Rate the Last Movie You Saw

[dannyboy121070]

My wife and son have been visiting her parents in Georgia for the past three weeks, so I have been watching a TON of movies. Most recently....

MONSTER ISLAND on Shudder was a fun little practical-effects creature feature. A gory Creature From The Black Lagoon/WWII Mashup.

SISU, on Peacock, was a wildly over-the-top film about a crazy old prospector killing Nazis. It got more and more ridiculous as it went on. By the end, it was more like an absurdist comedy. Streaming rant: This is the third or fourth time this month that I streamed a foreign film, and the subtitles weren't just a part of the film, they had to be activated manually. This one was a bit odd, because 99% of the film was in English. The last 30 seconds of the film, literally two lines, was in a foreign language, requiring me to rewind, and activate the subtitles, which came on the screen a good 30 seconds after the verbal dialogue. Very annoying.

I watched all six FINAL DESTINATION films over a few nights. They're all on HBO Max, so I figured it was time. The series, for the most part, improves from film to film, with the latest one being the best of the bunch. Watching them all at so close together made all of the little connections easy to catch, and a lot of fun. I had a good time.

[brlesh]

Just saw Shin Godzilla, which was a mixed bag.

It worked as much as s political satire as a Godzilla movie.

They really handled the monster in a unique way, which was the strongest point of the movie.

And the politics was played very straight forward, which just made it all the more funny.

However, there was too much down time in the second half of the movie. Needed more monster mayhem and a little less talking.

The ending was also very open ended. Seemed like they were counting on a sequel that never happened.

Overall, Godzilla fans will probably like it (I did), but had enough flaws to prevent a general recommendation.

B

[Sock Monkey]

I watched a few new-to-streaming movies over the past couple of nights. My wife and son are visiting her parents in Georgia, so I can watch WHATEVER I WANT, mwaaah-haa-haaa!

DEATH OF A UNICORN, streaming on HBO Max, was marketed as a dark comedy, but it played more as a straight-on monster movie. There were a few weird moments that may have been intended to be funny, but I barely cracked a smile.Paul Rudd and his daughter Jenna Ortega run over a unicorn in a wildlife preserve, and face the wrath of the deceased's parents. Glad I didn't pay to see this!

ABOUT MY FATHER on Peacock. I'm not at all a fan of Sebastian Maniscalco's stand-up, at least what little I've seen of it, but this brief little trifle made me laugh out loud on three or four occasions, mainly due to Robert De Niro's fish-out-of-water performance as Maniscalco's father. I enjoyed this a lot more than I thought I would. Peacock has now quietly started showing ads during the movies, where they only used to show ads before the movie. Dropping Peacock next month because of this...

THE MONKEY, on Hulu. First, an ad vent. I have some kind of insane 99 cent a month deal on Hulu, so I expect ads, but FUUUUCK. Hulu is virtually unwatchable. Their ad program is totally unpredictable. I watched the new animated Predator movie the night it premiered, and....not one ad. This movie had SIX commercial breaks, and now a lot of the ads are interactive, meaning you get a screen that says "Pick your Veoza/Viagra/Ex-Lax experience", and you have to pick which fucking ad you want to watch, otherwise the screen will just sit there forever until you pick. So now you can no longer passively ignore ads, they will command you to actually watch them. 99 cents a month is too much for this. Dropping Hulu next month. As for the film itself, I assume this was meant to be hilariously, darkly funny, but it just had so much over-the-top gore that it bored me. I was actually angry at myself for watching it by the time it was over. The completely horrible actor who played the adult twins did the film no favors. The movie should have stayed focused on the twins as kids, since the actor playing them could, you know...actually act. This is the third or forth film by Oz Perkins that I've seen, and aside from THE BLACKCOAT'S DAUGHTER, which was slow and ponderous, but really paid off in the end, I've hated all of the rest. I found LONGLEGS to be as exciting as watching mold grow on old bread, and this was no better. I just read an interview with Ari Aster, whose film HEREDITARY I absolutely loved, and he quoted his father, who, after seeing BEAU IS AFRAID and EDDINGTON, told him "Maybe instead of writing AND directing, you should leave the writing to someone else next time." Perkins wrote and directed THE MONKEY, and...he should stop writing. I hope Stephen King made some good bank off of this turd.

