The Last Movie(s) You Watched... (quick one or two sentence reviews)

[mnkykungfu]

National Lampoon’s European Vacation (1985)
I watched Clueless recently and was impressed by how well Amy Heckerling directed it, so vowed to give a second look to many of her films. This is one I remember fondly from my childhood but was puzzled by critics hating it. On second look, it's a string of skits with mostly dated, ignorant humor and some pretty bad acting from the kids, despite a bit of interesting direction.

Dirty Grandpa (2016)
The promise of seeing Aubrey Plaza as Robert DeNiro's wild fling was too much for me to resist this bomb. Those scenes are indeed great, but most of the rest of the film is a big, played-out, gross-out comedy with far too long spent on unfunny supporting characters.

Encanto (2021)
Wow, the hype for this was real but it totally lived up to it. This is the kind of fresh spin on these all-ages films that packs some surprising depth and emotionality into what works as an entertaining and inspiring romp for lil' ones, a la old skool Pixar. Also, it's been funny to read how many people are in total denial that his film has a villain because they can't conceive of a tiny old grandma as an outright antagonist. Facts.

 

[DigModiFicaTion]

The Scorpion King
I put this on in the background the other day. I remember it being not good, but not necessarily bad. Wow, my memory was wrong. It's not Kevin Sorbo Hercules cringe, but it's basically if that and the Mummy had a baby that grew up on WWF. Terrible movie.

 

[mnkykungfu]

John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023)

Reveal message: Much longer than "1 or 2 sentences" review

Unlike the critics who took a long time to view it as any more than another old-man actioner, I LOVED John Wick for the lean, mean efficiency of both its protagonist and its combat. The 2nd film started to get slightly bloated with how much it leaned in to this whole assassin mythology, but was still an inventive and rollicking time. The 3rd film no longer felt grounded to me and was so overlong and overly complex that it lost any consequentiality, literally ending with John in exactly the same position he started in... and there's more of all those problems here. It's a struggle to feel tension anymore in the legions of goons John dispenses, or to believe anything could ever really kill him. I felt no tension in this film and got tired of all the new characters and the expanded dialogue with all the old ones hamming it up. Best part was Scott Adkins, by far.

Zola (2020)
I was intensely curious to catch this film based on a longform tweetstorm, but the writer/director seemed to swallow the narrator's version of events wholesale and missed the mark on telling a story that's wild but actually believable and has a point. Some interesting style and cinematography and great central performances though.

"Open Your Eyes" (1997)
I'm actually a big fan of Cameron Crowe's remake of this, Vanilla Sky, and I think a lot of the writing decisions made for that film fix a lot of the weaknesses in this one. Still, if you haven't seen either, there are a lot of great shots by Alejandro Amenabar here that Crowe copied directly, and it's a remarkable headtrip of a film (with the benefit of a luminous and topless Penelope Cruz, to boot).

 

[Ender]

The Incredibles 2 is one half of a pretty good movie and one half of a really awful one. Everything about the Parrs' home life is on par (no pun intended) with the first film. The actual superhero business Helen gets involved in initially shows promise but rapidly spirals out of control.
The villain is terrible on every level, and upon seeing the deleted scenes, it becomes incredibly obvious their motivation (which is only ever brought up in a single monologue) is a leftover from an earlier draft where there was an angle of filming Elastigirl's crimefighting to broadcast as entertainment. With that angle lost, Screenslaver's rant about people only wanting superheroes as escapism feels completely out of left field and is forgotten just as soon as it's established. Speaking of Screenslaver, that cool design that reminds me a lot of the Paul Dano Riddler is only used once in the film, as is the entire persona of a sort of soft-spoken ninja is immediately discarded. If we had that Screenslaver for the rest of the movie it would be much better. But no, we get a twist reveal that you can see coming the minute the culprit is introduced (not to mention there's literally only two characters introduced who it realistically could be), which is completely worthless, and then the finale has the villain out of costume and just generally being boring. Oh and the fact that Elastigirl didn't immediately figure out they had the wrong guy when the film so blatantly telegraphs it was painful to watch.
Unlike the first film, there were actually a couple deleted scenes I think shouldn't have been cut, namely the restaurant holdup (I get that it doesn't contribute to the plot, but it's a fun scene, and the kids were otherwise underutilized so I loved seeing them shine) and Edna's security breach (having her hacked by Screenslaver would've been a great way to tie Helen's plotline to Bob's).
Oh and Schaffrillas is right about the newly introduced superheroes: their designs are awful.
Overall, I'd say the only thing this movie is is incredibly disappointing. The first one is a masterclass in storytelling that should be taught in universities around the world. The second is something to keep the kids quiet for two hours.
Damn, I think that was more than a few sentences.

