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Immaculate (Michael Mohan, 2024) Fun nunsploitation horror starring Sydney Sweeney - I enjoyed it. Sweeney plays a young initiate nun who moves to a remote Italian covent who soon discovers it harbours a dark secret... One of Sweeney's better recent roles (I hated Anyone But You where she seemed really flat and bored, but loved Reality which really showed off her skills) and she has a really good final one-shot scene in this film, though for a chaste nun she sure does spend a lot of time in thin or soaking wet nightgowns. The film early on relies a bit too much on jump-scare-with-loud-musical-sting, but there's some nasty gory moments (including one scene which made me avert my eyes, which usually never happens) and some more comedic moments such as the build up to the big reveal, which made me cackle, and some rather on the nose bits like a literal nine inch nail relic. Bit of a sparse crowd at the cineplex tonight but it would be fun with a crowd who's into it, and would also make a good double bill with The Pope's Exorcist .
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Mar 17, 2024 01:32
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Carpet posted:for a chaste nun she sure does spend a lot of time in thin or soaking wet nightgowns. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from nun movies, it’s that that’s totally standard nighttime convent attire.
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Mar 17, 2024 01:39
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Speaking of nuns, or wannabe nuns... Saint Maud (2019): I had a completely different inkling of a post in mind until the last 10 minutes of the film. So yeah. I went into this movie expecting more of a religious horror movie, which slanted the way I watched the film. I thought that the trailer pitched it as one when I saw it a few years back, so I rewatched it after the film. I can see why I thought it would be more of a horror film as it's cut in a way to make the film look like it moves a bit faster than it really does. However, every scene in it is in the movie. If I were the director, Rose Glass, I'd be a little frustrated that shows a few glimpses of the ending. However, maybe that's what is needed to get people to watch the film. The movie's pace is pretty slow. It's entertaining, but a lot of the film focuses on Maud's day-to-day routine as she goes about caring for Amanda. That's necessary to show her religious fanaticism, but it means the movie feels like it drags at places. I can't really go too much into the movie without spoiling some of it, but it reminds me a lot of Frailty---another movie that looks at someone's religious fanaticism. Saint Maud doesn't delve as far into the supernatural as Frailty does, but it keeps the audience guessing. Like I said at the beginning, I was about to write this film off as another movie where the trailer pitches a story that doesn't exist until the ending hits. And the ending is good if you like stories that blend religious fanaticism, psychosis, and the supernatural (which I do). It just means sitting through about an hour of mundane day-to-day activities plus some self-flagellation. If self-harm is something that you can't handle, it's probably best to skip this film. There's a lot of it, and it progressively gets worse as the story unfolds. The one thing I didn't like was the ambiguity of Maud's past life as Katie. It's hinted at during the film in that she did something bad, but I would have liked to have known more. It's not too important, but it would help flesh out the dichotomy between Katie's past as a normal person versus her pious Maud persona.
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Mar 17, 2024 06:42
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Wanted: Dead or Alive 1986 Rutger Hauer, treading practically threadbare ground at this point, plays an utterly unhinged ex-CIA agent living in the most insanely 80's, ludicrously outfitted bounty-hunter's secret warehouse lair, paid to hunt down a terrorist who's blown up a cinema showing Rambo on the cheap, with a wacky harmonica vs 1960's Doctor Who/BBC Radiophonic Workshop fusion soundtrack. Sounds great, right? Alas, the ending scene is pretty funny, but otherwise it's incredibly generic and dull. The baddies and action are both dull as poo poo, and Hauer's nowhere near charismatic enough to get away with his constant mugging at the camera. You'll struggle to maintain your attention. 2/5
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Mar 18, 2024 01:00
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The Wave (2019 or 2020, depending on where you look): I took a break from horror to watch a psychedelic comedy about an insurance lawyer played by Justin Long who ends up taking a drug at a party which leads down the rabbithole of time, space, and the meaning of life. I love Justin Long, he's such a great actor. I've recently seen him in Barbarian and House of Darkness, and he just nails each character he plays despite forever being known as the nerd from Galaxy Quest and the wannabe cheerleader from Dodgeball. This movie is an interesting ride. It's irreverently goofy with Long playing a straight-laced insurance lawyer living paycheck to paycheck who is on the verge of getting a big meeting with his boss after finding a loophole in an insurance policy. His buddy, played by Donald Faison, convinces him to go out and celebrate. They meet two women in a bar, head to a party, and Long takes some drugs, and his life as he knew it is literally over. The film relies a lot on time jumping, cutting back and forth between scenes, and drifting in and out of reality and fantasy. It's a movie with a moral to convey, so the ending is pretty clearly telegraphed toward the end (very different from the last movie I posted about here). Still, it's not always about being surprised by the ending. Sometimes it's nice just to enjoy the story told along the way. I would definitely recommend watching this one. Prime Video lists it as science fiction and suspense, but it's more a serious story told humorously.
