Movies You've Seen Recently |OT| May 2017

Saw Passengers and thought it was ok, quite entertaining.

Then I watched the Cinema Sins vid on it which pointed out just how utterly dumb the script is. So many illogical things happen for no other reason than a plot device.
 
After blasting through Season 2 of Twin Peaks this weekend, I finally made it to Fire Walk With Me(1992) on Sunday evening. To be honest this doesn't work at all as a stand-alone film, and even if you're familiar with Twin Peaks the film doesn't really have a very coherent or compelling plot. It's essentially stuff we already know about from the series being shown to us. But as a supplemental piece to the TV series it's pretty fantastic.

Sheryl Lee gives a jaw-dropping performance as Laura Palmer, it's really cool to see from her perspective after spending the entire series hearing about her from other people. Almost every scene involving her works really well (I think the pink room is my favorite), and I even liked the opening part with the two agents. Add in Lynch's trademark weird cinematography and sound design and you've got something really special.

However, for every fantastic scene it feels like there's one that feels pointless, out of place, or unfinished. Like Bowie's cameo and the scene at Shelly and Leo's house. Gonna try and track down a copy of the fan recut (which adds deleted scenes) and see if these make more sense.
It's also worth noting that FWWM is a pretty big tonal shift compared to the series.

Lynch clearly took advantage of being able to show more sex and violence, there's copious amounts of both throughout the film. And there's very little humor aside from the opening 30 minutes or so. Overall this is definitely worth watching for the spectacle even if it's not incredibly satisfying.

7/10
 
Saw Alien Covenant on Saturday and quite liked it. I give a solid B. And King Arthur (is the even the name? Don't remember) yesterday... what a load of crap.
 
bomma_man said:
yes give it to me
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awesome, looking forward to this.

dumping what I've seen in the past couple weeks:

Beauty and the Beast
The 90s cartoon is my favorite Disney animated film of all time, so naturally an almost 1:1 remake might at least be somewhat entertaining or passable right? NOPE. Holy shit, kudos to Disney and Bill Condon for managing to make 2 hours feel like 6. It takes a special kind of mediocrity and dullness to put this out. Emma Watson turns in a performance worthy of being on display at the front of a clothing store. Luke Evans as Gaston is the only moment of respite from this shit but even his musical number is a regression from the original.

Worst movie I saw all year (yeah, that guy ritchie King Arthur was even better than this). Now this wasteman is directing the Invisible Man remake next? yikes.

this gets 5 :pacspits out of 5. I feel like I'm being hyperbolic here but this don't deserve a less inflammatory response. stay away from it.

The Goonies

Richard Donner used to put out some dope crowd pleasers. The young cast is fun to watch interact. I only really know Feldman from his trainwreck public appearances, so rewatching this I'm surprised at how entertaining he was back in the day. That italian food order bit was great. The villains are fun in their incompetence. No doubt the movie is very much rooted in the 80s and could even be called dated I guess, but I think when it comes to these "kid crew" movies the interaction between the cast is >>> Super 8 and Stranger Things.

The only other movie in a similar vein that tops this imo is Attack the Block. Really looking forward to Cornish's next film.

Twin Peaks: The Return (Episodes 1 and 2)

GOD....DAMN. When the revival was announced I was very excited for new Twin Peaks but also a bit disappointed that what will likely be Lynch's last project is not a film.

But this premiere blew my expectations out the water, it feels like a culmination of his whole career. I got some Inland Empire, Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive, Eraserhead. You can draw a line to all of his work in here. The editing and jumping around to different areas makes this almost feel like a series of vignettes at times. Not unlike Mulholland Drive's first hour. And the low-fi visual effects are goofy but also lead to some hella unsettling and scary images in here.

Those last 10 minutes of episode 2 are beautiful. The chromatics song perfectly sets the mood as you are welcomed back to a sense of familiarity after all that surreal fuckery. Hell they even managed to make me care about James in that moment.

