It’s pretty good.
It’s about episode of Black Mirror good.
Not as good as I’d hoped, but better than most horror films.
I think it would have really benefited from showing us a little less.
Addy being swapped or not would have been better left ambiguous and even if they didn’t want to leave that ambiguous the movie showed too much of the underground life and environment and didn’t make it look nightmarish enough. Weird mysterious mimics who all come from underground is scary. A bunch of dancers interpretive dance rollercoaster riding in a clean open space with a seemingly endless supply of fresh rabbit isn’t. The scene where Addy kills with the scissors and Jason watches is sooo good, and felt so wasted by the end. The movie got a little less impactful with each reveal of that particular story thread. The ending still works as it is. I love Jason slowly pulling down his mask knowing about his Mom and not saying anything about it to anyone. Us feels like it could have been a classic had they artfully trimmed the movie down by about four or five minutes.
yeah, i liked it a lot. i think coming after get out i may have been expecting/hoping for something that was similarly like… allegorical? and not getting that initially left me kind of let down. but there are definitely scenes and images from Us that are super memorable.
and i really respect it for being set in santa cruz instead of the much more familiar (but similar) setting of like a new england beach town. this is obviously more personal rather than some kind of objective evaluation, but i really respect it when movies set in california ‘feel’ right, especially when they are not set in SF or Los Angeles. it’s rarer than you might think!
i love the totality of the expensive production design of licorice pizza and it looks so perfectly 70s ugly/beautiful on film and the leads are pretty charming. i am usually a sucker for coming of age stuff and movies about hustlers and like of course it is way too indulgent but the indulgence is the pleasure of this kind of all-vibe movie to a degree. gotta say the feeling of a movie with approximately one million relatives of celebrities makes it feel not so much nepotistic as like i am watching something made by someone’s weird church or cult or something. john c reilly as fred gwynne as herman munster for 10 seconds of screen time is great. the asian joke stuff sucked. if he was just saying that dumb shit, i don’t think it’s like “an endorsement” but having both of the women who are confused for each other speak only japanese (which he does? doesn’t understand) as a gag is like what kinda dumbass racist shit is this. the legally distinct lucille ball is of course better at it than nicole kidman. felt both like there was too much jon peters and not enough of him popping back in like a horror movie villain lol. the talent agent was great could have watched a whole movie about her. i don’t need like Literally The Graduate ending but i feel like the whole thing would have been served better with like shit petering out maybe. felt like i was watching the guy’s old man memories of the happiest time in his life without the comprehension of the sadness of how this child is alana’s main source of validation. anyway low-tier PTA high tier movies that are coming out in theaters.
Yesterday, I saw Chess of the Wind with one @Father.Torque
It’s an Iranian period film from 1976. The period depicted is some time in the nineteenth century. The film is incredibly detailed and carefully limits the scope to one large manor. Objects in the film are imbued with significance by the way they are deliberately handled. One female character in the film uses a wheelchair that is completely made out of wood. The sounds that the device makes, the way it tilts forward when at rest, and how its moved by her servant, they all give the object life and energy. The film is filled with objects like these.
So much of the characters’ relationships and motivations are slowly revealed. The film starts with a similar setup as Hamlet, but morphs and evolves. Confined to one home, it becomes very claustrophobic.
The recent restoration was completed in 2020. It looks like it has been touring around theaters since last year chessofthewind.com. I recommend seeing it if you can!
Movie was fantastic. For a theoretically contemplative art piece with long shots of rooms with one thing slowly moving and a clock ticking in the background it sure did have a whole lot of plot. This movie moves. Shocking revelations! It’s definitely powered by an underlying cultural context I don’t really understand but could begin to feel the edges of - the demise of the aristocracy and the rise of the petit bourgeoisie but 50 years later than the west and with a Muslim rather than Christian theology undergirding the transition. Constantly gorgeous. Damn fine film
I cannot express how good of a trilogy STALKED BY MY DOCTOR is. maybe its because I just watched star 80 and I put Eric roberts on the creep king pedestal but every single one of the movies I’d just be SCREAMING at the screen HE CANT KEEP GETTING AWAY WITH THIS
and the best thing is he doesn’t? like everyone is really smart and capable so every time you yell something they should be doing at the screen they DO IT
the first movie is all about him stalking a young woman he puts a new heart into after a car accident and just being SO UNCOMFORTABLE about everything he does with her, and everyone realizes he’s a pervert but the dad, who the mom yells ‘WHAT ARE WE GONNA DO WAIT FOR HIM TO RAPE HER’
WHICH RULES because we’ve all felt that way about a predator before
the SECOND movie is about him running to Mexico and saving a young girl from drowning but then he decides to tale of genji the girl freddy Krueger style and starts dating her mom, who’s husband died. she’s afraid of heights because he died falling off a ladder, and Eric roberts pretends he’s helping her get over that while trying to molest her daughter, which the mom doesn’t believe at first cuz she’s wearing horny for eric roberts glasseS
THE THIRD ONE the doctor gets STALKED BACK the girl from the first comes to the new school eric roberts is teaching at to RAISE HELL
the pacing is great every movie feels like it’s 10 minutes long. my friend said the first one is the best movie to tell someone who 'doesn’t really get/like movies" to watch. the last two (four and five) are by a different director and are actually sequels to a shitty sexsomnia movie so skip them. BUT PLEASE WATCH STALKED BY MY DOCTOR ITS DEATH WISH FOR WOMEN
Ghosts of Mars is one of the most videogame ass movies I’ve seen and one of the best original XBox games that never was, like I can see the shaders required and the glowing collectibles overlaid against the grimy textures of grittily bump mapped rooms and outdoor wastes but if John Carpenter is too checked out to make movies anymore I guess he’s too checked out to even half-heartedly encourage video games based on his schlockiest coolest work and that’s a real shame though maybe he just needs to hear the right pitch?
i feel like at this point it’s more up to to sony to pull it out of the IP cabinet if they wanted to i feel like carpenter would just be like “go for it” with whatever as long as he’s getting a check
Watched The One starring Jet Li and I had an incredible time. It’s a phenomenal Dumb Guy movie. It is full of the silliest nu-metal needle drops, every gag is taken to the extreme, so much silly nonsense taken so seriously… it’s so earnest and good.
There is a scene where evil Jet Li is trapped in space jail. An evil hot blonde lady whose identity is NEVER explained opens a secret compartment in her high heels. A rat with huge dangling rat balls crawls out of her shoe. The rat also has an antenna coming out of its ass. The hot blonde lady uses a remote to EXPLODE the rat and then Evil Jet Li escapes and immediately Down with the Sickness drops and he’s punching everyone. Incredible.
jet li is so underrated. i am sad that the tidal wave of 90s nostalgia has not brought him back into the discourse. he’s such an icon, on the level with jackie chan and bruce lee imo… but, with attitude for the 90s
I feel like I get hit the hardest when I watch a movie I expect to be trash, and it surprises me just enough to get my hopes up, and then turns back into exactly what I expected of it. The 1st Hitman movie has a scene where, completely out of context, The Hitman gets ambushed by 3 people and ends up in a mexican standoff. All 4 men then agree to put down their guns, and instead fight with the 2 samurai swords that all of them have been secretly keeping behind their jackets. I silently cheered.
Immediately after this the movie returns to the choppy incoherent mess it was before, and it broke my heart. Doubly so because it wastes one of my favorite songs and my favorite actor from LOST in the same half-assed scene. They fucking scraped in editing to try and ADR this movie an ending and it never works.
