the black dynamite follow up outlaw johnny black is not worth it. extremely weird tone. somehow too expensive and too cheap at the same time. is in conversation with and references BD but is definitely not even a spiritual sequel. how do i say this, it is a sincerely religious western where the plot is meant to be taken seriously that is sprinkled throughout with black dynamite style jokes some of which are actually funny. the problem is that this formula does not work without it being fast paced joke-a-minute stuff. the movie stops for like full actual sermons and scenes of unironic pathos. it looks okay, like itās hard to fuck up the big stirring vistas of the west, but it absolutely does not have the competency to visually look or feel like the 1970s anymore so all the sort of offensive outdated humor does not feel like a meta reference to old movies. when it is shot on normal looking comedy central sitcom ass digital video it just feels actually racist, sexist, homophobic. there are long shitty stretches of native jokes that are honestly too outdated for a 1970s movie to have touched. maybe the missing ingredient is scott sanders who originally directed and co-wrote black dynamite because a lot of the other pieces are in place. probably never wanted more for a movie to be better.
Not saying itāll make you like those rats (though I have a fondness for Bob Newhart) or even that itās particularly good, but this movie is interesting in that it was a conscious attempt by Disney to make something Ghibli-influenced, if I recall correctly. It also has arguably the best songs of any Disney film because it is not a musical and features no songs. I wish this movie had been a greater artistic/commercial success because they were kind of going for something with this one
Edit: also, and this is a āyou had to be there, and you had to be meā thing, but I thought the Raimi-like shaky-cam title sequence was very neat at the time
afaik it was a big sleeper hit on VHS. I know I rented it over and over. I didnāt know that about the Ghibli influence, but it makes sense.
In the clint eastwood movie āabsolute powerā he plays some kind of mix between pistachio disguisey and lupin the 3rd whoās also a decorated korean war vet wounded in battle and itās the most magic chuuni eastwood self-insert i have ever seen in one of his movies? Amazing that clint made a brian de palma movie where he evades his spot on the Clinton Kill List by being one of the 7 greatest thieves in the world and pretending like he doesnāt know what a VCR is. multiple characters in this movie become visibly uncomfortable thinking about cuckolding. i could spend hours thinking about the sniper yaoi scene where two fellas who donāt know each other are there assemble their rifles, fucking their guns ritualistically and simultaneously while preparing to shoot clint in the head. ed harris plays kyoko kirigiri from danganronpa for some reason. I wish I had a grandma to show this to
just saw fifth element at a little outdoor cinema. totally itās mostly kind of a shock to see what a 90s event parade of a blockbuster it is but the costumes have aged fantastically
Itās worth watching Rescuers down under because it has a direct to video sequel level plot combined with arguably the best animation they did in the 90s outside of Aladdin.
It is inexplicably gorgeous, my theory being that since it was their big test for digital animation they overbudgeted it by a lot and so there are a ton of sequences that are in fact nearly ghibli level detailed featuring animal species Disney had never animated before.
The completely unnecessarily John candy albatross in the bondage hospital scene alone raises every question about this movieās production.
Plus all three mouse leads are cute, Iām a furry and goddamn it this is a selling point.
cade: the tortured crossing - my wife bought the dvd from the website a month ago and today a mysterious envelope labelled BREEN showed up at the doorā¦ maybe his best yet at least as measured by like distance from anything that had a comparable budgetā¦ every scene was some kind of crazed greenscreen composite that looked like it came from the parallel universe where sierra really did become entertainment tycoons off the back of phantasmagoria. unannounced timeline skips, weird metaphorical(?) scenes of people being gotten by mysterious black clad figures fading in and out, a wonderful dance sequence, big videogame fight conclusion: twin peaks the return-core. there is an amazing extended scene where he fights a 3d tiger that looks like it was model ripped from Unreal Tournament and yet despite this it never feels camp at all.
in terms of the political message of the breeniverse it feels cautiously hopefulā¦ i was worried when so much of the plot involved human trafficking and covert gland-based medical experiments that heād finally fallen down the qanon hole he always seemed to be circling but in fact the ending involves neil teaching a bunch of psychically damaged teen drug addicts to become his new spiritual army, which i believe should be interpreted as a friendly reach out towards everyone who logs these movies on letterboxd
Itās really funny that they started making this movie hoping to capitalize on the Crocodile Dundee-inspired Australia craze but by the time it was finished no one cared about Australia anymore and it bombed hard
Watched Sometimes I Think About Dying. A lot of moments in this movie where Iām like āsameā. Not about wanting to die, but about social anxiety. I can say now that I donāt really suffer from it anymore, but in my early 20s it was really bad. This movie perfectly captures that whole perpetual cycle, where you really avoid social situations, but then when you actually do make the effort, people act like itās a big deal, and it makes you feel really embarrased, and become withdrawn again. Oh yeah and the first half of this movie is kinda like an ASMR vid. If youāre into mundane office settings with background chatterā¦ good stuff!!!
