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

[MrSquished]

i watched

Woman Of The Hour - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7737800/

Starring AND directed by Anna Kendrick.

I thought this was going to be the story of The Dating Game, but boy, was i wrong.
It is instead the story of a IRL serial killer, who was in fact a contestant on the show.

Kendrick plays the bachelorette, and the film is about their encounter on the show and a bit of his backstory, but she has no role in the conclusion of the film - it's just an abrupt "and then they caught him" ending.

The film is really well directed and acted, Kendrick is shaping up to be one of the best actresses of our generation, and i would put her work as director on this film over anything by Sophia Coppola, and while the film does have a lot of tension - as you'd expect, if you went in to see a film about a serial killer - but the script is weak, with no ending.

Still, would recommend.

6.5/10

I liked this film as well, and agree the ending was a bit of a letdown that dragged down the score

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Chopped (tv series) - cooking competition show. Despite having little culinary skill, i enjoy the creativity exhibited by all the different chefs as they think and cook on their feet to make a meal for the judges (who are generally award-winning chefs)

There are a lot of the typical shenanigans involved in making the show. Despite seeing behind the curtain, the wife and I have enjoyed watching it over the years.

I like to see how often someone will go the same or similar direction with the basket as I would. Understanding that some kitchen equipment is already preheated, hot, boiling, etc. helps quite a bit with that. Otherwise, it would eliminate options for cooking techniques because of the time limits.

 

[William Gaatjes]

so it's just the effects the matter? snore

it's why I give Avatar a 3/10 from the first and only time I saw it in the theater. I've never seen the others and likely never will. It was pretty, but not the best effects I've seen, but it was also pure garbage below that, so what's the point?

Of course it is not just the effects that matter. Look as example at the latest few (Sony) spiderman movies. Just no fun at all, a big fail even though they have state of the art special effects.
However, The first 3 Spiderman movies from director Sam Raimi with Tobey Maguire were and are much more fun.

But back to avatar.
It is a novel about live on another planet. And how the conquerors from Earth exhibit the same behavior we see here on this planet on a daily basis.
Present day examples like fracking, destroying rainforest, polluting waters and ground, overthrowing governments to steal resources and raw materials and so on.

Not so long ago there were all these kinds of representatives of South American tribes at the COP 30 summit 2025 in Brazil. Begging to to be more responsible with the rainforest. Also because their land is stolen from them and the trees are cut down, and the land is used to grow soy for to feed livestock, and to grow sugar for (bio)ethanol. And more...

But the movie avatar is also entertainment.

 

[William Gaatjes]

Hercule Poirot : A haunting in Venice (2023) 10/10

Very nice movie. Some plot twists here and there to keep the viewers on their toes.

 

[spacejamz]

Finished Season 5 of Stranger Things... 8/10 for me...

Series was wrapped up with a neat little bow with the door left open a bit.

They definitely stretched out the end (the part where they fast forward x number of months after the episode's climax). This lasted over 30 minutes (previous seasons were like 3-5 minutes) but I guess it does give 'closure' for the characters. I think this could have easily been done in about 10 minutes though.

Pretty sure that public rankings for this season will be all over the place....

 

[gorobei]

Palm Springs (2020)
Andy Samberg Cristin Milioti
time loop trap ala groundhog day.
9/10
modern version of the the formula, but adds enough to be interesting and different while not relying on the gimmicks in GHD. slow setup on the first run thru but cuts to the core premise and pattern fast enough and iterates quickly. they are smart enough to make the story about something while mostly running a range of light to med comedy. came out during covid so it probably doesnt get mentioned much.

Samberg tones down his normal schtick for a bit more normal portrayal. Milioti gets the meatier role but only a few really good comic moments. it is a far more subdued and real life tone than you would expect from the lonely island team.

 

[DigDog]

oh yeah i was very surprised at how good he was in that film.

 

[William Gaatjes]

Hercule Poirot : Death on the nile (2022) 10/10

Fun to watch.

I can still vaguely remember the original movie from 1978 with Peter Ustinov.

 

[Kaido]

Finished Stranger Things

Summary:

1. Started out strong
2. Good but not great ending

It could have been AMAZING, but it was just...fine. Not a terrible finale. It had good closure. But...

Spoiler

Production issues:

1. COVID turned the production schedule from months into years, the the 2023 writer's strike added nearly another year. Season 5 took three years to come out.