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Mar 18, 2024 07:21
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Love The Wave. Midlife crisis Donnie Darko ftw. Wish we got more funny psychedelic movies. You can get your trippy visuals in horror but not comedy for some strange reason.
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Mar 18, 2024 22:17
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ccubed posted:Love The Wave. Midlife crisis Donnie Darko ftw. Wish we got more funny psychedelic movies. You can get your trippy visuals in horror but not comedy for some strange reason. That is a great analogy for the film And agreed 100%.
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Mar 19, 2024 00:01
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Just finished Poor Things. loving amazing.
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Mar 19, 2024 03:40
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Raging Bull: A masterfully shot and directed portrait of just a complete rear end in a top hat. It's cool seeing young De Niro and Pesci in this, and there's many incredible sequences (like the locker room to championship fight), but Jake is just not a guy to cheer for or really even connect to. Title is true though. He's just raging and can't be contained. Many of Scorsese's protagonists later would also be assholes, but they had something charming about them still. Respect for De Niro for that body transformation.
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Mar 19, 2024 03:53
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If anything, de niro's next role in a scorsese movie might be even more charmless
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Mar 19, 2024 04:07
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Ishtar is pretty great. It's not the best movie ever, but it is a lot of fun. Beatty and Hoffman are a hoot, definitely strong in NYC than in the desert, but even that has its fair share of laughs. Turns out I really like everything Elaine May directed.
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Mar 19, 2024 05:45
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Goodnight Mommy (2022): Where to begin with this one? I didn't realize until after the fact that this is a remake, so I went in based on what I saw of the trailer. The trailer pitches it as something more sinister and supernatural, but this is more of a stilted psychological suspense movie. The basic premise is that twin boys are dropped off at their mother's house by their father. No one greets them, and when they come into the house they find her wearing a surgical mask due to a procedure that she tells them to keep as a secret between them. That sets up the tension in the movie, as the boys are growing more and more uncertain that the woman in the house is indeed their mother. That on its own is a pretty decent pitch for a film, but the trailer includes some dream sequences that make it look more like a horror film. I'm spoiling that bit right now because I don't like it when trailers hoodwink people into watching a different film. This one is weird. The dialog written for the mother is really odd, but Naomi Watts gives it her all (and you are never going to get a bad performance from her). It's one of those movies where natural questions elicit unnatural answers in order to hide future revelations from the audience. I feel like that cheapens a movie since it telegraphs that there is going to be a twist, and in this case it's done to maintain the crux of the film: who is Mommy??? There is some weirdness with the story as well. It starts out with the original premise and predictably starts to veer into into a familiar trope. That isn't a crime, and I'm fine with seeing the same story told a different way, but the shift between stories is jarring. I think it's because the film doesn't want to let the shift slip, but that means Naomi Watts acts like a total bitch to the twins for no apparent in-story reason. You can argue that part of it is because of unresolved psychological trauma from what happened, but none of that is really established. The story focuses on her having surgery to touch up her face, which requires the mask and drives the main plot. I don't know if that is due to the movie following the German original or if it's an attempt to differentiate it, but it makes the movie worse. That's especially true for a remake because most people will already be aware of story climax. Except for me, that is. Because I'm clueless.
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Mar 19, 2024 07:07
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Nightride (2021): This film must have been a logistical fuckin nightmare. Hats off to everyone involved for that alone. Imagine Boiling Point except instead of following a chef through a rough night at a restaurant, you're following a drug dealer on his last, biggest, riskiest deal. It's not as good as Boiling Point, and it doesn't have Stephen Graham in it, but it's still pretty loving good. Shot in realtime in what is presented as a single take, mostly pointing back at the main character as he desperately drives round Belfast, trying to shake a potential tail while trying to get all his ducks lined up. The whole thing feels really tense and authentic, there's even a few bits (including an encounter with the police) where I'm genuinely not sure if they're real or not. The acting is mostly solid, and even though you (mostly) only hear their voices, there are some great characters too - Ellie O'Halloran as a much younger cousin stuck out at night after her tinder date ghosts her, and Stephen Rea as the guy who's about to collect are particular standouts. There's a few slightly cringey lines and the original soundtrack isn't always able to carry the tension the rest of the film builds, but overall it's a really fun ride, a definite recommend. But don't watch the trailer, it gives away way too much.
