Oh yeah, I loved my moviepass while it worked how it was advertised and sold to me.
I didn't even necessarily mind them reducing the total number of movies I could go see. My max was generally 1-2 per week anyways. 3-4 movies per month for $10/month would've been fine.
The last straw for me was checking the app in the morning to see what was available to view that afternoon, making plans, getting to the theater, and then the viewing I planned on seeing was gone.
El Camino Christmas (Netflix), one of those movies you watch out of desperation to watch something expecting just Netflix original grade meh, but it actually does some things different and is more clever than I expected for a small town bottle-movie hostage dramedy taking place on Christmas Eve. Plus it has a solid b-list of talent, including:
You've got your usual twenty minute setup of characters and then the hostage situation takes place but it's done in a way that is more clever than you expect while still making it seem SOP by what the cops see as being a botched robbery. Then it slows down and you get characterization while the director is basically doing what he can to film the parts with certain actors around their schedules because it all feels like them doing him a favor (he directed First Sunday). Are the characters for the most part original? Not really, and I am getting hella sick of kid with autism being this go-to cheap characterization bit both for the sympathy strings as well as half filling in actual work for the parent in the situation, but best I can describe the movie is a person given generic furniture to work with in decorating a room, and they are able to place things just right to make you nod your head slightly DeNiro style and go "it's pretty decent, pretty good." It does go darker than you expect but does have a nice coda to really try and salvage having it take place on Christmas.
An average movie but one that you can at least respect for working within its budget, a recommend if you want to see decent shoestring budget film making and tire of watching Road House and Baseketball over and over on Netflix.
Is this the Breaking Bad Christmas special?
Switch: SW-7690-2320-9238Steam/PSN/Xbox: Drezdar
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cj iwakuraThe Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered Userregular
Watched La La Land for the first time in ages. I still love it, and Emma Stone breaks my heart every single time.
As much as I love the movie's highs, the second act has so much dead weight that drags it down. The theater subplot, the drama with his side band... I think the breakup could have been handled more organically than it was.
Texikan reviews are one of the most perplexing things
nexuscrawler on
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LegacyStuck Somewhere In CyberspaceThe Grid(Seattle)Registered User, ClubPAregular
That's also what I thought the first time I read that review, but 'El Camino Christmas' is a 2017 Netflix original, not to be confused with 'El Camino A Breaking Bad Movie'.
Can we get the chemicals in. 'Cause anything's better than this.
The theater subplot, the drama with his side band...
Aren't these pretty essential to their individual stories in terms of what they want as artists and who they want to be? I don't think they're subplots but the actual story, as much as anything else is.
Thirith on
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
The one woman show isn’t dead weight, nor is his band. They’re both integral to the themes of perseverance, integrity, self-doubt and dreams. Neither character gets where they end up without those things happening.
As a gay I was very happy when Moonlight snatched the Oscar away from La La Land but as an extremely white person I also enjoyed La La Land quite a bit and will put on the soundtrack sometimes
The theater subplot, the drama with his side band...
Aren't these pretty essential to their individual stories in terms of what they want as artists and who they want to be? I don't think they're subplots but the actual story, as much as anything else is.
They are, but I think it was sloppily handled. Oh no, he missed her performance because they had to rehearse! Things like that are just more trite then I think a script like that should be.
The theater subplot, the drama with his side band...
Aren't these pretty essential to their individual stories in terms of what they want as artists and who they want to be? I don't think they're subplots but the actual story, as much as anything else is.
They are, but I think it was sloppily handled. Oh no, he missed her performance because they had to rehearse! Things like that are just more trite then I think a script like that should be.
The one instance of that trope I fully accept is the scene in Spider-Man 2 with the jerk usher played by Bruce Campbell
@jacobkosh tell me you wouldn’t pay to see Kurt Russell suiting up and kicking ass to these first two themes. From Carpenter’s incredible album of music that criminally never had a film attached.
reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
edited October 2019
Saw some movies, felt like writing about them.
Les Affamés (also known as Ravenous) is a French-Canadian zombie movie. It's pretty good, the zombies aren't literally zombies but rather people what have gone bonkers and are now killing everyone. They're not mindless like zombies, they have some basic ability to creepily stare at you and build giant monuments to gods. As far as zombie movies go, it brings something a little different and fresh to the table. 4/5.
Dead Snow is kind of crap. All the characters are unlikeable film nerds and in the version I saw the dubbing was absolutely terrible. There's a small handful of okay-ish zombie kills, but overall I don't feel like the movie really does anything particularly interesting. 2/5.
The sequel is a lot more entertaining.
Alucarda is an old Spanish movie. A young lady by the name of Justine is sent to a nunnery for some reason, and there she meets the titular Alucarda. They frolick about about a bit, meet a pan and a Romani sorceress, find a tomb, Alucarda declares her love for Justine and suggests a suicide pact. Justine isn't quite ready for a suicide pact, so instead they open up an old casket and get possessed, after which they get naked and the pan helps them perform a Satanic blood ritual that involves Alucarda sucking on Justine's tits.
