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It's also funny because, somehow, RedLetterMedia somehow ended up with hundreds of copies on VHS. They would put all but one of them through a woodchipper and put the surviving copy up for auction for charity.
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Feb 6, 2025 15:40
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I read about that on the movie's Wikipedia page. Seems like a waste to me, even for a bad film like Nukie. e: Urban Cowbow (1980): B+ Another 'exceeded expectations' watch. I came into this thinking it'd be a small town yokel going into the big city, with all the ridiculousness of Travolta in a cowboy outfit (oh look: Tony Manero went country!). Instead, I got a fairly deep story - something of a coming of age thing but not really a "countrified Saturday Night Fever" because the themes are different. It's a small thing but I was especially impressed by how the soundtrack (which I like) tied into the scenes and their emotional energy. That was very well done. End of the day, this is an age-old "guy and girl love each other but are too prideful/stupid to admit it to themselves or each other" story, but done quite well and in a way that (I imagine) does right by Texas cowboy culture instead of making it a parody of itself. F_Shit_Fitzgerald fucked around with this message at 17:32 on Feb 7, 2025 |
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Feb 6, 2025 15:53
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A few good men - 1993 I’ve been watching Tom’s movies again, and at this rate I’ll soon have seen them all—especially the older ones! I’m pretty sure I’ve seen this film at least once before, but my memories of it were very vague. The movie’s visuals are outstanding: great HDR remastering, a pleasing grain, and attractive colors. There’s also sharp, deep contrast—why can’t modern films look this good anymore? The movie includes numerous blue-hour shots of Washington, beautiful orange-red sunrise gradients, and uniforms with an almost unbelievably bright white sheen. Looking back from today’s perspective, things still seemed reasonably in order at the time the film takes place, compared to Trump that is. It really gives the impression that everything was still under control. The acting is solid, and—believe it or not—Demi Moore and Tom Cruise don’t even hook up  4/5       
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Feb 9, 2025 15:15
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Ihmemies posted:There’s also sharp, deep contrast—why can’t modern films look this good anymore? The movie includes numerous blue-hour shots of Washington, beautiful orange-red sunrise gradients, and uniforms with an almost unbelievably bright white sheen. Modern digital cinema cameras have enormous dynamic range, so the image you get is very, very low-contrast unless you put in a bunch of work in editing to make it look good. There seems to be a fear of losing details in shadows and highlights, and also a philosophy of finding the look in post (including CGI elements like backgrounds or surroundings), which discourages bold on-set lighting choices. I'm generalizing a lot, but I can imagine Netflix producing this movie like,   
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Feb 9, 2025 17:54
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Yeah it's a confluence of technology and the way films are made these days. Film has a really wide dynamic range and digital cameras are just now catching up in that regards, but the bigger difference is that blown highlights on film look good because of whats called rolloff, a smooth natural transition to really bright light sources in the frame. Digital just blows out and takes everything around it with it in a really ugly way. Contrast on film looks great, contrast on digital has to be carefully controlled and is harder to do well. Then there's lighting. A lot of film stock required really big and really powerful lights to expose properly, creating a lot of contrast when combined with the common film stocks which have a naturally strong contrast by design. Digital cameras have a naturally flat profile for post processing, and combined with the "shoot a bunch of stuff and find the story in the edit" approach/heavy CGI work done on almost everything these days, they also tend to light sets as flat as possible and from the front to accommodate that and to not blow the highlights with any contrast because of the above. They'll even add new light sources and angles in post to shape the scene, but our eyes don't see it as a real light, just more CGI. They've lost the art of lighting scenes to create a visual style, opting to just have no style until the edit. The problem though, is the immense number of moving parts in that very post production process they're relying on, with many steps of many teams touching every frame and sending them back and forth in inefficient ways that make a lot of things end up rushed. Combined with studio heads like Disney wanting everything to be as approachable as possible, that naturally pushes things away from stylized artistic visions and towards easily digestible bland junk. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwTUM9cFeSo this video covers some of it if you want to see more examples.  this is a still from a video I shot on a canon digital cinema camera. it was flat and grey looking before editing, but the reason I was able to make it look so good is not because I edited it, but because the lighting is not flat and even. It's shaped by backlighting them and creating contrast across the scene, mixing with the soft ambient light in the room.
