Us. I watched it 3 times on successive nights, which is a first. The second watch revealed so much foreshadowing and subtextural stuff. Third was with my son. I had a great time cluing him in on the references: Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm St., Halloween, Hills Have Eyes, etc.. also talked about the negative consequences of social division especially when leveraged and exploited by politicians.
"Who are you?"
"We are Americans.","We are human ... just like you."
Monster University, and after that Monster. Inc. I just wanted to watch both in that succession.
I liked Monster university a lot, but Monster Inc. much less. It has a nice twist at the end, though - and several interesting twists in the middle.
A movie that was truly moving me was "The Good Dinosaur" - perhaps as I could emphasize with its protagonist *a lot*. Part of it was like my childhood being shown in front of me, emotionally.
Spot, the other protagonist of the movie, was shown in an very interesting and very irritating way. Very interesing *because* of very irritating !
"The good dinosaur", or, as it is called in Germany, "Arlo & Spot" is like a mixture of drama and road movie. It shows a journey, and how someone grows with it. A true "hero's journey" or "monomyth", like it is explained in Wikipedia (and the original Star Wars Trilogy is one, too).
If you want something emotionally moving, then I'd recommend The Good Dinosaur.
If you want more action, watch Monster Inc. .
If you want more laughs and fun, watch Monster University.
Watched Automata last night. A blend of Bladerunner and District 9, I greatly enjoyed it. Despite the second half kind of not living up to the potential of the first and wondering just what Antonio Banderas said at times (that accent is so thick), the premise of sentient robots in a Dystopian future is done so rarely in Hollywood-franchise-land that I was still captivated by the Asimov setting. Liked it more than the latest Bladrunner 2049 and its sludge-like pacing.
I'd never seen Tommy Boy flick, and a mate convinced me I should give it a viewing. It was fairly amusing, although I'm pretty certain I wouldn't have sat through a viewing during the nineties.
I saw a great little film with Ben Stiller, called Brad's Status. It was great. Great social commentary on the fear of missing out that social media platforms prey on. About life regrets. About being content with what you have. Really liked it and would recommend.
Watched John Wick 3, and was very disappointed. The action is fine although it became unnecessarily a boring slog.
The third movie is a prime example of how to destroy every single character developed over the three chapters and the setting in the last half hour of the movie. What a waste.
What with Disco Elysium releasing next month I decided to finally watch Taxi Driver (1976) for some mood-setting atmospherics. Interestingly I'd also just watched a YouTube video where Yourmoviesucks had just watched it for the first time as well, which is wonderfully coincidental.
He gave it a 10/10. While I agreed with everything he said, I disagree with the 10/10 rating. The flaws he raised in his brief review obviously didn't matter to him, but they were enough for me question the perfection status this film generally garners, notably the plot issues. I also had the usual Scorsese issue of not caring about any of the characters except the one I wasn't supposed to care for.
What is 10/10 is indeed the atmospherics and all-star acting and if that's all you need then, sure, this film nails it, you need read no more. DeNiro, Foster, Keitel, Shepherd et al are just a pleasure to watch. The music and cinematography are second to none in particular.
In terms of plot, however, I'd argue Falling Down (1993) provides a much more relatable scenario and does this plot-theme at lot tighter, even if it lacks the hard qualities of Taxi Driver. Day of the jackal (1973) does the assassination suspense better. One could even argue Taxi Driver was an attempt to cash in on the assassination movie craze that Jackal spearheaded.
A great film for sure, but I'm always both stumped and irritated that people will so often over-praise movies that are very good at one or two specific things when the whole point of 10/10 movies is that they should be an unobtainable definite perfection of everything. Possible, but rare. I mean, I'd rate Taxi Driver a great movie, but you can bet your bottom dollar the loonies will still troll me just because I only give it a… shock, horror, 4/5.
JW3 - it's not for masses really. Skip if you hate dogs, watch asap if you're in love with dogs and if you don't care about pets watch if you wanna see some action and that's it.
