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1,951 Reply by Boter 2019-09-12 01:30:34
From: Upstate NY
Re: Last movie you watched
God it's been way, way too long.
Boter, formerly of TF.N as Boter and DarthArjuna. I like making movies and playing games, in one order or another.
Boter's Website
1,952 Reply by Beeg 2019-09-12 02:10:11
Oh man. What a great movie. The TFN FFA is still there?!
IThe films took so long to download. Then we got DSL and it was still slow as fuck, but you could actually successfully download whole fan films. I was a latecomer to TFN, and then again to The Formula (I think cause I thought it was primarily a parody of The Matrix) but when I finally got around to downloading it... I feel like it changed everything about the way I thought about my fandom.
1,953 Reply by Owen_Ward 2019-09-12 11:01:30
Owen_Ward
The Doctor / Butler
From: Liverpool, UK
I saw The Formula before I ever saw The Matrix, High Fidelity or Jaws, which made for some interesting first viewings. You know the feeling you get when you see a movie that The Simpsons has parodied? I got that hard with these thanks to The Formula. I'm reminded of the time I first heard Baba O'Riley outside of the DLR theme tune and had this real feeling of disconnect, where the real world and my weird internet world merged together.
I also have a very cringe-worthy memory of (actually) 12 year old me asking Chris Hanel if I could do my own remake...
1,954 Reply by Abbie 2019-09-13 04:12:20
I had the exact same thing with The Matrix, and it felt so off-putting to me to watch it and absorb so many references in reverse that the entire movie really rubbed me the wrong way at the time. (Rewatched it on the big screen recently, then did the sequels for the first time, and loved all of 'em, so I'm glad I got over that sticking point. )
Abbie's Website
1,955 Reply by MartyJ 2019-09-20 22:40:46
MartyJ
From: Poland
A movie that feels like a satire on Donald Trump's worldview, but (most probably) wasn't intended that way.
The first Rambo film was about something. Movies 2 and 3 delivered some silly action. I remember almost nothing about movie 4. Movie 5 was a chance to return to the serious tone and give some closure to the character. What we got instead is
SPOILER Show
an over-the-top revenge slasher culminating with John Rambo ripping out a guy's heart. Oh, and the stereotypical portrayal of Mexico makes it look like an Asylum mockbuster of Desperado or Machete.
WTF, Sly? Were you just playing with B-movie tropes or do you actually want to build that wall on the Mexican border?
We all float down here...
1,956 Reply by drewjmore 2019-09-21 04:01:00
drewjmore
From: Chicago-ish
Aw, nuts. I was hoping you were right about the serious tone. I gave up on the series after 2.
Stallone's best revengy explody thing was The Specialist. IMHO.
Last edited by drewjmore (2019-09-21 04:09:46)
Avoided this for years because I considered the novel essentially unadaptable, most specifically in its overwhelmingly repulsive violence. As it turns out, Harron agrees—rather than even attempting to translate the book's slaughterhouse depictions to the screen, she reduces them to the abstract in the crazed scribblings Patrick's secretary Jean discovers in his notes. That moment, while it lacks the horrifying power of the book's lengthy descriptions of brutality and mangling, is nonetheless absolutely chilling.
It also highlights Harron's choice to wander outside Patrick's point of view and into the skins of the women he victimizes, the one area in which her adaptation is definitively superior to Ellis's novel. American Psycho the book is Bateman's story, Bateman's monologue, Bateman's experiences, and while being trapped in his head makes for suffocatingly powerful satire, it also locks the reader into a world without remorse, without empathy. We are sickened by the descriptions of Patrick's rape and torture and mutilation, but those acts might as well be happening to pieces of meat—the women are voiceless bags of flesh that are violated and then disposed of.
In American Psycho the film, the viewer is allowed to slip outside Bateman at crucial moments. When he solicits Christie for the second time, we inhabit her fear, her reluctance, her ultimate decision to dissociate and turn off her emotions in the hopes that this man won't hurt her; later, as he chases her, our perspective is not that of the man who holds the chainsaw but that of the girl who runs. And in the lesser, verbal violence he commits against Jean, we're inhabiting not his mind but hers; Bateman's callous, deliberate negging of her, every compliment barbed with a twist of abuse just underneath, honestly feels more visceral than a good chunk of the murders he commits, because Harron's camera follows Jean's pasted-on smiles, lingers on the hurt welling under her skin. When she finds the truth of who Patrick really is, we're alone in his office with her, experiencing the revelation in all its horror as though for the first time.
