Rate the Last Movie You Saw

[Sock Monkey]

I hope not, lol. I read that there is already an extended cut available on-demand, and it was only 4 minutes longer. Probably more vampire penis!

LOL!

[dannyboy121070]

Talking about Nosferatu, I heard there's a three hour cut out there. Wonder if that's ever going to see the light of day.

I hope not, lol. I read that there is already an extended cut available on-demand, and it was only 4 minutes longer. Probably more vampire penis!

[Sock Monkey]

Talking about Nosferatu, I heard there's a three hour cut out there. Wonder if that's ever going to see the light of day.

[dannyboy121070]

dannyboy121070 brlesh

Thanks for the replies. It's not likely I will get to see this in the theater (Bummer) but will check this out once it's on something I already pay for.

It'll probably hit Peacock by March. They already have a making-of doc on there.

[Ben Staad]

dannyboy121070 brlesh

Thanks for the replies. It's not likely I will get to see this in the theater (Bummer) but will check this out once it's on something I already pay for.

[brlesh]

Listed runtime is a little over 2 hours. Did the movie feel long at all?

Not at all.

With the 20 - 30 minute pre-movie trailers & commercials, I tend to start getting antsy around the 2 hour mark, or earlier if I’m bored with the movie.

I actually never once thought about the time during Nosferatu.

B

[dannyboy121070]

Listed runtime is a little over 2 hours. Did the movie feel long at all?

I saw it Christmas week, and I remember it as being closer to two and a half hours. Great-looking film, but I think I finally hit Dracula fatigue, or at least fatigue of the traditional Dracula retelling. I was bored a lot of the time, and while Skarsgard delivers a great, totally unrecognizable performance, the look of Count Orlock, which was kept top-secret, proved to be a huge letdown, and reminded me a lot of a major vampire character from early on in Mike Mignola's HELLBOY series. I was hoping for a more faithful update of the silent-film version. My filmmaking-school son loved it, but...I guess I've seen too much, am too jaded? Been there and done that. Everyone else seems to love it, though. I did think it was worth seeing for the performances. Willem Dafoe was great, as always.

[Ben Staad]

Listed runtime is a little over 2 hours. Did the movie feel long at all?

Saw Nosferatu the other night and really enjoyed it.

I thought it definitely lived up to the hype.

The cinematography was incredible, probably the best looking movie I’ve seen in years.

Well acted: I’ve never seen Lily Rose Depp in anything else, but thought she was very good as the vampire’s object of desire through the ages.

Skarsgard was very good as the lead villain.

Dafoe was borderline on over acting / hamming it up, but it worked for his crazy Van Helsing inspired character.

The dialogue was almost Shakespearian, but once again, it fit the story.

Gory enough to remind you that it is a horror movie, but never over the top.

My only complaint was I found the ending to be a little anticlimactic.

But, all in all, well worth the trip to the movie theater.

B

[sholloman81]

Saw Nosferatu the other night and really enjoyed it.

I thought it definitely lived up to the hype.

The cinematography was incredible, probably the best looking movie I’ve seen in years.

Well acted: I’ve never seen Lily Rose Depp in anything else, but thought she was very good as the vampire’s object of desire through the ages.

Skarsgard was very good as the lead villain.

Dafoe was borderline on over acting / hamming it up, but it worked for his crazy Van Helsing inspired character.

The dialogue was almost Shakespearian, but once again, it fit the story.

Gory enough to remind you that it is a horror movie, but never over the top.

My only complaint was I found the ending to be a little anticlimactic.

But, all in all, well worth the trip to the movie theater.

B

Glad to hear that this ended up being good. I've been on the fence as to seeing it at the theater. Pretty much love all of Eggers movies so far but am not the biggest Nicholas Hoult fan. I'll catch it at some point I'm sure!

[brlesh]

Saw Nosferatu the other night and really enjoyed it.

I thought it definitely lived up to the hype.

The cinematography was incredible, probably the best looking movie I’ve seen in years.