Tonight was FREAKY TALES on HBO Max, and I really, really enjoyed this oddball film. It's kind of like a bizarro PULP FICTION meets REPO MAN, set in 1988 Oakland, with four interweaving stories making up the narrative. If I had know that this was directed by the duo that made the awful CAPTAIN MARVEL, I would have steered waaaaay clear of it, but I'm glad I watched. Seeing this explains a LOT of what I hated about that film, though....they seem to have a real fixation with the late 80s/early 90s, video stores, punk rock, etc. Pedro Pascal, Ben Mendelsohn, and the guy that owns the video store (No spoilers!) were all great.

The Monkey was, indeed, my least favorite of Perkins's films. I think the tone was just too all over the place. If the movie had played everything else straight and sincere with the only the kills being over the top, I think the film would've been more successful. However, the ridiculousness with the adult twins just pushed it too far over the edge. Funny enough, I just watched Final Destination: Bloodlines the other day, and while I don't think the film is that great, it did a much better job at nailing this very dark comedy vibe. In fact, Bloodlines is much more a dark comedy than a horror movie and it had me laughing and clapping at some of the kills.

And thanks for the heads up on Freaky Tales. I was on the fence when I saw the trailer, but now I've gonna give it a watch.

[Sock Monkey]

I thought Thunderbolts was a great film, and I loved seeing the second-tier characters from other projects get a chance to shine. Florence Pugh, hell, the entire cast, they were all perfect. (I can live without Julia Louis-Dreyfus and her cut-rate Nick Fury, though.) I suspect we won't be seeing more films like this from Marvel, certainly not starring this group of characters, after the film was branded a huge flop.Chalk it up to super-hero fatigue? Maybe. I'm as big of a lifelong Marvel fan as they come, but I now have four Disney + Marvel series that I have yet to watch, and most of the Marvel films since Endgame have been substandard. Looking forward to the upcoming Avengers films, I give zero shits about seeing Captain Marvel, Shang-Chi, The Eternals, Namor, the 50-lb Black Panther girl....they have not managed to create any new, memorable film characters to replace the ones that have died or moved on. I feel like Disney, Marvel, and Kevin Feige just assume that the same fans will see every film, and it's just guaranteed money, so they have been content to pump out "Meh" films...clearly, this is not the case, as we seem to be settling into MCU films grossing $400 million instead of the expected billion they were used to. (FF supposedly took a disastrous decline in it's second weekend.) We'll see if the return of the Russo brothers and Robert Downey Jr. can turn things around for them. I think the Downey nostalgia is misplaced....People love his portrayal of Tony Stark, the egotistical, glib sarcasm machine. That is....NOT Dr. Doom. To be decided, I suppose.

I agree with a lot of your points. The MCU films, in my opinion, are struggling with transitioning to these legacy characters. I enjoyed Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, but wasn't on board with Shuri being the new Black Panther, mostly because I really enjoyed the character and the previous dynamic around her--especially in contrast to Chadwick's T'Challa--and felt what made the character interesting to me was lost. I haven't watched Ironheart, but trying fill RDJ's roles as Tony Stark/Iron Man is darn near impossible. Sam Wilson transitioning from the Falcon to Captain America was great on paper, but after New World Order, it pretty much feels like the Falcon carrying Captain America's shield, which is not the same thing, though I'm keeping an open mind. The only one I'm completely on board with is Florence Pugh's Yelena replacing Black Widow. Pugh has been great in the role and I really hope they keep her around despite the lackluster box office for The Thunderbolts. This problem was inevitable, but it probably could have been worked so that there wasn't such a clean break after Endgame.

As for RDJ as Doom...I'll wait and see. I don't know if how they are going to place this, as in if this is going to be RDJ playing Victor Von Doom or RDJ playing a multiversal version of Tony Stark who took Victor Von Doom's spot in the FF universe.

Regardless, I am excited to hear Bernthal is returning as the Punisher for his own Disney+ special and will be in the next Spider-Man film. Bernthal is one of my favorite actors and I'm digging his very damaged Frank Castle.

