Saturday, August 1, 2015

Weekend Open Thread

Have you seen anything good lately?


52 comments:

  1. I (finally) saw It Follows. In training for SMM.
    Surprised. Bit more Carpenter, bit less Cronenberg.

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  2. I was on a bit of modern western kick. I watched the new Michael Fassbender movie "Slow West". Despite some heavy handed imagery at the end, it was very good. It painted a very bleak portrait of the west, and felt more post-apocalyptic then western at times. This may have something to do with the cinematography as it was filmed in New Zealand, and has an other worldly quality to it. Next I watched "The Assassination of Jesse James by The Coward Robert Ford". It may be my favorite Brad Pitt Performance to date. The Train Robbery is definitely the stand out scene ( Along with the actual Assassinations scene) so it lulls at points but overall it is an interesting film. Casey Affleck did a good job portraying a character which is inherently unlikable and made him somewhat sympathetic. The later film I believe would be an interesting movie to do a podcast on. It got a couple oscar nods the year it came out, and has its fans- but you really don't hear about it to often.

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    1. Definitely liked Slow West. I think it would have been even better and benefitted from being a tad longer. Would make for a good podcast.

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  3. Ive now seen WHAS and im cut from Marble!

    Last night I re watched Zodiac which I really enjoy, also this week Dawn of the Dead remake which is probably my favourite Zack Snyder film, and FX Murder By illusion which I love, and Reservoir Dogs and Creepshow too

    And for fun I watched Dirty Sanchez, this is my recommendation, these guys are the British form of Jackass, so anyone who enjoys a bit of Jackassy fun please watch this but be prepared for it, these guys are serious idiots, it makes Jackass feel a bit soft, its like Jackass but withNo holds Barred

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    1. And once you learn what a "Dirty Sanchez" actually is you can't unlearn it, it's kinda wrong

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    2. I thought that was a well known term? Like since the 90s (unfortunately)?

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    3. It could be Jon, I just did not know it myself, they did it with drumsticks and the loser got a Dirty Sanchez, ide never seen it before

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  4. Good:

    "Comet" 2nd viewing. Got my DVD in the mail this week and needed to see this again. One of, if not, my favorite movie of it's genre. It's smart, well done, and doesn't pull any punches. I generally don't like Justin Long but he KILLS it in this. Same with Emmy Rossum, they are both fantastic. I think everyone needs to see this movie.

    "Réalité" - the latest release from Quentin Dupieux. If you stick with it it's pretty interesting. I liked it a lot.

    "The Midnight Swim" - Saw this a couple weeks ago and it hasn't left my head. It's a beautiful film with completely believable performances and an overall sense that something is off throughout. Ambitious directorial debut. Could be the best found footage movie ever as I forgot it was found footage very quickly into the film.

    The bad: (I know you didn't ask but here goes)

    "Dark Places" = True Detective 3. This film will be on Lifetime before you know it. It's bad. The story is uninteresting and I expected much more coming from the writer of Gone Girl, which I found compelling. (the movie, not the book, cause you know my motto - pshhhh....books.)

    "Unfriended" - A Post Apocalyptic film where computers have come for revenge on the awful teenagers they have created. One of the worst movies I've ever seen, but if it's any indication of what is happening now, we are all screwed.


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    1. I really dug Unfriended. I liked that it was going for something a bit different, and it was fully entertaining the whole way. I can't imagine going back to it, given the atheistic, but it was fun for 90 minutes.

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    2. Unfriended is polarising, any more opinions on this one?

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    3. I really liked Unfriended. I like how it tried to do something new with the “Paranormal Activity”-style aesthetic. I found that the amorality of the teenagers quite realistic and relevant, and this made it even more unsettling for me. I didn’t really get the post-apocalyptic computer revenge thing that Chaybee was getting from the movie, but maybe I wasn’t paying attention to that. Overall, the movie worked for me more than it didn't.

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    4. Count me in too as an Unfriended fan :-)

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    5. I liked a bunch about Unfriended. Generally bad teen actors in horror movies don't bother me too much, but since the movie consists almost entirely of close-ups the badness of a couple of the main actors was more noticeable to me than usual. With better performers I could see this being an Honorable Mention on my end of the year list. As is, it will wind up closer to the middle. But that's pretty good considering I went in expecting it to be awful.

