Rate the last movie you watched.

Yesterday, I watched The Fly. It's a silly (I can't remember the better word that describes these eighties movies.), interesting, gruesome tragedy. Jeff Goldblum was great. 7/10.

And Fitzcarraldo. Also a 7/10.

I also finished HBO's Carnivale yesterday. I liked it. A unique supernatural show with likable characters. The story is dragged out, though. Even when it should be over, they find a way to undo the heroes' efforts. The creator wanted four more seasons. I'm tired of serialized television. The shows stop being new and exciting in the first few seasons, but keep going and going and going. You rarely get remarkable creators and respectful producers with a concise vision. I've decided I'm gonna watch more self-contained seasons (meaning they work independently), episodic shows and miniseries.

A miniseries I started yesterday is Dekalog. I've been waiting three months for this Criterion release. I was considering marathoning it, but after the first episode I don't think I can. Not because it's bad. Dekalog: One was artistic, like Kieslowski's other films. I'm looking forward to the rest of the series. But it was sad. This version looks fantastic for being a thirty year old TV show. The booklet says it's a 4K restoration. The bitrate averages 19,000 kbps and it has a crisp mono PCM audio track. The only thing I don't like about the packaging is how discs 2 and 4 are covered by the plastic. I'm afraid I'll damage the top of the disc when I try to remove it from the tray one day, or the bottom as I drag it along the hole beneath. I'm probably gonna keep this backed up on my hard drive, as it was expensive.

Source: http://www.criterionforum.org/DVD-packaging/dekalog-blu-ray/the-criterion-collection/1640

Earlier this week I saw Andrea Arnold’s 2009 film, Fish Tank. Its story is deceptively simple and, on the surface, quite similar to the Dardenne brothers’ Rosetta. The story of Fish Tank is also seen through the eyes of a troubled teenage girl from an underclass background, who aspires to leave her current toxic environment. Fish Tank, however, covers more ground than Rosetta and has more layers to it. It’s dense, and the scenes – downplayed by naturalistic performances and Arnold’s confident direction – are laden with revealing details. There’s a short and relatively straightforward love scene two-thirds into the film that has the potential of not only changing your opinion of a character, but also painting all their previous actions in a completely different light. The main cast is excellent, particularly Katie Jarvis (an unknown actress who sadly hasn’t done much since) and Michael Fassbender; both give, in my opinion, flawless performances. While film is shot in “Academy” ratio to induce a harsh, claustrophobic atmosphere; it is not devoid of beauty. At the expense of sounding hyperbolic, I think Fish Tank is brilliant in nearly every respect and it may very well be my all-time favorite coming-of-age film.

It Follows (2014) 2/5

Interesting premise, not all that well executed. There were some moments I found tense, others were downright goofy, like the naked dude on the roof. I've heard people describe it as a satirical take on horror. I don't know about that, it was unique though. Soundtrack was good.

The Conjuring (2013) 1/5

Terrible. The acting and writing was so bad it was almost impossible to take any aspects of the horror seriously. The movie is also a walking cliché and fuck that cookie cutter ending bs, and the Will Arnett ass looking mf.

I recently watched Thunderball. That is one of the bond movies I remember the least from my childhood, but man I was actually very impressed by it. It has some odd plot points relative to some of those other ones of that era, but it gives a really interesting, almost darker, side to bond's personality. Even if just subtly doing so. Also that underwater scuba battle scene is legit really cool. I was shocked at how well that was filmed in my opinion.

Going in I didn't expect much of the bond movie I "always forgot about" [and hadn't seen in at least 15 years] but I was quite impressed. Maybe that was low expectations though 4/5. Mostly lost some points for some weird plot quirks.

I like how once in a while I can see VGK's avatar on the front page. That's nice.

Last movie I watched, he? Now You See Me 2. -1/5

@winternet: Now You See Me was a pretty bad movie, but man is Now You See Me 2 a complete shitshow.

Synchronicity (2015) written and directed by Jacob Gentry
A physicist who invents a time machine must travel back to the past to uncover the truth about his creation and the woman who is trying to steal it.

