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

Taiso

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I wouldn't read an article on The Mary Sue if you paid me ten million dollars but that picture is all I really needed to see to tell me he's very much up his own ass.

Thanks for sharing, folks.
 

Hot Chocolate

No Longer Yung, No Longer Raoul,
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The Fall Guy - Low stakes, meta-heavy action comedy loosely based on the early 80s TV show. Ryan Gosling is an affable if improbably handsome stuntman who's dating an up-and-coming production assistant (Emily Blunt) when he gets severely injured during a stunt. He spends 18 months recovering and feeling sorry for himself and drives away his lady friend. He finally gets back in the saddle when a producer calls because his now director ex is in trouble: the leading man on her first big break has disappeared and they need a replacement stuntman. Will they/won't they romantic subplots ensue and Gosling gets beat to shit while trying to solve the mystery.

The movie has token nods to the show (character names, the original theme song plays in the credits, Lee Majors and a rough looking Heather Thomas show up in an after-credits scene, a hint of the premise) but it's mostly just a love letter to the hard-working stuntman. Several real stuntmen have minor roles in the movie, a lot of screen time is dedicated to talking about the art of filmmaking and stuntwork and it's incredibly clear that the director (himself a stuntman before becoming an action movie director) has a genuine love for the craft. It has a very Indiana Jones quality to it (likable hero who is CONSTANTLY in way over his head and gets the crap kicked out of him a lot) and Ryan Gosling is suitably charming and has chemistry with Emily Blunt. Both of them are entirely too attractive for their roles (no stuntman on earth looks like Ryan Gosling) but it's not as distracting as I thought it could be.

There's a few fun extended action sequences, they go out of their way to use every trick in the stuntman/filmmaking 101 playbook and it has a solid 80s soundtrack. Chekov's guns out the ass too. Pretty good as popcorn movies go but I will say the tone is kind of all over the place and the movie can be a little overly goofy and meta. It's not a dealbreaker (more of a nitpick) and probably not that surprising from a guy who made a Deadpool movie but it definitely made the movie feel like it was being pulled in too many directions.
I had the same reaction to Heather Thomas that I did with Sammy Sosa, "WTF HAPPENED TO YOU?!"
 

100proof

Insert Something Clever Here
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I saw Stifler's mom in a commercial the other day and was like "oh no... she's become one of them too". All of those older ladies who have too much plastic surgery all start to look like Divine (John Waters' muse). It's so sad... while I understand that there's a lot of pressure on women in Hollywood to look "young", the plastic surgery makes them look worse EVERY. FUCKING. TIME.

Old women should be happy playing old women roles and if there's not enough of those, they should write more. You can't be hot when you're 60 unless you're one of those genetic freaks like Helen Mirren.
 

terry.330

Classic. Haven't Played It Yet.
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Halloween III: Season Of The Witch- Is this the misunderstood masterpiece that it has recently been lauded as? No, but it is certainly better than it originally got credit for. It is legitimately bizarre and I can see how people expecting another entry in the Michael Meyers saga were upset when they got a movie about an evil toy company and a bunch of pagan/occult stuff. Honestly it's so weird and off the wall that it's pretty interesting just for the sheer WTF? factor.

It's definitely better than a majority of the sequels that would come later though. The idea of making the series essentially an anthology of Halloween related stories was not a bad concept and it would have been interesting to see the series go in that direction but obviously that's not what happened.

Also man do I love the opening credits, the early glitched out CG accompanied by the Carpenter synth score is way more awesome than I remembered. Fuck that commercial jingle though.
 

Average Joe

Calmer than you are.
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Halloween 1 is perfect.

Halloween 2 is flawed fun.

Halloween 3 is a perfect holiday movie.

Halloween(s) 4-Zombie are varying degrees of awful/embarrassing.

Halloween 2018 is a legitimate return to form in the sense that it is great and then everything after it just gets worse all over again.
 

Average Joe

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In3Dragon

This was like watching a film directed by both Neil Breen and Shuny B and if you know who those people are and understand what this film is probably like then shame on you.

