Movie opinions thread (what have you seen, what did you think?)

[terry.330]

The Naked Gun- This didn't hold up as well as I was hoping but it's still pretty enjoyable. I think it's brought down a little by all the dated references. It seems to rely on current events and era specific references more than genre cliches like a lot of their other movies. There are a ton of visual gags but a lot of them are too elaborate with too little payoff and lack the bizarre cleverness of one found in say Top Secret. Still there are some absolutely classic scenes and obviously the cast is great, Leslie Nielsen really is a joy to watch.

 

[terry.330]

So apparently there's a Toxic Avenger remake starring Peter Dinklage (as Toxie), Kevin Bacon and Elijah Wood...

 

[terry.330]

Predators- A real mixed bag all around, some good ideas and some cool scenes but overall fairly mediocre. The whole movie is 2 steps forward and 2 steps back. Some shots look awesome and some look like direct to video junk. Most of the cast is solid but then you got Topher Grace. Great basic premise but a lousy script. Some great practical effects but then garbage CG. It's a mess but the good or at least good enough mostly outweighs the bad. Oh well, it's still miles ahead of AVP 1&2 and The Predator.

 

[HornheaDD]

So apparently there's a Toxic Avenger remake starring Peter Dinklage (as Toxie), Kevin Bacon and Elijah Wood...

Haven't watched the trailer but... is Toxie a midget in this version?

 

[terry.330]

Yup.

 

[terry.330]

Kamikaze- This is one of those hidden gems you just love to stumble on. It's a french sci-fi thriller/crime drama from 1986 produced and co-written by Luc Besson. A mad scientist/inventor is fired after 30 years at some huge corporation, he goes insane and creates a machine that allows him to assassinate people through live TV. He starts killing TV presenters and the police assign a detective to investigate who then assembles a team of scientist to figure out how the murders are being committed to find a way stop them.

If you love retro 80s technology in things like Videodrome and Buckaroo Banzai this is right up your alley. There's all kind of goofy but awesome gadgets and equipment plus all the TV studio stuff. It's got some amazing low key cinematography, a great unique synth score and the genre blending works surprisingly well. It's not perfect, it's very french and very 80s which leads to some goofy scenes but they don't really drag the movie down. I will also say a lot of the logic is pretty weird but I chalk most of that up to french sensibilities. Overall I thought this was pretty awesome, definitely unique. Recommended.

 

[HornheaDD]

Yup.

what in the fuck

 

[Ralfakick]

Insert Coin - Story of Midway Games.

Been wanting to watch it for a while but was waiting for it to come out on a free service (it’s free on Tubi TV and YouTube)

Anyway it’s all about Midway Games by the employees themselves with some Goobs added, but mostly the employees. Definitely some things I did not know, I’d say worth a watch if you are interested. Roger Sharpe is in a lot of these video game movies I recognized him from Special When Lit and he’s what the Man Who Saved Pinball is about

 

[Ralfakick]

Kamikaze- This is one of those hidden gems you just love to stumble on. It's a french sci-fi thriller/crime drama from 1986 produced and co-written by Luc Besson. A mad scientist/inventor is fired after 30 years at some huge corporation, he goes insane and creates a machine that allows him to assassinate people through live TV. He starts killing TV presenters and the police assign a detective to investigate who then assembles a team of scientist to figure out how the murders are being committed to find a way stop them.

If you love retro 80s technology in things like Videodrome and Buckaroo Banzai this is right up your alley. There's all kind of goofy but awesome gadgets and equipment plus all the TV studio stuff. It's got some amazing low key cinematography, a great unique synth score and the genre blending works surprisingly well. It's not perfect, it's very french and very 80s which leads to some goofy scenes but they don't really drag the movie down. I will also say a lot of the logic is pretty weird but I chalk most of that up to french sensibilities. Overall I thought this was pretty awesome, definitely unique. Recommended.

I’m going to check this out

 

[terry.330]

The Shadow- I had no idea this was directed by Russell Mulcahy (Highlander) and was able to watch it with a new appreciation. Unfortunately it's still a mess. The production design is fantastic, everything is just an art deco dream cranked up to 11. Penelope Anne Miller's wardrobe is also amazing. Visually it's a very ambitious and impressive film, bad CG aside of course. It's up there with the Burton Batmans. There are a few scenes where Mulcahy gets to really show what he's capable of but a lot of the movie feels like the studio had him on a pretty short leash. But once you get past that there are a lot of serious problems.

First being Alec Baldwin, he's terrible. He looks the part but he swings wildly between goofy playboy, cardboard cutout and second rate action man. He's all over the place and he's not convincing at any of them. Then you have the incredible supporting cast being absolutely wasted. And lastly the lousy script. I can see it all as word balloons in an actual comic but in movie format it just does not work. They were going for a legit retro comic hokey charm but it doesn't translate was well as the visuals do.

Overall it's an overly ambitious oddity with some tremendous visuals and some old school comic flair but not much else.

 

[fake]

Shivers - Good stuff. Dan O’Bannon definitely took a few pages from this when creating Dark Star.

Rabid - Weirdly more schlocky than Shivers. Worth it for a laugh I guess.

Dead Ringers - Really good. Super creepy on multiple levels, with actual heft to the characters and story. And the 80s brutalist set design is fantastic.

EXistenZ - probably an unpopular opinion but it stinks. Great idea with a terrible story, terrible dialog, and terrible acting. A distant third behind the matrix and dark city.

No One Will Save You - super hacky attempt at an elevated sci-fi horror. Not worth the time.

