What Movie Are You Watching?

No idea how a lot of people are saying the Matrix Resurrections is the worst one as I was highly entertained. It had the best performances from the entire series imo. Maybe I'm the crazy one.
 
Though I should watch it in theatres, I haven't watched the others in theatres, so I will probably wait until it comes out on DVD. Have heard mixed reactions to it though.

I DID, however, go see the King's Man last night!

The King's Man (2021):

A film I've been waiting for since 2017 (was supposed to release in 2019), we finally go our prequel to the, "spy genre-flipped-on-its-head," series, Kingsman :D

1902, in South Africa, two representatives of the Red Cross, the Duke of Oxford (Ralph Fiennes), his son, Conrad and his wife, are travelling to a POW/Slave/Concentration camp, in order to meet with the general stationed there, General Kitchener. While there, the Duke's wife is shot by a sniper, who then gets killed by the black servant of the Duke (who, despite being black and a butler of sorts, is treated throughout the entire film as a member of the family), seconds after firing that fatal shot. Conrad witnesses this and the Duke's wife makes the Duke promise to not let Conrad see or experience war in his lifetime. We then fast-forward 12 years later and it is WWI, where Conrad desperately wishes to enlist for his country.

Not going to say anymore due to spoilers, as the backdrop of WWI provides a great setting, however I will say that the film is ABSOLUTELY clunky and a bit all-over-the-place, in the first act (IMO, they try to setup the background of WWI and to those of us that know the facts, timeline and history of the war, it made it a bit plodding, sadly). The second act, there is a bit more-focus on things and much more cohesion, while the third act is just brilliant, definitely the most-enjoyable portion of the film (the last 45 minutes or so). Fiennes is fantastic, with the only real issues (I find) being that he is LOUD during fight scenes lol. The supporting cast does an excellent job and the way they navigated WWI and slightly altered history (ala Inglorious Basterds, albeit not as much), was done quite-well. I figured out the main villain within the first 20 minutes of the film, so they could definitely stand to get the writing a bit better for any sequels. The callbacks to the 2 previous films is fantastic and the way they were woven into the plot/script without shoehorning, was brilliant and well-done.

As with the other 2 films in the series, there is a MASSIVE shock that happens around the midpoint of the film and it completely took my wife and I by surprise (and films RARELY catch me off-guard lol), but unlike the 2 modern films, there is a GREAT sequel hook during the credits (which I also called within seconds lol) and I cannot wait to see what direction they go.

8.5/10
 
Saw Matrix Resurrections. I liked the fact it was a nice and subdued wrap up of the series but felt there was a lot that could have been done a lot better. It had these weird, choppy slows downs that I thought was a problem with the film and not a design feature. The reviews, such as IGN calling it "laughably bad" are just a gross exaggeration. Felt the premise was okay/good but the execution should have been so much better. The older films looked better from a special affects perspective.
 
So! Here are the films i've watched since my last post! Ones highlighted in bold come with my own personal recommendation!

New films
1) Violet Evergarden: The Movie / 2020 / Taichi Ishidate / 5/5
2) Ghostbusters: Afterlife / 2021 / Jason Reitman / 3/5
3) King Richard / 2021 / Reinaldo Marcus Green / 4/5
4) Rocky IV: Rocky vs Drago - The Ultimate Director's Cut / 2021 / Sylvester Stallone / 3/5
5) News of the World / 2020 / Paul Greengrass / 3/5
6) Frank Capra's American Dream / 1997 / Kenneth Bowser / 4/5
7) The Harder They Fall / 2021 / Jeymes Samuel / 3/5
8) Mandy / 2018 / Panos Cosmatos / 4/5
9) House of Gucci / 2021 / Ridley Scott / 3/5
10) The White Stripes Under Great White Northern Lights / 2009 / Emmett Malloy / 4/5
11) Encanto / 2021 / Byron Howard, Jared Bush & Charise Castro Smith / 3/5
12) Red Notice / 2021 / Rawson Marshall Thurber / 1/5
13) Johnny O'Clock / 1947 / Robert Rossen / 3/5
14) Seven Blood-Stained Orchids / 1972 / Umberto Lenzi / 3/5
15) Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City / 2021 / Johannes Roberts / 2/5
16) Repo Man / 1984 / Alex Cox / 4/5
17) The Power of the Dog / 2021 / Jane Campion / 3/5
18) West Side Story / 2021 / Steven Spielberg / 4/5
19) The Dead Don't Die / 2019 / Jim Jarmusch / 3/5
20) C'mon C'mon / 2021 / Mike Mills / 4/5
21) The Royal Tenenbaums / 2001 / Wes Anderson / 4/5
22) Street Trash / 1987 / J. Michael Muro / 3/5
23) Invasion U.S.A. / 1985 / Joseph Zito / 4/5
24) Tomorrowland: A World Beyond / 2015 / Brad Bird / 2/5
25) The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus / 2009 / Terry Gilliam / 3/5
26) Scream 4 / 2011 / Wes Craven / 3/5
27) Spider-Man: No Way Home / 2021 / Jon Watts / 4/5
28) The Shop Around The Corner / 1940 / Ernst Lubitsch / 4/5
29) Manderlay / 2005 / Lars Von Trier / 3/5
30) Erotic Ghost Story / 1990 / Ngai Choi Lam / 2.5/5