Ellis's novel is an American masterpiece in spite of its author, who in the three decades since its publication has done his level best to prove that he was capable of producing it only by accident. Harron's film succeeds because of its author—because of the ways she's able to mold Ellis's unrelenting charnelhouse to her own ends, enriching and expanding it without betraying its heart.
1,958 Reply by Teague 2019-09-28 03:46:31
User Karma: 1,445
That was a hell of a review. Thanks.
Teague Chrystie
I have a tendency to fix your typos.
Never ever sleeping again.
In many ways a spiritual successor to The Blair Witch Project—mockumentary format rather than found footage, but it takes that movie's idea of the camera as simultaneous buffer between you and reality and terrifying confirmation of horror as reality and progresses it into the realm of digital image-capturing. When reality is capable of being manipulated, the line between the artificial and the hauntological blurs—ghosts become digital artifacts and digital artifacts become ghosts. It becomes impossible to say whether the supernatural is always with us or whether we manufacture it into being.
The above philosophical wankery is wrapped around a core of tragedy and violation—there's absolutely zero chance the choice of "Palmer" as the family surname was coincidental—that tethers it to visceral horror where it could have wandered into the abstract. The two elements come together in a single shot that's one of the most unspeakably terrifying images I've ever seen, one that's gonna be burned into my brain.
So yeah, bed tonight will be fun.
Streaming for free on Prime. Watch it for Spooktober.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Teague wrote:
Thanks, Teague!
Last edited by Abbie (2019-10-03 14:31:17)
It's... not brilliant, to say the least. The script didn't venture far beyond obvious, clichéd statements about the world (that being said, Joaquin Phoenix did the best he could with the material he was given). I had hoped for so much more.
Is it a bad movie? Not really. It's just not nearly as good as it should have been. I still hope it does well at the box office (the opening weekend was quite big) - its financial success could pave the way for more unusual superhero (or supervillain) movies and that's exactly what we need.
1,961 Reply by avatar 2019-10-12 05:06:54
From: Van Dieman's Land
Robert Forster, who looks like Lee Ermey (and is just as dead) is in it. Look-a-like Tommy Lee Jones lives on for now.
Anyway, it was alright. Bit like Truman Show - how can I leave town when each way is thwarted?
They're pushing the flashbacks - some as early as a decade ago. Meth Damon getting chubby. Some just nostalgia, some needed to make sense of what's happening. Maybe a bit too many flashbacks for the 120 minute running time. But no actual past footage was used I think.
Aaron Paul has struggled to establish himself as an actor in films after BB, which is a surprise as he was so strong in the series and would have had a mountain of scripts and offers before the series ended. Jesse Pinkman is one of the great TV characters of the 20-teens.
Some tense stand-offs!
Was hoping for a convergence of the Better Call Saul (post-BB) threads at Cinnabon.
Vince loves his time-lapses... a cool top-down apartment sequence.
In summary, recommended!
not long to go now...
A core of true events—a philandering priest accused by nuns of witchcraft and rape at the tail end of the Middle Ages—is spun out into a carnival of surrealist horror. Genuinely has the power to shock some five decades later.
Canny enough to root its false-accusations paranoia in a patriarchal farce rather than straight misogyny, and honest enough to make Grandier a bastard who's nonetheless deserving of empathy rather than a perfect martyr. Christianity was fucked the instant it aligned God with hierarchical power and the devil with the marginalized. Our stroll through the ashes has yet to end. (See Kotsko's political theology The Prince of This World.)
As a longsuffering Who fan, really wish this Russell had shown up for Tommy.
Streaming on Criterion Channel as of this month—has a tendency to depart from services as quickly as it pops up on them, so get ye to the internet while you can.
I love that poster. I wish we did more stuff like that.
