Rate the last movie you watched.

Butt Boy- 5/5

It's about a guy who finds out he really likes shoving things up his butt after a prostate exam. He starts out small then eventually moves on to dogs, and finally kids.

The craziest part is that its actually good. Not in an ironic way either. It's just an entertaining crime drama, if you were to replace the stuff about butts with murder or something you wouldnt even notice.

Godzilla vs Gigan:

I actually watched this like two weeks ago but my brain has just not been co-operating when it comes to this stuff so some of these details will be 100% wrong.

Anyway surprise, aliens want to take over the Earth (in this case the aliens are giant cockroaches who fucked up their own planet with too much pollution). They've infiltrated society and are working on a plan to destroy Monster Island and thus pave the way for their own brand of "peace" which is apparently "everything but us is dead." They're doing this by building an amusement park themed around Godzilla, including a big tower shaped like Godzilla which also happens to house their DEATH RAY or whatever.

Our protagonist is a down-on-his-luck cartoonist who gets the chance to design some fake monsters for the amusement park. He runs into a woman looking for her missing brother, who has been press-ganged into helping build the death ray or whatever. They end up uncovering the alien plot, but the aliens summon Gigan to accelerate their plan. This also features Godzilla and Angurius talking to one another, and Godzilla sends Angurius to investigate at one point. It's all a blur. The message (pollution is bad we don't want to end up like the cockroach aliens) is pretty straightforward, and Gigan's design is... weird? He's like a beetle, but not really, and he has hooks for hands. Godzilla gets pretty fucked up in this movie, kind of like when he fought Hedorah, except instead of being covered in acid burns he just gets fuckin' cut. There's actual blood in this one, which kind of went away for a while, but now we're back to it and it feels deeply odd because these things have only gotten more cartoonish as they've gone along.

The fighting is pretty good, the tower blows up real good, and you get this incredibly dumb scene of two cockroaches buried under rubble talking to one another about how they can't believe their glorious plan went so wrong. It's... incredible.

3 out of 5 cockroaches.

Godzilla vs Megalon: Jet Jaguar's in this. Jet Jaguar is like Ultraman, except he's a robot and his ability to grow big is chalked up to him being just, really determined to protect people. That's not a joke, that's literally what they say and the movie just moves on like that's not a completely buck-fucking wild thing to say.

The protagonists are a professional racecar driver (I think?) and his inventor buddy (who built Jet Jaguar) and his... *deep sigh* precocious little brother. Yeah that's right we're back to this shit again.

The villains are the denizens of Sealand, an underwater kingdom that ends up being damaged by those goddamn americans (never mentioned that it is definitely the USA performing the tests, but it's definitely them) and their fucking underground nuclear tests. So the villains are at least justified in their desire to destroy all surface dwellers, because the surface dwellers started it.

Their plan is simple enough - summon Megalon and hijack Jet Jaguar's control systems to make him show Megalon the best places to destroy stuff. Why they know about Jet Jaguar is a bit of a mystery but honestly I don't want to put more effort into considering this mystery (also the mystery of why they need Jet Jaguar to show Megalon around, which.. huh?).

The inventor, of course, has a backup system they use to send Jet Jaguar to get Godzilla so he can whip Megalon's ass - but then the Sealandians or whatever they're called contact the aliens from the last movie and ask for help, so Gigan shows back up. Two on one isn't fair to Godzilla, so somehow Jet Jaguar gains sentience (I'll be honest I looked away for a minute and when I looked back they were like "oh he's making his own choices now") and then grows big because of his determination and there's a fight.

Jet Jaguar is a ridiculous looking robot, and he has a very dumb theme song. Therefore I am pleased to announce he has been adopted as my son.

The movie kind of sucks though.

3 Jets Jaguar out of 3

Extraction - 4/5

The movie does not go beyond besides a simple action flick, but it does that to perfection. Chris Hemsworth puts out a great performance as a mercenary. Wish Golshifteh Farahani had more screentime.