Re-watched films
1) Every Which Way But Loose / 1978 / James Fargo / 2/5
2) It Happened One Night / 1934 / Frank Capra / 4/5
3) Jackie / 2016 / Pablo Larraín / 3/5
4) The Matrix / 1999 / Lilly & Lana Wachowski / 5/5
5) Escape From Alcatraz / 1979 / Don Siegel / 4/5
6) Body Double / 1984 / Brian De Palma / 3/5
7) The Beguiled / 2018 / Sofia Coppola / 3/5
8) Heathers / 1988 / xMichael Lehmann/ 4/5
9) Scream / 1996 / Wes Craven / 4/5
10) Die Hard / 1988 / John McTiernan / 5/5
11) Any Which Way You Can / 1980 / Buddy Van Horn / 2/5
12) Scream 2 / 1997 / Wes Craven / 3/5
13) Sleepless In Seattle / 1993 / Nora Ephron / 3/5
14) Scream 3 / 2000 / Wes Craven / 2/5
15) Elf / 2003 / Jon Favreau / 3/5
16) White Christmas / 1954 / Michael Curtiz / 4/5
17) His Girl Friday / 1940 / Howard Hawks / 4/5
18) Gremlins / 1984 / Joe Dante / 4/5
19) It's A Wonderful Life / 1946 / Frank Capra / 5/5
20) The Irishman / 2019 / Martin Scorcese / 5/5

Short films
1) Fultah Fisher's Boarding House / 1922 / Frank Capra / 2/5
2) Far From The Tree / 2021 / Natalie Nourigat / 4/5
3) Not One Shall Die / 1958 / David Lowell / 3/5
4) Whoops, I'm An Indian! / 1936 / Del Lord / 3/5

TV Shows
1) A Very Murray Christmas / 2015 / Sofia Coppola / 3/5
 
some recent movies ive seen..

american graffiti (1963). directed by george lucas. i finally got around to watching this movie and it pretty good. gotta say though, ive seen harrison ford in a lot of movies, and it's gotta be his worst performance. 7.5/10

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019) - 8/10 tom hanks and Matthew Rhys are great.

don't' look up (2021) on netflix. 9/10 great movie, i highly recommend it.

the enemies (1968) on netflix - ww2 film. foreign ww2 film. kinda messy in places but entertaining... my only complaint is that they shot a real dog for the film :crying: 6/10
 
Just gonna copy/paste this from a discord I wrote it in

I’m not even sure who I was in this dream, kinda just followed these two idiots who were kinda like Beavis and Butthead or Jay and Silent Bob. Seems the whole premise was we were getting high off all this dope that we weren’t even supposed to have a hold of in this weird retro 80s mafia gang but we used the excuse we were selling it and that it was someone else’s fault for covering it up and they were skimming off the top or something. The boss was impressed we “owned up” to it and let us live, and even wanted us to come along to watch him kill the people we pinned the blame on.
It was like a cross between a David Lynch movie(maybe Lost Highway is the closest thing) and Pulp Fiction and was even “shot” that way in my head I guess. Really strange.
Thing is I think I was kinda barely awake or half awake and was aware I was talking in my sleep if that makes any sense.
After some thought I take it to mean that I should always throw people under the bus for hilarious results.

Ok now I vaguely remember how it got there. I had dreamt more before then but none of it is as clear. One part about missing an old coworker or two from my last retail job but that’s seemingly unrelated.
I end up as a gameshow host somehow…but now I think of it I think I was my old boss. Probably just to fit how smug I was and gloating that I’d just obtained a weird knife pen blade thing. I laughed and pointed at the other contestants and told them “When it’s my turn again, I’m gonna cut that dope! That’s when you really win!” and mimicked snorting it all. Because apparently, I don’t know if I’d really win, but somehow cutting a line of coke was a component to this gameshow, and you couldn’t do it without a blade. I just remembered thinking that it looked like a big ol block of powdered sugar and man it would be fun to taste it through my nose. And from then on it segway’d into that next part I already wrote down.
 
i saw matrix 4 in the cinema today. i would give it 7.5 /10

i liked it, it's quite a smart sequel.. very meta, lots of references and nods to the original trilogy. the film is not as bad as people say.

i thought the balance between the "matrix being a reality" and madness interesting.

i'm not really sure where they will take the series after this movie. i cant say i'm desperate for matrix 5 but i'll happily watch it if it comes out.
 