2. The show is about Kids vs. the Supernatural & now the kids were adults IRL. The show took place in under 3 years.

3. Season 4 had over 4,400 VFX shots & was rumored to cost upwards of $30 million per episode.

4. The Duffer brothers are known for late rewriters & locking in the script 100% for VFX & shooting before production.

What I liked:

1. Fabulous giant Mindflayer CGI at the end there.

2. Will taking over the demidogs & crippling Vecna a couple times was awesome

3. At least they gave us closure. I'm still salty about Lost lol.

4. Rambo Nancy hahaha

5. LOVED that they kept Murray

Wishlist:

1. Where's my pizza boy Argyle??

2. Zero stakes. No one "important" died.

3. We needed more context for Papa & the Military to be le evil. I always felt kinda bad for the military dudes just doing their job. Like when Nancy pops out of the top of the truck & mows all those dudes down, it didn't feel right, Sarah Connor was cool, but I had no idea what was driving her to do everything she did. They needed a bigger reason, like a perception mismatch that the Mindflayer was going to invade earth, so they had to build up the pregnancy army by whatever means possible.

4. Would have been AMAZING to spend an entire season exploring Henry's backstory & then have him join #TeamHawkins at the end. And merge in a more complex plot, like Papa was exploring the wormhole for science & military defense, but the Russians had made a deal with the Mindflayer to invade earth & take over America, which is why they needed superpowered kids so badly, no-holds-barred.

5. Golden opportunity when Will came out for Will to be Vecna's spy the whole time, which leads to core cast deaths during the plan, but then have Will take over Vecna's body & subsequently the Mindflayer's link.

6. Even tho the show is about Will & Joyce at its core, Will should have realized that he would always be damaged & thus sacrificed himself to kill the Mindflayer (in partnership with Henry, who is then atoned for), with his mom realizing that he is now finally free of his burdens & has legitimately saved the world in a way no one else could have.

7. I wanted more episodes with the other numbered kids as adults...ragtag X-men!

What I didn't like:

1. What a WASTE of the Mindflayer! Years of mental torture for poor Will & a flamethrower takes him out. They should have spent two or three episodes engaged in Matrix-level mind games or something.

2. Can't unsee Vecna as the lovechild of Jim Carrey's Grinch & Groot lol.

3. The writing & the vibe was off this season. It was so fun & creepy & so very 80's when it started out, it had me HOOKED!

4. Jonathan should have died saving Nancy in the gray goo. This would also have made Joyce's proposal more meaningful because they really did need to start a fresh life!

5. Eleven should have gotten her happy ending. They have us literally an hour-long LOTR Extended Edition-style ending. If I were to write it:

a. Will & Henry would die combining their powers to defeat the Mindflayer
b. Steve & Eight would sacrifice themselves to close the portal forever at the same time as the Mindflayer gets defeated, which crushes the Hawkings research center so there was no chance of ever opening it again from the stored research
c. El would be stripped of her powers, with the Mindflayer dust trying to escape through the wormhole as they kill the Mindflayer, but then gets eliminated by that, rendering El unusable to the military

TL;DR: Needed another season & an EPIC ending!!

 

[purbeast0]

I'm glad Stranger Things is over. The final season was pretty "meh" as a standalone but pretty bad compared to the rest of the series.

The finale was somewhat entertaining but it was also pretty mediocre and had so much dumb shit and stuff that made zero sense. It was also way too long. The "kids" looking like they had already graduated college also took a lot away from the draw of the show and just took you out of it.

I'm glad it is done and thought it went out pretty sad, but it's not Game of Thrones final season bad.

 

[Kaido]

I'm glad Stranger Things is over. The final season was pretty "meh" as a standalone but pretty bad compared to the rest of the series.

It could have been amazing

 

[MrSquished]

One Battle After Another - pretty epic film. Sean Penn as a creepy racist was a killer performance. A very timely movie as it turns out as well.

 

[purbeast0]

It could have been amazing

I don't really know how though, like the seasons have been going downhill since season 1. Season 4 was not very good either but 5 was not as good as 4.

It was pretty clear they didn't know where they were going with the show from the beginning, which sucks, cause the kids are like 2x the age they were when it first started lol. It just lost the charm it had in the earlier seasons, when they were actually kids playing kids lol.