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    6. The Post Apocalyptic comment was purely sarcasm. It's a movie about people typing for 90 minutes. If that's your idea of entertainment then it's the best movie ever. People are forgetting that Nacho Vigalondo tried this same concept with "Open Windows" before "Unfriended" and I didn't think that it worked either. "Unfriended" has way underdeveloped characters who you barely know so you don't care about them at all. There was absolutely no suspense for me in this movie. Maybe I just can't get past the aesthetic, but I honestly didn't see an actual "movie" in this.

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    7. I liked Unfriended. It was a lot better than it should have been. I don't know if it was scary but it was effective. The Den is a similar movie that's actually pretty frightening. I'm wondering if anyone else saw that and how it effected them...

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    8. I saw "The Den" a while ago and honestly I can't remember a thing about it, therefore it had zero effect on me.

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    9. I haven't seen Unfriended yet but I did see The Den and was very pleasantly surprised. It helps that my expectations were waaaaaaay low, but it was scary and reasonably well-made.

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  5. Has everyone seen the trailer for the Michael Bay Benghazi movie yet? Woof. I spend the first 2 minutes wondering "why does this look so silly?" (Aside from it being an action movie starring Jim from The Office, and Gale from Breaking Bad.) Then flashed "From director Michael Bay" and I audibly laughed in the theater. Is there anyone less appropriate to direct a movie about something so serious? I guess maybe Dennis Dugan, although an Adam Sandler Benghazi movie may actually be a great idea.

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    1. We know Michael Bay's track record with historic military action/drama (cough Pearl Harbor cough). If this is anything like that then we can expect plenty of fetishizing of the military and a blatant disregard for historic accuracy. I'm just sad that John Krasinski got mixed up in it.

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    2. Just watched it! "Welcome to Club Med" HAHA! Does anyone really say that anymore?!

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    3. I really like Krasinski too, but nearly all of his movie roles have been misfires with the exception of Away We Go. Something about him just doesn't feel cinematic I think. Perhaps he just played Jim Halpert so well, it's hard to see him as anything else. Either way, I do think it's a mistake to make him a leading man, he should be a strong supporting character, lighting sinks on fire and such.

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    4. I think I just want to like him because he seems like a nice guy who had some charisma in the Office, but yeah, he's probably not a good enough actor to pull off a career as a leading man. I just wonder if it's the projects he's chosen that are bad or if he is what makes them less interesting.

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  6. Wet Hot American Summer First Day Of Camp.

    I told myself that I wasn't going to binge this show because its only six episodes and I wanted it to last. Unfortunately I didn't last a day. The show is a lot of fun. It is funny, entertaining, and a worthy sequel (or prequel) in my opinion. Some of the jokes go nowhere with me, but after listening to the podcast on WHAS I realize that its just the style of the movie to have comedy of all types. They did seem to focus the comedy a little more in this, so there were less times that I felt like I was sitting in on an inside joke. I did feel a little overloaded by guest stars at several points. There are a lot of guest stars. Some of them work really really well. Some of them just feel like they are there for the name in the credits.

    Overall its a good show and it kept me entertained for a few hours. I don't know if the show format gives it the rewatchability of the movie, but I'm sure ill revisit it again.

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  7. Roar: The Movie (1981). Absolute insanity captured on film. The story here is inconsequential, it's basically 90 minutes of people wrestling, being pawed/clawed, running/hiding from a pack of lions and tigers. The tagline is pretty great too: "No animals were harmed in the making of this movie. 70 members of the cast and crew were." Unforgettable and highly recommended.

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  8. I've been on an obsessive horror kick lately. It's crazy. I've been consuming all the horror I can, I've seen a bunch of documentaries on the subject, and I'm reading this fascinating book called 'Shock Value' about the transformation of the genre in the late 60's-70's. Highly recommended! But enough on books. A highlight lately has been 'The Howling', which I'd never seen before, but I just bought the scream factory blu ray of. Such a fantastic film. It's great in a way that I don't think I got near as much out of it as there is to get. So I look forward to revisiting it. And I just adore werewolf transformation scenes.
    I also rewatched It Follows. I saw it in the theaters, and it didn't really hit me the way I hoped it would. No change on the second viewing. I appreciate so much about how it was made, but it really leaves me cold. Oh well.
    I'm just dying for October! Here's to hoping I don't burn myself out.