Spiderman No Way Home - 3 out of 5 // fun fan service but it won't stick with me beyond that. Although, it does make me want another Raimi film. I could see Tobey returning in a Dark Knight Returns fashion.

The Matrix Resurrections - 1.5 out of 5 // I think it's crystal clear that even Lana didn't want to make this movie. It started off with promise but just continued to plummet downhill.

Ghostbusters: Afterlife - 2 out of 5 // Controversial opinion here but why oh why is this sequel so god damn serious? Did we all suddenly forget that Ghostbusters was a COMEDY where the guys were making dick jokes with the whole crossing the stream thing? Cloyingly annoying Nostalgia Bait at its worse. I know people really like this film, but I don't get it! Ghostbusters was a COMEDY. Why are we treating Ghostbusters like a serious coming of age drama?

Re-watched/Revisted:

Shin Godzilla - 3.5 out of 5 // I revisited it during the Christmas break. I think I liked it more this second time around.

Gremlins 2 The New Batch - 4 out of 5 // So wonderfully irreverent.
 
The amount of people that ate up SM as, "the best film ever," is hilarious.

Nostalgia and fanservice truly run the world, when it comes to pop culture and I ******* hate it. It's why Ninty is as big as it is today.
 
Truck_1_0_1_ said:
The amount of people that ate up SM as, "the best film ever," is hilarious.

Nostalgia and fanservice truly run the world, when it comes to pop culture and I ******* hate it. It's why Ninty is as big as it is today.
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I didn’t hate it. Of the three nostalgia bait films I saw, it was the one that annoyed me the least of the three. Watching the three Peters interact with each other was fun at least. But at the same time, it won’t stick with me much like all of these recent MCU films don’t stick with me.

I’m just over the whole memberberries thing in general with all of these nostalgia filled films. Matrix 4 just served as a reminder why this series should have stayed one and done. And Afterlife: again, why am I watching a teary eye coming of age drama made from something that was once a comedy?
 
I do hate the fact that of the last half dozen films i've seen, Spider-Man is the best one i've seen. It's a weird one, because I too am tired of preachy fan service, but on the other hand, I can't help but admire the skill with which it was done. I'm bored to death of superhero CGI films, but there was something about this that just hit the spot.

The new Matrix film was interesting. At certain points I loved it, other points I hated it, but I have to admire the fact it didn't try to be overly fan servicey. In some ways it was pretty post-ironic and clever. I also liked how intimate it felt at times.

Praise be then for Céline Sciamma's "Petite Maman". A gentle, 72 minute film set in two or three places that felt like magic at times. No stars, no CGI, no post-irony, no ADHD explosions; just wonderful acting. I wasn't sure of it to begin with, but there were just tiny little bits that made me smile and I couldn't help talking about to people.


I will do my next big list in a week or so :)
 
I just finished The Public last night. It was filmed in my hometown and an area of town I always frequented as well as the location it is shot in.


I highly suggest it.
 
Spider-Man finally came out in Japan, where I live, and it was an enjoyable movie. It has some plotholes, but I hope they can be addressed later on.
 
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My wife was perusing Tubi (because they've had terrible films the past 2-3 months) and came across...

Don't Say a Word (2001):

Sean Bean, his crew and a black guy who won't shut up about football, break into a bank and steal a red diamond, worth over $10,000,000.00. Upon getting away however (they got away in 2 separate vehicles), Bean's character sees that the diamond has been replaced with another piece of jewelry and the crew of 5 in his car, are pissed, while the crew of 2 in the other car, are feeling smart. Cuts to 10 years later and Michael Douglas (ugh) is a psychiatrist, with a loving wife (Famke Janssen) and a daughter (Skye McCole Bartusiak), who upon returning home the day before Thanksgiving, gets a page (yes, a time when pagers were still used) to immediately go to a psychiatric hospital along the Hudson River. Upon getting there, he sees a new patient (Brittany Murphy), who Douglas' character immediately sees is faking her psychosis and tries to talk to her, but she still plays difficult. He gets home, then after a few minutes, it cuts to the next morning and he is making French Toast. After calling his daughter for a while, she doesn't turn up and then they realise that she has been taken/kidnapped, when the door bolt has been cut. The couple get a call from Bean's character, explaining that he wants Douglas to go to the hospital and try to get a number out of Murphy's character (he won't tell him the context of the number, however). He also tells him not to contact the police and that's he's being constantly watched.

