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

The Lovebirds - 2/10

ever seen Date Night? steve carrel, tina fey, a couple go out and get pulled into a series of incidents... it's quirky and funny and has a lot of memorable lines in it and is one of the few rom-coms that i love.
now imagine that, only it's utterly terrible in every single way with awful writing, stupid dialogue, and everyone is shrill and retarded.
 
prideandfall said:
The Lovebirds - 2/10

ever seen Date Night? steve carrel, tina fey, a couple go out and get pulled into a series of incidents... it's quirky and funny and has a lot of memorable lines in it and is one of the few rom-coms that i love.
now imagine that, only it's utterly terrible in every single way with awful writing, stupid dialogue, and everyone is shrill and retarded.
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The title sounds promising at least. Speaking of Steve Carell. Recently watched Crazy Stupid, Love. Who decided Carell is a comedian anyway? If it wasn't for Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone's characters, the movie was a disaster. 4/10
 
Shoplifters

I can't describe what makes this film so involving without foreshadowing developments, but it's well worth seeing. 9/10
 
The Final Countdown

What would happen if a modern (in 1980) aircraft carrier were thrown back in time to December 6th, 1941 by a mysterious storm? Would they be able to use their superior firepower and technology to stop the attack on Pearl Harbor?

More importantly, would it make a cool movie? I think the answer is mostly yes.

Kirk Douglas is great as the captain of the Nimitz. A young Martin Sheen shines as the "consultant" dropped off on the ship who figures out what's going on and asks the important questions. Charles Durning does a great turn as a Senator caught up in the time travel dilemma he doesn't understand due to his outsized ego. The resolution to the story is a little too easy, and it's wrapped up in a way that doesn't quite work, but hey...F-14's fighting Japanese Zeros? That was pretty cool.
 
Ford said:
The Final Countdown

What would happen if a modern (in 1980) aircraft carrier were thrown back in time to December 6th, 1941 by a mysterious storm? Would they be able to use their superior firepower and technology to stop the attack on Pearl Harbor?

More importantly, would it make a cool movie? I think the answer is mostly yes.

Kirk Douglas is great as the captain of the Nimitz. A young Martin Sheen shines as the "consultant" dropped off on the ship who figures out what's going on and asks the important questions. Charles Durning does a great turn as a Senator caught up in the time travel dilemma he doesn't understand due to his outsized ego. The resolution to the story is a little too easy, and it's wrapped up in a way that doesn't quite work, but hey...F-14's fighting Japanese Zeros? That was pretty cool.
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Saw that about a dozen times as a kid. Loved the Zero trying to shake the F-14 by flying into clouds.
 
Florence Foster Jenkins

I watched this expecting a film with Maggie Smith.

Got quite a surprise.

Meryl Streep deserves a purple heart for taking that on.
 
Ad Astra - 0.5/10
it gets 0.5 marks for at least being a studio production that had the camera pointed in the right direction and had completed special effects.
but literally everything else about this was abysmal: the story was a tired retread cliche about the end of the world and daddy issues, and the narrative beats were nonsensical, and in many places the science was really blatantly garbage for the sake of a dramatic moment.
it's exceedingly rare that i won't finish a movie, and this was one of them.

The Lighthouse - 0/10
speaking of movies i didn't finish...
this was the cinematic equivalent of being strapped to a combine engine in the sun for 2 hours: loud and boring.
the dialogue is muttered under a ton of environmental sound effects, and then hard cuts to something extremely loud, so for the 45 minutes i attempted to watch this dumpster fire i spent more time with my finger on the volume control than i did engaged with the film.
not that there's anything to engage with... two guys are running a lighthouse on an island. it sucks. the end.

Ready or Not - 5/10
a fairly light hearted silly/stupid horror comedy, with an unusually dumb setup to its premise, but it mostly makes up for it with the clever use of comedic gore and tactical violence.
 
Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga, 5/10; Stars Will Ferrell and Rachel McAdams as an Icelandic pop duo who aspire to win the Eurovision Song Contest. They get their chance to represent Iceland after the original artist is killed in a boating accident. It's an OK movie and has some pretty spectacular musical sequences in it. The humor is subtle as it takes the piss and pays homage to one of the cheesiest song competitions ever invented.
 
The Vast of Night, 2019. Found on Amazon. If you are a fan of The Outer Limits and Art Bell, black and white TV and radio, check this one out. I really really enjoyed it.
 
Ryan's Daughter (1970) Everything the detractors say about this film has some merit. It is overlong. It does lose its pace. It does have one weak central performance (Christopher Jones). But I love it for its many finely-crafted elements: the nature photography (you want to be on that beach), the understated power of Robert Mitchum, the subtle mystery in Sarah Miles' performance, the musical score, the sight of Trevor Howard striding through the film in his priest's robes, the piquant dialogue. Trevor Howard's final line to Mitchum, about doubt, is a memorable sendoff. I cannot make up my mind about John Mills as the mentally challenged Michael. He does wonders with the character, but I'm not comfortable with this kind of plot trope (maybe because of how atrocious The Other Sister is.)
Anyway, for the uninitiated, if you have 206 minutes to spare, Ryan's Daughter is worth seeing. (Directed by David Lean, who left films for about 15 years after reading the critics' takedown of this film.)
 
