What I've Been Watching: The Catch-All Film Thread

Not sure if already mentioned but the perfectionist (netflix) is a pretty good horror movie.
Which one is that exactly? There are tons of movies of that or similar title, for example:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093718/

At least it's not the vomit inducing PrettyLi'lLiars spinoff called Perfectionist as we're in movies thread. :)

It's possible you're talking about this one I've already decided to skip (friends panned it) but it's Perfection, not Perfectionist:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7772580/

I watched Bad Times at the El Royale last night, it was quite entertaining. I think I can watch just about any film with Jeff Bridges in it. The style in the direction was very similar to a Tarantino film, in my opinion.
I can't stand Tarantino's takes on the world outside of LA/Hollywood any more, but Jeff Bridges is an institution - name me one movie where he sux, in fact he can make an utter trash watchable.
Will try to watch it over the weekend if I find it somewhere. Thanks for suggestion!
 
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I finished up the Kurosawa Samurai Box Set this weekend. All are in black and white in Japanese with subtitles and all are technically strong in the film-making art, but do they entertain?

Seven Samurai (1954) is one I've been meaning to watch pretty much all my adult life but just never got round to it. Famously, it's the movie which inspired the even more famous The Magnificent Seven. And when I say inspired, I mean TM7 is a direct copy, of course. This isn't a bad thing though as all the greatest works are deserving of remakes and retellings. A village/town under threat from a large bandit gang set out to hire a posse of mercenaries to help protect them, to which the mercenaries are our protagonists and heroes with the seemingly impossible task.

The original here is a somewhat long film, notching up a hefty three hours of run-time. *cough*, *choke*, but it's not that bad if you prepare for that going in and maybe give yourself a 10 minute intermission at some point. The pacing is mostly good and it wont seem that long when it's over. The runtime can be summed up quite well by saying it's a two hour film that has an extra one hour of one specific character mixed into it. This one character is either a love or hate type character who is written as an annoying person intentionally, which works for the character arc, but is, obviously, quite annoying most of the time.

On the one hand, you could edit out a lot of his scenes to make a sharper and more focused 2 hourish runtime, but on the other hand his role is quite important and does add most of the character to the film. A sort of Jar Jar binx that actually does work. This version also has a lot more to say regarding human nature than the American remake as well which makes it worth the watch beyond rewatching pretty much the same story outline. It also makes it better IMO. 4.5/5

Throne of Blood (1957) is Kurosawa's samurai version of Shakespeare's Macbeth. Because I'm quite familiar with Macbeth I struggled to get through this as I always knew what was coming but unlike the above movie this doesn't add much in the way of additional interest. So my perception here is very biased by my own history and if you'd like to watch a Shakespeare story but are put off by the thought of all that hideous ye olde English poetical dialogue then this would be an ideal movie for you to get all the beats of the play. 3.5/5 as a personal mood score but it's a 4.5/5 as well.

The Hidden Fortress (1958) was a curious film. Some aspects were inspiration for some aspects of the original Star Wars, but it's not a copy-cat thing like most of the other ones here, just some sublte and not-so-subtle pinching of some of the ideas. Two comic relief characters become embroiled in a mission to help a princess and her bodyguard escape the evil empire.

It's more of a road movie than anything else, with the princess not even appearing for the first third of the film. As a result there's no specific protagonist, but rather an ensemble of three or four characters who we follow on the adventure as they try to escape, often spending time with each of them both apart and together. It's also difficult to pinpoint the point of the film as well with so many different themes happening, but the primary subplot is a large quantity of gold they are also hefting about with them, a theme later extracted for the Dollars Trilogy I'm guessing.

I found it both entertaining and frustrating in equal measure. The main frustration was the hard stereotypes that all the actors had to adhere to, it's a bit like watching a Warner Brothers cartoon in terms of character diversity, and as a result they'll often do lots of things one can't help but think are a bit dumb. On the other hand this simplicity of character helps the plot move on quickly and there's a welcome constant to the sense of movement and journey. 3.5/5

Yojimbo (1961) is the one that A Fistful of Dollars copied. And I was surprised just how much of a shot-for-shot remake AFOD actually was. Of all these movies this is the one which will play pretty much exactly like a film you've already seen. A wandering mercenary finds themself in a small town in a state of virtual civil war and decides to escalate the situation for, initially, personal gain.