Welcome to Derry season 1 felt way better as a "kids adventure" show than the past 2 seasons of Stranger Things.

 

[MrSquished]

I don't really know how though, like the seasons have been going downhill since season 1. Season 4 was not very good either but 5 was not as good as 4.

It was pretty clear they didn't know where they were going with the show from the beginning, which sucks, cause the kids are like 2x the age they were when it first started lol. It just lost the charm it had in the earlier seasons, when they were actually kids playing kids lol.

Welcome to Derry season 1 felt way better as a "kids adventure" show than the past 2 seasons of Stranger Things.

Covid, the writer's strike, plus the actor's strike really fucked up the timeline for a lot of shows, including this one. Not to mention so much production due to all the CGI, but those events really screwed up the release schedule.

 

[Kaido]

I don't really know how though, like the seasons have been going downhill since season 1. Season 4 was not very good either but 5 was not as good as 4.

It was pretty clear they didn't know where they were going with the show from the beginning, which sucks, cause the kids are like 2x the age they were when it first started lol. It just lost the charm it had in the earlier seasons, when they were actually kids playing kids lol.

Welcome to Derry season 1 felt way better as a "kids adventure" show than the past 2 seasons of Stranger Things.

Breaking Bad is one of the few shows where they did a good job the whole way through. I wish they had done the same for Stranger Things. Soooo many good ways to end the show & have it be rewatchable!

 

[JujuFish]

I liked Stranger Things 5, but the first season was clearly the best. I think I would rank 4 as the second best season.

 

[MrSquished]

The prince album with doves cry being the final track was pretty sick though.

 

[DigDog]

The prince album with doves cry being the final track was pretty sick though.

 

[William Gaatjes]

Avatar 3 : fire & ash 10/10

What can i say i am easy to please.
The story was good and there is a lot of time spend on little details like for example seeing the sounds the Tulkun whales make as vibrations on the water surface and also of course hearing the sounds.
A bit over 3 hours of movie fun time.

 

[bbhaag]

The Unbearable Weight Of Massive Talent - 8/10

This film might not be for everyone but if you are a Nick Cage fan then it will delight. The onscreen chemistry between Cage and Pascal is a bromance for the ages. Don't go into this movie wanting any kind of plot because it is paper thin. This movie is all about an aging actor trying to find himself while trying to fix his relationship with his family all while finding a new BFF along the way.

A really fun film that kinda peters out in the third act but is definitely worth watching.

 

[QueBert]

We Bury The Dead.

it's a horror thriller. America was testing a new high tech bomb, we fucked around and set off it off and accidentally killed the every living thing on Tanzania. It was some sort of sine wave bomb or something, so it didn't damage anything, it just killed everything living. The main character's an American who's going there to try and find the body of her husband who happened to be there on a business trip. The volunteers job is to break in homes and drag bodies out so the military can bury them. And if they Some of the dead still have brain activity, the military claim they're like chickens with their heads cut off and not still aware of anything just twitchy. If they encouter one of these they set off a flair and a solider will come and shoot them.

So basically zombies, it's slow paced and there's not a lot of actual zombies or zombies killing people. Most of the dead people are just dead people who lie there dead. It has a few decent jump scares, and the way the the semi alive ones look and how they massively grind their teeth was somewhat unnerving. It was an interesting movie, mostly her trying to sneak to the other side of the island to get to her husband's body. And it was pretty light on the horror, but not a bad watch.

It's 85% critic on RT with 66 reviews and 47% audience with 250+, usually if there's a big discrepancywith scores it's low critics and high audience, you don't tend to see it reversed very often.

 

[QueBert]

One Battle After Another - pretty epic film. Sean Penn as a creepy racist was a killer performance. A very timely movie as it turns out as well.

Boy the MAGAts HATE this movie, so many were on Reddit claiming that it's the worst movie ever and whining about how PTA clearly has TDS. I asked some how could it be TDS when he wrote the movie 5 years before Trump's 1st term. In their infinite wisdom, the ones who replied to me still are convinced it's TDS lol.

It is kind of spooky how accurate some parts of this are. Penn is creepy and fuckin hilarious, if he's not nominated for an Academy Award something's wrong. I love Benico Del Toro's character too, the cities almost at war and burning down and he couldn't have been more chill.