[dannyboy121070]

I watched SHADOW IN THE CLOUD on Netflix last night. I've had this movie on my watch list for 5 years now, lol.

The film is a WWII gremlin monster movie, at least on the surface. It is so, SO much more though....

Sometimes I watch a movie, and a certain plot point will make me wonder "Why did they do that? Didn't anyone involved with the film think that was a bad idea?"

This whole film had me saying that.

A fairly straightforward plot- A courier has to guard a top-secret maguffin on a flight that is targeted by a gremlin- goes completely batshit crazy, with weird plot twist after weird plot twist.

Chloe Grace Moretz stars, and as she boards the bomber, she is immediately belittled by the flight crew, has her maguffin taken away, and is locked into the belly gunner turret. Since we are supposed to feel empathy for the crew once the gremlin starts picking them off, what better way for the audience to get to know them and bond with them, than to have them vividly recount all of the different ways they want to gang-rape and assault our young heroine? Not just rape her and pass her around, but also beat the shit out of her? Truly what you expect from "The greatest generation"!

This part of the movie almost becomes a one-man-show, as the camera inexplicably stays on Moretz for, like, 30 minutes, while the rest of the cast becomes almost a dirty radio play. These guys really have some deep-seated rape fantasies.

The gremlin pops in and out, to the point where, when they do show it, you think "Oh, yeah, I forgot about the gremlin..."

To say any more about this film would be to do any potential viewers a great disservice. The true reason Moretz is on the flight, who one of the flight crew really is, the truth about the maguffin Moretz is carrying, the Mission Impossible-esque midair fight...this is one of the craziest films I have ever seen. I kept saying "They wouldn't..."......BUT THEY DO.

This is not a GOOD film....Buuuut....It sure was fun. I had a smile on my face the whole time. I'm not at all a fan of "So bad they're good" movies, but this was worlds more entertaining than LONGLEGS or THE MONKEY. Weta did the effects, so the gremlin and the dogfights look like a million bucks. Moretz tries hard, and I feel bad that this movie seems to have killed her career dead. But I had fun watching it, that's for sure.

Someone else needs to watch this film, please, so I have someone to discuss it with.

[dannyboy121070]

dannyboy121070 Thanks for the reviews and heads up on streaming services. I've certainly turned into an old dude and don's sign up for many of those these days. I'm shocked to hear that Hulu is doing interactive adverts. That would piss me off to no end.

I had hoped to watch The Monkey at some point but I hadn't heard much about it, little fan fair, and given your review, I can cool my jets on catching this at some point.

I'm trying to watch an action flick called Kandahar on Pluto. The service is free but it is almost unwatchable with the volume of ads. Way worse than what network TV used to do back in the day on the yearly showings of Sound of Music, Charlie, Oz, Spartacus, or Gone with the Wind.

Yeah, I sometimes put on Pluto when I'm working, to have an old sitcom playing as background noise, but as far as movies...the ads are just unbearable, and their random, odd placement is very annoying.

[Ben Staad]

dannyboy121070 Thanks for the reviews and heads up on streaming services. I've certainly turned into an old dude and don's sign up for many of those these days. I'm shocked to hear that Hulu is doing interactive adverts. That would piss me off to no end.

I had hoped to watch The Monkey at some point but I hadn't heard much about it, little fan fair, and given your review, I can cool my jets on catching this at some point.

I'm trying to watch an action flick called Kandahar on Pluto. The service is free but it is almost unwatchable with the volume of ads. Way worse than what network TV used to do back in the day on the yearly showings of Sound of Music, Charlie, Oz, Spartacus, or Gone with the Wind.

[dannyboy121070]

I watched a few new-to-streaming movies over the past couple of nights. My wife and son are visiting her parents in Georgia, so I can watch WHATEVER I WANT, mwaaah-haa-haaa!

DEATH OF A UNICORN, streaming on HBO Max, was marketed as a dark comedy, but it played more as a straight-on monster movie. There were a few weird moments that may have been intended to be funny, but I barely cracked a smile.Paul Rudd and his daughter Jenna Ortega run over a unicorn in a wildlife preserve, and face the wrath of the deceased's parents. Glad I didn't pay to see this!

