A place for you to talk about movies / Blu Rays and anything related.

Moderators: lazyben, static14, texasvinyl

User avatar
By inksb
#124560
I snuck out of work an hour early yesterday to make a screening of this

Image

I'll start by saying I absolutely loved it. I'll then follow that up with it was one of the hardest films to watch this year for me. I'm not an anxious person, I don't really have anxiety but holy hell did this film make me uncomfortable, anxious and wanting to scream at the character for every fucking idiotic choice he made. Great acting from all involved, it was shot really well, they nailed the aesthetic they were going for. Highly recommended.


And one that I didn't discuss last week but watched late one night because I realized it was the same directors as Uncut Gems.

Image
I loved this one too. Pattinson kills it as the ultra scummy brother trying to "save" his brother from jail. If you haven't seen this I highly recommend it, it is streaming on Amazon as part of Prime right now. I felt like this film could have easily been shot during the 90's NYC independent film boom. If there wasn't cell phones and a well known actor you could easily convince some one of this. Watch it if you haven't.

We watched the first episode of The Witcher. Takeaways from that were his wig looks fucking horrible, how do they have all this money and can't get a realistic looking wig on him? There are way too many shots of characters in foreground and background is obviously CG not done well. I would have been fine leaving it at just one episode but the wife does want to see if it gets better so we'll keep watching.

Castle Rock S2 EP1. Lizzy Caplan is amazing and I can't wait to see where this goes.

I started Fulci's Conquest but after about 15 minutes and two actual animal deaths I had to shut it off as it was making the wife incredibly uncomfortable. Fucking Italians loved to just killed animals for the sake of "realism" in their films during the 70's & 80's. I'll get back to it this weekend maybe. Really bummed as my wife loves Fulci films just like me but animal violence is a no go for her, she understands that it happens in those films and I try to warn her but it doesn't always work and it makes her pretty upset so this one gets skipped by her.

And I watched this over the weekend too.

Image
This film hit some emotions for me. I'm a little younger than some of you on here. I was born in the 80s but the 90s is where I did my dumb shit. I experienced the skateboarding boom very similar to the events in this film. While I'm from a backwoods middle of nowhere town, we still skated, a lot. I had the same experience as the main character, going into the local skate shop, being incredibly nervous to talk to the good skaters who worked there and were constantly hanging out front dicking around. I never made friends with those guys because the shop was too far from where I lived but we had our own group of misfits in town. We all did dumb shit, partied, got chased by the cops, got jealous of the kids who were way better than the others, pushed some of the kids out of the group for childish reasons. Stayed out late, got in trouble with my mother, argued with her. Dumb teenager shit. We never had the drunk driving accident but I had a few friends who did end up making that mistake at some point in their teens. This one just made the memories come flooding back. I still love skateboarding wish I still did it and wasn't an out of shape old man. Back to the film, the kids were all believable. I was quite impressed by the ones who could actually skate. I really like the mother, she was great in her role. Directing seemed good from Jonah. I do wish he dug a little deeper for the hip hop tracks, they were all fine but I felt like it could have had a few other one from the era that you saw in a lot of the skate videos. The ending feels a bit abrupt but the film didn't outstay it's welcome at a brisk 85 run time. Not sure this will have a huge appeal for certain people but for me it worked really well.
User avatar
By inksb
#124599
Image
A modern giallo from France that doesn't suck. Watch it. Score was very well done from M83. In true giallo fashion the plot barely makes a lick of sense and the moment they begin revealing the killer with some backstory you realize that there was absolutely no way for you to even guess who it was prior to that moment. Although at least they begin revealing who they are around the 2/3 mark and not the last 2 minutes of the film. If you are uncomfortable with homo-eroticism maybe avoid this one as the main plot deals with gay porn actors being killed off. The only thing I disliked in the film was the show brief glimpses of the killer's past through inverted image and it just looks like an amateur who just discovered the effects section of his editing software, I would have preferred some other way to stylize that footage, maybe it's just me but I hate the look of inverted black & white image

This may seem mean but I could not put my finger on who main actress looked like and then it dawned on me.

Image


Image
This was half way decent. I like Vincenzo, he usually makes interesting films that don't 100% work but I like watching what he comes up with. I enjoy Cube and Splice quite a bit, his part of the VHS films was fun and he did good work on Hannibal. This one feels a little like he's retreading Cube territory though, the two main actors were grating and not enjoyable to follow but the little boy was good, the second half of the films main character was good and Patrick Wilson delivers as usual. Worth a watch if you are bored and looking for something to watch on Netflix.