The Meg:

I had pretty low expectations going into this from seeing the reviews when it first released, but wrote them off a bit just due to the fact that it's, y'know, Jason Statham vs. a giant shark.

These low expectations were not met, not even close. There are about 2 or 3 alright scenes in this movie, and they are all at the the end of a boring 70 minutes of an ensemble cast sleepwalking their way through some of the worst dialogue I've heard in a big budget movie in a while (someone literally says "if i can short circuit the firewall, i should be able to restart the computers").

Tl;Dr version: Just watch literally any other movie

Parasite 10/10

Its a Thriller/Comedy movie which has so many great sights. From a directing standpoint, this movie is gorgeous. The cinematography is extremely well done. It's just stunning and so metaphorical. There are also sequences in this movie that will shake you and leave you on the edge of your seat.

Where's My Roy Cohn? 4/5

A fascinating look at the life and political career of a bad but interesting person. Highly recommend this with a double feature of the Netflix doc "Get Me Roger Stone".

Terminator: Dark Fate (7/10)

A pretty decent action flick, and a great Terminator sequel, which at this point, has the bar so low I have to dig a trench to jump it...

Good action sequences, likeable characters (at first I hated the presence of Schwarzenegger, but he grew on me) and a pretty threatening villain.

Capernaum - 5/5

How did she make this movie?

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Great flick if you are a fan of Harry Potter. I understand that glaring logical inconsistencies are too much for some but if you can ignore them it is a really fun world to escape into. Also it was my first time back at a movie theatre since COVID hit so that was nice. Only 3 dollars to get in as well.

4/5

Spider-Man: 5/5

"FINISH IT!!"

As I was listening to a Bombcast from 2011 I was reminded of that the movie In Time exists, and that I'd yet to watch it.

And now that I have, I can finally give In Time a solid 2/5.

The main premise of time being the currency for everything is very cool. But other than Cillian Murphy the premise is one of few strong things about this movie.

I'm glad I finally spent the time to watch it, though.

That Eurovision Movie: 3/5

Watched oldie but goldie How High and even tho I doesn't stand the test of time that well but the parts that made me laugh before made me laugh again.

7/10

The Old Guard - 3/5 (the people who can't die movie)

Charlize Theron carries this movie, but I've generally liked her in the things she does; she does 'intense lady' very well, although I wish she'd get more varied roles.

The action scenes when they happen are really well done, if a little generic. Theron's character also has a cool as fuck backstory that is barely touched on. The other main lead is unfortunately pretty weak in my opinion, both as a character and in performance.

Having said all of that, it's not a bad movie. Just more than a bit bland, especially given the subject matter. It's also very explicitly a set up for a sequel (meh) or a tv series (way more interested, if only for Theron's character).

Saw KKKlansman. Surprisingly warm movie considering its subject matter, with some really charming leads. My main problem was the story felt a bit too 'safe' and convenient throughout, but the ending does its best to go 'hey, this is still an issue'. Best scene is of an old man recollecting a lynching he witnessed and its aftermatch. Harrowing. 3.5/5

The last movie I watched was the Extraction and it is a great movie, I would rate it 9 out of 10.

Palm Springs 5/5

I enjoyed it quite a bit I also went in blind as I stopped watching trailers except for marvel or starwars unless at a cinema.

Extraction 4/5 was a decent film full of action.

Noah on Netflix - I'd give it 6/10

It's a strange mix of a Bible movie and Lord of the Rings ...

I watched Annihilation again and I still think while it's a beautifully shot film it is also a narratively bumbling mess that poses more questions than answers in an effort to mask how little it actually has to say.

Patriot Games 4/5

It was nice to see Harrision Ford and Sean Bean back in their primes.

2001: A Space Odyssey -5/5

Absolute masterpiece. How did I put it off for this long?

