Rate the Last Movie You Saw

[dannyboy121070]

One of the things that I seriously dislike about this message board are the lack of threads...everything that anyone could possibly talk about are tied up in a handful of threads: Random Thoughts, and What are you reading/watching/listening to? Going forward, I'm going to try to start new threads for books that I'm reading, and movies that I've seen recently, to try to spur on a little more diverse conversation around here. I love the movie talk here, but once we start talking about PREY, for example, then the talk about NOPE dies out. I'd like to have more specific threads on the board that people can pop into and have discussions when they finally get around to seeing/reading specific films and books.

That said......My wife and son and I watched PREY last week, and we all loved it. I thought Amber Midthunder did a great job as the hero. Being adorably cute was also a plus. The animal CGI didn't bother me much, because I'm used to iffy animal CGI at this point. I guess the days of filming an actual bear or dog are gone. (I know the dog was real, I was thinking more about the recent CALL OF THE WILD remake, which I really enjoyed, but the fake dog drove me nuts.) PREY seems to be a huge hit for Hulu, so I'm hoping we get some more Predator adventures in different time periods. And it's still not too late for the Arnold/Danny Glover team-up that I've wanted to see for decades......

My wife and I watched THE BLACK PHONE on Peacock last night. We both enjoyed it, but I'm glad that I didn't see it in a theater. Nothing about it needed to be seen on a big-screen. That make me sad to say, since I used to go to the movies every weekend pre-Covid, but most of my trips to the theater post-Covid have been awful. People just don't know how to act in public anymore. Loud talking, phones, tablets, yelling at the screen......I tend to only go see the big spectacles now, early in the morning, before the assholes wake up, and leave smaller films for home viewing. Back to THE BLACK PHONE....I thought there was some great acting on display, especially the little girl, and Ethan Hawke always kills it, whatever he's in. The dialogue was pretty corny at times, especially the kids, who all spoke in that faux-hip Stephen King kids voice, such as the little sister cursing out the cops and calling them "fartknockers".....And as someone who grew up in that time period, in The Bronx: That was maybe THE most violent neighborhood in America! Kung-fu kids beating the teeth out of bullies, knife-fights at the convenience store, rocks bashing heads and faces, plus a serial killer in a black van, which I would think would make SOME nosy neighbor take notice, lol. Good film, great performances.

I'm also about halfway through Netflix's THE SANDMAN adaptation, but I should start a new thread about that.

[Sock Monkey]

I watched Prey on Friday night and had the weekend to mull it over. Set in the late 1700s, the movie follows a group of Comanche hunters, including a female hunter who has yet to prove herself, as they have to battle a Predator hunting in their area. I absolutely loved the idea of taking the concept of the original Predator and setting it in a time period where we had even more primitive weapons (no one is blasting the jungle apart with a gatling gun in this movie!). Even the teaser trailer showing a the female Comanche hunter running from the woods into a prairie only to be dragged down by a fellow hunter who signals that there is something in the woods and draws his bow before the signature three laser dots show up on him was incredibly effective. I was hoping for more of this pared down approach. I hate to say "a little more realistic" when dealing with a hunter from space that uses high-tech gadgetry to kill his prey and acquire trophies, but, yeah, maybe a movie where the characters were a little more original Die Hard John McClane instead of Keanu Reeves's titular John Wick. That was definitely not the case. The movie was filled with standard modern Hollywood action set pieces where our heroes can somehow slide across the forest floor or bounce of trees to launch attacks. On one hand, I loved that Hollywood has progressed from the depiction of Native Americans as "noble savages" to showing them as kick-butt warriors. But on the other, some of this left me cold as a lot of modern action movies do.

As I watching the movie, I think what it came down to was that the movie felt too modern. Beyond the title card stating the year and the rudimentary weapons and technology, the movie just didn't feel like it was set in the late 1700s. The actors were great, but all their actions and mannerisms were very modern. I'm assuming this was deliberate the on the part of the director--maybe to ostensibly show that in that time they were modern?--and the acting we see depicting that time period in other films is surely manicured artifice, but these decisions created a weird anachronistic feel to the movie that, at least for me, made the acting feel out of place in the world that is being created around them.

The ultimate takedown of the Predator was just okay, but I didn't feel that it was clever enough to feel earned. As far as the special effects, the CGI on the Predator was solid, but the CGI on the animals in the film was not very good. And we just saw the Predator too darn much. There wasn't the feeling of our heroes were being stalked and hunted so much as if they were just on the tracks when a train barreled through.

This wasn't a bad movie, but it just seemed to miss the mark for me in what I was hoping for versus what I got.

Grade: C

[Martin]

And if so, what difference does this potentially make to the story? Ricky seems to remember it well enough and it definitely happened as evidenced by the memorabilia room and the veiled former actress. So if he is an unreliable narrator, which we really only get the story through those flashbacks and the story Ricky tells about the SNL skit, what does that mean for the story? It seems like something is just out of reach of understanding. I like that Peele is not answering specifically about it.

And Martin, Where the Crawdads Sing showed up at my local theater today but it was our 12 year anniversary and we couldn't work a movie into the day but hopefully it's still there next week because I want to see it. Thanks for alerting me to it!

Happy anniversary!

[Tommy]

And if so, what difference does this potentially make to the story? Ricky seems to remember it well enough and it definitely happened as evidenced by the memorabilia room and the veiled former actress. So if he is an unreliable narrator, which we really only get the story through those flashbacks and the story Ricky tells about the SNL skit, what does that mean for the story? It seems like something is just out of reach of understanding. I like that Peele is not answering specifically about it.

And Martin, Where the Crawdads Sing showed up at my local theater today but it was our 12 year anniversary and we couldn't work a movie into the day but hopefully it's still there next week because I want to see it. Thanks for alerting me to it!

[dannyboy121070]

I generally don't like to put such deep thought into movie-watching. so I don't usually go into the "The guy with red hair was a metaphor for the way the Irish were mistreated when the came to America!" deep-dives, especially since I think most movie dissections like that are total BS, but this film was just fraught with things that I didn't connect upon my first viewing, so, yes, I would love to see it again, especially in a uncut version at Peele's original running time. I've been reading some articles about the film and interviews with Peele lately, and he seems to never want to comment on why the shoe was standing on end. Maybe it was to show that Ricky was an unreliable narrator...?