Going to the anime cinema tomorrow to see End of Evangelion on the big screen. My partner knows nothing about the anime but is excited to come with. Honestly, the horrific spectacle I think hits best when you understand only a little of the significance of whatās happening, so I am hoping this viewing would be close to ideal for her.
Engaged in a higher form of patriotism again and on a 2nd watch, in a movie where Mark Wahlberg gives his name as āSteve Bannonā to some1 and highway roads in Georgia double for fake Indonesia, you really have to wonder what level of irony Peter Berg is working on here
also showed my friend classic boys movie Four Brothers and had a good laugh again at how Tyrese plays an affable fella like usual except for this one scene where he puts a plastic bag on a crooked copās head like Manhunt and ties it with a belt, talking about how like heās got like 4 minutes of air but heās panicking a lot, and the cop starts clawing at the whole setup suffocating until he rips the bag open, and Tyrese is like damn they always go for the belt first, nobody ever thinks of the bag, shit only works with clear bags not black ones and itās like ummm do you do this a lot Tyrese? They teach you that in the marine corps?
The amount of time they spend pouring gasoline on people as a threat is fucking hilarious. The entire movie mark wahlberg is microaggressing garrett hedlund by saying stuff like āMy little brother here is gonna suck your burning dickā and āDonāt die on me you fucking fairy!!ā because he has long hair. Really just one of the hardest casts of protagonists ever, you got mark tyrese garrett AND andre 3000!!! and that fuckin like 70% motown by volume soundtrack john singleton chose goes soooo hard for this beautiful snowy detroit movie, I donāt know, it just made me nostalgic for the midwest lol. One of the best movies my dad ever made me see in the theater as a kid randomly
Also marky markās no mercy thug life tattoo
Soul just manages to get me every time, and much to my surprise (after watching it the fourth or fifth time) in these tiny moments that arenāt designed to be #epicEmotionalPayoffScene17.
It is such a wonderful piece of art that manages to move my heart and it deserves the last missing 0.5 
and gets it well-deserved 
on top of that.
Poor Things: didnāt someone around here like this movie? Well guess what buddy, I gotta bone to pick with you. So brave of a film to ask a question no one ever wanted answered: what if Wes Anderson sucked?
Ingenue apotheosis, literal infant-woman, eat pray loves her way across twee Europe to discover that Victorian society is bad, actually.
Defoe is good of course. Ruffalo playing against type as a rake is utterly unconvincing. Stone gets fun later when sheās allowed to talk (cheap laughs mostly, but still), but early on when sheās doing toddler she falls squarely into Simple Jack territory. Thereās a couple old ladies keeping the whole thing together, real yeomanās work there.
An incredible amount of pseudoartistic grandstanding to get to the same moral premise as a Fast & Furious movie, but there we have it.
everyone likes this movie!
Iām assuming you havenāt seen any of yorgosā other work which imo would lead a person to view it with the wrong frame. I agree (as have most critics) that like, it doesnāt have much of a message, and itās pretty ambivalent and silly and most of the reasons to watch are the hilarious emma stone, mark ruffalo, and willem dafoe performances and the wild set design.
however!! this is the directorās like fourth or fifth surreal sexual psychodrama, and one of the reasons I liked this one so much is because heās essentially made each consecutive film broader and bigger and funnier without making them less weird. I think if youāre watching this after the lobster, dogtooth, the favorite, etc., itās like āoh! he finally made a full-on comedy.ā
though I canāt believe you didnāt think ruffalo was hysterical. and Iāve heard spectrum-identifying women say that the emma stone performance is even better with that perspective.
like my screening of this was probably the most raucous Iāve been in since jackass forever
much like fellow 2023 pretentious critical darling the bear season 2 its first big laugh line was an r-word joke! it is a funny movie
I liked the book but a lot of that was playing with victorian portmanteaus and Scottish authors like Hogg and Stevenson.
Summit of the Gods
French animated adaptation of a manga adaptation of a Japanese novel about a photojournalist seeking out a disgraced former climber & his mysterious camera recovered from the first failed Everest expedition. director previously was the animation director for Ernest et CĆ©lestine & April and the Extraordinary World
phenomenal. they compressed 5 seinen volumes into 90 minutes so thereās big story beats & flashbacks every 5-10 minutes. but doesnāt feel rushed, barely any dialogue in the last act as they approach the summit. beautiful art, animated on 3s-4s(?) so most likely all 2d hand-animated (probably over 3d blockouts). shockingly French film, considering the source
they recreated a wide helicopter shot
loser opinion, sorry