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

[terry.330]

The Inheritance- An incredibly wealthy old man invites his kids to the family mansion for his 75th birthday, once there he locks them in overnight and secludes himself in his study with orders not to be disturbed. His kids are all awful, one is a vapid influencer, there’s a pair of conniving greedy twins and the youngest son with his new wife. Turns out the old man sold his soul to a demon in exchange for a successful business empire. At some point he renegotiated his contract with the demon for his children’s souls Instead. Thus ending the family bloodline, unless of course his son’s new wife just happens to be pregnant. Sigh.

It’s terrible. It’s about as bland and by the numbers as it gets. It’s also incredibly predictable. Pretty much a complete waste of time.

 

[T.A.P.]

The same interview popped up on my YouTube mysteriously after you guys were talking Carpenter a few days back. Thought it was weird timing and I had no idea Carpenter had ever done this film with Chase. I had never heard of it.

Same thing for me too.

 

[LoneSage]

The same interview popped up on my YouTube mysteriously after you guys were talking Carpenter a few days back. Thought it was weird timing and I had no idea Carpenter had ever done this film with Chase. I had never heard of it.

2spooky4me

wait

220254me

 

[SouthtownKid]

Interstellar is fucking horrible.

Compared to what? Dune 2? lol

 

[terry.330]

Interstellar sucks, you don’t have to compare it to anything else.

 

[Lagduf]

I really enjoyed that Sci-Fi run we had a decade back. Interstellar, Gravity, The Martian, Arrival.

 

[famicommander]

I really enjoyed that Sci-Fi run we had a decade back. Interstellar, Gravity, The Martian, Arrival.

Alex Garland had three good ones in a row with Dredd, Ex Machina, and Annihilation.

Villeneuve is up to four good sci fi films in a row with Arrival, Blade Runner 2049, and Dune 1 and 2. Next he's doing Dune Messiah and Rendezvous with Rama, so those should also cause stk to say something douchey. We can all look forward to that.

I also have enjoyed the four most recent Planet of the Apes films.

ps if you liked Inception or Tenet, we can't be gay together anymore

 

[Lagduf]

Didn’t see Tenet and don’t care to. Inception was an interesting idea but not a movie that resonates with me.

Have been meaning to watch the last couple Apes movies.

 

[terry.330]

Nolan is one of the most frustrating directors of our time. He’s constantly pushing the envelope from a technical filmmaking standpoint but he‘s disappeared up his own ass with lame gimmicks and pseudo intellectual masturbation. That said I do enjoy The Prestige, it’s dumb and gimmicky but there’s enough cool stuff I can look past it. Also about 2/3 of The Dark Knight is pretty awesome.

Tenet is probably his most “Nolan” movie. I realized just how dumb the movie was where in the background of a scene there’s a bunch of soldiers practicing hand to hand fighting techniques for when time moves in reverse. It’s supposed to be a really cool detail that adds depth to the gimmick. Instead it’s actually the perfect visualization of just how superficial and silly it is.

 

[SouthtownKid]

Tenet is just Nolan doing the Connery-era Bond movie he always dreamed of. You shouldn't expect anything deeper than that from it.

 

[terry.330]

The Lair- Well I had heard this was bad but figured I’d give it a shot since it’s by the guy that did The Descent and Dog Soldiers. I was hoping the bad reviews were mostly just people who “didn’t get it” and that Marshall was going for an intentionally schlocky dumb action/horror/comedy thing. Well he was and he managed to fuck that up big time.

The premise is there, it’s basically Resident Evil in Afghanistan with aliens. There’s a lot of potential there for high quality action/horror shenanigans. But holy shit everything just falls flat. It looks incredibly cheap, the characters all suck, none of the humor works and there are so many weird little decisions that just make you scratch your head. Also what is going on with the accents? They are bad to the points of being distracting but I get the feeling they were supposed to be funny.

Total backfire in every regard.


Hellboy: The Crooked Man- Did not have high hopes for this but it was actually better than I thought it would be. That’s not saying a lot though. It looks and feels like a very polished fan film. Though like the 2019 one this is also a lot closer in tone to the comics than the Del Toro ones. So it does have something going for it.

It is one of the ugliest movies I’ve seen in years though. It has that Gears of War 2010s palette of grey and brown. It also has a tons of haze and shitty filters to try and hide how cheap everything looks. The guy that plays Hellboy has none of the body language of the character, any time he moves it looks bad.

Eh, it is what it is. Like I said there’s some good aspects to it but it never feels like a real movie.

 

[Tarma]

Sabotage - Obscure, but pretty decent, mid-90s action thriller starring Mark Dacascos, Carrie-Anne Moss, Graham Greene, and Tony Todd.

Dacascos plays a former special forces soldier who gets set up by his commanding officer, Greene, while on a rescue mission during the Bosnian war. Todd fucks the rescue by killing everyone including Dacascos. Fast forward three years, and the still alive Dacascos is a bodyguard whose latest client gets whacked by Todd. Moss is the FBI agent sent in to investigate and eventually teams up with Dacascos to take down both Todd and Greene.