The Exorcism of Emily Rose - I saw this in theaters but was making out with a hot older woman the whole time. Half paying attention this time, it’s actually a pretty good Law and Order episode. Honestly wish they put more emphasis on the legal procedure and the conundrum of how unprovable faith chafes against the judicial system.

The Menu - Pretty good novelty movie in the same vein as Knives Out.

 

[jro]

Coherence (re-watch, I dunno four times now?) - I appreciate this a little more every time I watch it. This time I tried to pay attention to the theory that reality switches at every cut to black and I still lost track after 40 minutes. I did, however, finally notice why/how badly Em fucks up at the end. Every time I'd watched it before, never managed to put it together, that "decoherence" depends on not interacting. Em very much interacts (after much shenanigans that throw off the viewer), and she thinks she's golden but there's that rule, she's fucked up royally in the morning.

And the way the movie was made, it's just, wow. Amazing success story that resulted in an awesome film.

At the End of Eight - so, I guess this is what happens when you have a budget of like, a thousand dollars. The concept is kind of interesting and there are a few scenes with some tension in the first half then it just goes to, dammit, FUCKING shit (the emphasis is because it could have been good!). Don't waste 80 minutes of your life on this. Good reminder of how bad the indie horror on Prime can be.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 - so I guess James Gunn can make a decent Marvel movie. Mantis, Drax, Nebula, then on down to Rocket (obvs I suppose), Drax, Quill, et al, really does make for a MUCH better than usual MCU entry. Really like the emphasis on the previously secondary characters, excellent actors with great writing. Also really refreshing to have a definitive ending for the whole group. Props, also, to Bradley Cooper (especially) and Vin Diesel for making very rich characters out of VA alone.

DCU ain't gonna be easy to be save but IMO Gunn might be the one guy that could pull it off.

Girl on the Third Floor - here ya go, an indie horror movie starring CM Punk. That's maybe the most non-committal intro ever? It has, I'm not kidding, mostly positive ratings on RT. Very basic storytelling, and Phil is not a good actor (he's fine. He's your local guy playing Hamlet, but with tats). Somehow more critics than not liked this. I did not. The ending is not awful, but it's also kinda dumb.

edit: to explain... guy goes to house to repair it to make it great for wife/unborn kid. Ghost girl/whore shows up. Latter tries to get in former's pants. That's it!

Not recommended.

 

[terry.330]

My Bloody Valentine 3D- This is the remake from 2009 and it sucks ass. Even with an ample amount of gore and nudity it's still a total dud. It's just another example of the dull, dumb and soulless horror remakes they were cranking out at the time. The script is especially bad.

 

[HornheaDD]

EXistenZ - probably an unpopular opinion but it stinks. Great idea with a terrible story, terrible dialog, and terrible acting. A distant third behind the matrix and dark city.

Wait - straight up facts is an unpopular opinion on this flick? I saw it and it was awful all around. The 13th Floor was better than Existenz.

 

[Syn]

Juan of the Dead

A Cuban zombie film that immediately had my interest since I only know the basics of the island. The humor, action and zombie lore are similar to ours so it was overall entertaining. Of course they threw in a trans character and weren't exactly complimentary of Castro or the current regime. Cuba comes off as poverty stricken and unsafe actually with more have nots than haves.

It's probably a more interesting look at today's Cuba than a zombie film that is a good film.

 

[dspoonrt]

The Thirteenth Floor is great. It got bashed unfairly at the time since it wasn't The Matrix.

 

[HornheaDD]

The Thirteenth Floor is great. It got bashed unfairly at the time since it wasn't The Matrix.

You're thinking of Equilibrium.

 

[Burning Fight!!]

I enjoyed the Thirteenth Floor at the time... well at the time it was broadcasted on TV at least. But it's barely a good movie imo.

 

[dspoonrt]

I've watched The Thirteenth Floor about every 5 years since it came out, including in the last 3-6 months. I think it holds up. It's got a few goofy moments and it's way more fiction than science, but it's engrossing and smarter than a lot of similar films from that era.

I remember liking Equilibrium, too, but I haven't seen it in 15 years or so. Probably due for a re-watch.

 

[terry.330]

Totally Killer- This is literally if Back to the Future was a slasher movie and it kind of works. A teenage girl's mother is killed by the same guy that killed the mother's friends 35 years earlier. The girl is then sent back in time via her best friends time machine to 1987 and attempts to prevent the murders. It's pretty self aware and there's a fair amount of humor, mostly centered around a woke teenage girl being sent back to the very un-PC 80s. Some of it works some of it doesn't. The time travel element is even more dubious than using a DeLorean, it's probably the weakest part of the movie. The slasher element is fairly solid but it's a pretty generic 80s slasher at its core and some of the kills are surprisingly brutal.

I'd say it's not quite as good as something like Happy Death Day which is probably its closest comparison. Not bad though.

 

[fickmichcommander]

The new Exorcist movie sucks so hard the director of the original film is shitting on it from beyond the grave

https://imgur.com/TTC96AC

 

[lithy]

That D&D movie is pretty damn good.

 

[terry.330]

The new Exorcist movie sucks so hard the director of the original film is shitting on it from beyond the grave

https://imgur.com/TTC96AC

Yeah it's getting absolutely savaged. Apparently the studio had already green lit a trilogy, of course.

DGG and Kenny Powers already proved they aren't capable of handling legacy material let alone a trilogy with Halloween Kills and Ends. I have no idea why a studio would give them The Exorcist.

 

[fickmichcommander]

The only good Halloween movie was the first one.

 

[Burning Fight!!]

Nah the second one was pretty cool too. I shot him six tiiimmmesssss