Rate the last movie you watched.

Alita Battle Angel 8/10.

I've never seen the anime entirely but I did watch bits and pieces of it so I came into this pretty fresh and could not compare it to the original source.

This movie was far better than what I was expecting, I think that's why I liked it so much. Alita looked weird as hell, but I got over that. It had a cringy badly done romance, but I looked past that as well. The best things in it was the action and nicely done CGI cyborgs. All of them looked so awesome and well done, for the most part anyway. The world was also just so great.

Watching this movie made me even more hyped to play Cyberpunk 2077 even though they are not related. Definitely hoping they make a sequel.

Netflix's Anon: 2.5/5

Its fine, if you like Clive Owen its an easy if not forgettable watch.

Blazing Saddles 2/5

Humour!

Spider-man Into the Spider-verse 5/5.

As someone whose sick to death of Marvel/Disney's generic superhero movies, this was an absolute breath of fresh air. Some lovely visuals, great soundtrack and featuring some great touches, it's given me faith in superhero movies again.

Genuinely wasn't expecting to enjoy it as much as I did.

I must've seen a thousand obscure movies, yet I've never seen arguably one of the most famous films ever, Schindler's List. I finally amended that today, and it was a unique viewing experience to say the least.

I'm not going to review it or anything, most people know its quality of performances, framing, etc., even if they've only seen clips, but there were some things that really stuck out to me:

For one, I expected/worried this film would be reliant on music to portray the emotional richness as much as the acting, but the complete opposite was true. When it's there it isn't 'sad' music per se, and it's not loud in the mix like a lot of dramas are guilty of. It's appropriate and beautifully integrated without being overt. Good for them.

The other thing that struck me was how the blase physical brutalization and murder of the Jews wasn't even the most disturbing part of the film. Far, far more disturbing to me are scenes such as the one where a little girl is shouting "Goodbye, Jews!" over and over with a look of deep glee on her face, holy shit.

Another scene that almost broke my brain was where Amon Goth is trying to execute the older gentleman that makes hinges in the metal workshop and the gun keeps jamming. It was so crazy to see a -- I don't want to say comedic -- but clumsy attempted murder. It was like something from Goodfellas, it was fucked up. I had my head in my hands every time that hammer clicked unsuccessfully.

There were plenty more: the scene where Amon happily listens to the female prisoner who was an engineer begging the officers to redo the foundations that would surely fail on the building they were working on, has her killed, then green-lights her request!

Anyway, it's a great movie. I almost wish I didn't like it just so I'd have a more interesting take on it, but I did, so I don't...

A+

Missing Link (3/5)

Disappointing from a Laika fan position, totally serviceable as an animated feature for kids.

First They Killed My Father 4/5

It's been a long time since I read the book for school, so it's hard for me to say whether this is a good adaptation or not. But it's certainly a pretty harrowing depiction of Cambodia in the mid-70s through the eyes of a young child.

John Carpenter's "The Thing" 5/5

Moody, dramatic atmosphere with remarkable practical effects. As a long time fan of Harryhausen and Argonauts, I was blown away. I'm a big practical effects guy, so seeing the scene with the belly and the hands, really blew me away.

Plus, any film with Kurt Russel- I'm into :D

The Banana Splits Movie: 4/5

Well, they did it. They turned a forgotten Sid & Marty Krofft kids' show into a gory slasher... and it's pretty good! Obviously very low-budget and silly fare, but this movie had no right being anything other than terrible. Very pleasantly surprised.

@sombre: Right on! The Thing is a classic and Kurt Russel is magic!

I grabbed a UHD copy of Gladiator to watch that for the first time in forever. Really good movie with some really great lines and scenes peppered throughout.

Super rewatchable, too.

I finally watched Us yesterday. I was eager to see it based on how much I loved Get Out. The first 20 minutes or so, setting up the movie, was great. Good, moody atmosphere and tension building. Everything after, from the time the doppelganger family enters their home, fell completely flat. I was shocked at how much I simply didn't enjoy the movie and cared very little for what was happening. I didn't feel the character's reactions based on what was happening reflected the gravity of the situation. The movie's own internal logic was also very inconsistent. Beyond that, I think it tried way to hard to be creepy and ultimately comes off as being rather bland in the horror department. Nothing was really that effective in terms of tension or scares. And the ending...I think it would've been more effective had things not been explained in full. The whole thing is pretty stupid.

