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

[Syn]

Island of the Living Dead

Amazon says 2023, the net 2006 but it feels older than that. A shipwrecked group finds themselves on an evil island. As they explore the area they encounter vampire zombies and ruins with treasure. It's not good but it is so bad it's good if you enjoy that. The ending is predictable too.

 

[Average Joe]

Island of the Living Dead

Amazon says 2023, the net 2006 but it feels older than that. A shipwrecked group finds themselves on an evil island. As they explore the area they encounter vampire zombies and ruins with treasure. It's not good but it is so bad it's good if you enjoy that. The ending is predictable too.

Yeah, it was 2006 and that was Bruno Mattei's last movie.

Also, probably one of his best (behind Night Killer of course.)

 

[Taiso]

Both of the Dead Snow movies are good in their own way.

The first film had this legendary scene where a bunch of young people (clearly meant to die) in a cabin are visited by an older dude that comes to warn them about Colonel Herzog and the hidden Nazi gold he's cursed to defend forever. That scene had me in stitches. For the most part, the film takes itself pretty serioiusly.

The second entire film is very tongue in check, very Army of Darkness in tone. A fun, silly time.

 

[Tarma]

Ghost In The Shell - so I'm going on a bit of an anime binge, going through my LD collection (goddamn anime looks good on LD)... so tonight it was the turn of Mamoru Oshi's cyberpunk classic. Still looks stunning 30 years after its original release, and the audio is pretty awesome too. If you like cyberpunk and/or anime, then you owe to yourself to check this out, if you've not seen it already. Forget the Scarlett Johansson live action remake - the original 1995 masterpiece is the real deal.

 

[SouthtownKid]

Ghost In The Shell - so I'm going on a bit of an anime binge, going through my LD collection (goddamn anime looks good on LD)... so tonight it was the turn of Mamoru Oshi's cyberpunk classic. Still looks stunning 30 years after its original release, and the audio is pretty awesome too. If you like cyberpunk and/or anime, then you owe to yourself to check this out, if you've not seen it already. Forget the Scarlett Johansson live action remake - the original 1995 masterpiece is the real deal.

Also, forget the altered-color remaster with new puppetmaster voice. We just rewatched this and Innocence last week on streaming, and thankfully, they use the original version of the first movie here.

 

[LoneSage]

Also, forget the altered-color remaster with new puppetmaster voice. We just rewatched this and Innocence last week on streaming, and thankfully, they use the original version of the first movie here.

Man, Innocence. Guess it came out 20 years ago but the reviews killed it for me so I never checked it out. At that time, SAC was enough for me. What did you think of it?

 

[SouthtownKid]

Man, Innocence. Guess it came out 20 years ago but the reviews killed it for me so I never checked it out. At that time, SAC was enough for me. What did you think of it?

It's the best animated Ghost in the Shell ever produced. Well, now that I think about it, it's better than the comic, too.

Shirow is never all that interested in telling a story or creating characters. He's definitely not interested in developing any characters. Everything to him is just a vehicle for exploring the science. Character development is non-existent and any plot is just an afterthought. The comics are 90% Shirow imagining how the technology will work. While Oshii's movies are about the emotional and psychological effects of that technology on people.

 

[SouthtownKid]

This probably should be in the tv thread, but we also watched Arise. Which was better than I expected.

 

[LoneSage]

JFC. Ok bro. I never watched Get Smart. But I will watch Innocence. Thank you

 

[Taiso]

It's the best animated Ghost in the Shell ever produced.

Concur.

 

[jro]

I have (re)watched far too many films recently to mention them all, but a few that are of note to me are:

1. Mean Spirited - very slow to start, honestly kinda hard to get through the first 30 minutes but then it picks up quite a bit. Rest of it ends up taking a pretty nasty turn that redeems the bad start for the most part. It's not subtle in the storytelling but it's solid and does what it means to do.
2. The Strangers: Prey at Night - yes, these are out of order on purpose. I watched PaN first on purpose, and it's... okay. The movie itself is fine as a home invasion thriller with a little bit of moving around and Bailee Madison saving several scenes but the soundtrack is by far the MVP here. The fight in the pool to Pat Benetar is always going to fucking slay me. Not happy to see the reviews that the zero-chapter is apparently awful, but fuck me, who knows how to make good horror movies these days I guess.
3. The Strangers - the first, I dunno, 60% of this (up to the point when Dennis gets f'ed right on up) is amazing. Then it's fine. It did, however, sort of lay down the genre conventions for terror movies, i.e. home invasion thrillers. And I'll never forget that my ex scolded me for taking her to see this. There are no pictures of her anywhere on earth or any other planet.
4. Evil Dead: Rise - I actually really like the, what, 2015, Evil Dead remake, but this one is the real deal, as you'd expect from one that Raimi and Campbell would both sign on to as EPs. Starts pretty slow and then just goes steadily into nasty/chaos. Storytelling is great, direction is awesome, ending works okay. I'd honestly be surprised if there is not a proper ED Raimi/Campbell feature coming in the next few years or so, and this is a nice bar to set for quality. Best straight mainstream horror movie of the past few years IMO.
5. Primer - yeah that microscopic budget is pretty obvious for much of the way here, but... it's still honestly really fucking good. It has a lot of filler somehow, and it's, what 70 minutes long, The first 30 minutes drag, then there's like a few minutes of plot, then the movie goes to the end which is really good, and, fuck, yeah, just go watch it. Now I'm gonna have to go watch Upstream Color again and be also similarly bored and then attentive.
6. Trespass - one of two (I think?) r-rated movies I saw in the theater when I was 12 (my parents were like what harm could a gangster movie do, the other one was Demon Knight I did indeed have good taste even then (I'm probably getting this wrong fucking whatever)), fucking Walter Hill man, his stuff holds up to this day. It's such pulp, but man, Paxton (especially), Ice T, and the set pieces really carry it. Still good.
7. The Endless (yes, again, fuck me) - I appreciate this more every time I watch it. Reminds me of Primer and Coherence.
8. Dark Windows - bizarre British take on home invasion and then it gets the ending really right, like, for real, first 80 minutes suck balls and then the ending made me go okay, that works. Not often that that happens.
9. Chappie (re-watch, what, third fourth fifth time whatever) - it's a dumb movie with several strong points that make it fun as hell to watch IMO: Copley is VERY engaged as Chappie. Dude is believable. Seriously, watch those scenes where Chappie is touching things for the first time. Second one (thanks for not formatting anything sorry this looks like shit), Yolandi is genuinely pretty good in her scenes. Ninja is obviously playing his usual persona, but she's playing surrogate mom and doing a decent job of it. And, of course, Patel and Jackman both are bringing their A-games to this.
   1. Was gonna post a bunch of shit about that casting but will cut it short (yes you're welcome kernow) to say that overall, fuck me, make Chappie 2.
10. edit... There's apparently a sequel to Coherence coming. Ummmm....................

 

[Taiso]

Furiosa

I don't really have a lot to say about this film so I will try to just bullet point my thoughts.

GOOD

• Chris Hemsworth is pretty great in it as Dementus.
• George Miller's worldbuilding continues to be very imaginative, especially in all the engineering innovations that are developed specifically to deal with highway piracy.
• The autodeuling sequences are still pretty great all these years later, even if too much of it was CGI this time around.

BAD

• Way too long. 2.5 hours for this?
• Futile prequel. There is nothing here that we needed to know and nothing here that warranted the telling. It did not help me understand Fury Road any better or contribute to that film in any meaningful fashion.

I was somewhat engaged while watching it but it is a film I am going to forget by the end of the day. It's not a horrible movie by any means but there is nothing new here. It lacks the leap in innovation that we saw from Mad Max to The Road Warrior to Thunderdome to Fury Road. The first film in the franchise that feels stale when compared to what came before.

3 out of 5.

 

[Average Joe]

Suitable Flesh

Put off watching this for no real reason in particular and finally watched it with it leaving a very favorable impression.

It definitely deserves praise for very much feeling like an 80s Gordon piece and if Gordon was still alive and somehow made this without me knowing he did I honestly wouldn't question it one bit. Heather Graham and the young lead actor deserve kudos too for getting pretty wild at times and giving some solid performances for such a goofy little movie.