The action is pretty solid, and Dacascos gets to show off his martial arts skills a few times to great effect. Tony Todd steals every scene he's in, and Moss also gives a sound performance. There's a great supporting role for John Neville (The Adventures of Baron Munchausen) as well, so the main cast is quite strong.

I went into this with low expectations because there's so little information on it out there, but came away pleasantly surprised. Definitely worth tracking down if you're either a Mark Dacascos or Tony Todd fan.

 

[Taiso]

RE: The most recent Hellboy movie.

I haven't seen it and have no interest in seeing it but I felt that David Harbour was a pretty solid pick to play the role if Perlman wasn't going to. Disappointing that it doesn't sound like he embodies the role as well as I would have expected.

 

[SouthtownKid]

RE: The most recent Hellboy movie.

I haven't seen it and have no interest in seeing it but I felt that David Harbour was a pretty solid pick to play the role if Perlman wasn't going to. Disappointing that it doesn't sound like he embodies the role as well as I would have expected.

The sad truth is that none of the movies are anywhere close to perfect. Perlman was perfectly cast, and Del Toro was a great director choice, but what he made were Del Toro movies, not Hellboy movies. The first reboot was better in some ways and worse in many more ways. And the new reboot trailer looked like a bad tv movie that was just as far, if not further, from the source material than the previous attempts, despite being a direct adaptation of an existing comic.

Better to just reread the comics one more time than get your hopes up for another disappointing movie.

 

[Taiso]

Agree with all of that.

I was never even a big fan of the comics but it was more because I wasn't feeling the vibe at the time. I would probably really like them today.

Mignola's art has never clicked for me. That's not a criticism of his style, just more that it's not really my cup of tea. I also wasn't impressed, unfortunately, with his adaptation of Leiber. I own two different versions of the trade, the more recent of which reprinted some of the other Leiber comics before Mignola's take.

I would have loved to see Tim Sale continue adapting Thieves' World, though. Really liked what little he did with that.

 

[HornheaDD]

The Electric State:

Kind of a different take on the whole "Robot uprising" thing. But a feel-good/comedy with teeny bits of drama in it.

It was... ok. It felt like a Netflix original movie (even though it literally is a netflix movie). I dont exactly know how to describe it. Somewhere between a regular movie and a made-for-tv movie, I guess? Its like they took a little DNA from A.I. (the Kubrikberg movie), Pinocchio and.. I dunno, whatever else. Maybe a little of Ready Player One (god that movie sucked).

Chris Pratt is literally the same character he plays in everything so that was no surprise. Millie Bobby Brown is the same as she is in everything else she's in. Poor kid, shes cute but definitely a one-note actress. At least she's better than ScarJo, not counting bangability.

Honestly its not terrible per se, but its also not great. I just can't see Stanley Tucci as a villain, (No I havent seen lovely bones so stuff it). The only time I can see Tucci being an antagonist is as "MUERRRRTE!" in Undercover Blues. And even then as Morty he was more funny than a villain. Ke Huy Quan is in it as well, dudes getting tons of work, and thats actually quite refreshing. Giancarlo Esposito is 100% wasted in this movie. Hes amazing and pretty much sits in a chair the entire time.

The one thing that stuck out to me in the movie is a blink and you'll miss it reference to Arrested Development, lol. It was a very quick shot of a billboard robot that has an advertisement for Barry Zuckercorn, Attorney At Law. It even has Lucille's "He's very good." quote on it. That gave me a chuckle.

Watch it if you made your bowl of ramen and got nothing else to watch/do, if anything for the CG on the robots and that Barry Zuckercorn reference.

 

[Tarma]

Kickboxer - 1989 martial arts drama starring Jean Claude Van Damme who seeks revenge against a brutal Muay Thai fighter who crippled his brother in the ring.
While superficially similar to the earlier Bloodsport, this is different enough to stand on its own merits. The acting is a lot better in Kickboxer, especially from supporting characters... well, Van Damme's "brother", he's a little wooden, but fortunately we don't see that much of him. It's quite amusing in places too, intentionally so, unlike Bloodsport, which is just a wall-to-wall Cannon cheese fest.
Some great tunes from Stan Bush, plus some really good fight scenes, make this a must watch for fans of Bloodsport and Van Damme in general.

 

[fake]

The Substance

An aging jazzercise star takes a drug that makes her grow a younger, "more perfect" version of herself, who becomes the next big jazzercise star. They share a consciousness, but she has to trade between her new and old body every seven days so each one can recharge. She abuses the system and her consciousness splits between the two bodies.

