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

I have ADigitalMan's edit as well.

I just watched the Disney+ version on Wednesday. There, they've stitched together the first two "seasons" of 20 3-minute episodes into one 60-minute episode, and the third "season" of 5 12-minute episodes into a second 60-minute episode. I think this presentation actually works really well since there is a time jump between those two 60-minute segments. However, the Disney+ version has no transitions between the original episodes, which sometimes is really jarring in the middle of the new versions.
 
^That's how the DVDs were released, two discs. The edit I have does move the shorts around a bit in the beginning so that there is a little bit of variety, a little of a back and forth feeling. The original presentation can get a bit exhausting just watching one 3-minute short after another, all in a row. Arranging it so that either Anakin or Obi-Wan is featured about every 10 minutes or so provides a nice sense of progression. You're right though, it would be nice if there was something to fill between the time Anakin becomes a Knight and the time when he shows up with long hair.
 
Sorry, my terminology was unclear. The Disney+ version has hard jarring changes between each 3 minute segment. They need a wipe and audio fade.
 
Star Wars - Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (2005)
Easily the best of the prequel films, but as I've discovered the fanedit community, I've allowed myself to pick more of its nits and hope for an even better film. This rewatch, I checked out an oldie-but-goodie fanedit by @FatherMerrin "Fall of the Jedi". An easy recommend as a conservative edit, but I find myself wanting to check out a couple of newer ones in hopes of bringing the development of the Rebellion and the seduction of Anakin to smoother conclusions.

Secrets & Lies (1996)
The kind of movie that seemed like anathema to me as a younger man, but which I'm now trying to educate myself on, particularly on Mother's Day. As a non-Brit, I'm sure there are aspects of this that don't resonate with me as strongly, and the film certainly presents a lot of shrill, tough-to-love women. I am not someone who embraces cringe humor or watching awkward social situations, so the first hour of set-up was something I kind of forced myself to sit through, but it does have a solid ending.
 
Do Androids Dream of Funkadelic Sheep? A fanedit by @krausfadr .

Well, I guess they dream of something. Looking at you @ParanoidAndroid .

I saw the project thread for this edit and I was fit to be tied. I couldn't believe someone would dare do anything like this to, in my personal opinion, the greatest science fiction movie of all time. I couldn't wait to shred it to pieces.

But damn! @krausfadr did a fine job of making something completely different out of the movie. It's now a retro beat up, scratched up romp with a kick ass score. The trailers which they voiced were perfectly campy, as was the retro title sequence.

This was really fun! Highly recommended!
 
Solo (2018)
A pretty good film that faced unrealistic expectations from all sides that nearly tanked it, this is a miracle that it came out as well as it did. It could use a good fanedit to make it stand better on its own instead of doing so much connecting to other franchise ideas, but it's far from the bottom of the Star Wars entries.

Moon Knight (2022)
Another one of these recent Marvel projects that works best if you're not a fan of the character. After the Winter Soldier got frozen out, Loki got tricked out, and Hawkeye got shafted, Moon Knight has now gotten his own mini-series that skips over decades of history to loosely adapt a story that was written only a couple of years ago. Even if you're not a fan of the blood-soaked noir-ish vigilante of the comics, this series literally skips over any climatic finales and yadda yaddas its way to a conclusion that explains nothing. Very skippable.
 
mnkykungfu said:
Solo (2018)
A pretty good film that faced unrealistic expectations from all sides that nearly tanked it, this is a miracle that it came out as well as it did. It could use a good fanedit to make it stand better on its own instead of doing so much connecting to other franchise ideas, but it's far from the bottom of the Star Wars entries.
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My kids watched episodes 1-6 over the last 10 days and so I put on Solo for them next. We watched @DigModiFicaTion ’s Coaxium Heist version, which IMO fixes a lot of the movie’s issues. We enjoyed it but it definitely suffers from being a prequel. The tension was definitely lacking from things like the Kessel Run because we know the outcome.

Funny anecdote: one of my kids said why is Han Solo so young and look different? I told him because they had to cast a different actor because Harrison Ford is old now. He said, “why did they make all these Star Wars movie in such a dumb order?” 🤣
 
^Yeah, I mean, if it's watched as your first intro to Han then it kinda avoids those questions. lol
I've seen the Coaxium Heist listing. It seems to me to have different aims than what I was referring to, namely, it seeks to reduce L3's role as much as possible, and to cut out personal tastes in language use and humor. My ideas are to strengthen the core characters already in the film and add in more of the scenes that do that, like Han's deleted career as an Imperial Pilot. No offense to the Coaxium Heist edit, it's just a different kettle of fish.