It's a bit too heavy on the eroticism for me and definitely could have used some more of the classic Gordon-Lovecraftian gore/monster work, but there is still enough there and what is there is quite well done. I can see the ending possibly pissing some people off, but given the tone of the film overall it felt almost predictable and I welcomed it.

 

[100proof]

Love Lies Bleeding - Much like Saltburn was the Talented Mr. Ripley through a weirdo pervert's lens, this movie is very much Thelma and Louise but made by a person with a muscle lady fetish. Pretty standard love story stuff: outsider rolls in to town (in this case, a bodybuilder chick from the midwest), falls for the main character (in this case, a not half bad Kristen Stewart playing a butch lesbian who eats cigarettes and looks like she hasn't bathed in a month... big stretch, I know), she upsets all the apple carts, a big mistake is made that forces a difficult choice to be made and they ride off in to the sunset (maybe).

However, this movie has a weird undercurrent of body horror-ish fantasy to it. It's set in a filthy pervert version of the 1980s that John Waters would probably be happy to call home and everything has a kind of heightened reality from the beginning with ridiculous hairdos and a dopey mustache on James Franco's kid brother. Then it just gets straight up weird... bodybuilder lady begins taking steroids and there are several close-up shots of her muscles pulsing/growing (?) unnaturally (especially when she's angry) and it all culminates with a scene at the end that's straight out of Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman that's so dumb, I would've turned the movie off if it wasn't in the last five minutes. I have to imagine that shit is the whole reason the movie was made (so the writer/director could see their jack-off fantasy on the screen) and it's shot as a sort of fantasy sequence but it's utter nonsense and completely killed any momentum the movie had going for it.

There's a couple of non-explicit lesbian sex scenes that are alright complete with heavily implied box-eating and finger-blastin (assuming you like looking at boyish Kristen Stewart and the bodybuilder lady... who isn't unattractive but muscle chicks generally aren't my thing) and you get Ed Harris in a wild skullet... I don't know. It probably would've been decent if it decided to stick with either being a straight-forward drama or a trashy exploitation movie where roided out muscle chicks cave a guy's face in in ways that only Jason Voorhees could but as is, it's kinda not great as either.

 

[SouthtownKid]

Finally got around to watching Godfather: Coda -- The Death of Michael Corleone. This movie is a magic trick. It's still nowhere near as good as Godfather 1 & 2, but with creative editing and some rearranging of scene order, Coppola actually turned this into a pretty good movie. How he did this with only the existing material from 34 years ago is kind of miraculous.

 

[famicommander]

Finally got around to watching Godfather: Coda -- The Death of Michael Corleone. This movie is a magic trick. It's still nowhere near as good as Godfather 1 & 2, but with creative editing and some rearranging of scene order, Coppola actually turned this into a pretty good movie. How he did this with only the existing material from 34 years ago is kind of miraculous.

His extended cut of The Outsiders was pretty good too, except he replaced the awesome soundtrack from the theatrical cut with weird generic upbeat guitar tracks that don't fit. But the extra scenes are worth watching, and it matches the book almost 1:1.

 

[Hattori Hanzo]

Watched 1 & 2 last year. Skipped the 3rd for decades. Not so sure if I want to watch Coda.

 

[terry.330]

Also, forget the altered-color remaster with new puppetmaster voice. We just rewatched this and Innocence last week on streaming, and thankfully, they use the original version of the first movie here.

You taking about 2.0? Cause yeah that thing is a travesty.


Close Encounters Of The Third Kind- I don't know if I'd call this one underrated but it rarely comes up when people talk about Spielberg these days. I don't think I can call it a classic in the same sense as Jaws, Raiders, JP etc. but it is one of Spielberg's most Spielbergian movies. It's got all of the hallmarks that he would come to be known for and goes heavy in the first third with the suburban family slice of life stuff that he would revisit. In fact having watched Poltergeist fairly recently I can definitely see how much of that was handled by Spielberg after watching this.

As a follow up to Jaws this is a pretty damn ambitious project and I think he definitely ran into some issues when trying to assemble the movie. Which it would seem he would continue to have as there are 3 different versions of this all made multiple years apart. The biggest issue is pacing and what I guess you would call the action scenes. Running from the military, sneaking up the mountain etc. they just come off as awkward and lack any real sense of tension.