ideologyhunter said:
Ryan's Daughter (1970) Everything the detractors say about this film has some merit. It is overlong. It does lose its pace. It does have one weak central performance (Christopher Jones). But I love it for its many finely-crafted elements: the nature photography (you want to be on that beach), the understated power of Robert Mitchum, the subtle mystery in Sarah Miles' performance, the musical score, the sight of Trevor Howard striding through the film in his priest's robes, the piquant dialogue. Trevor Howard's final line to Mitchum, about doubt, is a memorable sendoff. I cannot make up my mind about John Mills as the mentally challenged Michael. He does wonders with the character, but I'm not comfortable with this kind of plot trope (maybe because of how atrocious The Other Sister is.)
Anyway, for the uninitiated, if you have 206 minutes to spare, Ryan's Daughter is worth seeing. (Directed by David Lean, who left films for about 15 years after reading the critics' takedown of this film.)
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A stunningly beautiful film.
 
Dr Sleep - 5/10

A sequel to The Shining, with the kid as an adult trying to help another kid with the shining escape a group of evil shiners who eat the power of other people in order to stay young. The movie starts out great and the middle is great. However, the end of it drops off a cliff. Details in hide tags for those who haven't seen it.


The whole premise that there were building towards in the movie as soon as they showed the row of boxes in Danny's mind with the ghosts in them was that he was going to open those boxes and the finale was going to be the ghosts fighting the bad guys. But then that never really happened. They did do the scene, but then the ghosts were there for about two minutes when there was one bad guy left and it was over in a second.

The film fell apart when they killed all the bad guys in the woods. At that point, why go to the Overlook? There was one bad guy left and they could feel her coming, so just wait and shoot the bitch. She has no defense against a guy with a gun, so is of a limited threat level. I think it would have been much better if the ambush hadn't worked and the smokey stuff healed their wounds, so they were forced to run and going to the Overlook is a last ditch effort to use magic against magic and then have ten or fifteen minutes of ghosts vs bad guys in the halls there.

Also, drive a dump truck full of money up to Jack Nicholson's house to have him do a cameo. If they had done the bar scene with Nicholson standing there doing the other side of the conversation, it would have been epic. Instead they had some REALLY BAD cgi of him which was so terrible that it took a couple of minutes before you were sure that they were actually trying to put Nicholson's face on the body. A potentially awesome scene flopped badly as a result.



So, an excellent movie for about an hour and a half, but then none of the payoff it was leading up to. It would have been better if the whole thing was terrible so it could just be forgotten as opposed to getting you so worked up by the potential they built and then crushing your expectations with bland garbage.
 
Knives Out, 3/10; A strong ensemble cast including 007 Daniel Craig, Don Johnson, Christopher Plummer. A convoluted Agatha Christie type whodunnit that would make for an OK book but was a dreadful movie. The movie start out ok with some amusing dialogue. But it descends into a cliche ridden mess the longer it went on. I had to bail about halfway through.
 
Whoa, really? I watched Knives Out a few weeks ago and loved it! It's campy, but I thought it was rather meant to be, and Daniel Craig's performance had me in stitches.

8/10 stars.
 
I thought Knives Out was formulaic. If you like the whodunnit genre, it's okay. But it has all the limitations of the form -- including the big old house where the rich guy lived, the half dozen or so people who stood to gain by his death, etc., etc. The form was done definitively in And Then There Were None (1945 version; accept no substitutes.)
 
ideologyhunter said:
I thought Knives Out was formulaic. If you like the whodunnit genre, it's okay. But it has all the limitations of the form -- including the big old house where the rich guy lived, the half dozen or so people who stood to gain by his death, etc., etc. The form was done definitively in And Then There Were None (1945 version; accept no substitutes.)
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Murder by Death (1976)?

I haven't seen the one you named, so I'll need to add it to the TCM list.
 
I thought it was great, lots of twist and turns, but I have to admit I don't and haven't watched a lot of "who dunnits".
 
ideologyhunter said:
I thought Knives Out was formulaic. If you like the whodunnit genre, it's okay. But it has all the limitations of the form -- including the big old house where the rich guy lived, the half dozen or so people who stood to gain by his death, etc., etc. The form was done definitively in And Then There Were None (1945 version; accept no substitutes.)
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I thought it was entertaining, if implausible. Also some elements of a pro-immigrant morality tale.

But what struck me was - wouldn't a fatal dose of morphine get a person very high very quickly? Also, since it turned out he got his usual dose, didn't he notice it? I think most people would notice 3mg of morphine injection.

Also, there was no explanation for Jaimie Lee Curtis being cut from the will. I guess including might be repetitive.
 
ideologyhunter said:
I thought Knives Out was formulaic. If you like the whodunnit genre, it's okay. But it has all the limitations of the form -- including the big old house where the rich guy lived, the half dozen or so people who stood to gain by his death, etc., etc. The form was done definitively in And Then There Were None (1945 version; accept no substitutes.)
Click to expand...

I thought it was entertaining, if implausible. Also some elements of a pro-immigrant morality tale.

But what struck me was - wouldn't a fatal dose of morphine get a person very high very quickly? Also, since it turned out he got his usual dose, didn't he notice it? I think most people would notice 3mg of morphine injection.
 
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