Except for all the plot stuff, the setting, the characters, the relative age range of the main characters, and so on. They are pretty much as different as two movies could be.
Little Monsters was okay, but the tone is all over the place, in a bad way, the main character is an impressively unlikable creep, and they do not know how to end the movie, so credits hit immediately after the resolution, like, immediately.
The positives include lupita nyong'o's performance and singing and Josh Gad's scene chewing, misogynistic scumbag children's show host.
The kills are few and uninspired except for one:
Josh Gad's co-host is a puppet/puppeteer who is killed early. The payoff is the zombie puppeteer zombie "bites" Gad with the puppet's mouth as though it also became zombified.
Ultimately, it's definitely a watchable horror comedy, but the negatives make it painfully mediocre. I wouldn't watch it again, but I'm not mad I watched it, I guess.
I saw that the John Wick director has been connected with a Ghosts of Tushima adaptation. Samurai movie with John Wick fighting? Man that can be awesome.
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
I just think its dumb doing a sequel reboot whatever of face/off do your own off kilter action movie. Stop digging shit up that doesn't need to be.
I guess idk, it's not like some sacred cow or anything. They remade point break and literally nobody remembers or cares, if you say point break everyone knows you mean the original.
If things never got sequels or reboots we wouldn't have The Dark Knight, Fury Road, or like any Godzilla films
I don't necessarily disagree on principal; I just get annoyed when there's a remake or sequel to something that was not particularly good in the first place, only to have execs get surprised that people don't actually want to see more of something that they only made popular because of the lulz or memes or whatever word is hip at any given time.
Plus the inevitable condescension and "tsk'ing" from them, blaming the failure on unreasonable fans or whatever.
At least Batman had a solid IP behind it, and while the original sequels leaned in on the cheese, Mad Max was a legitimately good indie film.
I mean, hey, let studios make whatever they want, I guess. It just frequently feels like these choices aren't being made with sound reasoning or expectations, and I'd like fewer justifications for things that could be good not being made because something that a lump of dirt could predict was bound to fail, fails.
I saw that the John Wick director has been connected with a Ghosts of Tushima adaptation. Samurai movie with John Wick fighting? Man that can be awesome.
I saw that the John Wick director has been connected with a Ghosts of Tushima adaptation. Samurai movie with John Wick fighting? Man that can be awesome.
He's supposed to be doing a Highlander reboot.
Honestly I wonder if he'll ever do anything but John Wick movies and be attached to other stuff. David Leitch is the one who's actually done non wick films.
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
I decided a long time ago that John Wick was absolutely a reboot of Highlander, and I will never be convinced otherwise.
This was before Stahelski was linked to a potential Highlander reboot/sequel.
If he also does Highlander, I'm on board. I've loved Highlander since I was a kid, though, really just the first movie and the TV show with Adrian Paul. The rest is...eh.
Little Monsters was okay, but the tone is all over the place, in a bad way, the main character is an impressively unlikable creep, and they do not know how to end the movie, so credits hit immediately after the resolution, like, immediately.
The positives include lupita nyong'o's performance and singing and Josh Gad's scene chewing, misogynistic scumbag children's show host.
The kills are few and uninspired except for one:
Josh Gad's co-host is a puppet/puppeteer who is killed early. The payoff is the zombie puppeteer zombie "bites" Gad with the puppet's mouth as though it also became zombified.
Ultimately, it's definitely a watchable horror comedy, but the negatives make it painfully mediocre. I wouldn't watch it again, but I'm not mad I watched it, I guess.
Grade: C
I spent the entire time reading this post wondering how you could recognize a kid Lupita or Josh in a movie from 1989.
Its very much a z level movie that happened to get Nic Cage. I enjoyed it, but like don't go in expecting production values, or like actually decent writing. But it does have a lot of Nicolas Cage.
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
Little Monsters was okay, but the tone is all over the place, in a bad way, the main character is an impressively unlikable creep, and they do not know how to end the movie, so credits hit immediately after the resolution, like, immediately.
The positives include lupita nyong'o's performance and singing and Josh Gad's scene chewing, misogynistic scumbag children's show host.
The kills are few and uninspired except for one:
Josh Gad's co-host is a puppet/puppeteer who is killed early. The payoff is the zombie puppeteer zombie "bites" Gad with the puppet's mouth as though it also became zombified.
Ultimately, it's definitely a watchable horror comedy, but the negatives make it painfully mediocre. I wouldn't watch it again, but I'm not mad I watched it, I guess.
Grade: C
I spent the entire time reading this post wondering how you could recognize a kid Lupita or Josh in a movie from 1989.
Little Monsters was okay, but the tone is all over the place, in a bad way, the main character is an impressively unlikable creep, and they do not know how to end the movie, so credits hit immediately after the resolution, like, immediately.
The positives include lupita nyong'o's performance and singing and Josh Gad's scene chewing, misogynistic scumbag children's show host.
The kills are few and uninspired except for one:
Josh Gad's co-host is a puppet/puppeteer who is killed early. The payoff is the zombie puppeteer zombie "bites" Gad with the puppet's mouth as though it also became zombified.
Ultimately, it's definitely a watchable horror comedy, but the negatives make it painfully mediocre. I wouldn't watch it again, but I'm not mad I watched it, I guess.
Grade: C
I spent the entire time reading this post wondering how you could recognize a kid Lupita or Josh in a movie from 1989.
guys it may surprise you to find out that, against all odds, both Doom movies suck.
The first movie feels made by disinterested filmmakers wanting to make some low-effort money; it's workmanlike, poorly lit, plain to look at, rewrites the schlocky central premise of the game to omit Hell entirely (which, like, why even) and is deeply un-fun until near the end of the movie, where the fun stuff is far too little and comes too late. It's mostly a more boring Resident Evil with, like, two standout moments, which is exactly enough to make the rest of the movie even more disappointing. Not worth the time. Also who the fuck had the idea to do the fun and silly first person scene with a song that sounds a bit like, but is definitely not, At Doom's Gate? Just use At Doom's Gate!