This is such a classic story that I honestly didn't mind the fact that I knew all the beats as they happened, it's just a joy to watch and simply having Samurais instead of cowboys was enough of a sense of the new to make it even more interesting. As a great bit of serendipity, I also saw the James Bond movie Licence to Kill on the same day and, watching the documentary about it afterwards in the special features, the director was saying how Yojimbo was also an inspiration for this film. Imagine someone renting Yojimbo, A Fistful of Dollars and Licence to Kill and watching them all in the same day without knowing they were in any way connected :D Anyway, one of the best of life's entertaining romps 5/5.

Sanjuro (1962) is the odd one out here as I don't think it's either been copied or is a copy in any way. Reading the box after watching it, it says it's kind of his anti-parody of his own genre, and it does have some very funny scenes but I wasn't aware of this while watching it. A wandering samurai decides to help a group of inexperienced samurai who are being persecuted by a criminal hostile takeover of their town.

Like Yojimbo, the protagonist is great and plays a very similar role, but the large posse of weaker samurais are more the Hidden Fortress-like cardboard stereotypes who act upon their dumb stereotype rather than any sense of genuine rationality. The villains are ok but nothing greatly exceptional. The most fun characters aside from the protagonist are the side bit parts such as the rescued women and an enemy prisoner. To use a phrase we see a lot nowadays but was probably very original in it's time, it subverts expectations, sometimes well, sometimes not. Quite entertaining and worth a watch, but not exceptional. 3.5/5
 
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Dodes'ka-den is in the Kurosawa Classic box set which I haven't got to yet & Dersu Uzala was one of three or four of his films that you can't get in the UK for less than £9.00, so I'll probably rent it on a digital service when I've watched everything else.
 
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Dodes'ka-den is in the Kurosawa Classic box set which I haven't got to yet & Dersu Uzala was one of three or four of his films that you can't get in the UK for less than £9.00, so I'll probably rent it on a digital service when I've watched everything else.

Makes sense. With Dersu, I have seen three different cuts one of which was significantly longer.
 
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Black Dynamite on Prime Video. Funny, affectionate, pisstake of Blaxploitation films.

I thought it was a bit hit and miss, but when it hit, it really cracked me up. If it had been consistent, it could have been a bit of a cult classic.

"My mommy says my daddy's name was Black Dynamite."

"Hush now, little girl. There's a lot of cats with that name."

:biggrin:
 
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While waiting for the CFL action to kick off last night, I watched a film called Sunshine, which I'd heard of in the past but had never seen. I've no idea how it did money-wise, but I enjoyed it.
 
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While waiting for the CFL action to kick off last night, I watched a film called Sunshine, which I'd heard of in the past but had never seen. I've no idea how it did money-wise, but I enjoyed it.

It did ok, which is apt, as it's an ok movie. Not really one for the all-time annuls but one that makes for a good choice if you just want to sit back and watch some watchable sci-fi.
 
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Aye, wouldn't call it a great movie by any stretch, but I found it intriguing and worth watching! Considering how many movies nowadays that I simply give up on, I'm surprised a bit when I fully complete one.
 
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I've seen the new Child's Play reboot. Although the premise is not as silly as the original one with the voodoo stuff going on it's still enjoyable compared to the other film of the franchise.
 
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I caught Old Man and the Gun Saturday night, when I saw Redford was starring I just had to check it out. I don't recall hearing anything about the movie when it first released, but I quite enjoyed watching it myself. The only issue I had with the film was they seemed to glorify the criminal aspect a bit, so that might be a tad offensive to some.
 
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Mentioned it before and finally watched it.
A new chinese scifi movie is on it's way to "conquer" the world. The Wandering Earth is about an imminent danger to our planet where the only solution possible is - moving the Earth elsewhere. Yes, the whole planet.
It's fun, it's eyecandy (not just CGI but also all the cast), the sound and music are fantastic, China made an effort to make everything perfect. But it ain't no masterpiece. :)

Cons:
- it wasn't made in Hollywood but looks as copypasted Hollywood, where is originality!?
- not a person or friends, but a family saves the world, well, shove off with family crap
- not enough of humor
- tastes like eating fancylooking cardboard, there is no sauce due to dracionian China censhorship

Pros:
- proper editing is a huge problem in chinese movies (because censors?), this is a rare one where it's done good (reshoots most probably)
- in the story there is a second "villain" that is not nature, it's a product of humanity - AI
- you'll see almost every ethnicity, race and nationality in the worldsaving joint mission except - USA. No americans anywhere. Diametral opposition to Hollywood's "hero" movies where noone but USA citizens are seen. :D

Historically this movie sets an important step for chinese cinematography as their first scifi that isn't plain garbage.
Artistically, due to family rubbish and fear from censors, sadly this is a forgettable entry. For example, the main guy has a younger sister. Who's not his real sister, but "adoped". The movie could have made it biological sister, but you can't easily have a younger biological sister in today's China = no multiple kids families (or questioning it) allowed in the movie.