John Wick Chapter 3. First time seeing it since theaters and it's a movie I still feel conflicted about. I find the entire Morocco excursion to be a chore despite a great look for Halle Berry; even setting the plot beats aside, I honestly just don't find the dog combat that compelling and think it raises more questions than it answers. They feel like Halle Berry is summoning them with a button press and then they disappear from the combat like a video game, and for a series that prides itself on practical effects and stunt blocking it just takes me out of it a little bit.

It's also the one that takes the most effort to be a comedy, and while nothing matches the silliness of the subway shootout from John Wick 2 there are moments where you can tell the actors are about to break and give up the ruse, especially the Adjuticator (who I LOVE in this movie) during her scenes with Laurence Fishburne and Jason Mantzoukas.

Action movies have always been the religious text of plot armor but John never really feels like he's in as dire a situation as described.

So there's all that, but it's still the movie with a book murder, an eye murder, a horse murder, that dog scaling that wall (now that's cool!), the insane level of production that went into that motorcycle sequence and probably the stupidest ending of any action movie ever so...

4/5, worst of the Wicks is still quite a fun time.

The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot - 5/5

Watched it because of its silly name, but it turned out to be a surprisingly good character study movie. And it has this cool tone to it, when every scene is very dire or sad and yet really funny at the same time, which I love

The Graduate - 3/5

I saw this for the first time, and I have opinions on this.

If you're not familiar with it, this is the story of Benjamin Braddock, the titular Graduate, who has an affair with an older woman and eventually falls in love with her daughter Elaine.

The movie is very, very funny at times. So much cringe, all the way through, which made me alternately whince and laugh. And some of the camera work is fascinating - albeit a bit on the nose, with all the visual metaphors and phallic symbols.

The problem is that Benjamin is just such a worthless, insipid, disgusting character. It's a little unclear the extent to which we are meant to root for him - I'm guessing, probably not very much - but I'm sure in 1967 he was hailed as a hero. He feels imprisoned by all of the expectations his family and family friends put on him. Well, tough luck friend. He gets a free education, a car, a beautiful home, etc. Everything in life is laid out before him. As someone who put himself through college and never had a car until recently when I could afford it, in my 30s, it's hard for me to feel too bad for him. If you're not happy with your life, just do something about it. Need to get away? Go on a road trip. Tired of suburban city life? Go pull an "Into the Wild" or something. Do *something, *anything*. If this were a film about depression, I could understand, having had serious bouts of this myself; but the movie frames this not as depression but as some kind of imprisonment. Ben, your parents seem like kind, normal people. Nobody's jailing you. Just go live your life. If you don't like living with your parents, get a job and move out. No need to sulk in your room.

Of course, this is the character at the beginning of the movie, and he has an arc. The problem is his arc goes at 90mph from bland nothing to sex toy to crazed psychopath, when he starts to stalk Elaine. He's barely dated her and he wants to marry her, expects her to ignore the fact that he just ripped her family apart (and the fact that they have no chemistry)? Nope. Get away, Elaine, while you still can.

I don't buy the ending, where Benjamin pounds on the window during her wedding and she runs off with him. Elaine showed zero sign of being a free spirit before this point - in fact, she went along with everything her parents wanted her to do, including marrying somemone else. If she was in love with Benjamin this whole time, she had ample opportunity to do something, anything, about it before this; and given that, Benjamin's actions here, interrupting her wedding and screaming her namme repeatedly, are those of a truly unhinged stalker. That said, I have to say that in spite of myself I did love the ending; it was quite funny and weirdly satisfying to see them both fighting off the whole crowd of congregates in a highly exaggerated way.

The last shot, of them both on the bus looking at first happy and then less so as their idiocy dawns on them, is amusing. But what am I supposed to take away? These characters are both so uninteresting and make so many incredibly stupid choices. I guess they're going to get the comeuppance now, in another loveless marriage maybe? It's not like this is an *easy* mistake to make.