Doom: Annihilation is also boring and dumb but for opposite reasons. While the first one seems like it was made by professional filmmakers who just didn't care to make the effort of producing a Doom movie that was fun, faithful, or interesting, This one seems like it was made by a bunch of fans who were super excited to put a bunch of Doom stuff on screen but didn't really know how to make a movie, so they just safely built one out of standard cliches and tropes that aren't spun into anything entertaining or self-aware. It's like milk-flavored ice cream, sprinkled with... zombies and chunky, primary-colored keycards, I guess. Look, the analogy falls apart here.
Anyway these movies suck, just watch Event Horizon. It also sucks but it knows it and has fun doing it.
Doom movie is probably the only movie I was ever excited about seeing and went to watch in the theater on opening night edit-alone because I didnt have anyone to ask to come with me at that point.
The cast is solid. Urban and Rock can deliver. We know this. The movie was just dumb and bad. Trying to shoehorn too much game when it didnt matter but ignore it when it did?
I honestly wanted Doom book dumb stupid fun. I was disappointed even going in with limited expectations and never bothered with the sequels.
The first person sections were hyped up so much and while neat they did it so infrequently it was just a gimmick. Imagine a Hardcore Henry style Doom movie, that would actually be neat.
Doom movie is probably the only movie I was ever excited about seeing and went to watch in the theater on opening night edit-alone because I didnt have anyone to ask to come with me at that point.
The cast is solid. Urban and Rock can deliver. We know this. The movie was just dumb and bad. Trying to shoehorn too much game when it didnt matter but ignore it when it did?
I honestly wanted Doom book dumb stupid fun. I was disappointed even going in with limited expectations and never bothered with the sequels.
This explains the Doom movie very well and I don't know why they would do this
I was hoping for a trashy, incredibly stupid and lame, chrome-covered, but still kind of fun mid-2000s action movie, because that was as high as my expectations could get and also my wife loves those kinds of movies, so maybe at least one of us could get something out of the deal. It failed those expectations. There are glints of that sort of movie in there, with some of the Rock's character arc and obviously the first person scene. It's like someone involved in the movie realized what sort of thing this should have been from the get-go, and people only started listening to them when they were nearly done.
Hardcore Henry was amazing, lol. Was probably the most literal translation of an FPS to the movie screen you're going to get.
It was a very interesting cinematic achievement but damn I am not super prone to motion sickness but I was getting a headache by the end of that film.
By the maybe last third of the movie I was over the whole FPS gimmick. I thought it was cool and there are some legitimate breathtaking shots there, but its too much for an entire movie I think.
Nicholas Cage appears to enjoy making movies more than anyone else.
guys it may surprise you to find out that, against all odds, both Doom movies suck.
The first movie feels made by disinterested filmmakers wanting to make some low-effort money; it's workmanlike, poorly lit, plain to look at, rewrites the schlocky central premise of the game to omit Hell entirely (which, like, why even) and is deeply un-fun until near the end of the movie, where the fun stuff is far too little and comes too late. It's mostly a more boring Resident Evil with, like, two standout moments, which is exactly enough to make the rest of the movie even more disappointing. Not worth the time. Also who the fuck had the idea to do the fun and silly first person scene with a song that sounds a bit like, but is definitely not, At Doom's Gate? Just use At Doom's Gate!
Doom: Annihilation is also boring and dumb but for opposite reasons. While the first one seems like it was made by professional filmmakers who just didn't care to make the effort of producing a Doom movie that was fun, faithful, or interesting, This one seems like it was made by a bunch of fans who were super excited to put a bunch of Doom stuff on screen but didn't really know how to make a movie, so they just safely built one out of standard cliches and tropes that aren't spun into anything entertaining or self-aware. It's like milk-flavored ice cream, sprinkled with... zombies and chunky, primary-colored keycards, I guess. Look, the analogy falls apart here.
Anyway these movies suck, just watch Event Horizon. It also sucks but it knows it and has fun doing it.
That’s really rude. His full title is DR. Doom, thank you much much.
The Fantastic Four movies were bad tho I agree even though I never saw them.
Watched the Pepe documentary Feels Good Man on Theatrical-at-Home (even got two “tickets” to support my local art house”). I know it came out a while ago, but it is amazing. In turns hilarious, insightful, and ultimately heartbreaking.
I didn’t really key in on Pepe early on as I didn’t really care for general forums back then. So I was sort of blindsided when he was co-opted into the alt-right. The film really sorted it out for me, and has a lot to say about art, artists and their relation to the wide world.
Finished 1960 in my viewing project. The start of a new decade, and a run of a good 6 or 7 years where Hollywood was being seriously overshadowed by what the rest of the world was making. An exciting era of 'New Waves' popping up left and right, innovations in documentary and experimental filmmaking, and excursions into difficult, lurid, and timely subject matter. France was overripe with new talent, Japanese cinema was still incredible, Italy had one of its most iconic years, Eastern Europe was getting buff, and there were some other really cool pictures from other spots in Asia too.
It's making less and less sense to start with America every time I write one of these, but for the sake of tradition, let's start there. It was a bit of a scattered year, but there's a handful of really solid offerings. 1960 had one of the strongest Best Picture winners ever: Billy Wilder's terrific dark romantic comedy The Apartment exhibits essentially all of his strengths as a writer-director while adding a stronger visual language and sense of atmosphere. I'm not sure Wilder ever made another film quite as good as this.