That said, it was a beautifully shot movie, with some solid acting, and a good score that frankly does not fit the movie. This is definitely a case of the trailer being better than the final product. I'm pretty certain Us' positive reception comes solely from people loving Get Out and buying into the hype for Jordan Peele's second directorial outing. There's a pretty staggering difference in quality between the two movies. Get Out, for me, was a 5/5. Us is only a 2/5.

Watched Parasite after seeing Kojima mentioning it in a tweet. It's enjoyable. I'm a bit torn on it overall though, I feel like some of the acting could have been better and the ending was somewhat weak imo. But a fun movie, lots of crazy shit happening throughout it.

3/5 for Parasite

Oh, I also watched Death Race, the remake of the old 70s one. It's pretty dumb, but it's about prisoners playing real-life car combat racing, and it has Jason Statham in the lead role, so I guess it has to and to some extent should be dumb. Real bad cinematography during the racing action scenes, just shaky cam everywhere I could hardly tell what the fuck was going on half of the time. The acting is rough, but whatever. The cars look pretty cool, and I liked the cheesy streaming recaps with the ads and all the racers and the standing between each stage. I wish the movie would have leaned more into that dumb stuff rather than Statham's boring revenge story.

2/5 for Death Race

My husband and I have so many things we want to watch (TV, Movies) that we have to have a system for randomizing selection or else we end up pretty much not watching anything, or spending way too much time trying to pick what to watch next. Last time we decided to select five movies with this criteria -

1. I picked a letter of the alphabet (C was my choice)
2. My husband picked an actor with a last name that started with that letter (Nicolas Cage)
3. I had to pick 5 movies to watch with that actor

So our most recent selection of movies were -

• Con Air
• Drive Angry
• The Sorcerer's Apprentice
• Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
• Mandy

And ho-leeeeeeee sheeeee-it what a bonkers selection of movies that ended up being. I knew what to expect with Mandy, since I had already seen Beyond the Black Rainbow, but the real WTF was Bad Lieutenant. I don't know what I expected but that movie was just so weird. Imaginary iguanas, break dancing ghosts, SO MANY DRUGS, an unexpected (by me) appearance by Val Kilmer... Just off the wall. So if I was ranking them best to worst, it would probably go - Mandy, Con Air, Bad Lieutenant, Drive Angry, The Sorcerer's Apprentice. Although, Drive Angry was kind of okay in a bootleg Ghost Rider kind of way. If you watch any of these, Mandy is probably the best but most divisive, imo. Con Air is pretty interesting, although I think it isn't as good as I was led to believe by the internet. Sorcerer's Apprentice is just off brand Harry Potter with worse characters and world building, though Cage is fun in it. Bad Lieutenant is BONKERS so worth seeing for that at least. Drive Angry better than I expected, since I kind of expected a trash fire. It far exceeded those expectations.

My husband and I also just watched (I had to pick movies on our shelf that had blue spines)-

• Basic Instinct - a worse version of Body Heat, but certainly not bad and I was always entertained
• The Fog - not the best John Carpenter movie I've ever seen, but had some cool moments. Honestly, the Garfield Halloween special does pirate ghosts better :/
• How to Deal - horrible horrible HORRIBLE Mandy Moore teen drama comedy (?) which was boring, incoherent, visually bland and literally filled from beginning to end with overused tropes and cliches. May be the worst film I have ever seen. I am not exaggerating. No redeeming qualities. DO NOT WATCH.

I skipped ratings since I kind of just go on a recommend/do not recommend scale at this point. Of everything I listed, I would recommend watching Mandy, Basic Instinct, Con Air and Bad Lieutenant. Anything else you can skip and not feel bad about it.