This is a movie about rich kids going crazy and doing insane things to keep themselves from the ennui of everyday life and societal expectations. Well, rich kids, please just remember that you have the world at your fingertips; go and climb a fucking mountain or something. You don't have to dismantle the lives of everyone you love.

Gemini Man 3/5

Felt CG Will Smith's face was inconsistent at times which took you out of the moment, but overall the action/storyline was pretty standard.

Do The Right Thing - 5/5.

I've heard of this movie for years and just now finally got around to watching it. It's quite a stunning achievement. Spike Lee has an ear for dialogue like few others. It's very funny and also quite sad. I really liked or at least was intrigued by just about every character. It's quite complex and I'll be thinking about it for a while.

Intending to get into the spirit of the season(Or Dome), I decided to watch Suicide Squad(2016). It had a great Amanda Waller and for a guy who said he wouldn't ever be in a superhero movie, Jai Courteney's Captain Boomerang was low key the most fun character.

2/5

Best Moment:

(Distressed Voice): "Who's this?"

The Wandering Earth - 2.5/5

This is that Chinese made film about literally pushing the entire planet Earth out of our solar system. It's been on my queue for a while but I never really felt a great urge to watch it until a bout of extreme boredom made me check it out. I would say that Sci-fi movies can be largely divided into two types: the ones based on science to varying degrees and the ones that might as well be magic. Wandering Earth aims to be the former but ends up very much being the latter. The idea of strapping huge engines onto the planet so it can glide through the cosmos to another sun is already insane for a wide variety of reasons, but it's an entertaining premise for a special-effects extravaganza. For the most part I found Wandering Earth quite boring and often disjointed rather than silly fun. Certain leaps of logic and in fact storytelling are so jarring that you're not quite sure what happened from one moment to the next or why anyone is doing what they are doing. Ultimately though it's never really all that important. The effects are nice for the most part, but not much else to be gleamed here.

The Lighthouse

8/10

Damn ye! Let Neptune strike ye dead Winslow! Hark! Hark, Triton. Hark! Bellow, bid our father, the sea king, rise from the depths, full foul in his fury, black waves teeming with salt-foam, to smother this young mouth with pungent slime, to choke ye, engorging your organs till ye turn blue and bloated with bilge, and brine, and can scream no more. Only when, he, crowned in cockle shells, with slithering tentacled tail, and steaming beard, takes up his fell, be-finnèd arm, his coral-tined trident screeches banshee-like in the tempest, and plunges right through your gullet, bursting ye, a bulging bladder no more, but a blasted bloody film now, a nothing for the Harpies, and the souls of dead sailors to peck and claw and feed upon, only to be lapped up and swallowed by the infinite waters of the dread emperor himself. Forgotten to any man, to any time, forgotten to any god, or devil, forgotten even to the sea, for any stuff, or part of a Winslow, even any scantling of your soul, is a Winslow no more, but is now itself the sea.

William Dafoe is amazing.

Bill & Ted 3

As a kid in the 90s if you were to tell me they were making a 3rd film I'd be ecstatic and who knew I'd be as excited 30 years later. I enjoyed it enough.

3.75/5

TENET - 4/5

It's not the best Nolan film out there but it's definitely the most confusing. That said Nolan continues to operate so far beyond most other directors that it's still a really good ride. Some of the casting could have been done better but it's definitely worth experiencing - the score by Ludwig Goransson lives up to the amazing Hans Zimmer who typically works with Nolan.

Bill and Ted Face the Music - 2.5/5

I've seen a lot of people say it's not bad and I guess for me it was just a shade below "OK" for the most part. I'm very confused about the direction they went with for their daughters to basically be.. them. Not female versions of them, but to act almost completely like Bill and Ted and having no personalities of their own. A great opportunity to kind of pass the torch to a newer generation but instead it's an odd gender-bender rehash of two characters that already are near copies of themselves.

Mulan - it was decent I don't recall ever watching the animated one but I knew the basics of the story.

I enjoyed it quite a bit.

