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Which movie did you watch today and how would you rate it?

The Congress

Netflix description:

Actress Robin Wright plays herself in this surreal drama about a film star who agrees to have her digital image recorded for reuse in future films. Despite the handsome payoff, Robin begins to recognize some unforeseen consequences of the deal.
Click to expand...

That's how it starts, at least. Then it takes a detour into an animated story apparently based on based on Stanislav Lem's "The Futurological Congress." Ambitious, visually stunning, and kind of a mess.

5/10
 
Ford said:
The Congress

Netflix description:

Actress Robin Wright plays herself in this surreal drama about a film star who agrees to have her digital image recorded for reuse in future films. Despite the handsome payoff, Robin begins to recognize some unforeseen consequences of the deal.
Click to expand...

That's how it starts, at least. Then it takes a detour into an animated story apparently based on based on Stanislav Lem's "The Futurological Congress." Ambitious, visually stunning, and kind of a mess.

5/10
Click to expand...
Regardless of whether it's good or not, I always wanted to see the Futurological congress adapted to film. Thanks for the tip.
 
Train to Busan

It's a Korean zombie flick that, as the title would suggest, largely takes place on a train. Although the zombie genre has pretty much run its course for the time being, this is overall a pretty good movie anyway. It also contains one of the most hate-able human villains I've seen in a long time, so that was good.

6.5/10 or so
 
Europa Report
7/10

Found-footage scifi movie about an exploration trip to Europa, where everything goes sideways as the astronauts find signs of life under the ice (okay, I could have put that in spoilers but it's freaking obvious isn't it?) after their communications wit Earth are fried by solar flares. As far as found footage garbage goes, this one is actually doing it pretty well. It might be the best found footage film after Cloverfield I can think of right now. So a few brownie points for that. But the plot is still a bit predictable (though there is one clever plot twist near the end) and due to the small budget the whole experience is a bit bland. Worth watching, if you like space and got nothing better to do for an hour and a half.
 
Spider-Man: Homecoming
7.5/10

The latest reboot of the Spider-Man franchise, starring Tom Holland, is a solid movie, if you like the superhero genre. It gets to the root of what I think Spider-Man represents, without giving us yet another origin story for Spidey. That root is a teen aged kid just having fun with his new-found powers. It starts just after the events of Civil War, so Peter Parker already has his powers, and the suit that Tony Stark made for him. It ends not much later, with Parker still in High School, I would say that, ignoring the background from the opening scene, the events in the movie only comprise a couple of months in the MCU. It doesn't move too fast through Peter's life like the Toby McGuire run, and avoids the darkness of the Andrew Garfield run. What it does is focus on a relatively short time period in which Peter is mostly just acting like a kid would given his situation, but simultaneously learning about what it means to be a superhero, and growing into that role. I took off a half point from the story for unnecessary tweaks to the established Spider-Man cannon, but I think this movie easily holds it's own against the last two Spider-Man film incarnations.
 
Rifftrax: To Catch A Yeti

I think the secret to a good MST3K/Rifftrax movie is that even though the movies are supposed to be bad (and they are), they also have to be inherently funny on their own. That is, if you watched them without the commentary, you still would at least watch for a while because you'd be laughing. Then the Rifftrax crew enhances the humor. And that's why To Catch a Yeti was so awful. It's not funny-bad, it's not so good it's bad; it's just unwatchable for any reason. And the Rifftrax crew had no hope of saving it.

2/10
 
Bokeh

I felt like Homer Simpson throughout this thing.

Booooooooooooor-ing!
Booooooooooooor-ing!

So fine, not every movie can be exciting, but this coma-inducer is about two largely unremarkable people who have nothing remarkable to do or say when it turns out they're the only two people left on the planet after some unidentified event takes place. Okay, so there's a flash of light and then all of a sudden everyone's gone. Oh, and it happens in Iceland. The two people are Americans vacationing in Iceland.

But Iceland is beautiful. Maybe its tourist board put this together to increase tourism.

Netflix has it at 4+ stars.

I give it a Zzzzzz/10
 
I'm watching The Big Short again.


To me it is sort of the spiritual sequel to "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room." A film that spells out exactly how unabashedly crooked people could be when there was hundreds of millions of dollars at stake. Astonishingly huge swindles carried out in full view of the people who were ostensibly supposed to be watching over the system, and for the most part, nobody was held to account. They ripped us all off, and nothing bad happened to them.

And it has been, what...10 years since the last swindle unfolded? The rules haven't really changed. Nobody is watching the watchers. I have a terrible feeling that a few years from now there will be another sequel. Maybe it will be called "How Many Times Are We Going To Do This?"
 
Passengers

I thought this was overall a very watchable movie. Good special effects too.

