Movies We've Seen Recently

[moooo566 (taylor's version)]

Just saw Fighting With My Family, they pretty much nailed every bit of it as far as I'm concerned. The jokes are great, the heartwarming moments are suitably heartwarming, the acting really sells it all. It's got all the storytelling and spectacle I'd expect of a something about wrestling, and was fun even for someone who is only vaguely familiar with wrestling (me), which I guess is partly because it's literally a WWE promo tool but it's really good at that! I don't know how it stands up if you're really really into the WWE and already intimately familiar with Paige's story and the WWE system in general, but unless someone who is has anything bad to say I'd highly recommend it.

[ikaribattousai]

Lords of Chaos was an intensely interesting and well acted docudrama, but it seems to lack an overall thesis statement and maybe I took the wrong intent from it, but the movie seems to have a lot more affection for the people involved in these events than I think any of them deserve.

Isn't It Romantic was definitely not my thing. I liked the director's previous movie, "The Final Girls," which was a fun little twist on the slasher movie. Since this had a similar premise, but with romantic comedies, I was hoping for another gem. It ended up being the shallowest critique of romantic comedy tropes it could possibly be, which is a huge step down from "The Final Girls" which had the strong emotional core of a girl coming to terms with and saying goodbye to her dead mother. Also, most of the jokes didn't land for me.

Greta was a mostly paint by numbers stalker movie that doesn't really hold up to a lot of scrutiny. Chloe Grace Moretz, and Isabella Huppert are both pretty good in their roles, and it was nice to see Maika Monroe again (I haven't seen her in anything since The Guest), but there weren't really any surprises and I'm probably going to forget I saw it by next week.

Alita: Battle Angel is about as good an adaptation of its source material as I could expect to be made in live action. I rented the 1993 OAV on VHS from Hollywood Video as a kid and read a lot of the manga and I was really satisfied with how this movie played out. I'm not saying that it would have been a smash hit if they hadn't made the stylistic mistake of making Alita look like a weird real life / anime hybrid, but I think it wouldn't have tanked in the US so hard if they hadn't.

[Spenny]

Hereditary. Boy. I don't know what to say here, but I'll drop a few sentences here anyways.

I didn't like watching it. It is painfully uncomfortable to watch for the first 3/4ths and then it gets really good. That doesn't mean I didn't like it, because I think I did. Especially after seeing the whole movie and knowing how everything fits together. With that knowledge, I can accept it is a very expertly crafted movie, but it still is not a fun watch for most of it. But, then again, it is a horror movie. I guess being uncomfortable is the point of a horror movie.

After reading stuff after viewing, and Googling as far as I can, I still have one problem with it that I can't find closure for. It's ultimately unimportant I'll spoiler it, and if you guys know anything, please let me know. When Annie explains the time when she tried to kill the kids while sleepwalking, she says she woke up to "Peter in Charlie's bed." saying it was back when they shared a room. Is this implying Peter had molested Charlie at a young age? Maybe it was just that Annie moved Charlie into Peter's bed to burn them all at once?

Like I said, ultimately it doesn't play in to the whole actual ordeal, but it was something I noticed that nobody I've Google'd seems to have. There's also a decent chance the guy doing captions for Amazon's transcriptioning misheard the line, because I know that happened at least once in the movie.

EDIT: as long as I'm here, here's all the movies I watched while I was sick, in order.

Sorry to Bother You: fantastic. Had a really satisfyingly uncomfortable turn.

Annihilation: very beautiful and very good.

mother!: I was in the middle of a sinus infection. Fever, constant headache, unending sinus pressure, you name it. This was the wrong movie to watch. It was a stressful headache the whole way through. I caught on to the subtext when the son bashed the other son's head in and I thought wow, this is some Cain and Abel shit. That doesn't stop this whole movie from being extremely stressful. 'People not listening to me in desperate situations' is a nightmare I have constantly, apparently as does everyone judging from the reviews. Even after I caught on it still managed to make me uncomfortable. I really think it deserves points for that. It's been a week now and I don't think I can actually say if I liked or disliked this film, it's just a strong experience I had while very sick, and if you also want to get hurt, then go for it

Overlord. Overlord! I loved this one. It was my favorite. I knew exactly what I was getting in to and I had so much fun along the way. I hope Hollywood uses more Wyatt Russel.

Widows wow I dunno. It was definitely directed well, and I enjoyed it. Elizabeth Debicki is the stand out star. Her character had a bit to overcome and she overcame it! I was proud of her, and then the big shit happened and she was the only one injured, but the final scene showed she's fine so whatever

Everything can't always have a happy ending. You always have to go back to work after having a few gross movie days.

[Ambious]

Contact remains one of my favorite movies ever.

[moooo566 (taylor's version)]

Caught up on some Marvel movies because someone from work wanted to see Captain Marvel with me.

Doctor Strange: I didn't particularly like it. I don't think he's an especially interesting character (although the time manipulation stuff is kind of fun) and I think the first half of the film with all the character development went on way too long for how much it actually contributed. This is a running theme with my superhero film opinions but it really needed to be like half an hour shorter.