Rogue One (2016)
As much as I did enjoy Solo on this rewatch, seeing Rogue One as the next film in my Star Wars marathon really makes Solo look poor in comparison. It just does Every. Single. Thing. Better. From the callbacks to the action scenes, character development to world design...Rogue One is just an absolute marvel, my favorite Star Wars film outside the original trilogy.
 
Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (1977)
For the next step in my marathon, I watched @lantern51 's excellent new "Redux" fanedit. I wrote all about it here, but essentially I think this will be my preferred version to watch the film now. My biggest gripe has always been the lame Darth Vader v Obi-Wan fight, made even lamer in the wake of further films, culminating in Rogue One. Here, that footage kicks off the movie, starting it with a jolt that the original Star Destroyer opening long since stopped giving me.

Redeemer (2014)
Speaking of jolts, this Chilean indie martial arts film is an attempt to make a sort of Catholic superhero vigilante a la The Punisher/Daredevil. It is not as good as those Netflix series, but it does have some fun MMA fights and a surprisingly funny villain. (Links to fights in my review here.)
 
The Batman (2022)
I fell asleep a few times watching this over two days. Super moody and drawn out. It felt more like watching a video game at times than an actual movie. I also thought the color of this movie was pretty terrible. The soundtrack was lack luster and really pounded that motif to death. I'll take Nolan's batman over this any day. 5/10
 
DigModiFicaTion said:
The Batman (2022)
I fell asleep a few times watching this over two days. Super moody and drawn out. It felt more like watching a video game at times than an actual movie. I also thought the color of this movie was pretty terrible. The soundtrack was lack luster and really pounded that motif to death. I'll take Nolan's batman over this any day. 5/10
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Although I did like the grittier Se7en vibe, I agree with everything else you state. Pattinson is not Batman.
 
Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
One of the first movies I ever saw, and my default answer if someone demands I commit to a favorite film of all time. For this rewatch, I enjoyed the unimpeachable "Revisited" fanedit, and wrote this love letter review to the film.

The Foot Fist Way (2006)
Microbudget indie breakout for Danny McBride, seeing him just on the right side of blustery annoying sympathetic blowhard stooge. In this case, as a strip mall Tae Kwon Do instructor, modelled after writer/director/actor/Tae Kwon Do-ist Jody Hill's own youth. It's the best kind of satire, one made with brutal love.
 
I got to see Everything Everywhere All at Once a few days ago! Overall, it was good, but not great. I guess I didn’t enjoy it as much as everyone else (and by everyone else, I mean the 8.8 rating on IMDb. Take it with a grain of salt). I still liked it, and I still recommend it. I just wasn’t wowed by it.

The biggest issue I have with the film is with its runtime. It’s a little too long at 140 minutes, and I think the ideal length is somewhere in the 120-130 minute range. If the film had been made just a tad bit shorter, I’d probably be going gaga for it. I also have to be honest and say that the theme of finding meaning in meaninglessness is one I’ve dealt with already, so it didn’t boggle my mind as much as it did for everyone else. To me, the basic message I got out of the film is that water is wet.

With that said, though, this is a bizarre movie of the good kind. Michelle Yeoh did a great job in the starring role, and come to think of it, so did everyone else who played a member of the family. When you consider that most of the cast is taking on dozens (or hundreds in Yeoh’s case) of roles, it’s hard not to be impressed with the acting on display. The visuals are also on a level of insanity that’s just too much fun to watch! It’s a plot where everything is dependent on how random the characters can get, and this results in some ridiculous (but hilarious) circumstances that have to be seen to be believed! There is one shot in this film that I can never describe in words because it would take several novels to explain what everyone is doing. It’s not often that I would praise a film for being so chaotic and disorderly, but this is one exception where the chaos and disorder is the point, and it works!

So while I do have a nit or two to pick with this movie, it’s still a wild and fun ride that I enjoyed enough to recommend! If it’s playing in your area and you feel like seeing it, I say give it a watch!
 
^ @Eyepainter It's interesting to hear that, and helpful for taking my expectations down a notch. I don't want to be disappointed watching this simply because I've heard nothing but rave reviews. If you really want to dig in and say more than a few sentences about these films though, you may be interested in this review thread: A Few Reviews.

Star Wars Episode V: The Return of the Jedi (1983) Returning to Jedi: A Filmumentary (2007)
For this rewatch of Jedi, I opted for the sort of "pop-up video" film commentary fanedit by Jamie Benning. While you could argue if these are more fanedits or more actual documentaries, they are listed under his name on IMDB, so... Anyway, I didn't like this quite as much as his later Star Wars Begins, but seeing the deleted scenes that could have been in Jedi was a great insight, and the frame-by-frame of Vader's electrocution was very cool.

