Yeah, loved Hamm in that movie. Almost wanna watch Mad Men, but dunno if I wanna dedicate time to doing that. Was actually disappointed Bernthal didn't have a bigger role. I guess he told the truth.

SPOILER: Click to show

{Spoiler}
Think he said if you don't see me again it means I'm dead.

Oct 16, 2017 20:48:18 GMT @ness said:

Yeah, loved Hamm in that movie. Almost wanna watch Mad Men, but dunno if I wanna dedicate time to doing that. Was actually disappointed Bernthal didn't have a bigger role. I guess he told the truth.

SPOILER: Click to show

{Spoiler}
Think he said if you don't see me again it means I'm dead.

Oh yes Berenthal , I almost wish they would of went with him more of the movie than Jamie Foxx , who I know had a place in that movie and didn't really drag it down but I would of liked more screen time for Berenthal who is consistently one of my favorite actors working today. That would completely change the movie though. 

I watched Baby Driver this past weekend as well and I thought it was excellent. Definitely a top contender for one of my favorite movies of 2017, and the soundtrack is great too. Baby was my favorite, Ansel Elgort was great in his role, and I liked Jon Bernthal as well and wished he would have had a bigger role.

As you may or may not have heard by now I got a new big screen 4K curve TV with a nice sound bar last year. I keep mentioning it when i talk about watching movies, not to brag about it but because watching movies with this rig is really something else. The curve at first seemed like a gimmick to me but it really does give the movie a great scope or perspective or depth, whatever you want to call it it is nice. Watching a movie with this much quality really immerses you into it, you lose that desire to whip your phone out or bring the laptop into the living room even if it's an old movie you've seen a million times before. Some old movies look shockingly amazing on this thing(The Rock), while others don't look as good as I thought they would(Point Break). Watching an old favorite on this rig almost feels like seeing it for the first time again.

One movie that I have never seen before that I watched on this bad boy today was Leon: The Professional. I watched it on Amazon Prime, I'm sure it was remastered in 1080p at least but honestly this looked like it was 4K it looked so good. I'm sure this came out probably 1995 or maybe even 1994 because Natalie Portman is like 10 years old in it. Some of the story got a little weird but for the most part this was a really beautifully shot action movie with some great performances by Gary Oldman as the villain. This was a great movie to watch on a 4K curve, it looked like it was made for it. 

Yeah I loved the Professional. I saw the what I guess was the directors cut of it and they dive into Leon and Matilda's relationship a bit more than other versions of the movie. No lines are ever crossed but it does make you wonder exactly what they were going for. It did seem a bit one sided though. Matilda seemed to be coming into womanhood and casts Leon as her crush while Leon seemed confused and uncomfortable by her comments towards him.

Anyways...

The Big Sick:
No idea that a lot of this was inspired by Kumail's actual life. It was a cute little movie. Probably not a second watch worthy but it was fine.

SpiderMan Homecoming: a little overrated. I expected better than what I got. And what hero thinks he can do anything special without a high school diploma. I don't remember Parker being that dumb.

The House: fucking hilarious. The scene with the finger cut off...that was great.

I was hoping The Snowman would be something like Zodiac meets Seven....it's not. Right off the bat things go south when you realize that the main characters name is...and I shit you not...Harry Hole. lol. I couldn't get over that in the theater watching this that they actually named Fassbender that. No man who looks like Michael Fassbender is going to be named Harry Hole. That is ridiculous. So right from the jump i'm annoyed at the name choice and then the plot kicks in...except it doesn't. The movie just builds and builds to nothing. The finale sequences are just so deflating. Also everybody seems to be kind of a mystery, there was always a disconnect with all the characters where I just didn't feel anything for any of them. I found out after sitting through this shit show that the director had about 15 more scenes he wanted to put in that tied the story together more but couldn't get that done...yeah, it showed. It really did feel like chunks of this movie were missing. Just terrible. It's amazing they got this amazing cast and somehow this is what came out. Don't waste your money, absolute garbage movie.

