Too Beautiful to Die (aka, Nothing Underneath 2) | 1988
As far as eighties gialli go, this falls somewhere between a Duran Duran music video and Argento's post Tenebre output. Despite having no real connection to the first one, it still runs with the same concept of a bad thing occurs in the beginning and hot models slowly getting killed off. No Pino Donaggio on the soundtrack this time around, but you do get some Kenny G style sax numbers and Frankie Goes to Hollywood's Warriors of the Wasteland.
Force Majeure (2014) - This was painful to watch at times but I really respect how thorough the film-making and writing is. I expected a comedy though this more of a dark drama with distinctly Scandinavian themes aside from the more universal message.
Ex Machina (2015) - Kept me interested throughout but didnt really leave an impression.
Cooties (2015) - Enjoyable zombiecom with some good characters.
Whether to Jason of Philaflava or John Podesta, I will speak my fucking perspective openly
- MB
Inside Out - Probably the best Pixar Up or Toy Story 3, depending on how you rank those. Pretty crazy how they managed to pull off this nuanced allegory on emotional development from a pretty straightforward children's adventure set up.
Finally caught this and I've got to admit I was a little disappointed. Outside of the Argento-esque visuals and some pretty savage kill scenes, this failed to keep me that interested.
The acting and dialogue in this movie were particularly atrocious:
crazy heart (2009) - this movie was boring as shit. jeff bridges plays a drunk old country singer well and got an oscar, but the movie never addresses why a 30-something maggie gyllenhall would be seduced by his bumbling messiness. not much really happens. best part was seeing colin farell sing and talk like a country singer. 4/10
monuments men (2014) - highly underrated. a ww2 movie with a lighter tone than most but still stays grounded. cate blanchett plays a french woman. great cast, beautifully shot. clooney is great on both sides of the camera. 8/10
alexander: the ultimate cut (2004) - yeah, yeah this movie sucks and it was a huge flop but still definitely enjoyable and worth a watch. jolie and dawson have hawt bewbs. the battle sequences are surprisingly not very good except for the one with elephants but that was hard to watch just feeling for the animals. kilmer is good. the hound is in it as well as that one pedo from GOT. best part about the film was probably the costumes and sets, not throwing shade they were just that good. 4/10
Dude the elephant battle is like the best one. I always bring up Rosario's tits in that movie in any greatest tits discussion and its always a conversation ender.
Crimson Peak - A really fun watch overall but surprisingly I was also kinda disappointed with certain elements of it. Even keeping in mind that this is meant to be high-pitched melodrama, a bit of a lighter touch could've gone a long way, especially in the second half. Charlie Threhunnam is woefully out of his depth, he doesn't even look the part. Everybody else is suitably pale and high cheekboned or grizzled and muttonchopped, this motherfucker is out here looking like Jax stuffed into The Penguin suit from Batman Returns. His 'I'm detecting shit' look while examining the bashed in head was one of the biggest unintended laughs I got from a serious movie in ages. And perhaps the biggest and most offensive gripe - for a Del Toro movie the ghosts looked surprisingly meh. The set design and overall look of the movie is fantastic, and when the ghoulish shit is in the background or lurking in the shadows it's very effective. But up close they didn't look that interesting, and oddly cheap. There were a few skull shots that looked like some shit from Windows 95, the old lady with the cleaver head was early Resident Evil level. The red snow effects looked kinda cheap too. None of them are bad enough to be complete deal breakers, but with Del Toro its reasonable to expect more I think. Maybe he should've went with more practical stuff and less CGI.
Electric Boogaloo (The Cannon doc) - solid primer on Cannon's history but way too in love with the 'Lol these guys were weirdos and made a ton of bad movies' narrative, to the point where a lot of interesting nuances and asides are barely touched or not even mentioned. This goes for both positive and negative aspects of their story. Really interesting stuff that's barely mentioned at all, or rushed through - the fact that some of their product was actually artistically good and successful, the influence they've had on the movie industry despite their failures, the way their industry snubbed them, their shady and often illegal business practices, Michael Winner being the b-movie director equivalent of Gucci Condoms, the odd relationship they had with their stars, etc etc etc. And the biggest and oddest omission, the very reason for this doc's existence in the first place, there's absolutely no mention of the cult status and following they've developed.
Tangerine - loved the fuck out of this, just pure joy of film making happening in every frame. The cab driver subplot was maybe a little unsatisfying in the payoff, but everything with the 2 leads is superb. Nice to see Ziggy pop up too. Would make a surprisingly good double bill with Mad Max because of the look, energy and pace of it.
Cradle To The Grave - Really glad to report this still holds up as a great dumb action movie. Watching DMX do martial arts moves and running up the wall to do a backflip in baggy jeans and unlaced timbs is a pure delight. Also the soundtrack blaring NIGGAS WANNA FIGHT ME, FIGHT THESE TEARS! as he jumps over 3 cars on an ATV or whatever is like the early 00s equivalent of the Walker footsteps in Point Blank.
The Connection (La French) - had high hopes for this French side of the French Connection story but it turned out to be pretty mediocre. It's good looking and has a good cast, but bends an interesting true story into a series of the same old tropes gangster movies have been rinsing out since Casino (the fact that this one tries to be more Scorsese-ish than typically French in style doubles down on the insult.) The worst thing about it is that for all the slickness and effort it's just boring, very little real tension or momentum to the story. One random saving grace though, like a true Scorsese ripoff it has a killer period-based soundtrack.
