The Return of Even More Movies You've Watched This Week III

Off Topic Art, Music, Entertainment
4442

Wife is gonna be gone till after the CNY. I can blast Tornado of Souls and watch terrible movies in the TV room without considering her interests. Which is why I’m watching every Exorcism movie I can find in the recent years. Why doesn’t she have any interest in horror movies of this kind? Because she was bred as a commie. And commies have no souls.

Joke.

Well, I found one flick that was:

The Exorcism of God

It sucks. But the “top exorcist” from the Vatican looked familiar. I recognized the voice first and the accent… and then it came together:

It was the dude who played Geoffrey the butler in Fresh Prince of Belair!

However, despite that LOL moment and minor entertainment ONLY because I had the image of him in the TV series in my head, the movie sucked. The problem with movies nowadays is something that I really can’t put my finger on.

Why are all the “horror” moments ILLUSIONS??? Or a spirit fucking with someone without doing shit to them? The Conjuring did this but AND provided a solid rationale about the stages of possession but people who make movies that try the same shit need to understand 2 things:

  1. You are not James Wan.
    James Wan has the innate ability to successfully balance something known as TONE. Which determines the efficacy of PACING. Which is why the fucker can make a dumbass Fast and Furious movie in which The Rock walks around the street with a gattling gun he ripped off a crashed helicopter look cool. You know why he looks cool instead of DUMB? Because you want to believe The Rock can walk around the street with a gattling gun he ripped off a crashed helicopter. You want to because the dude set up the tone of the movie so effectively that you accept the absurdity.

  2. You really aren’t James Wan
    You know why the aforementioned absurdity is readily accepted? Because he knows how to NOT GO OVERBOARD WITH THE ABSURDITY DEPENDING ON THE TYPE OF GENRE. This requires an understanding of what an audience is able to accept before they get turned off. Some dumb shit can happen the Fast and Furious world. In the Aquaman world, all cards are on the table. Seahorse fights and a motherfucking octopus playing the drums underwater.
    I’m buying it! Bring it on!
    Geddit?

Now, check out The Conjuring again. All the scares had initial events, with the next event increasing in intensity building on the previous one. Then comes the JUMP SCARE!!! This is a very basic concept known as “escalation” which is dependent on tone and pacing. And, not only that, one has to be INVESTED in a character, which, in this movie, is obtained through creating EMPATHY for a character. Look at how well directed the youngest kid was, and how good of an actress she is too. The look of terror and physical and verbal responses to the events were BELIEVABLE. The events don’t have to be. That’s how you get invested in what amounts to a JUMP SCARE!!! The kid looked genuinely scared shitless.

To understand the connection to the Fast and Furious move, the audience already got majorly invested through depicting a musclebound freak and his relationship with his daughter. We were sold right at the moment he went, “Daddy’s gotta go to work!” and FLEXED the cast off his arm.

And, again, I find myself ranting about James Wan because I can’t remember what the fuck was going on in this movie. The only credit I give it is that the CGI was pretty damn good and the makeup on the possessed people was some of the best I’ve seen in a very long time. But what is the point if you don’t know how to USE THESE?

2/10

Then I found another remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and it was the same shit. Great sfx and pretty damn seamless CGI gore. A lot of thought was put into all these. But it was boring as fuck. The only real credit I can give it is that this is the only movie that promised a massacre and actually delivered it, and via the use of a chainsaw.

2/10

What did I learn from this? Only Marty Friedman never lets me down. Time was better spent with the solo portion on repeat. Fuck.

You see? During a time where “shreddors” were going wild with the appregios and complex chordal arrangements derived from classical scores which all ended up being playable in simply E minor anyway, there was Marty Friedman and Jason Becker. Jason Becker was more talented musically than any fucking shredder till today which is why he could compose and execute mind bending pieces like Mable’s Fatal Fable. Marty, who’s more inclined towards the “softer stuff” from Japanese traditional music which I have not listened to and a fellow Jay Chou fanboy, put melodic changes and leveraging individual selected notes with techniques such as extended bends to tell a story, which is not an indicator of anything other than personal preference and general audience accessibility. Which is why this solo is simple, accessible to a non-musical person and complex at the same time while not being too technically complex to be accessible only to musicians whom have studied this shit.

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4443

Watch Santa Inc

Or Velma

/s

Between nasty jokes about the holocaust, jokes about Ms Claus being a stripper and Reindeer being methamphetamine addicts coupled with ham fisted political messaging

I don’t know who thought making such a mean spirited, cynical show about christmas of all things was a good idea.

Has a 1.6 out of 10 on imdb.