Oct 20, 2017 2:19:53 GMT vendrell said:

I was hoping The Snowman would be something like Zodiac meets Seven....it's not. Right off the bat things go south when you realize that the main characters name is...and I shit you not...Harry Hole. lol. I couldn't get over that in the theater watching this that they actually named Fassbender that. No man who looks like Michael Fassbender is going to be named Harry Hole. That is ridiculous. So right from the jump i'm annoyed at the name choice and then the plot kicks in...except it doesn't. The movie just builds and builds to nothing. The finale sequences are just so deflating. Also everybody seems to be kind of a mystery, there was always a disconnect with all the characters where I just didn't feel anything for any of them. I found out after sitting through this shit show that the director had about 15 more scenes he wanted to put in that tied the story together more but couldn't get that done...yeah, it showed. It really did feel like chunks of this movie were missing. Just terrible. It's amazing they got this amazing cast and somehow this is what came out. Don't waste your money, absolute garbage movie.

That sucks as I thought the movie looked interesting the first time I saw a preview. After Fass killed the Aliens franchise and now this... Hopefully the world turns on him!

To be fair to Fassbender, he was fine in the role itself it was just the movie was a mix of being convoluted and just kind of boring that nobody could of saved it with just pure acting. It all starts with the story and this story was dead in the water.

Speaking of the alien franchise I got around to watching Alien Covenant...I will say I enjoyed it far more than Promethius. That isn't to say this is a great movie though. Everybody not named Michael Fassbender felt pretty underdeveloped as characters. It had some cool moments though and it did feel like more was happening in compared to promethius.

The House - What an absolute shit show , and I'm usually very nice to Ferrell films because he's one of my favorite actors of all time. This movie though was terrible and really only landed like two or three jokes for me from beginning to end. The best part was the Renner cameo and some of the stuff that happened around him. Had his character been a bigger part of the movie it would have been infinitely better.

Lights Out - I seen this like a month ago and never commented on it , but I did absolutely love it and would recommend it as a perfect little 90 minute popcorn movie for Halloween season. It's effectively scary , well acted and unlike so many horror movies these days that take themselves too seriously it runs for 90 minutes which is perfect.

I can't stand movies of this genre that think they need to run for 2 hours and 20 minutes (I'm looking at you Conjuring 2). So yeah , Lights Out , of the horror movies I've seen this year it's probably my favorite!



Also introduced Goonies to my kids the other night and not only did they love it , my wife who hadn't seen it in like 15 years also loved it all over again. She just not got the joke behind One Eyed Willie which was a pretty awesome moment. It still definitely holds up as a classic.

Lady Macbeth:
I really liked the lead girl, she did a very good job. The story and pacing were good. The one thing that I think would have made a bigger impact was if we had focused in on her relationship with the man she was cheating on her husband with. I mean more of the beginning stages of the relationship. It's just one minute he's being a scum bag and the next she's fucking him for...reasons? I don't know they didn't flesh that out very well. So I think everything that happens after that would have had more sting to it if we knew both characters a bit more. As it was though, I wasn't as invested in their relationship as I should have been. It was still a solid movie though.

Kubo and the Two Strings... Feeling a little confused.

I watched the original black and white Night of the Living Dead movie last night on my 4K curve, a "Remastered" version that was on Amazon Prime. This movie did not look remastered at all, in fact it actually looked worse than I remembered the movie looking. I usually always end up watching it around this time of year and I wanted to see what it looked like on the curve. It doesn't look very good at all, just seemed to be darker than usual with a weird contrast going on. Also it was in 4:3 aspect ratio with those annoying black bars on the sides of the screen. This just didn't work for me, this movie looks best on regular old school CRT standard definition TV.

As for the movie itself though it is one of my favorite movies of all time. Movie is just too good to be from 1968, love the tension between the characters and especially love that grim fucked up hopeless ending, there is some deep subtext going on with that ending that is some type of social commentary maybe, I'm not smart enough to understand the meaning of it all but I'm still deeply jarred by it every time I watch the movie. Just love the atmosphere and the feeling of the movie and the story is so great.

If I would have made a list for the recent Top 10 Remakes countdown the 1990 remake of Night of the Living Dead by Tom Savini would have been at or near the top of my list, he took a great movie and somehow managed to make it even better while still honoring the original. I really love the changes Savini made to the story for the remake. I'm going to try to watch it on my 4K curve hopefully sometime today.

The Lobster:
I enjoyed it. Dark comedy leaning heavier on the dark. It was such a unique feeling movie and other than True Detective, this was easily Colin Farrel's best work.