18 hours of this?! It's like such a refined piece of work for him. If he retired with this I wouldn't mind judging by what we've gotten so far.
 
Discotheque said:
awesome, looking forward to this.

dumping what I've seen in the past couple weeks:

Beauty and the Beast
The 90s cartoon is my favorite Disney animated film of all time, so naturally an almost 1:1 remake might at least be somewhat entertaining or passable right? NOPE. Holy shit, kudos to Disney and Bill Condon for managing to make 2 hours feel like 6. It takes a special kind of mediocrity and dullness to put this out. Emma Watson turns in a performance worthy of being on display at the front of a clothing store. Luke Evans as Gaston is the only moment of respite from this shit but even his musical number is a regression from the original.

Worst movie I saw all year (yeah, that guy ritchie King Arthur was even better than this). Now this wasteman is directing the Invisible Man remake next? yikes.

this gets 5 :pacspits out of 5. I feel like I'm being hyperbolic here but this don't deserve a less inflammatory response. stay away from it.
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I settled on it being OK though my negative points significantly outnumber the positives. When I think about it, the only scene I actually liked was Be Our Guest, which was the only sequence that felt like it actually had life in it (funny as it was 99% CGI) and even that really paled in comparison to the original. Luke Evans was the highlight and I really liked Dan Stevens' performance and song but the design for the Beast was so bland. Kevin Kline was so damn hokey. Emma Watson seriously cannot act (or sing). Characters like Lumiere, Mrs. Potts and Cogsworth didn't even have a fraction of the charm or presence of their animated counterparts.

...

Yeah, this was actually kinda bad.
 
yeah, be our guest was kinda working but even that felt way longer than the cartoon version for some reason. just was not feeling this one.

the castle design was nice though, great set work. If they give out awards for production design and sets I think this deserves a nomination.
 
Discotheque said:
yeah, be our guest was kinda working but even that felt way longer than the cartoon version for some reason. just was not feeling this one.

the castle design was nice though, great set work. If they give out awards for production design and sets I think this deserves a nomination.
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Yeah, production design was very good. I did have a nagging thought while watching that the cinematography was incredibly static just so they could show those fabulous sets.
 
nailbombxx said:
im gonna have to say starvation was the least of their problems bro
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No, i just assumed they were slave owners before being banished. Thomasin made a comment that she was washing her father's clothes like a slave; they were banished from their plantation and its "liberties". I took those words literally since everything else in the film is literal.That being the case, I don't feel bad about their demise. fuck em.
 
Late Autumn (1960)
Ozu in color!
tD0BoD6.jpg


I wouldn't be surprised if this turns out to be the peak of Ozu's visual style in color. It feels like a master class on his film techniques, deconstructing and illustrating their impact.

Similarity to Late Spring is greatly overstated... the most well-realized characters here are a trio of funny, somewhat creepy old guys who get tons of focus.

There is one element of the story though, like a tiny splinter in my foot that doesn't really hurt, but still can't be ignored.
I just couldn't accept the way Setsuko Hara's daughter refused to believe her, even though she clearly had a good idea what the old guys were like, and had even stood up to them before... doesn't make sense. If she had some reason for desperately wanting to disbelieve her, ok, but I don't see it.
4/5

Apocalypto (2006)
Awesome action movie that might be more widely loved without Gibson's name attached (which itself made me suspicious of ulterior motives in historical inaccuracy).
4/5

Miranda (1948)
3.5/5

Hidden Figures (2016)
3.5/5

Hell or High Water (2016)
3.5/5

The Handmaiden (2016)
The snake marks the bounds of knowledge

This is up there with The Witch and The Lobster, in some order, as my top 3 of 2016 right now. It's best to go into this one blind, so I won't say any more. Now, about those sex scenes.