All in the first 20 minutes of the movie.
It's quite something.
However, the movie doesn't quite manage to be as good all the way through. While it's not by any means bad, there's a pretty noticeable downwards trajectory after the first act is over, and the ending is quite terrible. Still, it's an insane wild ride for the most part. 4/5.
What We Do In The Shadows is a Taika Waititi joint. I'm sure most of y'all seen it, it's a mockumentary about a group of vampires who live together. It's funny and occasionally touching, with a fun crew of characters. Stu is the best. 5/5.
Who Can Kill a Child is basically where Stephen King stole the idea for Children of the Corn from. Tom and Evie are on a vacation and Tom wants them to visit this lovely little island he was at some eleven years ago. They go there, the island seems deserted apart from some children, and no matter how obvious it becomes that something is wrong Tom simply refuses to leave.
Tom is the kind of protagonist who it is impossible to root for. He's stubborn, he lies to his wife, he's in denial. Even seeing what are very obviously murdered bodies, or straight up witnessing a young girl beat an old man to death with his own walking stick, isn't going to sway Tom from enjoying his vacation. Sure, he has some concerns about what's going on, but it takes an absolute forever and a half before he is finally willing to cut the vacation short.
Aside from Tom being Tom, another thing dragging the experience down is that as an older movie the pacing is glacial. It could be a good movie with some tweaks here and there, but it's just kind of annoying to watch. 2/5.
The Seventh Curse is a Hong Kong martial arts movie from the 80s. The movie starts with a group of terrorists that have taken some hostages. They get swiftly taken out by our hero, Chester Young, and a group of hongkongian SWAT guys. After that, there is a comedic pool party scene that has no relation to anything else that happens in the movie, followed by Chester Young finding a naked caucasian lady in his room. He then gets attacked by Dragon, our secondary character, who tells Chester that he has to return to Thailand before his blood curse kills him.
Before returning to Thailand, Chester asks advice from his good friend Wesley. He explains how he got the blood curse in a flashback sequence featuring naked boobs, a cult, a murderous demon alien baby creature, and a kung fu fight with an ancient skellington that transforms into a winged xenomorph. And just like in Alucarda, we're barely twenty minutes into the movie.
However, unlike Alucarda which wizzles out towards the end, The Seventh Curse keeps it up all the way through. The pacing is insane, the plot holds up as well as it needs to, and there's more than enough kung fu fights to go around. It's not the "best" movie I've seen this year, but it's definitely the most entertaining. 6/5, heartily recommended.
The theater subplot, the drama with his side band...
Aren't these pretty essential to their individual stories in terms of what they want as artists and who they want to be? I don't think they're subplots but the actual story, as much as anything else is.
They are, but I think it was sloppily handled. Oh no, he missed her performance because they had to rehearse! Things like that are just more trite then I think a script like that should be.
I think you’re missing a key element: the band isn’t what he really wants, he’s essentially given up his dream for a steady income that is making him unhappy, and this is what he misses her play for. She feels he’s given up both on himself and on her.
Thirith on
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
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AstaerethIn the belly of the beastRegistered Userregular
Who Can Kill a Child is basically where Stephen King stole the idea for Children of the Corn from.
I was curious if this was actually true (I realize you were just describing the movie and probably not making a literal claim, so this is really just curiosity)... but I don’t think it is.
King’s short story was first published in a magazine in March 1977. Who Can Kill a Child? was released in June 1976, so one question there is how long before publication did King write the story (and how long between submission and publication)? But also, the movie, a Spanish film, was not released in America until June 1978, more than a year after the story was published, and in fact several months after Night Shift, the book the story is collected in, was released.
King got his $100,000 advance for Carrie in 1973, so it’s possible he was vacationing abroad in 1976 and saw the film, or heard about it and had a copy imported for him (would it have been translated prior to foreign release, though?). On the other hand it’s possible he wrote the story, or at least had the idea, long before it got published. Perhaps there’s a King scholar out there who knows.
Anyway, that’s all kind of a stretch. I think what makes more sense is just two people having similar ideas around the same time.
I agree with you though that Who Can Kill a Child? isn’t a great movie, although its treatment of the kids is quite eerie. I think King’s short story does a decent job of the same thing; unfortunately the CotC movie humanizes the kids too much and so makes them much less scary.
I watched Won't You Be My Neighbor? over the weekend. I was interested in the film because of the great reviews, but I was also a bit apprehensive; Mr Rogers simply wasn't a thing over here (not sure whether he would've been well known in the UK, but in Switzerland he definitely wasn't), so all I knew about him was the collection of vague, often sneering references from other films, TV series or books, which made him sound like a trite, Polyannaish figure. I'm very glad I watched the film, though, as it gave me a much better understanding of why he's such a revered figure by many.