4444

Neither does Marty Feldman.

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4445

For anyone who likes movies but hates modern films:

Why Modern Movies Suck - They Hate Men (Part 1) - YouTube

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4446

I watched Dr Strange and the Multiverse of Madness but I was already really sleepy and nodded asleep and woke back up several times during the movie but eventually fell asleep lol.

Dude, if you have watched it, do you think it’s worth sitting through?

It was not boredom that made me nod off. I was really sleepy.

The fact that I woke up and tried to keep my eyes open was because the parts I caught:

  1. They were vintage Sam Raimi. The funny angles, the nasty sense of humor - I caught Bruce Campbell’s cameo and it ended in Bruce smacking himself around like he did in Evil Dead 2.
  2. The Inception-like dimension. This stuff was literally waiting for Sam Raimi to do it justice. While previous depictions were really good, Sam Raimi has been doing similar stuff in his pre-Spiderman movies but never had the material nor budget to fully actualize them. *I wrote this part in case there are fellow Sam Raimi fanboys around. For others, the web slinging around the city scenes in the first Spiderman were what Sam Raimi was trying to accomplish in Darkman. The effects in Darkman were pretty much shit and some scenes required overcranking (speeding up the footage) so it looked like something stitched together but you could see the kind of energy and pacing he was trying to get. I never liked the Spiderman movies but when I saw the first one, I thought, “The dude finally got a budget for the shit he was trying to pull of in Darkman.” But the movie bored me to tears.
  3. The problem I had with the Spideman movies was that I could not see anything that were characteristic of Sam Raimi. The only thing that came close was the scene in Part 2 where the octupus fellows in an operating theater and the tentacles went batshit and so did the camera and editing. I caught a lot of these in the portions of this movie that I managed to stay awake for.
  4. Man, I’ve said this years ago. The most interesting character with the most potential for character development and for the action scenes to go completely batshit has always been Wanda. HOLY CRAP. Caught part of the scene in some temple where she was FLOATING and throwing fireballs or something like that. And Wong was doing some cool kungfu shit. That’s the shit I watch HK movies for to get my fix. Alas, there are no real HK movies anymore.

So, anyone liked the entire movie as a whole? Hated it? Action scenes made it worth watching?

Thanks!

4447

I don’ really have an opinion on the stuff the fellow was talking about but the part where he was talking about men in older movies “not complaining about stuff” and the edit of the dude on fire falling from a building or something when he said the words “… or complain about physical discomfort…” gave me a big fucking lol.

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4448

His videos are all pretty funny and provides some much needed criticism on a lot of modern movies

He is also and author and I started one of his books - pretty good so far. It ties into my favorite unsolved mystery - the Dyatlov Pass incident.

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4449

Ah, ok. I watched the video in full so I could give a fair opinion about it.

While I do not know how good he is as a writer, he kinda doesn’t understand the difference between the cinematic language and actual “social messaging”. Simply put, Michael Mann only thrives when he’s making films in his element - gritty crime dramas with hardboiled leads. The Insider, Collateral. When he was just slightly out of his element with Blackhat, while it had pretty damn good cinematography, the overall product sucked.

I think the best examples I can pull out are the works of The Coen Brothers. The only real bad movie they made was Miller’s Crossing, which was an ambitious failure, IMHO. They are fucking masters of the cinematic language. When I watch No Country for Old Men, I’m not even thinking about the masculinity of the male characters. I’m too absorbed looking at the way everything from the framing to the pacing and editing are all involved to tell a story. The part where the coin flipping dude does his coin thing with the guy at the cash register. I’m looking at the edits. Each frame alternates between each character. How are they retaining the audience’s attention while drawing them in aside from having already deliberately established right from the start of the movie that this dude will fuck you up and smile while he’s doing it? Through making the characters a liiiite closer to the frame in each cut. And he never does anything after the first scene in full view of the camera again. Why? Because the audience can already imagine the full extent of violence the fucker will do. Set it up, leave the rest to imagination. Fucking geniuses.

My point is that if one is making a film. A REAL filmmaker. The focus isn’t on social messaging. It’s on making a good movie. And there are so many elements that make up a good scene. Since I’ve done shit like this, I wouldn’t even be thinking about what social message there is since my focus is on so many things that span from the technical stuff to directing the performers.

And for turds like Captain Marvel, we have John Wick. Rambo? Tulsa King! That’s real masculinity on screen. James Bond? To be honest, I have never liked watching any Bond movies. And he’s forgetting that the Bond movies when Pierce Brosnan became Bond SUCKED. Denise Richards = rocket scientist? LOLOL.

