked, and did not by any stretch of the imagine contain a sorceress. Mostly just your standard bad sword and sorcery cheese but maybe slightly worse towards women than average, which is saying something. It's really noteworthy though that there's this whole bit where the main villain has to sacrifice his firstborn child to his evil god and gets tripped up by having twin daughters, and some random guy takes them off to be raised in hiding by his friend, telling him it's super important nobody knows he's got twin girls he's raising so he should disguise them as guys and uh...
Yes. No one will ever know. Also this disguise thing falls apart basically immediately, not because they're really terrible disguises, but because at no point do their adopted parents actually explain this whole life in hiding thing to them and they just kinda immediately publicly shower in front of some random dudes because nobody explained to them that they aren't actually two fine strapping lads who just happen to have breasts and such. Communication is key to any ruse, see.
Hideous!- Again, this is an extremely Full Moon movie, which probably SHOULD have been about these 4 deformed fetuses coming to life as slimy little puppets and getting up to some kinda mischief and maybe killing a few people, but mostly just gets entirely too distracted being about this epic lifelong feud between two wacky eccentric rich weirdos who are very competitive about their medical oddity collections and various other people getting caught up in that. It also spends more time than it probably should explaining how the woman introduced wearing just shoes shorts and a gorilla mask and then ditches the mask and puts on a vest is Just Like That and had a hard time finding a job that was welcoming to her personal aesthetic. For real there's maybe like 5 total minutes of weird little puppet in the thing.
Skinner- Here's a movie from the 90s about a dorky nerdy guy played by Ted Raimi just kinda trying to get by while secretly being stalked by some disfigured mystery woman. Also he sometimes removes people's skin and makes it into suits and puts those on and roleplays as them which you'd think would give him a dark villainous sort of feel... and I think that was probably the intent of someone behind this but, it just didn't happen. Comes off as just kind of a wacky quirk.
Scanners 2, Species 3- Sometimes you see some movie got a sequel or two you weren't aware of and you watch them to see if you are missing out on anything, and turns out you absolutely are not.
Circuitry Man- This also sucked but in one of those ways where you can tell someone really thought they were actually making a movie of some kind. Basically some girl and a Nice Robot are on the run from a guy who has various ports on his head in what I guess is some kinda cyberpunk setting.
Planet of the Vampire Women- I feel like this sort of schlock worked way better back when everything was on film because even if you had basically no budget you had to pay to have the cameras going and that lead to SOME level of trying to get something going. That said for a no budget movie from 2011 with a really dumb plot that's pretty much just there to excuse a whole lot of toplessness it at least has a lot of practical blood effects and cheesy puppets and honestly impressively terrible CGI in places. Also like the worst sword fight choreography I think I've ever seen at the end.
The Curious Female- OK so I THINK what this was was like, back in the 60s someone tried to make this sincere sorta movie about some college girls dealing with Stuff, including an interracial lesbian couple, and could not get this even halfway finished because holy crap that premise did not fly with the censorship standards of the time. So then he got a bit jaded and found a producer to pitch some dumb anthology thing to where like one of those Dating Computers sets up wacky matches that clearly don't work with some stupid little skits that was secretly serving as a framing device to go around what he'd managed to film of his art thing, and ironically the rest of the framing device is pretty damn homophobic. THAT attempt at a movie also didn't get finished though, so he sat on it for a while longer, and eventually those censorship policies keeping him from making his original movie fell away, and at this point, being intensely bitter about the whole thing, he pitched yet another thing to people where it's this dumb high concept sci-fi thing where in the future the world is ruled by a horrible evil computer and there's this underground resistance of mostly naked hedonists getting together for clandestine meetings to watch subversive old movies like this terrible wrapper movie going around this original idea, periodically cutting back to the film club to honestly just completely break the fourth wall and gripe about how producers and ratings boards suck and nobody appreciates his genius, and honestly those are the best bits of the whole mess. Anyway that still didn't get it to feature length so the film club also watches... I think just actual straight up pornography from the silent film era real quick first. And this final layer of movie turducken still didn't get an actual release so the version of this I saw on Tubi was like, some sort of rough cut someone found and uploaded that starts with 2 minutes of total dead air and weird catalog codes. This... wasn't good but trying to work out what the absolute hell I was even watching was an engaging puzzle.