I think it is certainly misguided to believe Chan-wook Park was using them to satisfy male gaze or anything like that. They are stark and challenging. As for whether they are realistic, I'm not qualified to judge. But I noticed that in Sook-hee's story, it was less explicit, more earnest. Lady Hideko's more explicit, detached perspective reflects her background. And both characters are inexperienced. The scenes worked for me because they are specific to the two characters and their backgrounds.
4/5
 
the-levelling-ellie-kendrick-and-david-troughton.jpg

It's been a week since I saw it, and The Levelling is still stuck in my head. Directed by Hope Dickson Leach, it's a potent examination of the dying economy on farms (due to floods, lack of demand, diseases), familial tension, and toxic masculinity tied to male mental health. It's made the more interesting by looking at this usually male space of farm dramas from a female perspective. It has other genre leanings like a thriller vibe thanks to the score, like a rabbit in water used as a regular transition with the obvious symbolism that innocence is dying.

Ellie Kendrick is brilliant in oscillating between taking no nonsense to being emotionally distraught at how it's all fallen apart. Much like in the recent Raw, as a veterinary student she finds it hard to adjust to the fixation on animal meat and having to cull a calf at one point breaks her down.

There's a certain destroyed beauty thanks to the excellent framing by Nanu Segal of the farm in ruins and mud everywhere as contrast to how bucolic and idyllic rural areas are usually portrayed. No surprise the director wanted to shoot in Somerset under cloudy weather to get a post-apocalyptic look. Great film, and don't need to be into rural family dramas to appreciate assured acting and measured cinematography.
 
Whiskey Galore is a curiously inert film. The set up of a bunch of Scottish islanders helping themselves to whiskey they've been denied due to war time rationing from a crashed ship and the bungling home guard commander trying to stop them seems like a set up ripe for a farcial comedy sort of thing, which is what they did with the 1940's original.

However this remake is lifeless and flat. It's not nearly as funny or as silly as it should be. There's no real drama or hinderances to the characters either to compensate, and a lot of the acting and script fall flater than a popped balloon. There's a stupid political subplot in there that goes nowhere and achieves nothing except making the film feel even more like a badly paced slog than it does already. It's mildly charming, inoffensive fare. The sort of thing you'd watch on Netflix on a Sunday afternoon when you're sick of Fawlty Towers or Daredevil.
 
TheOnlyOneHeEverFeared said:
Whiskey Galore is a curiously inert film. The set up of a bunch of Scottish islanders helping themselves to whiskey they've been denied due to war time rationing from a crashed ship and the bungling home guard commander trying to stop them seems like a set up ripe for a farcial comedy sort of thing, which is what they did with the 1940's original.

However this remake is lifeless and flat. It's not nearly as funny or as silly as it should be. There's no real drama or hinderances to the characters either to compensate, and a lot of the acting and script fall flater than a popped balloon. There's a stupid political subplot in there that goes nowhere and achieves nothing except making the film feel even more like a badly paced slog than it does already. It's mildly charming, inoffensive fare. The sort of thing you'd watch on Netflix on a Sunday afternoon when you're sick of Fawlty Towers or Daredevil.
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Urgh they remade this?
 
Split (2016) - Watched this last night with my wife. I went in with the knowledge this was attached to Unbreakable in some way, so that may have altered my perspective on it. I did not share that information with my wife, who didn't like Unbreakable. What's interesting is we both enjoyed this for different reasons.

From my perspective, McAvoy is amazing in his various personalities, but the knowledge that perhaps his "Beast" mode is a superhero and the other personalities--"the Horde"--are in some way in support of that superhero is an interesting take on how he developed into what he is.

Likewise, Anya Taylor-Joy is very good in her likewise broken character. There are really two moments where I thought "she's also got superpowers" ... and oddly enough one of them was in the car in the very beginning, where "Dennis" basically doesn't realize she's in the car until she makes a noise. Almost as though she was invisible at first. The second of course was at the end where he recognizes she's as broken as he is.

Now, from my wife's perspective... she was a psychology major in college, so she came at this from the split personality disorder perspective. She found it both engaging and horrifying in equal measure, and kudos again to McAvoy for pulling off some serious creepiness in his various personas. We thought it particularly interesting when he was actually "Dennis" but trying to come off as "Barry" in a couple of his sessions with his therapist.