Taxi Driver - I agree it's not 10/10 movie if we'll say 10/10 is something where possible errors as hidden so good it feels perfect at every scene, but that doesn't make it skippable, this is one of those mustwatch before you die works and comes from old times when Hollywood knew how to make quality movies. If important, I never use numbers to "score" a move because it's not possible. When I say watch before you die it means something with unique traits you'd want to rewatch in case you get an amnesia.
Again, I wouldn't even say it's a must watch before you die. I think it's very good and there are lots of reasons to watch it, but I don't think it has any genre-defining or mind-altering or emotion-fuel aspects or any other 'thing' that would mean your life is less rich for having not seen it. I'd say just worth seeing but curb your enthusiasm.
Movies that I personally consider to be near flawless would be stuff like Apocalypse Now, Ace in the Hole, Matrix, Blazing Saddles, Life of Brian, True Grit, Spartacus, and many more. if you want a few paragraphs on why for any of them just say which one you'd want my extended opinion of.
I still owe the forum some time loop movies thread, but I also promise a sort of watch before dying lists eventually. Why lists? Because I have to go genre specific as I can't care less about bore the audience to death overrated dramas, am not interested in biographies nor revisions of history and find 99.99% of war movies unbelievable bull. Those specific type of movies will have to be covered by someone else.
Also I'll have to concentrate on some time interval (probably a decade or two), it's impossible to remember and number everything since the dawn of time.
As I argued in the previous post, these won't be any kind of 10/10 or whatever one considers perfect works. These will be movies you'd want to watch after memory loss. For example Hobo With a Shotgun. Is that a perfect movie? Absolutely not. Should you watch it for some reason before you die. Yes, you should, and not for just one reason.
An opposite example I'll take the mentioned Citizen Kane (which to me is by no means 10/10). It's value is only in style and that style should be studied by film industry workers. Those who are in front of the screen for fun and brain food should skippit.
Of course, the plan is a thread where everyone would add their lists too. So you might say Hobo is crap and Kane is mustwatch, it's your taste and I respect that.
All I need is some more free time and by the looks of it won't happen soon, just when I thought I'll have some, Greedfall appeared, Ni No Kuni appeared, I still didn't complete AC Odyssey (season pass), still haven't replayed the full KCD, etc, and Outer Worlds is just around the corner.
btw, which True Grit? The one with John Wayne or with Jeff Bridges?
Okay, Famageddon is a good movie.
It has LOTS of fun in the first part, and becomes more serious in the second part, and it has a great finale. Overall it's an imho really good movie.
It has lots is small to tiny items put in from the general Sci-Fi genre. Often with screen time of only a few seconds.
In Germany it's called "Ufo Alarm".
Green Book. Liked this one. It's not spectacular, but good enough. The best part about it are the two leads, Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali, who are just great. Maybe they were a bit stereotypical, but I really enjoyed their performance. Maybe it's because I really like the actors? Don't know. Anyways, I think I agree the movie might not be Movie of the Year, even though it got the Oscar, but it's much better than the impression I got from people's negative opinion.
Under the Silver Lake. This was a hell of a mindfuck, but I really loved. It's a rollercoaster of an investigation movie. Recommended.
Green Book… I think I agree the movie might not be Movie of the Year, even though it got the Oscar, but it's much better than the impression I got from people's negative opinion.
What people? I know I wrote something about it before… Anyway…
The movie absolutely deserved that Oscar, whoever says Hollywood had a better movie last year is delusional. Yes, I hoped Black Panther would win because I loved it, but Green Book talks about ordinary people at certain historical point in USA making everything believable (no depiction of south as if it's Mordor and because normal people aren't "dark&gritty", the movie provides tons of humor). I can't remember the last time I didn't complain when best picture Oscar went to some title, this time they IMO did the right pick.
As you said and I agree, no, it's not the movie of the year, that'd be Shoplifters (Roma took the foreign language Oscar thanks to it's perfection in style over substance and that's okay).