Hobbs & Shaw

I'd give it a 6.5/10. It was a fairly solid entry into The Fast and The Furious franchise. Despite being Dom-less they still managed to make the main plot about fambly and had a bunch of touching scenes. They also managed to cast real life Moana as The Rock's daughter and she's pretty adorable. I also give the film bonus points for having The Rock do a traditional Samoan war chant (Haka) and dress in traditional clothing while beating the shit out of British agents with traditional Samoan weaponry.
There's a couple of clearly improvised banter scenes that went on a beat or so too long, one with Ryan Reynolds and the other Kevin Hart. The Kevin Hart scene cut very abruptly and felt as if it was unfinished. Ryan Reynolds shows up twice and is basically Deadpool in a business suit. From the content of the mid-credits scene it seems like his role will be increasing in the franchise as it goes forward. Idris Alba makes a good villain. He also manages to have amber colored eyes in this film too, just like his character Heimdall does in Thor.

There was less of an emphasis on cool cars in this film but a lot more fun spy stuff. At the very end of the film they do bust out a decent line-up of classic vehicles and perform the sort stunts the series is known for.

Really, if you enjoyed the crazier F&F movies (5-8) you'll probably enjoy this one too. I brought my 14 and 15 year old sons and they had a blast.

Rocky- 4/5. A really good story, but it was just...weird. Maybe it has something to do with it being 40 years old or whatever it is, but the dialogue was just...weird. Stallone has SO MUCH ambient dialogue, and I hate to say this, but it was almost like a Smith film where there's just all this weird dialogue all over. Also, the sound mixing is so fucked, but I know that's down to the year it was made.

Grave of the Fireflies- 5/5. A bone chilling look at war in the pacific theater, and how it affected the day to day life of average people. The story was incredibly moving, and the finale brought me to tears, but besides the story, the actual art and animation were stunning. Furthermore to this, their direction of a child was incredible. I've worked with kids my whole adult life, and the way they got Setsuko to do her voice acting was fucking PERFECT. Really charming, but I bet when I look it up in a minute it was a 30 year old woman

Blade - 5/5
It's been long enough that i had forgotten enough of the movie to want to watch it again, and it's still great, you know it's great but you can't remember why, then you watch it again and it's still great.
I watched a video recently that claimed it was the beginning of hollywood taking comic book movies seriously and i can totally see that, but that doesn't mean there aren't parts of Blade which are a little cooky and silly the way comic book movies used to be, but they are really small moments mostly when the film is sped up like a Benny Hill skit.
Other than that a really fun film, with a great cast especially Wesley Snipes who is the perfect Blade.
Watching this video and learning about some of the behind the scenes of the film made me appreciate it so much more, it sounded like a real passion project (i'm so glad the ending was changed jesus christ).

The Chronicles of Riddick

Vin Diesel runs and leaps through a series of hilariously poor visual effects while a host of characters ramble about fantasy shit and expect you to care.

0.5/5

True Grit - 4/5

Aesthetically, it's fucking remarkable. It looks incredible, the design of the outfits are fantastic, and it's as close as Red Dead 2 in a movie than I've seen. It has a great pair of main actors in Jeff Bridges/Matt Damon, but I feel it was let down a little by how sparingly they used Josh Brolin. He's a brilliant actor, but they barely feature him, which is a shame.

@killem_dafoe: I didn’t like Get Out as I was expecting a horror movie and REALLY just wanted to watch a horror movie that night.

I respect it, though.

I’m totally with you on Us. It was all there and done very well, but something was missing the whole time. Everything felt too safe and...sterile? It felt like a big budget movie that didn’t want to take risks, in a way. I don’t know. It was missing some amount of soul, I guess...

Bring it On. Saw it years ago and just rewatched for the first time in a while. It's silly, doesn't make a lot of sense, and has several things in it that wouldn't be allowed at all in movies these days. However it's a fun movie and don't feel like you get a lot of movies like this anymore. I'd say 3/5

John Wick 3: I'm gonna be real with y'all, I live a life without regrets, but part of me does regret not getting my ass to the local cinema what shows films in OV out here to catch one of the like, two showings of John Wick 3 that existed back when it released. That said, I picked up a digital copy over the weekend, just bought the damn thing, because I loved 1 and 2 - and enough people I know who saw 3 convinced me it was probably a safe bet that I'd want to watch the movie multiple times.

