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

Tom Hanks: The Nomad (2023)
This felt like an Ai chat bot scripted and compiled a bunch of wikipedia articles and random YouTube clips to make a documentary. Most egregious was it's repeated use of pictures of Rita Wilson when talking about his first wife Samantha. It did that 3 or 4 times. Fantastic actor. Extremely poor production. 4/10
 
First Man (2018) A SCI-FI movie I only picked up for looks but found, intrieguing, confusing but educational. It's a good movie I think that goes into Neil Armstrongs life and had facts I had no idea about.

Master & Commander (Early 2000s) - A really confusing boring movie, with no good sword fights even, but hey at least the set was cool, the DVD set that is. Though the actual movie and visuals were fine.

Thunderpants (2002) - What the heck did I just watch? A really funny movie for out juvenile and bad it is! LOL
 
Mildred Pierce - 1940s movie. Pretty dark and twisted especially for the era! Great acting and pacing and story telling. Picked up the dvd at the local library. Strongly recommend
 
Last week I made my older sibling watch Star Trek V with me, we had a great time. It's not the best Trek, but the little character moments between the main trio make it worthwhile.
Before that, we watched Highlander 2, which wasn't nearly as dumb-fun as I remembered, it has long boring stretches. I still love its blatent disregard for the established lore.
Yesterday we watched Star Trek '09, which I still love. Not the biggest fan of Zachary Quinto's Spock honestly.
 
Jrzag42 said:
Before that, we watched Highlander 2, which wasn't nearly as dumb-fun as I remembered, it has long boring stretches. I still love its blatent disregard for the established lore.
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I saw that there's a brand new edit of this that attempts to compile all the different sources and versions into a FanFix. You're a sucker for bad films: watch it and let me know if it makes it bearable? 😜
 
Macross Frontier: The False Songstress (2009) and The Wings of Farewell (2011)
This pair of films attempts to retell and expand the Macross Frontier anime series, giving it a firmer resolution that it never really had. It's almost cut and paste of the major themes and plot elements from the various iterations of Macross that pre-date it, so there aren't many surprises here for anime fans.

The films are a bit of a mixed bag in terms of whether to recommend them over the series.... where the animation is often improved, the music is not better. Where the main character is less annoying, the two love interests are handled less well. Ultimately, it's hard to recommend these films for casuals, so I think you just have to bite the bullet and watch the whole series if you're interested.

X-Men: Pryde of the X-Men (1989)
This was the pilot for the original X-Men series that never got picked up but did have that bitchin' arcade game. The link in my long-from review is a new AI-upscale from the VHS, and looks great. I was always just slightly too old for the '90s X-Men cartoon, but this would've been right in my wheelhouse, and is a bit darker. I've always hated Jubilee and having Kitty Pryde be her replacement here would've been an amazing series...enough to put up with Aussie Wolverine!
 
daedal said:
The Creator (2023)
I did not like this movie. I'm generally a big fan of sci-fi driven by human stories but, just like Rogue One, I could not care less about those characters. The production values are great though so if you are into that you may like it better than I did! In fact the recent VFX artists react video from Corridor Crew was very interesting. It featured Gareth Edwards himself talking about the production and FX from the movie!
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I'm not a fan of Gareth Edwards either. So far, I've seen his take on Godzilla from 2014 and Rogue One, and both plots are the exact same "child with daddy issues" story. The ending is the only crucial difference between the two. And looking at the synopses of the films I haven't seen (including this one), it looks like they all have the same father/child story. The only reason to watch a Gareth Edwards film is to see what ending he came up with this time, and that isn't interesting enough for me to spend my two hours.
 
With the rerelease of TENET in theaters and Christopher Nolan's recent interviews where he said this movie wasn't meant to be understood. I decided to watch the movie simply as an action/spy thriller. There are moments where this feels like a bit of a show as the narrative dialogue moves along, but the concept of how the inversions go together still felt good albeit slightly tired as the reveal is already known. The opener still pounds with Ludwig's score and I love John David Washington's frenetic energy during action scenes. He really goes all out and raw. This is Nolan's dessert film and it still delivers for me. 8.5/10

Re: The Creator
I'm actually really looking forward to The Creator as I'm a big John David Washington fan. I'll hopefully be picking it up soon to watch it.
 