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Mar 19, 2024 21:26
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Buffalo 66 Best movie I've watched this year I think. It shouldn't work. You could never get a movie off the ground nowadays that starts with a pathetic seeming man with temper issues kidnapping a young woman and regularly threatening her to go along with his incredibly misguided plan to get even the smallest amount of love from his parents. The fact Gallo manages to actually make you feel bad for this poor gently caress to the point you actually turn around on him and hope he gets with Ricci's character is an undeniable testament to Gallo's talents as a director, writer and actor despite his other failings. That said, the movie also owes a lot to the look of it's characters, Ricci's blue eyeshadow and baby blue dress combined with Gallo's sunken in eyes and Dostoevskian demeanor pop off the screen and lodge themselves in your head likely never to vacate. I actually didn't make the connection before typing it, but this movie is pretty Dostoevsky in character. Maybe that explains why I like it so much.
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Mar 20, 2024 23:51
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Watched Midsommar and The Wicker Man back-to-back the last couple of evenings. I think I gotta give the latter the nod as the more haunting and groundbreaking (the weirdass songs pervading the whole thing adds to the eeriness way more than anything else about the matter-of-fact detective story), but Midsommar is hardly less interesting from a thematic point of view. To say nothing of course of just how modern movies work, how close to everyday "realistic" dialogue and emoting and general immersion it brings the characters to us; it reminds us that we're as far beyond The Third Man in terms of acting verisimilitude at this point as Welles was from the stage theatre tradition. It's an arc that keeps moving in the same direction, decade after decade, and I wonder how long it can keep going that way before some kind of wild new stylization movement pushes back against it. It was fun to see how much Midsommar owed to TWM but went to such lengths to put its own well-researched spin on things (the May Queen being a British tradition rather than Scandinavian and being associated with, well, May, aside). I felt like it had a lot of The Beach in it really
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Mar 21, 2024 00:37
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Just got out of Love Lies Bleeding. Truly had no idea where the plot was going to go beat-by-beat so there were tons of surprises along the way. The trailers definitely caught the vibe of the film. Very neo noir. Very accurate depiction of the era (not sure if they say a specific year, but it’s gotta be 1989/1990). And a wild ending that left me a bit agape. Vague ending spoilers: it feels like they didn’t know how to really write the ending of the movie, plot-wise, and things just get the right amount of weird to ease you out of the story instead of really resolving the various plots. Big ending spoilers: I really didn’t get the end. She says the feds are going to be there any minute, but they just get away with a body in their truck? Part of me wonders if they actually both died there, and the last few minutes are just a fantasy, but I hate that kind of cop out. There was too much stuff about the FBI throughout the movie for it to seemingly not matter at the very very end. This is literally my only complaint, and it’s actually much minor than it seems because the emotional stories were resolved. GIANT ending spoiler:  Data Graham posted:I felt like it had a lot of The Beach in it really I never thought about this but it’s actually the best comparison I’ve seen. I saw the Beach when I was only like 11, but it weirdly stuck with me all these years. Midsommar left a VERY similar impression on me in terms of general tone and plot. Good catch.
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Mar 21, 2024 02:36
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 I'd guess it's the relationship-drama component mostly, which TWM has none of.I actually read the book of The Beach before the movie ever came out, and it was one of my first experiences with seeing a new film adaptation of a book I knew well (other than fantasy stuff like Tolkien). There's a lot I remember thinking it "got wrong" but of course with time that mellowed into "they made different choices", some of which work better than others, and I wouldn't trade that video game sequence for anything lol
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Mar 21, 2024 03:54
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The Insider - First viewing in probably four years. Al Pacino spends most of his scenes yelling at people on the telephone, culminating in him wading knee-deep in the ocean, bellowing, "CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW", which is somehow one of the great moments in all of cinema. Five stars.