And there were pretty silly ones when Roger Moore became Bond. Moonraker? It was a 1.5hr joke lol. Bond as a character became pretty silly during the Roger Moore era and I had the misfortune of having a dad who loves Roger Moore so I’ve had to sit through mostly Bond movies from his era and I can’t remember a single one other vague recollections of Moonraker and On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and this is only because 2 HongKong movies that I loved during my childhood went and turned them into even zanier parodies. (Aces Go Places for anyone interested. Samuel Hui and Baldy(Karl Maka)).

He’s not even considering how Sam Mendes took over the helm and made probably the best movie in the entire franchise which was Skyfall. I mean, hole fuck, did you all see how Roger Deakins lit the climax with the house Bond owned on fire all the way from the marshlands they were trying to get across to the church? Damn, man. That was fucking cinematic brilliance right there. Brie Larson could have played M and I wouldnt even remember she was in the movie when you throw me that kind of gourmet shit. Thought I was walking into something that would be more like the first Bond movie where Daniel whatshisname first appeared as Bond given the lackluster reception of the prior one. Nice action, interesting bad guys. Motherfucker sprang that gourmet shit on me lol.

And Sam Mendes made American Beauty, which was pretty damn woke during it’s time. But, watching Skyfall, that’s how Sam Mendes makes movies. Road to Perdition had TOO MANY long shots with sparse dialogue. It bored the shit out of everyone I know. The move that came after Skyfall was too close to Road to Perdition to retain MY attention lol.

And the problem I had with the last Bond movie was that it was reeeaaaallly borrrriiinng. As in boring the way only Sam Mendes can bore the fuck out of me lol. Only Rami Malek managed to blow me away with his performance. The female 007, Bond’s insecurities, etc. I don’t even REMEMBER them because i was too fuckign bored to give a shit. :joy:

And here’s the interesting part. David Niven was Ian Fleming’s ideal choice for playing Bond. The dude from that Gregory Peck movie that was referenced in True Romance by the character played by Gary Oldman which I can’t recall the name of at the… Guns of Navarrone! One look at David Niven and I don’t think anyone would see much masculinity. But that’s how spies and secret agents are hired. They blend in with the crowd because you don’t want them to be noticed at all since they are supposed to acquire secret stuff. Daniel whathisname is the only Bond who came close to real life. Or maybe Timothy Dalton did but I didn’t watch his Bond movies.

Crap… this brain fart has gone on for too long lol.

Ok, seriously, I agree with some stuff in the video. i don’t agree with the EXAMPLES he uses, which does not mean that I disagree with him conceptually. The latest Charlie’s Angels remake was fucking propaganda the studio decided to spew out at a low budget. 40million for virtue signaling. Ok. We’ll make 400 million back from the next comic book movie. Fuck the virtue signaling.

4450

I think you look at the film as more of a technical piece of art (framing, genius positioning etc) and he is looking at it as a story.

I agree with you on the bond examples. Sky fall was amazing (judy dench was a way better M than that dude they replaced her with). Moonraker feels like a spoof of a bond film. Also, I don’t think bond is a masculine character to emulate as a whole. Like most well designed characters he has many good qualities and many (if not more) flaws. Flaws endear us to characters more than their strengths.

I can remember way more examples of the “dumb dad” or “useless husband” type tropes in recent (say last 25 years) movies than actual well written (this is obviously my opinion - and I am an autistic male so take it with a grain of salt I guess) male characters.

I like his example of how they took Luke Skywalker from the underdog hero to the petulant, old, useless man in the new Star Wars trilogy. Looking objectively at the heroes of the first and third trilogies, Luke is so much better written and developed than Rey.

I know movies are meant to push boundaries as all good art should. However, making one think and pushing boundaries is way different than a lot of the messaging in movies today which feels no deeper in many cases than a 140 character tweet. Hell, Emily Blunt spoke out against the “strong female” character description recently. Which is an interesting comment from someone I think is indeed a strong, feminine character in real life.

You have to admit for every one good movie we get lately we get about 19 stinkers.

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4451

Yeah, I guess what I was trying to say was that he has to compare the good movies that are more woke to the good movies of the past that weren’t woke. Because we remember the good movies. We forget that there was a lot of shit that was released in the same years the good movies were released.

If we look at the movies during the John Wayne era, this was basically what Once Upon a Time In Hollywood was depicting. They were all big studio productions. There were no mid-budget flicks. Movies were either big studio productions or low budget grindhouse flicks until the disasters that were Heaven’s Gate and one of the Cleopetra movies lol.