Halloween H20:
The name is kind of stupid. Was LL Cool J apart of every movie in the late 90's? He just seemed to pop up everywhere. Found it super strange that Adam Arkin gets second billing behind Jamie Lee Curtis. Even Joeseph Gordon Levitt gets an opening credits billing and he's killed off in the first 5 minutes and this was before Levitt was big time, he was just that punk kid from Third Rock From The Sun at this point in time. Really this just felt like every other slasher film of that late 90's era really. There is some fun to be had and Laurie finally coming face to face with Michael for the first time after 20 years was a cool moment. Michelle Williams was at her peak of hotness at this point and I believe this was Josh Hartnett's first big movie role. It's not bad by slasher standards but it just lacks something. Dr. Loomis brought such a great element to the early films that gave them an extra punch, this didn't have that.

Oct 29, 2017 12:37:25 GMT 🤯 said:

Kubo and the Two Strings... Feeling a little confused.

Why?
It's a great japanese folktale

I watched Creepshow at some point during the end of last month, I remember bits and pieces here and there but this was the first time I properly sat down and watched it I guess. This was a project with Stephen King and George Romero(Night of the Living Dead) working together, and if I'm not mistaken the great Tom Savini(Friday The 13th) did the special effects. This movie was not good at all. It's an anthology horror movie with a bunch of Tales From The Crypt style stories, in fact I get the impression that this movie was a big influence on Tales From The Crypt TV series(both were based on old school horror comic books).

There were 5 or so different stories here and most of them were pretty goofy, especially the one where Stephen King makes an appearance as a hillbilly that finds a meteor that turns him into a plant. The only stories that were decent was the one with Ted Danson and Leslie Nielson where Danson gets burried up to his neck and drowned by the ocean tide. The best story was the last one with the rich guy being driven crazy by roaches. My house got invaded by fleas a couple of weeks ago and I was like this guy going crazy running around trying to kill them all and spray everything down to get rid of them. Those fucking fleas come from out of nowhere and drove me fucking ape shit. Anyways that was the best part of this movie, funny character with some funny moments("next year when you take your family to Disney world you can pay with it with your fucking welfare check!"), typical George Romero with this story having some deep subtext social commentary about our society.

Aside from that last story Creepshow is really not good, in fact I'd even go as far as saying that's it actually pretty bad for the most part. I remember liking Creepshow 2 a lot more but it's been ages since I've watched it.

Nov 5, 2017 13:25:55 GMT Mistress said:

Oct 29, 2017 12:37:25 GMT 🤯 said:

Kubo and the Two Strings... Feeling a little confused.

Why?
It's a great japanese folktale

Didn't his guitar have three strings (not two) in the climax?

And so his parents die at the hands of his evil grandfather, but he ultimately befriends him in the end just because?

Don't get me wrong, I was generally entertained by the movie. Great visual aesthetic, for sure. And it felt like it had heart. But some of the logic was a little "Huh?".

Nov 5, 2017 16:16:27 GMT 🤯 said:

Nov 5, 2017 13:25:55 GMT Mistress said:

Why?
It's a great japanese folktale

Didn't his guitar have three strings (not two) in the climax?

And so his parents die at the hands of his evil grandfather, but he ultimately befriends him in the end just because?

Don't get me wrong, I was generally entertained by the movie. Great visual aesthetic, for sure. And it felt like it had heart. But some of the logic was a little "Huh?".

2 strings is all he needs. And yes after the evil spirit in his grandfather was gone, the goodness shown through. Thats how most movies are. Look at Cap and bucky...

Nov 5, 2017 18:18:37 GMT Mistress said:

Nov 5, 2017 16:16:27 GMT 🤯 said:

Didn't his guitar have three strings (not two) in the climax?

And so his parents die at the hands of his evil grandfather, but he ultimately befriends him in the end just because?

Don't get me wrong, I was generally entertained by the movie. Great visual aesthetic, for sure. And it felt like it had heart. But some of the logic was a little "Huh?".

2 strings is all he needs. And yes after the evil spirit in his grandfather was gone, the goodness shown through. Thats how most movies are. Look at Cap and bucky...

What?! Pretty sure he plucked one of his hairs to make it three strings.

And what!? You murder my parents, but then your "good" shines through? Were we watching different movies? Unless this is supposed to be a common Japanese theme after WW2 as a way to say "Our bad about Pearl Harbor, please accept us, we're not bad guys anymore... Really!"

No idea what Cap and Bucky are, but I'd argue this is not a common theme in "most movies". That seems like a pretty wild claim...