Image
I was talking with my wife last week and made a reference to Seven and she had no clue what I was talking about. I then asked if she had ever seen it (a lot of my movie references just go right over her head so that's initially what I assumed), she responded she didn't think so. So I decided to show her Seven yesterday on our day off. She loved it. It was nice to revisit it, I think it's been at least a decade since the last time I watched it. It's funny my memory of the film was Freeman had the better performance here but in hindsight he's just doing what he always does and Pitt is the shining star. I did completely forget that Spacey was the killer until I heard his voice. Same thing from him, he's just doing his normal Spacey thing.
User avatar
By Bezulsqy
#124600
Thanks for all this info @inksb. I might start an A24 movie challenge this year. Going over the list of movies they produced I appear to have seen only a few. And a lot of those I wasn't aware it was from them. I am not sure I want to check out all of them as some don't really appear to be my cup of tea. But we'll see.
User avatar
By inksb
#124601
Bezulsqy wrote: Thu Jan 02, 2020 2:39 pm Thanks for all this info @inksb. I might start an A24 movie challenge this year. Going over the list of movies they produced I appear to have seen only a few. And a lot of those I wasn't aware it was from them. I am not sure I want to check out all of them as some don't really appear to be my cup of tea. But we'll see.
This year I came to the realization they have been consistently putting out some of the best genre films of the last 5 years. Not everything on their slate is for me but there is definitely a lot. I feel you'll probably end up the same.
User avatar
By Bezulsqy
#124639
Finally I got to watch this. (and first from my A24 challenge of the year).
Midsommar (Directors Cut)

Image
User avatar
By inksb
#124643
Jimmy_Mike wrote: Sat Jan 04, 2020 11:25 pm Directors cut? Please do tell.
It's 20 minutes longer I believe. I didn't watch the theatrical but I saw the DC and thought it was excellent. I've seen most people who have seen both say the DC is superior.
User avatar
By Bezulsqy
#124653
Jimmy_Mike wrote: Sat Jan 04, 2020 11:25 pm Directors cut? Please do tell.
It is 170 minutes in stead of 143. I haven't seen the standard version so I don't know how different it is. All I can say is that ii is an excellent film and it did not feel overly long. I love that it is almost completely sunny and bright outside. I did not really care for the some of the cast though. I did not like the boyfriend of the lead girl. Felt too American cliché college kid like...

Highly recommended!
User avatar
By ScoJo
#124693
Soundtrack release confirmed by DWRC on twitters. Look forward to that (and saves me the effort of trying to put it out myself ;)
User avatar
By inksb
#124740
I haven't had a chance to watch too much over the last two weeks. Still haven't dragged myself to the theater to see what I'm sure will be dissappointing, TROS. Anyway here's a few

Image
I knew nothing of this going in other than it's directed by Jim Mickle (whom I really enjoy) and starred Michael C Hall. I was not expecting a time travel mystery at all. It's well directed but I would probably say it's one of Mickle's lesser films, the script could have been tightened up a little and the dialog written a little better. The VFX were severely lacking in some scenes while others they looked great, it's a shame to see that as it's not a VFX heavy film so those moments are pretty glaring. If you are bored and looking for something to watch on Netflix give this a go.

Image
Holy fuck is this film a special kind of bad. It's incredibly entertaining but everything about it is so ineptly done, from acting to special effects to set design. It's the perfect film to be put out by Vinegar Syndrome. I had a blast watching, there were many times where I looked at my wife and asked what the fuck are they even going for here. One of the bad guys has the funniest "walk" I couldn't believe the director was like "yeah, that's perfect! keep doing that!". During part of the film many of the guests get "locked" into rooms with something trying to kill them, the lock? guess what it's the guy with the weird walk literally holding the handle and pulling the door shut. Eventually he stops and moves on to another room in the house to hold the door shut. It's a baffling movie with terrible acting, some clever but incredibly low budget effects. Worth a watch if you are into this type of thing and the score is a hoot. I have the cassette from Terror Vision and I'm happy to finally see the film that went along with it. Also Vinegar Syndrome worked a miracle on the print and it's fucking pristine looking, this movie probably never looked this good when it was first projected back in the mid 80s.


I also attempted to watch a film called Malevolence, I've heard many people praise it over the years and wanted to finally check it out. It wasn't for me, I was excited at first as it was shot on film 35mm which quickly fell into disappointment as it seemed the DP had no idea how to frame a shot or light one either. I was pretty baffled at how amateurish it looked. After about 45 minutes I realized I was looking at my phone and not paying attention to the film so I shut it off and watched some TV instead. I doubt I'll go back to finish it.
User avatar
By ScoJo
#124773
Just spotted 'Director's Definitive Edition' on amazon. Not seen anything alarming so far. (Content wise, it's the same slightly tweaked version as the previous blu, but Mann has completely regraded every shot so that it is more like he 'had made it recently'. Basically, more of a blue cast throughout...? I need to A/B with the blu really)

IMG_1472.JPG
IMG_1472.JPG (165.71 KiB) Viewed 2732 times
User avatar
By ScoJo
#124774
Yep, colour timing is definitely quite different - somewhat more yellow/green and noticeably brighter (so not 'more blue', contrary to the pre-release word from Mann himself...?)

