Saturday, February 18, 2017

Weekend Open Thread

High five.

Happy week, everyone! It's been a comedown since F This Movie Fest, but we're getting through it with constant anger, fear and unease. On the plus side, movies!

41 comments:

  1. Wait, so we're not have an F This Movie Fest double feature this weekend? How am I supposed to get rid of the shakes? I guess watching XX on VOD will have to suffice. Thanks again for the fest and all the great articles this week.

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  2. It was a tough few days being unplugged from the movie-twitter matrix. Today I watched Princess Kaguya with my daughter as she's performing that story for her school play next week. It's like a more mature Kubo. Beautiful minimalist art work. I cried a little at the end, thinking about how my daughters will grow up, put on the robes of forgetfulness and leave me. My daughter cried because I cried so then I cried a little more. Having kids is a trip.

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  3. Now that I'm unemployed, again, I binged on a ton of movies. (Also, for the kids, Physics will be the most fun...ever. But good luck after.)

    Showgirls: I listened to the podcast. Watched the movie. Listened to the podcast again. Boobies! This movie is great. Not bored for a single minute.

    Arrival: Not at all what I was expecting. I thought it was about aliens, but it was about us. Sci-fi classic.

    So, as a good proud Canadian I watched a couple more Denis Villeneuve movies.

    Sicario: Benicio Del Toro is amazing in this (3rd time watching)

    Enemy: Loved it, but still not sure what happened, what?

    Prisoners: Very very good. I was in tears several times watching this.

    K-19: The Widowmaker: I've watched this many times. Underrated submarine movie. Probably the only sub movie without "depth charges".

    Storks: meh...the kids wanted to see it.

    Trolls: this was quite funny! We had a great time watching this.

    Pacific Rim: I really like the idea, but the movie isn't terribly good? Shit, it's a movie about giant robots battling monsters, how the fuck do you make it boring. fuck me

    Body of Lies:

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    1. I so wish Pacific Rim was better than it is and I liked it more. Oh well, here's hoping for good things with the sequel!

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    2. Denis Villeneuve is probably my favorite director right now. Looking forward to the new Blade Runner.

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  4. I thought "XX" was pretty fantastic. There wasn't anything particularly mind blowing about it (well, of course except for Lynskey) but I enjoyed every segment and it was really well done. All four have a totally different theme and vibe to them and are really well balanced throughout the films short, hour twenty min runtime.

    "Shut-In" is another bland, run of the mill studio film where Naomi Watts and Oliver Platt are getting paid to do nothing. The last act is pretty much a complete rip off of the Shining's last act which was so blatant in execution I believe they felt it was an homage to the film. It's a pretty awful film.

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    1. I didn't love "XX" but I liked enough about it and what it was trying to do that I don't want to focus too much on the negative. I do think it's worth watching and I thought that the wraparound segments were especially cool.

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    2. Right on. Completely understand. For some reason I really liked it a lot.

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    3. Just found out XX is getting an Australian release, which is exciting because we never get this kind of stuff!!

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    4. Is that at Monster Fest? I saw there was an offshoot of that in Sydney with a Suspira 4K screening and like 'Get Out' and stuff playing. Arghhh it looks so cool but it's during school, in my half yearlies ahaha Next year!

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    5. Yeah Monster Fest :) should be good!!

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  5. Patrick, was curious if you ever went back and watched the extended cut of Phenomena to compare against the shorter "Creepers" version. I recently went through that exercise and it was pretty interesting.

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    1. I haven't yet. I really need to do them back to back. Which do you prefer?

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    2. I think Creepers is superior. The long cut makes a little more sense and explains why things are happening a little more. I don't want that in my surreal Italian horror experiences though. Please post your thoughts whenever you get around to watching them, I'd love to hear what you think!

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  6. Watched since the Fest:

    John Wick: Chapter 2 - It was exactly what it was supposed to be. Great fun.

    Batman: The Killing Joke - The first 30 minutes was just bad and the last 45 was fine, but lost something in translation. Hamill is still the best Joker ever, though.

    The Purge - It's okay, but mostly it just got me even more curious about the sequels. Planning on watching them this weekend.

    Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders - A fun animated romp in the style of the 60's show, but boy do the returning cast sound old (especially Julie Newmar). Like, to a distracting degree.