ABOUT MY FATHER on Peacock. I'm not at all a fan of Sebastian Maniscalco's stand-up, at least what little I've seen of it, but this brief little trifle made me laugh out loud on three or four occasions, mainly due to Robert De Niro's fish-out-of-water performance as Maniscalco's father. I enjoyed this a lot more than I thought I would. Peacock has now quietly started showing ads during the movies, where they only used to show ads before the movie. Dropping Peacock next month because of this...

THE MONKEY, on Hulu. First, an ad vent. I have some kind of insane 99 cent a month deal on Hulu, so I expect ads, but FUUUUCK. Hulu is virtually unwatchable. Their ad program is totally unpredictable. I watched the new animated Predator movie the night it premiered, and....not one ad. This movie had SIX commercial breaks, and now a lot of the ads are interactive, meaning you get a screen that says "Pick your Veoza/Viagra/Ex-Lax experience", and you have to pick which fucking ad you want to watch, otherwise the screen will just sit there forever until you pick. So now you can no longer passively ignore ads, they will command you to actually watch them. 99 cents a month is too much for this. Dropping Hulu next month. As for the film itself, I assume this was meant to be hilariously, darkly funny, but it just had so much over-the-top gore that it bored me. I was actually angry at myself for watching it by the time it was over. The completely horrible actor who played the adult twins did the film no favors. The movie should have stayed focused on the twins as kids, since the actor playing them could, you know...actually act. This is the third or forth film by Oz Perkins that I've seen, and aside from THE BLACKCOAT'S DAUGHTER, which was slow and ponderous, but really paid off in the end, I've hated all of the rest. I found LONGLEGS to be as exciting as watching mold grow on old bread, and this was no better. I just read an interview with Ari Aster, whose film HEREDITARY I absolutely loved, and he quoted his father, who, after seeing BEAU IS AFRAID and EDDINGTON, told him "Maybe instead of writing AND directing, you should leave the writing to someone else next time." Perkins wrote and directed THE MONKEY, and...he should stop writing. I hope Stephen King made some good bank off of this turd.

Tonight was FREAKY TALES on HBO Max, and I really, really enjoyed this oddball film. It's kind of like a bizarro PULP FICTION meets REPO MAN, set in 1988 Oakland, with four interweaving stories making up the narrative. If I had know that this was directed by the duo that made the awful CAPTAIN MARVEL, I would have steered waaaaay clear of it, but I'm glad I watched. Seeing this explains a LOT of what I hated about that film, though....they seem to have a real fixation with the late 80s/early 90s, video stores, punk rock, etc. Pedro Pascal, Ben Mendelsohn, and the guy that owns the video store (No spoilers!) were all great.

[dannyboy121070]

I thought Thunderbolts was a great film, and I loved seeing the second-tier characters from other projects get a chance to shine. Florence Pugh, hell, the entire cast, they were all perfect. (I can live without Julia Louis-Dreyfus and her cut-rate Nick Fury, though.) I suspect we won't be seeing more films like this from Marvel, certainly not starring this group of characters, after the film was branded a huge flop.Chalk it up to super-hero fatigue? Maybe. I'm as big of a lifelong Marvel fan as they come, but I now have four Disney + Marvel series that I have yet to watch, and most of the Marvel films since Endgame have been substandard. Looking forward to the upcoming Avengers films, I give zero shits about seeing Captain Marvel, Shang-Chi, The Eternals, Namor, the 50-lb Black Panther girl....they have not managed to create any new, memorable film characters to replace the ones that have died or moved on. I feel like Disney, Marvel, and Kevin Feige just assume that the same fans will see every film, and it's just guaranteed money, so they have been content to pump out "Meh" films...clearly, this is not the case, as we seem to be settling into MCU films grossing $400 million instead of the expected billion they were used to. (FF supposedly took a disastrous decline in it's second weekend.) We'll see if the return of the Russo brothers and Robert Downey Jr. can turn things around for them. I think the Downey nostalgia is misplaced....People love his portrayal of Tony Stark, the egotistical, glib sarcasm machine. That is....NOT Dr. Doom. To be decided, I suppose.

