The Official Movie Thread

[challenge_everything]

coming back to this convo a second, i've now seen nine '60s godards and my favourite 2 by far are contempt and pierrot le fou. he's also now my favourite of the 'big five' nouvelle vague directors as things stand although i have much to explore.

It was cool to see Pierrot crop up in Framed the other day. Much more obscure than their usual canon.

I am a Truffault fan so I would have him up there too. I like what I've seen from Resnais and Rivette but not enough to comment on them generally.

 

[rms]

Saw a hellraiser reboot was just released (with a trans woman lead! Jackpot) and decided to give the original a watch for what feels like ten plus years.

Cenobites always creeped me out as a kid, but man Hellraiser does not age well the focus on Frank versus the other world just does not seem like the correct focus. And the not so terrifying demand to Kristy in the hospital is hilarious and I forgot how silly the ending was. Oh man, no wonder the later ones turned into a goofy bdsm lite porn.

Can't believe the new one added thirty minutes of run time. Could've been a 35 minute movie in the original!

 

[CiG]

Rest in peace Robbie Coltrane.

 

[CiG]

So I saw Halloween Ends last night. More like Halloween Ends up being shitty.

The story was just so meh. Total waste of amazing cinematography and an awesome soundtrack. Literally like 1 cool kill. David Gordon Green shit the bed by trying way too hard to serve a bunch of boring subtextual messages about the nature of evil blah blah blah. Forgot he was making a slasher.

 

[no country for old wainds]

So I saw Halloween Ends last night. More like Halloween Ends up being shitty.

 

[CiG]

 

[Vegard Pompey]

Fourth or fifth time watching it. Every bit as good as I remembered, if not better.

 

[CiG]

I think Bill Murray just got #MeToo'd.

 

[no country for old wainds]

I think Bill Murray just got #MeToo'd.

thankfully he made up for it by dropping seth green in a bin headfirst. the hero we all need.

 

[CiG]

thankfully he made up for it by dropping seth green in a bin headfirst. the hero we all need.

“He picked me up by my ankles,” Green said. “Held me upside down … He dangled me over a trash can and he was like, ‘The trash goes in the trash can.’ And I was screaming, and I swung my arms, flailed wildly, full contact with his balls. He dropped me in the trash can, the trash can falls over. I was horrified. I ran away, hid under the table in my dressing room and just cried.”

 

[challenge_everything]

Andrew Dominik's Blonde is getting bodied on RYM.

it’s also getting widely compared to fire walk with me which also got bodied on release, so i’m taking that with a pinch of salt. a lot of the criticisms seem to want it to be a more boring respectful biopic, i’d honestly prefer a trainwreck to that.

I've watched half of it, I feel like the Lynch comparisons are way too complimentary but maybe that'll change when I finish it tomorrow.

I thought most of the criticisms were harsh and were absolutely due to people expecting a more traditional or balanced biopic. It wasn't perfect but I really liked it.

I didn't think it was stylistically like Lynch, but there's definitely a Laura Palmer vibe to the Marilyn/Norma Jean character. I've seen a few comments that it was misogynistic and that Norma Jean is portrayed as an airhead but I don't agree with that at all. The essence of this fictional version of Norma Jean is that she's naive, child-like and too fragile for the world, but there's scenes like where she's giving feedback to Arthur Miller or referencing Chekhov that absolutely demonstrate a level of intelligence that she's never credited for. She's just too compliant, or semi-autistic, to reveal it more often. She's even shown exhibiting an early form of method acting in a rehearsal which gets disapproved of by the studio execs (which frankly is more complimentary to Marilyn than real life because she was very limited as an actress).

I liked how Dominik avoids the usual highs-and-lows biopic cliches - here even the most famous scenes from Marilyn's life which we all recognise are stripped of every vestige of glamour (eg the sewer grate, meeting Kennedy). The daddy issues were laid on a bit thick though, it basically becomes Dominik's version of 'Rosebud'.

The Cave/Ellis soundtrack was a winner too.

@CiG what did you think in the end?

 

[Bloopy]

“He picked me up by my ankles,” Green said. “Held me upside down … He dangled me over a trash can and he was like, ‘The trash goes in the trash can.’ And I was screaming, and I swung my arms, flailed wildly, full contact with his balls. He dropped me in the trash can, the trash can falls over. I was horrified. I ran away, hid under the table in my dressing room and just cried.”

Crazy how he didn't get the last of the trash embedded in his head removed until adulthood.

 

[CiG]

I thought most of the criticisms were harsh and were absolutely due to people expecting a more traditional or balanced biopic. It wasn't perfect but I really liked it.

I didn't think it was stylistically like Lynch, but there's definitely a Laura Palmer vibe to the Marilyn/Norma Jean character. I've seen a few comments that it was misogynistic and that Norma Jean is portrayed as an airhead but I don't agree with that at all. The essence of this fictional version of Norma Jean is that she's naive, child-like and too fragile for the world, but there's scenes like where she's giving feedback to Arthur Miller or referencing Chekhov that absolutely demonstrate a level of intelligence that she's never credited for. She's just too compliant, or semi-autistic, to reveal it more often. She's even shown exhibiting an early form of method acting in a rehearsal which gets disapproved of by the studio execs (which frankly is more complimentary to Marilyn than real life because she was very limited as an actress).

