Rate the last movie you watched.

House Party (1990) - while visually compelling as a result of its turn of the decade hip hop aesthetic, particularly the kid n play dance choreography, overall a pretty dumb comedy that is much more amusing than outright funny [6.0]

The new Suicide Squad get a 7/10 from me. The humor is hit or miss. Some of it feels like it was written by a 13 year old, but I will say I loved the rivalry between Peacemaker and Bloodsport. Wish some of the other characters got more screen time, but overall it was an enjoyable movie.

Wild Wild Country - 5/5.

This is a Netflix documentary on the Rajneeshee cult. If you're not aware, Rajneesh was a guru with thousands of new-agey followers who came from India to build a city in central Oregon. Some of said followers committed ghastly crimes [eg poisoning hundreds of people] in an attempt to take over the county in its 1984 election. All the while, Rajneesh himself amassed many millions of dollars and had 17 Rolls-Royces. I'm from Oregon myself and I've heard vague things about Rajneesh, but there was so much I didn't know. This is a 6-part series and I binged it over two nights.

If I had to describe it in a word, I would call it... infuriating. There are many interviews with Rajneesh's followers and their general arrogance and sanctimony is breathtaking. While the local and state government's response here was sadly authoritative and almost fascistic in nature - stopping the registration of Rajneeshee voters - I found myself mostly angry at the empty aphorisms of religion and the total lack of feeling for the consequences to human beings. I'm probably in an especially pissed-off mood because of the devastating news in Afghanistan, but right now I feel like religions, or at least some forms of them, are a plague.

Leon: The Professional 4/5

Somehow missed this early Natalie Portman title. Some interactions with the main characters were a little cringy, but glad it didn't go beyond implying some relationship stuff. The action was really good and never knew Gary Oldman was a hell of an actor long before the Dark Knight trilogy.

Damn, you've got some homework ahead of you. Sid & Nancy, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, State of Grace, Bram Stoker's Dracula, JFK and True Romance (you won't believe his character in this movie) all predate The Professional and established Oldman as one of the '90s great thespian discoveries. You can also dig into Oldman personal favorites Chattahoochee and Criminal Law, which were pretty critically panned and deservedly so, but you can see flashes of what he'd bring to True Romance and The Fifth Element in those films.

Speaking of The Fifth Element, you've also got that, Air Force One, Lost in Space and The Contender prior to Batman Begins as well! And if you really want to dig deep, try and find Nobody's Baby - that's a 0% Rotten Tomatoes special with Gary Oldman in this makeup:

Evangelion 3.0+1.0 - 4/5

Although it’s not the perfect movie it is the perfect conclusion to Evangelion and one that both Anno and the fans deserved. The final rebuild movie has something for everyone: high octane mecha skirmishes involving the Evas, philosophical introspections in an ethereal plane and plenty of fan service from your favorite 14 year olds - but it’s ok because they’re actually 29 now mentally! Although 3.0 feels almost like two disparate films at times, in the end when you get past a lot of the LCL, Spear of this and that techno-Eva-babble, there is an emotional arch that comes to a very satisfying and definite end.

@nodima Wow thanks so much! I'll definitely check some of these out before the end of the year!

The Invitation - 7/10. Really good movie with a great build up. The build up just lasts way too long and then the climax is too short. Still would recommend

Reminiscence - 1/5

I haven't seen a high profile movie with talented actors be this bad in quite a while. Somehow these established actors are all giving some real C-tier performances all around, with Rebecca Ferguson being quite possibly the worst of the bunch. While the premise shows promise the execution misses the mark by a wide mile. This was meant to be a gritty future noir story with all your typical stand-ins - the tortured detective, the mysterious femme fatale, crooked cops, gangsters and the rich and powerful tying all these loose threads together. Yet none of it works. The clothes are too clean the sets too nice, we see all these shots of downtrodden people living at the bottom of the food chain but none of it feels real. Worst of all is the attempt to turn the genre on it's head by flipping day and night with characters operating in the blistering Miami sun.

Howard The Duck - 1/5

Man, this movie is terrible. There a several 'fight scenes' even though Howard cannot fight at all, so they all suck. The 'comedy' is terrible, with shitty puns(?) like 'quack-fu' that don't even make sense. It's about an hour into the film before the 'baddie' is revealed. There's a whole lot of the duck being horny, which means you see ducks with tits and then you ALMOST get a scene of a human woman getting it on with a duck. Who is this film for!?

Awful. Glad I watched it.

Citizen Kane (1941)

Truly, this movie is the Citizen Kane of Citizen Kanes.

Rating: 10 Citizens out of 10 Kanes.

What people keep missing is the fact that Citizen Kane is a much more fun movie to see than majority of the Academy Awards winners over the last 2 decade.