GRADE: B- (3/5)
This is a low budget movie, but well filmed, with nice cinematography. It does not look cheap, it just that resources were obviously limited to pull off a high concept time travel film. The film is a bit slow for the first 30 minutes, but as the time-travel aspects stack up the story becomes more interesting by the moment. The movies never has any huge action scene, it pays off very quietly..maybe too quietly. Yet, I think it is a good sit on the sofa on a rainy Saturday with your boy/girlfriend type of movie. This is not a movie you would have seen in theaters, but I have to give it a nudge.

@militantfreudian: Love that film! The lead actress Katie Jarvis needs to be in more work.

With all the talk of John Wick on the last podcast I rewatched that film.

Holy shit, 10 out of five stars. That movie is so much more badass than I remember it being. My girlfriend watched it with me and about fifteen minutes in she got upset over the dog dying because she absolutely hates when dogs die in movies. She wanted to stop watching it but I convinced her to stick around because the dog is well more than avenged. She quickly got back on board with the film during the "the one you send to kill the fucking boogeyman" sequence.

Rewatched Lawrence of Arabia and The Godfather, Part II. Better than I gave them credit for years ago. 9/10. I still don't love Godfather II, but I see now that it IS a great movie. I might rewatch the third one as well, at some point.

I was surprised to see and hear a young Corrado Soprano.

Neon Demon - 2/5

Worse than Drive, better than Only God Forgives. There was a pretty rote story with some nice visuals and an uneasy atmosphere throughout. The ending somewhat subverts expectations but by now you kind of know what to expect from a NWR movie.

Terminator Genisys - 4/5

I can see immediately why a lot of people hated this movie, it how it breaks away from the lore and canon to time travel with the previous Terminator movies, but that was the very point of it. Watching this movie also happened fresh off of my completion of Zero Time Dilemma. It seems like that game prepped me well to accept this movie as a whole. As for this movie launching a new trilogy, I'm glad that it hasn't thus far. Like Zero Time Dilemma, there are technically other places to go, but in reality considering everything that has happened prior in lore, they have already been explored. No need to beat a dead horse.

Love & Friendship

Definitely one of Stillman's best films. It takes Austen, and instead of reducing it to a stodgy, staid period piece, it retains her wit and attitude in almost a contemporary way. Low budget, but with smart trimmings (I dug the use of text especially), it seems to lean more towards Rohmer than Merchant/Ivory. Kate Beckinsale is great in it, better than I've ever seen her, and the supporting cast is also pretty strong. I thought it was pretty good. One of the better 2016 films I've seen.

Zootopia 4/5

A fun movie with a interesting story and funny little characters. Just don't try to make sense of how and why all of these talking animals get along.

John Wick (2014)

☺☺☺☻

I can only give it three smiley faces out of four. I like Mr Reeves' commitment to action movies, martial arts, and stunts. I think he is probably a decent human being and he honestly tries to appear normal in roles, but he is a stiff weird actor. John Wick, the movie, has style and is well shot and directed as a story; but I can't really get around that Keanu Reeves does not "sell" the character's emotional state or deliver a believable line of dilague. My solution would have been for Mr. Reeves not to say anything in the whole movie, until the end where he says, 'they killed my dog' or something.

The Cabin in the Woods 2/5

The people that worked on this movie definitely had a lot of fun; I didn't.

Captain America: Civil War, 9.8/10. It's gotta be the best Marvel film made this year.

Dredd *** 1/2

A good action film with some great looking shots. Very solid, but not great.

Sword of the Stranger ** 1/2

Style over substance is the name of the game here. The writing is kind of bad. There's nothing to the story and the characters are paper thin. The action sequences are the only things worthwhile, but even there they are kind of ridiculous.

Cape Fear - 4/5

Pretty strong. Ton of great moments and very good cast. Goes off the rails towards end.

Blade II - 3/5

Starts well, great 1st 30mins but loses a lot of steam after.

Wrong Turn (2003) - 0.5/5

Badly acted, written, shot and edited. It features a couple of QOTSA tracks which is cool.

Martyrs (2008) - 1.5/5

If you really care for disturbing imagery, I guess watch this. I was enjoying it up until like the last half when it went full french cinema. I didn't just find the exposition and reasonings half-assed, but kind of asinine? So basically a group of insane psychopaths who are also pseudo philosophers torture young women, because they believe once one of them goes into a catatonic state and develops a thousand yard stare, she can see what happens after death? What? No really.

"Equilibrium". Not nearly as good as everyone claims. A pale clone of 1984. Also, the action scenes are terrible.

The Legend of Tarzan 2016.