[Ben Staad]

I saw an ad for that the other day and wondered what the movie was about. Sounds interesting.

I saw Together the other night, which I thought was pretty good combination of folk and body horror.

A dysfunctional couple move to small, rural town for the girlfriend’s new teaching job. Mid thirties, been together 10 years, the boyfriend (Tim) is a want-to-be rock star, though he lacks the ambition to truly chase his dream. He’s basically a loser that can’t commit, but is also deathly afraid of being alone. The girlfriend (Millie) is more practical and definitely the adult one in the relationship.

After moving into the new house, they go for a walk in the woods, get caught in a rain storm, and literally stumble upon what they think at the time is a cave. After spending the night in the cave, their relationship starts to change in increasingly weird ways.

I thought the acting by the two leads was pretty good, and frankly, most of the characters other than the leads were pretty peripheral.

The effects were interesting, and helped to tell the story.

Overall I enjoyed together, and was pleasantly surprised on taking a chance on a movie that wasn’t really on my radar.

B

[Sock Monkey]

We saw Superman and Fantastic Four on their respective opening weekends. Superman was a lot of fun. I liked how they just jumped into a fully-formed world with no time or interest in origin stories, you just hit the ground running and catch up as you go. Fun film, and James Gunn really seems to get the character. My son and I loved it, my wife hated it.

Fantastic Four: First Steps looked amazing in Imax 3-D, and the peppy 60s-throwback storytelling really worked with these characters. It was amazing to see a comic-accurate Galactus in a movie...I never thought I would live to see the day. My son and I both loved it, and my wife said she "had a great time".

Though I'm much more a DC fan than a Marvel one, I still haven't seen Superman. I did, however, go see Fantastic Four: First Steps on Friday. Once again I hit up the local drive-in theater and they doubled FF with The Thunderbolts, which I didn't see when it first came out.

I wasn't too sure where I would land with FF. I was a little iffy on the whole Shalla-Bal as the Silver Surfer, not due to any weird sexist thing, but mostly because I just want to see live action versions of the characters I grew up with and Norrin Radd was my Silver Surfer, but felt they did the character justice, even though they didn't give the character much of an arc. Galactus could have came off as super-goofy, but, man, they really the menace of the character. I loved the set designs and they finally gave Jack Kirby some spotlight in the credits with a quote from him, which was nice considering his contribution to Marvel is considered as significant as Stan Lee's but he rarely gets the spotlight that Lee did. The only drawback to the movie was that it felt like there was a little too much crammed into the film and I didn't really get to know any of the FF as people. The film pivots around the birth of Reed and Sue's son Franklin, and the pregnancy and birth is given some weight supposedly shifting some dynamics in the group, but I never felt grounded with the any of the characters beforehand, so it all felt rather surface level. This was the main point that tripped the movie up for my wife as well. Overall, I thought the movie was really well done, but for the story they wanted to tell, the film could have used another 30 minutes or so to flesh things out. Grade: B

All eyes have been on the box office performance for FF, and rightly so after some disappointing results from Marvel's latest films, but after seeing The Thunderbolts, I kinda feel like this one the general public slept on. Ostensibly a sequel to Black Widow and The Falcon & Winter Soldier, this mashed-up team flick, with its exploration of guilt, loneliness, and depression, is probably one of the most thematically heavy Marvel films, but it does it with a rather skillful touch. And we get actual character arcs--something woefully missing from The Marvels and Captain America: New World Order. Florence Pugh anchors this film as Yelena, but there is so much good stuff going with Wyatt Russell's USAgent (Okay, they haven't named him that yet, but that's John Walker in the comics), and Lewis Pullman as Bob. David Harbour is so much fun as Red Guardian and, though I wasn't a huge fan to begin with, now I can't get enough of Sebastian Stan as the Bucky/the Winter Soldier. I really think this one is a grower and should be held up as top-level Marvel with the likes of Captain America: Winter Soldier, Civil War, and the Spider-Man films. This felt like a return to form. Grade: A

[brlesh]

I saw Together the other night, which I thought was pretty good combination of folk and body horror.