This is packed full of your typical vanity project egotistical buffoonery, but also has what is likely the most confusing script (and film title) I've ever seen. I can't even begin to unpack the logic that this film throws at you as it is legit kind of mind-numbing and hurts the fun of it a bit as it also goes on for two hours and becomes a bit exhausting. The last thirty minutes might be the most confusing part of the film, but it also cranks the insanity to 11 and becomes something special because of it.

I typically refrain from commenting on the physical appearances of others, but I'm making an exception here since I have never seen such a collection of unattractive people on film before and I've seen Tod Browning's "Freaks". A large chunk of this film is just being blasted by ugly people in the closest of close-ups and in some of the worst lighting. I don't know if there is a collective noun for a group of ugly homosapiens, but this film warrants coming up with one.

Also, the end credits features three separate "In Memory of..." moments fo three different deceased cast members. I don't know what the average number of deaths are during the production of a film this size are, but three seems a bit high. Much respect for the Director JJ Stomp for doing that as it is definitely a very nice thing to do and makes him seem like a decent dude.

I don't think this tops Fight of Fury for me as a "so bad it's good" film, but there are a few god-tier scenes here and maybe one of the best uses of stock footage used in lieu of an actual scene I've ever seen.
 
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terry.330

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American Fiction- So this was fairly interesting for reasons that I was not expecting. This was kind of marketed as a scathing comedic critique of race pandering in modern media. Not that it isn't but that's only one component of it.

Jeffery Wright plays an author who had modest past success but has been relegated to teaching at a small college. He's not exactly cut out for teaching at a modern college environment and its uber PC trappings so he is let go from his position. His agent is shopping around his most recent novel which keeps getting rejected because it's "not black enough". Not black enough for the liberal white elite who run the literary world and their notion of what a "black" novel should be.

So as kind of a fuck you to them he decides to write a purposefully ignorant, shallow, pandering piece of shit. Going so far as to make up a fictional author who is a wanted fugitive and speaks in ebonics. Unfortunately to his surprise his joke book sells immediately and soon after the movie rights are being optioned off. In his own words "it's like the stupider I act the richer I become".

The other part of the movie is him moving back to Boston with his somewhat estranged family and dealing with a series of tragedies and also some positives. I think this is where the movie loses a lot of people. It's more about a man coming to terms with himself and life in general than the social commentary comedy that it was advertised as.

Overall it was very good. Jeffery Wright is an incredible actor and the supporting cast is all very strong. It's funny, poignant and smart.
 

basic

back to basics
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Dune 2 should be able to reach 700-725M worldwide, compared to 406M for the first film (including the IMAX re-release from this year). Dune Messiah is a sure thing, it's just a matter of whether Villeneuve wants to do it next or if he wants to make one or two other movies before that.
doesn't fucking matter. nuggets choked game 7 at home.
 

Taiso

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Halloween by Rob Zombie is terrible but it has my favorite scene in any film in the 'franchise' ever.

 

Taiso

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I've always felt that Michael Myers and Joe Grizzly should have become friends and had trucker adventures all over the country.
 

terry.330

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Rebecca- Hitchcock drama from 1940 starring Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine. Fontaine is a meek companion to a wealthy older woman on holiday in Monte Carlo, she meets the dashing and wealthy Olivier and they end up in a whirlwind romance. They get married and she moves in with him at his families grand estate. She soon realizes that she knows practically nothing about his past, including his first wife, the titular Rebecca. This borders on psychological thriller as Fontaine starts to go a bit mad living in Rebecca's shadow from beyond the grave as well as her new husband who seems to be hiding something very big from her. She seeks to uncover his secrets and contend with some very malicious characters.

Beautifully shot with incredible sets and locations, as well as some great lighting. The cast is also great with some nice performances, especially from Fontaine who is very likable although rather pathetic for most of the movie. It drags a bit as it's quite long but picks up in the last act.

It's missing the sense of diabolical fun and mystery that is a hallmark of Hitchcock's later movies but is still expertly made with a satisfying conclusion.
 

Syn

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Get Out

I saw it was highly rated so I gave it a chance. The movie opens with a black guy walking in a subdivision at night. A car pulls up and stops. The guy looks and keeps walking. The car is following him so he turns around and walks away. I can't remember if the guy heard something but he looks behind him and for a second or two sees nothing. He then sees a guy run up on him, gets choked out and thrown in a trunk.