Sinners- OK this wasn't a Tubi thing this was someone being worried about me and dragging me out of the apartment but yeah super good like everyone else says, definitely watch it.
Novocaine- This is a neo-noir thriller from 2001, and apparently another dimension, because Steve Martin plays a dentist married to Laura Dern, running a business with Lynne Thigpen, who gets involved with some Stuff beginning with Helena Bonham Carter stealing various pain killers from him, prompting a police investigation led by Keith David (and also involving Kevin Bacon). So, you know, that's a cast list. Also it goes some kind of interesting places. The ending is... certainly something, and I do kinda wish I could go back to a world where I haven't seen Steve Martin in a sex scene but... yeah, this exists turns out!
The Phantom Empire- Lemme just be visual a moment here...
Plus wow, the contrast of Jeffrey Combs actually taking this seriously vs. everyone else understanding they're in a Fred Olen Ray movie. Magical.
The Primevals- I... kinda wish I'd seen this before The Phantom Empire, because this is ALSO a bit of a stop motion hollow earth anything goes thing (with a hell of a story behind its production, look it up) but the last one had Jeffrey Combs!
Harlem Nights- I guess this is more of a "good" movie than the rest of these so it kinda breaks the pattern but hey I'd never seen it and I was getting ready to see Sinners, so sure let me also watch this other movie with a mostly-black cast and a plot that involves screwing over the mafia in the 1930s. Quite enjoyable! Starts off like a standard mobster sort of thing but kinda shifts into a super upbeat heist movie sorta deal by the end, which is arguably a spoiler but like, it's starring Richard Prior and Eddie Murphy, of course that's where it's going.
Seed People- If you're gonna do a Bodysnatchers knockoff, why not fill it with wacky Full Moon productions puppets? That actually works pretty well. Unlike the ending which in all seriousness at this point I would love to see a horror movie be this obvious about it and then have it turn out the heroes actually DID get a nice clean win. That would legitimately be surprising and refreshing.
Sorceress- OK so this sucked, and did not by any stretch of the imagine contain a sorceress. Mostly just your standard bad sword and sorcery cheese but maybe slightly worse towards women than average, which is saying something. It's really noteworthy though that there's this whole bit where the main villain has to sacrifice his firstborn child to his evil god and gets tripped up by having twin daughters, and some random guy takes them off to be raised in hiding by his friend, telling him it's super important nobody knows he's got twin girls he's raising so he should disguise them as guys and uh...
Yes. No one will ever know. Also this disguise thing falls apart basically immediately, not because they're really terrible disguises, but because at no point do their adopted parents actually explain this whole life in hiding thing to them and they just kinda immediately publicly shower in front of some random dudes because nobody explained to them that they aren't actually two fine strapping lads who just happen to have breasts and such. Communication is key to any ruse, see.
Hideous!- Again, this is an extremely Full Moon movie, which probably SHOULD have been about these 4 deformed fetuses coming to life as slimy little puppets and getting up to some kinda mischief and maybe killing a few people, but mostly just gets entirely too distracted being about this epic lifelong feud between two wacky eccentric rich weirdos who are very competitive about their medical oddity collections and various other people getting caught up in that. It also spends more time than it probably should explaining how the woman introduced wearing just shoes shorts and a gorilla mask and then ditches the mask and puts on a vest is Just Like That and had a hard time finding a job that was welcoming to her personal aesthetic. For real there's maybe like 5 total minutes of weird little puppet in the thing.
Skinner- Here's a movie from the 90s about a dorky nerdy guy played by Ted Raimi just kinda trying to get by while secretly being stalked by some disfigured mystery woman. Also he sometimes removes people's skin and makes it into suits and puts those on and roleplays as them which you'd think would give him a dark villainous sort of feel... and I think that was probably the intent of someone behind this but, it just didn't happen. Comes off as just kind of a wacky quirk.
Scanners 2, Species 3- Sometimes you see some movie got a sequel or two you weren't aware of and you watch them to see if you are missing out on anything, and turns out you absolutely are not.