Overall quite enjoyable, though there were points of such slowness, and I was so tired, that I feared I would fall asleep. But I managed to power through.

Kudos to Shyamalan for putting together a small budget, more tightly woven character-driven movie. It's almost as though when he does something more intimate like this, he can pull off a decent story, rather than going bigger and wider and trying to work in his trademark twist somehow.

In some ways, this is sort of like Gregory Maguire's "Wicked" which is a different perspective on the Wizard of Oz. In this case, Shyamalan is showing us a different perspective of superheroes or at least how being superhuman might impact people.

Looking forward to Glass.

4 / 5
 
Warrior (2011)

This movie is a tad cliched, but I still found it to be very enjoyable and quite moving. Solid performances from the cast, great use of music (particularly the music by The National), intense fight scenes, and a really great ending.

Really liked it.
 
Inglorious Basterds: At the beginning, I was wondering "What's so special about this? It's an entertaining WWII movie with some eccentric characters, I'll give it that.", but as it heads down to the climax, I'm wondering "Will this plan actually work, or is this one of those movies where the good guys lose?" I was very satisfied with how it turned out.

The Kid (1921): If you're expecting a comedy like Charlie Chaplin is known for, you'll be somewhat disappointed, as this is more of a drama. Still a good movie with a rooftop chase and nicely made dream sequence.
 
The Life Aquatic This is my second Wes Anderson with the Grand Budapest being number one and I have to say I like his style. The cutaway boat was very cool and reminded me of this book I had as a kid that showed cutaways of things like a boat and a house or even some of the old 50's cutaway diagrams of rockets and space stations which I love that kind of thing.

The humor was a bit dry but it doesn't detract anything. If anything the cast and style all put together really makes this what it is. So dry humor or no it wouldn't be right without this particular mixture.

Barton Fink Ok. So as not to spoil this for someone that hasn't seen it. This takes a very, very sharp and really unpredictable turn. Still not exactly sure how I feel about the film overall though. Its pretty cool but at the same time kind of off beat, weird....then something happens, we get a slight pause, then insanity busts through the seams of reality to close this thing out. Well Barton has some extra closure but John Goodman's outro part was...shall we say fiery. Think I need to watch this again to better appreciate the earlier bits. Quite honestly it was kind of boring in a way for the first hour. Actually plodding might be better. I wasn't bored exactly this just wasn't the edge of your seat kind of flick.
 
The Great Wall the Matt Damon film set in china. Really enjoyed it, reminded me of the 80s action/adventure movies I grew up on that have kinda disappeared from Hollywood. Very high production values, simple but fun and enjoyable story, and all the leads were fantastic If this is an indication of the kind of movie that China is going to start putting out for world wide audiences, I think Hollywood should be a bit scared. 8/10 for me.
 
hard candy (2005) as prep to listen to the let's watch 2 movies podcast. super great and nuanced performance from ellen page, my goodness. she's a terrific actress.

the podcasts hosts commented that there was less gore / violence than they expected and i'm in the same boat. i wonder how different it would be if it released in 2017 post-saw world.
 
Rewatched Get Out last night for the first time since seeing it in theaters. It's such an amazing movie, and there's so much more to pick up on when rewatching this than most horror films will give you. Still my pick for movie of the year at this point.
 
The Blackcoat's Daughter: When a young person is abandoned and isolated, what sort of hole does it leave in them? And what sort of ideas, or things, can find their way in to fill it?

Those are the questions that spur writer/director Oz Perkins in The Blackcoat's Daughter, but he's less interested in interrogating them through character or theme than using it as a springboard for a film that devotes itself almost entirely to its chilly and deeply unsettling mood.

The story takes place along two seemingly unrelated plot threads, one about two girls left behind at their religious school during break, and the other about a young woman who hitches a ride with a married couple. The plot threads don't seem to make a whole lot of sense at first, and Perkins drags out any answers for as long as possible, seemingly content in letting them become gradually more sinister as they progress. The threads do eventually connect, and in a fairly surprising way, but Perkins seems more invested in the cleverness of his narrative structure than in any inherent value to the characters within.