The film does a very good job of portraying Rogers and his work for children, and it was impossible for me not to come away with a deep respect for the way he related to children and took them seriously. His niceness also comes across as far removed from generic, smiley friendliness, as something that is exceedingly hard to achieve and a precious thing for those at the receiving end of it. When I grew up, we had children's programmes that took their audience seriously, but I don't think I ever saw anything that also addressed the dark and deeply sad things children often experience. The clip they showed from the show responding to Bobby Kennedy's assassination pretty much took my breath away with its simple, honest audacity.
Won't You Be My Neighbor? does drift into hagiography country, but my impression is that it would've been difficult to avoid this. The film gave me an impression of Fred Rogers as a deeply kind, earnest man, but as a human being nevertheless. As a documentary, it's perfectly fine but the filmmaking isn't all that striking - it's mostly talking heads and scenes from Mr Rogers' Neighborhood, with the occasional animated sequence trying to tie together certain themes - but as a document of the man it's well worth watching.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
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FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
edited October 2019
As far as I know, Mr. Rogers is the only man within my lifetime whose goodness actually lives up to the hype.
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cj iwakuraThe Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered Userregular
The theater subplot, the drama with his side band...
Aren't these pretty essential to their individual stories in terms of what they want as artists and who they want to be? I don't think they're subplots but the actual story, as much as anything else is.
They are, but I think it was sloppily handled. Oh no, he missed her performance because they had to rehearse! Things like that are just more trite then I think a script like that should be.
I think you’re missing a key element: the band isn’t what he really wants, he’s essentially given up his dream for a steady income that is making him unhappy, and this is what he misses her play for. She feels he’s given up both on himself and on her.
I got that, again, it just felt trite in how they executed it.
As far as I know, Mr. Rogers is the only man within my lifetime whose goodness actually lives up to the hype.
The kid is almost two and we found the show streaming on PBS Kids. The first was where they go to the restaurant and teach about ordering meals and we all sat in rapt attention.
Caught up on some flicks this week since I was off.
Jurrasic World Whatever Subtitle: Terrible. The island is nice but then I realize I don't give a shit about the humans and the movie is just there to make cash and feels obvious about it. Near the end I wanted to see Chris Pratt get eaten, I wanted to see the comic relief hacker guy get eaten within 10 minutes of him being on screen. All the villains are fucking obvious and the little girl reveal is just a whole lot of why and who cares? To clarify this is the last one, I say that because I am pretty sure the movie I described could be applied to at least three of the previous movies.
Hellboy: It ends with a manic shootout / punchfest set to Motley Crue's Kickstart my Heart. Who the fuck is this movie for? Do they even know what movie they're making? Lobster Johnson shows up, but somehow completely misfires despite being somehow cool in the comics I read. The best scene in the flick is the giant devil thing walking through the Thames to the Tower bridge, the rest of the flick was kinda poop. Mila is alright, as is Ian McShane kinda but his final bit just goes on too long.
John Wick 3: Loved the first, second was...not great. This one was pretty great. Halle Berry's dogs steal the show, Dacasos has some funny parts and oddly they go for a fourth one? I didn't think Hollywood could count past the three in trilogy. John makes some bizarre decisions and then recants them which felt confusing. The criminal assassin underworld has a shitload of trinkets and gewgaws to signify payments and debts, how the fuck do they ever keep track of these things. He better go to a libary in the fourth to withdraw a book with crucial plot items and find it was checked out and looted 2 years earlier. The fight with the two dudes right before the end and their banter was pretty fun.
Watched some other stuff and it was so forgettable that I forgot it, which is probably for the best.
I watched One Cut of the Dead recently, which is a very compelling mix of both self-conscious film craft and the ramshackle can-do atmosphere that produces it, but it had me thinking more about the point and implementation of 'oners', because I think the film is actually critiquing the artistic worth of them in a sly way.
The long tracking shot that opens the film isn't even contextualized as anything artistic, but as a concept introduced at a producer's level and imposed upon the production. This conceit provides a foil for the pretty delightful back half of the film, but it also cements the modern tracking shot as a technique that is almost always praised and discussed for for its mechanical difficulty rather than its artistic worth or appropriateness. The behind-the-scenes story is more interesting, which is true for both this film and the technique it hinges around.
I don't think this was always the case, rather difficult and puzzling tracking shots go as far back as silent cinema and feature heavily and meaningfully in the filmographies of many renowned directors (Tarkovsky, Angelopoulos, Jansco, etc), but a popular infatuation with them (which I feel started with the invention of steadicam and people like Kubrick and Scorsese implementing it) hasn't resulted in the technique adding a whole lot to modern cinema. 1917, the upcoming World War I thriller conceived in a single disguised take should be an exhilarating notion, but it's just tiring to me. It's not even that it's been done before, but that even though it's shot by Deakins, its visual concept comes across as both limiting and distracting.