Here's a few illustration frames - top is the previous Warner blu, bottom is the Definitive Director's Edition:

F4E238EA-9ED0-4F8C-8945-8FAAD0B63715-1590-000003480F539116.png
F4E238EA-9ED0-4F8C-8945-8FAAD0B63715-1590-000003480F539116.png (420.87 KiB) Viewed 2729 times
F285D640-AFCC-4E4D-877C-1EEA64201287-1590-0000034813F3576E.png
F285D640-AFCC-4E4D-877C-1EEA64201287-1590-0000034813F3576E.png (585.95 KiB) Viewed 2729 times
16A03047-4CD2-46C2-A581-0453317F8D34-1590-0000034829B9E3E3.png
16A03047-4CD2-46C2-A581-0453317F8D34-1590-0000034829B9E3E3.png (368.13 KiB) Viewed 2729 times
55492082-4820-418E-B1E0-5A17BB2F649C-1590-000003482D92326F.png
55492082-4820-418E-B1E0-5A17BB2F649C-1590-000003482D92326F.png (561.79 KiB) Viewed 2729 times
User avatar
By inksb
#124786
Image
I finally sat down to watch this one. My friend has been badgering me to watch it for months. It was fun. I don't care enough about Spiderman for it to be much more. Most superhero films don't really reach anything higher than entertaining action movie for me and the probably of me revisiting it is very low. The only one's I've actually watched more than once are Thor Ragnarok, Capt America Winter Soldier/Civil War and the Guardians of the Galaxy films. I did watch it in 4K and it was quite impressive even though almost all of the Marvel movies are finished in 2K because they render all of their VFX at 2K. It still looks really good.

Image
This one has been on the list to watch for 5 years now. I've actually had the movie in my possession for 4 of those 5. I'm a fan of Moorhead & Benson, I really enjoyed Resolution and The Endless. I was pretty captivated by this film all the way up until the main character decides to tell the girl she's the "love of his life" after 5 days of hanging out. Immediate eye roll from me. What followed was the most self centered and selfish convincing of another human being to give up everything they have just for him (mind you this is more than just a normal, drop what you are doing and spend your life with me). I thought it was so unfair of this person to even ask this person to do that and then he proceeds to badger her for an entire other day about, I didn't like the ending, nothing about it felt "sweet or heartfelt". I was just disappointed she even entertained the idea behind it. So 2/3 of the film come highly recommend, it's clever and well shot, last 1/3 can fuck off, it ruins what it sets up imo.
User avatar
By NathanLurker
#124789
regarding Spring, if that helps you make peace with some of it : she didn't really get to choose anything. Her body was gonna stop the cycles by itself and switch to pregnancy if she loved him. She had no actual choice to make, it all depended on wether or not she had strong feelings about him.
User avatar
By inksb
#124790
NathanLurker wrote: Mon Jan 13, 2020 3:10 pm regarding Spring, if that helps you make peace with some of it : she didn't really get to choose anything. Her body was gonna stop the cycles by itself and switch to pregnancy if she loved him. She had no actual choice to make, it all depended on wether or not she had strong feelings about him.
Oh absolutely, I would have preferred their last day just enjoying their time, showing that he loves her rather than saying it, it felt bad. I didn't think he deserved to have her give up her life for him. It just came off as selfish. The way he was acting I wanted her to just move on and leave him.

Maybe because I've seen my friends and family get manipulated by people with similar situations(minus the whole monster thing) only to be left abandoned months later, it's fucked up. I feel like it could have been handled better. That's just me though
User avatar
By maxlevel
#124792
@scojo the Heat directors cut; much bluer, and he’s reframed/resized a number of shots. The val kilmer scene with Ashley Judd where he smashes a picture by the door, the picture is no longer in frame. Which I think is an error, as it’s a picture of her. Perhaps it didn’t need to be so on the nose but Mann is a serial re-framer so it is what it is
User avatar
By Hatter313
#124811
ScoJo wrote: Sun Jan 12, 2020 8:37 pm Just spotted 'Director's Definitive Edition' on amazon. Not seen anything alarming so far. (Content wise, it's the same slightly tweaked version as the previous blu, but Mann has completely regraded every shot so that it is more like he 'had made it recently'. Basically, more of a blue cast throughout...? I need to A/B with the blu really)


IMG_1472.JPG

We were riding the same wave length Sunday Scott! I also watched this exact edition of Heat.
User avatar
By inksb
#124813
Just watched the first two episodes of The Outsider. It's quite good. I'm excited to see what else the series brings. I enjoyed the book and thought it would make a good mini series.
  • 1
  • 141
  • 142
  • 143
  • 144
  • 145
  • 280