Taken at face value as a horror film, The Blackcoat's Daughter certainly does the trick (boiler rooms were already scary, but...jesus). This is a deeply unsettling movie, progressing from odd noises and looks that feel slightly off, to truly ugly and unhinged acts of graphic violence, clinically portrayed through the sparse framing of the camera, and punctuated by well timed cuts to spare your eyes of the most graphic details, but not your imagination.

But, as creepy as it is, it makes me wonder how much more effective the film would be if all the characters weren't held just out of arms reach the whole way through. What Perkins gains in his creepy, and mysterious tone by making everyone exist in an uncanny limbo between a kind of sympathetic pity, and an unknowing sinister potential, where any glance could mean something evil, he loses out on the ability for his audience to really connect with the anyone and the story as a whole, and thus render all its terror to something tangible and lasting.

Thankfully, the ending to the film is its most effective moment, as all the cards are on the table, and Perkins at last ties in the most horrifying elements and anchors them to expand on a character and the questions that kicked off the film in the first place. This allows him to end the film on a note that chills far deeper than the vague unease or unflinching violence that preceded it, forcing you to reflect on the horror long past that final cut to black.
 
Boy from Taiki Wa...the Thor 3 director!

Good movie. It really hits home as I related to the kids growing up. Child actors were also really solid. I have to check out the rest of Taiki's filmography now (this is the first movie I saw from him).
 
Anyone willing to do a best of 2017 so far list? Or would that just be a circlejerk with Get Out, John Wick 2 and Logan?
 
y2dvd said:
Boy from Taiki Wa...the Thor 3 director!

Good movie. It really hits home as I related to the kids growing up. Child actors were also really solid. I have to check out the rest of Taiki's filmography now (this is the first movie I saw from him).
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What We Do in the Shadows is on Amazon prime, and Hunt for the Wilderpeople is on Hulu. Both are pretty great.
 
I've managed to be called pretentious on two seperate movie threads this month. Which is weird, considering you are so much more pretentious pricks than I am. :'D
(going to see if I can reach 3 this month. Gotta beat that personal record and all)

Incidently, I'm also rewatching Predator 1 & 2 due to a recent thread and ehm... I really want to defend 2, but dear lord that is not a good movie. At all.


Also, for the Brits: Mark Kermode reviewed a movie called 'Mindhorn' which seems like the exact kind of dark awkward comedy that you guys would appreciate. He enjoyed it, so it's probably not rubbish. I mean, he's kind of the only paid critic that I still trust to have a genuine interest in movies and not just 'oh god this is my life now, FML' like the average youtube shill.

(and yes, best of 2017 is Get Out, Logan, Split - that I still need to watch- , and Resident Evil for 'WTF was that' Razzy award. My mind is fuzzy is what else of interest came out this year. )
 
y2dvd said:
Boy from Taiki Wa...the Thor 3 director!

Good movie. It really hits home as I related to the kids growing up. Child actors were also really solid. I have to check out the rest of Taiki's filmography now (this is the first movie I saw from him).
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adding on to what's been suggested: Eagle vs Shark is nice
Divius said:
Anyone willing to do a best of 2017 so far list? Or would that just be a circlejerk with Get Out, John Wick 2 and Logan?
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been terrible about going to the theaters this year so I can rank every new release I've seen
1. Personal Shopper
2. John Wick: Chapter 2
---
3. Logan
4. Get Out
---
5. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
---
6. Fist Fight
7. Split
 
Yeah I haven't seen a lot of movies in the theater this year so I'm part of the circle jerk for now.

1. Logan
2. John Wick Chapter 2
3. Alien: Covenant
4. Get Out
5. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
6. Lego: Batman
7. Kong: Skull Island

And yup, that's all I've seen so far, so yeah. Only Logan and John Wick have been top 10 material so far. I enjoyed Covenant more than I probably should have, and Lego Batman has sort of dried up for me since I saw it.
 