Circuitry Man- This also sucked but in one of those ways where you can tell someone really thought they were actually making a movie of some kind. Basically some girl and a Nice Robot are on the run from a guy who has various ports on his head in what I guess is some kinda cyberpunk setting.
Planet of the Vampire Women- I feel like this sort of schlock worked way better back when everything was on film because even if you had basically no budget you had to pay to have the cameras going and that lead to SOME level of trying to get something going. That said for a no budget movie from 2011 with a really dumb plot that's pretty much just there to excuse a whole lot of toplessness it at least has a lot of practical blood effects and cheesy puppets and honestly impressively terrible CGI in places. Also like the worst sword fight choreography I think I've ever seen at the end.
The Curious Female- OK so I THINK what this was was like, back in the 60s someone tried to make this sincere sorta movie about some college girls dealing with Stuff, including an interracial lesbian couple, and could not get this even halfway finished because holy crap that premise did not fly with the censorship standards of the time. So then he got a bit jaded and found a producer to pitch some dumb anthology thing to where like one of those Dating Computers sets up wacky matches that clearly don't work with some stupid little skits that was secretly serving as a framing device to go around what he'd managed to film of his art thing, and ironically the rest of the framing device is pretty damn homophobic. THAT attempt at a movie also didn't get finished though, so he sat on it for a while longer, and eventually those censorship policies keeping him from making his original movie fell away, and at this point, being intensely bitter about the whole thing, he pitched yet another thing to people where it's this dumb high concept sci-fi thing where in the future the world is ruled by a horrible evil computer and there's this underground resistance of mostly naked hedonists getting together for clandestine meetings to watch subversive old movies like this terrible wrapper movie going around this original idea, periodically cutting back to the film club to honestly just completely break the fourth wall and gripe about how producers and ratings boards suck and nobody appreciates his genius, and honestly those are the best bits of the whole mess. Anyway that still didn't get it to feature length so the film club also watches... I think just actual straight up pornography from the silent film era real quick first. And this final layer of movie turducken still didn't get an actual release so the version of this I saw on Tubi was like, some sort of rough cut someone found and uploaded that starts with 2 minutes of total dead air and weird catalog codes. This... wasn't good but trying to work out what the absolute hell I was even watching was an engaging puzzle.
Sinners- OK this wasn't a Tubi thing this was someone being worried about me and dragging me out of the apartment but yeah super good like everyone else says, definitely watch it.
Sinners is not a traditionally Octo sort of movie (Vampire Irish Jig not withstanding) for the most part but damned if I didn’t drink in every moment of it
Johnny Unusual
(He/Him)
This is a great sports movie.
yeah, i think there's a lot of rich stuff there all over the place but more than anything my takeaway was how much it's a celebration of the fact that we all get to share our lives in this world, and not just with the people here right now. and then michael b jordan opens up a coffin to reveal a huge weapon, always one of my favorite parts of a vampire movie, and a few minutes later mows down a bunch of kkk guys and lights a cigarette before bleeding out. five stars
Purple
(She/Her)
Oh yeah, I almost forgot...
Chompy and the Girls- This actually ended up having kind of a John Dies at the End vibe I really wasn't expecting. Girl with a lot of problems decides to contact her dad who never knew about her for an awkward introduction. While they're talking, some vaguely Lewis Black looking guy in the background expands his mouth in a somewhat Large Marge-ish fashion and swallows some 9 year old girl whole. And then we've got a whole lot of fleeing this weird monster man, trying to work out what the hell his deal even is (following Ginger Snaps' logic of "my drug dealer seems like he knows a lot about supernatural weirdness") and then starts getting really weird when they apparently run into the same girl they saw get swallowed just kinda walking down the street at like 4 AM. And then, you know, it goes some interesting places.
Humanoids from the Deep- This is one of those ones I keep seeing and not watching so I did. It's sort of this weird missing link between a 1950s creature feature, in the dire dry "let's have this scientist explain a theory" sorta mode, and a tense slasher-inspired 80s creature feature, while also being an obvious Creature from the Black Lagoon knockoff from someone who JUST watched Jaws. That's all well and good until it pulls out this "the monsters want to breed with our women!" angle and could we just not, ever? So I would not recommend. BUT! There is this one out of nowhere scene where prior to this girl having a Rather Unfortunate Fate, she's in a tent on a beach getting ready to have sex with this guy...