4/5

Mulan: 2/5

I certainly do not have that much reverence for the animated version. It's an okay film that's carried by a single fantastic song. However, I do enjoy myself some wuxia and Mulan is certainly not it. Basically it's the wuxia genre stripped to its barest part to be sold to westerans, with a couple of familiar Asian actors to pander to a Chinese audience. The movie has none of what makes chinese wuxia so endearing, and you can tell that the film, directed by Nici Carro who is Australian, didn't know how to film the--very few--wuxia fights in the movie. It's badly edited, and worse--it's boring.

If you don't have to, don't pay $30 for this. It's not worth it.

The Lobster - 1/5.

Well, this is one of the strangest movies I've ever seen. The premise, if you haven't heard it: in this world, no one is allowed to be single. Anyone who is single is put into a hotel where they have a few weeks to meet someone; if they can't, they are turned into an animal of their choice. In the case of our main character, that choice is a lobster.

I'm not sure what I expected from this movie, exactly. If you only knew the premise, you might think it was an Adam Sandler comedy. I knew it wasn't that, but I think I expected something along the lines of a Charlie Kaufman movie; a very odd, droll satire with a lot of funny moments and thought-provoking twists.

Instead, what I got was one of the most depressing things I've ever experienced. It's hard to criticize, in some sense, because I'm sure it does exactly what it sets out to do; but it seemed like it was written by an alien. There's nobody in the movie that talks or acts like a human being. In fact, every character speaks in exactly the same way - stiffly and politely, regardless of the circumstance. Nobody has any relatable motivation to speak of. In a film like this with such a strange premise, I would expect the characters to act somewhat realistically within the norms and rules of this world; Black Mirror, for example, is good at this. When the situation is strange and the characters are completely inhuman, there's just not much to anchor you in reality.

I'm sure you could read this as an allegory for how society expects everyone to conform. The scene where police are checking for everyone's marriage certificates in the mall reminded me of similar checks that I've heard happen in Iran, where men and women are not allowed to walk together if they are not married. But what it's ultimately trying to say - I have no idea, and I don't have the patience or the interest to figure it out.

I did have a good guffaw at the random animals showing up in the background. The camel was my favorite.

Holidays 3/5

Horror anthology film based on several U.S. holidays. Reminded me a lot of VHS franchise, but most of the stories didn't really stick, and the few that did, they were over too quick.

I've found Easter story quite entertaining but do agree movie falls flat at most.

@wollywoo: Yeah, that was definitely a weird one. I enjoyed the first half of the film but the second was just a little too convoluted and nonsensical. You should check out that guy's films he did after The Lobster, those were more up my alley.

The last good film I saw was Calm With Horses, it's probably my favorite movie of 2020. In America, they changed the name of it to "Shadow of Violence" for some stupid reason. Don't let the trailer fool you into thinking it's a non-stop action thrill ride, I would actually advise you to just go in not knowing anything, definitely enhances most of my viewing experiences anyway but you do you.

Batman: Mask of the Phantasm - 4/5

In a lot of ways, this movie is kind of a masterpiece. Yeah, it has flaws in terms of pacing (too many flashbacks) but just about every scene is spectacular and drives home exactly what it was meant to. Not a single minute of screen time is wasted and so much of it is magnificent in terms of how well it characterizes (DCAU) Batman. Whether it is something as famous as Bruce begging the grave of his parents to let him be happy or Andrea seeing Batman in the cemetary and realizing he is Bruce because she has had the same transformation by pain and loss.

What I found most "fun" is just the difference time makes. It has probably been at least a decade since I last saw this and I always remembered that Alfred is afraid when Bruce first puts on the cape and cowl. As a kid you think "Yeah, Batman finally learned how to strike fear into his enemies". As someone who watches way too many hyperviolent action movies you start to understand that it was more about buying him reaction time due to hesitation. But watching it again and paying more attention to all the times Alfred jokingly called Bruce insane and encouraged him to be with Andrea and be happy: it is shock and horror at his son having fully transformed into a lost soul.