 

[Editzilla]

The Incredibles 2 is one half of a pretty good movie and one half of a really awful one. Everything about the Parrs' home life is on par (no pun intended) with the first film. The actual superhero business Helen gets involved in initially shows promise but rapidly spirals out of control.
The villain is terrible on every level, and upon seeing the deleted scenes, it becomes incredibly obvious their motivation (which is only ever brought up in a single monologue) is a leftover from an earlier draft where there was an angle of filming Elastigirl's crimefighting to broadcast as entertainment. With that angle lost, Screenslaver's rant about people only wanting superheroes as escapism feels completely out of left field and is forgotten just as soon as it's established. Speaking of Screenslaver, that cool design that reminds me a lot of the Paul Dano Riddler is only used once in the film, as is the entire persona of a sort of soft-spoken ninja is immediately discarded. If we had that Screenslaver for the rest of the movie it would be much better. But no, we get a twist reveal that you can see coming the minute the culprit is introduced (not to mention there's literally only two characters introduced who it realistically could be), which is completely worthless, and then the finale has the villain out of costume and just generally being boring.
Unlike the first film, there were actually a couple deleted scenes I think shouldn't have been cut, namely the restaurant holdup (I get that it doesn't contribute to the plot, but it's a fun scene, and the kids were otherwise underutilized so I loved seeing them shine) and Edna's security breach (having her hacked by Screenslaver would've been a great way to tie Helen's plotline to Bob's).
Oh and Schaffrillas is right about the newly introduced superheroes: their designs are awful.
Overall, I'd say the only thing this movie is is incredibly disappointing. The first one is a masterclass in storytelling that should be taught in universities around the world. The second is something to keep the kids quiet for two hours.
Damn, I think that was more than a few sentences.

I honestly thought the whole thing was a disaster including the family life, just soo many OOC moments. And of course the villain being the exact thing the first one made fun of ("Starts off with this prepared speech about how feeble I am to him, how inevitable my defeat.......").

The only good part I can say about the film was this deleted scene:

 

[Ender]

Oh right! I forgot about that one! That was also one I thought should've been in the movie!

 

[Eyepainter]

Rocky V (1990)

This is often said to be the worst film in the Rocky franchise, and I'm afraid that criticism is justified. Sure, the scene with Mick is touching and all, and I suppose it wasn't a bad idea to try something different as opposed to the same thing happening five times in a row, but what exactly was this movie about? Is it about Rocky and his son? Is it about Tommy Gunn? Is it about Rocky adjusting to a normal life? Say what you will about the other sequels, but at least they all had a clear focus on the big fight between Rocky and (insert opponent here). This movie doesn't have that, and the climactic street fight, though original, is never built up in any effective way. The message about family gets very preachy and over sentimental in the second half. And I'm sorry, but Stallone's son can't act. Overall, a disappointing finish to the first five films.

 

[kinnikuman]

Maybe this is an unpopular opinion?: The Frog Princess is an underseen and underpraised Disney gem with gorgeous (mostly) 2D animation, great unique music, and enough twists to take a film clearly aimed at children but make it enjoyable for adults as well.

It's no Princess Bride though, which has apparently become fashionable for Gen Z to call overrated? Inconceivable.

The princess and the frog totally grew on me - I thought it was just a throw away movie to have a black princess. I was totally wrong - the story is great , the music is amazing and the art style is so charming it makes me miss hand drawn.

