Last movie you watched ?

Damn, Rutger Hauer and Jennifer Jason Leigh. Gonna have to watch this one, sometime.

@DEVILinIRON: The entire thing is on Youtube ^

The world feels more like The Witcher than the actual Witcher show lol

I turned True Detective season 1 into a movie! Already seen it before and it felt like I remembered each line by heart. Still couldn't let it go till I binged the entire thing, that's how good it is.

Trespass. 7/10. One of Ice T’s best movies.

Frankenhooker

Indiana Jones and The Dial of Destiny. It was better than Kingdom of The Crystal Skull but that's a low bar. They at least gave most of the Indy characters from previous movies a send off. Would have liked to see Short Round one more time though.

Personal Shopper. Good movie starring Kristen Stewart from the Twilight series (which I have never seen).

The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane - Never really been big on Jodie Foster, just "meh", but she absolutely kills it in this movie. Crazy good. Need to dig out more 70's movies like this

The Long Good Friday. Good, but not too long.

Check out the sequels but this was underwhelming. Tries to be big and epic but just comes across as bloated and boring. And when boil the story down it's another basic "West bad/China good" they do a kabillion times over.

In the Line of Fire. 7/10

Enjoyed this. Every scene with Julian Sands (rip) is a good time. Ending sucks.

Decided to watch the first one. Very different. Didn't enjoy it as much.

He's lot more low key and less hamming it up, which results in boring. It also appears to be somewhat of a Terminator ripoff. Two dudes travel in time, meets woman etc...

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

Movie is all over the place. Some great fight scenes, but too long, too much le_drama and just a mess.

Flashpoint (2007 Hong Kong film with Donnie Yen, not the 2008 Canadian series with Amy Jo Johnson).

Great action. Kind of a meh plot.

Renfield and Mr Monks Last Case. Both were decent enough but I wouldn't have payed to rent them or see them in theaters but since they were on streaming services I already use they were worth my time.

What’s Love got to do With it. 7/10. Pretty good film.

In comparison, 2023 for me was the year of least watched movies (only 6). No apparent reason, just not was in the mood for them. However, today, I watched Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022), wherein Doctor Strange must help a teenager with the power of walking through alternate realities survive Scarlett Witch, who is hunting her down in order to syphon her powers (and kill her in the process) and find an alternate universe, in which the children, which she conjured up in WandaVision series are alive and well. It was a solid 8, however, once Wanda killed off the entire roster of alternate reality's heroes (mind you, that was freaking awesome to watch, probably the best part of the movie - Terminator Wanda), the film kinda lost its steam, but eh...

Good film starring a young Tim Roth.

Harry Potter and the deathly hallows part 2.

Watched Predator, Alien and Aliens

Predator is 9/10. Alien was 7/10 good horror movie, Aliens is overrated. its 6/10

then watched Mad max movies.

Fury road is best one. follow by 2.

Fury road is still kinda overrated as wasted tom hardy as max. still 8/10. first watch didnot liked but after watched entire saga its best.

Watched Beekeeper. Excellent movie. Its John wick starting Jason stathom with some interesting plot like call center scams.

9/10.

Better than the first film, Ben Schwartz is less annoying as Sonic. Idris Elba is great as Knuckles. Jim Carrey is hilarious as Dr. Robotnik. I liked seeing Dr. Robotnik get the master emerald which was awesome. Sonic and Tails were hilarious together and I like the call backs to Sonic 2 on Sega Genesis. 8/10 especially the ending credits.

I last watched Sonic 2, enjoyed it 8/10 Was let down by the sequel baiting of Shadow

Conan the Destroyer (1984)

Watched Conan the Barbarian three times, never The Destroyer. Nice vistas, crappier music with obvious lack of real orchestra (maybe a smaller room with a couple of instruments), Conan talks too much (made worse by Schwarzenegger's bad acting, but shouldn't talk so much anyway), bosses sucked, humor irritated, nice sense of adventure, feels pointless with ending teasing what the first movie's ending already teased, overall lacks excitement. Glad I finally watched it, but not really good. Will read the books at some point.