Well acted: I’ve never seen Lily Rose Depp in anything else, but thought she was very good as the vampire’s object of desire through the ages.

Skarsgard was very good as the lead villain.

Dafoe was borderline on over acting / hamming it up, but it worked for his crazy Van Helsing inspired character.

The dialogue was almost Shakespearian, but once again, it fit the story.

Gory enough to remind you that it is a horror movie, but never over the top.

My only complaint was I found the ending to be a little anticlimactic.

But, all in all, well worth the trip to the movie theater.

B

[Sock Monkey]

Year-End Wrap Part 3 (of 3):

The Family Man (2000):

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Listen, sometimes you love a movie even though you know that it has flaws and doesn't quite work, and The Family Man is one of those movies for me. I'm not quite sure why I watched this movie in the first place as I'm not a fan of Nic Cage, Tea Leoni, or director Brett Ratner, though I have a sneaking suspicion it's due to Don Cheadle, who I've been a fan of since his days on Picket Fences (anyone remember that show?). Yet there is something about this Christmas mash-up of A Christmas Carol and It's a Wonderful LIfe with a Nic Cage playing a cutthroat businessman who gets a "glimpse" into what his life would have been like if he had stayed with his college sweetheart, played by Tea Leoni. The movie falls apart in its finale, but there's something about the chemistry between Nic Cage and Tea Leoni (this has to be her best performance ever, playing straight man to Cage's--albeit, toned down--weirdness), the adorableness of his daughter Annie, and just the sincerity that the film plays out that just makes it work for me. Truly it comes down to the cast being stacked with great character actors like Jeremy Piven, Harve Presnell, Josef Sommer, and Saul Rubinek. Everyone is on board and the world that Nic Cage finds himself feels both heightened in the way that the best Christmas movies do, but also lived in. I didn't know if it would hold up since I hadn't seen it in five or so years, but it absolutely did. Grade: Not going to rate this one, but I love it.

Rebel Ridge (2024):

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...And this is the problem with Netflix. I'm a HUGE Jeremy Saulnier fan, counting Green Room in my Top 5 movies, period. I even carved out a very limited spot during Fantastic Fest one year to catch Hold the Dark on the big screen, knowing that it would be on Netflix a few days later. I should've been watching this on the first day it was released, yet I had no idea that it was available to stream until three months after it came out. Man, Netflix is lucky that they were the first to this streaming game because if they entered the race now with the marketing they have, I have serious doubts they would survive.

Anyways, while not as nerve-wracking as Green Room, Saulnier still delivers an incredibly tense action movie centered around one man's battle against a local police department over the civil forfeiture of the money he was going to use to bail his cousin out of jail. Aaron Pierre gives a star-making performance and holds his own against the equally fantastic Don Johnson.

Quick aside, later-career Don Johnson has become one of my favorite actors. If you haven't done so already, please go watch Cold in July; it's about as perfect of a Lansdale adaptation as we'll ever get.

While I wish there was just a little bit more to the ending, I truly enjoyed this film and highly recommend it. I will say, don't watch the trailer as it gives away one of the film's best lines. Grade: A

Intermission (2003):

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There was this brief moment in the mid-to-late 90s and early 2000s where we would get these movies with sprawling casts and multiple intermingled storylines. I think this all came to a head with 2004's Crash, but one of the ones that I always found interesting was Intermission. Supposedly it contains 43 characters over 11 storylines, but too be honest, I didn't count. I will say that there is a lot going on in the film and it takes about 20-30 minutes to get settled in as the film jumps from one seemingly unconnected story to the next. The film's littered with actors that are either pretty darn famous--Colin Farrell, Cillian Murphy--or faces you'll recognize--Colm Meaney, Shirley Henderson, Kerry Condon. I think I really picked this up because of Kelly MacDonald, who I've always enjoyed since first catching her in Trainspotting. It'd be futile to try to detail the plot, but suffice to say, it follows all these storylines and characters as they cross path, engaging equally in petty crime and attempts in finding love. To be honest, even at only 105 minutes, the film feels a little long by the end and doesn't quite know how to end, but the journey is rather fun and the characters, even when unlikeable, are pretty darn likeable. It was decidedly not my wife's vibe, so your mileage may vary, but if this type of film was in your wheelhouse, then you might find this to be neat little treat. Grade: B-