SPOILER ALERT








There's 5,000 passengers aboard a spaceship on the way to colonize another planet. They're supposed to be in hyper sleep, which prevents them from again, which is good, because the trip takes 120 years. There's a malfunction and one of the passengers is awoken after just 30 years, and there's no way for him to get back into hyper sleep, which means he faces living out the rest of his life by himself aboard the ship. Eventually, he cracks and wakes up another passenger.

The ethical dilemma presented is interesting. I'd like to think I could be stoic and just commit suicide at some point, rather than waking up someone else, but I can't really know that. The things we can convince ourselves of under much less dire circumstances indicates that most people would probably do the same thing. It's interesting in that it's not murder, but at the same time, it's robbing someone of the life they expected. Is it slavery or kidnapping? Hard to say.

The downside is that this was a big budget Hollywood movie and therefore, they had to find a way to not only have a largely happy ending. Also, due to the self-created holes in the plot, with a little math, they could've actually solved the problem in the end. And that kind of puts a damper on it. Then again, you root for the characters so maybe it was better that way. Overall though, still much better than average movie that's also visually interesting.

6.875/10
 
I think it was called the Big Sick. Definitely a chick flick but I enjoyed it very much as it tended to bash religious behavior.

I give it very high marks.
 
VALERIAN

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Let's Be Evil

Young whippersnappers taking care of younger whippersnappers in a movie made for the whippersnapper crowd. I've already expended too much effort... its supposed to be a horror movie, with high tech things going on. Just avoid it.

Fuck this/10
 
The Mummy (2017) FT/10

A mummy is out to get Tom Cruise. She wants to possess his dead body with the spirit of an ancient God (and kill his girlfriend in the process). Why is Tom the same character in all of his action movies? Actually he was the same damn character in almost everything he has ever done! There is something wrong if you still like Tom Cruise, and very wrong if you like this movie.

Russell Crowe's character suggests the launch of an ongoing cinematic universe. It will quickly explode in flames because this movie sucks badly. Anything to follow will definitely suck. I've lost respect for Russell. Haven't had any for Tom since he was an officer and a gentleman.

Russell and Tom are the same age, and it shows. Tom is a fucking mummy and we all know it. Plastic surgery aint helping. Funny that Tom's character is supposed to be much younger than Russell's.
 
Finally got around to watching Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.

I didn't want to watch it because everything that has come out since the original series was in theaters has been a disappointment on some level.

The prequels. The animated series. Star Wars 7, Electric Boogaloo. Over and over again the efforts to recapture the magic of that movie I saw in 1977 (and the sequels in '80 and '83) have all fallen short to some degree.

This did not. I was wrong to put off seeing this film. It took a story I didn't know that I needed to hear, and told it in a way that pushed all my Star Wars fan boy buttons without seeming like a shameless cash grab. Was it a shameless cash grab? Maybe...but it didn't seem that way. It had the emotional impact that was sorely lacking in the prequels.



In the prequels, everyone dies, and it is the same here, but in this movie all their deaths meant something. Like Obi-Wan sacrificing himself so that Luke could escape. Every single rebel that bought the farm in this movie was important.

 
Lion (2016)
8/10

If you don't like slow-paced movies, you won't like this one.

Based on a real story about a little Indian boy who becomes separated from his family by 1600 km, then gets adopted by an Australian family, then goes in search of his biological family. I came close to tears.

 
Ford said:
Finally got around to watching Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.

I didn't want to watch it because everything that has come out since the original series was in theaters has been a disappointment on some level.

The prequels. The animated series. Star Wars 7, Electric Boogaloo. Over and over again the efforts to recapture the magic of that movie I saw in 1977 (and the sequels in '80 and '83) have all fallen short to some degree.

This did not. I was wrong to put off seeing this film. It took a story I didn't know that I needed to hear, and told it in a way that pushed all my Star Wars fan boy buttons without seeming like a shameless cash grab. Was it a shameless cash grab? Maybe...but it didn't seem that way. It had the emotional impact that was sorely lacking in the prequels.



In the prequels, everyone dies, and it is the same here, but in this movie all their deaths meant something. Like Obi-Wan sacrificing himself so that Luke could escape. Every single rebel that bought the farm in this movie was important.

Click to expand...

I just re-watched this, and to be honest, I liked episode 7 better, but to each their own. I did enjoy both.
 
Nothing Left to Fear: AKA Slash From G n' R Made A Horror Movie!

Family moves from Somewhere Town USA to Nowheresville, Mississippi USA. There's a gate to Hell or something and it requires the blood/souls of then new family. Lots of old tropes: creepy townsfolk all in a dark secret, one normal townie, etc.

Very slow paced at first, but eventually picks up. There's some decent gore, some okay creepiness.

But in terms of rock star turned moviemaker, this isn't the super awesome high energy combo of serial killer lore/mystical satanism/super sleaze that a Rob Zombie film is. For a first effort, it's okay, and better than the average horror flick. That isn't saying very much though because most are just flat out terrible. But if you have a hankerin' for a horror movie, you could do worse than this one.

4/10
 
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