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AstaerethIn the belly of the beastRegistered Userregular
How did you feel about Birdman, Tenzy? I thought the long take style there added a lot of tension—without the overt “look at this” indicators of normal edits, you got the sense that you were observing a space that was both theatrical and chaotic, where anything could happen.
Arguably Children of Men operates in the same way—surprises are more surprising, particularly when they come from off-screen space, when you can’t use the rhythm of the cutting to anticipate them. It’s the difference between a long take conversation and suddenly a grenade is thrown into the room, and a normal intercut conversation that cuts to a grenade being thrown into the room. In the latter scenario, it’s the edit that registers as the point of surprise before the grenade does, which I think might lessen the impact of it.
Certainly long takes can feel like a pointless stunt (the one in Atonement is a great example), but done right I think they create a spell of geographic and temporal unity, and one that can be great fun to suddenly puncture. Hopefully 1917 takes this to heart.
Certainly long takes can feel like a pointless stunt (the one in Atonement is a great example), but done right I think they create a spell of geographic and temporal unity, and one that can be great fun to suddenly puncture. Hopefully 1917 takes this to heart.
Oh thank the Maker I’ve always hated that bit and worried I was being a Luddite or I just didn’t get it somehow.
I thought they might be trying to establish space like the tour through the ship in Serenity or the house party in Pride & Prejudice but then they don’t do anything with it. It feels like “look at how long this shot is! Admire it, damnit!”
It was not a movie, but Kojima having each cutscene in MGSV be a continuous take felt like it accomplished almost nothing outside of making what would be cuts when two people are talking to each other really nauseating.
Who Can Kill a Child is basically where Stephen King stole the idea for Children of the Corn from.
I was curious if this was actually true (I realize you were just describing the movie and probably not making a literal claim, so this is really just curiosity)... but I don’t think it is.
King’s short story was first published in a magazine in March 1977. Who Can Kill a Child? was released in June 1976, so one question there is how long before publication did King write the story (and how long between submission and publication)? But also, the movie, a Spanish film, was not released in America until June 1978, more than a year after the story was published, and in fact several months after Night Shift, the book the story is collected in, was released.
King got his $100,000 advance for Carrie in 1973, so it’s possible he was vacationing abroad in 1976 and saw the film, or heard about it and had a copy imported for him (would it have been translated prior to foreign release, though?). On the other hand it’s possible he wrote the story, or at least had the idea, long before it got published. Perhaps there’s a King scholar out there who knows.
Anyway, that’s all kind of a stretch. I think what makes more sense is just two people having similar ideas around the same time.
I agree with you though that Who Can Kill a Child? isn’t a great movie, although its treatment of the kids is quite eerie. I think King’s short story does a decent job of the same thing; unfortunately the CotC movie humanizes the kids too much and so makes them much less scary.
King's story flows seamlessly from his major tic at the time - take an innocuous, everyday place or object and turn it into something malevolent. In this case, it's a combination of "haunted corn field" and "rural children."
What 2 had going for it is that it resolved the conflict of the movie, while making it clear there would be consequences for how that conflict was resolved. But on the whole it was a clean break and the story of those consequences would be told another time. Think how Two Towers ends at Helm's Deep while musing about how Sauron is still a threat.
The conflict of 3 feels very much not resolved. It's complicated and heightened by Winston's maybe-betrayal and then John is kinda left where he was at the start, outcast from the hidden society and the only change is some of them think he's dead, leaving him with more or less the same foes to contend with in part 4. Think how Desolation of Smaug ends in the middle of the struggle with Smaug.
I hate Birdman, but more for its cynicism, showiness, derivativeness, and uninteresting blend of cinematic and theatrical craft than for the continuous take shenanigans. It's admittedly propulsive, especially with that percussive score which provides beats and jolts that almost seem to stand in for fast cutting. I don't like the constant, below eye level push-pull-slide of the camera operation, but that's more of a how rather than a what or why.
In fact I think the most interesting sequence, and the most meaningful blend of film and stage is a 'diguised cut' itself, where the camera stays on a rooftop and we pass through the night into the morning. It's a pretty theatrical rift, more of a lighting change or scene transition than a common time lapse. Small thing I guess, but that part really worked for me.
What timing! I just watched Gaspar Noe's Climax last night. It has a long continuous take (42 minutes!!!) that was exhilarating. It propels the subject matter by grounding you to both the theatrical stage (the characters are all dancers) and the event (a drug-fueled descent into madness). Unlike previous Noe pictures, these long takes made the film feel more like a documentary, like I was actually following these people around as they lost their minds. It was terrifying.
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DemonStaceyTTODewback's DaughterIn love with the TaySwayRegistered Userregular
What timing! I just watched Gaspar Noe's Climax last night. It has a long continuous take (42 minutes!!!) that was exhilarating. It propels the subject matter by grounding you to both the theatrical stage (the characters are all dancers) and the event (a drug-fueled descent into madness). Unlike previous Noe pictures, these long takes made the film feel more like a documentary, like I was actually following these people around as they lost their minds. It was terrifying.