Mortal Kombat (2021) - 5/10

It's pretty irregular. There are some really cool fight scenes (intro scenes) and some characters get a lot more development than expected (Kano), but there are a lot of mediocre fights as well, and the target audience is really fuzzy. It obviously got made for people that know the games, with a lot of winks, references and inside humor, not to mention lots of elements that would make no sense to people not familiar with the source material.

On the other hand, they deviate just enough of that source material to possibly alienate that audience, with the protagonist being a redundant (and pretty boring) new character, and tying the weird stuff to the dragon tattoo that can give you completely inconsistent powers: anything from fireballs and T2 eyes, to sombrerokinesis or a vibranium tight fit shirt. Between that and the pingpong of PG13 and R rating, it feels the writers weren't very comfortable with the material.

But, when the fight scenes work, they are pretty good, and it is a lot (a looooot) better than Annihilation, so I can't really call it bad, just rather mediocre.

Tenet (2020) - 8/10

(I'll keep this spoiler-free.)

I started watching Tenet yesterday having my expectation colored in advance by Chris Nolan's stupid-ass ruckus in 2020 about how the movie HAS! to be watched in theaters and CAN'T! be fully enjoyed at home. Because fuck the pandemic, a few more dead people can't be as important as his masterpiece, can they?

Well, it was a great watch at 1080p resolution on my 50" TV, but I gotta give it to Nolan: Visually, the movie is a feast, and I actually wish I could've watched it on the silver screen. I'm a sucker for practical effects, and even Tenet's big action setpieces are made with a minimum of VFX, and look fucking spectacular!

Story-wise, Nolan sticks with his typical MO established with Memento and especially Inception, just more of it. There's a lot of scenes with characters explaining to each other how everything works, but approaching the end it becomes so convoluted I was tempted to pick up the remote and rewind the movie every couple of minutes just to wrap my head around how everything might fit together. I'm sure there's people who love to disentangle Nolan's plot constructions, but I just found it overwhelming at the end, and where Inception had me excited to watch the movie again, the climactic scenes of Tenet left me perplexed and tired. Inception felt like it would be fun to analyse it scene by scene; Tenet's pace builds to a staccato that feels like it needs to be dissected frame by frame.

Still, Tenet is very entertaining, the action scenes are exciting and top-tier, as is all the acting (didn't think I'd ever be saying that about a movie starring Robert Pattinson). John David Washington's charismatic performance in particular makes me want to watch BlackKklansman as quickly as possible.

Tenet's not quite the masterpiece that demands going to a theater during a pandemic and risking your life and health for, but it's a good time. Don't expect to "get" it during your first session though.

Shang Chi 8.5/10 yes it had the traditional marvel humor in it but I enjoy that. Great story, different from the traditional Marvel superhero movies but still part of that world. fun flick. and a fun throwback to a previous marvel movie I wasn't aware of as I didn't read a lot up on this movie.

9/11: One Day in America (Available on Hulu): It'd be pretty crass to rate something like this, IMO, all I'll say is that this is incredibly comprehensive and told almost entirely via footage from the ground and only contains interviews with survivors from the buildings conducted by the 9/11 Memorial Museum, meaning that at no point is the subject matter sensationalized or manipulated for dramatic or political affect. Episodes 1 and 3 in particular are jaw droppingly scary in a way you might've convinced yourself you're numb to in the 20 years since these attacks, but I'd wager it'd take some kind of disorder to resist the urge to sit upright and pay this footage it's proper respect three or four times during each episode.

I'll admit I didn't finish it - after nearly five hours across five episodes, I felt like I'd had my fill of tragedy for today despite the sixth episode appearing to mostly be about the people who were found alive in the rubble. I guess that's the cynical part of me that's resilient to this project - give me the sadness all day, I'll turn away when things get a bit brighter.

For some reason I got sucked into watching the David Lynch version of Dune.

Man, what a weird disaster that movie is. It's one of those movies you know cost a ton of money to make, but you can't quite figure out where all of it went. The sets look cheap, the lighting is terrible, the special effects don't look good even by 1984 standards, and the cast is overacting a hilariously bad script (Kenneth McMillan saying "You must milk this cat" while Sting awkwardly carries around a Sphinx in a harness clearly made out of hardware store plumbing parts will never not be funny. And yes, this actually happens in the movie).

Shang-Chi. As someone who always have time for a fun martial arts flick, this movie was a surprisingly tasty treat. Until the last third, when it becomes basically a different movie and the fun and intense fighting scenes are replaced with huge CG spectacle with no real stakes. It also introduces entirely new plot points, a whole slew of new characters, and completely stops the momentum.