Won't spoil anymore, but you can really see how this was a novel, in the way it was written; the acting by all the leads and supporters is not bad at all, but that's the extent of the really good in this film. The plot really is better left for a novel, as it is full of holes and weird situations, not to mention there's a subplot that appears to exist solely to give Jennifer Esposito some screen time (it only gets tied to the main plot in the last 15 minutes of the film or so, but it is completely unnecessary and doesn't change anything). This is also one of the worst-shot films I have ever seen; the cinematography is just... weird and techniques/angles are used that don't make sense, like the fact that (seemingly) 1/3 of the scene cuts, end with a slow-mo: it's just bizarre. Not as bad as Battlefield Earth, mind you, but still poor. On a personal misgiving, it's oddly weird to see Paul Schulze (Father Intintola in the Sopranos) play a cold-blooded Ahole lol.

And I can't stand Douglas; he almost always plays a refined, upper-class character, but devolves into a brute by the end of the film and it just doesn't make sense in my mind, for a skinny, little runt like him (he survived pancreatic cancer, so the man is incredibly-tough in real life), but I just am not a fan at all.

(Sadly) interesting to note, that Murphy and Bartusiak both passed away young, Murphy at 32 in 2009 and Bartusiak at 21 in 2014. When Murphy utters her line, "I'll never tell!" it flooded back memories of 21 years ago when this film came out; my father used to make fun of that line SO MUCH (and he's completely forgotten it).

6/10 (and that's being generous!)
 
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My Favorite Things I Watched in 2021 (Old and New -- because I didn't see enough from 2021 to make a full list)

-- Irreversible: The Straight Cut (Dir: Gaspar Noe) -- A fascinating re cut of what was already a ferociously powerful piece of film making. The interesting thing is how both cuts alter your perception of the movie. While I do ultimately prefer the original backwards cut with its meditative notion of Time Destroys All Thing...I will say the straight cut also holds a bleak power of its own with its more blunt Time Reveals All Things nature. Either way, this is still a ferociously powerful piece of rape-revenge cinema that holds quite a fucking punch.

-- Cobra Kai Season 4 -- Sneaking in at the very end of 2021 was Cobra Kai Season 4. I'm still having fun with this show. It's not great television but it is thoroughly entertaining nonetheless.

-- Kong vs Godzilla (Dir: Adam Winguard) -- I had fun with it. For what it was, I enjoyed it well enough.

-- The Suicide Squad (Dir: James Gunn) -- A nice solid return to Troma form for James Gunn. I miss this James Gunn. Although I will say, none of his mainstream films hold a candle to Super.

-- Last Night In Soho (Dir: Edgar Wright) -- It has some issues in the logic department at times, but I guess this is a film more about the concept and theme than it is concerned telling a logical plot. Still, I had a good time with this even with its issues.

-- My Cherry Pie (Dir: Addison Heath and Jasmine Jakupi) -- Yeah, I'm favoring a friends low budget horror film, but hey, I had a good time with this. It was a a fun little piece of Ozsploitation and was the type of film I needed to cheer me up this year.

-- Evil Dead Trap (Dir: Toshiharu Ikeda) -- First time seeing this and I had a blast with it. Was right up my alley on the weird-shit-o-meter that I like.

-- Onibaba (Dir: Kaneto Shindo) -- One that I had been meaning to see for years on end and one that I finally rectified last year. What an incredible piece of atmospheric horror cinema this was! It may have taken me awhile to get around to but damn it was good.

-- Uncut Gems (Dir: The Safdie Bros) -- I didn't get a chance to see this when it first came out and am only just now catching up with it courtesy of that newly minted Criterion Blu Ray. An excellent performance of desperation from Adam Sandler. Say what you will about his recent comedies being lazy, but when this man gets good material delivered to him he does indeed deliver in a big bad way!

-- Mirror (Dir: Andrei Tarkovsky) -- Tarkovsky is one of those filmmakers I've known of for a LONG time but have actually never dug into any of his work...until last year. I started digging into some of the films of Andrei Tarkovsky and of the few I did see, Mirror was one that really stuck with me. I think it was the stream of consciousness feel of it that really got me the most about it. I really appreciated the nonlinear and poetical structure it has about it and it ultimately is a rather interesting meditation on the nature of war.


Like I said, I wish I had seen more from 2021 but the reality is there just wasn't much I was interested in seeing from last year. Although there are a couple of films I still really want to see. I want to see Censor at some point as that looks intriguing to me. But I greatly enjoyed discovering older films I hadn't seen yet instead.
 
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