The sound in that movie is some of the most harrowing parts imo.
Like during that long take just hearing the the background screams and arguments continuously going on off screen and getting louder and more distant as you the camera traveled through the building was unsettling to such an incredible degree
Consider Russian Ark, a one-shot film that is truly one continuous shot but also will probably put most viewers to sleep.
I mean, I thought it had some good moments and a truly spectacular finish when you consider the technical aspects of it all, but boy is it ever a pretentious art film that probably no one would have ever given the time of day to if it weren't for the one-shot gimmick.
KetarCome on upstairswe're having a partyRegistered Userregular
I'd also watched Once Cut of the Dead recently, and I loved it. But the less you know going in, the better, so don't read about it or watch a trailer. If you're interested in an original zombie film that's fun to watch, give it a shot.
I woke up super early this morning and had time to kill, so I watched The Seventh Curse. Absolutely lived up to its 6/5 billing! I'll probably do a double feature of this and One Cut of the Dead when I have friends over near Halloween since both movies will be super appreciated by my usual group.
Russian Ark is a film that, when I saw it at the cinema, I found almost belligerently boring. Half an hour into it, I tried to will myself to fall asleep, but I was already so annoyed I was too wound up. I sometimes think I should rewatch it to see if I’d still have as visceral a reaction to it.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
I watched Won't You Be My Neighbor? over the weekend. I was interested in the film because of the great reviews, but I was also a bit apprehensive; Mr Rogers simply wasn't a thing over here (not sure whether he would've been well known in the UK, but in Switzerland he definitely wasn't), so all I knew about him was the collection of vague, often sneering references from other films, TV series or books, which made him sound like a trite, Polyannaish figure. I'm very glad I watched the film, though, as it gave me a much better understanding of why he's such a revered figure by many.
The film does a very good job of portraying Rogers and his work for children, and it was impossible for me not to come away with a deep respect for the way he related to children and took them seriously. His niceness also comes across as far removed from generic, smiley friendliness, as something that is exceedingly hard to achieve and a precious thing for those at the receiving end of it. When I grew up, we had children's programmes that took their audience seriously, but I don't think I ever saw anything that also addressed the dark and deeply sad things children often experience. The clip they showed from the show responding to Bobby Kennedy's assassination pretty much took my breath away with its simple, honest audacity.
Won't You Be My Neighbor? does drift into hagiography country, but my impression is that it would've been difficult to avoid this. The film gave me an impression of Fred Rogers as a deeply kind, earnest man, but as a human being nevertheless. As a documentary, it's perfectly fine but the filmmaking isn't all that striking - it's mostly talking heads and scenes from Mr Rogers' Neighborhood, with the occasional animated sequence trying to tie together certain themes - but as a document of the man it's well worth watching.
Yeah Fred Rogers is pretty canonized in the States(possibly Canada?), he's one of the few figures people will rally around as 'untouchable', especially since there tend to be few really 'good' childhood figures left after revelations behind other once-icons such as Cosby and (for the UK) Jimmy Savile.
He's done an astounding amount of good during his life, but he's definitely as human as the rest of us and I do think that biographies about him do tend to give him a free pass on that because of all of his public work - which is... fine...? A lot of people desperately need heroes to look up to especially today; but at least for me even for Rogers it feels a little askew to flawlessly glorify someone like the public does to the point where temperance goes out the window and anything less than glowing praise invites near-religiously fed backlash(which is incredibly ironic given Rogers' general philosophy). More specifically, to recall one experience I had regarding him, during the Twitch marathon of Mr. Rogers' neighborhood about two years ago Betty Aberlin would occasionally show up in Twitch chat and describe some of her experiences working with Fred. Some of the things she would recount(that I personally saw and was able to screenshot) were candid to the point where if anyone but her had said them, that person would probably be flatly shouted down by no less than the entire country. (mind she still loves him dearly and feels the overall good he did outweighs the rest, but nonetheless has deeply mixed feelings about her time on the show.)
As an aside, I'm kind of curious how an Aberlin-led Living Dead would have went over if it actually happened...
John Wick 3: Loved the first, second was...not great. This one was pretty great. Halle Berry's dogs steal the show, Dacasos has some funny parts and oddly they go for a fourth one? I didn't think Hollywood could count past the three in trilogy. John makes some bizarre decisions and then recants them which felt confusing. The criminal assassin underworld has a shitload of trinkets and gewgaws to signify payments and debts, how the fuck do they ever keep track of these things.
"Yes, I will take care of this problem for you. The price will be... one gold coin."
"Here you...... crap, do you have change for a blood marker?"
"Uhhhhhh maybe, let me look... I have three gold coins and a pinky finger. You don't have anything smaller than a blood marker?"
"No man, I forgot to hit the Assassin Trinket Machine on my way here. Look, will you take five Vials of Tears and half a Silver Hair Lock?"