[Sock Monkey]

Year-End Wrap Up Part 2 (of 3):

Night of the Demon (1957):

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This is another film that has been on my radar for a while since floating back to the horror community's consciousness and I'm really kicking myself for waiting as long as I did to purchase the Indicator blu-ray. Based on the M.R. James story "Casting the Runes," the film follows an American psychologist (Dana Andrews) teams up with a niece of a colleague who has recently died under mysterious circumstances to investigate a cult that may have been involved in the colleague's death. A love a good curse-with-a-ticking-time-clock film and this appears to be the granddaddy of them all--frankly how much Raimi's Drag Me to Hell owes to this film was illuminating--and it didn't disappoint in the least. I was worried that the wife wouldn't like it as she hated Tourneau's Cat People; however, she wound up loving it. Tourneau directs the heck out of the film and the two leads have great chemistry together and Andrews plays the squared-jawed skeptic perfectly. There is the well-known controversy that Tourneau did not want the titular demon ever to be shown and I kinda agree that I wish it hadn't, at least in the beginning, so as to play into the doubts of whether the curse is real or not. Regardless, the film still works perfectly and this--and the Indicator disc, which is packed with both the UK and US versions and tons of special features--is highly recommended and worth the cost. Grade: A

Longlegs (2024):

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I've been a fan of Osgood Perkins's films since catching The Blackcoat's Daughter--which is so much better on a rewatch, by the way--and equally enjoyed I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House, even if it was a LOT slower and more obtuse than his previous offering. To say his film's are a "deliberately paced" would be an understatement as Perkins's films work more on a slow drifting mist of dread and small intense punctuations of violence to unnerve the viewer. Whether this works or not really depends on how willing one is to meeting the film on its own terms. I was very hesitant to pull the trigger on this one due to Nicolas Cage's involvement as I find him very hit-or-miss and tend to enjoy him more reined in rather than fully unleashed. However, the film very much worked for me and feels, in a lot of ways, like a spiritual cousin to The Blackcoat's Daughter. The film follows Maika Monroe (The Guest, It Follows) as a young FBI agent recruited by her superior (played by a fantastic Blair Underwood) to help in hunting a serial killer. If this sounds a lot like Silence of the Lambs, then you wouldn't be too far off, but Perkins takes a hard right turn into weirdness as the story unfolds and it, for the most part, it works. There is a late reveal that I saw coming, but besides that I found the world that Perkins created to be fascinating. If slow burn--or Nic Cage at his weirdest--is your jam, then this might be for you. Grade: B+

Quick aside: If Perkins's adaptation of King's The Monkey lives up to the promise of its trailer, then its going to be a blast.

Oddity (2024):

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I reviewed director Damian McCarthy's previous film, Caveat, and found it rather wanting. Some of the film's logic didn't quite work for me, but it was clear that McCarthy was a talent to watch. I will absolutely say, without a doubt, Oddity is a complete banger of a film and I will now be watching anything that comes my from Mr. McCarthy. To talk about the plot would give away far too much and I would recommend going into this as blind as possible. Within the first few minutes, the film gives a hook that is so smart that I was floored I hadn't seen it before and then it gets better. I will also say that I don't get fooled by jump scares easily and this had at least two that knocked me back in my seat in its execution. I loved this film and will be buying it on disc to add to the collection. So good! Grade: A

