NEW: List some movies you've watched recently. Theatre, rental, TV... and give a */10

[DigDog]

Just wondering if you seen the director's other movie The VVitch?

maybe tomorrow?

 

[DaaQ]

maybe tomorrow?

The girl from The Queens Gambit is in it,
IIRC movie is from 2015 ish. Not a bad movie, the color palette , the filming choices, leaves alot to the imagination. But the end delivers.

 

[Dr. Detroit]

Trim Season - 5.5/10 (Now streaming on Starz)

If you love all things marijuana this might get a slightly higher score!

Some broke LA bitches down on their luck decide to head to the Emerald Triangle for a 2-week stint working as weed trimmers. They get dropped off at a remote location and the farm owner is a spooky old gal and shit happens.

We got a trans, we got the strong female, we have the clueless stoner, and we have the indecisive meek lead.

Some good cinematography with the Redwood curtain highlighted, its a eery/spooky vibe the Director does a good job with, and its an interesting story thats not a rehash of previous horror thrillers.

As I'm familiar with the area I found a few things off -
the meet up point looked like it was in the Sierras and not Garberville
Trimmers listen to music, apparently they couldn't afford music rights

 

[bbhaag]

Speed Racer 2008 - 7/10

Fun movie that is family friendly. I absolutely love the way it looks with its glitzy bubble gum pop CGI. I would love to see a 4K UHD release but......never gonna happen.

The story is nothing to write home about but gets the job done and the acting is on point for the type of movie it is. Pacing is fine but drags a little in spots but eventually picks back up when it needs to. I know it can be a little corny at times but that harkens back to the original series.

I know this movie gets a lot of hate even today but I'm not sure why. For what it is it's fine. Is it going to change the way you view cinema or give you new insight into your perspective on world views? No, of course not and it was never meant to. It's just a solid family friendly movie to sit down and escape reality for a few hours and it does a pretty good job at it.

 

[Kaido]

Silo season 2 was great! Last few episodes were fantastic! Love Steve Zahn.

Been SURPRISED by AppleTV's quality: Severance, Ted Lasso, Schmigadoon!, Shrinking, Silo, etc. Giant-looking sets BTS:

 

[thebestMAX]

Star Trek : Section 31

The most unlike Star Trek Star Trek yet. An offshoot of Discovery and even worse. They mention The Federation so I guess that makes it Star Trek. Ill watch Michelle Yeoh in almost anything but this strains the relationship. Poor plotline, iffy technology, time jumps and overused ideas. Who does Mech Man remind you of? This one might have been better as an animated feature. If your are hungry for anything Star Trek (like I am) you might want to watch this but take it for the universe it is in and the many aliens but not the "story".

4 out of 10 for a few snarky lines and feeble attempts at humor is generous.

 

[Kaido]

Yay Severance is back on!

https://twitter.com/x/status/1882792326982250665

x.com

x.com

 

[MrSquished]

White lotus season 3 starts in less than a few weeks. Can Mike White keep the hits going? And the theme music too!

 

[Dr. Detroit]

MaXXXine - 7/10 (Now streaming on HBO)

The 3rd in the Maxine series by Writer/Director Ti West and starring Mia Goth.
MaXXXine came with a much bigger budget, some bigger stars (Kevin Bacon), and a solid soundtrack, but it was just OK for me. X the first one was a 10/10 for me. This one lacked the grit, the nudity, the rawness of the first one.

First 2 acts were solid, the 3rd just didn't do it for me and the ending was just meh. Some solid kill/gore scenes, some solid homage to "Pulp Fiction" in the junkyard scene, really enjoyed her Agent, Giancarlo Esposito, and of course the gritty Hollywood 80's vibe was excellent.

 

[Charmonium]

Pompeii - 2014 meh

It was a fun movie decent fx, but some cheesy exceptions. But I kept thinking pyroclastic flow bitches.

However I did recently learn that it doesn't have to be the immediate result of an eruption. It can be from high in the eruption column.

So I guess we have to cut them some slack. Or not.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Pompeii - 2014

Did they show the REAL Pompei (rampant sex and orgies)?