Hey look they were right. This movie was basically just one long gun fight with a few character moments which were pretty good! Halle Berry got to run around kicking ass in a way I don't think she's done since... Die Another Day, maybe? It was fucking rad! Lawrence Fishborne has some nice scenery to chew on and continues to be just the best dude as the King of the Bowery (Avert your eyes, my sweet), and he and Keanu play off one another in the way you want them to. The story itself is surprisingly coherent, and I for one am fully here for it. I really like the way they've quietly been building out this weird world and its factions, and like, if these people were wizards instead of assassins this would just be Harry Potter. The final battle in the Continental might be one of the coolest sequences I've ever seen in my goddamn life. The last shot of the film made me actually throw my hands up in the air and yell "yoooooo" alone in my apartment. Keanu Reeves is a treasure.

Bring on John Wick 4 I say.

5 shotguns out of 5

Blair Witch Project 5/5

Had to watch this again to prepare for the game. I love this movie. It really nails the feeling of authenticity.

Also, I never paid too much attention to it the other times I watched this, but I'm pretty into the song that plays at the start of the movie:

They Shall Not Grow Old: Finally got around to this one after my brother insisted I do so, and I do not regret it. It's an incredible look at the first world war in a way that is frankly unprecedented. The cleaned and colorized footage looks amazing, but the real treasure is the narration - all of it from the mouths of veterans of the war. It's a credit to the editing that they take all these stories and weave the narrative of the war itself together, and not once do they need to have anyone come in and explain what's going on. The testimony and footage speak for themselves.

Once the actual fighting starts, it's maybe one of the hardest things I've ever sat through. There's no heroism to it, it's just carnage and listening to, for example, a soldier talk about killing a wounded kid out of a sense of mercy that is maybe the most gutting thing I've ever heard. It is... awful.

5/5 I don't have a joke because that would feel wrong

I finally got around to Korean revenge flick I Saw the Devil. It stars The Bad (Byung-Hun Lee) from The Good, The Bad, and the Weird and Oldboy (Min-sik Choi), himself.

It’s a very well directed film that runs north of two hours, but goes by quickly. Expect a few gory scenes and a lot of cat and mouse suspense. The film neither pulls punches nor glorifies revenge, and is well-acted throughout.

4/5

@nutter: Nice, that's a Korean film I've yet to see but always wanted to, alongside Chaser and Black Coal, Thin Ice. Maybe I'll just rent all three tomorrow and have a K-Fest.

Have you seen A Hard Day (Kkeut-kka-ji-gan-da)? That is a brilliant mixture of genuine tension and black comedy.

Watched the first episode of The Dark Crystal(?) On Netflix. Can't make my mind up, the puppets are extremely unsettling to me but I love the fantastical nature of the show. Will keep watching.

@brunothethird: No, but I’ll throw it on my list of things to watch.

I’m pretty bored with 99% of what comes out in the west, so catching up on different films with different sensibilities these last few years has been cool.

Saw "Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark" went in with kind of low expectations as the spooky ghost type of horror movies dont really do it for me but had a pretty good time. You watch it and you can definitely tell Guillermo Del Toro/his production company had their hands on it with all the weird body stuff. Wouldn't go out of my way to watch it again but would watch a sequel.

3/5

I believe Black Coal, Thin Ice is Chinese. I watched it and...kind of enjoyed it? It's kinda weird in that not much happens, but the finale is terrific

@sombre: You're right, it isn't Korean at all. It was recommended to me by someone who knew I loved Korean cinema, I just assumed. My bad, I don't make that kind of error often. Looks good though, I'm going to rent it very soon.

I've seen few Chinese/Hong Kong movies that weren't kung fu/wushu ones, thinking about it. I've seen half of Red Sorghum, two or three John Woo movies and a few older Ang Lee films. I'm going to make a list, there must be hundreds of gems.

