Saturday, February 18, 2023

Weekend Open Thread

23 comments:

  1. Thank goodness the weekend is here!

    Terrifier 2 (2022 blu): This and part 1 are a bit of a mixed bag for me..theres a bunch i dig and a little i dont. I realllllly like the creation and execution of Art the Clown. Great menacing look with emotive, imposing eyes. And as a huge horror fan i am stoked at what they pull off in the practical gore department. Part 2 is hands down one of the goriest flicks ive seen in a while so huge kudos. Additionally i think its creative how they do things with Art that we dont see with other silent horror icons (meyers/voorhees/etc): using guns, doing normal stuff like laundry. So, yea, lots to dig. Unfortunately i feel like there's a lack of tone/tension. There's brutal prolonged violence but without an essence of tension it becomes a bit more "lets wait for the next Art setpiece". Still im VERY glad the movie did so well and will be on board for whatever the f@#$ crazy kills they dream up in part 3.

    Troll (2022 Netflix). Very very well done Norwegian movie about a cave Troll that awakes and causes havoc. It feels like a bit of a movie quilt made from shades of Godzilla, Cloverfield, and a LOT of King Kong. Pretty family friendly so a great choice to watch with kids who dig on monster flicks.

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    1. I added Troll to my Netflix list. Although I don't know if I'll get a chance to see it before I get cut off! I've been using my brothers account for years now. There was a warning about "only for people who live in the same location" that popped up about a week ago, but it's still letting me watch stuff for now.

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  2. I've been busy with a new job, so have had much less time for posting here and watching movies in general. Still saw some great stuff since I last posted 3 weeks ago:

    Rewatched The Last Duel and Arrival. I've been listening to the score for the latter frequently as well. Rewatched The Rocket (2005) which is a hockey biopic about Maurice "The Rocket" Richard. This is a great movie that I revisit every couple of years.

    Time After Time (1979, dir. Nicholas Meyer) was sold to me as an adventure where H.G. Wells is hunting Jack The Ripper throughout time using his time machine. While there is less time travelling than I anticipated, I really liked it. McDowell is excellent as the fuddy scientist and David Warner really nails the charming but dangerous Ripper.

    Dark of the Sun (1968, dir. Jack Cardiff) was an AWESOME action/adventure movie about mercenaries that travel into the Congo to rescue some people and retrieve diamonds while being hounded by Congolese military forces. What make this uppercase awesome is that it's also a great train movie as they use an old steam train on their mission.

    The Duellists (1977, Ridley Scott). Scott is one of my favourite directors so I've catched all of his movies I hadn't seen, and it's a shame I hadn't seen this one before. It's interesting how it's all about honour and following the rules, which means their duel ends up extending over decades. Really gorgeous movie and Keith Carradine and Harvey Keitel are both excellent in it. I can't wait for Scott to revisit that time period in Napoleon later this year.

    I watched a bunch of other fun action stuff, Deep Blue Sea (2nd time watching the best sequel to Jaws), Blue Thunder (should have been called Blue "Peeping Tom" Thunder), Johnny Mnemonic (cyper dolphin), and Street Fighter (not nearly as bad as I had been lead to believe).

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    1. I'm *catching up with* all of Scott's movies that I haven't seen. Still have 9 more to go. Next up perhaps a double feature of Someone To Watch Over Me and Black Rain?

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    2. I watched some Ridley Scott in the last week also. For whatever reason, American Gangster was one that I hadn't seen before even though it's Ridley Scott and it's Denzel. It's a solid movie and I can't really point to any flaws in it, but there also hasn't really been much of it that has stuck with me since watching it. I think there's around 7 movies of Scott's I still need to watch.

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    3. American Gangster is one the my most watched movies. But partially because of circumstance. There was a period of a few years, right after it came out, that I didn't have internet and so while I often rented DVDs from the local place, American Gangster was one I owned, so I watched it a ton.

      It's a great movie, with a star studded cast. Denzel, Crowe, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Ted Lavine, Josh Brolin (what a year for him!), The RZA (great performance), and one of my all time favourites, John Hawkes. I love this movie. I was a huge Crowe-head when it came out, so I was all in. This will always be one of my favourites.

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    4. Great picks Paul! ive been saving The Last Duel for a while and really need to see it soon. SO much love for Ridley.