"Ugh, no, fuck it, just Hitman-Venmo me later, next time come prepared, this is fucking amateur hour, dude."
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
John Wick 3: Loved the first, second was...not great. This one was pretty great. Halle Berry's dogs steal the show, Dacasos has some funny parts and oddly they go for a fourth one? I didn't think Hollywood could count past the three in trilogy. John makes some bizarre decisions and then recants them which felt confusing. The criminal assassin underworld has a shitload of trinkets and gewgaws to signify payments and debts, how the fuck do they ever keep track of these things.
"Yes, I will take care of this problem for you. The price will be... one gold coin."
"Here you...... crap, do you have change for a blood marker?"
"Uhhhhhh maybe, let me look... I have three gold coins and a pinky finger. You don't have anything smaller than a blood marker?"
"No man, I forgot to hit the Assassin Trinket Machine on my way here. Look, will you take five Vials of Tears and half a Silver Hair Lock?"
"Ugh, no, fuck it, just Hitman-Venmo me later, next time come prepared, this is fucking amateur hour, dude."
Seriously, who doesn't have at least three fully-stocked obscure murder stashes within easy walking distance of Hotel Kill?
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I didn't even necessarily mind them reducing the total number of movies I could go see. My max was generally 1-2 per week anyways. 3-4 movies per month for $10/month would've been fine.
The last straw for me was checking the app in the morning to see what was available to view that afternoon, making plans, getting to the theater, and then the viewing I planned on seeing was gone.
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Is this the Breaking Bad Christmas special?
As much as I love the movie's highs, the second act has so much dead weight that drags it down. The theater subplot, the drama with his side band... I think the breakup could have been handled more organically than it was.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
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They are, but I think it was sloppily handled. Oh no, he missed her performance because they had to rehearse! Things like that are just more trite then I think a script like that should be.
@jacobkosh tell me you wouldn’t pay to see Kurt Russell suiting up and kicking ass to these first two themes. From Carpenter’s incredible album of music that criminally never had a film attached.
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Les Affamés (also known as Ravenous) is a French-Canadian zombie movie. It's pretty good, the zombies aren't literally zombies but rather people what have gone bonkers and are now killing everyone. They're not mindless like zombies, they have some basic ability to creepily stare at you and build giant monuments to gods. As far as zombie movies go, it brings something a little different and fresh to the table. 4/5.
Dead Snow is kind of crap. All the characters are unlikeable film nerds and in the version I saw the dubbing was absolutely terrible. There's a small handful of okay-ish zombie kills, but overall I don't feel like the movie really does anything particularly interesting. 2/5.
The sequel is a lot more entertaining.
Alucarda is an old Spanish movie. A young lady by the name of Justine is sent to a nunnery for some reason, and there she meets the titular Alucarda. They frolick about about a bit, meet a pan and a Romani sorceress, find a tomb, Alucarda declares her love for Justine and suggests a suicide pact. Justine isn't quite ready for a suicide pact, so instead they open up an old casket and get possessed, after which they get naked and the pan helps them perform a Satanic blood ritual that involves Alucarda sucking on Justine's tits.
All in the first 20 minutes of the movie.
It's quite something.
However, the movie doesn't quite manage to be as good all the way through. While it's not by any means bad, there's a pretty noticeable downwards trajectory after the first act is over, and the ending is quite terrible. Still, it's an insane wild ride for the most part. 4/5.
What We Do In The Shadows is a Taika Waititi joint. I'm sure most of y'all seen it, it's a mockumentary about a group of vampires who live together. It's funny and occasionally touching, with a fun crew of characters. Stu is the best. 5/5.
Who Can Kill a Child is basically where Stephen King stole the idea for Children of the Corn from. Tom and Evie are on a vacation and Tom wants them to visit this lovely little island he was at some eleven years ago. They go there, the island seems deserted apart from some children, and no matter how obvious it becomes that something is wrong Tom simply refuses to leave.
Tom is the kind of protagonist who it is impossible to root for. He's stubborn, he lies to his wife, he's in denial. Even seeing what are very obviously murdered bodies, or straight up witnessing a young girl beat an old man to death with his own walking stick, isn't going to sway Tom from enjoying his vacation. Sure, he has some concerns about what's going on, but it takes an absolute forever and a half before he is finally willing to cut the vacation short.
Aside from Tom being Tom, another thing dragging the experience down is that as an older movie the pacing is glacial. It could be a good movie with some tweaks here and there, but it's just kind of annoying to watch. 2/5.
The Seventh Curse is a Hong Kong martial arts movie from the 80s. The movie starts with a group of terrorists that have taken some hostages. They get swiftly taken out by our hero, Chester Young, and a group of hongkongian SWAT guys. After that, there is a comedic pool party scene that has no relation to anything else that happens in the movie, followed by Chester Young finding a naked caucasian lady in his room. He then gets attacked by Dragon, our secondary character, who tells Chester that he has to return to Thailand before his blood curse kills him.