Pursuit of Happyness- 4/5

An incredibly TENSE film that had me on the edge of my seat the entire time. All the shit that happens to him, I was constantly just making "ooh" and "eeeh" noises out loud with all his shit being stolen and being hit by the car etc

The Dead Don't Die - 0/5

I saw it but I really wish I hadn't. Best described as a bad SNL skit that got turned into a full feature film The Dead Don't Die meanders about for most of it's runtime before trying to make a vague point about consumerism and then finally gives up the ghost, taking with it any hopes you might have had that the past 104 minutes weren't a complete waste of your time. While Jim Jarmusch isn't exactly known for Hollywood popcorn flicks, I have enjoyed some of his past artistic endeavours like Only Lovers Left Alive. Didn't really find a whole lot of artistic or any other sort of merit here.

My Hulu was glitchin' out last night! I watched Downsizing...and whatever the fuck film it switched over to halfway in where Matt Damon was playing the same character...

I just watched IT (Chapter One). I'm not sure why, since usually I have no interest in horror, but I guess the discussion around Chapter Two aroused my curiosity.

My score: 3/5. It's hard to evaluate, because it almost feels like two different movies wrapped into one. The kids are all great, especially Beverly, and they seemed believable. But it felt like the story structure behind the horror elements were lacking. The threat comes out of nowhere, disconnected from the rest of reality. It would've been scarier if it were more grounded.

IT feeds on fear, so each kid has a different experience based on what they fear most. Mike sees a fiery things because his parents were burned - but wouldn't it make more sense for him to see animal slaughter, since he's afraid of that? The fire thing seems like an extraneous element. Stan just sees a scary painting come to life for some reason? The CG looked pretty bad, almost comical, like a knock-off Slenderman. Beverly sees her abusive father, and torrents of blood because she's afraid of her period and what that represents in terms of adulthood/sexuality. This could have been better handled - there's not much reason for the implied sexual trauma except as an excuse for spooky stuff. It just feels cheap and exploitative somehow. Something could be done with this idea but it would need to more mature.

But there's too many elements here for it to make much sense, and nothing seems fully fleshed out. We just go from one spooky scene to another without enough connective tissue to make it viable. There's a lot of kids screaming profanity and things jumping around without any good reason, either thematically or logically. I'm not sure how to fix it, but maybe if they took their time and spread it across a mini-series it would gel into a more cohesive story. On the other hand, I don't know if my brain could take 10 hours of this.

I have to say that the ending was very well-done and affecting. It's also a very pretty movie, with neat colors and imagery. And it also lead me to a great song I hadn't heard before - "Dear God" by XTC, which has a fascinating, controversial history of its own.

Vincey Masters: Born to be a Karate Meister

Doesn't hold up like it did back in 2007. Plus some of those jokes would not fly now, especially practically everything Andy Dick says and does. Still that Xzibit cameo makes me laugh every time. 3 nasty sharts from the McCurdle Twins out of 5

Captain Marvel - Easily the weakest MCU film thus far. It's too bad they didn't toss a nod to Agents of SHIELD as it had already incorporated the Ultimate version of Annette Benning's character by the way of a giant Kree body years back which was speculated to be that of Mahr-Vehl (got the ill communication) given its ID tag started with "GH" which were the initials of that character's real name..."Geheneris Hala`son." So yeah, the MCU has already flirted with the multiverse apparently back when the show was still considered canon.

Endgame - It was good. It was exactly what I expected, but certainly not living up to the massive hype certain people have given it. I doubt it would be in my MCU top five, though.

Us - Best film I've seen this year even if the premise is paper thin.

Godzilla: King of the Monsters - I didn't much care for the 2014 one, and this somehow managed to be worse. I get you can't have two hours of monster battles, but my god the human characters are dull as dogshit. Why can't we have a Kaiju movie told completely from the perspective of news casts and on location reports? Something that has the super dark tone of that 2012 SDCC teaser they put out? Cloverfield was so much better than these turds.