      Equally ive been meaning to revisit Time after Time. LOVED it as a kid and somehow havent rewatched. Totally didnt know NIcholas Meyer directed and that makes me more stoked..(gotta see if its on blu).

      Blue Thunder: i feel like this is a bit of a forgotten-in-time movie (kinda like Patricks recent revisit to Man With Two Brains). That being said, i rewatched this one weekly in the vhs era and find it a lot of fun. Plus: Schneider v McDowell!?! (chefs kiss)

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  3. Got a chance to watch some stuff but I'll just talk about a handful of things (already discussed Quantumania over in Rob's review thread):

    To Sir, with Love (1967): The Amazon Prime algorithm knows me well enough at this point to suggest movies I'll probably like, and if it suggests something Sidney Poitier stars in, I'm inclined to watch it. Poitier plays Mark Thackeray, who takes a position teaching High School students in London while searching for other employment. The students (including Man With the Golden Gun singer Lulu) are undisciplined and due to enter then real world, and Thackeray ultimately reaches them by throwing out formal classwork and interacting with them as adults. Not surprisingly it's a pretty great movie.

    Infinity Pool (2023): I didn't really connect with this one. It felt like maybe 45 minutes worth of ideas stretched out into a 2 hour movie. Also I still have trouble getting into Mia Goth's performances the way virtually every one else seems to be able to.

    Breathless (1960): I know it's a classic, and people love it, and French New Wave and all that. I get it and by no means do I think it's bad, I think I just appreciate it more than I actually enjoy watching it. Honestly I'm more affected by Jean Seberg's real life story than this movie.

    Bringing Up Baby (1938): I was going to mention that Katharine Hepburn is sort of like a proto-Manic Pixie Dream Girl here, but apparently she's the first example listed in the Wikipedia entry so I guess I'm not alone in my thinking. Cary Grant just gets to play the straight man here, taking a back seat to Hepburn and an actual freakin' leopard! Very fun movie, and did I mention it has a leopard in it?

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    1. BRINGING UP BABY has a special place in my movie watching history as the entry point into becoming a classic film fan. It was around 1993 that I caught the scene of Grant and Hepburn wandering calling for the leopard on AMC. AMC was actually on the air before Turner Classic Movies. Something drew me to the film, and I waited for it to be shown again. Three decades later, I am still watching this era of films.

      Interestingly, Bringing Up Baby was a major flop and set back Katherine Hepburn's career for a couple of years. It took the release The Philadelphia story (a property gifted to her by the aviation magnate Howard Hughes) to get back to being a star.

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    2. I'm looking forward to watching Infinity Pool. There's been some mixed reactions to it, but I definitely want to give it a shot. Titanic is also getting re-released. Damn, so I'll probably have to choose between the 2. My time is limited.

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  4. You'd have to look far and wide to find a bigger Marvel-head than me, which is why I'm heartbroken to say that ANT-MAN AND THE WASP: QUANTUMANIA is... not good. It's the same-old, same-old sci-fi/fantasy plot of "ordinary man falls through a portal to another world where he becomes the unlikely hero leading the rebellion against the evil overlord." All the character work is supposed to be what sets Marvel apart, and that's what's lacking in this one.

    GAMERA THE BRAVE (2006). Kid friendly reboot of everybody's favorite giant turtle. It's all very cute and E.T.-ish, but wow it's so slowly paced. Too dull for grownups and way too dull for the kiddos.

    RAISING ARIZONA (1987). "He's our baby, too!"

    MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE (1987). No to #RestoreTheSnyderVerse, yes to #RestoreTheGwildorVerse.

    ROSALINE (2021). I'm as much of a Shakespeare-head as I am a Marvel-head, so this movie was a lot of fun for me. You could argue that it's too cutesy and jokey, but I didn't mind.

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    1. Thanks Mac for your take on Ant-Man....i know its impossible but i feel like maybe Marvel should have taken a few years off post End Game to try and come up with a new and exciting world....they didnt and the overall quality output has suffered. And honestly i have no clue what will right the ship? Gunn going to DC is cool but coming up with something TRUELY original and creative and fun and entertaining in the comic book space is reallllly hard right now.

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  5. With my work situation starting to settle down, I had more mental space for films this week. My watches were through Mubi again. Besides trying to use a service I have paid for a while, I am trying to expand my viewing habits a little. There are plenty of international films to choose from.