Another more mature Hollywood romance, Strangers When We Meet, about a pair of suburbanites having an affair, is also very good and doesn't get talked about a lot (probably because Quine's direction more subtle than Sirk's or Minnelli's). Wild River, one of Elia Kazan's very best films, examines a woman refusing to move during a dam development project on the Tennessee. It's a well-acted, intelligent character piece that's ripe with subtext on the American psyche.
There's also Psycho! What hasn't been said about this one? I think it's really sharp, effective film craft. Is the story and construction all that impressive? Not really, but it's still uncomfortable, still able work its way into the mind well after viewing. And not an American film, though an English language film that invites comparison to Hitchcock's film: Peeping Tom was also released this year. It's also a psychological, scopophilic serial killer picture with disturbing payoffs and excellent visuals. But it has that Archers' attention to colour and arguably greater camp value, so I think it's really worth seeing. It's a film of comparable quality as well as subject matter.
And I guess it goes here, though it's made in Mexico doesn't feel anything like an American movie: there's also The Young One. Luis Buñuel's provocative, poetic drama about a black man who escapes lynching and finds himself taking refuge on an island with a racist game warden and a teenage girl. Everything troubling that could come of this premise either happens or is flirted with, and yet it maintains a wondrous psychological power and real sense of atmosphere. It's one of his best works of his North American period.
1960 was a big year for French cinema: the second major year of the French New Wave and the introduction of probably the most important living director: Jean-Luc Godard with his film Breathless. Jazzy, improvisational... a bit bland? It always struck me as more of a movie about movies than an exploration of life. I guess it's about how those two intersect, to be fair. In any case I've never been that big of a fan, though I like some of the other stuff old JLG has made. Putting that film aside, there's still plenty to appreciate from France this year.
Fellow Cahiers du Cinema director Francois Truffaut made what I think is his best early work: Shoot the Piano Player. A small crime film with a real pessimistic streak; it's really well shot and the performances are all solid. It's him energetically creating genre material without being so cute about it (The Bride Wore Black? Bleh. Mississippi Mermaid? Yuck). And another Cahiers boy, the underrated Claude Chabrol made Les Bonnes Femmes, a uniquely grim and confrontational film about dating in Paris. Following the social lives of a handful of women who work together, it shows the horror, both minor and major, of being interested in and being pursed by men. It's one of his defining works.
A new filmmaker, one of my favourites from France, Maurice Pialat, made a documentary short that I really love called L'Amour Existe. It's a poetic, polemical essay film about the stultifying Parisian suburbs that's just so convincing and well thought out, both an argument and as a work of visual art. The funny thing is that it's completely different from the style he'd develop when he transitioned to feature filmmaking. Regardless, I think this short is one of the best films of this year.
Georges Franju directed the eerie, seminal horror film Eyes Without a Face which is definitely worth praising for its uncanny mix of old mad scientist storylines on sleek, modernist surface. Rene Clement adapted The Talented Mr. Ripley as Purple Noon, a sun-drenched, austere thriller led by the incomparable Alain Delon. And Jacques Becker directed his last feature film: Le Trou. It's a prison escape story with such a devoted sense of teamwork and procedure, only Bresson's A Man Escaped feels comparable in its greatness. It's a film where you watch, for minutes a time, characters bashing through cement to reach freedom.
A massive year for Japan. The new wave really takes off this year with the young Shochiku directors, but almost every important director working had something---often times several films worth checking out.
Yasujiro Ozu had the very sweet Late Autumn, which repurposes one of his favourite storylines (single parent + marrying age daughter) with more levity. Akira Kurosawa had The Bad Sleep Well, his wonderfully staged corporate noir inspired by Hamlet. Kon Ichikawa had a strange, prickly melodrama about a fickle Osaka merchant trying to make sense of his place in a female-dominated merchant family, Bonchi. Kaneto Shindo made a visually striking dialogue-free drama about a farming family that lives on a small island, The Naked Island. Much of the film is the parents gathering water from the mainland and hiking it up the steep shore of their island home.
Young director Kihachi Okamoto made a comic-western-war film set in occupied Manchuria called Westward Desperato that works better than it probably should. Future cult icon Teruo Ishii had a very fun and quick moving noir pastiche called Black Line. And a director I had never heard of, Hiromichi Horikawa, made The Lost Alibi, which is a great, well-acted moral thriller about a man who faces a dilemma when he's the alibi for someone falsely accused of murder, but risks ruining his marriage and career by coming forward with it.
The versatile Keisuke Kinoshita had a couple of very different films this year. Spring Dreams is a pretty funny class satire about an old, poor man who suffers a stroke in the living room of a rich family and under doctor's orders can't be moved. The River Fuefuki is a multi-generational trajedy about a family of peasants whose men are exploited in decades of war. It's a sombre, stylistically unique period film, which uses tinting and hand painted swipes of colour in contrast with its black and white cinematography.
Tomu Uchida gave me two more reasons to consider him a favourite. The Master Spearman, a lively, thematically compelling samurai drama about disillusionment and duty that tells the life of a warrior who's told to commit suicide, then not to, then to do so again after his master disgraces himself. An even better societal critique is found in his Hero of the Red Light District, about a textile merchant with facial discoloration who falls for the first time for a geisha whose business is out to financially exploit him. Both of these are beautifully produced and directed with elegance, but Hero has the more classical, tragic storyline, and the final sequence where the protagonist furiously gives the film its title under a torrent of falling cherry blossoms is one of the best scenes of the year.
Yasuzo Masumura also had a pair of films worth mentioning this year: the solid, Yukio Mishima-led crime picture Afraid to Die, and another film a little harder pigeon-hole: A False Student. It's about a guy in his early twenties who repeatedly fails the entrance exams to university, then decides to just go anyways and pretend to be a student. He then becomes involved in student activism until they start to become suspicious. It's a bizarre but very engaging dark satirical comedy that works well with some of the new wave stuff about leftist activists that was coming out at the same time.
