I Just Watched... (Movies/TV/DVD)

[King Kamala]

I got the chance to see Motherless Brooklyn this weekend. I hadn't seen any trailers or heard any prerelease hype but heard Ed Norton a semi recent episode of WTF and had some time to kill. Man, I'm glad I did. I thought it was a really enjoyable modern film noir with a great cast. My only complaint is it is kind of annoying to have able bodied actors play disabled characters in 2019. It really did seem like a huge passion project for Ed Norton and it's a bummer that it was such a huge flop (and it doesn't even seem like it did better than fair to middling with critics)

 

[HarleyQuinn]

Switchback (1997)

A decent movie about a young man named Lane (Jared Leto) whom befriends a traveler named Bob (Danny Glover) on a road trip. Meanwhile, Dennis Quaid, an FBI agent, is on the hunt of a serial killer who has abducted his son. This leads him to cross paths with R. Lee Ermey, a small town Sheriff trying to get re-elected against William Fichtner's character, and Ermey's assistant played by Ted Levine.

The editing is a little shoddy but the pacing is good and Danny Glover is a real delight as Bob. It's a little hard to

Spoiler

buy him as the killer

but the chemistry he and Leto have is solid. Quaid is also really good as the stoic FBI agent on the hunt and Ermey/Levine share some good chemistry that makes it believable that they'd be working together for 15+ years. Bonus points for seeing Ermey with a mustache and an early portrayal by Levine of how his Stottlemeyer character would be on the TV show Monk.

6/10

 

[Youth N Asia]

Finally got around to watching Us. I tried to not let the hype lead me, because it was sold as an all time classic. I’m not quite there with it, but dig it quite a bit. The whole explanation with things was a little silly, but once it got tense it kept up throughout the rest of the movie.

 

[Master Thrasher]

I watched the first Avengers movie cause it showed up on Amazon Prime Video. I thought it was really good. I can't figure out why anyone would want to live in Manhattan in the Marvel Universe.

 

[King Kamala]

Finally watched My Name is Dolemite yesterday on my day off which is mild surprise cause I'm a huge huge Rudy Ray Moore and Eddie Murphy fan. Start off with the positive and say it was a fun, perfectly enjoyable biopic. However, do have to say that that I'm in agreement with the people who say Eddie was mildly to moderately miscast as Rudy Ray Moore.


Not to say that it was a bad performance by any stretch of the imagination but it's really hard to buy Eddie Murphy as a journeyman showbiz lifer who can't catch a break. Even decades past his prime (and not having done a movie in 7 or 8 years), he's a guy that exudes star quality and charisma. I've heard people say Craig Robinson might've been better and I agree (And he was in the damn movie too). I thought Wesley Snipes stole the show as D'Urville Martin. He was hilarious as exasperated semi-antagonist. I forgot he could do comedy. Just a great ensemble from top to bottom.

Movie was a lot glossier than I would've liked but overall, pretty good. Would recommend if you are not a rat soup eating motherfucker. 7.5/10

 

[Master Thrasher]

I watched the first Die Hard movie. It must be at least dozen times I've watched it and it finally hit me that the Christmas party takes place on Christmas Eve. Who goes to an office party on Christmas Eve? Usually you have family over, not spend time at work.

Later on, Mr. Takagi is taken to vault and forced to give up codes. He says they'll just change the codes in the morning in Tokyo. I looked it up it would have been close to noon during this time in Japan. Also, give up the codes because it ain't worth dying over.

I was surprised about all the law enforcement gathered during Christmas Eve. They had to be pissed (or super happy cause time and half) to be there.

So John wins in the end. (Spoiler) He and Holly go off, happily ever after. Holly got over the fact she was held hostage, her boss and sleazy coworker died, and she was almost thrown off a thirty story building.

Also, this had to suck for the survivors and the families of those who didn't make it.

You get home at like 1AM, your spouse is worried about you, tried to go to bed, and at 7AM the kids are screaming at you cause they want to open presents.

 

[Brooklyn Zoo]

Solid points

 

[Laz]

Brief rebuttals:
-An office Xmas party in Los Angeles during the 80s. People want their cocaine, free liquor, and bonuses (to spend on cocaine). The party probably would have ended around 6 or 7 had they not been taken hostage.

-Emergency services are on call 24/7, regardless of the day. Even if it's your day off. Close friend just recently stopped being an EMT, her father was a firefighter, her husband is a firefighter, Xmas doesn't guarantee anything. Police in my girlfriend's family, both local and state. Shit happens but double pay is great.

The rest are all solid af points.