@warm_gun: Start with the original short stories by Robert E. Howard. Great stuff.

Yeah, I have the complete Robert E. Howard Conan collection on my wishlist. Just wish it was hardcover.

Just watched this. The Villainess.

Excellent korean martial arts action movie. its part martial arts, part john wick and part romantic drama.

9/10.

There's no way Red Sonja is a 5.1/10 on IMDB for what that means on IMDB, let alone the far lower consensus with critics. Way for Schwarzenegger to throw her under the bus by calling it his worst movie. Liked it slightly more than Conan the Destroyer anyway.

3/5

Star Trek 2009 - Only thing like about this movie is the soundtrack.

Where Eagles Dare

Infiltrate, obtain intel, uncover spies, exfiltrate. Violent action-adventure with an escape that's too long and neat. However many dynamite bombs you think the heroes pack into that case, it's more than that. MUCH more. They are immune to 10,000 bullets.

Edit: Lol, I just noticed Clint Eastwood is not even looking at where he's shooting on the poster.

Hard Times (1975, Walter Hill)

3.5/5

"Just like old times," James Coburn's character says to the other lead played by Charles Bronson. They were never close. Their partnership didn't even seem to last that long, counting the fights. The Bronson character's relationship with the young woman felt underdeveloped too.

Bronson moved pretty well and had a great body for a man his age.

Just finished Leprechaun 3 with my two sons. We watched all 5 Final Destination movies and are 3 into the 8 leprechaun movies over the past couple weeks.

Watched few days ago. Absolute best Romantic movie I have ever seen. much better than any clitche romantic movie like titanic.

didnot bore me from start to finish. written by tarrantino help it.

also han zimmer soundtrack is so good

@warm_gun: ordered the 4K releases of this and the original Conan the Barbarian; should be coming in tomorrow. Can't wait.

Appolo 13. Not bad 7/10.

Maigret Sets A Trap (2016). Being blasted by the media and the internal affairs for not catching a killer, who has been at large for five months, Inspector Maigret has to find a way to lure them out... 7/10

I wish any of the women I played as in action games had this kind of pizazz. (Either one.)

Liked Sonja's fighting style, but should have had more blood and gore. Flawed movie for sure. Poorly thought out in a number of ways. But good costumes, good sets, good music by Ennio Morricone. Liked it.

The 4K of Satoshi Kon's last anime, Paprika, pointless to do because it was animated in sub-1080, but maybe the colors they used weren't limited to TV standards? No, the old non-HDR version is probably more faithful. Looked good, though. Didn't see any upscaling shenanigans and colors were nice. Will keep both the new and old versions, see if this torrent of the old version I'm downloading is not window-boxed like the old American Blu-ray.

Charming. Really want to like it more, but think it's too dense and goes too far. One thing's for sure: animation is an amazing medium for dreams and American studios and their consumers are idiots for not seeing its uses beyond children's stories and adult television.

3.5/5

Almost all I do now as far as anime goes is watch movies that I have already seen, sometimes TV shows that I have seen. Watched only two new series in eleven years, and they were from the 1970s and '80s. Some Hosoda and Shinkai movies, all varying degrees of mediocre. I wrote about Hosoda's new social media-related virtual reality movie Belle five months ago, thought it kinda sucked, 2.5/5 or 1/2. Also commented on Demon Slayer: The Movie (2020), the biggest movie in Japan's history and a piece of shit. A couple of Ghibli movies that were left after anime stopped being a regular hobby for me. Yeah, don't like what's coming out of Japan.

Can't remember if I posted them here.