On Her Majesty's Secret Service(69) - 2/5

This came up in conversation the other day and finished watching it tonight(One of us had never seen it, the other not in twenty years). Telly Savalas, the music and the on-location shoots are the draw, the character actors being asked to make convo's with Bond fun are the chew and being able to say you can see how they got to Daniel Craig is the napkin on your plate when done.

Everything else is WOW things have changed and "He tells everyone he quit and they didn't fire him first? Good for him.". But damn, Telly Savalas. Think he did that before Kojak(But still many years before his Welles-esque peak at selling Birmingham UK to people) and he is playing a game six levels above everyone else. His shit-eating grin at starting an avalanche made me think of him as like god-tier bad guy. He's at least the best Blofeld paired with prob my new least fav Bond.

@petesix0: In case you don't know what I'm talking about, here's a master of a craft at work.

@yummylee: Rear window is dope. It's my favorite Hitchcock film. Damn, I've got to rewatch it again.

Cinemas re-opened in Australia a little while ago so i saw Tenet in VMAX with Dolby Atmos. Pretty good, doesnt beat Inception even though it was very similar. i Just love christopher nolan movies. Probably like an 8/10

But the last movie i actually watched was as recent as last night called "Lost Girls and Love Hotels" It wasnt the greatest but so I'll admit I may have watched it because it starred Alexandria Daddario haha, not ashamed of it it either.

Really, really loved Palm Springs. Smartly written, one hell of a satisfying ending, and I think I'm now a little tiny bit in love with Cristen Milioti. Such a good movie.

Sukiyaki Western Django is a movie I'd heard about for a while and finally watched.

So, obligatory Film Nerd Fun Fact That Everyone Knows, classic samurai movies and classic westerns, specifically spaghetti westerns, are, like, deeply connected. Formative directors in both genres were huge fans of each other, most notably Sergio Leone, who was a humongous fan of Akira Kurosawa and actually got sued by Kurosawa when A Fistfull of Dollars came out on the grounds that Kurosawa thought the whole movie was a ripoff of Yojimbo (Leone settled out of court, but for such a comical amount of money that I assume his legal defense thought they were on shaky ground).

So, decades later, Takashi Miike goes "fuck it" and finally marries the two, making a samurai western. The fusion is best exemplified to me by a scene of a gunslinger in black riding his horse into town. The entrance to the town is marked by a large wooden torii gate, from which a body is hanging. The camera pans over an old wooden sign in Kanji, which the subtitles helpfully translate to "Nevada".

It's really interesting! So many tropes of samurai movies and westerns are so intertwined that when you put them together it's almost too homogenous? Like, it kind of just feels like a western or a samurai movie, which almost drains some of the novelty. In my opinion, the best moments are the ones that are the most anachronistic, most notably an extremely sick duel between a gunslinger and a samurai in the snow that is extremely cool. Ultimately, though, I think the movie suffers from the two genres melding a little too well, which in turn makes the entire thing feel a little less novel and interesting and more like a standard western/samurai movie.

Special shout-out to Quentin Tarantino of all people, who appears in an acting role in this and is terrible. For reasons I will never begin to understand, there's an extended sequence in which he speaks in an exaggerated Japanese accent (the whole movie's in English) and it is the worst thing in the world, but I guess he is working on a Japanese film under a Japanese director with Japanese actors, so I have to assume it was intentional?

Ace Ventura.

That movie has not aged well.

I’ll give you two:

Documentary: The Console Wars (4/5)

Fiction: I’m Thinking of Ending Things (4/5)

Feel free to follow on Letterboxd. I will follow back, love to see what others are watching and their random thoughts on the matter.

Archive 4/5

It really did start off with typical sci-fi tropes but by the end of the movie, I think it went in directions I would not have expected it to, which felt really fresh.

Goosebumps 2 2/5

Being a kids movie I've found it really slow burn and boring.