 

[mnkykungfu]

Rocky V is often said to be the worst film in the Rocky franchise, and I'm afraid that criticism is justified..... what exactly was this movie about?

I hear you. I feel like there are some great ideas here though that were essentially exposing the reality of boxing after kind of glorifying it for 4 films. Rocky is in the twilight of his career, and that's when boxers start finding out who their friends really are and how cruel the business can be. The film is about Rocky realizing when he thought he'd made a lot of sacrifices for his family, he'd really been sacrificing his family the whole time. And all that other stuff was temporary. It's personified in a battle between his real flesh and blood son being overlooked because he's not like Rocky, an artist not a fighter, and Rocky investing in his 'found' son, real-life boxing star Tommy Gunn instead.

The message about family gets very preachy and over sentimental in the second half. And I'm sorry, but Stallone's son can't act. Overall, a disappointing finish to the first five films.

I think you're right that the whole thing is undercut by the kid actors not being that compelling. Rocky has always been sentimental, but somehow Stallone and Shire and Meredith always managed to sell the schmaltz. Less so here. Doesn't help that though he's a great boxer, Gunn is less of an actor and his whole arc is just a little too earnest. The film is great at exposing the way Don King worked the boxing commission and how the whole industry is corrupt and kind of rigged and chews up fighters... it may seem obvious now, but this was edgy stuff in the heyday of Mike Tyson's career.

There's a pretty great fanedit of this called The '80s Remix Edition that helps make this a much more enjoyable film within the series... although still the weakest, depending on how you feel about the Creed movies.

 

[mnkykungfu]

The Last Picture Show (1971) - Director's Cut
This is 8 minutes longer and I wish I would've watched the theatrical version first because long bits of this felt slow, boring, and emotionally uninvesting for me. Jeff Bridges is young, handsome and amazingly talented; Cybil Shepherd is young and beautiful. Feels 10 years older than it is, just with a lot of awkward underage sex.

Class Action Park (2020)
Very engaging documentary about an American theme park that is simultaneously the best and worst of America, all wrapped up into one trashy, New Jersey package.

Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (2019)
I put this off for a long time, like The Hateful Eight, because I had a feeling that it would be bloated, indulgent, meandering, and not for me. I was right on all counts, and would love a fanedit. I particularly struggled with Tarantino's ongoing use of Bruce Lee --and Asian iconography in general-- as purely a way to make his white actors seem cooler and more powerful, in this case especially egregiously.

 

[Eyepainter]

I hear you. I feel like there are some great ideas here though that were essentially exposing the reality of boxing after kind of glorifying it for 4 films. Rocky is in the twilight of his career, and that's when boxers start finding out who their friends really are and how cruel the business can be. The film is about Rocky realizing when he thought he'd made a lot of sacrifices for his family, he'd really been sacrificing his family the whole time. And all that other stuff was temporary. It's personified in a battle between his real flesh and blood son being overlooked because he's not like Rocky, an artist not a fighter, and Rocky investing in his 'found' son, real-life boxing star Tommy Gunn instead.

I think you're right that the whole thing is undercut by the kid actors not being that compelling. Rocky has always been sentimental, but somehow Stallone and Shire and Meredith always managed to sell the schmaltz. Less so here. Doesn't help that though he's a great boxer, Gunn is less of an actor and his whole arc is just a little too earnest. The film is great at exposing the way Don King worked the boxing commission and how the whole industry is corrupt and kind of rigged and chews up fighters... it may seem obvious now, but this was edgy stuff in the heyday of Mike Tyson's career.

There's a pretty great fanedit of this called The '80s Remix Edition that helps make this a much more enjoyable film within the series... although still the weakest, depending on how you feel about the Creed movies.

In a lot of ways, Rocky V reminds me of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, another disastrous fifth movie. Star Trek V also tried to be ambitious and different from the others before it, and it even had some interesting ideas. But the structuring was so bad, and the execution was so poor that it became universally hated.