New Wave director Koreyoshi Kurahara had the brief but entertaining heist picture Intimidation which was a fun watch. He also made one of the best films of the year, the electric, jazzy, and wonderfully despicable The Warped Ones. It's a real step up from other sun tribe films, with a relentlessly physical lead performance and terrific camera work. Expressing the angst and frustration of being young and angry in a polite, conservative culture, it's like a feral animal let out of a cage.
Which bears some comparison to the debuting Shochiku directors. Shochiku was the most conservative, family friendly Japanese film studio (they still sorta are), and at the start of the 60's they decided to let a trio of young, wild, politically active filmmakers start making stuff, and it turned out they were three of the most important directors of the period. Masahiro Shinoda's first film, One Way Ticket to Love is an atmospheric backstage melodrama set in Tokyo's jazz clubs that I liked. Dry Lake is more interesting and troubling: a film about a disturbed, angry young man who believes the leftist protests at the time weren't radical enough and flirts with extremism. Yoshishige Yoshida had a couple films too, but Blood is Dry is my favourite: a dark satire about a corporate worker who attempts suicide at a strike, only for his tragic event to be repurposed by the company as an ad campaign. And then Nagisa Oshima made two mean gangland pictures A Cruel Story of Youth and The Sun's Burial, but his richest this year is Night and Fog in Japan. Born out of his frustrations with student activism in university, it's a theatrical, Brechtian drama about the erosion and failures of leftist demonstration in Japan. Set at a wedding with forceful, accusatory dialogue and a tangled flashback structure, it's a demanding, intelligent film. Shochiku pulled it after one week and Oshima quit the studio. Eventually the two other directors would as well.
But saving the best for last, my main man Mikio Naruse made 3 and a half films this year. The half, A Woman's Testament he co-directed with Yuzo Kawashima, and it's a colourful, sometimes lively film about a gaggle of hostesses facing problems in modern Japan. Pretty good. More grandiose is Daughter, Wife, Mother which has one of the most ridiculous casts of the period. It's a large ensemble piece about a family sapping money from a recently widowed member and the value of the family home. It's very good, showing a real aptitude for widescreen photography, but it's maybe too wide a yarn for Naruse's focused, observational style. When a Woman Ascends the Stairs, probably Naruse's most famous work internationally, is built more to his specifications: the story of a widowed bar hostess trying to figure out how to move forward in her life professionally and romantically. Hideko Takamine is incredible in the lead and it has his quiet, cumulative dramatic effect---slowly becoming a wrenching experience. A new favourite though, is Approach of Autumn, about an adolescent boy who moves to Tokyo with his single mother and has to live away from her with his uncle's family. It's among the most profound, most keenly realized coming of age films I've ever watched; totally, subtly devastating without ever feeling forced or untrue. He's the only guy who can totally bowl me over with shot-reverse-shot.
Italy also had a banner year. Two films were the queens of the 1960 Cannes Film festival: L'Avventura and La Dolce Vita---both draining, modern epics about spiritual and moral disallusionment that had an enormous influence on the shape of arthouse cinema. Antonioni's film may have been more influential, especially sytlistically. It's the story of a group socialites who go out boating, and decide to explore a deserted island. One of them just disappears, and the rest look for her... kinda. The rest of the film is a half-hearted search for her that feels more empty and self-serving than helpful. Its pioneering use of duration and inaction is actually really effective. It's an incredible looking film, and if you can find the characters interesting (even if only in a reptilian sort of way), it's an engaging watch.
Fellini's film, which is about Roman nightlife and celebrity culture is a far more festive, bombastic affair. It's totally gorgeous (as a film about that city, time in history, and subject matter should dictate), but its bitter ironies about burnout, artistic failure, depression, and the denial of beauty make it one of the most spiritual films about modern life. It's draining; crammed with unforgettable moments and made with great feeling. It's a soul-taker, and one of the finest films ever made.
A couple of Italian filmmakers I'm not the most acquainted with made films that really impressed me. Antonio Pietrangeli made Adua and Her Friends, a lively and well acted comedy about a group of women who open a restaurant after their brothel closes. And Luigi Comencini made a really strong war film called Everybody Go Home. Set during the double occupation directly after the defeat of the Italian forces, it's a kind of tragicomic Odyssey about a group of dismissed soldiers trying to return home, and it's really effective.
And Luchino Visconti made Rocco and His Brothers, a kind of marriage between his earlier neorealist styling and his direction towards grandiose, operatic aspirations. It doesn't sound like it should work, and it's a bit of an odd beast, but the principle cast is excellent and the film's scope helps its two modes of storytelling to synthesize.
Poland was another country with a new band of filmmakers, and 1960 showcases a lot of talent. The standard this year seemed to be consciously postwar, free-form romances: Innocent Sorcerors, Nobody's Calling, Goodbye, See You Tomorrow. They're the sort of thing that Skolimowski would push further in coming years but they display a style and richness of new talent (Skolimowski wrote the Wajda film, and Polanski appears in two of them). One film from the country that was a little different was Aleksander Ford's Knights of the Teutonic Order, a well-paced Middle Ages epic with nice production value despite a low budget. I think I liked that one best, which surprised me.
One of Czechoslovakia's most important filmmakers, Frantisek Vlacil, released his first feature ahead of the Czechoslovak New Wave, The White Dove. Concerning a paraplegic boy nursing a lost carrier dove back to heath with his upstairs neighbour, it's a lot of things in a small package: a sentimental story of connection in an urban environment, a symbolic parable about liberty, a rigorous visual study of natural and designed environments and beings. It's a work of such promising directorial talent, it's no wonder this guy went on to make so many great films.