Nov 5, 2017 20:03:38 GMT 🤯 said:

Nov 5, 2017 18:18:37 GMT Mistress said:

2 strings is all he needs. And yes after the evil spirit in his grandfather was gone, the goodness shown through. Thats how most movies are. Look at Cap and bucky...

What?! Pretty sure he plucked one of his hairs to make it three strings.

And what!? You murder my parents, but then your "good" shines through? Were we watching different movies? Unless this is supposed to be a common Japanese theme after WW2 as a way to say "Our bad about Pearl Harbor, please accept us, we're not bad guys anymore... Really!"

No idea what Cap and Bucky are, but I'd argue this is not a common theme in "most movies". That seems like a pretty wild claim...

You must not watch many movies.

hell this goes back to Power Rangers
Evil green ranger...now a good guy
the villain Astronema....now a good lady

so dont act like bad guys becoming good is a new phenomena lol

unless you live under a rock

I think with Bucky and the Green Ranger it's easier to buy into it since they weren't really evil and it was more brain washing.

Now Dean and Roman welcoming Seth back............

Nov 5, 2017 20:33:42 GMT Mistress said:

Nov 5, 2017 20:03:38 GMT 🤯 said:

What?! Pretty sure he plucked one of his hairs to make it three strings.

And what!? You murder my parents, but then your "good" shines through? Were we watching different movies? Unless this is supposed to be a common Japanese theme after WW2 as a way to say "Our bad about Pearl Harbor, please accept us, we're not bad guys anymore... Really!"

No idea what Cap and Bucky are, but I'd argue this is not a common theme in "most movies". That seems like a pretty wild claim...

You must not watch many movies.

hell this goes back to Power Rangers
Evil green ranger...now a good guy
the villain Astronema....now a good lady

so dont act like bad guys becoming good is a new phenomena lol

unless you live under a rock

Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs, arguably even Hannibal Lecter, Jack from the Shining, Scar from Lion King, Predator and Alien from the series of the same name (or at least the original movies, just in case you're gonna attempt to throw AvP in my face), Cruella DeVille, Ursula, Emperor Palpatine... I mean, I could probably go on and on.

I get that a theme in movies is redemption, like Vader turning face, etc. but it's not so prevalent that it's THE dominant theme in all movies.

And even if the story in Kubo was meant to be the redemption of the evil grandfather, they didn't go a decent job from a logic standpoint. Plus, the two strings vs. three strings thing.

Finally got around to seeing Arrival, very good movie, solider performances across the board, never tries to be bombastic, just a nice, reserved, well told story.

Also saw Nerve, wasn't terrible, enjoyable if forgettable, never pushed the premise too far, never felt anybody was in any real danger.

Arrival was pretty dope, RagnarokMike. My wife really enjoyed it.

Then we watched Life immediately after since we were on an alien/space kick, and she was terrified... Until we read up afterward on how stupid the premise was from a logic/science standpoint.

Speaking of recent couples viewings with the wife...

We recently caught the middle half of the first Thor movie on TV. I think we were both amused enough that we wanted to know how it ended, so we ended up renting it and watching the whole thing through. Takeaways were: 1) I wish I was as big and cut as Thor, and I think my wife wishes that too; and 2) My wife mentioned that people were supposedly into either the Loki character or the guy who played him. We're both like "uh, ok?" at the outset, but by the end we were both grooving on him.

We were pleasantly surprised by Thor enough that we decided to check out Thor 2. But then we got confused as fuck in the first third by how Loki had come back and who he was allied with. It wasn't until Natalie Portman mentioned something about seeing Thor in New York that we put it together... Maybe we missed something that was covered in Avengers? So we stopped Thor 2 there, and watched the whole Avengers movie.

As a movie, Avengers was fun enough and I guess could sorta stand alone... But we also definitely felt like we were missing info that was probably covered in more depth in other movies. No idea which ones though. Overall, Wife said she liked Deadpool and Logan much more. That said, Avengers did ratchet up her Loki love by like 10.

We also realized we're a house divided, as there was some scene where Captain America and Robert Downey Jr. were arguing, and we turned to each other simultaneously and said we like/dislike the other guy (I was siding with Da Cap'n and Wife was siding with Ironman). I think we were amused/surprised by the difference, and all of the sudden started wondering if that Civil War movie wouldn't be so dumb after all... like, if nothing else, it'd be interesting to have competing rooting interests.