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Feb 9, 2025 18:51
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Muppet Treasure Island (1996): B Although I don't think it's as good as the 'classic' Muppet films, it's still a decent movie with a lot of heart. Tim Curry steals the show, of course, because he always does a great job of playing villains who revel in their role (see also: the concierge in Home Alone 2). Overall a good experience, but 1980s (and late '70s) Muppets > late '90s Muppets. Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1978): D A....pastiche? Music Video? Musical? as garish and ridiculous as anything the Beatles themselves ever did. Beatle songs - not just from Sgt Pepper's - are inexpertly weaved into a story of sorts that literalizes (is that a word?) the 1967 concept album. It seems significant to me that at the time this movie was made, all four Beatles were still living and yet they were all wise enough to stay far away from this production. e: The Blair Witch Project (1999): A I don't remember if I reviewed Ax 'Em here or not; Blair Witch is along the lines of what Ax 'Em was trying to do but lacked the talent and the compelling story. The medium is the message. Although I'm sure there have been 4K ultra high-def releases of this movie more recently, Blair Witch wouldn't look right if it wasn't gritty and sometimes poorly filmed. That adds to the charm because this movie is all about what you can't see and not what you can. A very compelling and effective horror film. F_Shit_Fitzgerald fucked around with this message at 21:58 on Feb 13, 2025 |
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Feb 11, 2025 03:28
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The China Syndrome (1978): A+ One of several excellent movies to come from the cynicism of the post-Watergate era. This movie is thematically very similar to one of my favorite movies, Network. The endings are similar, where a main character is martyred by deeply corrupt capital. China Syndrome is not so much "about" the safety of nuclear energy as much as it's an examination of corruption and people's power in standing up to concentrated capital. F_Shit_Fitzgerald fucked around with this message at 22:24 on Feb 18, 2025 |
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Feb 18, 2025 22:12
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I saw a couple of Terminator movies with a Terminator superfan. I hadn't seen these before then. Terminator Salvation What an absolutely boring movie. The only things going for it are being yet another unnecessary Terminator sequel and Christian Bale's meltdown at the DP. If this movie had somehow managed to get released in 2009 without being a part of an existing franchise, no one would have seen this or remembered it. It's just that boring. There are scenes in this movie that just rehash scenes from The Terminator and Terminator 2 with the roles juxtaposed. The first is the chase scene with the tow truck with Kyle Reese and Marcus that calls back to the chase scene the drainage canal in Terminator 2, right down to pushing the broken windshield out of the way. The other is the final fight against the Arnold T-800 that riffs on the final fight in both The Terminator and Terminator 2. These rehashes were great at making me wish I was watching either of those two movies. The T-600 in the skin suit was neat. You only see it for a second, but I liked that callback. Terminator Genisys I hated less than I did Terminator 3 or Salvation, but the bar was already on the ground. Arnold's the only good thing going for this movie. I'll admit it, I smirked at all his dumb dad jokes and comments because he's playing a robot nanny with a shotgun. The line, “a straight line… you just go and you don't look back,” was a good one. But goddamn everyone else in this movie is just so flat. It's all just make believe badassery. Sarah Connor's just a spoiled brat with a pet terminator. Skynet is now wearing the future John Connor's body like a suit and yet none of the sheer terror and sense of futility to stopping it exists. And now all the action is just CGI beating the poo poo out of itself. Terminator 3 was the first movie in this franchise that I saw from start to finish and could remember, and I only saw it because I was sixteen and working at the local movie theater in 2003. I had seen the last act of Terminator 2 with my dad on HBO some time in the mid nineties, but I didn't finally connect with it until 2009 when I was twenty-two. The first two movies have absolutely stuck with me ever since, but after seeing these two sequels, it finally dawned on me that everything after has been an attempt to repeat Terminator 2's success and wears that film like a costume. They're generating just enough revenue to keep studio interest in them, but they're all soulless pointless movies made to generate revenue. I used to think that a movie set during the machine war was a good idea, but fighting the avatar of Skynet itself in Genisys made me realize that the legend of John Connor as the leader of the resistance should be left exactly that--a legend. Skynet is a malevolent force that also lives in legend and is best left unseen. Star Man fucked around with this message at 03:57 on Feb 23, 2025 |
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Feb 23, 2025 03:54
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Bottom Liner posted:The problem though, is the immense number of moving parts in that very post production process they're relying on, with many steps of many teams touching every frame and sending them back and forth in inefficient ways that make a lot of things end up rushed. Combined with studio heads like Disney wanting everything to be as approachable as possible, that naturally pushes things away from stylized artistic visions and towards easily digestible bland junk. With Disney I also have a strong suspicion that the flat look is there to communicate to parents that the movie is safe. A Marvel flick may be PG-13 but it's fine to take your 6-year-old to.
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Feb 24, 2025 04:55
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Yeah but then they let Guardians 3 exist and that movie is loving dark lol
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Feb 24, 2025 07:25
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With Disney/Marvel I suspect it's the pipeline more than anything- let's not take too long doing these setups, etc. Directors can sometimes squeeze in something interesting looking but it's uneven.