big boi fucked around with this message at 04:50 on Mar 23, 2024 |
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Mar 23, 2024 04:41
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Bogus Adventure posted:Speaking of nuns, or wannabe nuns... i watched this a few years ago when it came out expecting some really creepy cool macabre story about how hosed up it is to believe in god, but it was mostly just kind of boring (to me, at the time) and unmemorable. i don't really remember anything about the movie having seen it much more recently than a lot of other single-watch movies. but the ending scene/shot is basically what i was looking for out of the movie the whole time. it was way cool and i remember rewinding it a few times to see it again. i might revisit it since i did enjoy rose glass's next movie. MokBa posted:Just got out of Love Lies Bleeding. i didn't really even notice/care that they were supposedly going to be caught by the FBI, i was much more wrapped up in their personal dramas and resolution, which i think, like you said, was well resolved. i just assumed they had a back way out of wherever they were and that was shown by them running away through the clouds and we're not really supposed to worry about the actual details of how they get away. i kinda wish the movie ended as they were running through the clouds as giants bc that would have kind of solidified the whole dreamlike/surreal aspect of their story and left it on an interesting cliffhanger where the details don't matter and it's just a vibe. to build the entire movie up to that feeling and have it pay off with that sequence to only bring it back down to reality - where they drive off and have to keep killing in order to stay ahead of what they're running from - feels a little like it messed with the momentum
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Mar 23, 2024 06:59
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Dunkirk: technically very impressive but it felt like watching people helplessly die for two hours, not exactly my idea of a good time
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Mar 23, 2024 17:06
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ShoogaSlim posted:i watched this a few years ago when it came out expecting some really creepy cool macabre story about how hosed up it is to believe in god, but it was mostly just kind of boring (to me, at the time) and unmemorable. i don't really remember anything about the movie having seen it much more recently than a lot of other single-watch movies. Yeah, the ending is really good. I don't know if it fully redeems the slog of the beginning and middle, but it made me feel better for spending time on it.
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Mar 23, 2024 19:21
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Divergent: part one of a three part dystopian YA novel adaptation that actually had a nice story all of its own and wrapped up in a satisfying manner. The cast was interesting to say the least - Ashley Judd and Kate Winslet, the lead whose name escapes me, a young Ansel Elgort, some other vaguely familiar faces. Set in a future Chicago, which is a city that doesn't get much play in these types of stories but is well set up for it. The weird social structure takes a minute to set up via voiceover, but once you get the basics down it's off to the Hunger Games/Maze Runner style paranoid mystery story, which is the real strength here. Some neat visuals representing the mental tests all the factions have to go through and some wild shots throughout. Nice flick, goes down easy
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Mar 24, 2024 01:32
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Millennium Actress: it's been a while since I watched this and it's still fantastic. The Blu-ray is gorgeous and apparently it's Kons last film before he starts using digital techniques. Love how colorful and alive it all feels. The whole structure and blending of realities is a lot of fun. Eventually it's not clear whew the whole melodramatic curse originates: a movie or her actual life. But it doesn't matter as the curse of time is the same with way. And the last line is great as she revels in the chase vs success, which makes sense given how she describes her life in film drama. There's likely no way the key man would have ever lived up to such a chase. I think Tokyo Godfathers is still my favorite of his, but this is probably number 2.
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Mar 24, 2024 03:41
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Watched the original Road House for the first time and it was surprisingly good. I enjoyed the first half a lot more than the 2nd though. I was genuinely more interested in how Dalton was gonna clean up the bar rather than the more high stakes typical action movie stuff that happens later.
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Mar 24, 2024 14:22
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Chas McGill posted:Watched the original Road House for the first time and it was surprisingly good. I enjoyed the first half a lot more than the 2nd though. I was genuinely more interested in how Dalton was gonna clean up the bar rather than the more high stakes typical action movie stuff that happens later. Road House is incredible camp. One of the funniest movies I know.
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Mar 24, 2024 19:01
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i tried watching November last night. i managed to make it through to the end but not without a majority of the movie playing at 1.5x speed since it was a blu-ray. the imagery and cinematography are both great but the narrative was way too abstract for me to grip onto. shame bc a weird folk dark fairytale with magical creatures made out of scythes and leather and other old timey farm equipment infused by the actual devil with sacrificed souls sounds sick as poo poo on paper. but it was a weird slog
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Mar 24, 2024 19:14
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The Hunt for the Red October: I think this is the first time I've watched this in full. Usually I just watched sections here and there on cable growing up. But this is very entertaining thriller/mystery as long as you buy Sean Connery as a Soviet sub captain. He's commanding and works well, but accents stood out a bit to me after shows like Chernobyl. It doesn't matter much though. Baldwin is solid as a submarine geek and all the mind games between captains and Jack Ryan help to drive the film forward. Finally the final sub battle is fantastic with all secret maneuvers each captain does to trick torpedoes. Great stuff.
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Mar 24, 2024 20:37
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checkplease posted:The Hunt for the Red October: I think this is the first time I've watched this in full. Usually I just watched sections here and there on cable growing up. But this is very entertaining thriller/mystery as long as you buy Sean Connery as a Soviet sub captain. He's commanding and works well, but accents stood out a bit to me after shows like Chernobyl. It doesn't matter much though. It's so good, I remembered it but recently rewatched the whole thing and it slaps. I loved the Russian to English scene transitioning on Armageddon.