The Soviet Union had a couple of films I really liked too. Technical master Mikhail Kalatozov made the eye-popping survival story A Letter Never Sent, which has a few totally wild sequences (like the forest fire holy). And Iosif Kheifits, a director I hadn't seen anything from until now, made a terrific adaptation of Chekhov's Lady With the Dog that has a subtle, nearly indescribable visual style. Somehow mannered and yet deeply psychological and almost impressionistic. Basically perfect for Chekhov.
India, in particular the Bengali filmmakers, had a very good year as well. The best known director from the country, Stayajit Ray, had Devi, a film about a young woman who has theological importance thrust upon her by her community. It's a feminist story of isolation, a theme that I think he made better films about, but this one is handled with his usual sensitivity. Ritwik Ghatak would have the strongest offering this year from India: The Cloud-Capped Star, a brilliantly made melodrama about a woman who sees her opportunities in life dwindle as she's weighed down by family tragedy and exploitation. It's a real classic, with excellent visual direction. And someone I had never seen a film from until now: Mrinal Sen made The Wedding Day, a hard to pin down drama about a middle-aged bachelor who ends up marrying a teenager just prior to the Second World War. It moved in such peculiar ways and yet was very mature in the handling of its themes. I'm looking forward to seeing more from Sen, I liked this one.
Latin America offered a couple of films I enjoyed as well: Mexican director Roberto Gavaldon's Faustian folk fantasy Macario, about a peasant who is supernaturally given the ability to prevent death, and the Argentinian documentary short Tire Dié, about child beggars who run along side passenger trains.
And lastly, South Korea had what might be the single most influential release in its film history: The Housemaid. It's about an upper-middle class family that hires a disturbed young woman as the new maid, and things get out of hand pretty quick. It's lurid, feverish melodrama, and its observations on class and general nastiness can be seen in a lot of modern South Korean output.
Top 10:
1. La Dolce Vita
2. Approach of Autumn
3. L'Amour Existe
4. The Apartment
5. The Young One
6. Le Trou
7. The Cloud-Capped Star
8. Hero of the Red Light District
9. The Warped Ones
10. Les Bonnes Femmes
Honourable mentions in vague preferential order:
-The Lady With the Dog
-Wild River
-Shoot the Piano Player
-When a Woman Ascends the Stairs
-Night and Fog in Japan
-Psycho
-The White Dove
-Peeping Tom
-The Lost Alibi
-Purple Noon
-Blood is Dry
-Everybody Go Home
-The Housemaid
-The River Fuefuki
-Adua and Her Friends
-Letter Never Sent
-A False Student
-Late Autumn
-Rocco and His Brothers
-Strangers When We Meet
-Eyes Without a Face
-The Naked Island
-The Bad Sleep Well
-The Master Spearman
-Daughter Wife Mother
-Westward Desperado
-Spring Dreams
-Bonchi
-Black Line
-Tire Dié
-The Wedding Day
-Macario
-A Cruel Story of Youth
-L'Avventura
-Devi
-Afraid to Die
-Intimidation
-One Way Ticket to Love
-A Woman's Testament
-Dry Lake
Going to try something a little different for 1961.
Heard bad reviews about that, the Banana Splits is supposed to be a better movie - and they both come from the same source! An obscure restaurant with terrifying robots.
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The positives include lupita nyong'o's performance and singing and Josh Gad's scene chewing, misogynistic scumbag children's show host.
The kills are few and uninspired except for one:
Ultimately, it's definitely a watchable horror comedy, but the negatives make it painfully mediocre. I wouldn't watch it again, but I'm not mad I watched it, I guess.
Grade: C
pleasepaypreacher.net
I don't necessarily disagree on principal; I just get annoyed when there's a remake or sequel to something that was not particularly good in the first place, only to have execs get surprised that people don't actually want to see more of something that they only made popular because of the lulz or memes or whatever word is hip at any given time.
Plus the inevitable condescension and "tsk'ing" from them, blaming the failure on unreasonable fans or whatever.
At least Batman had a solid IP behind it, and while the original sequels leaned in on the cheese, Mad Max was a legitimately good indie film.
I mean, hey, let studios make whatever they want, I guess. It just frequently feels like these choices aren't being made with sound reasoning or expectations, and I'd like fewer justifications for things that could be good not being made because something that a lump of dirt could predict was bound to fail, fails.
Seriously though, where's a Dredd sequel?
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
He's supposed to be doing a Highlander reboot.
Honestly I wonder if he'll ever do anything but John Wick movies and be attached to other stuff. David Leitch is the one who's actually done non wick films.
pleasepaypreacher.net
This was before Stahelski was linked to a potential Highlander reboot/sequel.
If he also does Highlander, I'm on board. I've loved Highlander since I was a kid, though, really just the first movie and the TV show with Adrian Paul. The rest is...eh.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
I spent the entire time reading this post wondering how you could recognize a kid Lupita or Josh in a movie from 1989.
Its very much a z level movie that happened to get Nic Cage. I enjoyed it, but like don't go in expecting production values, or like actually decent writing. But it does have a lot of Nicolas Cage.
pleasepaypreacher.net
It's great.
Grade: A-
I was super confused as well.
He has been in movies evenly distributed across the spectrum of great to garbage, a lot of fun popcorn stuff, and we always get full Cage.
He isn't the greatest actor, but he has never once been a drag on anything he is involved in.
He is good at playing mentally unstable characters.
Cheaper than seeing a movie with two people.
pleasepaypreacher.net
The first movie feels made by disinterested filmmakers wanting to make some low-effort money; it's workmanlike, poorly lit, plain to look at, rewrites the schlocky central premise of the game to omit Hell entirely (which, like, why even) and is deeply un-fun until near the end of the movie, where the fun stuff is far too little and comes too late. It's mostly a more boring Resident Evil with, like, two standout moments, which is exactly enough to make the rest of the movie even more disappointing. Not worth the time. Also who the fuck had the idea to do the fun and silly first person scene with a song that sounds a bit like, but is definitely not, At Doom's Gate? Just use At Doom's Gate!