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Feb 24, 2025 08:13
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That's a factor, but the Marvel movies Disney put out after the aquisition are distinctly more visually subdued and squeamish about violence than the other action/adventure movies they were making prior to that or around the same time - the Verbinski Pirates, Lone Ranger, John Carter, Tron Legacy.
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Feb 24, 2025 08:39
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The Great Escape (1963): A+ Movies like this are why I don't succumb to  . Fear is the glue that holds fascism together. When people realize they no longer have to fear, even if they're killed, fascism falls apart very quickly (see: Warsaw Ghetto Uprising). I especially appreciate that the movie doesn't end when some of the men escape. The movie isn't just about "the escape" but resistance even in the face of overwhelming odds. Fateful Findings (2012): C A terrible movie but lots of unintended comedy. I'm really surprised the Rifftrax crew hasn't had a go at this film yet.
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Feb 26, 2025 02:16
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Mickey 17: A I don't really know why I expected this to skew more comedy. That's on me, not the movie though. Pattinson is really good but the voice and mannerisms were almost played like a level of mentally impaired. That made me uncomfortable because it seemed like everyone was taking undue advantage of him, not only because he's "expendable" and would just keep coming back again and again, but also like he didn't fully understand the world around him. It also made the romance plot feel kind of icky. Maybe that's my interpretation, because isolated from anything else, Mickey is just kind of a luckless average guy. Not a genius, but not a complete moron. Maybe a bit gullible. I think it just had me feeling so much empathy for this unfortunate dummy that I couldn't laugh at all of his mistreatment. And except for the plot twist, he never stands up for himself at all, and maybe 2 other people on the ship full of thousands see him as a person. Mark Ruffalo and Toni Collette playing absolute moronic Trumpy/Musk-esque pieces of poo poo was kind of amazing. There were basically no scenes involving either of them where I didn't hate the characters. I will say that the creature effects were also very good. I don't think there were a lot of puppets in use, but the CGI looked really good.
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Mar 10, 2025 14:48
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CzarChasm posted:
I thought it was less he's mentally impaired or whatever and more that he thinks he deserves all the bad treatment he gets as punishment for killing his mom as a child. People are taking advantage of me constantly and I have to go through horrible death over and over? Well I deserve it for killing mom. Mickey 18 didn't have that guilt and trauma so he wasn't cool with the idea of "we deserve all this awful stuff being done to us"
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Mar 10, 2025 18:13
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Mickey-17 is worth seeing if you are in the mood for some interesting sci-fi. It isn’t exactly re-inventing the wheel but I had fun. It really pissed someone in the theater off which made me appreciate it more.
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Mar 10, 2025 18:51
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I rewatched half of Snow Piercer with my SO; I'd already seen it and didn't like it but she wanted to check it out before Mickey 17 and, about twenty minutes in, she remarked that it seems like a Korean movie with a predominantly white cast and she was surprised by how much less willing she was to embrace the movie compared to, say, train to busan. I gotta agree; the whole movie is this surreal mix of awkward dialogue, nonsensical plot, and out of place kung fu choreography that just adds up to something unappealing.
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Mar 10, 2025 19:01
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Rick posted:Mickey-17 is worth seeing if you are in the mood for some interesting sci-fi. It isn’t exactly re-inventing the wheel but I had fun. It really pissed someone in the theater off which made me appreciate it more. They must have been pretty angry when the Mickeys didn't gently caress.
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Mar 10, 2025 19:57
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Mickey 17 has the problem where a movie can be pretty fun for most of its runtime, but if it fails to stick the landing then that can dominate one's impression of it. The expedition can be a parade of grotesque, exploitative, and foolish decisions, but you can just stop doing that and there's seemingly no lingering costs that require hard choices. The crew can be filled with colonists who specifically wanted to follow Mark Ruffalo's character, but they're swept aside as irrelevant once he dies and a just and fair representative democracy appears. Bafflingly naive compared to Bong Joon-ho's other work. It's not a terrible time at the theater, but it's way below what I was hoping for from the director of Memories of Murder, The Host, and Parasite. Robert Pattinson is quite good in it, though.
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Mar 10, 2025 21:38
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An American Hippie in Israel (1972): D-. The "Israel" part is not even the most embarrassing part of this film. This is essentially the original series Star Trek episode The Way To Eden, except even dopier, if you can imagine it, and with a far worse main actor.
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Mar 13, 2025 23:50
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Inland Empire (2006): B? I got nothing, man. I thought Louis Malle's Black Moon was weird. I have no idea what I just finished watching.