7/10 not bad.

Swiss Army Man

10/10 I loved it. Best movie I've seen this year.

I thought this year's Ninja Turtles sequel would be the worst blockbuster movie I'd watch this decade but I just had the unfortunate experience of watching Independence Day Resurgence and holy shit! I'm still honestly not sure if it was supposed to be a Naked Gun style comedy making fun of it's predecessor or if it was intended to be taken relatively seriously. Either way it fails miserably.

Ninja Turtles 2 - 1.5/5

Independence Day 2 - 1.0/5

The Crow - 4/5

It is not a perfect movie but it is a lot of fun. It is the tale of Eric Draven coming back to life to avenge the rape and murder of his fiancee. He hunts down the men involved and kills them each in a brutal fashion. The story takes place on Halloween and has a very gothic look, making it a perfect October movie. It is also nice to have something in the action genre to watch during the annual Halloween binge.

Hush - 4/5

Available on Netflix, this is the classic story of a woman who is home alone and has to survive the assault of a masked killer. The twist here is that the woman is deaf. It doesn't really change much in the long run but it is clear that the filmmaker's paid close attention to the sound design of the movie. It doesn't do much to shake up the classic formula but it is a well done version of that formula.

Just rewatched Death Machine (1994) after a good 17 years or so. Damn, that movie was way better than I remembered it, and I had fairly fond memories of it. They go a bit overboard by naming all the characters after famous movie directors, but I finally really get why people call it a spiritual successor to Hardware. Really fun cyberpunk we're-stuck-in-a-skyskraper-with-a-murder-machine movie with some fantastic music and sound design, and special effects that still generally hold up.

4/5

John Wick 10/10 ~ My new fav movie.. just watch it.. like omg..

Free Willy 4/5

Cute, but also filled with some real 90s cringe.

Shin Godzilla 3/5 - It's a very old school Godzilla movie in that it is more or less a criticism to the Japanese Government's handling of the 2011 earthquake via a giant monster attack instead of being pure camp like the last batch of Godzilla movies At times this approach comes off as a wry political satire akin to the 2009 movie In the Loop (huge recommend from me) and other times it gets a bit heavy handed with its message.

Anyway on to the design of Godzilla. It is an odd looking Godzilla that I want to believe is intentionally off-putting, and very Cronenberg-esque, especially when he first appears, but I think it fits the story they are trying to tell of a misshapen monstrosity instead of looking like a recognizable animal shape. I love that the new Godzilla is creepy looking and seems to lack any anthropomorphic qualities. All that said I hate how the eyes look very much like googly eyes. Plus the tail is ridiculously too long and looks cheap compared to the rest of the movie.

I'm really curious on how they follow up this movie. Personally I like to see the morality of trying to turn Godzilla into a biological weapon that they attempt and ultimately fail to control.

Certain Women - 5/5

This director (Kelly Reichardt) has always surprised me with her ability to film the mundane yet imbue it with beauty. Loved this film.

Shin Godzilla - 5/5 - Do you like OG Godzilla? The "I'mma come out of the ocean and fuck you up" one, not the "I'mma come out of the ocean and fuck up this monster" one, or the "I'mma come out of the ocean and be a friend to children" one, either. If you do, and you have a real love for the specific tropes an old Godzilla movie brings with it (people fleeing in panic, lots of boardroom indecision, failed military attacks, musical bombast, loveably sub-par effects, a wacky plan as a last resort), you'll eat this shit up.

They sprinkled just about all of that with a heavy dose of Japanese nationalism, especially the boardroom bits, but you can tell there's a real love for the roots of Godzilla, right down to the music cues cut straight from the 1954 original. Give it a watch if you can; the crowd I was with had a great time, including some tear-inducing laughter when The King of the Monsters first makes his appearance as a weird armless half-turkey half-lizard biped that literally has to push himself along the ground on his stomach to go anywhere.

You can tell that Ano was all over this thing, and I feel like he nailed it.

@mirado: Um I believe the record will show that Gamera is a friend to all children, not Godzilla.

I need to see this movie. Is it in theaters, or can I grab a digital rental at this point?

@ford_dent: I see your factual argument about Gamera, and raise you an unrelated video of Godzilla doing a jumpy victory dance which confuses a space alien guy:

It's in theaters, one week only, from the 11th to the 18th. My local theaters only had it for one time per day, so your location may vary in availability.