Doom: Annihilation is also boring and dumb but for opposite reasons. While the first one seems like it was made by professional filmmakers who just didn't care to make the effort of producing a Doom movie that was fun, faithful, or interesting, This one seems like it was made by a bunch of fans who were super excited to put a bunch of Doom stuff on screen but didn't really know how to make a movie, so they just safely built one out of standard cliches and tropes that aren't spun into anything entertaining or self-aware. It's like milk-flavored ice cream, sprinkled with... zombies and chunky, primary-colored keycards, I guess. Look, the analogy falls apart here.
Anyway these movies suck, just watch Event Horizon. It also sucks but it knows it and has fun doing it.
Get bit/scratched - zombie rules
You can see the wire work during the final battle with The Rock as well.
It's not great.
The cast is solid. Urban and Rock can deliver. We know this. The movie was just dumb and bad. Trying to shoehorn too much game when it didnt matter but ignore it when it did?
I honestly wanted Doom book dumb stupid fun. I was disappointed even going in with limited expectations and never bothered with the sequels.
This explains the Doom movie very well and I don't know why they would do this
I was hoping for a trashy, incredibly stupid and lame, chrome-covered, but still kind of fun mid-2000s action movie, because that was as high as my expectations could get and also my wife loves those kinds of movies, so maybe at least one of us could get something out of the deal. It failed those expectations. There are glints of that sort of movie in there, with some of the Rock's character arc and obviously the first person scene. It's like someone involved in the movie realized what sort of thing this should have been from the get-go, and people only started listening to them when they were nearly done.
It was a very interesting cinematic achievement but damn I am not super prone to motion sickness but I was getting a headache by the end of that film.
By the maybe last third of the movie I was over the whole FPS gimmick. I thought it was cool and there are some legitimate breathtaking shots there, but its too much for an entire movie I think.
Nicholas Cage appears to enjoy making movies more than anyone else.
That’s really rude. His full title is DR. Doom, thank you much much.
The Fantastic Four movies were bad tho I agree even though I never saw them.
I didn’t really key in on Pepe early on as I didn’t really care for general forums back then. So I was sort of blindsided when he was co-opted into the alt-right. The film really sorted it out for me, and has a lot to say about art, artists and their relation to the wide world.
Really entertaining.
Another more mature Hollywood romance, Strangers When We Meet, about a pair of suburbanites having an affair, is also very good and doesn't get talked about a lot (probably because Quine's direction more subtle than Sirk's or Minnelli's). Wild River, one of Elia Kazan's very best films, examines a woman refusing to move during a dam development project on the Tennessee. It's a well-acted, intelligent character piece that's ripe with subtext on the American psyche.
There's also Psycho! What hasn't been said about this one? I think it's really sharp, effective film craft. Is the story and construction all that impressive? Not really, but it's still uncomfortable, still able work its way into the mind well after viewing. And not an American film, though an English language film that invites comparison to Hitchcock's film: Peeping Tom was also released this year. It's also a psychological, scopophilic serial killer picture with disturbing payoffs and excellent visuals. But it has that Archers' attention to colour and arguably greater camp value, so I think it's really worth seeing. It's a film of comparable quality as well as subject matter.
And I guess it goes here, though it's made in Mexico doesn't feel anything like an American movie: there's also The Young One. Luis Buñuel's provocative, poetic drama about a black man who escapes lynching and finds himself taking refuge on an island with a racist game warden and a teenage girl. Everything troubling that could come of this premise either happens or is flirted with, and yet it maintains a wondrous psychological power and real sense of atmosphere. It's one of his best works of his North American period.
1960 was a big year for French cinema: the second major year of the French New Wave and the introduction of probably the most important living director: Jean-Luc Godard with his film Breathless. Jazzy, improvisational... a bit bland? It always struck me as more of a movie about movies than an exploration of life. I guess it's about how those two intersect, to be fair. In any case I've never been that big of a fan, though I like some of the other stuff old JLG has made. Putting that film aside, there's still plenty to appreciate from France this year.
Fellow Cahiers du Cinema director Francois Truffaut made what I think is his best early work: Shoot the Piano Player. A small crime film with a real pessimistic streak; it's really well shot and the performances are all solid. It's him energetically creating genre material without being so cute about it (The Bride Wore Black? Bleh. Mississippi Mermaid? Yuck). And another Cahiers boy, the underrated Claude Chabrol made Les Bonnes Femmes, a uniquely grim and confrontational film about dating in Paris. Following the social lives of a handful of women who work together, it shows the horror, both minor and major, of being interested in and being pursed by men. It's one of his defining works.
A new filmmaker, one of my favourites from France, Maurice Pialat, made a documentary short that I really love called L'Amour Existe. It's a poetic, polemical essay film about the stultifying Parisian suburbs that's just so convincing and well thought out, both an argument and as a work of visual art. The funny thing is that it's completely different from the style he'd develop when he transitioned to feature filmmaking. Regardless, I think this short is one of the best films of this year.
Georges Franju directed the eerie, seminal horror film Eyes Without a Face which is definitely worth praising for its uncanny mix of old mad scientist storylines on sleek, modernist surface. Rene Clement adapted The Talented Mr. Ripley as Purple Noon, a sun-drenched, austere thriller led by the incomparable Alain Delon. And Jacques Becker directed his last feature film: Le Trou. It's a prison escape story with such a devoted sense of teamwork and procedure, only Bresson's A Man Escaped feels comparable in its greatness. It's a film where you watch, for minutes a time, characters bashing through cement to reach freedom.
A massive year for Japan. The new wave really takes off this year with the young Shochiku directors, but almost every important director working had something---often times several films worth checking out.
