What have you watched lately?

[Harvester]

Watched Apostle and the new Suspiria. Apostle is okay and has some quite disturbing scenes. Worth a watch since it's free on Netflix.

The new Suspiria is fairly fucked up. Don't expect a remake, it's completely different from the original. For starters, it's an hour longer and far more sombre and serious. Gone are the garish, bright primary colors, this is depressingly gloomy 70s Berlin architecture and an old, poorly lit decrepit building as the main stage. It even touches on some serious issues like WW2 and German society's feelings of guilt after it, and the RAF (Rote Armee Fraktion aka the Baader Meinhof complex) reign of terror in the 70s. Of course, the witchcraft plot is horror movie stuff, but it's treated completely seriously, in that way it reminded me of Rosemary's Baby. However that doesn't stop the final act from being one of the craziest displays of mayhem I've ever watched. Music is well done by Radiohead's Thom Yorke and the acting is good - see if you can spot Tilda Swinton's second character besides ms. Blanc. By the way, this is a very female driven movie that hardly has any male characters in it. It does have a lot of nudity but none of it is the least bit sexy/sexual. If you like the more artsy horror movies, I can recommend this.

[henke]

Velvet Buzzsaw

Yeah, it's kinda fun. Not especially scary though.

Polar

I'm kinda surprised by the huge divide between critics and user-scores on this one. It has a 19% on metacritic, but 6.8 from users, and a 6.3 on imdb. It's a film where Mads Mikkelsen plays a retired hitman who gets pulled back in for oooone laaaast jooooob. Based on a comic book. Directed by Jonas Åkerlund who is best known as a musicvideo director(Madonna's "Ray Of Light", Prodigy's "Smack My Bitch Up").

I watched it on the day it came out, and... it's kinda all over the place. It has all these weird characters, like it's trying to be funny, but without actually having any jokes. Kinda feels like it's trying to be a bizarro-John Wick. The actionscenes aren't Wick-level or anything, but they were still pretty entertaining. The tone is all over the place, from goofy to grim, but Åkerlund is no Tarantino, so it just feels weird. Mads was good, and had some nice little character-moments here and there. Overall, I didn't hate it.

Ready Player One

This is just like Nostalgia: The Movie. It's like "Hey, remember THIS THING? Oh and hey, what about THIS? HUH? HUH?". Eh, it had its moments.

Børning

Norwegian Cannonball Run, basically. It really wears its inspirations on its sleeve and even has a opening-title commemoration to Hal Needham. The story is paper-thin, and while there are some nice character moments here and there it's mostly just 90 minutes of car-porn. I liked it.

[Renzatic]

It does have a lot of nudity but none of it is the least bit sexy/sexual.

Dakota Johnson's prominent display of barely concealed undershirt nipples begs to differ. But then again, it was the 70's. That was kind of a thing back then.

[Starker]

Ready Player One

This is just like Nostalgia: The Movie. It's like "Hey, remember THIS THING? Oh and hey, what about THIS? HUH? HUH?". Eh, it had its moments.

Well, it's based on Nostalgia: The Book. Don't get me wrong, I didn't hate it or anything, but it basically read like a young adult fiction novel. Only that it was aimed at people who were young in the 80s. Which theoretically should have been me, but... eh.

[Renzatic]

Honestly, I've had absolutely no interest in seeing Ready Player One. The trailer looked neat enough, but it also looked like a movie that showed all of its cards for the previews.

But anyway, I just got through finishing off Kingdom on Netflix. I never thought I'd be excited about zombies again, but it somehow managed to pull me in. It ended up being pretty damn good.

[Harvester]

Dutch Netflix just added Train To Busan. If you want more zombies (with a bit of social commentary to boot) in an original setting with some touching emotional development I can heartily recommend this movie if it's also on your country's Netflix.

[Tocky]

I also recommend Train to Busan. Lot's of nail biting action with moral lessons thrown in. The ending tugs at your heart. Excellent movie.

[N'Al]

Train to Busan was fun, yeah. Nothing all that new when it comes to zombie movies, but entertaining nonetheless.

If you can, also check out Seoul Station, which is an anime prequel.

[icemann]

Last night watched "Upgrade". This turned out to be wayyyyy more cyberpunk than I first expected. Great film overall. I had the big "surprise" at the end all figured out long before then.

8/10

[icemann]

After watching:



I just had to go find this "Joysticks" 1983 movie that I'd never heard of before. Well this movie is a cross between "Revenge of the Nerds", "Animal House" and "The Wizard". An odd bunch to be all of. It's Revenge of the Nerds + Animal House as it has that early 80s frat-house kinda movie with breasts / naked women appearing frequently, and it has that early 80s party vibe about it. It's the Wizard on top of that as it has a VERY strong early 80s video game arcade theme to it, as it's set at a video arcade + it has 80s video game stuff all over it, with Pac-Man intermissions to scenes. Mid-Way even allowed the movie to use Pac-Man openly. For a movie of this kind to have that is unheard of, and there is no way in hell that that would happen nowadays.