Anyway, we wrap up Avengers and at least now understand why Loki is in jail in Thor 2. We hop back to Thor 2 to pick up where we left off. I'm not sure if there's really that much of a difference between Thor 1 & 2 at their cores, but I will go out on a sturdy limb and say Wife liked #2 better because: a) it cranked her Loki love up to 1000X, and she's dying to see him in other movies; and b) she found her favorite character in the Thor series and perhaps entire Marvel universe in Frigga.

So, long story short, in the span of like a day and a half, Wife and I surprised the shit out of ourselves by not only watching 2.5 (I guess 3.5 if you count the Thor 1 rewatch) Marvel movies... but also fucking enjoying them, WHAT!?

We're definitely in for more now too. We looked up the movie timelines to see if there's certain connections or orders we're supposed to watch things in. And now, beyond simply wanting more Loki and chances to oggle Hemsworths, puzzle-loving Wife seems really attracted by the idea of piecing the Marvel movie multiverse together.

Maybe I should start a new thread to track and document our journey...

I was so underwhelmed by Arrival after all the hype, I was so stoked about finally seeing it and was just kinda left wondering what all the fuss was about. Didn't really find anything special about any of the acting performances and did not like the story at all, not even a little bit. Maybe I need to check it out again(I bought it on Amazon Instant video when it came out).

I watched Sniper this morning on Amazon, this was from maybe 93 or 94 starring Billy Zane and Tom Beringer(sorry I don't have time/energy to look up how to spell people's names). This was pretty fantastic, better than I remembered(haven't seen it probably since the late 90's). Really made me want to play Metal Gear Solid 3 again for some reason. I wonder if this movie was maybe an influence on that game. Good movie though with some solid acting good characters and decent story, looks great on a 4K curve for such an old movie.

Nov 9, 2017 8:08:09 GMT RagnarokMike said:

Finally got around to seeing Arrival, very good movie, solider performances across the board, never tries to be bombastic, just a nice, reserved, well told story.

Also saw Nerve, wasn't terrible, enjoyable if forgettable, never pushed the premise too far, never felt anybody was in any real danger.

Arrival was really good. Also this is a text book example of a score being an instrumental part of what made the film have such a punch.  Without that haunting score I think it would lose a lot.  I do understand Shin's view on it though.  This is a big reason why I try to not even listen to hype about movies and just go in with no real expectations and whatever happens happens. 

Yeah I agree with Nerve.  It was just instantly forgettable the moment it was over.  I kind of trailed off from time to time during it. 

Adam:
A very cute romance movie. I love Hugh Dancey and Rose Byrne and they played this one perfectly.  Their relationship came off very genuine which was nice and add on that Hugh Dancey is playing a guy with Aspergers syndrome trying to make this relationship work...It just made for a really compelling and cute movie. 

Brave Heart:
Yeah I had never actually seen this movie until now.  It was really good.  The only real gripes I have with the film is that it is pretty damn long.  It's right on the 3 hour mark and at times you can feel it.  Also the battle scenes feel pretty dated which isn't the fault of the film it's just the bar has been raised so much over the years that these battles feel a bit tame.

Caught Blair Witch, mildly better than BWP, still not really anything special, pretty bog standard stuff, I'll never re-watch it.

Also Moonlight, very good film, great performances for the most part, very believably told...well worth the one watch, not sure I'd care for a second though, but if it was on, I wouldn't go out of my way to change the channel.

Finally watched La La Land. I do indeed love it.

I'm warming up to give Arrival another chance, my first impression was that it was pretentious Hollywood schlock cleverly disguised as an alien sci-fi movie. At least it was better than Passengers and Interstellar, Passengers was such a lame paint by the numbers love story that they wrapped a sci-fi/space theme around. I was underwhelmed by all of these big sci fi movies that got all this praise over the past 5-6 years, the Martian was decent but still not that great. 

Nov 12, 2017 14:17:08 GMT shinobimusashi said:

I'm warming up to give Arrival another chance, my first impression was that it was pretentious Hollywood schlock cleverly disguised as an alien sci-fi movie. At least it was better than Passengers and Interstellar, Passengers was such a lame paint by the numbers love story that they wrapped a sci-fi/space theme around. I was underwhelmed by all of these big sci fi movies that got all this praise over the past 5-6 years, the Martian was decent but still not that great. 

How do you hate on Interstellar!?

I've been working on this theory to loosely link Interstellar, the Martian, and Gravity as some sort of trilogy. It's a pretty bad/loose theory TBH.