Thor Ragnarok: Probably my favourite MCU film, there were actual good jokes, the fights were fun, the new characters were mostly fun and/or interesting and the old ones were used really well. If they're going to keep making superhero films I really hope they take a lead from this one and remember to actually be fun.

Black Panther: Pretty good, I think it was probably hyped harder than any film could possibly deliver. I felt like it fell apart a little at the end when they all started turning on each other but it was still really good. Killmonger is great (and hot), although I think his big fight with T'Challa was a bit underwhelming in a film (and entire genre) full of flashy nonsense. Was a bit disappointed by the soundtrack, I heard it had Kendrick and then it was mostly just the usual cinematic orchestra stuff.

Infinity War: A disappointing self indulgent mess. I don't know if I've just gotten lost in the jumble or what, but the film clearly wants me to care about these characters (Scarlet Witch and Vision above all others) that I don't feel like I really know at all. The cool villains basically had zero character and big boring Thanos got all the screen time. Every ten minutes was just a cut to some new story that had minimal connections to the previous part. I wish it felt more like an entire film in it's own right rather than a rushed act one to set up a more interesting sequel. I understand Thanos had to win but it felt a bit miserable how one sided it was, like there wasn't even any suspense. Thanos pops up, fucks everything up with no issue, then repeat ten times and bam I've spent a whole evening and I'm mostly just confused. I'm really disappointed by the characters they chose to kill off. Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, the Hulk, Black Widow (less so, she really should have got her own film) all made it through, I'd have thought at least some of them were shoe-ins for death just because the audience is attached to them, and also because it would give more space to the newer more interesting characters to have their time, and also get the pieces moving for whatever the next stages are. Instead they killed off the people I didn't know so well, which has less of an impact and leaves me with yet more fucking Iron Man and Captain America. Fingers crossed Endgame feels a little more coherent.

Captain Marvel: I really liked this one. The story was good, I really like a prequel, especially a 90s prequel, rather than them trying to jam yet more into the present day stuff. It's probably my favourite of the more serious Marvel films. They got pretty much everything right as far as I'm concerned - it's still a superhero film but it's got the storytelling and pacing right on, and it looked and sounded really good. I think the soundtrack was compiled specifically to pander to me.

I've got a couple more I haven't seen yet but I'm really feeling superheroed out at the moment.

[sambair]

I liked Infinity War more than I thought I would, but I went with low expectations and just wanted to watch lasers and schlocky melodrama. I like superhero movies well enough, but I don't think I've seen an MCU movie in theaters since Captain America 2.

[Cleretic]

The actual Avengers films seem to pin a whole lot of hope on people enjoying very specific characters that are more central to the plot itself than the others. The first one was gambling a lot on Thor and Loki, Age of Ultron on Ultron himself, Tony Stark and debatably Captain America, and Infinity War on Scarlet Witch, Vision, and to a lesser extent Star Lord and Gamorra.

That's fair enough and makes sense, but the thing that gets me is that Infinity War had the timeframe to know better than to pick what they did. Loki was set in motion to be the Avengers villain from his introduction, so they were kinda just hoping that Thor wasn't the weak link of those movies. Age of Ultron's making a combination safe bet and gamble; they know Stark can carry things well, but Ultron was a wildcard since he hadn't been in the movies at all. But by Infinity War they knew that Scarlet Witch and Vision weren't gonna be able to carry that load, and they had plenty of time to reshuffle things to put main dramatic spotlight on either someone who definitely can (the Guardians who already had stake that could be elevated further, old standard of an O.G. Avenger) or take a gamble on a newer one that might've paid off between filming and release (Doctor Strange, Black Panther, what they're currently doing with Captain Marvel). Making Scarlet Witch and Vision basically their climactic emotional moment and conflict is just... an awful idea, because they're basically the only ones on the table that we know can't handle that responsibility.

[Pigeon Pal]

I watched The Lobster and I don't really like how it was billed as a comedy when it's pretty damn dark, but otherwise I really enjoyed it.

[Blandest]

What else would you call a black comedy then?

[Pigeon Pal]

I'm not sure, I just wasn't expecting a graphic dog death is all.

[Ambious]

Huston Hawk is a wonderful movie, I can't fathom why it flopped so hard both critically and financially.

[sambair]

Just got back from seeing Us. Pretty great performances all around, especially from Lupita Nyong'o, and some really impressive uses of real places to get surreal imagery. I can recommend it to anyone who likes Jordan Peele or horror movies in general. I won't say any more because it's a pretty good movie to go into knowing as little as possible.

[Dr. Buttplug]

Just got back from seeing Us. Pretty great performances all around, especially from Lupita Nyong'o, and some really impressive uses of real places to get surreal imagery. I can recommend it to anyone who likes Jordan Peele or horror movies in general. I won't say any more because it's a pretty good movie to go into knowing as little as possible.

Just got back from seeing it purely on your recommendation. You are absolutely right. Fantastic!

[Ambious]

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is one of the best movies I've seen in recent years.

[sambair]

Watched the original 1977 Suspiria because I wanted to see it before watching the remake, can recommend. I could talk about the cinematography or the soundtrack, but instead I'm going to say you should watch it because it has a scene with a 33 year old Udo Kier.