Is it a good movie? I'm not sure honestly. It's softcore porn at times, but then it has the video arcade angle. Hmm. Not sure. This is a movie you need to watch at least once. That is if you don't mind the nudity. It has some recognizable faces too.

[Yakoob]

I binge-watched Russian Doll in one night and it was absolutely excellent. Great acting, clever plot, good mix of drama/laughs, and enough twists to keep the repetitive formula from going stale.

[demagogue]

So Bird Box was pretty clearly a metaphor for political trolling & conspiracy mongering on social media that makes people go completely batshit & do unhealthy things, packaged as an apocalyptic movie which Mute or The Walking Dead did better. But if you put all of that aside, the formula more or less works I guess... having to survive in a really vulnerable situation and the importance of community after humans have exhausted the whole self-hate schtick they have going right now. Sandra Bullock & John Malkovich were great for their characters. It was good if you took it on its own terms, but there was a lot of that background context that kept creeping back and distracted from it sometimes.

[SubJeff]

I took it at face value and sounds like I enjoyed it more without all that baggage.

I saw Blindspotting and defo recommend it. Very visually interesting too, as an aside.

[SlyFoxx]

I found "Poldark" to be quite good. 4 seasons...about 36 episodes. 5th and final to come in early June 2019. BBC production. I watched it on Amazon...included with prime.

...It's 1783 and Ross Poldark returns from the American War of Independence to his beloved Cornwall to find his world in ruins: his father dead, the family mine long since closed, his house wrecked and his sweetheart pledged to marry his cousin. But Ross finds that hope and love can be found when you are least expecting it.

[SubJeff]

Are you a middle aged housewife?

[demagogue]

I used to be a big fan of As Time Goes By, which put me squarely in the elderly putterer demographic.
I still want to be like Lionel Hardcastle when I grow up.

[Pyrian]

Just saw Alita: Battle Angel and I liked it a lot.

[icemann]

That ones sure been getting mixed reviews. Seems to be one of those hate it or really love it style movies, with those that watched the anime loving it and those who havent hating it.

[Pyrian]

Hmm. I never watched the anime and I loved it. The world building is great, the action is good, and the main character is fantastic, she really sells it. The criticisms are all pretty much legitimate, IMO: a few things are just manga-goofy, a couple of the supporting characters don't sell their arcs that well, the plot structure is a mess. If any of that is deal-breaking, I would understand.

[raph]

icemann - "official" reviews are mixed but audience reaction is overwhelmingly positive.

I am really dismayed by the amount of hate Alita got from critics, to be honest. The movie is not perfect and I got my own gripes with it, but it goes beyond that and I get the feeling that they're knocking it down because it doesn't tick their boxes about what a strong, solid female lead can be. Most of the criticism I've seen could be said from any MCU movie, yet you can already see them ramping up to give Captain Marvel a full pass as if it's some kind of gold standard for female heroes.

I think we can trust the public on that one. It's a spectacular movie that breaks new ground in visual effects and performance capture (Rosa Salazar is honestly right up there with Andy Serkis with her portrayal of Alita) and explores a world that's completely different from any other sci-fi universe. It's absolutely worth supporting, if only to encourage directors to do the same and explore settings outside of a set paint-by-number formula.

Personally, I'll go see it a third time later this week, because godamn I'll pitch in whatever I can to get that sequel.

[icemann]

What I've heard (from reviews) is that the action scenes are excellent but the acting was average, there's no chemistry between Alinta and the love interest, the main bad guy is boring and is no threat whatsoever, the trailer contains the best bits in the movie and that its stupid that the bad guys know where she is for the whole movie but only send in single hit squad guys each time, when they could have killed her easily at any point.

Compare that to another review I watched where the reviewer was calling it the best live action version of an anime ever.

[Pyrian]

Those aren't necessarily conflicting viewpoints, lol.

The acting isn't so much mediocre as a mix of really good and really bad.

[icemann]

This week been watching season 3 of "The Grand Tour". I'm not a car person in the slightest, but I really enjoy this show. More for the personalities than anything, and it does make you (over time) take some level of moderate interest in cars for how well they handle tracks etc. I do tend to prefer the parts where their sent off to some location with tasks in hand to complete. For example, the last 2 episodes had them going off to Southern America, tasked to find various animals. 1 of which was the hippopotamus. I had no idea they were in Southern America though only due to a smuggler. Earlier on they were in Detroit, which funnily enough (to me) is following partly in the direction that Robocop predicted (2 decades prior) of the place being in major decline, many factories closed, much of the population has left etc etc. Freaky.

Great show.

[Slasher]

Ouch, I saw 2019 Oscar Nominated Live Action Shorts and it was some serious grimdark sadbrains fuel. Four of the five shorts involve children in peril, and three of those four involve children being killed or killing others (including other children). A lot of theaters seem to run the animated shorts and documentaries at the same time. I'd recommend the animated one as a palate cleanser if you see the live action shorts, even if they weren't as good as last year.

[SubJeff]

Just watched all of Cobra Kai.

What a great idea for a series, and it's executed really well.