Child's Play 2019 - 3/5

It's actually a decent attempt at reimagining Chucky, and it was quite funny at times with some excellent kills and the always welcome presence of Aubrey Plaza. Still, the story was duuuuuuumb (not that the original is a masterpiece of writing, mind), and who knew a doll could have such a punchable face?

If this were taking the place of the main franchise, I'd hate it. As its own thing, though, I'd actually recommend it. It's bad, but not as bad as I expected by any means.

The Odds - 4.5/5

I have a soft spot for... what would you call them? "Game" movies? Sawlikes? Not really torture porn, but involving characters enduring horrible things (usually willingly) to "win". Either way, this is a really good one of those. Surprisingly not gory, the tension focuses more on the mental tortures than the physical ones (both are a-plenty, though), and they do it quite well. It's not perfect, but odds are (eyyyy) it'll become a minor cult classic.

Zookeeper 2 - Second time is the charm in this sequel about everyone's favorite bumbling zookeeper, Griffin Keyes and those wonderful celebrity voiced talking animals. This time Griffin and his animal pals have to help two pandas, voiced by Ken Jeong and Awkwafina, fall in love while trying to thwart a pair of bumbling exotic animal knappers played by Nick Swardson and Taylor Lautner. Can Griffin handle all this and a pregnant wife ,played by Rosario Dawson reprising her role as Kate? The only way to find out is to watch this soon to be comedy classic. 4 hippos voiced by Shaquille O'Neil out of 5

Invader Zim: Enter the Florpus - 3/5

It's been fifteen or so years since the last new episode of Invader Zim aired, which perhaps leads me to reflect on mortality and the passage of time more so than anything else. I was in 7th grade when Invader Zim debuted, so I was right on the target demographic. I think some of Zim has aged better than other bits. The absurdism and juxtapositions hold up (ridiculous tech and weaponry in service of convoluted, impotent schemes), but the dadaistic humor hasn't quite done it for me for a long time (GIR's non-sequiturs, random-for-the-sake-of-random gags). So despite my love for Zim which persisted long after my teenage years, and my nostalgic excitement that new Zim had finally been made, I actually waited almost a month after Enter the Florpus had released on Netflix before watching it. I was too nervous. Would it be an awful movie, propped up only by nostalgia? Does Jhonen Vasquez really just appeal to disaffected teens? Has Invader Zim aged too poorly?

The answers respectively: No, disaffected adults too, and my prediction on Zim's aging rang true for me. Enter the Florpus dials the random lunacy of the series up quite a few notches, but it also takes advantage of its 71-minute run time (over the typical episode length of 12 minutes) to tell a more fleshed out story than the series has ever undertaken. So it was a bit of a mixed bag for me, though mostly positive, as I welcomed actual story-telling while rolling my eyes at the nonsensical gags. Enter the Florpus was not as funny as I'd want a cartoon to be, but it was certainly more interesting and engaging on both the narrative and character development fronts.

That said, the story does go full circle by the end of it. No spoilers, but it's true to its format where nothing truly comes of it. If you're wondering if Zim finally conquers the Earth, if Dib finally exposes Zim, or if meaningful progress is made with either ultimate goal, you're going to be disappointed. And that might be what has aged worst for me with Invader Zim. After fifteen years of incredible television--including cartoons with continuity, forward momentum, and lasting consequences--I'd prefer to see characters making progress toward achieving their goals over fast-paced random outbursts and yelling.

Recommended for dedicated Zim fans, but its too esoteric for a general audience. And that caps off a far-more detailed review than I intended to write.

Child's Play 2019. 3/10

I'm a huge fan of the original series, even all the way up to the carnival of dumb that is Cult of Chucky. But that has nothing to do with why I didn't dig this movie. I wasn't feeling Chucky's look or personality, and I didn't think the movie was much fun. The live characters were actually pretty good though.