I didn't expect this to be as tongue in cheek as it was. A lot of the visuals of the younger version of the main character have a hyper realistic, over-saturated look to them, similar to David LaChapelle's photography. Plus there's a lot of lingering on body parts. So I think the cinematography was effective in reinforcing the main character's self-conciousness around aging and the fakery of the younger self. It veers hard into body horror, and luckily uses a lot of prosthetics and fx makeup rather than CGI, which makes it feel like a stronger homage to Cronenberg. Definitely worth watching.



Now that I've seen this, I can be pretty sure that my favorite movie of 2024 was The Beast (though I haven't seen The Brutalist yet).

 

[famicommander]

Kickboxer - 1989 martial arts drama starring Jean Claude Van Damme who seeks revenge against a brutal Muay Thai fighter who crippled his brother in the ring.
While superficially similar to the earlier Bloodsport, this is different enough to stand on its own merits. The acting is a lot better in Kickboxer, especially from supporting characters... well, Van Damme's "brother", he's a little wooden, but fortunately we don't see that much of him. It's quite amusing in places too, intentionally so, unlike Bloodsport, which is just a wall-to-wall Cannon cheese fest.
Some great tunes from Stan Bush, plus some really good fight scenes, make this a must watch for fans of Bloodsport and Van Damme in general.

The brother wasn't actually an actor by trade, he was a world champion professional kickboxer in real life. Had a 63-1-1-2 kickboxing record and a 6-1 pro boxing record.

 

[terry.330]

Cuckoo- A teen girl moves with her father, new step mother and young step sister to a small resort in the Alps. From the minute she arrives it’s obvious that something is very wrong and there is definitely something weird going on.

This one is hard to talk about much without spoiling anything. It’s a very well made movie and the performances are all pretty good, especially the lead actress. It definitely has a lot of atmosphere and there’s a great sense of existential dread mixed with a nefarious sort of trippiness.

The big problem is the secret that we’re waiting to get revealed is so bizarre that it’s not really satisfying or climactic. It’s really hard to explain it and it feels more like weird for weirdness sake instead of actually being intriguing.

Again, it’s not a bad movie but it’s definitely missing that something to really make it engaging.

 

[Tarma]

Missing In Action - Chuck Norris and Cannon's take on the POWs in 'Nam plot lines from the mid-80s. Usually described as a rip-off of First Blood: Part 2, this is more of an action thriller than an out-and-out action film. MIA takes a while to get going, but when it does, it's fairly entertaining, and Norris is his usual stoic self throughout.
It's not as good as Stallone's effort imo, despite some good action scenes and a supporting turn from M. Emmet Walsh. First Blood: Part 2 just gets you right in there, virtually from the start, and then doesn't let up. MIA is paced all differently, and isn't quite as nuts as FB: Part 2.

If any one has seen the sequels I'd love to hear your opinions - I've heard that MIA 2 (which originally was going to be the first film in the series) is pretty naff, but MIA 3 looks interesting... at least from the trailer.

 

[terry.330]

Synchronic- An EMS tech in New Orleans starts experimenting with a new designer drug that allows him to travel into the past for 7 minutes at a time. He uses this ability to rescue his best friend’s missing daughter. The catch is he only has a limited supply of the drug and he can’t really control how far back in time he goes.

This was pretty damn good, the premise is pretty flimsy but it works for the most part. It takes itself just serious enough with the time travel rules without getting bogged down by them. That is to say the rules are pretty loose and the movie is better for it. Anthony Mackie is great as the lead, it’s too bad he’s been trapped doing Marvel junk. The supporting cast is good as well. I really dug the movie’s kind of laidback burnt out vibe. It also looked really good, some pretty slick cinematography and editing without being showy. Recommend.

 

[terry.330]

Smile 2- The first movie wasn’t bad or anything but it just didn’t do much for me. This one is not only a huge step up but takes it in a completely different direction. The main character in this is a pop singer trying to make a career comeback after a serious accident and drug addiction almost ruined her. I was somewhat hesitant about that premise but they really did a good job with it. It goes for how terrifying and stressful being essentially trapped as not only a star/product but someone who has an entire machine of publicity and business that depends on them would be. Then it combines that with the actual horror of the Smile demon and makes for some pretty creative reality warping stuff. It also looks great and makes the dancing/singing stuff engaging in ways you wouldn’t expect. The lead actress does an excellent job and really manages to carry the movie.

Don’t dismiss this as just another lazy horror sequel, this is worth a watch.

 

[BasicMicroGun]

into the wild - from a film perspective, I guess it was well made. i watched it because it was so highly rated by people...I guess I can see why. the story was touching to people but I couldn't get past the general sense that the story was about a son with daddy issues. he had the upper class privilege of not having any perspective and thinking he was the main character in the greatest tragedy the world had ever known.

 

[max 330 megafartz]

into the wild - from a film perspective, I guess it was well made. i watched it because it was so highly rated by people...I guess I can see why. the story was touching to people but I couldn't get past the general sense that the story was about a son with daddy issues. he had the upper class privilege of not having any perspective and thinking he was the main character in the greatest tragedy the world had ever known.