My alt-Valentine's run of people looking for love in all the wrong places...

After Hours (1985)
I'm notably a lesser Scorsese enthusiast than most cinephiles, and his attempts at esoteric absurdity (e.g. Bringing Out the Dead, The Last Temptation of Christ, this...) don't do much for me. His take on the '80s horny comedy seems too pointless and mean-spirited to me, and I honestly didn't care what happened to any of these thinly-drawn characters, which made it a bit of a slog.

Blue Valentine (2010)
I hesitate to throw around the word "genius", but it just may apply to writer/director Derek Cianfrance's work here. A film at turns charming and gut-wrenching, this features two career-highlight performances from Williams and Gosling as ill-fated lovers. This is Brokeback Mountain for boring straight people like me.

Cinderella (2015)
This is the best live-action Disney remake, and I will die on that hill. Not only that, it actually improves on the original animated work, something that only a couple of other Disney films have done (The Jungle Book, Pete's Dragon). Brannagh borrows a few elements from other fairy tales (the original French Beauty and the Beast, for example) to flesh out the story and make this an updated-but-not-pandering work of enchantment.
 
Aquaman & The Lost Kingdom (2nd Watch) 7/10 I love Aquaman 2, it's such a great sequel, it's got fun scenes, great action, beautiful visuals! I loved it more the second time! Actually a great sequel despite the "rumored" issues. But the weird slow mo framerate bugged me.
 
The Zone of Interest. I purposefully didn’t know much about this going in. It was much more experimental than I was expecting, especially given it’s Oscar nomination. The choice to open the film on a long lingering black screen was puzzling to me at first but I soon understood its purpose. We aren’t meant to focus on what is happening in the foreground. Or, rather, that is not the most important part of what is happening. It so primed me for that experience that some of the larger shots that truly expose the location of the house almost seemed overkill. It’s a haunting movie that certainly won’t be for everyone.
 
Beauty and the Beast (1946)
This is the famous French one made with all practical effects, and it truly is amazing to look at, even today. The story doesn't really nail down all the odd variations in character and narrative like the Disney animated one did, so the romance and the ending in particular feel pretty contrived and less gratifying.

Looking For Mr. Goodbar (1977)
I didn't know that this was loosely -ever so loosely- based on a real woman and events, which made it easier to watch up, until the ending. When I tried to find out more about why the final act of the movie kind of comes out of nowhere and feels so forced and messagey, I found that that was really the whole point of the film. This is optimistically, "Slut-Shaming: The Movie", or pessimistically, character assassination of a woman after she's dead.

Lost in America (1985)
This might have played as a Comedy back in the '80s, but for me now it just reads as toothless and gutless. It's a typical Albert Brooks neurotic joint, this time about the Hippie dream of dropping out of the ratrace. It eventually becomes an ode to white entitlement and yuppie-ism, cringey in the worst ways.
 
I rewatched Shakes The Clown the other day, got my older sibling to watch it with me. They actually loved it and agreed with my thoughts on it. I still really like it, but I will say that it kinda meanders, shots linger and scenes go on slightly too long. The cop characters could be cut almost entirely. Any plot synopsis pretty much just talks about the last 35 or so minutes. It's enjoyable regardless, but it's a film that's begging to be tightened up in an edit. I still maintain that Tom Kenny would make a great joker, and in general should be in more live action roles, especially playing more unhinged villains like Binky here. One of these days I'd like to make a full video essay analyzing the character of Shakes The Clown.
 