1,964 Reply by Regan 2019-10-17 08:15:38
Not a movie, but, if any one is in the mood for an English-dubbed Spanish heist show? Well, have I got just the thing for you...
La Casa de Papel AKA Money Heist
Last edited by Regan (2019-10-17 08:17:21)
Hurroo
Doesn't La Casa de Papel mean The Paper House?
1,966 Reply by Trey 2019-10-18 01:56:07
A Grizzled Old Dick With Stories To Tell
Netflix knows that us Americans don't do well with fancy titles.
"House of Paper? The hell is that? Pass."
"Money Heist? I bet they heist some money! Cool."
Trey's Website
Yeah, it's an awful title comparatively. I do like the show though. Certainly the first two as-they-call-them-on-Netflix-instead-of-seasons 'Parts'; they wrap up into a nice little bow. Having just binged 'em, I'm all for more. The 'god in the machine' tussle that comes with most heist things - everything that has transpired has done so according to my design - feels a little more 50/50 between the cops and the robbers than the usual 'Oceans' franchise format. Yet, I say that, it's probably more a 70/30 split in favour of the robbers. It kinda doesn't feel formulaic even with the smattering of slow-mo-bad-ass-The Right Stuff-gang-walks-to-camera that any heist movie must have.
Also, I'm fairly sure that there is quota to have a gal in her underwear to sexify up the joint in every episode. Not a complaint. Just an observation, but enough to distract you from the libertariansim and anti-establishment theme.
Fave 2019 release so far. The stark black-and-white film stock makes for gorgeous use of light and shadow, the aspect ratio constricting the frame to the point of claustrophobia. Pattinson and Dafoe make utter lunatics of themselves. A metric ton of vodka is consumed. And where The Witch felt genuinely unholy (it remains the scariest movie I've ever seen), this one is basically a romantic comedy crossed with isolation horror? My audience was in stitches.
Oh that looks good. Well, that's tonights movie sorted.
Hey, that I (I, Robot) Am (Moon-esque-vibe) Mother (Alien/2001-ish) Netflix thing ain't bad.
Play the old stuff! We wanna hear the catch-phrases and that dada-da-dada every few years, and see the same chases and the endless punch-ups between indestructible robots and stuff.
But if they can get that de-ageing tech to work for an entire movie, that really would be cool...
Zombieland 2. Not such a classic as the original but a good follow-up. Homages to the previous one didn't feel forced and it brought some fresh stuff as well.
The only thing I care about re: terminator Dark Moon or whatever it is is I'd like to know how the terminator grew a beard. Also The Internet seems to think because the producers remembered Linda Hamilton it is therefore The Feminist Terminator. I feel like we've been here before.
I understand the complaints that this is too devoted to its predecessor—it's at its worst when it's slavishly imitating Kubrick's film to no apparent purpose (what is the point of making Bruce Greenwood's office a mirror of Ullman's in the Overlook?). But I think to dismiss this out of hand is to ignore just how effective it is when it takes that Kubrickian imagery and draws on it to create something new and meaningful. That conversation between Danny and his dad at the bar is an extraordinarily daring piece of work, and while it's marred by its inability to overcome the iconic nature of Kubrick's film—it will never be possible to watch the recast Jack and Wendy and not feel enveloped by the uncanny valley—Flanagan's choice to use a new performer is a far more humble, moral call than using digital trickery to resurrect the Nicholson of 1980. Hell, in an age of reanimated Peter Cushings and James Deans it's downright refreshing.
This also captures the essential weirdness of maximalist King in a way that most other adaptations don't even try at, thanks in no small part to Rebecca Ferguson's entrancing performance as Rose the Hat but not solely because of her. It's all here—silly slang, references to the Dark Tower's shambling mythology, psychedelic dream visions. It even nails how delightful King's lapses into nonsensical clearings of the chess board can be—the sequence of Ewan and Cliff just fucking laying waste to an army of psychic vampires with... deer rifles?! works precisely because of how ridiculous it is.
Is it better than Kubrick's? No. Am I surprised by how much I dug it? As someone who's been lukewarm at best on previous Flanagan, absolutely.
Huh. Hadn't even heard of it.
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