Ad Astra - 3/5

I’ve read reviews calling this a modern day masterpiece or an instant classic that will become appreciated with time. I’ve also read more simple reviews of people claiming it is trash or absolutely boring from beginning to end. I wouldn’t go as far as calling it trash or even a bad movie per-se, but I don’t think it is great either. Much like Solaris this is a psychological character study with a thin veneer of sci-fi to spice things up a bit. You could just as easily have placed the film in a jungle and the plot would work as well but the comparisons to Apocalypse Now would them be a little too on the nose. I appreciated parts of it but the plot overall is rough, the writing can be uneven and certain action sequences seem forced and quite frankly out of place.

A lot of the people who champion this film mention Annihilation and Arrival in the same unequivocal praise, both movies which I find flawed although with Annihilation I appreciate the artistry despite the generally poor writing. So maybe that should be a baseline for personal expectations.

Toy Story 4- 3/5

A largely shallow movie, which made me really start to hate Woody. He was single minded to the extent of putting his friends in CONSTANT danger for "his kid", almost like some blind indoctrination.

The ending was charming, but largely emotionally manipulative. Also Buzz was HARDLY used, which sucked. If they make another one after that, it would be the most absolutely soulless cash grab, with how it ended

Mandy 5/5
Fight Club 4/5
Crawl 4/5
The Matrix 4/5

I've only watched three old-ish Swedish movies in the last few months:

Fucking Åmål (1998, released internationally as Show Me Love), a drama about teenage lesbians growing up in the small town of Åmål. Found it incredibly engrossing and relatable, and beautifully shot and edited. 4/5

Lilya 4-Ever (2002), a movie about sex trafficing and a girl abandoned by her parents somewhere in the former Soviet Union. Watched it back when it premiered too, but this was the first time I had seen it since, back then it was the most gut-wrenching movie I had seen. While it's still a strong movie, and the theme is as actual as ever, there are some choices in the editing and sound department - as well as that odd late 90s obsession with angel imagery - that makes it feel surprisingly aged, still a 4/5, but back when it was new I may have been leaning towards a 5/5.

Stenansiktet (1973, a.k.a. The Stone Face), a fascinating but pretty poorly executed film about how urban planning and architecture can literally spawn aggression and violence. Back when it was released it was often compared to A Clockwork Orange, but aside from the near future setting and gang violence, I don't think they have a lot in common. The movie is about a politician from a smaller town that moves to a newly built suburb (built for 50000 citizens, has 10000 parking spots but only one kindergarten with room for 30 kids) and finds the planning directly inhumane, then loses his child as it smashes its head into the concrete ground when it falls off a swing that hadn't been installed with any safety in mind.

A gang resides in the same neighborhood burning cars and robbing people, but the politician tries to convince them to direct their aggression towards the government instead of other citizens, and eventually starts paying them to murder the architects, planners and other politicians responsible, starting off with the public hanging of the leader of the city planning group.

The movie was made with the intention to radicalize people against the ideas of Le Corbusier and American influences on city planning focused on traffic and commercialism instead of culture and living, but it ended up both a critical and commercial failure and wasn't particularly good at exploring its ideas. 2/5

Rambo: Last Blood- 4/5

The beginning was kind of boring, but I appreciate it was all for the setup. About the time when he fucking started pulling out that guys COLLARBONE, I knew what kind of film it was gonna be. By the way, that scene made me and my brother do an "Ooooh" noise out loud at how gruesome it was.

From when it gets to his farm, you know what it's gonna be. Great montage of death weapons, inventive, almost torture porn esque kills, and an IMMENSELY satisfying death to the final villain. As soon as he said what he was gonna do, I leaned over to my brother and said "He's gonna do X in about 10 seconds" and then he did it. Leaving vague, but if you saw it, you'll know what I'm on about.

Plus, in terms of looks, Stallone has aged like the finest of wines. He looks fucking fantastic still

Little Shop of Horrors (1986) 4/5

Hey, it's October, so to kick off the spooky month, I watched an ever-so-slightly spooky movie. I can't say I was a huge fan of its musical nature, but it was still some nice, goofy fun with some incredible puppetry.

Wolf Creek 4/5

Second time watching this; still super fucked up. Um, kind of makes me want to go to the real Wolfe Creek 👀

Joker - 4/5

Dark, disturbing character study with one helluva performance from Joaquin Phoenix.