A dysfunctional couple move to small, rural town for the girlfriend’s new teaching job. Mid thirties, been together 10 years, the boyfriend (Tim) is a want-to-be rock star, though he lacks the ambition to truly chase his dream. He’s basically a loser that can’t commit, but is also deathly afraid of being alone. The girlfriend (Millie) is more practical and definitely the adult one in the relationship.

After moving into the new house, they go for a walk in the woods, get caught in a rain storm, and literally stumble upon what they think at the time is a cave. After spending the night in the cave, their relationship starts to change in increasingly weird ways.

I thought the acting by the two leads was pretty good, and frankly, most of the characters other than the leads were pretty peripheral.

The effects were interesting, and helped to tell the story.

Overall I enjoyed together, and was pleasantly surprised on taking a chance on a movie that wasn’t really on my radar.

B

[dannyboy121070]

We saw Superman and Fantastic Four on their respective opening weekends. Superman was a lot of fun. I liked how they just jumped into a fully-formed world with no time or interest in origin stories, you just hit the ground running and catch up as you go. Fun film, and James Gunn really seems to get the character. My son and I loved it, my wife hated it.

Fantastic Four: First Steps looked amazing in Imax 3-D, and the peppy 60s-throwback storytelling really worked with these characters. It was amazing to see a comic-accurate Galactus in a movie...I never thought I would live to see the day. My son and I both loved it, and my wife said she "had a great time".

[Sock Monkey]

As far as the goofy last few minutes of 28 YEARS LATER, it seems to have hit completely different for UK audiences, so I'd advise anyone interested to google JImmy Saville, which will explain a lot.

As far as JP, all I can think about these movies is "When the eff are they going to get away from these islands? FALLEN KINGDOM set up a world with dinosaurs running loose, and then the next movie was like "Nah, let's go back to an island!".....and here we go again.

Oh, thanks for the heads up regarding 28 Years Later. I only have a passing knowledge about Jimmy Saville, but the movie makes a lot more sense within that context. Still, all the leaping parkour stuff was little strange.

And I agree with these Jurassic Park films. They really just don't know what to do with them it seems like.

[dannyboy121070]

So I caught this a couple weeks back at the local drive-in (which I actually really enjoy going to; the video isn't as crisp as an actual theatre and the sound obviously suffers as well, but there's something so simple and unpretentious about it that I find appealing) on a double feature with Jurassic Park: Rebirth, which I'll get to in a bit. I absolutely agree with all the points you make in your post: the cast is great, including the kid playing Spike; the infected scenes are actually quite intense, and it builds on the first films without tarnishing it (though an argument could be made that 28 Weeks Later already did that). I also agree that the ending comes off as not just jarring, but almost ridiculous. After we get this very ponderous, melancholic time spent in the Bone Temple, the film ends on some silliness. There also was some great use of editing in the film with intercutting both sound and video that I really liked. Overall, I liked the film and was glad to see Danny Boyle back in top form. Grade: B

Jurassic Park: Rebirth, on the other hand, is probably the most impressively stupid movie I've watched in a long time. Now, to be fair, I didn't watch the previous two films in the franchise; I tapped out when Chris Pratt made friends with the raptors. To be fair, Gareth Edwards is a solid director and any of the scenes involving dinosaur action is executed very well. It's just that everything that is not an action set piece is just plain bad. Both Scarlett Johannson and Mahershala Ali are completely wasted in this film, but at least Ali seems to know what film he's in. Johannson, on the other hand, feels so tonally out of place and could have easily just been removed from the plot for how little she actually comes into play versus any of the other random characters. Then there's the family that gets rescued by the Johannson and crew, but consist of the single most unlikeable character ever that I hated more than the actual "human bad guy" of the film. On top of the this, the jokes don't land and it hits the beats of so many of its predecessors that I can't really recommend this beyond maybe a lazy Sunday between naps. Grade: D-

As far as the goofy last few minutes of 28 YEARS LATER, it seems to have hit completely different for UK audiences, so I'd advise anyone interested to google JImmy Saville, which will explain a lot.

As far as JP, all I can think about these movies is "When the eff are they going to get away from these islands? FALLEN KINGDOM set up a world with dinosaurs running loose, and then the next movie was like "Nah, let's go back to an island!".....and here we go again.