 

[thestrangebrew1]

Just wrapped up Silo. Why oh why did it have to end on such a cliffhanger! WTF Apple?! S2 was an 8/10 for me.

 

[DigDog]

Just wrapped up Silo. Why oh why did it have to end on such a cliffhanger! WTF Apple?! S2 was an 8/10 for me.

.. as opposed to S01 ?

Dude, the whole show is about that cliffhanger. S03 is going to end .. you guessed right, ON A CLIFFHANGER.

 

[MrSquished]

.. as opposed to S01 ?

Dude, the whole show is about that cliffhanger. S03 is going to end .. you guessed right, ON A CLIFFHANGER.

But not season 4. If you've read the books, it's a great yarn.

Book 2 was my favorite book in the series and that is what season 3 is mostly about. Curious to see how they pull it off.

 

[thestrangebrew1]

.. as opposed to S01 ?

Dude, the whole show is about that cliffhanger. S03 is going to end .. you guessed right, ON A CLIFFHANGER.

lol yea I know but this one hit especially hard for some reason. Now I get to get back into Severance and be bummed by yet another cliffhanger I'm sure...

 

[Dr. Detroit]

Greyhound 8/10 - (Now streaming on Apple TV+)

WWII Naval film starring Tom Hanks who also wrote the screenplay.

After a very quick love interest backstory on the Captain's promotion we enter the War and it continues relentlessly for the next 85-minutes. I like that!

This film didn't fall into the normal Hollywood tropes and just focused on the action spanning roughly 4-days all from the bridge of the Greyhound. It felt real, I'm not a Navy guy, but it felt like they had the military lingo and call backs down and felt intense.

A few things bothered me - the meals, the shoes, the broken plates but all were minor.

 

[DigDog]

Just wondering if you seen the director's other movie The VVitch?

ok, i have watched The VVitch - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4263482/reference/

which i *had* already watched, but not as thoroughly as this time around.

early Puritan times in America. Family (Irish?) just off the boat, are cast out of a settlement and they go live in the forest. Father, mother, Anya Taylor-Joy, a baby boy, older brother, and two younger kids.
There happens to be a Witch living in this here forest. She first abducts and kills the young baby boy, then makes the older brother go insane and die. The family has a goat that channels Satan and corrupts the two younger kids. The mother is driven insane by the constant deaths and evil manifestations. The faher also loses it and is killed by the goat.

The whole spectacle is ATJ being powerless as the "voice of reason" while the rest of her idiotic, manically-religious family gets shredded to bits by the Witch's evil powers.
It's all shot with natural light, as if that's something which i care about as a viewer (remember Barry Lyndon? yeah i hated that one as well), the language is a mishmash of historical and teathrical, the music is subdued, the costumes are .. well, realistic, but the result of the whole is that often the palette is just shades of gray. I seriously thought
about getting out the digital color meter for this, but here:

i'm sorry, WHERE is the color??
Try it for yourself, https://annystudio.com/software/colorpicker/
THIS:

is color. And it's not even a particularly great film when it comes to color, but hey, let's use the worst example and The Witch still looks like B&W in comparison.

Sure, the acting is good, if very limited in scope, and the film is well made for what it is, i just question WHY they wanted to make it this way; it doesn't make it better, it makes it worse.

My vote: 5.5/10, don't bother.

 

[DigDog]

i watched also a whole bunch of other stuff on the way back from Rio,

The Kingsman - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6856242/reference/

Ralph Fiennes trying to shoulder this embarassment of a film, the third (only the first one was good, let's cut it out ok?) installment of the Princess & The Butthole Kingsmen series, it describes .. fairly accurately, with some minor liberties ofc, but surprisingly so, the period of time around WW1 / the assassination of the Archduke of Austria by Gavrilo Princip / House Hannover / the 1917 russian revolution, leading to the creation of the Kingsmen secret service.