Literally every new thing I've seen this year:

1. Logan
2. Get Out
3. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
4. Kedi
5. Batman & Bill
6. The Fate of the Furious

FFXV, The Last Guardian (which I've now been neglecting for weeks), Twin Peaks, and an avalanche of TV that hit last month has really derailed my movie watching lately.
 
Split was 2016 (according to letterboxd). I've only seen four 2017 movies so far.

1. Logan
2. GotG Vol 2
3. Kong: Skull Island
4. Beauty and the Beast
 
AngmarsKing701 said:
Split was 2016 (according to letterboxd). I've only seen four 2017 movies so far.

1. Logan
2. GotG Vol 2
3. Kong: Skull Island
4. Beauty and the Beast
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bc it played at two festivals at the end of 2016. actual release wasn't until 2017. the years listed on sites like lb and icm are always inexact due to festival screenings and differing release windows
 
John Wick 2

Not as good as the first one. Still enjoyable. They went abit to far with the secret society stuff tho and what was the point of that deaf chick? If she was a bodyguard she was pretty crappy at it. The muscles were even better fighters.
 
JW2: Those parts in the
catacombs and the museum where John goes through the henchman like he's playing a shooter with aimbot on easy mode while being a bulletsponge with his magic jacket really were terrible
 
Divius said:
Anyone willing to do a best of 2017 so far list? Or would that just be a circlejerk with Get Out, John Wick 2 and Logan?
Click to expand...

Went through my Fandango ticket list and Amazon rentals for what I've seen. Does Your Name count? If so it would be sixth.

1. Get Out
2. LEGO Batman
3. Logan
4. Hounds of Love
5. John Wick 2
6. Free Fire
7. Power Rangers
8. The Void
9. Split
10. Alien Covenant
11. GOTG2
12. Kong Skull Island
 
big ander said:
bc it played at two festivals at the end of 2016. actual release wasn't until 2017. the years listed on sites like lb and icm are always inexact due to festival screenings and differing release windows
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I would probably slide Split in behind Kong. For the record, I liked all these movies, so I'm on a decent 2017 run I guess.
 
My favorite of the year so far is probably Raw or Get Out. Haven't seen all that many, but there aren't a lot of surprising entries on the lists provided so far, so I'll just keep my ear to the ground.
 
Wow...I haven't watched shit from 2017 and June is here with a quickness. Logan just hit vod so that will change things shortly.
 
Come and See (1985), dir. Elem Klimov

Well I guess I'm going to be spending the next couple of months wondering whether humanity can really be saved after witnessing the last scene of this film.

EDIT:
karasu said:
No, i just assumed they were slave owners before being banished. Thomasin made a comment that she was washing her father's clothes like a slave; they were banished from their plantation and its "liberties". I took those words literally since everything else in the film is literal.That being the case, I don't feel bad about their demise. fuck em.
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Well the film never presents them as slave owners so I don't think you should get too hung up on it tbh
 
I've only five of this years' movies so far and what I've liked the best has been:

1. Your Name
2. Power Rangers
3. Ghost in the Shell
4. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
5. Logan
 
Divius said:
Anyone willing to do a best of 2017 so far list? Or would that just be a circlejerk with Get Out, John Wick 2 and Logan?
Click to expand...
There is also Raw, Colossal, Lady Macbeth, The Levelling, Free Fire, The Red Turtle, The Handmaiden, Prevenge, The Eyes Of My Mother.

Hearing great buzz on Baby Driver and Hounds Of Love (could be the best horror film of the year). There are also the new Michael Haneke and Yorgos Lanthimos films although who knows when they release outside of festivals.
 
I've seen 21 2017 films so far, and Logan, I Don't Feel At Home In This World Anymore, and Get Out are my top three!

I plan on watching Raw, Hounds of Love, and Colossal on the weekend, so hopefully that changes!
 
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