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Mar 17, 2025 02:04
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The Electric State. Horribly edited, acting is awful, bloated with product placement and memberberries, obnoxious music, disingenuous messaging and I just found out that the Russo Brothers also champion the use of AI in filmmaking and utilized it for voice alterations in this trash pile. 2/10. I only rate it above 1 because some of the visuals looked nice in isolation, but it is an exceedingly ugly movie.
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Mar 17, 2025 05:34
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The Day the Earth Blew Up Just a whole lot of goddamn fun. I have not seen a comedy with this level of Never Not Doing A Bit in a good while. gently caress David Zaslav. B/10
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Mar 23, 2025 21:03
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Snow White (2025) I worked on this movie so I'm a bit biased but I hadn't seen the whole thing in context until this morning. Completely anodyne film with some horrendous acting by Gal Gadot but otherwise totally fine. Feels like it could have been made for a quarter of the price if the dwarves weren't CGI and there hadn't been so many reshoots, but then again the dwarves are some of the most visually interesting parts of the film, even if those visuals are a bit unsettling. Kids would probably enjoy it. 3/5 Ccs fucked around with this message at 03:01 on Mar 24, 2025 |
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Mar 23, 2025 21:55
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Squirmed my way through Barbarian , and as a huge jumpscare pussy, that kept me uncomfortable more than I'd like to admit. It's one of those movies where you will not guess in a million years where it's going from the premise, so I'm not going to dwell on the plot. Goddamn. On that merit, 4/5. Dual (Karen Gillan, Aaron Paul) After "Gunpowder Milkshake" and from the movie blurb, I was expecting a drawn out, quippy and action-laden one-on-one duel action flick (in the veins of the first half of "Mr. and Mrs. Smith"). What I got was a dark, at times even subtly funny movie-length episode of Black Mirror. Not complaining, though. 4/5 mcbexx fucked around with this message at 01:07 on Mar 24, 2025 |
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Mar 23, 2025 22:36
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mcbexx posted:Squirmed my way through Barbarian , and as a huge jumpscare pussy, that kept me uncomfortable more than I'd like to admit. Absolutely you will not guess. I think casting Bill Skarsgard really threw me off. quote:Dual (Karen Gillan, Aaron Paul) Sounds like one for the list.
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Mar 25, 2025 14:13
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Ad Astra (2019): A A far better, more introspective movie than Interstellar, though there are similar themes (Ad Astra is a reverse Interstellar; the child reconnecting with the parent instead of the parent trying to get back to the child). The performances were excellent. Both Brad Pitt and Tommy Lee Jones play against their types and show a lot of vulnerability in their characters. The plotting is also far better than Interstellar, keeping you interested without dragging.
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Mar 27, 2025 00:47
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Also there's an Applebee's on the moon
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Mar 27, 2025 04:32
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I watched Threads last night. Now I want to die.
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Mar 28, 2025 16:05
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Navin Johnson posted:I watched Threads last night. Now I want to die. Good news!
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Mar 28, 2025 16:21
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Waffleman_ posted:Also there's an Applebee's on the moon
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Mar 28, 2025 16:37
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Ad Astra is a good movie with a really bad movie bolted in randomly
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Mar 28, 2025 16:38
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Navin Johnson posted:I watched Threads last night. Now I want to die. same except i didn't watch Threads
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Mar 28, 2025 16:53
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Magic Hate Ball posted:Good news! Rude! However, Username/Post combo is strong.
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Mar 28, 2025 17:47
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:I love it so much that the Moon is just a dump with a bunch of rednecks on it. It's one of the most accurate predictions of the movie: that the moon would be a commercialized dump (if our dumb asses even get there again, that is).
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Mar 28, 2025 17:48
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Bottom Liner posted:Ad Astra is a good movie with a really bad movie bolted in randomly Rats, did they put the good movie after the credits? I missed that part.
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Mar 28, 2025 18:42
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:I love it so much that the Moon is just a dump with a bunch of rednecks on it. Kinda like Iron Sky
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Mar 28, 2025 19:10
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I'm curious what some of you all don't like about Ad Astra. Not saying you're wrong; to each their own. I thought it was massively better than Interstellar, which was still a pretty decent movie overall. While I'm at it: Robot Monster (1953; no MST3K/Rifftrax): D Even for '50s D-movie schlock, this was incredibly dumb. I laughed especially hard near the end of the movie, when the couple was married to a lot of fanfare and the newlywed husband ended up dead. "Well, [character's name] is dead" said in such a blase tone like he stubbed his toe. An unintentional camp comedy classic, but not a great movie.
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Mar 28, 2025 19:32
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Love the comic scroll intro
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Mar 28, 2025 19:48
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Around when Ad Astra came out I mostly remember a ton of immediate "this is boring" reactions, now I'm kinda curious
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Mar 29, 2025 01:30
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