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

 
 
 
Weapons, 6/10; Stars Josh Brolin, Julia Garner and directed by Zach Cregger. It's a horror/supernatural film about the mysterious disappearance of 17 elementary schoolchildren from the same class. All the kids (except one) from the class leave their house at 2:17am and there is no trace of them. It's quite a well put together plot and the way the story unfolds is quite clever. A decent watch.
 
TSwizzle said:
Weapons, 6/10; Stars Josh Brolin, Julia Garner and directed by Zach Cregger. It's a horror/supernatural film about the mysterious disappearance of 17 elementary schoolchildren from the same class. All the kids (except one) from the class leave their house at 2:17am and there is no trace of them. It's quite a well put together plot and the way the story unfolds is quite clever. A decent watch.
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Sounds somewhat reminiscent of Picnic at Hanging Rock. Been a long time since I saw it, but I remember it as being pretty good.
 
Not Without My Daughter, 7/10; Released in 1991 and starring Sally field and Alfred Molina . The story is apparently true or at least based on a book written by Betty Mahmoody, a US citizen that tells her story about her marriage to Iranian doctor Sayyed Mahmoody. The story starts off in Michigan around 1984. Sayyed insists that the family, Betty and their four year old daughter Mahtob take a trip to Tehran to visit his relatives. Betty is reluctant but agrees to the trip after Sayyed assures her they will return to America after two weeks. Once they arrive in Tehran, Sayyed starts to change. On the day before the family are due to return to the USA, Sayyed informs Betty they are staying in Iran for good. Betty and her daughter are trapped in Iran with the physical and mentally abusive Sayyed. It's an ok movie and starts off well but becomes a bit disjointed as things progress. Sally Field and Alfred Molina are very good.
 
ZiprHead said:
Backrooms

86% on Rotten Tomatoes. Said to be the best horror movie of the year.

If you get a little rattled by being in a corn maze, this movie will freak the fuck right out of you.

A furniture store owner finds a strange door in the basement of his store. It leads to an endless dimension of rooms and hallways and terror.
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Just watched this on a plane. Super creepy for sure but not really sure there was a message that got through. Seemed like there was a psychological concept they were going for but didn’t really deliver.
 
A Hard Days Night (1964)
Watching it now reminded me of the first time I saw it, first run.
I was a kid. My old man had recently bought a small two story building and was renovating the storefront to rent out. I was hanging out and bored, and probably being in the way.
Dad gave me a dollar... "go see a movie". (I think tickets were 75c, popcorn 25c)
The one and only theater (one screen) was only a block away.
Nowadays theaters have multiple screens and play a film till ticket sales slow down.
Back then they made fewer copies. You could fallow the newspaper ads and see a film move from town to town from week to week. We would get a film months after it's release, One Week Only*. So I just happened to see A Hard Days Night that day.
I was impressed. I got back and asked for another dollar to see it again.
dad said "Why didn't you just stay seated?".
!! "I can do that?!???"
It was a revelation.


* If you saw the last showing on the last day, as you left the theater film cans would already be stacked by the door, to be picked-up overnight and taken to the next town for their noon showing.
 
A History Of Violence, 7/10; Released in 2005 and start Viggo Mortensen and Ed Harris. A critically acclaimed movie that I found to be a bit flat. The movie opens with a brutal murder at a motel by two psychopaths. They later stop by a diner run by Tom Stall (Mortensen) and try to rob the place. Quiet mannered Tom manages to kill both of the bad guy and becomes a bit of a national here as the story is covered by TV networks. S short time later, a menacing character appears in the diner and starts calling Tom Joey, Joey Cusack. From here you can guess that Tom is probably an ex mobster that has quit crime or is in the witness protection program. It's a decent movie but some of it is just flat and there are a couple of sex scenes that were just not required. The character of Tom's wife is unlikable, his son is another weak character.
 
You're breaking my heart.

Until this, I would have said that neither actor had been in a bad movie. (From a standpoint of not having watched all of them. )
 
spikepipsqueak said:
You're breaking my heart.

Until this, I would have said that neither actor had been in a bad movie. (From a standpoint of not having watched all of them. )
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Huh? I didn't say it was a bad movie. Mortenson and Harris were good, they always are. In my opinion the movie didn't live up to the critical acclaim I read about it. They seldom do, lol.

Have you seen A History Of Violence? What was your opinion?
 
TSwizzle said:

Have you seen A History Of Violence? What was your opinion?
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Okay, but not great. Pedestrian. This is better than Old Henry, but they're about the same movie. Thief (1981, James Caan) was less good. High noon was somehow much better. Outland (1981, Sean Connery), was a remake of High Noon but not nearly as good. I didn't like Nobody or The Beekeeper at all. The Accountant? I'll rate that higher than History of Violence but lower than High Noon. John Wick was surprisingly good.

They all seem to be more or less the same movie, but that counts against some of them more than others. It counts more against the ones that seem to be saying, "Hey, let's use this old plot and not dress it up or add anything to it." History of Violence is one that, from the getgo, makes you think, "Ah, this one again."

