hey rocker. i haven't seen either of your movies. brooklyn is one that i'll get around to one of these days, but it looks like the kind of worthwhile, admirable film that i know i ought to watch but that just doesn't excite me, the cinematic equivalent of eating your vegetables. wonder woman was added to netflix recently, so i'll work that in soon as well.
my week:
the lives of others (2006) 5 i think this belongs in an serious discussion of the best films of the century. there's one very minor thing i dislike in the final moment of the film, but otherwise i think it's perfect.
fantastic planet (1973) 2.5 french animated sci-fi. this bounced right off me. frustrating, because i feel like i ought to have loved everything about it. i love animation, weird 70s sci-fi, all down the line this ought to be all for me. but i was bored. at one point, when i felt like i'd been watching forever, i checked the running time as i was sure we must be nearing the end, and found i was only 35 minutes in.
this is my defect, i'm sure, but i just didn't dig it one bit.
compliance (2012) 4 i've heard some people get a bit sniffy over this thing because of perceived exploitation. is something really exploitative if it portrays evens seemingly accurately?
it's well made, well acted, is undeniably unbelievable & maintains its spell all the way through to the end.
if you're looking for a film to support your misanthropy, look no further!
starry eyes (2014) 3.5 one of the better indie-horror films of the past decade or so imo.
makes the flaccid, uneventful pet sematary remake from the same directors all the more mystifying.
election (1999) 3.5 i oscillated between loving and hating every character in this movie.
except the sister, who i found perpetually loathsome.
we all hate the tracy flicks of our world, & maybe i do too, but it's out of my own pettiness & jealousy & bitterness at my own mediocrity, i guess.
it's a funny old world.
monster party (2018) 2.5 seemed like it was setting up something great, terrific tough trashy fun along the lines of don't breathe, but it turned out to be rather plodding. will fill the evening, but i didn't find it all that compelling.
high hopes (1988) 2 i've loved just about every mike leigh film i've seen.
but not this one. it felt terribly artificial & staged. the people didn't seem real.
and above all, i thought it was unfair.
i'd like to leave politics out, but when a film is explicitly political in some aspects, this perhaps can't be done.
i didn't live in 80s england, and mike leigh did, and i have to respect that.
but this depiction of thatcherism & the purity of its opposition seemed like vicious caricature and nothing else.
steelman your opponents, not strawman. otherwise you are not arguing in good faith.
i think this is a dishonest movie.
the girl next door (2007) 3.5 horrifying abuse story, based on true events.
i just wanted a nice, trashy movie to watch on tubitv.
& instead i stumbled into this.
i almost turned it off 10 times. it really is too much to take at times.
the actors do well. the film does what it was meant to do.
but i wished i hadn't watched it. this is too ugly, too awful to bear.
avengers: endgame (2019) 5 my 2nd watch. this really is just a hell of a movie.
mainstream entertainment at its best. i'm probably going to see it a 3rd time this week.
i forgot to look for howard the duck during the final battle.
or are people just making this up to mess with htd fans?
white heat (1949) 4 i didn't know this james cagney film was 'that' movie with 'that' famous line when i pressed play.
it's great, of course.
but i did find the middle section in prison just a bit...plodding. but it's terrific otherwise.
smithereens (1982) 4 raw, fun, bitter yet lighthearted punk inspired romp. and the feelies are all over the soundtrack. loveless love shows up a lot, and i'm not going to complain about that.
extremely wicked, shockingly evil & vile (2019) 3 not the dud that its straight to netflix status might lead you to believe it might be, but it's not a new classic of the serial killer genre either. interesting cast, & probably mostly for better it avoids almost all graphic detail, but it does lack a bit of focus & a compelling through-line. a bit of a movie of the week feel, in summary. but worth a watch if you're serial killer obsessed like every other person.
come and see (1985) 5 teenager joins the resistance fighting german soldiers in byelorussia.
i've got nothing to say that others won't have said & said better.
go read what they said.
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[deleted]
5 years ago
under the silver lake (2018) 4 david yow from the jesus lizard plays the homeless king in this movie!
i was really enjoying this until the 1hr32m or so mark, when the songwriter slipped in the riff to innagaddadavida, at which point i completely fell in love.
critic matt singer, in his review of inherent vice, said that to help viewers understand that movie every ticket should come with either a joint or a ticket to another viewing. i think the exact same thing could be said about this film.
this may seem to some a bit like director trying very hard to make the next mulholland drive, the new film that will become cultishly obsessed over & picked apart on message boards. and maybe it is, but i loved every minute of it, and the second it ended i wanted to watch it all over again.
eyes without a face (1960) 3.5 color me a bit surprised at how closely this hued to traditional horror, with its tortured scientist & some fairly gruesome moments. it feels a bit too uneventful, even long at 90 minutes - the twilight zone would have wrapped this up in 22m - but it's still a weird & interesting work.
the incredible hulk (2008) 3 the first hour of this is not bad. it's quite good, even. it settles into a far less satisfying, much more bland conclusion, with an uninteresting finale featuring two cgi monsters unconvincingly beating each other.
but i think i'm coming firmly down on the opinion that this is substantially better than iron man 2 and that thor film everyone hates (i kinda feel sorry for dark world at this point, the way everyone picks on it).
we are monsters (2015) 2 i guess i'm naive, but it always amazes me that rape/revenge movies like this still get made. they really do feel like transmissions from another time.
there's nothing distinctive here, nothing imaginative or fun or even particularly sleazy about this one. oh, wait. there is an incredibly disgusting scene at the end during the revenge moment where the evil guy is forced to eat his friend's intestine. i guess i've never seen that before. spoiler, i suppose.
if you enjoy watching these kinds of movies, then this is one of the kinds of movies you'll probably like to watch.
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StoneKeeper (21032)
5 years ago
I haven't seen those but I bought the lives of others a few months ago. I really need to watch it.
Compliance made me very curious.
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[deleted]
5 years ago
if/when you get to the lives of others, i'll be very curious to know what you think of it. i think it plays like one of the greatest spy/cold war stories i've ever seen. that's not a style/genre i generally watch, but i sure loved this thing.
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