Before returning to Thailand, Chester asks advice from his good friend Wesley. He explains how he got the blood curse in a flashback sequence featuring naked boobs, a cult, a murderous demon alien baby creature, and a kung fu fight with an ancient skellington that transforms into a winged xenomorph. And just like in Alucarda, we're barely twenty minutes into the movie.
However, unlike Alucarda which wizzles out towards the end, The Seventh Curse keeps it up all the way through. The pacing is insane, the plot holds up as well as it needs to, and there's more than enough kung fu fights to go around. It's not the "best" movie I've seen this year, but it's definitely the most entertaining. 6/5, heartily recommended.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
I was curious if this was actually true (I realize you were just describing the movie and probably not making a literal claim, so this is really just curiosity)... but I don’t think it is.
King’s short story was first published in a magazine in March 1977. Who Can Kill a Child? was released in June 1976, so one question there is how long before publication did King write the story (and how long between submission and publication)? But also, the movie, a Spanish film, was not released in America until June 1978, more than a year after the story was published, and in fact several months after Night Shift, the book the story is collected in, was released.
King got his $100,000 advance for Carrie in 1973, so it’s possible he was vacationing abroad in 1976 and saw the film, or heard about it and had a copy imported for him (would it have been translated prior to foreign release, though?). On the other hand it’s possible he wrote the story, or at least had the idea, long before it got published. Perhaps there’s a King scholar out there who knows.
Anyway, that’s all kind of a stretch. I think what makes more sense is just two people having similar ideas around the same time.
I agree with you though that Who Can Kill a Child? isn’t a great movie, although its treatment of the kids is quite eerie. I think King’s short story does a decent job of the same thing; unfortunately the CotC movie humanizes the kids too much and so makes them much less scary.
The film does a very good job of portraying Rogers and his work for children, and it was impossible for me not to come away with a deep respect for the way he related to children and took them seriously. His niceness also comes across as far removed from generic, smiley friendliness, as something that is exceedingly hard to achieve and a precious thing for those at the receiving end of it. When I grew up, we had children's programmes that took their audience seriously, but I don't think I ever saw anything that also addressed the dark and deeply sad things children often experience. The clip they showed from the show responding to Bobby Kennedy's assassination pretty much took my breath away with its simple, honest audacity.
Won't You Be My Neighbor? does drift into hagiography country, but my impression is that it would've been difficult to avoid this. The film gave me an impression of Fred Rogers as a deeply kind, earnest man, but as a human being nevertheless. As a documentary, it's perfectly fine but the filmmaking isn't all that striking - it's mostly talking heads and scenes from Mr Rogers' Neighborhood, with the occasional animated sequence trying to tie together certain themes - but as a document of the man it's well worth watching.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
I got that, again, it just felt trite in how they executed it.
The kid is almost two and we found the show streaming on PBS Kids. The first was where they go to the restaurant and teach about ordering meals and we all sat in rapt attention.
Jurrasic World Whatever Subtitle: Terrible. The island is nice but then I realize I don't give a shit about the humans and the movie is just there to make cash and feels obvious about it. Near the end I wanted to see Chris Pratt get eaten, I wanted to see the comic relief hacker guy get eaten within 10 minutes of him being on screen. All the villains are fucking obvious and the little girl reveal is just a whole lot of why and who cares? To clarify this is the last one, I say that because I am pretty sure the movie I described could be applied to at least three of the previous movies.
Hellboy: It ends with a manic shootout / punchfest set to Motley Crue's Kickstart my Heart. Who the fuck is this movie for? Do they even know what movie they're making? Lobster Johnson shows up, but somehow completely misfires despite being somehow cool in the comics I read. The best scene in the flick is the giant devil thing walking through the Thames to the Tower bridge, the rest of the flick was kinda poop. Mila is alright, as is Ian McShane kinda but his final bit just goes on too long.
John Wick 3: Loved the first, second was...not great. This one was pretty great. Halle Berry's dogs steal the show, Dacasos has some funny parts and oddly they go for a fourth one? I didn't think Hollywood could count past the three in trilogy. John makes some bizarre decisions and then recants them which felt confusing. The criminal assassin underworld has a shitload of trinkets and gewgaws to signify payments and debts, how the fuck do they ever keep track of these things. He better go to a libary in the fourth to withdraw a book with crucial plot items and find it was checked out and looted 2 years earlier. The fight with the two dudes right before the end and their banter was pretty fun.
Watched some other stuff and it was so forgettable that I forgot it, which is probably for the best.
The long tracking shot that opens the film isn't even contextualized as anything artistic, but as a concept introduced at a producer's level and imposed upon the production. This conceit provides a foil for the pretty delightful back half of the film, but it also cements the modern tracking shot as a technique that is almost always praised and discussed for for its mechanical difficulty rather than its artistic worth or appropriateness. The behind-the-scenes story is more interesting, which is true for both this film and the technique it hinges around.