Ghost in the Shell - 4/5

It's been ages since I last watched this. The tank scene is still great. Though I must have completely blacked out my memory of what happened after, cause that part was weird. Seriously, Motoko in a little girl's body. Now I want to watch GitS 2: Innocence, I remember even less about that one.

PlayTime (1967)

This comedy experiment in a modern/futuristic city was surprisingly entertaining. It's a series of events (connected by happenstance) over the course of a day, following multiple characters. It's kind of like watching city people through a magnifying glass or watching Sims. The camera never closes in on their faces and there's barely any dialogue.

An example of the humor involves a busy assistant/attendant scurrying around an office building when his boss requests some information over a phone. He hurries down to the drawer in the bottom right corner to pull the folder, briefly looks around (as if trying to figure out where he should go) and then goes back to the cubicle in the top left corner (the one with the red light) and informs his boss (the person in the hat, standing behind the wall with the drawer) over the phone.

The movie starts off calm, a morning at an airport, and gradually the scenes become denser and more absurd. I loved it. I'm surprised this only has 13,000 members on IMDB.

Hotel Transylvania - 5/5

Man this movie's a delight. A lot funnier than I was expecting, one of those no-villain movies, and fan-fucking-tastic animation. Lacking in any of those Pixar-esque emotional gut punches, but that's okay. Not every 3D animated movie needs to go there.

Seriously though, some killer fuckin animation in this thing. The style here really caught me off-guard. I'd forgotten it was Genndy Tartakovsky at the helm.

@mirado: Damn and blast. I'll have to wait until it's available as a rental or something here.

Green Room-5/5

Punks vs Nazis= Brutal, intense, horrific, great movie.

Hardcore Henry.
I was a backer of its indiegogo campaign but the campaign rewards, i.e. digital downloads, haven't been given out yet so i had to get it on DVD, but that's ok because it's still my preferred method of watching movies.
Anyway, it's good, super bizarre with a crazy enough plot to keep you watching but really you should be watching for the gimmick which is that pretty much the entire film is shot in first person. It's mostly successful at this, though if you're susceptible to motion sickness from cameras swinging around you may hate it.
As an indie scale movie it has an ambition and drive which you can't help but notice throughout, there are one or two scenes which don't quite manage to keep up but overall it was a fun ride, Sharlto Copley is awesome, he probably had a ton of fun acting in this, he's in the commentary for the movie so i may re-watch it with that on in the near future.

I watched Full Metal Jacket. It's a great movie

X-Men: Apocalypse - 2/5

Some good ideas and visuals but half baked all around. CGI looked cheap.

Captain America: Civil War - 4/5

First Avengers movie I liked. Reminded me I really like Spider-Man and got me hyped on that movie, Black Panther seems pretty cool too. I thought I was completely done with superhero movies but quite enjoyed this one. Don't remember what happened with Hulk but seemed weird he was just MIA.

@dharmabum: so jealous you got to see this. I'm in the UK and there doesn't seem to be a release date for it. Loved Meek's Cutoff and Night Moves and I've been loking forward to this for a while.

As for what I've seen recently, I watched Ran. It was first Kurosawa movie and I really enjoyed it. Its about power and greed corrupting people told through a king handing the reigns to his three sons and fighting that happens between them as a result (This is a pretty rough interpretation that I came up with a few hours after seeing it so I'm sorry if I'm dumbing it down). My only gripe was the pacing which was unnecessarily slow. I don't mind long movies if they can justify their length but this one dragged a little, even for me. 4/5

@ulquiokani: Night Moves blew me away the first time I saw it. Then I went back and watched Old Joy and Meek's Cutoff - both excellent. Still need to see Wendy and Lucy but I'm kind of afraid of what it's about. Certain Women had a dedication to Lucy, Reichardt's dog, at the end. If you are a fan of her style and aesthetic you'll probably love it. Hope it opens in your area soon.

Memories of Murder 5/5

A great take on detective drama. Good characters and the chemistry between them. Starts off as your usual 'whodunnit' flick but develops into a very interesting character study.

And of course, the camerawork. Some of the best if not the best use of space, blocking and camera movement I've seen in a film. The way the movie feeds the viewer information about the characters and their relationships with each other simply by putting them in certain places within the frame is absolutely masterful. It's also a prime example of how to direct the viewer's attention and showing them what's important without the use of boring close-up shots.