So we have this totally out of nowhere gross ventriloquist sexual innuendo, which again, could we not ever, but here's the thing, when inevitably a fish monster comes in to murder the hell out of this guy, we keep cutting to reaction shots of his dummy with a horrified expression. Just... you know, because?
And there's a bunch of other stuff I watched in the last couple weeks that... frankly all blends together into an unmemorable mash of slop resembling things I shouted out.
Chompy and the Girls- This actually ended up having kind of a John Dies at the End vibe I really wasn't expecting. Girl with a lot of problems decides to contact her dad who never knew about her for an awkward introduction. While they're talking, some vaguely Lewis Black looking guy in the background expands his mouth in a somewhat Large Marge-ish fashion and swallows some 9 year old girl whole. And then we've got a whole lot of fleeing this weird monster man, trying to work out what the hell his deal even is (following Ginger Snaps' logic of "my drug dealer seems like he knows a lot about supernatural weirdness") and then starts getting really weird when they apparently run into the same girl they saw get swallowed just kinda walking down the street at like 4 AM. And then, you know, it goes some interesting places.
Humanoids from the Deep- This is one of those ones I keep seeing and not watching so I did. It's sort of this weird missing link between a 1950s creature feature, in the dire dry "let's have this scientist explain a theory" sorta mode, and a tense slasher-inspired 80s creature feature, while also being an obvious Creature from the Black Lagoon knockoff from someone who JUST watched Jaws. That's all well and good until it pulls out this "the monsters want to breed with our women!" angle and could we just not, ever? So I would not recommend. BUT! There is this one out of nowhere scene where prior to this girl having a Rather Unfortunate Fate, she's in a tent on a beach getting ready to have sex with this guy...
So we have this totally out of nowhere gross ventriloquist sexual innuendo, which again, could we not ever, but here's the thing, when inevitably a fish monster comes in to murder the hell out of this guy, we keep cutting to reaction shots of his dummy with a horrified expression. Just... you know, because?
And there's a bunch of other stuff I watched in the last couple weeks that... frankly all blends together into an unmemorable mash of slop resembling things I shouted out.
R.R. Bigman
Coolest Guy
I’m going to break my over five year sabbatical from movie theaters to see Sinners. Wish me luck! In the meantime…
I watched Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan. A fair bit less imaginative than the first movie’s central mystery of what the hell was happening, but having a central antagonist helps to move a plot. Was Khan in the original series? The movie treats him with some amount of malevolent awe, and we don’t seem to get the whole story of what happened fifteen years earlier.
I thought there was going to be a more direct examination of the potential dangers of manipulating life of the Genesis program by looking at Khan and his genetic supermen, but that didn’t really happen. What was Khan going to do with the Genesis program? Did he even know how it worked? He’s smart, but still from hundreds of years in the past.
I bet that ending hit a lot of people hard when the movie came out. How do you undo that? I suppose I’ll find out…
I watched Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan. A fair bit less imaginative than the first movie’s central mystery of what the hell was happening, but having a central antagonist helps to move a plot. Was Khan in the original series? The movie treats him with some amount of malevolent awe, and we don’t seem to get the whole story of what happened fifteen years earlier.
I thought there was going to be a more direct examination of the potential dangers of manipulating life of the Genesis program by looking at Khan and his genetic supermen, but that didn’t really happen. What was Khan going to do with the Genesis program? Did he even know how it worked? He’s smart, but still from hundreds of years in the past.
I bet that ending hit a lot of people hard when the movie came out. How do you undo that? I suppose I’ll find out…
R.R. Bigman
Coolest Guy
That is really cool! Must have been a great episode to make an entire film as a followup.
The episode was pretty solid, but not necessarily one of TOS's finest. What it did have, was a charismatic villain who posed a real threat to Kirk & Co, and wasn't just dispatched at the end so that you could have a possible follow up 15 yrs later. Not a lot of TOS episodes fit that bill, so Space Seed/Khan was kinda chosen by default.
In Space Seed, dude got rescued by the Enterprise, spent an evening reading technical manuals, and learned exactly how the entire ship worked enough to stage a successful hostile takeover. He would have learned how Genesis worked eventually. Guy is a strongman from the 20th Century, he would have used the Genesis device like we use a WMD -- security. Don't mess with me/give me what I want or else I use this.