I do agree that the Rocky franchise is sentimental by nature, but that doesn't mean that the franchise itself was completely unrealistic. The first two Rocky films were quite ambitious for being set in the mean streets of Philadelphia, which made the sentimental stuff easier to swallow, since the backdrop was so depressingly realistic for the 1970s. In fact, according to IMDb's trivia page on Rocky V, John G. Avildsen wanted cinematographer Steven Poster to make V look like the first movie again. Poster didn't like it and complained that the original film "looked like a cheap documentary." To which Avildsen replied, "Exactly." Not sure how much of that is truth, but it does show how much heart and attention to detail was put into the first movie by comparison if that conversation did take place.

Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (2019)
I put this off for a long time, like The Hateful Eight, because I had a feeling that it would be bloated, indulgent, meandering, and not for me. I was right on all counts, and would love a fanedit. I particularly struggled with Tarantino's ongoing use of Bruce Lee --and Asian iconography in general-- as purely a way to make his white actors seem cooler and more powerful, in this case especially egregiously.

Glad I'm not the only one who felt underwhelmed by this movie. I'm a huge Tarantino fan, but the only good thing in the film was the last half hour. Everything else in this movie felt like one long, boring first act without end. I watched this movie at my favorite multiplex, and several people walked out about 90 minutes in because nothing interesting was going on. If you have the patience, the climax does feel like a reward. It's a 5-star ending for an otherwise 2-star movie. But again, you have to have an insane amount of patience for it, and I can only wait for so long.

 

[mnkykungfu]

^The stuff about Avildsen sounds right. I like his stuff a lot, but something about that period had him trying to get more mature and dramatic and just not really hitting home with the action stuff. I know he had a lot of battles with the producers of Rocky V, with Stallone stuck in the middle, and I think after the failure of Karate Kid III the year before, Avildsen just didn't have the juice to go full bore with his Rocky V vision. It ended up as a watered-down compromise killed by 1,000 cuts.

I actually don't love the ending of OUATIH, which I think a lot of people do just because it's so dynamic after a film that was so low-key. The overwhelming review I saw on Letterboxd was "at least something finally happened!" I very much like a lot of the middle with Cliff and Rick, but there's too much fat on that steak to really appreciate it. I just wrote up my vision for a fanedit here.

 

[mnkykungfu]

Hustlers (2019)
I really enjoyed this movie but watched it with the awareness of J-Lo's bitter disappointment at the lack of awards, both from an actress and a producer's perspective. It's honestly too light and engaging of a crime story to get the prestige awards, and it was a year or two behind all the other nuevo-Girl-Power films so it wasn't going to ride the #metoo wave into an honorary political Oscar.

Navalny (2022)
...and speaking of honorary political Oscars... This is a documentary with a solid section in the middle but hardly anything titanic from a filmmaking point of view. I guess if you get your international news from movies a couple years later, then this could rock your conceptions of how bad things are in Russia, but otherwise I found it to be just "good".

Out of the Past (1947)
Rounding out my trilogy of films hyped up too much by critical praise, I enjoyed this 75-year-old film just fine. Have we gotten a lot better at telling Noir stories since then? Oh god yes. But it's a rare treat to see Robert Mitchum and a quite young Kirk Douglass play off each other, and this has some great chiaroscuro lighting.

 

[Kouji]

Few more I've seen lately

The Hidden (1987)
I really recommend going in blind as I did, what a bizarre ride, it's basically basically The Thing meets Falling Down. Yet another rather unique Detective story with some fun performances and a pretty good soundtrack befiting a Miami Vice-style aesthetic .

Noah (2014)
Not the greatest thing ever, can understand why it didn't get the best reviews. Though I really enjoyed that they leaned quite heavily into the much weirder "deep lore" in regards to The Watchers (what a cool design they had by the way). An interesting blend of (already) post-apocalyptic with some Medieval elements.