Went to see Lo and Behold! Reveries of a Connected World, the new documentary by Werner Herzog, on Wednesday.

I would say it's up there with his best documentaries. In the Q&A afterwards he said that the project was intended to be a youtube series, but that he decided it required a feature length treatment. To some extent this is seen in the film, which is split into 10 sections, discussing a different aspect of his topic. In practice this gives the film a musical, symphonic quality, with clear shifts in tone that slowly piece together some greater whole.

Notionally the film is about the emergence of the internet as a fact of daily life, and the film is largely populated with people who are, or have been, at the forefront of the modern technological world. However, if you watch this film hoping for an exhaustive history of the internet, or any kind of explanation of how it works, you'll be very disappointed. In fact, there are only really two diversions into technical explanation. One, where Leonard Kleinrock recites a formula for determining the capacity of a network, is played for laughs with a dry irony that is maybe slightly atypical for Herzog. The other is when Ted Nelson attempts to explain his alternative paradigm for a connected network; Nelson presents his ideas in a poetic, dreamlike way that is also completely opaque. It's clear that Herzog admires him for this.

What emerges from these and other interviews is a film rather in the vein of Dickens' Hard Times. Herzog suggests early in the film that the internet represents the first stage of a radical shift in the very essence of humanity, and I think he's interested here in how the connected world has already changed our society and our morals, how it might go on to change them, and also what sort of personalities are building this future for us. I think this is why he is so enamored of Ted Nelson - he is happy that at least some of the people creating our future are poets.

The film is mostly successful in presenting all of this. It can seem at first like a slightly erratic and unfocused piece of work, but as with his earlier film Encounters at the End of the World, Herzog's real concerns run through the film from start to finish, emerging in a wonderfully strange crescendo, in which he slips into the more fantastical mode of Lessons in Darkness and Fata Morgana to tie the whole thing together. It's also one of his more beautifully filmed documentaries showing a lot of the flair for composition -presenting us with weird, uncanny tableaux - that make his drama films so wonderful.

It's not without flaws. Herzog tends to let his interviewees speak for themselves, and I felt that sometimes what they were saying needed to be challenged a little more. I also think that Herzog himself only has a limited understanding of what some of the more technical people were saying, and because he has his own preoccupations and obsessions, he ends up talking at cross-purposes with them.

Overall though, it's a great film. Thought-provoking, filled with great characters, and refreshingly optimistic.

Decided to rewatch the Saw franchise from beginning to end, since I had picked up the series (that barebones but unrated DVD set) a couple months back.

Got through the first three last night. Note: I'm rating these against themselves, so don't take the high ratings to mean that these are great movies by any means.

Saw - 4/5: Hmm. This was interesting to go back to. It has such a different feel from the other movies, for both better and worse. It also has an oddly comedic tone in spots that I had forgotten about (Sing's OTT death, the cigarette ruse, etc.), and the acting is weirdly shoddy coming from the likes of Cary Elwes and Danny Glover. Especially Elwes, who gets some unintentional(?) laughs from his delivery. It feels like a polished indie movie (makes sense given its roots) and it's really likable in that way. And that series of twists is still awesome. Shame that every sequel tried to top it, to the point where it eventually becomes a complete mess of plot.

Of course, Jigsaw's M.O. is flimsy at best from the very beginning, which becomes more and more obvious as the series goes on. Makes for entertaining scenes, though, so... y'know.

Saw II - 5/5: Man, I love Saw 2. It's fun in a way that the series never really achieves again, and there's so much ham in it that it could feed the world. Plus it has my favorite twist in the whole series. Not a lot to even say about it... it's just a fun, fucked-up movie.

Saw III - 3/5: I like a lot about Saw 3, I really do. But Jesus H. Christmas, did it take place in a universe where all the characters suddenly became untenably stupid? The entire thrust of this installment is one stupid decision after another by everybody involved. I also never bought Amanda as being so reverent of Jigsaw, or so suddenly unhinged. None of it feels earned or properly explained. And with the series timeline taking its first foray into "Wait, WHEN did this scene happen?" fuckery, it's even less coherent. I do love the final shot, though... so silly.

X-Men Apocalypse

-1/5 stars. Nothing makes sense. I want my time and money back.

I watched Lego Movie, and it was funny. I liked it