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  9. I finally saw Trainwreck. I liked it, didn't love it. Amy Schumer is probably the best thing about it. I really liked all the characters.They all seemed to be realistic people (excluding perhaps Tilda Swinton) instead of broad cartoon characters as it is with most modern romantic comedies. There's a scene toward the beginning where Bill Hader's character is on a date with Amy and he does the check sign to the waiter, which becomes a running joke, and I couldn't help but think of They Came Together, where something very similar happens. I laughed very loudly. I'm curious whether or not that was a direct reference.

    I wish there would have been more scenes with Amy's family (Brie Larson, Mike Birbiglia, Colin Quinn) because I thought they provided some genuine drama and heart. I appreciate some of the stuff it had to say about Hollywood's portrayal of women in comedies but in the end it felt too much like a formulaic romantic comedy. It's definitely one of the better one's of the last few years but it never really steps outside of the genre. I think my expectations were just too high. I can see myself turning it on when it comes on cable though.

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  10. I'm also excited for End of the Tour. It comes out here in Austin on the 14th. I'm a big David Foster Wallace fan and I can watch Jesse Eisenberg in anything. I don't get all the hate for Jesse Eisenberg.

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    1. I got to see it early. It's a really good movie.

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  11. I watched Battle Royale, sometimes known as Japanese "The Hunger Games." My friend actually has a Japanese exchange student over at the moment so we watched it so he would understand and all. It was a pretty visceral movie, I think there were sequences that disturbed me, and it's this weird idea of kids killing people that really gets me. I was kind of trying to watch it through the Japanese exchange students eyes, because I feel like the idea of this very angry generational gap, and the students relationships in this society were much more pertinent for him, and more like a window into another culture for us. Overall though, apart from the ultra violence this movie is famous for, and these weird melodramatic scenes which I kind of like in how they just show different sensibilities in Japanese audiences, this film also treats all its characters with a sense of respect and lets them evolve and deal with this terrible, over the top situation in their own ways, however hard it is for the film maker to show it.

    I also saw Crank (which is insane fun, but kind of exhausting, and just runs out of the awesome action comedy ideas that drive it in the last twenty minutes), and It Follows (which I am still digesting. I really loved it though!)

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    1. Battle Royale is great. I like how unlike The Hunger Games which plays the whole conceit as "blockbuster" fare, BR treats it like a tragedy (albiet a melodramatic one). That being said, though I'm still not sure how to take those extra scenes from the extended cut. Especially that riverbank scene. *shrugs*

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    2. Oh and the Battle Royale podcast with Mark "Ignorance Corner" Ahn is one of my favourites.

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    3. Yeah, I don't think the actual horror of it ever really hits home in The Hunger Games (although I do like those movies quite a bit, but for different reasons). I think the version on Netflix, which I saw, is the original cut. I guess I'll keep away from the extended cut then?

      And I didn't even think to check for a podcast! Awesome, well, I'm just gonna go do some vacuuming for an hour or so...

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  12. Ide like to give a shout out to the best show ive seen for ages. Black Mirror. This show is epic

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    1. Did you watch the Christmas Special too? It's just as good as the rest.

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    2. Yeah I love it. Its really dark and clever, Technology gone bad, its my best new thing this year until Ash Vs Evil Dead comes out! I've not seen the Christmas special yet,

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  13. I rewatched Hitchcok's Frenzy for the first time since I was a teenager. It's a mess, but kind of a glorious one. It's sleazy and mean and campy and ridiculous and I really really liked it. Makes me wish he had made more movies in the '70s.

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  14. Just finished watching "Dude Bro Massacre III" based on Patrick's recommendation. I liked it! I'm a really hard sell with Horror Comedies and it's WAY too jokey for my taste, I mean it's non-stop jokey, but the way it's done is fantastic and some of the jokes land big time - especially the end. The names of some of the characters are great and everyone in it seems super committed. It's definitely best viewed with a bunch of "Dude Bro's" as it's a crowd pleaser kind of film. This would have been a lot of fun in a theater with a bunch of people.

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  15. Continuing my slasher marathon, this week I saw the last three Elm Streets, Halloween 5 and Jason Goes to Hell. Can't really say any of them was really good but I immensely enjoyed Jason Goes to Hell for its craziness and total disregard for anything done in the franchise before.

    21 movies down, nine to go.

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    1. I've just started going through the Nightmare sequels and just watched 2. Boy is the subtext obvious, but I think it might just be saying something interesting about repressed homosexuality and becoming something while fighting it. I might be giving it too much credit. Its not good, and its really hurt by the lead actor, but I think it has its merits. Not the worst thing ever!