 

[Master Thrasher]

Oh yeah Ellis does coke in his office.

 

[HarleyQuinn]

Finally watched Nightcrawler after hearing so much praise for it. Really good movie and such a skin crawling performance by Jake Gyllenhaal. One of those that I really didn't know a lot about going in but so glad I watched it.

 

[KingPK]

I'm in the middle of my MCUthon and watched Doctor Strange today. That might have been the most surprisingly enjoyable movie of the series so far given I know zero about the character and before I watched it it seemed like a solid but unspectacular "I'll probably never watch this again" entry like Ant-Man was. The creativity of the action scenes combined with what is easily the most clever ending "fight" in the entire MCU so far really drew me in.

Also, I didn't really like Civil War at all. They introduced some interesting things but don't really do much with them because they had to introduce Black Panther and the new Spider-Man instead.

 

[Laz]

Caught Nekrotronic (2018) the other night. The same cree that made Wyrmwood, which was a fairly well received horror indie of the Fango style a few years back. The SFX are incredible for such a small budget and it effectively blends The Matrix and Ghostbusters as well as they could possibly go together, I guess, but it left me wanting so much more because I just KNOW that there's a much better movie in here, somewhere. Worth a catch if you have Shudder or come across it for free. I loved the effects and art design, and a lot of the crews for both have worked on some big deals, notably both The Matrix and Mad Max: Fury Road for quite a few of the crew itself.

A gorgeous mess, really.

 

[Laz]

While I can't say I'd recommend this movie in the sense of it being good or even to people of certain tastes, I can very much so say that Rob Zombie's 3 From Hell is the best movie he's made in over a decade. It starts off sluggish at the prison as Zombie flexes his typical over-indulgence in ogling his wife, but I'll be damned if Sherri doesn't deliver the perfect "insane Looney Tune" performance. She's actually the best part of this, more of a modern grimy western than either of the previous two Firefly family flicks, and that's insane to think about. 6.5/10

 

[HarleyQuinn]

Past Life (2016) directed by Avi Nesher
An Israeli film centered in the 1970s around a pair of sisters, one a singer and another a writer. Both sisters soon learn there's something more to their father's history which quickly unravels as the singer becomes entwined with a famous composer related to her father's history. It's a war-time mystery that doesn't quite nail the mystery aspect and the singer/composer relationship feels a little rushed and undeveloped but the strength of this film is largely in the acting.

Really great acting particularly from the adults: Doron Tavory as Baruch Milch, Evgenia Dodina as Lusia Milch in a scene stealing role, and Katarzyna Gniewkowska as Agnieszka Zielinska. Worth checking out if you're into more modern foreign films. 6/10

 

[Gary]

"Bad Boys for Life" is the best entry in the franchise thus far. It removes a lot of the fat (and things you could not get away with today) of the previous movie while actually making it's protagonists interesting and giving them pathos. It's also got some great action scenes and probably the funniest banter of the franchise. The kind of January/February surprise that makes going to the movies fun.

 

[Laz]

You Were Never Really There (2019) is a low-key masterpiece of brutal simplicity. There's maybe 15 minutes worth of dialogue in the 89-minute run time, and the whole thing is carried by Joaquin Phoenix and his cold glare. 7.5/10

 

[HarleyQuinn]

Troop Zero stars McKenna Grace, Viola Davis, Jim Gaffigan, and Allison Janney about a girl in 1977 Georgia who dreams of being recorded on NASA's Golden Record and joins a Birdie Scout group to do so. Great acting, very enjoyable kids flick that mirrors stuff like Bridge to Terebithia, Harriet the Spy, and early 90s fare like D2: The Mighty Ducks. Worth checking out if you have kids and want to watch something a bit more modern but isn't full of young teens.

7/10

 

[Super Leather]

Watching Chinatown for the umpteenth time. Chinatown never gets old; it is one of the movies that should be made permanently available on all of the streaming services and hold a place in all movie collections. Every time it ends, all I want to do is watch it again. Of course, I am not saying anything that you do not already know.

"Bad Boys for Life" is the best entry in the franchise thus far. It removes a lot of the fat (and things you could not get away with today) of the previous movie while actually making it's protagonists interesting and giving them pathos. It's also got some great action scenes and probably the funniest banter of the franchise. The kind of January/February surprise that makes going to the movies fun.

Saw a trailer for Bad Boys for Life and I'm definitely on board. Finally saw Bad Boys II the other night. I had actually forgotten that they had made a sequel, but I wasn't paying attention in the early 2000s anyway. Thought it was just as good as the first; I have no reason to believe that Bad Boys for Life will not be up to the same standard.