I was like okay. The actual story starts with a black guy getting ready to visit his white girlfriend's parents. He asks if her parents know he's black, she's say no but they won't care. They aren't out and out prejudice but you know when a white tries to make it seem like they feel ya bro, that awkward feeling, the parents are like that.

The guy who plays Chris, Daniel Kaluuya, was awesome.
 

terry.330

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Dune: Part Two- I dunno, on one hand I'm glad dense sci-fi like this is even getting such well done adaptions and seems to do fairly well with general audiences and fans alike. On the other I couldn't really care less. I find both movies to be very disconnected feeling and unengaging. There are engaging scenes but as a whole they just leave me feeling kind of indifferent.

They are visually exceptional though, incredible art direction, shot composition etc, but that's about all I really enjoy.

I also thought the music in this one was especially terrible. Just felt like it was trying to be epic instead of assisting with the already epic visuals. And for the love of god can they stop with the wailing female vocals in everything. It's played out and it was never pleasant to listen to in the first place.
 

SouthtownKid

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such well done adaptions
even that is up for debate. Villenueve seems to want to take large liberties with the source in order to appeal to current cultural trends while somewhat minimizing the awkward geopolitical and religious analogies of the book. Villenueve gets my vote to adapt the work of Salman Rushdie, because he will do it in a safe way that will say nothing, but engender no backlash or pesky violence.
 

terry.330

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even that is up for debate.
I meant in the broadest sense possible. It very easily could have been much worse. Like it's not filled with snappy dialogue or trying to be a dark edge lord wankfest and it's actually clearly someones vision. Villenue certainly has his issues but at least it has an air being a respectable movie. Imagine if JJ Abrams or Snyder were in charge of the material...
 

Taiso

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Dune: Part Two- I dunno, on one hand I'm glad dense sci-fi like this is even getting such well done adaptions and seems to do fairly well with general audiences and fans alike. On the other I couldn't really care less. I find both movies to be very disconnected feeling and unengaging. There are engaging scenes but as a whole they just leave me feeling kind of indifferent.

They are visually exceptional though, incredible art direction, shot composition etc, but that's about all I really enjoy.

I also thought the music in this one was especially terrible. Just felt like it was trying to be epic instead of assisting with the already epic visuals. And for the love of god can they stop with the wailing female vocals in everything. It's played out and it was never pleasant to listen to in the first place.
What did you think of Austin Butler as Feyd-Rautha?
 

terry.330

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What did you think of Austin Butler as Feyd-Rautha?
Honestly I thought he was one of the best parts of the movie. I don't particularly like him as an actor from what little I've seen of him in other things. In this he felt legitimately crazy and menacing, which contrasted with just how flat and restrained most of the rest of the cast was. He was at least entertaining.

He's no Sting in a metal codpiece but then who is?
 

Taiso

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Honestly I thought he was one of the best parts of the movie. I don't particularly like him as an actor from what little I've seen of him in other things. In this he felt legitimately crazy and menacing, which contrasted with just how flat and restrained most of the rest of the cast was. He was at least entertaining.

He's no Sting in a metal codpiece but then who is?
I watched the Baz Luhrman Elvis and thought Butler was magnificent in the role of Presley. The first half hour of the flick was like a fever dream that clumsily skipped over his early years to get to his struggles with Colonel Tom Parker. Those interactions between Butler and Hanks were pure magic. I never knew that Elvis had once melted down on stage over his restrictive contact and it made me research the actual event. The movie posits that Parker signed a contract with the Westgate to give both him and Elvis free room and board but had a stipulation that it was only valid so long as Elvis never left the country. Reason being that Elvis was a cash cow and they were making bank. If he'd have gone on that world tour like he wanted, they would have lost the profits.

The film showed Parker very conflicted about the agreement but ultimately choosing himself over Elvis. These parts of the movie are great drama and without Butler to carry the emotional weight of those scenes, I doubt it would have come off half as well.

Hanks was pretty great as Parker, too.
 
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