John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023)
It turned out to be my favourite of the franchise I believe, all the action and fights were fantastic, all the new Supporting characters were so perfect and fitting for the world they've built. The soundtrack once again was great, only complaint was certain scenes where the greenscreen was a bit too obvious for whatever reason. (Fans of Hotline Miami will absolutely love this one)

 

[mnkykungfu]

The Hidden (1987)
I really recommend going in blind as I did, what a bizarre ride, it's basically basically The Thing meets Falling Down. Yet another rather unique Detective story with some fun performances and a pretty good soundtrack befiting a Miami Vice-style aesthetic .

There's an edit of this on here that seems like it cuts out the flat bits and makes it even better...check it out!

 

[kinnikuman]

I saw the new top gun and ski school. The new top gun was okay maybe I had too much hype going in - but it was a little bit long and repetitive. Spoilers - by the third or fourth time that we are told the mission is impossible I was going “just get maverick already!” By the third time the female lead and maverick talk I’m thinking “just hook up” or with gooses son “just bond already” not a major crime I was definitely having fun and the movie looks and sounds amazing! The major problem came at the end - every time that maverick is “beat” he pulls off a miracle so when finally he really was beat at the end is basically surrendering I thought he would just pull off another miracle and I wasn’t really invested! He suddenly saved by an unlikely source but I was like “oh i thought he was just gonna do another maverick thing to get away, I never thought he was in real danger” - 3.5/5
As for ski school - no plot, tons of boobs, 30 minutes worth of slow mo ski moves - 5/5!

 

[mnkykungfu]

I saw the new top gun and ski school.

Elevator pitch: Top Gun Ski School. "They never told you what happened to your father that day of the ski accident, Snow Goose. Well I was there... and he did it right. He did it right."

Leprechaun 2 (1994)
I discovered the ridiculous horrible awesomeness of Leprechaun last year for St. Paddy's, so this year decided to watch the only one in the series that actually takes place on the day. It's nowhere near as good as the first one, though it's much more gruesome and horrifying and at least three times as horny.

The Notorious Bettie Page (2005)
Gretchen Mol stars as the tit-ular lady and portrays her admirably, though the script itself doesn't really dig in to make us truly feel much of the crazy drama that was Page's life. The team from American Psycho make a stab at saying something about the hypocrisy of policing pornography too, but it all remains too superficial to have any of the deconstructive societal commentary of that film. Still liked this a million times more than Blonde.

 

[kinnikuman]

Elevator pitch: Top Gun Ski School. "They never told you what happened to your father that day of the ski accident, Snow Goose. Well I was there... and he did it right. He did it right."

Leprechaun 2 (1994)
I discovered the ridiculous horrible awesomeness of Leprechaun last year for St. Paddy's, so this year decided to watch the only one in the series that actually takes place on the day. It's nowhere near as good as the first one, though it's much more gruesome and horrifying and at least three times as horny.

The Notorious Bettie Page (2005)
Gretchen Mol stars as the tit-ular lady and portrays her admirably, though the script itself doesn't really dig in to make us truly feel much of the crazy drama that was Page's life. The team from American Psycho make a stab at saying something about the hypocrisy of policing pornography too, but it all remains too superficial to have any of the deconstructive societal commentary of that film. Still liked this a million times more than Blonde.

Lol so many similarities!!!

 

[Eyepainter]

John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023)

I don't think my review is gonna be very informative here. I loved the last 3 movies, and I loved this one too. I don't think it'll win over any critics who complain about Mr. Wick surviving a thousand injuries that would kill most mortal men, but this film isn't for them anyway. Trust me. You already know if you're going to enjoy it or not. So if you think this is gonna be a blast, go to the nearest cineplex and enjoy!

 

[mnkykungfu]

Lol so many similarities!!!

Snow Maverick: "I can't shake these Russian Snow Bunnies! ...I'm going inverted!"
Snow Goose: "WHAT?!"
Snow Maverick proceeds to ski upside down, slipping through the Russians' legs so artfully that they bug out.
Back at the ski lodge, Snowman tells Snow Maverick, "You can be my tandem any time!" The whole ski school celebrates in and around the jacuzzi.