Watch with friends, don't expect anything more than fun for one night.



That wasn't sole scifi movie I've watched, although warned it's not very good by a friend, risked with High Life.

First 15-20 minutes are absolutely amazing, I have no idea how they did that, the child needs to be given an Oscar!

Then the child grows and the story is set into telling what happened before and what happened after. It's dragged, it's boring and it's utterly silly.

If this was a short movie that stops after 20ish minutes, I'd suggest watching as soon as possible. Sadly, as a full feature it's plain garbage about scum that well deserved their fate and noone cares about what happens to them.

Avoid at all costs.



The third one was Captive State.

I was a bit sad when Colony (series) got cancelled and didn't expect seeing almost the same story in form of a movie.
This time however there is no family with overpowered IQ=378456347856783534578 spielbergian kids, just ordinary people who are trying to resist the alien invasion.

imdb got genres right, there is no stupid and boring drama, there is no drag-o-rama nor boredom, there is no mundane filler: this is a sci fi thriller. As such it delivers.

If you liked Colony and hated cancellation with too many of cliffhangers, watch this movie asap. If you've never heard about Colony but need some scifi thriller fix, you'll love this one.
 
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Another day, another mediocre "scifi" thus the doublepost.

Australia tries to revive it's postapoc MM legacy with something supposed to be a thriller and, well, the result is not so good.
I am mother starts promising, in a world where humanity is extinct a robot is trying to repopulate the earth from a "storage" of embryos.
We see the first problem there. The robot has no face yet the child is smiling. This in not possible, baby socialization through giggles and smiles is not an instict, it's reflection on the assumed parent. Children raised by animals in real life never smile and never laugh.
One might argue the robot posing as mother was showing movies to the baby, cmon.

The robot obviously lies and the kid will eventually learn the truth. Partially. This is the movie's biggest sin.
We'll never be sure what and how happened with people exactly, we'll never learn where did embryos came from and we'll never know why this kid we're following in the movie is special.
It's suggested that the kid is somehow special because of robot's "parenting skills", that is another thing proven wrong by recent research - parenting has like 1-2% of impact how we'll turn out, 7-8% is from the society and 90% are genes.

There are more things I can't and didn't like but it'd take me too many words to describe each of those.

In it's core, this movie is a fantasy, not scifi. A fantasy needs humor or horror to work. Neither exist in this mediocrity. Cmon Australia, I know you can do better.

Feel free to skip this Netflix (original?) and pick something else there.
 
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Captain Marvel. Plain action movie but I liked it and was brainlessly entertained. Seems I'm getting over my comic hero fatigue (started somewhere in 2005 I think), or those movies are finally getting better... I suspect the former.

Looking forward to endgame now, despite that it was majorly spoiled for me by watching the Graham Norton show.
 
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Captain Marvel; saw it a while ago - it was ok - liked it better than a lot of folks here but certainly not deep or that great.

Spiderman - far from home - didn't really care for it as much as the first spiderman. I liked that the story is more interesting (or attempts to be more interesting) then the last two spiderman reboot (tobey maguire was great (esp #2) but the stories were old) - not sure why far from home didn't work for myself - just found it kind of boring - too much cgi not enough acting.
 
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Captain Marvel. Plain action movie but I liked it and was brainlessly entertained. Seems I'm getting over my comic hero fatigue (started somewhere in 2005 I think), or those movies are finally getting better… I suspect the former.

Looking forward to endgame now, despite that it was majorly spoiled for me by watching the Graham Norton show.
There is a huge difference between comics hero and comics superhero.

The kiddie script (not hacking terminology: script kiddie) in the movie above is about comic superhero.
Sadly kiddie scripts are often used for comics heroes too thus recent Valerian turned out to be artistically irrelevant and forgettable unlike the legendary comics series everyone and their mother stole ideas and aesthetics from.

Here's hope the upcoming videogame based on comics hero, Blacksad, won't be yet another mediocrity. It's planned release is september this year.
 
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