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  17. M:I Rogue Nation was great. Putting the "spy" back into the series of spy/action thriller films. The quotes saying it has elements akin to the De Palma first movie are true. Some great sequences, surprises, a more intricate plot and great cinematography make it a perfect film where everything works. Shadows, silence, and secrets are how I like my M:I movies, and this is exactly that.

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  18. Tonight I'm watching They Live, we all know why, paying my respect

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  19. I recently watched Magnificent Seven wnd High & Low for the first time! They have been a movie shames of mine for not having seen them yet and they are truly fantastic films. Yul is the man. Did Kurosawa ever make a bad film?!

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    1. Kurosawa made few bad movies (mostly when he was younger and a hired hand, or when he was too old and just wouldn't stop), but a few times his material was more than what his considerable skills could handle. For "The Idiot" it was the one-two punch of (a) the studio cutting a sizable portion of the movie and (b) what's left feeling oddly mismatched for the tone of a Dostoyevsky. For "Dodes'ka-den" he was just too out of it and mentally weakened to be an impartial arbiter of his work. And so on and so forth.

      But shoot, out of 33 movies I'd say he did maybe 5 or 6 outright bad. When the masterpieces and just OK movies outnumber your bad ones by a wide margin you're a cinema God, and Kurosawa was the man. :-)

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  20. As usual I'm way behind updating my blog about the movies I've seen (click my name to go to my Google+ page), but a few that I haven't written about that I've seen recently that really impressed me:

    --Leap of Faith (1992) on Netflix Instant (expired Aug. 1): what an interesting movie, particularly the way it ends. It's Steve Martin's "Truman Show," a dramatic role that employs his comedic/stand-up skills to make a revival preacher act seem believable. And what a supporting cast: Liam Neeson (butterfly puncher? ;-) ), Debra Winger, Meat Loaf and, four years before Dusty in "Twister," Philip Seymour Hoffman doing almost the exact same shtick.

    --Mr. Holmes (2015) in theaters: "Gods and Monsters" star Ian McKellen and director Bill Condon reunite after 16 years to do the best movie either one of them have done since their previous collaboration. Moving but not mawkish, intriguing but not enough to overwhelm, and polished without feeling like a stuck-up PBS period piece, "Mr. Holmes" is like the ultimate fan film to the lore and myth of Sherlock Holmes that isn't afraid to poke fun at itself while also being in awe of its subject matter. Best summer movie I've seen this year by far.

    --The Kiss Before the Mirror (1933) in 35mm: speaking of Whale, this little-seen gem has the director's trademark black humor and artistic touches applied to a procedural set in Vienna. A man kills his much-younger wife in a jealous rage in her lover's home, but then his friend/defense lawyer starts suspecting his own trophy wife of being unfaithful to him (fueled by jealousy, insecurity and his client/friend's details of his own crime). Up until the very end the movie feels like Whale's thumbing it's nose the the just-implemented Hays Code, but then it comfortably keels over into Sturges' "Unfaithfully Yours" territory. Great little flick that time has apparently forgotten.

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  21. Everything movie-wise has already been discussed on the site, but was wondering if anybody is watching Mr. Robot on the USA network? I'm totally in, and it's mitigating how disappointed I am in True Detective this season. Anyway, anyone looking for movie feature type production in a cyber-crime story should check it out.

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    1. Mr. Robot is from the same guy who did "Comet" which I mentioned earlier that everyone needs to see. Check it out, Mark. I have seen one episode of Mr. Robot and didn't like it but I too am disappointed in TD2.

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  22. This summer I've undertaken the task of watching all of Hitchcock's movies in chronological order, and this weekend I finally made it to his entrance into the Talkie Era with "Blackmail", which I enjoy monumentally. His silent efforts show a surprising amount of talent and confidence from a blossoming director, but it was only with Blackmail that I felt the pieces all finally came together. The plot is the usual mix of stretched out plausibility and minor plot holes, but I enjoyed the inventiveness that Hitchcock used in utilizing sound to tell the story when most filmmaker's were having a hard enough time just to get voices on the screen. It was a huge winner for me and I can't wait to keep charging on towards the established classics, and hope to find some new favorites in his early British years.

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    1. Good luck soldier, you're mission is righteous. ;-)

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