Most of he effects have aged pretty well if you're someone that appreciates matte paintings, compositing and miniatures, the movie is very interesting from a technical stand point. Maybe not very polished but you can tell Spielberg and his crew definitely learned a lot making this and it shows in Raiders and E.T. (Though I think he also learned a lot about making engaging action working on 1941, which is kind of ironic)

Again while not a classic on the level of some of his others this is still avery interesting and unique movie on a lot of levels. It has it's problems but I think they're fairly easy to overlook.

 

[100proof]

Silent Night (2023) - John Woo action/revenge flick starring Joel Kinnaman as a father whose young son was caught in the crossfire of a gangland shooting and he was shot in the throat and can no longer speak. The gimmick of the movie is that there are like two lines of dialogue in the entire thing so the whole movie has to be carried by the score and Kinnaman's facial expressions. It's got a few decent kinetic action scenes and Kinnaman and his wife do a really good job of selling the anguish of losing a child and being fundamentally broken in the aftermath but it's otherwise a pretty by-the-numbers revenge movie. The villains are cookie-cutter latino gangbangers, the useless cop (played by Kid Cudi) is barely even in it until the end and the basic outline of the story is one we've seen a million times.

This is a movie that would've probably found a cult following if it came out 30 years ago between VHS and HBO. It has an interesting gimmick that's executed pretty well (though the lack of dialogue definitely prevents the supporting characters from being fleshed out properly) and while it's certainly not up there with the movies that made John Woo famous, it highlights some of the things he was always good at. In 2024, it just gets dumped on a streaming service and lost in the mist.

 

[SouthtownKid]

Watched 1 & 2 last year. Skipped the 3rd for decades. Not so sure if I want to watch Coda.

You might as well, although I wouldn't say you can't live without it. But this version goes a good ways toward saving the movie, and the worst aspects of the original cut are kind of minimized in an interesting way.

 

[Taiso]

His extended cut of The Outsiders was pretty good too, except he replaced the awesome soundtrack from the theatrical cut with weird generic upbeat guitar tracks that don't fit. But the extra scenes are worth watching, and it matches the book almost 1:1.

I agree with this. The extended cut is, story and character wise, vastly superior to the original theatrical cut. That scene where the brothers all have it out in the park at the end should have never been removed.

But the new soundtrack is shitty. I wonder if a fan ever made an edit with the brilliant original score.

 

[Ralfakick]

The season and weather are here for summer horror flicks. How about a Sleepaway Camp/Friday the 13th/The Burning, Jaws/Lake Placid/Piranha 3D/Deep Rising/Tremors/Arachnophobia/Crawl, JC's Vampires/Near Dark/Lost Boys, Cabin in the Woods/Tucker & Dale vs. Evil, or Killer Klowns from Outer Space? So many good options. So many bad options, too: Congo, Deep Blue Sea, The Meg, Club Dread, Cabin Fever, most of the Hills Have Eyes, Wrong Turn, Hatchet, and Children of the Corn series, etc. The Faculty, Disturbing Behavior, Scream, The Craft, Carrie, and Final Destination all seem to be set around the end of the school year.

This post reminded me I still hold out hope Summer Camp Nightmare will someday get released on bluray by someone like Vinegar Syndrome. It never got a dvd release even, I used to love watching it on our local cable channel Prism when I was younger

 

[prof]

@terry.330
Nice avatar. I can't believe someone else has actually seen that awful movie. Haha

Edit: that dude's actually a practicing attorney....

John De Hart Esq. - Home Page

johndehartesq.com

 

[terry.330]

@terry.330
Nice avatar. I can't believe someone else has actually seen that awful movie. Haha

Not only have I seen it but I've seen all 3 versions of it.

GetEven
Road To Revenge
Champagne And Bullets

Each one more painful than the previous.

 

[Average Joe]

@terry.330
Nice avatar. I can't believe someone else has actually seen that awful movie. Haha

Edit: that dude's actually a practicing attorney....

John De Hart Esq. - Home Page

johndehartesq.com

I own that awful movie.