    THE HOME AND THE WORLD (1984, Satyajit Ray) – Delving into the events touched off by the partitioning of the eastern Indian region of Bengal in the early 20th century, THE HOME is a complex tapestry of love, patriarchy, nationalism, and the frequently self-serving world of politics. Although an undeniably beautiful film to look at, I struggled to follow what was happening in the story. As with other serious Indian films I have seen, I feel there is as subtext I am missing. For the most part, the acting is of the stagey “period” variety. Probably not the best place to start a journey into Ray’s filmography, yet still the work of a master.

    MAMMO (1994, dir. Shyam Benegal) – Being impressed with his film ANKUR a couple of weeks ago, I decided watch another one of Benegal’s films on Mubi before it went off the service. MAMMO is quite different from ANKUR and the other Indian film I saw this week. Although the 1947 partition of India is at the heart of MAMMO, the film is a relatively light-hearted tale of a Muslim woman who returns to India to visit her sister several decades after she left for Pakistan. The actress portraying Mammo is a delight, bringing a lot of warmth and humor to some recognizable family situations. Her interactions with the sister’s grandson are the best part of the film. Overall, MAMMO is a relatable film that one does not need a background in Indian history to appreciate.

    PLAYING WITH FIRE (1975, dir. Alain Robbe-Grillet) – A supposedly kidnapped young woman suddenly turns again as if nothing happens. Other women get kidnapped and end up in a mansion where kinky scenes are played out. Things only get weirder as director Robbe-Grillet, also the writer, flips around the narrative and changes the roles the actors play. He never cared about making an easy to movie to watch. One positive thing going for it is the light tone, excellently captured by the great Jean-Louis Trintignant in his dual role. I really do not know what to think about this one.

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  6. Last night I took out the DVD of STARSHIP TROOPERS. I could not remember if it was in anamorphic widescreen. (I have many DVDs that are formatted for full-screen ratio only.) It is widescreen, and I ended up watching the whole thing again. I was reminded of how clever Starship Troopers is. Paul Verhoeven somehow found ways to make movies that can be simultaneously watched in a mindless way and with attention to details. I enjoy how the silly teen drama of the beginning evolves into a dark tale of the toll of war. All of the propaganda sections give the viewer something to think about. The big question is: Who started the war? One of the few things that has not aged well is the CGI.

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    1. The episode of Starship Troopers was the first episode of Fthismovie I ever listened to. I had just watched it for the first time shortly before. I was browsing among "bad movie podcasts", and was delighted that they loved it a ton. And I stuck around :)

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    3. That might come off as seeming like I thought it was bad. Entirely the opposite. It just happened that concurrently I was searching for "bad movie podcasts" and happened to stumble upon Fthismovie.

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    4. I love Verhoeven and it's always kind of entertaining to me how the people who made sequels or remakes for Starship Troopers, Robocop, and Total Recall seem to take the originals at face value and miss the satire.

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  7. Yesterday evening I watched Infernal Affairs (2002) which was the movie that The Departed was a remake of. Excellent movie! I was surprised how close the script of the remake stuck to the original. Like, almost beat for beat. The ending is very slightly different.

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  9. The Bourne Trilogy movies (Identity, Supremacy, Ultimatum) are some of my favorite action movies of the 2000s, if not ever. I can't watch one without the other two and i watched them a lot. It changed the genre, and as in anything with hollywood movies it was often imitated, but it was never as good. Heck, even Paul Greengrass (director of 2 and 3) couldn't do it again with the fourth movie featuring the titular character Jason Bourne. One of those early legacy-sequel that forgot what it is to tell a story, instead centering their efforts toward calling back the original movies. You know what i'm talking about because that's they're making now. That last movie sucked so bad, it almost makes me angry.

    Then you have a spinoff movie, without Jason Bourne, The Bourne Legacy made after 3, but before 4. It's a fine movie, living in the shadow of the original 3, so expectations were high and was immediately dismissed. Which is probably why we got the 4th movie.

    At least we'll always have the first 3

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    1. Thanks Kunider!! ive been looking for some fun action flicks lately and was about to restart the Mission Impossible franchise but your comment made me realize i havent watched Bourne for years. Time to go back!!!!

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    2. The MI franchise are my other go-to movie when i need good action.

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