Later in the 70s, that was the time indie filmmakers were able to get their stuff released. And John Carpenter remains one of the most influential and highly regarded filmmakers today although I’m not a fan. But I have watched his stuff and the fellow was probably a socialist. Look at the theme of They Live lol. My point is, woke stuff was already around and the dude in the video and other youtuber whom I’ve browsed through are forgetting that they are calling certain woke movies of the era they were made “classics”.

So, while nowadays, real crap movies are all over because anyone can make a low budget flick and use current tech to make them look more expensive, in the past, the crap was all in mainstream movies along with the good.

So, I was not really trying to get into movies as an art and all, but just explaining the thought process of something who is focussed on making a good movie. And giving the examples of elements of good movies I’ve looked at that couldn’t have had “being woke” as part of the thought process during filming. Because, you’d end up with Charlie’s Angels LMAO! And that fucking Terminator movie. Shit, even if I look at the latter from a producer’s perspective, there was absolutely no way anyone of sound mind, nor even the shittiest AI bot these fellows are probably using, that would give that a greenlight with that ludicrous budget based on how all the prior Terminator movies fared at the box office.

Okok, that was a bit off track. My point is… You don’t compare Heat to some silly romp com to where the male character is girly man. And there was already Revenge of the Nerds in the 80s that was pretty damn popular. So, yeah, just some further elaboration on the earlier points and discussion of the stuff you brought up.

The Luke Skywalker thing was absurd as fuck. There was simply no reason for that bloody movie to exist and giving a dude whose only film credit was the “not bad” Looper was one of the many absurd things about the whole fiasco. I’m still gonna contend that there’s an extended scene after the end that was left on the cutting room floor where the kid did an Electric Boogaloo with the broom. I posted about the nonsense and predicted that The Last Jedi did well at the box office only because of the previous movie but it would cause the NEXT movie to tank. Well, the Solo spinoff did but I didn’t even know there was one, and the next Star Wars movie probably lost 500+million in potential revenue with net revenue even less percentage wise because of the costs of rewrites and extra filming based on test audiences reactions.

It was just dumb.

Oh BTW I caught half of Scream 2022 and there was a scene where they went meta like all the other Scream movies and one chick was saying that the new killings started because in teh Scream universe, there’s a franchise that’s based on the events of the actual killings in the movies called Stab. I think she said it was Stab 6 or something which went off the rails because “they got the director of The Last Jedi to film it and it destroyed the childhoods of the Stab fanboys”. And the motive of the killers was to create a new premise for a return to the franchise by doing the killings “right” LMAO!

I turned it off like 5 mins later. I have no idea if it’s a good or bad flick. I just remembered I’m not really a fan of slasher movies.

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4452

One of the best, if not the best scene in modern cinema.

I liked Roger Moore’s Bond. Of course, it leaned more into comedy and “I’ll bang anything with a pulse” but he brought a tongue in cheek charm to it.

David Niven was one of the manliest men ever, that’s why Ian Fleming picked him out for the part.

He was an A-list Hollywood star who immediately after the outbreak of WW2 dropped his coveted status and rejoined the British Army, transferred to the Commandos and spent a significant amount of time behind enemy lines in Italy and France literally strangling Nazis. I mean, just these tidbits are gold:

About to lead his men into action, Niven eased their nervousness by telling them, “Look, you chaps only have to do this once. But I’ll have to do it all over again in Hollywood with Errol Flynn!” Asked by suspicious American sentries during the Battle of the Bulge who had won the World Series in 1943, he answered, “Haven’t the foggiest idea, but I did co-star with Ginger Rogers in Bachelor Mother !”[27]

One of my favorite movies stars growing up was Jean-Paul Belmondo (it’s an European thing). His film opus was basically “Jackie Chan meets a very charming asshole” and my teenage daughters cannot comprehend why I like his movies.

As they say, “but he was an ugly chauvinistic POS that only wanted to hook up with every female character”. Yes, that’s the point - and the fact that his characters do the right thing in the end make his flaws and character arcs even more relatable.

Virtuous saints are boring. Deeply flawed people who find the inner strength or conviction to take a stand are inspiring because they speak for all of us.

4453

I watched “The Whale” yesterday. The acting was quite good (especially Fraser’s). There isn’t anything remarkable about the story (it could be the story of any very obese individual), but that is one of the high points for me. It’s more about development of the characters and understanding their motivations and emotions, than following a plot. The characters are neither good or bad, but somewhere in between. I’ll give it 8/10.