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Mar 25, 2024 05:21
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Oppenheimer: It's as good as everyone made it out to be. There are two ways I can sum it up: It's a 3 hour film about the rise and fall from grace of one of the greatest scientific minds of our time. Or "Well, well, well, if it isn't the consequences of my own actions." Also, if this movie is at all truthful about his relationships, Oppenheimer was a Playa. I'm pretty sure he hosed the bomb at one point, going by how the scene was shot.
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Mar 25, 2024 18:34
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So after watching part one for the first time on the weekend and part 2 in cinemas last night my attitude has gone from "utter folly to even attempt, this is inherently unfilmable" to "need to watch it a bunch but Villeneuve's Dune is a contender for greatest science fiction film of all time". It's certainly one of the most visually gorgeous films I've ever watched.
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Mar 25, 2024 21:07
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Breetai posted:So after watching part one for the first time on the weekend and part 2 in cinemas last night my attitude has gone from "utter folly to even attempt, this is inherently unfilmable" to "need to watch it a bunch but Villeneuve's Dune is a contender for greatest science fiction film of all time". Yeah it owns, especially as a theater experience holy poo poo
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Mar 25, 2024 23:54
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The Upturned Glass A young girl begging her mother to not be left alone with James Mason makes me feel way more uncomfortable then it should, thanks Nabokov and Kubrick. Maybe I'm talking out of my rear end but I feel like British noir is even more expository than the American kind. Not a bad thing necessarily but it does make the whole work feel more kludgy than it should.
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Mar 26, 2024 02:28
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Wolf of Wall Street Gave up because watching a bunch of awful people do awful things was not fun Was hoping for something like Wall Street or Boiler Room but it wasn’t
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Mar 26, 2024 05:46
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Cat Hassler posted:Wolf of Wall Street wolf of wall street is fun bc you can tell people will look at it as inspirational even tho it's highlighting how awful the characters actually are. there's also a tinge of fantasy escapism bc if i were that lovely and money hungry i would probably be a piece of poo poo, too, and it's cathartic to see that played out instead of needing to be it? idk. boiler room is better tho for sure.
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Mar 26, 2024 08:31
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To me it's a great illustration of the idea that nobody should have that much money. Nobody can *use* all that money. It's vomitous in the excess it shows, there's just no end to it and it makes Jordan an absurd, risible figure. It's basically a black comedy.
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Mar 26, 2024 09:41
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Cat Hassler posted:Wolf of Wall Street People having fun doing bad things is a plot in a LOT of cinema. It's not like the film is endorsing their behaviour. It's a Hollywood film, it catches up to them eventually. ShoogaSlim posted:wolf of wall street is fun bc you can tell people will look at it as inspirational even tho it's highlighting how awful the characters actually are. We live in a world were some audiences thought Homelander was a good guy. Mega Comrade fucked around with this message at 12:12 on Mar 26, 2024 |
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Mar 26, 2024 12:10
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Maurice - being gay in Edwardian England really sucked. Good Merchant-Ivory stuff here.
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Mar 26, 2024 15:28
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I'm often cold on Scorsese because he has some specific storytelling techniques he leans on that I'm not big on and tend to derail his movies for me, but Wolf of Wall Street was the first movie of his I watched that was almost a total winner for me because for much of the runtime it felt great seeing a terrible person be terrible and get set up for some big falls. However, I think that (due to the movie having to be overseen by the Real Actual Guy) the ending somewhat cheaps out and makes him seem way too cool, at odds with a lot of what the rest of the movie was saying and doing. It's a great performance, though, and a movie that kept me going through his filmography. It's good stuff.
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Mar 26, 2024 16:44
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I had to excuse myself from The Aviator a few days ago and just listen to it going on in the next room because there's something about it that just rubs me the wrong way anymore. It's catnip for a certain kind of hero-worshipping "the rules don't apply to me because I'm just that awesome" type of person, and a lot of it feels written out of spite, or to soothe a grudge, like the whole "We're socialists!  *dashes out to net butterflies*" scene.But hearing it audio-only really exacerbated that effect somehow, because I didn't have any cool visuals to distract from the didactic drumbeat of the dialogue. The movie censorship scene where the frowsty old greybeards were going  at the pinup photos, "You see, zee measurements uff ... her CLEEVITCH" — just lol when it's pounding on you through the wall and you don't get the effect of it looking like a super serious Epic Movie and you hear what a goofball cartoon the whole thing sounds like
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Mar 26, 2024 16:55
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Some of you people sound like you need to chill out and just watch movies instead of making up people in your head who watch movies wrong so you can be mad at them. Anyways if you think Wolf wasn't hard enough on the Wall Street folks The Beekeeper is here for you.
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Mar 26, 2024 23:44
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