 

[mikeymikec]

The Sopranos (finished watching the whole thing)

I get the impression that this series was written with a solid start but the writers fully expected to get cancelled after 2 seasons or less. S1 & 2 are great. S3 and S4 seem like "oh, now we have to come up with more content?", and descend into soapyness. S5 & S6 IMO are part of a positive recovery process, but overall I got the impression of a story that was never intended to go on that long. IMO it gave the impression that it was going to have a conclusion but never really reaches one. It's rather like the old Star Trek series question of "one long plot or standalone episodes with little continuity", and this series tried to be both, maybe?

There's some good quality content in there, but if I had known how much of a slog it was going to be, I would have stopped at the end of S2. I got halfway though S6 (the final season) and seriously considered quitting for the second or third time.

 

[MrSquished]

Boy the MAGAts HATE this movie, so many were on Reddit claiming that it's the worst movie ever and whining about how PTA clearly has TDS. I asked some how could it be TDS when he wrote the movie 5 years before Trump's 1st term. In their infinite wisdom, the ones who replied to me still are convinced it's TDS lol.

It is kind of spooky how accurate some parts of this are. Penn is creepy and fuckin hilarious, if he's not nominated for an Academy Award something's wrong. I love Benico Del Toro's character too, the cities almost at war and burning down and he couldn't have been more chill.

lol MAGA are the dumbest evil fucks around that is for shit sure.

Yeah Benicio was so good as well and his character was the most likeable. He really is a great actor - Sicario is a great example.

It's not like OBAA didn't make the leftists look bad either, but yes, of course the right-wingers looked worse. Because they are, indeed, pure fucking evil.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Stranger Things S5 - 7/10
Stranger Things - Whole Series - 8.5/10
S1 - Solid "goonies" x "IT" coming of age story
S2 - Solid "alien" x "thing" authority trying to control something way out of their league tropes
S3 - Solid "mallrats" x "Red Dawn" x "grindhouse" narrative about the death of small town America, the red scare, and mall culture.
S4 - Solid teen slasher flick / 80's horror story.
S5 - Solid "the power of friendship" and "by our powers combined" narrative.
A satisfying ending to a fun series. Missed opportunities? Yeah. Strange plot holes or leaps in logic? Yeah. Fun with a solid emotional core? Yeah.

As a series, Stranger Things S1 was a masterwork that dipped in quality for subsequent seasons but never so much as there was not something to find entertaining or compelling as the show went on. It was almost like a sort of mini-anthology of 80's tropes that were serviced by the primary narrative. It wasn't done perfectly, but about as well as anyone could expect.

S5 felt off initially. I suspect it might be due to Netflix's second screen rule being hardcore enforced: assume the viewer is surfing while watching, so you have to assume they just looked up from their phone and reexplain whats going on every 10-15 minutes to keep them engaged. Joyce as a character was essentially reduced to a plot device that had to act bumbled and confused about what was going on so other characters had an excuse to explain what just happened and what was about to happen for the viewer's benefit.

As the season progressed however it became less bothersome, and I appreciated the show's willingness to just go *out there* when it came to reveals. Would it have been nice if the series had been planned ahead and we had gotten some nuggets of the final season in earlier seasons? Yes, of course it would. But given that some amount of "seat of the pants" writing was clearly happening, it was all tied together remarkably well.

The cast was huge, and that definitely hurt the show. Lot of parallel narratives (many far less interesting than others), fan service, flanderization of characters (i.e. Nancy is Rambo, Murray is cranky Jew who speaks wisdom, Joyce is confused and worried, What does Jonathan even do here besides unhappy relationship with Nancy, Hopper is overprotective Dad, etc etc etc). The military subplot is also deeply frustrating, and holy shit did they waste Linda Hamilton. Nevertheless, I appreciated the extended epilogue that gave emotionally satisfying endings to all characters except one (and you know the one I'm talking about).

Overall, if you're a suburban kid of the 80's or 90's, you will LOVE stranger things. You will fucking love everything about it, it will tickle every god damn nostalgia bone in your entire god damn body. Think of that scene in Ratatouille with the critic eating the title dish, transported to his childhood where everything was simple and he was loved unconditionally, that is what this series will do to you. Flawed gem, I look forward to watching the whole thing start to finish with my kids when the youngest hits double digits.