Poor Things. Set in Victorian London, but a fairy tale version of it with sets and camera angles and lenses and stagey cityscapes meant to make this world … off. The heavily scarred God(win) played by Willem Dafoe being a kind of Dr. Frankenstein; his “monster” is Bella. I feel I need to be spoilery in order to go further, so… I quite enjoyed the early scenes with his student Max and thought we were in for a charming little odd but humorous fairy tale riff. This being a Lanthimos film, I should’ve known better. Bella is, though loved, explicitly controlled by the men around her. The fact that she is an attractive, grown woman yet can (they surmise) be controlled is part of what these men desire in her. Yet the more she asserts herself, the more the men seem drawn to her. It’s kind of a miracle this all works. But it does and it very charmingly and almost stealthily provides a wonderful satire of patriarchal thinking, even if it is rarely a subtle film. Anyway, I quite liked it and found it very funny. It’s maybe a bit overlong, however.
 
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Napoleon. What a strange movie. I’m a fan of both Ridley Scott and Joaquin Phoenix. But both seem unsure of what they wanted to do with this movie. At times feeling like a straight historical drama and at others feeling like it wanted to be something of a more modern take and still other times where it felt like a parody. Well, whatever it was it didn’t work for me. I kept waiting for us to get some insights into Napoleon himself and the so-called Napoleon Complex but it never delivered. The movie hinges somewhat on the relationship between Napoleon and Josephine. But I never felt anything approaching chemistry or even really an understanding of their relationship and certainly no passion, though it is suggested in Napoleon’s letters. The actress just seems out of place, but to be fair so does just about everyone including Phoenix. I will say some of the battle scenes are not only well done, but genuinely interesting from a strategic perspective. But even that often seems underlit and washed out as if trying to hide poor effects. I honestly think Ridley Scott’s eyes are gone because he used to have such a great eye for that stuff. But its biggest crime is that it is just mostly boring.
 
Killers of the Flower Moon well made, but way too long but then also it just stops and they do a weird radio play production instead of ending the movie. I think this would have been a much better 6-part miniseries like HBO's Chernobyl.
 
^I liked Napoleon (and its gouache-style painted imagery) more than you, but points all well made.

Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005)
That this was a pretty strong indie hit is kind of bizarre to me, as I'm not sure what all it really offers besides a lot of quirk. Trigger warning for anyone remotely sensitive to minors being placed in sexual situations with adults...there are multiple sub-plots of that here.

Watching the Detectives (2007)
Cillian Murphy trying to run a niche video rental shop when Lucy Liu manic pixies her way into his life, with Jason Sudeikis as the best friend/employee....why the hell did this go straight to DVD?? Well, the star of Super Troopers makes his independent directing/writing debut here, and this ends up feeling like a string of gags/ideas more than having an actual narrative arc.

Proof (1991)
Hugo Weaving is a blind guy who takes pictures and has his housekeeper describe what's in them to him. But he begins to suspect she's going all Kathy Bates obsessive and so he seizes on the chance to start bro-ing around with young Russell Crowe instead. That latter part really shone for me, the first part less so.
 
Moe_Syzlak said:
Napoleon. What a strange movie. I’m a fan of both Ridley Scott and Joaquin Phoenix. But both seem unsure of what they wanted to do with this movie. At times feeling like a straight historical drama and at others feeling like it wanted to be something of a more modern take and still other times where it felt like a parody. Well, whatever it was it didn’t work for me. I kept waiting for us to get some insights into Napoleon himself and the so-called Napoleon Complex but it never delivered. The movie hinges somewhat on the relationship between Napoleon and Josephine. But I never felt anything approaching chemistry or even really an understanding of their relationship and certainly no passion, though it is suggested in Napoleon’s letters. The actress just seems out of place, but to be fair so does just about everyone including Phoenix. I will say some of the battle scenes are not only well done, but genuinely interesting from a strategic perspective. But even that often seems underlit and washed out as if trying to hide poor effects. I honestly think Ridley Scott’s eyes are gone because he used to have such a great eye for that stuff. But its biggest crime is that it is just mostly boring.
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Haven't seen this but one of my friends did and expressed disappointment, think I then suggested Napoleon Dynamite instead!
 
Is the new Napoleon movie based on the 1927 film at all? Either a remake, or just inspired by? Because I keep assuming that there's a connection, and I have no idea why. I can't find any evidence to suggest any relation.
 
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