    Batman & Robin - Watched it with the Joel Schumacher commentary (did someone on this site mention that it's worth listening to?). He walks the tightrope between blaming the studio and taking responsibility pretty well, but also plays the martyr a bit, essentially saying "sorry I tried to make a fun movie". Was pretty entertaining, definitely more so than the movie is without the commentary.

    I also finished my project watching ST:TOS on Blu-ray this week (my second time through TOS, the first was about a decade ago). Boy, was the third season hard to get through at times, but the highlights are worth it. Listening to the Mission Log podcast along with the show helped and also made me appreciate the show a lot more at times.

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    1. Sounds like you need to cap off the week with The Lego Batman Movie and you'll have had a great week filled with vigilante justice!

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    2. I saw it last weekend, that's what started me on my Bat bender.

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    3. A Cure for Wellness - An underwhelming and predictable "mystery" with a couple of surprisingly effective body horror scenes.

      Purge: Anarchy & Purge: Election Year - Nicely continuing the first movie's narrative, but I can't help feeling there was potential for so much more - especially in Election Year.

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    4. I watched A Cure for Wellness without any prior knowledge of the film. Enjoyed parts of it, but the last 15 minutes introduces too many unnecessary aspects to the story. Very good cinematography although some of the shots were a little showy.

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  7. Just tried to show my wife "Wild Beasts". We got 15 minutes in and she was like "turn this off now". Haha. On to the next :)

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    1. BUT SHE DIDN'T EVEN GET TO THE POLAR BEAR

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    2. I know. She saw the Tiger convulsing and was like "There's no way to fake that" Then the rats ate the cat and it was all over from there. :(

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    3. About to start "Dead West" instead.

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  8. "Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die. Tragedy is when Italian filmmakers kill a rat."

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    1. Eh. It goes both ways. I respect that she wasn't feeling it just as I can't watch 2 minutes of Vampire Diaries without gouging my eyeball out. I'm lucky enough to have a wife that wants to watch Horror films with me all the time.

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    2. You know how the old saying goes: "Goddamnit, Chaybee, you lucky bastard."

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    3. :0 Dead West - decent - not a Horror film - waaaaaay too long.

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  9. Well, I finally had to watch "Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star" at some point. Definitely another low blow from the Happy Madison company with an unappealing lead performance from Nick Swardson as well as appearances by three once popular actors (Christina Ricci, Don Johnson and Stephen Dorff) who should've known better.

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  10. Pretty decent week of movies for me.
    I continued my Valentines tradition of watching The Graduate because I'm a heartless cynic. This is one of those movies that's so good that I'm jealous of JB being able to watch this a million times with fresh audiences.

    Later this week I saw Fences, which was fine. I read the play in a College literature class, and while the movie is very faithful, I can't help but rather read the play.

    My only real disappointment this week was One Hour Photo. That movie looked so promising, but it left me feeling very empty afterwards. There's really no joy to be found in it.

    Finally, today I saw The Stuff which is a fine exploitation movie, and Drive which is just the best.

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  11. I watched They Live for the first time last night which was great (unsurprisingly I suppose). I feel like it's a movie which has had way more influence than people give it credit for/realise. At least among my generation, people are referencing that movie without even realising it. I love how broad and angry the political points it is making are, but I also think it's got some interesting things to say about masculinity, in the same vein as Big Trouble. Roddy Piper between the alleyway brawl, his mass murdering spree and his absolute single-minded determination to shoot things as the first and last plan is a really weird hero, considering how calm and nice the first half hour of the movie is. I read Patrick's review, agree that it has some pacing issues, but other than that loved it :)

    Also, did anyone here see Midnight Special? Because I watched it last week and godddd I loved it. If I was to claim one movie as 'underrated' from last year that would be it for me.

    F this movie fest looked like it went super well! Hope you all enjoyed. Wish I could have joined in :/ I might do the marathon at some point when I have more time just because it's so good ahaha

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    1. Rowdy Roddy Piper was in a couple episodes of Its Always Sunny In Philadelphia. He was great in it. His first appearance is one of my favourite episodes.. RIP

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    2. That's a pretty interesting take on what's going on beneath the surface of that movie! And I'd never thought about it, but yeah, between two Snake Plissken movies, Roddy, Jack Burton, Jack Crow, and the version of Desolation Williams we would've gotten if Jason Statham had played him as planned, Carpenter does seem to have a fascination with the nearly Tarzan-ish, brutish hero.

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  12. XX was really good, I think the film was solid throughout but I do think they got weaker as they went. Loved the connecting segment but was not a fan of the repeat intos. Definitely worth a watch for The Box alone.