Speak No Evil (2024):
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I was initially going to pass on this remake of the 2022 Danish film, but I had heard good things and that the film went in a different direction than the incredibly bleak and nihilistic original. It also had the bonus of being directed by James Watkins, who directed the fantastic Eden Lake, a film that I've shared countless times with people and that is always a crowd-pleaser. Well, after watching the film, I'm a little torn. First the good: Watkins does a great job directing the film, ratcheting up the tension as the film progresses. And James McAvoy absolutely kills it in the role of increasingly menacing Paddy. Aisling Franciosi is also simply amazing as Paddy's counterpart, Ciara. The film is pretty beat-for-beat the same as the original until the last act and then it diverges quite a bit and becomes a more traditional Hollywood thriller as the two families battle each other. In this regard, the film becomes one I'd be a lot more likely to revisit, but also a lot less interesting than original. In the remake, an infidelity has been added to the backstory of our two protagonists, Ben and Louise. Yet, the film seems to side with Louise's reasons for her affair in Ben's self-pitying selfishness when his career collapses. Adding this to Ben's passive nature throughout the film, a newly added revelation about Paddy and Ciara's past, and a new, more upbeat ending, the film positions the film's themes around malformed masculinity and the brunt borne by women in these relationships. However, the original poses a far more interesting questions--at least to me--about how much criminal acts are facilitated and exploited by society's reliance on social norms; if society wasn't so nice and polite, would criminals have the opportunity to be so bad? This is complex argument is negated in the remake, replaced by a rather safe critique of domineering patriarchal masculinity. Overall, this is not a bad film and I think most people would find it much more enjoyable than the original. Maybe if I hadn't seen the original, I would have liked this more than I did. Grade: B-

[Sock Monkey]

Have been close to pulling the trigger on the criterion of Eye Without a Face for quite a while. Your review may have pushed me over the edge!

Highly recommended. Per the course for Criterion, the transfer is great and, frankly, the movie is a classic for a reason. If you like older movies and horror film's that edge closer to arthouse than pulp--this one straddles the line very well--then its an easy recommendation. Of course, I'd wait until one of Criterion's or Barnes & Noble's 50% off sales. No reason to spend more than necessary!

[Sock Monkey]

I had to Wiki the end of the film, because I felt like I had missed something, and, sure enough, it was not what I thought it was.

I've done a little bit of research online, but haven't stumbled across anything that resolves it in my mind. I might need to dig a little deeper, though. I only did a cursory search.

[dannyboy121070]

[SIZE=14px][FONT=Calibri]YEAR-END WRAP UP PART 1 (OF 3):



2024 was the year of directors of some my favorite underrated genre films finally making something new. I mentioned this with MadS, but I also get this post-apocalyptic flick from E.L. Katz, whose 2013 dark comedy Cheap Thrills is one of my favorites. Add in that it is written by Simon Barrett (The Guest, You're Next) and I'd already be in, but it also stars Samara Weaving, who I think, even after getting some great buzz from Ready or Not, is still incredibly underrated as an actress. Set after some unknown apocalypse--possibly, the biblical Rapture?--after the murder of her boyfriend, a young woman (Weaving) must fight against a mute cult in order to survive. Also similar to Moreau's MadS having the gimmick of it being a "one-take" film, Katz's movie has its own gimmick in that the film is almost entirely without dialogue. In the hands of a lesser actress, this wouldn't work at all, but Weaving's incredibly emotive reactions carry the weight of the film, leading the viewer on both an emotional and bloody journey. Without dialogue, the film is rather light on both exposition and character development, so if one requires a lot of either to fulfill their cinematic diet, this might feel a little bit like violent cotton candy. For me, even though I didn't quite get it all, I enjoyed piecing the mythology together, and it does feel as if there is a fully fleshed out mythology that is feeding this film, just maybe one that we don't quite understand and the film isn't keen on spelling out. I will also say that the special effects were solid and the designs of the supernatural creatures were pretty gnarly. My only complaint is that I feel like I need to rewatch the film again to see if I nail down the film's ending as I was left scratching my head a little. Grade: B

I had to Wiki the end of the film, because I felt like I had missed something, and, sure enough, it was not what I thought it was.