Now I do hate family movies more than anything, but Shoplifters is not yet another yuck/barf bore'em to death drama clone and for sure was not filmed as festivals awards bait. It's country of origin hates it because - it's not that country's exclusive thing but could be happening anywhere. And I say that's exactly the movie's power. Give it a shot please.
Yay! Always nice to hear it's not only me watching these crazy stuff.
For those not sure about it, MC is a looser who stumbles upon a few "conspiracies", not linked inbetween at first and is trying to get to the bottom of all of them because some girl disappeared.
He will eventually find out what's going on… in the main "conspiracy". Other mysteries happening in LA, he will not solve. See, our MC is a professional reviewer interested only in the main story, who cares about sidestories.
One unsolved mystery is someone unknown killing dogs all over LA, another is an urban legend called owl woman MC will see at one point.
At the end of the movie MC will end up a suspect for dog kills, but thanks to his explanation he will be let free, but the "interrogator" will still remain unsure.
While refreshing in the stale idealess modern Hollywood, sadly, the movie has it's problems.
The director is obsessed with MC's butt and you'll see it every 10-15 mins, but you'll also see boobs every 5 minutes. Naked. At one point there is a Nintendo magazine because MC thinks the clue is in it, of course it isn't although MC uses it to map the clue where it actually is. Then there are all sorts of different music coming from a composer - this is absolutely impossible unless the composer is an alien (and isn't although something else is suggested about him).
All that and more should function as part of brainwashing people through mainstream media into specific behavior conspiracy. In reality this does work, thanks to mainstream people lost their taste and are now praising mediocrity, but in this movie all of it is too caricatural to be taken seriously.
Additionally, the movie supposedly shows a real motive "conspiracy" creators had, but then you get confused because secret messages within pop culture works become meaningless as they could have used anything else that'd be more efficient than that.
There are more of the author's red herrings, for example all female groups come in three. Why? Because of course they do, that's why, it won't be explained ever, the joke is on the audience.
Nevertheless, the movie is fun. Feel free to skip it as it isn't on level with conspiracy classics (Carpenter's old but gold They Live did it all more effectively for example), but you won't be sorry if you give it a chance. It's not a mustwatch! But if you're bored and annoyed with all the recent mediocrity in cinemas and stream platforms, go for it asap.
Just watched Fellowship of the Ring again and realised what a great movie that is in terms of entertainment value. What are some other good fantasy movies that came out after LOTR?
I somewhat remember Stardust being good but I can't seem to recall any other "recent" good fantasy movies.
Yes, Stardust is awsome.
Peter Jackson's rubbish is not, it's avoid at all costs and seriously read books instead even if you don't have time for books.
Recent years fantasies I find fun, those I can remember from top of my head, probably there were more:
- Haven't watched all Harry Potter movies but the first two are good, maybe others are too
- All Pirates of the Caribbean are fun, oh yes, it's all fantasy
- The Forbidden Kingdom (Jackie Chan reprises his drunken master role, accompanied with Jet Li the movie couldn't fail)
- Viy (distributed in USA under title The Forbidden Empire), the sequel will soon appear in cinemas so prepare by watching the first movie
- The new Jumanji with The Rock and Jack Black (the old one is pathetic)
- Pan's Labyrinth is possibly the ultimate fantasy movie but is not for kids, Ni No Kuni 1 story is kids' version but is vastly inferior and naive to the point of inflicting pain to the player/reader
- Along With the Gods: The Two Worlds is not a classic fantasy, nevertheless is amazing, but I have to suggest waiting till all 4 movies are released (currently 2 are out)
- All three Detective Dee movies, don't be fooled by "detective" in the title it's still fantasy
- Blade of the Immortal, possibly the most faithful wuxia fantasy manga adaptation ever
- Percy Jackson, a bit cringy, but fun, both movies. A shame they didn't make more of these.
Bonus notes:
- I wrote in this thread before that to me the most beautiful movie ever made is fantasy: The Legend of the Demon Cat, but it's story is bland due to draconian censors in the country of origin so watch it if you care only for eyecandy
- Similar can be said for Mirror Mask, visually stunning yet the story sucks