Yasujiro Ozu had the very sweet Late Autumn, which repurposes one of his favourite storylines (single parent + marrying age daughter) with more levity. Akira Kurosawa had The Bad Sleep Well, his wonderfully staged corporate noir inspired by Hamlet. Kon Ichikawa had a strange, prickly melodrama about a fickle Osaka merchant trying to make sense of his place in a female-dominated merchant family, Bonchi. Kaneto Shindo made a visually striking dialogue-free drama about a farming family that lives on a small island, The Naked Island. Much of the film is the parents gathering water from the mainland and hiking it up the steep shore of their island home.
Young director Kihachi Okamoto made a comic-western-war film set in occupied Manchuria called Westward Desperato that works better than it probably should. Future cult icon Teruo Ishii had a very fun and quick moving noir pastiche called Black Line. And a director I had never heard of, Hiromichi Horikawa, made The Lost Alibi, which is a great, well-acted moral thriller about a man who faces a dilemma when he's the alibi for someone falsely accused of murder, but risks ruining his marriage and career by coming forward with it.
The versatile Keisuke Kinoshita had a couple of very different films this year. Spring Dreams is a pretty funny class satire about an old, poor man who suffers a stroke in the living room of a rich family and under doctor's orders can't be moved. The River Fuefuki is a multi-generational trajedy about a family of peasants whose men are exploited in decades of war. It's a sombre, stylistically unique period film, which uses tinting and hand painted swipes of colour in contrast with its black and white cinematography.
Tomu Uchida gave me two more reasons to consider him a favourite. The Master Spearman, a lively, thematically compelling samurai drama about disillusionment and duty that tells the life of a warrior who's told to commit suicide, then not to, then to do so again after his master disgraces himself. An even better societal critique is found in his Hero of the Red Light District, about a textile merchant with facial discoloration who falls for the first time for a geisha whose business is out to financially exploit him. Both of these are beautifully produced and directed with elegance, but Hero has the more classical, tragic storyline, and the final sequence where the protagonist furiously gives the film its title under a torrent of falling cherry blossoms is one of the best scenes of the year.
Yasuzo Masumura also had a pair of films worth mentioning this year: the solid, Yukio Mishima-led crime picture Afraid to Die, and another film a little harder pigeon-hole: A False Student. It's about a guy in his early twenties who repeatedly fails the entrance exams to university, then decides to just go anyways and pretend to be a student. He then becomes involved in student activism until they start to become suspicious. It's a bizarre but very engaging dark satirical comedy that works well with some of the new wave stuff about leftist activists that was coming out at the same time.
New Wave director Koreyoshi Kurahara had the brief but entertaining heist picture Intimidation which was a fun watch. He also made one of the best films of the year, the electric, jazzy, and wonderfully despicable The Warped Ones. It's a real step up from other sun tribe films, with a relentlessly physical lead performance and terrific camera work. Expressing the angst and frustration of being young and angry in a polite, conservative culture, it's like a feral animal let out of a cage.
Which bears some comparison to the debuting Shochiku directors. Shochiku was the most conservative, family friendly Japanese film studio (they still sorta are), and at the start of the 60's they decided to let a trio of young, wild, politically active filmmakers start making stuff, and it turned out they were three of the most important directors of the period. Masahiro Shinoda's first film, One Way Ticket to Love is an atmospheric backstage melodrama set in Tokyo's jazz clubs that I liked. Dry Lake is more interesting and troubling: a film about a disturbed, angry young man who believes the leftist protests at the time weren't radical enough and flirts with extremism. Yoshishige Yoshida had a couple films too, but Blood is Dry is my favourite: a dark satire about a corporate worker who attempts suicide at a strike, only for his tragic event to be repurposed by the company as an ad campaign. And then Nagisa Oshima made two mean gangland pictures A Cruel Story of Youth and The Sun's Burial, but his richest this year is Night and Fog in Japan. Born out of his frustrations with student activism in university, it's a theatrical, Brechtian drama about the erosion and failures of leftist demonstration in Japan. Set at a wedding with forceful, accusatory dialogue and a tangled flashback structure, it's a demanding, intelligent film. Shochiku pulled it after one week and Oshima quit the studio. Eventually the two other directors would as well.
But saving the best for last, my main man Mikio Naruse made 3 and a half films this year. The half, A Woman's Testament he co-directed with Yuzo Kawashima, and it's a colourful, sometimes lively film about a gaggle of hostesses facing problems in modern Japan. Pretty good. More grandiose is Daughter, Wife, Mother which has one of the most ridiculous casts of the period. It's a large ensemble piece about a family sapping money from a recently widowed member and the value of the family home. It's very good, showing a real aptitude for widescreen photography, but it's maybe too wide a yarn for Naruse's focused, observational style. When a Woman Ascends the Stairs, probably Naruse's most famous work internationally, is built more to his specifications: the story of a widowed bar hostess trying to figure out how to move forward in her life professionally and romantically. Hideko Takamine is incredible in the lead and it has his quiet, cumulative dramatic effect---slowly becoming a wrenching experience. A new favourite though, is Approach of Autumn, about an adolescent boy who moves to Tokyo with his single mother and has to live away from her with his uncle's family. It's among the most profound, most keenly realized coming of age films I've ever watched; totally, subtly devastating without ever feeling forced or untrue. He's the only guy who can totally bowl me over with shot-reverse-shot.
Italy also had a banner year. Two films were the queens of the 1960 Cannes Film festival: L'Avventura and La Dolce Vita---both draining, modern epics about spiritual and moral disallusionment that had an enormous influence on the shape of arthouse cinema. Antonioni's film may have been more influential, especially sytlistically. It's the story of a group socialites who go out boating, and decide to explore a deserted island. One of them just disappears, and the rest look for her... kinda. The rest of the film is a half-hearted search for her that feels more empty and self-serving than helpful. Its pioneering use of duration and inaction is actually really effective. It's an incredible looking film, and if you can find the characters interesting (even if only in a reptilian sort of way), it's an engaging watch.