Yeah he was a mutant psychic super Hitler, he’s… very low on the list of people you’d want to give a potentially planet killing bomb to.
R.R. Bigman
Coolest Guy
Sinners was okay. My enjoyment of the movie went down significantly once
I am ashamed to admit it took me about forty minutes into the movie to realize Micheal B. Jordan was playing both SmokeStack twins.
The vampire showed up. I kept hoping those cool Native American Vampire Slayers would come back, but I guess they went off to be in a different movie.
I am ashamed to admit it took me about forty minutes into the movie to realize Micheal B. Jordan was playing both SmokeStack twins.
Yeah for a while I was thinking “incredible they got two different guys who look like Micheal B Jordan”
Issun
(He/Him)
The whole thing about the vampires is that they're meant to be an allegory for white assimilation and appropriation of black American culture.
Purple
(She/Her)
That wouldn't be a reason not to bring the hunters back in, because they are clearly another group of people having to deal with this. It would mess with a lot of other things thematically though, and you'd need time properly introduce them and get some named characters and have them bounce off everyone else, and this is already a movie where (and this is not a complaint) we spend so much time pretending to be just a period drama and establishing the hell out of a very big and likable cast that we just barely have time to see 3 of them get taken out before having to just take it on faith that yeah something like 5 vampires managed to wipe out a crowd of something like 50 people in a rapid series of stealth take downs as they were getting into their cars/walking home all at once.
And of course that same late-movie economy of time is why I was so delighted that they did manage to squeeze in the scene ofoh right, I was so distracted fighting the allegory for white supremacy I forgot I still have to fight the literal white supremacy, better get my old guns from the war.
And of course that same late-movie economy of time is why I was so delighted that they did manage to squeeze in the scene ofoh right, I was so distracted fighting the allegory for white supremacy I forgot I still have to fight the literal white supremacy, better get my old guns from the war.
Purple
(She/Her)
So moving on from watching weird stuff plumbed from the depths of antiquity... well, after The Monster Club, an anthology of kinda stuffy but not bad shorts with a hell of a framing device... actually hell real quick.
So Vincent Price, being a vampire, runs up to what is later revealed to be his favorite horror author, drinks some blood, and then just flat out asks him out on a date at the titular Monster Club, and words cannot really do justice to the vibe but hey here's basically the whole intro:
I swear if you asked me to pitch a movie when I was 6 years old or so this is exactly what you'd get. The shorts are all... very dry, and somehow actually rooted in this wild Dr. Seussian monster chart from the end of that clip, leading off with the Shadmock bit even. Then a fairly straightforward vampire thing and one about a village full of ghouls, and you know, actually doing played-straight ghouls in the classic sense (that like everyone in the world forgot after Night of the Living Dead just kinda totally booted them out of cultural memory) can work REALLY WELL, and does here incidentally, probably the strongest short even. But of course there's also not a whole like you can really do with ghouls beyond revealing that you're doing ghouls. It's a shame.
But as I was saying yeah, taking a break from old obscure stuff I finally watched Furiosa. It is of course not as good of a movie as what everyone seems to agree is hands down one of the best movies ever made, but is Pretty OK, generally. The one big flaw with it unfortunately is... Furiosa. I thought I was joking saying it's a shame she's played by one of those uncanny valley CGI creatures but turns out oh the reason this actress playing the younger her looks so unlike an actual flesh and blood human is they were in fact trying a thing of partially compositing Charlize Theron over her and slowly cranking the Theronizer up higher as the movie went on. Considering I thought I was just saying this actress looks odd I guess they didn't do a terrible job doing that, but I did notice SOMETHING was up, and even without that added weirdness I really wish they'd just have the woman who did a good enough job playing this character previously to a point where we were all on board seeing a prequel about her. I swear I have the ability to ignore that the actress has gotten older and yet we're looking at he character being younger. It's fine, really. Past that...