I don't think this was always the case, rather difficult and puzzling tracking shots go as far back as silent cinema and feature heavily and meaningfully in the filmographies of many renowned directors (Tarkovsky, Angelopoulos, Jansco, etc), but a popular infatuation with them (which I feel started with the invention of steadicam and people like Kubrick and Scorsese implementing it) hasn't resulted in the technique adding a whole lot to modern cinema. 1917, the upcoming World War I thriller conceived in a single disguised take should be an exhilarating notion, but it's just tiring to me. It's not even that it's been done before, but that even though it's shot by Deakins, its visual concept comes across as both limiting and distracting.
Arguably Children of Men operates in the same way—surprises are more surprising, particularly when they come from off-screen space, when you can’t use the rhythm of the cutting to anticipate them. It’s the difference between a long take conversation and suddenly a grenade is thrown into the room, and a normal intercut conversation that cuts to a grenade being thrown into the room. In the latter scenario, it’s the edit that registers as the point of surprise before the grenade does, which I think might lessen the impact of it.
Certainly long takes can feel like a pointless stunt (the one in Atonement is a great example), but done right I think they create a spell of geographic and temporal unity, and one that can be great fun to suddenly puncture. Hopefully 1917 takes this to heart.
Oh thank the Maker I’ve always hated that bit and worried I was being a Luddite or I just didn’t get it somehow.
I thought they might be trying to establish space like the tour through the ship in Serenity or the house party in Pride & Prejudice but then they don’t do anything with it. It feels like “look at how long this shot is! Admire it, damnit!”
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King's story flows seamlessly from his major tic at the time - take an innocuous, everyday place or object and turn it into something malevolent. In this case, it's a combination of "haunted corn field" and "rural children."
The conflict of 3 feels very much not resolved. It's complicated and heightened by Winston's maybe-betrayal and then John is kinda left where he was at the start, outcast from the hidden society and the only change is some of them think he's dead, leaving him with more or less the same foes to contend with in part 4. Think how Desolation of Smaug ends in the middle of the struggle with Smaug.
In fact I think the most interesting sequence, and the most meaningful blend of film and stage is a 'diguised cut' itself, where the camera stays on a rooftop and we pass through the night into the morning. It's a pretty theatrical rift, more of a lighting change or scene transition than a common time lapse. Small thing I guess, but that part really worked for me.
The sound in that movie is some of the most harrowing parts imo.
I mean, I thought it had some good moments and a truly spectacular finish when you consider the technical aspects of it all, but boy is it ever a pretentious art film that probably no one would have ever given the time of day to if it weren't for the one-shot gimmick.
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I woke up super early this morning and had time to kill, so I watched The Seventh Curse. Absolutely lived up to its 6/5 billing! I'll probably do a double feature of this and One Cut of the Dead when I have friends over near Halloween since both movies will be super appreciated by my usual group.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
he had to go outside in Russia in winter for those shots
wearing a tshirt
Yeah Fred Rogers is pretty canonized in the States(possibly Canada?), he's one of the few figures people will rally around as 'untouchable', especially since there tend to be few really 'good' childhood figures left after revelations behind other once-icons such as Cosby and (for the UK) Jimmy Savile.
He's done an astounding amount of good during his life, but he's definitely as human as the rest of us and I do think that biographies about him do tend to give him a free pass on that because of all of his public work - which is... fine...? A lot of people desperately need heroes to look up to especially today; but at least for me even for Rogers it feels a little askew to flawlessly glorify someone like the public does to the point where temperance goes out the window and anything less than glowing praise invites near-religiously fed backlash(which is incredibly ironic given Rogers' general philosophy). More specifically, to recall one experience I had regarding him, during the Twitch marathon of Mr. Rogers' neighborhood about two years ago Betty Aberlin would occasionally show up in Twitch chat and describe some of her experiences working with Fred. Some of the things she would recount(that I personally saw and was able to screenshot) were candid to the point where if anyone but her had said them, that person would probably be flatly shouted down by no less than the entire country. (mind she still loves him dearly and feels the overall good he did outweighs the rest, but nonetheless has deeply mixed feelings about her time on the show.)
As an aside, I'm kind of curious how an Aberlin-led Living Dead would have went over if it actually happened...
"Yes, I will take care of this problem for you. The price will be... one gold coin."
"Here you...... crap, do you have change for a blood marker?"
"Uhhhhhh maybe, let me look... I have three gold coins and a pinky finger. You don't have anything smaller than a blood marker?"
"No man, I forgot to hit the Assassin Trinket Machine on my way here. Look, will you take five Vials of Tears and half a Silver Hair Lock?"
"Ugh, no, fuck it, just Hitman-Venmo me later, next time come prepared, this is fucking amateur hour, dude."
Seriously, who doesn't have at least three fully-stocked obscure murder stashes within easy walking distance of Hotel Kill?
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Well... 90% of his hands, and a reason.
Ain't that a bitch
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