Fellini's film, which is about Roman nightlife and celebrity culture is a far more festive, bombastic affair. It's totally gorgeous (as a film about that city, time in history, and subject matter should dictate), but its bitter ironies about burnout, artistic failure, depression, and the denial of beauty make it one of the most spiritual films about modern life. It's draining; crammed with unforgettable moments and made with great feeling. It's a soul-taker, and one of the finest films ever made.
A couple of Italian filmmakers I'm not the most acquainted with made films that really impressed me. Antonio Pietrangeli made Adua and Her Friends, a lively and well acted comedy about a group of women who open a restaurant after their brothel closes. And Luigi Comencini made a really strong war film called Everybody Go Home. Set during the double occupation directly after the defeat of the Italian forces, it's a kind of tragicomic Odyssey about a group of dismissed soldiers trying to return home, and it's really effective.
And Luchino Visconti made Rocco and His Brothers, a kind of marriage between his earlier neorealist styling and his direction towards grandiose, operatic aspirations. It doesn't sound like it should work, and it's a bit of an odd beast, but the principle cast is excellent and the film's scope helps its two modes of storytelling to synthesize.
Poland was another country with a new band of filmmakers, and 1960 showcases a lot of talent. The standard this year seemed to be consciously postwar, free-form romances: Innocent Sorcerors, Nobody's Calling, Goodbye, See You Tomorrow. They're the sort of thing that Skolimowski would push further in coming years but they display a style and richness of new talent (Skolimowski wrote the Wajda film, and Polanski appears in two of them). One film from the country that was a little different was Aleksander Ford's Knights of the Teutonic Order, a well-paced Middle Ages epic with nice production value despite a low budget. I think I liked that one best, which surprised me.
One of Czechoslovakia's most important filmmakers, Frantisek Vlacil, released his first feature ahead of the Czechoslovak New Wave, The White Dove. Concerning a paraplegic boy nursing a lost carrier dove back to heath with his upstairs neighbour, it's a lot of things in a small package: a sentimental story of connection in an urban environment, a symbolic parable about liberty, a rigorous visual study of natural and designed environments and beings. It's a work of such promising directorial talent, it's no wonder this guy went on to make so many great films.
The Soviet Union had a couple of films I really liked too. Technical master Mikhail Kalatozov made the eye-popping survival story A Letter Never Sent, which has a few totally wild sequences (like the forest fire holy). And Iosif Kheifits, a director I hadn't seen anything from until now, made a terrific adaptation of Chekhov's Lady With the Dog that has a subtle, nearly indescribable visual style. Somehow mannered and yet deeply psychological and almost impressionistic. Basically perfect for Chekhov.
India, in particular the Bengali filmmakers, had a very good year as well. The best known director from the country, Stayajit Ray, had Devi, a film about a young woman who has theological importance thrust upon her by her community. It's a feminist story of isolation, a theme that I think he made better films about, but this one is handled with his usual sensitivity. Ritwik Ghatak would have the strongest offering this year from India: The Cloud-Capped Star, a brilliantly made melodrama about a woman who sees her opportunities in life dwindle as she's weighed down by family tragedy and exploitation. It's a real classic, with excellent visual direction. And someone I had never seen a film from until now: Mrinal Sen made The Wedding Day, a hard to pin down drama about a middle-aged bachelor who ends up marrying a teenager just prior to the Second World War. It moved in such peculiar ways and yet was very mature in the handling of its themes. I'm looking forward to seeing more from Sen, I liked this one.
Latin America offered a couple of films I enjoyed as well: Mexican director Roberto Gavaldon's Faustian folk fantasy Macario, about a peasant who is supernaturally given the ability to prevent death, and the Argentinian documentary short Tire Dié, about child beggars who run along side passenger trains.
And lastly, South Korea had what might be the single most influential release in its film history: The Housemaid. It's about an upper-middle class family that hires a disturbed young woman as the new maid, and things get out of hand pretty quick. It's lurid, feverish melodrama, and its observations on class and general nastiness can be seen in a lot of modern South Korean output.
Top 10:
1. La Dolce Vita
2. Approach of Autumn
3. L'Amour Existe
4. The Apartment
5. The Young One
6. Le Trou
7. The Cloud-Capped Star
8. Hero of the Red Light District
9. The Warped Ones
10. Les Bonnes Femmes
Honourable mentions in vague preferential order:
-The Lady With the Dog
-Wild River
-Shoot the Piano Player
-When a Woman Ascends the Stairs
-Night and Fog in Japan
-Psycho
-The White Dove
-Peeping Tom
-The Lost Alibi
-Purple Noon
-Blood is Dry
-Everybody Go Home
-The Housemaid
-The River Fuefuki
-Adua and Her Friends
-Letter Never Sent
-A False Student
-Late Autumn
-Rocco and His Brothers
-Strangers When We Meet
-Eyes Without a Face
-The Naked Island
-The Bad Sleep Well
-The Master Spearman
-Daughter Wife Mother
-Westward Desperado
-Spring Dreams
-Bonchi
-Black Line
-Tire Dié
-The Wedding Day
-Macario
-A Cruel Story of Youth
-L'Avventura
-Devi
-Afraid to Die
-Intimidation
-One Way Ticket to Love
-A Woman's Testament
-Dry Lake
Going to try something a little different for 1961.
Choose Your Own Chat 1 Choose Your Own Chat 2 Choose Your Own Chat 3
~ Buckaroo Banzai
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Heard bad reviews about that, the Banana Splits is supposed to be a better movie - and they both come from the same source! An obscure restaurant with terrifying robots.