And also adds in some absolutely fucking buffoonery because director Matthew Vaughn only knows comedy, and cannot follow a consistent tone if his life depended on it.
And this happens CONSTANTLY through the film. There is a fucking disgrace of a character called Polly whose sole purpose is to be a fucking twat and ruin every single somber moment with her stupid smug look of Girl Boss superiority.

.. i hate to say this, but Fiennes actually made the film worse. Since he CAN act, when there is a tragic scene - of which sadly there are quite a few, including the death of his heroic if misguided son - he can actually act it out, making you feel sad and invested into the suffering of his character, only for the film to then assfuck you with Gemma Arterton's idiot face the next instant.

5/10 - not buttsecs jokes.

 

[DigDog]

Tales From The Rabbit Hole AKA Alice Nueva Iorke - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10268654/reference/

A film about which i can find little info, as none of the major players involved - production & distribution, director, main cast - seems to have a wikipedia page.
A multi-language film (the protagonist is portuguese, but lives in NYC and everyone speaks their own language) about, well, the american dream.
As quirky visually and stylistically as any european film, worth it even if just for the style over the substance.
Alice is a girl. In New York. You already know she wants more from life, but life doesn't want to give it to her.

6/10 if you are ok with subtitles.

 

[DigDog]

The Simpsons Movie - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0462538/reference/

This was the last piece of Simpsons-media that i followed, back when it aired in 2007, meaning this is the film that made me finally stop watching the Simpsons. I hated it back then and i hate it this time. Nothing terribly wrong with the film per-se, but i really did not like how much of a bad person they made Homer in this .. well, episode, because despite the runtime the format is the same as a TV episode. And also how cringey and tragic they made Marge.

Typical day in Springfield, where Abe has a vision in church and prophecizes the arrival of a beast of many eyes to bring about the end of the world. IIPA ! IIIIPAAA !
Of course this is nothing but the result of a Green Day concert that sinks their concert set in Springfield lake, combined with Homer dumping a whole silo full of pig shit in it. Fish mutations ensue (the beast of many eyes) and the US EPA placing a dome around the city to let them die.
Note that certified Hack mr Stephen King wrote his version of Under the Dome around 2 years after this film came out .. wink wink.

Homer continues being an incompetent idiot to the point of causing the city to try to kill the Simpsons family, and yet they barely escape, to Alaska!, where Homer yet again continues to be an absolutely shit human being, causing Marge to actually divorce him ..
yeah at that point the heroic ending doesn't really matter anymore. Marge taping her goodbye over her wedding video was too much to take.

Homer was always a bit of an idiot and at any one time could have any negative trait, lazy, stupid, incompetent, lier, drunk, but somehow the show always managed to toe that line where the character(s) was charming and forgivable. For this film they flanderized him hard to the point where i found it unwatchable. Shame, i was on board with Spider Pig, the animation isn't bad, but seeing the character treated with this little respect really annoyed me. Or idk, maybe i'm exagerating the problem, YMMV.

5/10

 

[DigDog]

The Intern - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2361509/reference/

absolutely shit film with DeNiro and Anne Hathaway, where young Anne is the founder of a successful startup, and DeNiro is the intern; he's an old man, retired, just needs something to do to keep himself busy, mk?
So he starts working for fiery boss Hathaway, kinda like Devil Wears Prada, EXCEPT that there is zero antagonism here. Everyone gets along perfectly well. Every time someone does something for someone else, it all works magically well and everyone benefits from everyone else's existence, in this fucking joke of a script. It's just success after success with no antagonist in sight. Even Wicked has more conflict than this film.

4.8/10 - really at this point we're just staring at a screen with colors on it.

 

[DigDog]

Civil War - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt17279496/reference/

finally a film that didn't suck balls.

Kirsten Dunst (Lee) is a war reporter during the Second American Civil War, circa, well, now. 'Murica has imploded and the richers states have seceeded, with their respective armies killing one another and massacring a whole bunch of civilians along the way, while at the same time some more peripherial areas of the US untouched by the conflict, pretend that nothing's happening and it's just a political crisis.