I liked how Dominik avoids the usual highs-and-lows biopic cliches - here even the most famous scenes from Marilyn's life which we all recognise are stripped of every vestige of glamour (eg the sewer grate, meeting Kennedy). The daddy issues were laid on a bit thick though, it basically becomes Dominik's version of 'Rosebud'.

The Cave/Ellis soundtrack was a winner too.

@CiG what did you think in the end?

I agree with much of what you said there.

For me the comparison my mind kept going to was Nitram in the sense that I loved the mechanics of the film; the way it's shot, the cinematography, the angles, the soundtrack etc. But I just struggled to give a shit about the material itself, and I think it's more or less down to how fictionalised it was.

Like Caleb Landry Jones in Nitram, Ana de Armas obviously completely lost herself in the role and it was really enjoyable to watch that go down on the screen. But at times I found the breathy never-ending mental breakdown style of the plot to be a bit insufferable. I found myself drifting from indifference to suddenly sitting upright in full attention. It was an odd experience for me.

I do feel some sympathy with accusations of misogyny in the sense that much Monroe's misery was reduced to her not having a child, but at the same time it's not as if that never happens to women. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Ultimately I've been pretty intellectually lazy with the film and should rewatch it at some point. I didn't bomb it in my ratings though, so obviously there's something there beyond the aesthetics that I liked.

Crazy how he didn't get the last of the trash embedded in his head removed until adulthood.

View attachment 32051

 

[TechnicalBarbarity]

NP

...im about halfway through but holy shit this movie is fuckin' awesome!

 

[RadicalThrasher]

Tonight's episode of "wtf am i watching "


Moonchild (1994) ...in the opening credits it thanks the iron maiden song for partial inspiration. @CiG , don't know what your tolerance is for SOV garbage, but has to be seen to be believed.

Synopsis:

(1994) In a dystopian future, political prisoner Jacob Stryker is transformed into a werewolf super soldier by government scientists. He escapes captivity and searches for his son, who may be the messiah, and joins an army of karate kicking rebellion fighters poised to overthrow the United Nations of America. Along the way, Jacob is hunted by a group of cyborg and mutant bounty hunters as he tries to forget the bomb implanted in his stomach that's set to explode in 72 hours.
A mind-boggling, sprawling, shot on video horror/ sci-fi/ action/ martial arts epic from SOV fan favorite Todd Sheets (Zombie Bloodbath, Goblin) that is one of the most ambitious and offbeat low budget movies of the VHS era.

Spoiler

Spoiler

some reviews from letterboxed

The worst thing about MOONCHILD is that it isn't a werewolf film. Sure, the main dude, Jacob Stryker, has the potential to wolf out, but he only goes full man-in suit at the end for 10-ish seconds.
Instead, this is a mega ambitious Post-Apocalyptic adventure film in the vein of 2019: AFTER THE FALL OF NEW YORK, in which a rag-tag group of weirdos trek across the wasteland (of Kansas City) to save a child who may be the world's messiah. Shot for a few hundred dollars, it's got almost a dozen charming main characters (including a feisty 10-year-old girl), multiple low-speed car chases (with explosions), and a brain slurping assassin that looks like Amy Sedaris. It's a bit light on gore for a Sheets film, but all his regular rainbow-coloured lighting is on full display.

There's a lot to love about Moonchild: the slow-speed car chases, the badly choreographed fight scenes, the awful effects, an epic story that far exceeded the scope of their budget, or how the cast was probably tasked with putting their own outfits together for $20 down at the local Goodwill, which would explain why the bounty hunter Medusa (played by a scene-chewing grandma) has a stuffed Beanie Baby snake wrapped around her head. Personally, my favorite small detail was how the evil villain's lair has its very own Study Room.

Spoiler

Rerelease art

 

[CiG]

Moonchild (1994) ...in the opening credits it thanks the iron maiden song for partial inspiration. @CiG , don't know what your tolerance is for SOV garbage, but has to be seen to be believed.

Remind me what's "SOV" again?

Btw I rented Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich because I remembered you praising it awhile back, and also because it's October. Probably watching it tonight!

 

[no country for old wainds]

SOV = shot on video

that puppet master movie's written by zahler btw in case you've forgotten!

 

[CiG]

Oh yeah I knew about the Zahler connection.

Rolling solo tonight so I'm watching autistic waindscore trash. I'll wait for when my kid is over before I watch Puppet Master.

 

[Krow]

Is that the newest Puppet Master? I cant remember. But if its the one I'm thinking that movie was mean as fuck! wasnt expecting that at all.

 

[no country for old wainds]

Rolling solo tonight so I'm watching autistic waindscore trash. I'll wait for when my kid is over before I watch Puppet Master.

View attachment 32052

you've seen that before, right?