But the actors generally do a good job, most of the humor works, and I left the cinema pretty satisfied, if overstuffed. Marvel/Disney needs to understand not every new Marvel movie has to have incredibly high stakes. Or always end with an over the top CG battle. Looking at you, Black Widow....

@hhap: Did you watch the extended version? If not, good. Let it stay that way.

“Prospect” with Pedro Pascal. Low budget sci-fi with lots of environmental storytelling, like Fury Road (or Dark Souls). Very practical and well considered universe, like The Expanse, but focuses on folks that are living the tough life with old, broken technology and just trying to make enough money to survive. Pedro Pascals manner of speaks reminds me a lot of Mal from Firefly, which I guess is built off a western trope (not really my scene, couldn’t tell you). But it does feel kinda western-y, I suppose — or at least what I imagine westerns were like.

Gets a little slow in spots. Lots of traveling and talking, no crazy CGI (low budget is obvious, but the practical effects range from passable to downright impressive)

Overall, I liked it. The kind of movie that sticks with you for awhile.

@nocall: Watched this a while ago and really liked it. Has that old school Alien type of lived in, gritty sci-fi feel to it. I especially liked the part where they meet the other "bounty hunters" and everyone has a different suit.

@humanity: yeah there was a lot of impromptu discussion about the suits when we were watching this - which ones were newer/better, which ones were military, industrial, or made for civilians. Also spent a lot of time discussing things like why the gems are the way they are, or what type of ammunition their “throwers” use (still not sure about this one).

Good movie to watch with a couple people and bounce ideas off each other about what is going on.

Lawrence of Arabia 10/10.

The most famous world war one epic that never had been sold as a movie about world war one. Watched it because the upcoming Dune Part 1 would not have sense of conclusion by its end. If you like Lord of the Rings, this is a must watch. It's proto Peter Jackson movie trilogy. And it just ends up on my list of reasons to say "get fucked" to Star Wars, the series not the 1977 movie because that movie is great.

It was the 80s. My guess is cocaine.

This is one of those movies I always wanted to see, however I never got around to it. Someday, when I am feeling particularly masochistic, I plan to watch Dune and Ishtar.

8/10 Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Circles Glad to see an All Asian cast take the lead. And in the coming on a long way. Great action and great witty writing there.

How did the original Matrix movie get it SO RIGHT, and the sequels got it SO WRONG

Love and Monsters 8/10

Its basically feels like a cousin to the Tremors movies, but actually manages to have more heart to it by the end. A lot of it is one guy on his own so theres not so much banter. I hope it becomes a feelgood cult classic, and doesnt spawn a bunch of lesser sequels.

I really enjoyed that film. It was very fun

Gone Girl -- 8.5/10 Absolutely brilliant movie. I was hooked to the very end. All I can say is after watching that movie I am more afraid of women now.

Subscribed with that HBO Max deal ending today and realized it's been decades since I've watched Blade. 10/10 Blade is so fucking cool!

@sombre: I was also surprised how fun that turned out to be. I'm not even much of a dog person and I fell in love with that guy in the movie.

Sweet Girl starring Jason Momoa 6/10

It tires to be a revenge film with a big plot twist in the end, but it doesn't deliver as strongly as other films with the same concept. It's not bad, but its nothing to sing about either. You can watch the film on Netflix and judge for yourself if you have a subscription.

@jaytoh:

Blade *is* so fucking cool. Blade 2, also cool. del Toros monster designs + Ron Perlman + Normal Reedus? Hell yeah

Spencer Confidential (Netflix). If you want to watch Marky Mark wander around Boston talking about bad cops and just shut off your brain. it might be worth passing the time. Definitely not to be confused with high cinema. 6/10.

@minahilmalik: I know, right? (Maybe not about the being scared of women part) I totally thought they were just setting it up to be that she went ’missing’ because the Ben Affleck character was a bit of a shit husband, but nope, it goes for like another 100 miles with her batshit crazy plan.

Black Widow 2/5

Kind of a boring plot, boring performances, and all around snoozer of a film. It just felt like it was made to set up the Hawkeye Disney+ show. After the Infinity War/Endgame stuff, it’s kind of hard to go back to the post Civil War story arch and really care about anything.

I can throw this one in the pile with Thor 2 and Iron Man 3 as one of the low tier MCU films.

In the Mouth of Madness - Probably the weakest of John Carpenter's "apocalypse trilogy" but considering the other two are The Thing and Prince of Darkness that's no knock against it. Carpenter and his team do a fantastic job of approximating the feel of Lovecraft, particularly the sense of reality falling apart as the protagonist sees more and more horrible things. Sam Neill is a lot of fun, particularly in the second half when he starts unraveling. [8/10]

Did you know That Thing You Do has an extended edition? It does! It's great!