Lee and her crew decide they will pull a Pulitzer-prize stunt and drive all the way to Washington DC to interview the President before the inevitable fall. This proves to be extremely difficult, with a good number of people getting killed along the way.
Lee also picks up a young girl, Jesse (Cailee Spaeny) who is essentially Lee when younger; she wants to be a war reporter too.

Along the way Lee teaches the ways of the force to Jesse, until they get to the White House, and then Jesse does this stupid OH IT'S TIME FOR THE MAIN SCENE and puts herself into harm's way thus forcing Lee to essentially commit suicide to transfer her soul into Jesse's body, with Lee getting killed and Jesse photographing Lee as she is killed, emotionless as a war reporter needs to be.

The "civil war" bits of Civil War were done superbly well; maybe because it's been 20 years of zombie films and filmmakers have a treatise on societal collapse, but it was nice to see all the tropes well presented and lined up in a row. Scarcity, lawlessness, devastation, cruelty and death, with not a single zombie / alien / robot in sight, just people being horrible to one another the way only people can.
Solid offering from Nick Offerman for the little part he does - just 2 brief scenes - and from all the secondary characters. Lee / Dunst was also solid in her part, while Spaeny was a bit over the top during the scenes where she is suffering, but then bouncing back like a spring, while Dunst manages to maintain a stable thread for her character's emotions. All in all i would say, the director's fault for not tweaking a bit a few important moments, but all in all a very respectable film.

6.9/10 - more production work than anything else

 

[igor_kavinski]

4.8/10 - really at this point we're just staring at a screen with colors on it.

I would prefer a 4.8 no-conflict life.

 

[DigDog]

Fantastic Mr Fox - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0432283/reference/

George Clooney stars as the voice of the animated Mr Fox, a former wild fox who has changed his ways since getting married, but still feels the call of the wild.

Wes Anderson film ofc, with a quirky weird animation style similar, but not identical to Isle Of Dogs.

I liked Isle Of Dogs better in every way.
The protagonist, Mr Fox, is a douche. He fucks up once, gets busted, doubles down on the fuckupery, then again gets busted, keeps doubling down, and in the end we're supposed to cheer for him while he instead nearly ruined his life and didn't accomplish much of anything. And, George Clooney has this particular voice where he is charming as the straight man, or at best the lovable rogue, but extremely annoying when he's a negative character.
I did like the supporting characters though. The wife was bland as the ... wife, but the kung-fu kid was great, the other kid wasn't terrible, the badger was great, the animals overall were all fun, the story is kinda meh when compared to Isle Of Dogs, and since they are both animated films by Wes Anderson, the comparison is inevitable, and Isle is the winner.

this film: 7/10
Isle of Dogs: 7.5/10

 

[Charmonium]

Drain the Oceans on NatGeo - 8/10

This is a cool concept. They pick a body of water or section of ocean and do very hires scans - geomagnetic, sonar, I think it varies but I sort of filter out the precise tech used.

Then they do a 3d render of whatever is of interest or were after.

For example, on a recent show, they scanned Loch Ness.

Sightings of Nessie didn't start until the 1930s. Very curious that a prehistoric monster should be so shy and then just come out like a deb at a debutante ball.

One of their interests in that episode was trying to find science based explanation for the sightings but they took the scenic route.

In 1952, John Cob tried to break the boating speed record in a rocket powered, hydroplane boat. The loch surface was dead calm - a virtual mirror. And yet, his boat started oscillating - front and back. Then suddenly the bow dips and the boat explodes.

That shouldn't have happened unless there was a rogue wave of some sort. But there wasn't - there couldn't have been . . . . except . . .

Due to the fact that the sides of the loch are virtually vertical, waves from passing boats, which in this case would have been Cob's own support team, can set up wake ripples that bounce around the loch for several hours while the boat that made the wake could be miles away.

This coincides with the 1930s time frame for Nessie. At the turn of the century, seagoing vessels switched from sails to engines. A propelled boat doesn't need to tack and leaves a perfectly form v-shaped wake.

Seen from the side (i.e., from the shore), the ripples can look like a moving object - a serpent-like monster.