 

[Master Thrasher]

Spider Man: Far From Home. I watched the original Sam Raimi trilogy and they are so different from the Marvel ones. I think I like the Marvel ones better. Anyway, Mysterio

Spoiler

turns heel halfway through the movie. I can't believe it. I'm still not sure how he died unless one of the drones shot him while he was cloaked. I would have liked the Spider series to follow a different trend and not kill the bad guy. I liked Mysterio.

I hope Peter graduates high school in the next movie.

 

[HarleyQuinn]

Hiding Out from 1987 starring Jon Cryer, Keith Coogan, and Annabeth Gish. Quick plot is that a stock broker in Boston (Cryer) gets called to testify against a Mob Boss who wants to whack him, and so he's forced on the run to eventually hide out as a high school student at his cousin's (Coogan) high school. Pretty typical stuff afterwards but the film is paced well, solid direction, and Cryer is fun as the main protagonist even in the "Mob" antagonists are virtually gone for the majority of the film til the obvious climax.

6/10

 

[Gary]

"Gretel & Hansel" is actually really good (but not quite great) horror movie that some people might consider boring because it relies more on mood and atmosphere than it does the kind of jump scares you usually get in PG-13 horror. I wouldn't fault someone for disliking it, but I find it refreshing to see a wide release, major studio horror movie that's more artful and creepy than you usually get.

 

[fazzle]

I don't want to try and butt in more on 909's thread, but I've also been keeping a ranked list of 2020 movies, and here's my order so far:

Spoiler

1. Birds of Prey
2. Bad Boys For Life
3. Weathering With You
4. Sonic the Hedgehog
5. The Gentlemen
6. Las Pildoras de Mi Novio
7. The Last Full Measure
8. Underwater
9. Gretel & Hansel
10. Dolittle
11. The Rhythm Section
12. Fantasy Island
13. Like a Boss
14. The Grudge
15. Downhill
16. The Turning

Top 5 are the ones I'd actually call good, and the bottom 7 are the ones I'd call flat out bad, with the ones inbetween being somewhere in the range of "eh, it's ok"

 

[Gary]

You wanna know what's really best in life? Watching "Conan the Barbarian" with the commentary track. I lost count of how many times Arnold says "exactly" or "it's funny".

 

[Epic Springs]

It's not available anywhere yet to stream (that I can see anyway) but I'd like to give the highest of recommendations to a little French indie flick I caught over the weekend. It's called "Stars by the Pound" (or the original French title, "100 kilos d'étoiles"). It's about an overweight teenager who aspires to be an astronaut. After a health scare, she takes a road trip with her friends to enter a prestigious science competition. Go seek it out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4GYAWOtF9k

 

[HarleyQuinn]

Train to Busan Damn what a great movie. I'm not into Zombie flicks much but I heard great things about this and it held up while being surprisingly emotional. 8/10

 

[Brocklock]

I love that movie. The human drama is handled so perfectly and there are a ton of likable characters. The zombie stuff is very similar to the World War Z movie, but with the raised stakes of the characters it worked for me.The ending got me misty eyed.

 

[BruiserBrody]

You wanna know what's really best in life? Watching "Conan the Barbarian" with the commentary track. I lost count of how many times Arnold says "exactly" or "it's funny".

I loved the director Milius...doing commentary with Arnie. He went deep into the concept of the Riddle of Steel and Arnie's contribution was "Yahhh...steel".

I am re-watching Prisoners for the first time in years. Jesus does the foreboding mood hold up.

 

[HarleyQuinn]

Re-watched Outbreak for the first time in a long time. Really good cast and decent enough film although the sub-plot about the "bad" Army major played by Donald Sutherland kinda drags a lot of the 2nd half of the movie for me.

The monkey + apple scene is still one of the only moments I'll probably remember from this movie just like before.

 

[Gert]

Watched both 1917 & Motherless Brooklyn last night,

Thought 1917 was good but not great. It had great cinematic elements that deserved winning awards, but probably not Best Picture.

Motherless Brooklyn was one of those movies that the cast was great, and the attention to detail of the time frame (1957) was great, but you kept waiting for the story to click and it didn't. When reading that it was an Edward Norton passion project it all made a lot of sense.

 

[Master Thrasher]

The Pet Sematary remake is on Amazon. I've seen the original and sequel, so I was familiar with the story. Louis is dumbest doctor in the world. Buying a house in another state without looking at it because he'd know that trucks zip at 100 mph and you own 50 acres of property that people dump their dead pets into.