It’s hot like summer where I reside even though it’s early October. So I decided to revisit a trilogy of summer blockbusters: the Sam Rami helming Spider-man ran from 2002 to 2007.

Spider-man(2002) 9/10

This is basically a 1990s blockbuster with more practical effect than I remembered. Climax mainly contains Spider-man and Green Goblin punching each other on the ground. It’s hard not to see Rami and crew’s desire for building up a proto Marvel Cinematic Universe, name dropping “Eddie” the journalist and “Dr Connors”. I guess their appearance in the sequels actually had nothing to do with those name dropping.

Overall this Batman Forever enhanced.

Spider-man 2 (2004) 10/10

Still one of the best comic book adaption in that business. With at least 2 Lord of the Rings movie reaping fame and wealth when they started to make this one, Rami and crew seemed to be able to inject some more horror shtick into this one. Awakening of Dr. Oct is basically an Evil Dead scene but expensive. “Dr. Strange” got name dropped in this one, it went nowhere, but let’s be honest the name drop in Winter Soldier a full decade later technicality did not go anywhere either.

CG heavy action began in 2. Rami basically made live action cartoon showing bloody consequences of slapsticks in Evil Dead trilogy, so the gag in Spider-man 2 and 3 landed better than anything Whedon and crew did in Age of Ultron. Guess Disney just ain’t cut out for cartoon anymore.

Some plot hole aside, one of the best super hero movie out there.

Spider-man 3 (2007) 8/10

Sam Rami had recently expressed his unpleasant experience making Spider-man 3 on the marketing tour for that Dr. Strange sequel. I think it’s most because his cinematic universe ambition got cut down to a trilogy, since this is quite the fitting coda to a trilogy. It’s hard to imagine Peter Parker continue his special police action after hearing Sandman’s sad story.

I imagined this one to be a clusterfuck with 3 villains, Goblin Junior, Sandman and Venom, back when they announced it in 2005. When I finally saw the movie in 2015, the end result feels better than I thought, especially after MCU’s far worse clusterfucks Iron Man 2 and Avengers Age of Ultron. The so-called “faithfulness to source material” aside, Eddie Bruke and Venom are handled in Spider-man 3 the same Harvey Dent and Two-face are in Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight, yet only the latter got praised to heaven and back.

Fuck I miss the days of trilogies, these days of cinematic universe are tiring in comparison.

Fear Street Trilogy: 8 out of 10. It was a lot of fun, even my wife couldn't predict where it was going (and she predicts just about every movie), when the characters didn't something that seemed "stupid," it was usually only stupid because the audience knew why it would be dumb, but if you were in that situation it would seem reasonable.

Raya and The Last Dragon 4/5

This was a fun movie. It is a very vivid and colorful film. The film is not too deep, but it does have a good message and the plot does advance towards expressing that message. It has its moments of knowing that you are watching a film intended for children. Beyond that, it is a entertaining and original film. I really liked Awkwafina in this movie, her character Sisu was standout in this movie, and brought back the same feel good vibes as Robin Williams' Genie in Aladdin. If you are a fan of Disney animated movies I recommend it.

Black Widow 4/10

The film became available to watch on Disney+ this weekend, and sadly I wasn't impressed. There was so much they could've done to make a good Black Widow movie, but instead they chose a cliche story that is almost completely out of place, especially for that character. The film has plenty of action, but none of it stands out as anything special, just basic MCU fare. The twist they did with the Taskmaster character is almost criminal if you know anything about Taskmaster. And none of the actors stood out in anyway. Definitely one of the weakest films in the Marvel library. Out of all the Avengers who got their own movie, Black Widow's is definitely the worst.

@av_gamer: Agreed. The movie felt 5-6 years too late, and all of the plot twists felt very unimpactful. The movie was extremely boring in comparison to other "boots on the ground" marvel movies like Captain America and Ant-Man. I also completely agree that they squandered Taskmaster horribly. It seemed like a incredibly cheap way to shoehorn the character into the Black Widows past to make the character seem more relevant than they actually were.

Double post (sorry!) but I finally got around to watching...

The Godfather 5/5

Not much else I can add to what has already been said, but this movie is probably one of the greatest films of all time. I finally watched it in its entirety, and even without fully seeing it before, I had already seen a lot of the most memorable moments.

Blade Runner 2049 5/5

I am not really a fan of remakes or sequels that take 30+ years to develop, but this movie was fantastic. The plot was intriguing, Ryan Gosling was phenomonal, and it kept the spirit of the original in everyway and expanded the lore and world building of Blade Runner. It gave a definite answer to the lingering question of the original film about Deckard. I felt there was a lot of zingers in the dialogue about the human condition and what it means to have a soul. This movie exceeded my expectations and is a legit sequel.

Addams Family 2 7/10

Dear Evan Hansen 7/10