The Joy Luck Club (1993)
Another Mother's Day watch I'm just now logging, this one is almost an Altman-style anthology of 4 immigrant Chinese women and their 4 ABC daughters. The struggles the women all went through end up influencing how they raise their daughters, the expectations put on them defining how their relationships will unfurl. Bookend scenes are added on to this film adaptation, setting the whole thing at a group dinner party where the high drama is told mostly in flashbacks that may make the room quite a bit dusty.
 
mnkykungfu said:
^Yeah, I mean, if it's watched as your first intro to Han then it kinda avoids those questions. lol
I've seen the Coaxium Heist listing. It seems to me to have different aims than what I was referring to, namely, it seeks to reduce L3's role as much as possible, and to cut out personal tastes in language use and humor. My ideas are to strengthen the core characters already in the film and add in more of the scenes that do that, like Han's deleted career as an Imperial Pilot. No offense to the Coaxium Heist edit, it's just a different kettle of fish.

Rogue One (2016)
As much as I did enjoy Solo on this rewatch, seeing Rogue One as the next film in my Star Wars marathon really makes Solo look poor in comparison. It just does Every. Single. Thing. Better. From the callbacks to the action scenes, character development to world design...Rogue One is just an absolute marvel, my favorite Star Wars film outside the original trilogy.
Click to expand...

Watched Rogue One with the kids tonight. We, again, watched @DigModiFicaTion ’s edit. While this edit still works perfectly for me, it was a bit confusing for my kids. Some of the early edits left them confused about who the pilot was, for example. But after the destruction of Jedha, they had no issues and absolutely loved it. The lesser Star Wars fan of the two again complained about the order of the films, insisting the crashed Star Destroyers at the end were the same that we find Rey scavenging in TFA. But once Leia shows up they understood where it was happening in the timeline.

Personally, I was simultaneously impressed by the CGI Tarkin and left feeling the technology has improved so drastically. There were moments it looked pretty good, especially for the time, but it never was fully convincing. Updating the actor replacement is an update I’d happily welcome from LFL.
 
For my next mini-marathon, I started a countdown to Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Firstly, I wanted to start with The Avengers since he features in their later films and I wasn't sure if these characters/events would become important in the new film...

The Avengers (2012)
Simply one of the best superhero films ever made. We take for granted now how well this balances all the characters and their interactions, the economy of story, the world-defining. I love the little moments that aren't made a big deal of with some slow motion closeup, like Iron Man refracting a beam off Cap's shield to hit multiple aliens, or Thor's awesome "He's adopted" quip about Loki (yes, Thor was funny before Waititi). I'll plug here for samspider3's EE, which I watched as an interesting alternative with those Maria Hill bookends.

Stronger (2017)
A true story connected to the Boston Marathon bombing, this easily could've been Oscar bait but it's not so pat. Strong performances but some people may have a hard time sympathizing with a very crass, loud Bostonian cast of flawed characters.
 
Session 9 (2001)

Third time I've watched this movie. First time was around 2005/06, second time somewhere around 2016. Each time, I've liked it more than the time before. It's an incredibly eerie and sad film, with almost intolerable levels of ambiguity that leave me wanting more answers than the film provides — the perfect formula for a horror film, in my book. I do think it suffers from underdeveloped characterization, but only slightly.

Also, this is the best scene in all cinematic history:


8/10
 
Doctor Strange (2016)
Continuing the countdown to Multiverse of Madness, I went back for another rewatch of this, a film I've always loved. Manages to not feel like the Magical Iron Man that it could look like on paper, and brings awesome visuals and wonderfully-balanced humor to the equation. I wasn't a huge fan of how much magic comes down to glowy ropes and shields here, but the film makes up for it by having a fantastic motif throughout.

Turning Red (2022)
I put off watching this Pixar film forever, even though I've been a huge fan of them since day one (yeah, back when they were working on Tron!) Everything about this screamed that it was going to be "not for me", and boy was I right. I guess they already made the version for me to identify with as Teen Wolf back in the '80s, so I'm glad I gave this a shot but it went straight into the bottom tier of my Pixar rankings.
 
Another one for Mother's Day...
One True Thing (1998)
Fresh off Jerry Maguire, Renee Zellweger stars as an up-and-coming journalist who has to put her career on hold and move back in with her parents, William Hurt and Meryl F'n Streep (yes, that's how she must always be name-checked). An often low-key drama that has a bit in common with famous tearjerker Terms of Endearment but is a lot better in my opinion. Possibly Streep's most underrated performance?

Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) - The Extinction Edition
Sure, Dr. Strange isn't in this, but what, am I gonna just go from Avengers to Infinity War and skip it? Plus, a great excuse to watch @Bobson Dugnutt 's fanedit, which I think we all can just agree is the definitive version now, right? The most underrated Avengers movie, I like this more the further away I get from my initial expectations, and those deleted scenes really do help.
 
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