I don't want to oversell my point. There's a good argument that there is only one plot, that all movies are remakes. But some of them seem to rub that in, and some others rise to greatness. History of Violence is competent, and we like the actors, but it doesn't achieve greatness. I like it way better than Payback (1999, Mel Gibson).
 
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Wiploc said:
TSwizzle said:

Have you seen A History Of Violence? What was your opinion?
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Okay, but not great. Pedestrian. This is better than Old Henry, but they're about the same movie. Thief (1981, James Caan) was less good. High noon was somehow much better. Outland (1981, Sean Connery), was a remake of High Noon but not nearly as good. I didn't like Nobody or The Beekeeper at all. The Accountant? I'll rate that higher than History of Violence but lower than High Noon. John Wick was surprisingly good.

They all seem to be more or less the same movie, but that counts against some of them more than others. It counts more against the ones that seem to be saying, "Hey, let's use this old plot and not dress it up or add anything to it." History of Violence is one that, from the getgo, makes you think, "Ah, this one again."

I don't want to oversell my point. There's a good argument that there is only one plot, that all movies are remakes.
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The truth is there are plenty of plots, but they were mostly used up by the late 40s. Then musical adaptations became a thing.

The unfortunate thing is that historical fictions fall to the cliche world as well. Can't do an accurate movie about Alan Turing, let's add some needless bonus drama to Hidden Numbers.
 
Binge watched two TV series available on Net Flix.
Derek (8/10) - A Ricky Gervais series where he plays a physically or mentally challenged 50 year old worker in a nursing home. As you might expect, it is satirical, sarcastic and sweet.
Fisk (9/10) - An Australian comedy about a recently divorced estate attorney. The humor is dry and deadpan, but very funny. The joke that slayed me was an actor asks "Who said 'Exit, stage left", and Fisk replies "Snagglepus?". Anyone who can work Snagglepus into a punchline is a true artiste.
 
Buddy

Kids are trapped and parents are pulled into a 90s style kid show. It's essentially evil Barney the Dinosaur.

It had potential but never realizes it. Ambiguity is fine, but there's not enough here to derive a good interpretation from. A lot of needed information was either hand waved away and/or the work wasn't done to make it coherent.

It's like the filmmakers were behind in payments and the rental company showed up and gave them two hours to finish filming before they took their stuff back. Then two interns worked for free in post-production to get the thing finished.

4/10
 
Greenland 2; Migration
The sequel to Greenland, a disaster movie with great special effects and a weak story. I went in to the follow up thinking it would be bad and it superseded my expectations. Many plot holes, people acting stupid, over-sentimentality and bad science abound in this one.

2/10
 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Under_Suspicion_(2000_film)

I watched "Under Suspicion" last night. I must have seen it many years ago because I watched it on a DVD we had bought. I'd give it about a 6 out of 10. In some ways, it reminded me of a Law and Order plot.

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Under Suspicion is a 2000 American-French thriller film directed by Stephen Hopkins and starring Gene Hackman, Morgan Freeman, Monica Bellucci and Thomas Jane. The film is based on the 1981 French film Garde à Vue and the British novel Brainwash (1979) written by John Wainwright. It was screened out of competition at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival.[4]

Plot​

Wealthy tax attorney Henry Hearst is about to give a speech at an exclusive fundraising party in San Juan, Puerto Rico, as the city celebrates the San Sebastián Festival. He is called to the Puerto Rico Police station to be questioned about the body he found the day before – that of a young girl who had been raped and murdered. Hearst changes his version of events several times; Captain Victor Benezet and Detective Felix Owens question him about inconsistencies in his story. Hearst quickly realizes that they think he committed the murder, as well as that of another young girl whose body was found days earlier, but at this stage of questioning he is unalarmed. Benezet is under pressure from his boss to free Hearst so that he can give his speech. As there is no conclusive proof,
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Dolly

It does an excellent job of establishing creepiness. The practical special effects and set design are top notch*. On a technical level, it's very good. However, it's like the writers purposely set out to use every long worn out horror movie trope ever captured on film e.g. characters doing the stupidest things possible when all they had to do was walk or run away. Unfathomably bad decisions about. There are even some scenes of the victims falling down at the worst possible moment.

If you like horror technique, this is a good one. If you like good movies, this is a bad one.

*OTOH, there's a terrible makeup effect that's so bad it's hilarious. It goes on throughout the film. What's supposed to be a horrific injury becomes Rifftrax worthy.

5/10
 
Green Room, 5/10; I only watched this because it has the recently deceased Patrick Stewart in it. released in 2015 it's a story about a thrash music band that takes a gig in a strange Nazi/Skinhead camp in the Pacific Northwest. Something criminal is going on (drugs) and one of the band members observes the corpse of a dead woman on the premises. So basically the band member are trapped in the changing room (green room) with a bunch of psychos who want to kill them. The story is basically them trying to get out through stealth, negotiation and violence. Patrick Stewart plays his part well of course but the movie is badly filmed, the lighting is so bad you can barely make out what is happening. Not my cup of tea,
 
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