For the birthday stream we watched DRUMLINE. It ruled! I was shocked how good it was.
It is such a period piece now because it is the last exact moment you could make a college movie without cellphones. A character uses a payphone! A dude has to creep on a girl to ask her on a date.
The conflicts are also more complex than I had remembered. And it is weird a NYC transplant to Atlanta there are no jokes about cultural differences.
It’s also wonderfully Gay and Anime and multiple people said “if this had come out 5 years later tumblr would love it.”
Anyways guess we gotta have a watch part for the 12 year later semi-sequel made for TV just to be dissappointed.
“the harder they come” (the netflix western) is cool as hell. the script is kind of predictable but everything looks amazing and all the actors are great. it reminded me a lot of ‘the quick and the dead’, for hitting that sweet spot between being goofy enough to still be fun without just being ridiculous like young guns or whatever, but also serious enough to hold your interest, without going too far into ultra grim revisionist western territory. no idea if the director has made anything else but i hope they do.
On the one hand, blaxpoitation lineage, rad music (mostly made by the director!), SQUIBS, mostly tonal sweet spot, Idris Elba as the villain, the rest of the cast all rules too, specially Jonathan Majors as the protag, who I only recognized from being the endboss of the Loki series, who was great and absolutely wasted on that show’s nonending. On the other hand, a little too antiseptic to really live up to the blaxploitation feel, a dead weight script, and that final shot teasing a sequel (ugggghhhhh).
yeah that’s right i messed up the title. good movie though! i didn’t realize the director also did the music, that kind of explains… a lot. some of the tunes worked a lot better than others. i guess it can be considered a display of restraint of some kind, but as i am extremely stupid i do wish there was some jimmy cliff on the soundtrack. i’m just saying it wouldn’t have felt out of place is all.
i was also kind of irritated by the sequel bait, esp since that ending felt a little rushed even before that. but yeah this sort of felt like the ideal jonathan majors role. i might be wrong but it didn’t look like they used a stunt double for that shot where he like runs and jumps on the horse. cool stuff.
it still felt like one of the few netflix movies that could have just been a real movie. and yet it also would have worked as a series, especially since so much of the supporting cast just seemed to have a lot more potential beyond what they actually get to do in the movie.
I am 100% convinced that lakeith stanfield uses a fake deep voice (like teen boy style) but he did “sorry to bother you” so now “lakeith stanfield fake voice” is a defeated search term on my hunt 4 truth
I really liked Raw. The relationship between the main character and her older sister felt very true to me and the actors sold it well. The scene where the older sister walks in on the younger one taking tentative bites out of the older sister’s recently severed finger was pretty unforgettable. The younger sister’s mortified look, and the older sister’s reaction of unsurprised, condescending annoyance that reveals that she knows more than the viewer thinks. Amazing. I just love the film’s bizarre, super-heightened version of sibling rivalry and strained affection.
I didn’t like Titane nearly as much. It felt way less immediate and “lived in”. Didn’t feel like it was coming from as sincere a place. Though I was kind of interested in the layers of gender presentation going on in the scene where the woman disguised as a man “cross-dresses” as a woman and gets found out.
I watched (most of) the Integral Cut of Re-Animator last night when the internet went out in a big chunk of the Bay Area. It restores some cut scenes, gore, and nudity, but nothing too integral. Mostly, it just helps to explain Barbara Crampton’s dad’s sudden shift in attitude better via a scene of Dr. Hill sort of “hypnotizing” her dad, though, it comes off more like he just has supernatural powers of suggestion. The scene where Dr. Dan and Barbara Crampton discover Rufus in Herbert’s room, the ensuing argument, and then the following scenes are all restored, which explains some stuff, but mostly it just helps solve a continuity issue that was created by cutting that scene up. There’s a lot of whiplash in those scenes, though, so I’m really not surprised they were cut.
Nothing too dramatic that would make it worth the effort to seek out unless you’re a Re-Animator fan. Ultimately, I agree with the cuts they made to the released version, just not how they did it since it goofs up the movie a bit. I’d definitely be interested in seeing a fan-cut of the movie that tries to balance things out a bit better.
I watched No Time to Die and enjoyed it.
It felt like it was the movie I wanted Skyfall to be.
The women were beautiful. The men were handsome.
The locations looked great.
The writing seemed well above par.
I liked Bond’s acknowledgement of what Felix had meant to him.
I liked that Bond had been replaced with a younger than him black woman.
Bond’s death seemed like a very pleasant happy ending to me, though I think most would read it as tragic:
A ghost who got to be useful one last time finally getting to rest. His final moments getting to be the absolute knowledge of his end while looking out at the water and knowing his loved ones will be safe.
“I have a thing for old-wrecks” might just be my favorite cheesy 007 line ever.
my biggest problem with NTtD is that the last act seemed like it came from a totally different script (unlike skyfall, whose last act was laborious and obscenely overrated but at least consistent with the rest of the film), and felt badly contrived as a result. the first 90 minutes were fun and good and I’d say it’s the least intrusive their insistence on maintaining an arc has been in the last 3 films, but the arc is still incompatible with the character and none of the non-martin campbell bonds in the past 30 years have been remotely as good as the martin campbell bonds. the supporting cast was basically all good though I thought it was very funny that lea seydoux was more naked in the new wes anderson movie than in the new bond movie
@Tulpa I have finally watched Filibus. It is such a treat. Their world is changing so rapidly, its technology, knowledge, ways of being. Filibus is a master of all these. They are able to manipulate others by taking advantage of their shaky understanding of the new world. This early adventure genre is so charming.
I also liked small, common touches like the swapping of color screens whenever a light switch was used. Thank you for the recommendation.
Did you make your own soundtrack to watch it with? I just played the castle in the sky ost when I watched Filibus and it matched pretty well (obvs the timing wasn’t great but at least the music suited the film)
That would’ve been so good. I should’ve done that. Reminds me that I saw a version of Paul Fejos’ Lonesome set to a My Bloody Valentine playlist. The person who mixed it actually got timing down pretty well. Uncanny.
I actually feel the ending works but the beginning is too heavy - there are two inciting incidents and a flashback that literally portrays dialogue from Spectre to set up the mask reveal.