So Vincent Price, being a vampire, runs up to what is later revealed to be his favorite horror author, drinks some blood, and then just flat out asks him out on a date at the titular Monster Club, and words cannot really do justice to the vibe but hey here's basically the whole intro:
I swear if you asked me to pitch a movie when I was 6 years old or so this is exactly what you'd get. The shorts are all... very dry, and somehow actually rooted in this wild Dr. Seussian monster chart from the end of that clip, leading off with the Shadmock bit even. Then a fairly straightforward vampire thing and one about a village full of ghouls, and you know, actually doing played-straight ghouls in the classic sense (that like everyone in the world forgot after Night of the Living Dead just kinda totally booted them out of cultural memory) can work REALLY WELL, and does here incidentally, probably the strongest short even. But of course there's also not a whole like you can really do with ghouls beyond revealing that you're doing ghouls. It's a shame.
But as I was saying yeah, taking a break from old obscure stuff I finally watched Furiosa. It is of course not as good of a movie as what everyone seems to agree is hands down one of the best movies ever made, but is Pretty OK, generally. The one big flaw with it unfortunately is... Furiosa. I thought I was joking saying it's a shame she's played by one of those uncanny valley CGI creatures but turns out oh the reason this actress playing the younger her looks so unlike an actual flesh and blood human is they were in fact trying a thing of partially compositing Charlize Theron over her and slowly cranking the Theronizer up higher as the movie went on. Considering I thought I was just saying this actress looks odd I guess they didn't do a terrible job doing that, but I did notice SOMETHING was up, and even without that added weirdness I really wish they'd just have the woman who did a good enough job playing this character previously to a point where we were all on board seeing a prequel about her. I swear I have the ability to ignore that the actress has gotten older and yet we're looking at he character being younger. It's fine, really. Past that...
I like how much it subverts all the obvious prequel stuff. Like you would figure we'd have a big whole deal about how she ended up this trusted goon of Immortan Joe and overcomes his being-toxic-masculinity-incarnate to earn his respect. Maybe there's some other warlord he's trying to topple and she's providing immeasurable help or something.
But then no. We do have this other warlord, and he thinks HE'S gonna be the one to topple Joe. And ha ha ha that's obviously not going to work, so what are we even doing here?
And she doesn't actually earn his respect either. He just kinda buys her as another healthy seeming girl to get pregnant later, she sneaks off and does the drag thing and works her way up a bit in secret... but not all the way up? Mostly just impressing one high profile underling, who works out she's a girl because she has long hair (which... is weird? Because future her shaves her head and she shaves her head at the start of this escape plan and there's really no reason to let it grow back out honestly) and it's not so much that when the big guy in charge finds out he appreciates her moxie it's just that there's a lot else going on and he can't really be bothered to make a scene over that.
And then there's the arm thing. We know in the future she's missing this arm, and hey, here's this Special Tattoo Star Chart to the place everyone wants her to take'em to. So clearly either at some point someone's going to realize how that's significant and cut it off to follow, or she's going to realize it's endangering people and cut it off herself. Just a big ol' Chekov's Gun sorta deal and then... no she actually just loses it in a nasty car combat situation like you'd probably figured from the original movie, had nothing to do with the tattoo. And I really appreciate the hell out of the subversiveness of that.
Also good: Dementus is just a fun villain. Smart enough to have clever plans sometimes but broadly just... kinda bad at being a post-apocalyptic warlord? Interesting character. Not as interesting as the Octoboss though, obviously. As is the point there and all.
Not so good: There's this subplot where they try and force in some heterosexuality and I have no idea what they were thinking with that at all. Basically everything established about Furiosa in Fury Road loudly screams that this is not a character who is romantically interested in men, nor does anyone not innately know that. These two have like, no chemistry at all. Jack's kind of a non-character to begin with who's just kinda there because someone has to notice she's competent and I guess have the job she eventually gets promoted to. It genuinely feels like it was just kinda inorganically wedged in there to try and lure in the straights or something.
But then no. We do have this other warlord, and he thinks HE'S gonna be the one to topple Joe. And ha ha ha that's obviously not going to work, so what are we even doing here?