The Martian - liked this way more than expected, the relatively light tone goes a long way to it being enjoyable (I expected something way more serious and melodramatic).
Sakura Killers - Most shitty VHS movies from the 80s can't live up to their cover art. This one not only lives up to it, it actually exceeds it, so it's going right up to the top of the crap pile with stuff like Hard Ticket To Hawaii. Notable bit of film trivia - by virtue of starring both Chuck Connors and Mark Long (aka The Ghostfaced Killer) this movie connects Old Yeller, Roots, and several classic american 50s-60s cowboy tv shows to The Mystery Of Chessboxing.
jan been like
joy -- garbage through and through
steve jobs -- skip the last three minutes, otherwise wasn't what was expected and dug it a lot (don't know the story that well, am assuming the bulk is sorkin sorkining, which i quite like)
The Green Inferno (2015) - This is a great comedy about annoying activists from college who somehow end up landing in the middle of a cannibal horrorfilm.
Knock Knock (2015) - His wife shows the tits in this one after teasing us throughout much of Inferno. I was entertained enough for most of the film but its not a very good one.
Eli Roth kinda wants to say things but at the same time he doesn't want to be taken seriously. Its not that I mind a few laughs but he could make stronger films if he tried to keep a straight face at times. His interview on BEE's podcast makes me think its not going to happen however ("I bought a house with money I made from Hostel 2, so critics are wrong to say it was a bit shit!").
Whether to Jason of Philaflava or John Podesta, I will speak my fucking perspective openly
- MB
He's just trying to swagger jack Michael Caine anyways.
“I have never seen it, but by all accounts it is terrible. However, I have seen the house that it built, and it is terrific.” [Caine regarding, Jaws: The Revenge]
The Lobster - kinda torn on this. Really unique and interesting ideas that I'm still thinking about the next morning, but aside from some deadpan laughs the movie mostly engages intellectually, rarely emotionally or viscerally. Doesn't do much with the premise that's used as the hook in the trailer either, the whole thing with people being turned into animals isn't much more than a side gag and the world of the movie is only sketched-in enough to set the high-concept framing for the central love story. So ultimately something that's more fun to think about than to actually watch.
Dealer (2015) - This is like a French reinterpretation of NWR's Pusher mixed with Crank. Some coke goes missing and a dealer's life turns to shit within a few hours while he tries to make sense of the situation and raise money to pay his debts. Definitely a film that will have many fans once it gets a wider release if it hasnt already. 75 minutes of adrenaline and raw, meanspirited violence.
Whether to Jason of Philaflava or John Podesta, I will speak my fucking perspective openly
- MB
Comedy Quaddafi wrote:Dealer (2015) - This is like a French reinterpretation of NWR's Pusher mixed with Crank. Some coke goes missing and a dealer's life turns to shit within a few hours while he tries to make sense of the situation and raise money to pay his debts. Definitely a film that will have many fans once it gets a wider release if it hasnt already. 75 minutes of adrenaline and raw, meanspirited violence.
Its up on Netflix instant. Saw it just now, it was lots of fun. Thanks for the push to watch.
World Of Kanako - Some sick, violent nihilistic shit that took me back to the early 00s glory days of asian extermists like Miike and Park Chan Wook. An insane alcoholic ex-detective (who is an irredeemably evil piece of shit in his own right) searches for his estranged and now lost daughter, who is of course not quite the sweet teenager she seems to be. The extent of the depravity which the movie assigns to both the protagonist and the object of his obsession is impressive, the momentum that constantly ups the stakes of their evil is what really makes the movie work. Pretty good, if you can stomach this kind of thing.
Nothing But Trouble (Dan Akroyd, 1991) - Kinda like if you made an adult version of The Goonies, except without good characters or a sense of fun or adventure. There's some really great set design, the junkyard mansion setting is pretty amazing and you get to see John Candy in drag and a pre-fame 2Pac appearance with The Digital Underground, but the script just fucking sucks and pretty much every joke falls flat on its face.
whoa, that shit was a staple of childhood. p amazed tommy hadn't seen it 'til now. haven't seen it in twenty years, am confident i remember most of it, but will give it a watch again in the next few days.
But also you know an immaculately staged and emotionally devastating drama with an incredibly nuanced and non-sensationalized pov on a difficult subject and all that stuff. Surprisingly, a master class in tension too. The only other movie this year that had me clenching as hard for purely dramatic and non-action reasons was Sicario.
Rarely pay much attention to TV crime dramas, but this new three part adaptation of Agatha Christie's classic book was a gamble that immensely paid off. Whole thing had me hooked from start to finish.
The BBC adaptation was way more competent and stylish than that. Well worth checking out. Missed it over the recent holidays and caught up with it on the BBC iPlayer.
Big Short - I appreciated the effort to tell an important story filled with dry details generally impenetrable to laymen in an entertaining way, but I didn't feel like the parts added up to an actual good movie. More like 'ok, good to know assuming they didn't smudge too much for dramatic effect'. Carell and Bale were pretty dope, they really made something of their characters. Pretty much anybody could've played Pitt and Gosling's roles but you can't really grudge the director casting them to get more people to watch this. FWIW I'd rather watch the story presented like this than via a browbeating Michael Moore doc on it or some such.
Last Witch Hunter - Decent but trips over itself in needlessly trying to set up a franchise out the character and so ends up on the lower shelves of Diesel's pantheon.
Train wreck of a film and not as good as the 1990 version with the Kemp brothers, but bucketloads of unintentional comedy. Tom Hardy's portrayal of Ronnie Kray - oh man!