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    1. Heath isn't dead, he just has a life, other interests and a family. He'll be back.

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  14. I'm currently doing a rewatch of the entire Harry Potter saga. It's a long endeavor but one that's overdue. I haven't seen any of them since I saw them each in theaters.

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  15. Went to a midnight theatrical screening of "XX" last night at Brooklyn's Nitehawk Cinema. Packed house, which only made the consistency and quality of all four segments and the creepy connective tissue scenes linking them together stand out even more by how little reaction the segments got from us. No one segment was too crappy or too good, but "The Box" and "Her Only Living Son" were slightly-better and worthy of book ending the anthology. I like that some of the stories don't make sense or wrap-up with a tidy explanation, but man, by the time we got to "Don't Fall" I was sick and tired of seeing the names of each segment repeated over and over again. OK anthology horror entry, but don't plan to ever see it again.

    Also caught the complete, uncensored 4K restoration of John Huston's 1953 ode to camp "Beat the Devil" at Film Forum. What a loopy movie that walks a tightrope between utter farce and camp with a straight face and tongue firmly in cheek. It's like "The Maltese Falcon" if the ZAZ team had been alive in the early 50's and applied their "Ruthless People" skills to a literate and dripping-with-witticisms script (co-written by Truman Capote no less). Jennifer Jones stands out and almost steals the movie from a cast that includes Peter Lorre ("Casablanca" reunion with Bogey!), Gina Lollobrigida, Robert Morley and a pre-James Bond Bernard Lee moonlighting for Scotland Yard. Bogart is like an impish straight man being content to let everyone else steal the spotlight for their individual scenes. A total delight.

    Last but not least was "The Red Turtle," a Studio Ghibli-sponsored animated French oddity that's half "Castaway," half Kafka's "Metamorphosis." Virtually silent and using color sporadically, you've never seen anything like it. Slow even at 81 minutes, it's worth seeing for anyone wondering what it would be like to be stranded on an island long-enough to develop empty nest syndrome after your offspring swims away to meet with other turtles. Uh? :-P

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  16. Got to see Love Witch - oh wow the texture in that movie!! I really loved it. Also really interesting reaction. But in a good way. Also saw Silence, which I think I admire more than liked. Even though every step of that movie is meant to be painful - the movie felt effortless at the same time, but it is Scorsese.

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  17. Watched "The Phoenix Project" - a Found Footage UFO, alien film about the 1997 "lights over Phoenix". Surprisingly effective for what it is. I kind of liked it.

    Also watched a gem - "American Fable". I did not expect this film to be this good. It's absolutely gorgeous, great performances and a really, really good story told exquisitely. There are so many layers to what this film is saying, much of which is about storytelling but also about family and growing up during the early 80's in rural farmland. There's a lot more going on here symbolically that I need to peep on a second viewing. I really liked this film.

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  18. Due to work and a few other things I've been busy with it's been a quiet week for me as far as movies go aside from "XX". I'm looking forward to seeing "Get Out" at some point in the coming week though.

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  19. I started my weekend with "John Wick Chapter 2", followed by "Split". I had great fun with both of them, although on very different levels. The seemingly very divisive final sequence of "Split" gave me some of the most joyous seconds in years.
    Next was "Warcraft" which was more entertaining than I thought it would be. But visually it was a bad green screen inferno, which left me scratching my head several times during the movie, asking myself where they spent the reported 150 millions. Clearly not on good CGI.
    Next was "Southpaw", starring the great Jake Gyllenhaal in a very conventional story, checking every box necessary for this kind of movie without adding something.
    Next was Rick Famuyiwa´s "Dope", which was a funny, clever and well played little gem.
    Next was "Dark Places", which was fine but played more like a movie of the week, which is sad considering the talented cast of Theron, Hoult, Moretz, Hendricks and Stoll.
    Next was "The people vs. Fritz Bauer", a german movie about the state attorney that brought Nazi Adolf Eichmann to justice. Fine performances and the good overall story make up for an unnecessary and totally made up side story that dilutes this movie a little bit.
    Eli Roth´s "Knock Knock" was the final film, so I started and ended my weekend with Keanu Reeves. Sadly, after a good start this one became a pretty annoying film when those chicks from hell started to wreak havoc on Keanu´s life. I felt no suspense, no drama and so I was happy when it was over - a reaction I have with pretty much every Eli Roth movie.

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