And she doesn't actually earn his respect either. He just kinda buys her as another healthy seeming girl to get pregnant later, she sneaks off and does the drag thing and works her way up a bit in secret... but not all the way up? Mostly just impressing one high profile underling, who works out she's a girl because she has long hair (which... is weird? Because future her shaves her head and she shaves her head at the start of this escape plan and there's really no reason to let it grow back out honestly) and it's not so much that when the big guy in charge finds out he appreciates her moxie it's just that there's a lot else going on and he can't really be bothered to make a scene over that.
And then there's the arm thing. We know in the future she's missing this arm, and hey, here's this Special Tattoo Star Chart to the place everyone wants her to take'em to. So clearly either at some point someone's going to realize how that's significant and cut it off to follow, or she's going to realize it's endangering people and cut it off herself. Just a big ol' Chekov's Gun sorta deal and then... no she actually just loses it in a nasty car combat situation like you'd probably figured from the original movie, had nothing to do with the tattoo. And I really appreciate the hell out of the subversiveness of that.
Also good: Dementus is just a fun villain. Smart enough to have clever plans sometimes but broadly just... kinda bad at being a post-apocalyptic warlord? Interesting character. Not as interesting as the Octoboss though, obviously. As is the point there and all.
Not so good: There's this subplot where they try and force in some heterosexuality and I have no idea what they were thinking with that at all. Basically everything established about Furiosa in Fury Road loudly screams that this is not a character who is romantically interested in men, nor does anyone not innately know that. These two have like, no chemistry at all. Jack's kind of a non-character to begin with who's just kinda there because someone has to notice she's competent and I guess have the job she eventually gets promoted to. It genuinely feels like it was just kinda inorganically wedged in there to try and lure in the straights or something.
They were mapping Anya Taylor-Joy's face onto the child actor's, not Charlize Theron's.
It was a weekend of SPOOKYFILMs of wildly varying levels of prestige and enjoyment.
Nosferatu was a bit of a mixed bag; full of all the kinds of stuff love in the genre, and in other adaptations of the source material; most notably everyone overacting like they found an extra tub of Acting in the pantry and it was about to go bad. But *man* did it feel long but I really can’t see a heck of a lot they could have trimmed out.
Also it turns out that a really cool and creepy shot in a film from 1924 doesn’t have the same impact 80 years later.
Werewolves was a gloriously stupid movie with a simple premise (“What if the Purge had Rowdy Dogmen?”), but it never goes as stupid as I wanted it to.
How the hell do you make a movie about The Purge Except Werewolves and not put any dog puns in there?!?
Just say “Play dead!” When shooting a werewolf, Frank Grillo, geez.
Succubus was a movie I was assuming would have been Straight to Tubi calibre Fun Tradh, but it was in fact *surprisingly good*. Starts off being a kind of low budget erotic thriller, akin to a Fatal Attraction, but with a supernatural twist (you may accurately predict that twist based on the title). Then about midway through it becomes Hellraiser instead and you can tell that the budget went to a lot more than just hiring Ron Perlman for a couple of scenes. Lots of really well shot practical effects and costume effects.
Ron plays a guy named “Orion Zephyr”, so I think that was the main reason they got him.
Nosferatu was a bit of a mixed bag; full of all the kinds of stuff love in the genre, and in other adaptations of the source material; most notably everyone overacting like they found an extra tub of Acting in the pantry and it was about to go bad. But *man* did it feel long but I really can’t see a heck of a lot they could have trimmed out.
Also it turns out that a really cool and creepy shot in a film from 1924 doesn’t have the same impact 80 years later.
Werewolves was a gloriously stupid movie with a simple premise (“What if the Purge had Rowdy Dogmen?”), but it never goes as stupid as I wanted it to.
How the hell do you make a movie about The Purge Except Werewolves and not put any dog puns in there?!?
Just say “Play dead!” When shooting a werewolf, Frank Grillo, geez.
Succubus was a movie I was assuming would have been Straight to Tubi calibre Fun Tradh, but it was in fact *surprisingly good*. Starts off being a kind of low budget erotic thriller, akin to a Fatal Attraction, but with a supernatural twist (you may accurately predict that twist based on the title). Then about midway through it becomes Hellraiser instead and you can tell that the budget went to a lot more than just hiring Ron Perlman for a couple of scenes. Lots of really well shot practical effects and costume effects.
Ron plays a guy named “Orion Zephyr”, so I think that was the main reason they got him.