Sept. 13, 2023

Belle (2021)

It's about social media, being followed (not told in this work of fiction: the depression of young people, the tribalism that makes people willfully ignorant/excessively conspiratorial and the decline of society), and doesn't condemn it. Mixed with Disney's version of Beauty and the Beast. Feels like it's missing a bunch of scenes/introductions. Stuff just happens. Unbelievable behavior, like how the women in the music club/choir and the boys talk to the girl protagonist. In a scene where a school athlete doesn't know how to deal with a girl rooting for him and the girl protagonist makes him go up to her I threw my head back with eyes rolled in annoyance. A pretty significant portion of the movie feels like viewing the screen of someone browsing the web and different social media hubs in 3D with virtual avatars, not engaging storytelling. Had trouble following, because I was rather bored and it felt dyslexic. I don't know how they found the identity of the beast through the computer. Was borderline tapped out by that point, but pretty sure it was BS. How they later track down where he lives is super dumb and makes this world of 5 billion users seem very small. Why, out of 5 billion users, is he the only renegade and able to reach out to Belle (the protagonist's avatar)? The movie condones being yourself, revealing your identity, on the internet...

As much as I have complained about Makoto Shinkai over the years, Mamoru Hosoda is worse. He's an idiot. It's so depressing that these two rule the Japanese animated film industry. If I worked in the anime industry, even with the power of a director, I would want to kill myself every day, thinking of all the stories that can't be told and the worlds that can't be drawn because the viewers are a-holes, the money is very tight and the executives are so cautious.

Sept. 6, 2021

Demon Slayer – Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Mugen Train

What the hell IS this tripe? Felt like I walked into the middle of a shounen story that was probably convoluted and childish in its entirety anyway. And someone actually told me this was one of the examples of manga to movie adaptations that was very good, after I told them almost all the ones they were thinking of were probably TV shows and OVA series and that movie adaptations are usually better when they carve their own identities in part by telling stories better suited to shorter formats. Like almost any very faithful adaptation of a long running manga, this movie is confusing and loaded with so many unexplained characters for outsiders. So it's a shitty example that might as well be part of a series.

The character designs blow. Everyone is small enough to be a pre-pubescent child, including the adults, and the faces and hair are very typical of the modern clean, spiky, sleek variety, with those big pupils in all colors of the rainbow and whites in the middle that make them look like lifeless voids.

The violence is adult, but the battles are typical shounen crap, with everybody's power level over 9000, which just makes them all end up boring.

Unless you really like the TV show or manga, be smarter than me and don't bother. That it's probably rather inaccessible to outsiders makes me wonder how the hell it's the highest grossing Japanese movie ever made. How many of those viewers know the anime or manga? It just can't be half a billion dollars worth.

Gremlins (1984)

It's alright, has impressive puppets/animatronics, decent story, but I'm still gonna shit on it. Makes me feel like a snob, like I GET to be. The cuteness of the little monster (its human antics) is beneath me. Definitely conceived to sell toys, but I don't remember wanting one as a child. Story goes through so much trouble just to show monsters imitating humans (with inexplicable specificity), some kind of weird horror comedy without the horror. Or maybe the (secondary) intent was to have a vehicle with which to show little creatures killed in creative ways.

The cheese of Spielberg is always smellier when he produces instead of directs. (Though, Land Before Time still makes me emotional, more thanks to Don Bluth. Doesn't even feel like a Spielberg movie.) Knew Kathleen Kennedy's name was gonna be there too.

The father's inventions were too ridiculous to be funny, the dog-hating lady was so over the top in her nastiness.

Don't like the almost constant music, a uniquely American thing. Makes it feel overproduced and less sincere.

Set before Christmas. Nothing looks like snow. Flake falls on Billy's nose and just stays there, doesn't melt. An 11 million dollar production that couldn't be bothered to film in North Dakota or Montana during the winter.

I would have been the worst viewer in the cinema, would have laughed my ass off as Kate explained her sad story for hating Christmas. Father fell down the chimney and died, lmao. I'm the asshole who thinks she was correct for disliking Christmas.

That print of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs the monsters watched looked pretty good. We had to wait until 2023 before it looked like film at home.

Very powerful documentary. They're so stylized, and trying to be "epic" now, very dry, bare bones, no nonsense.