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4454

In a movie in 2023? Almost an impossible occurrence

Watched Fear Street Part 1 and Part 2 this past week. First movie was really well done. Almost a throwback to the 80s slasher flicks without being too over the top. Honestly the best horror film I have seen in quite awhile. No overtly political crap thrown in (one mom is quite upset her daughter is a lesbian, but it doesn’t feel forced into the movie). Plenty of gore without being disgusting and you really hope certain characters won’t get killed. 7.5/10

Part 2 is definitely more of a filler movie for the story (it’s a trilogy). It was not as good as the first one, mainly because after watching the first one the plot was too predictable. Characters in this one were not quite as likeable as part 1. 6/10

Looking forward to part 3.

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4455

Knock at the Cabin - M.Night Shymalan

This dude has done something really facinating here.

First, I could spot the twist in the first 10mins. It was OBVIOUS for anyone who listens to Metallica. Nono I mean knows some stuff about the Bible or plays some kind of nerdy RPG game.

Second, he does not understand the constituents of the twist he’s set up but he’s so convinced that, due to the his insane talent for screenwriting, he’s taking it to a logical conclusion that makes no sense at all from a Biblical even to a 90s Blizzard games perspective.

Alright, at least half of you should know the twist now when you read the plot sypnosis. But, you see, he’s convinced you won’t. Which is why he doesn’t keep the set up VAGUE - like normal filmmakers do to make you “form your own conclusions” when they don’t understand what they’re trying to pull off. Not Shymalan. All cards are on the table. Like the dude who made Donnie Darko but Donnie Darko was a lot, hell of a fucking lot smarter in it’s execution which is why there are lots of fanboys who purposefully ignore the entire clusterfuck of the 3rd act.

Which leads to a twist set up that makes no sense from the start and a reveal that makes the set up make even less sense and underwhelming at the same time but it’s delivered as if Shymalan is convinced it’s the most sensible thing in the world because he’s obviously not a Metallica fan.

And I now have one of my favorite movie phases: “permanently and cosmically alone”.

Oh, Shymalan. Keep the good times rolling.

PS: I’m not taking The Happening into consideration because that wasn’t a twist. The absurd shit about plants and neurotoxins or some shit like that was established at the start and what followed was simply foreshadowing, which also makes no sense.

4456

Watched Ghostbusters Afterlife.

Started off well. Last act was horrible. A complete shitshow. I thought only HK movies could start off pretty good and fuck up their last acts so spectacularly. Probably 6.5/10.

4457

Watched Fear Street part III this past weekend. Predictable ending to the series but given the throwback vibes to 80s cult classic slasher flicks - it was enjoyable. Overall Rate the series 8/10.

Also watched Before I wake a movie about a kid whose dreams and nightmares come to life. First 2/3-3/4 of the movie were pretty well done (great cast with Kate Bosworth and Thomas Jane). Completely ruined the movie in the last scenes. 5/10

Maybe 2 movies I have watched in the last year have endings that really bring the story where it ought to be. Most endings in modern films are absolute trash.

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4458

Didn’t like the Paul Rudd storyline nor his character but the ending with Egon was pretty touching to me (I’ve got daughters of the same age so I’m probably biased)

And I’ve just found at that the full version of Look who’s back is now on Youtube so I’ve watched the movie for the fourth time, probably the scariest comedy ever made. (Fun fact, the Hitler actor later played one of the leads in The Dark)

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4459

Watched the first half of The Painted Bird in class yesterday. Finishing up tomorrow. I was told it was going to be a gruesome movie but so far only the opening scene made me the (very) squeamish. Maybe it gets worse later on.

Anybody else seen this? @loppar - I think it’s probably from your neck of the woods. I’m not really sure what the point of it is - just to depict how brutal life in Central/Eastern Europe was during WWII? The war really hasn’t had a very heavy presence in the movie, it’s mostly (so far) just following the travels of a young boy as he meets new people and witnesses (and experiences) violence and death. Really cheery stuff.

There’s little dialogue and only one recurring character so it’s hard to follow a storyline. I like it though. It’s in black and white, which I think makes it better, and the boy’s a good actor.

4460

John Wick 4 tomorrow

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4461

I guess so. Pretty much everyone in Eastern Europe has family stories as harrowing as these. Or worse (yes, there are worse). I think the movie does a great job of showing how war breaks people’s souls.

The dialogue in the movie is in a made up language - Interslavic. Some Czech professor made a cross section of all Slavic languages and from all same/similar words made a language that’s intelligible for speakers of any Slavic language. It’s somewhat rudimentary but for a Slavic language speaker it’s very weird because one understands everything without quite putting a finger on it.

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