InkyMoondrop wrote:
I'm not a fan of Woody Allen, because it feels like he's this safe play kind of director that sits down with any movie star and they don't even have to read the script, they'll already know what kind of a role it will be, they already know it won't be a hit, that the character is unlikely to allow any great performances, that the movie itself is going to be a romantic lemonade about a certain class of people without much to say really, but it's a Woody Allen film, so it's not going to be terrible and it'll look good on a resumé.

Pretty much XD

I made it through the whole thing. It did't really get less annoying. It still felt as if these were 1960s people with 1960s issues in 1960s New York that happened to be in the present.

Interesting titbit- The male lead and his GF break up. He gets together with a younger girl who was the kid-sister of an ex- she had a kid crush on him back in the day. Bit of a Soon Yi type thing? I don't know.
Also, the GF has a series of older powerful movie guys super interested in her and it bamboozles her pretty head.

There's nothing wrong with the movie, it wasn't bad. It was interesting to see that fantasy version of New York that's all sophisticated and classy and old fashioned because it lives in Woody's memory.
It's basically a little tour through Woody's mind, living his fantasy for a short while.

So if you can tolerate almost an entire cast speaking like Woody Allen (this is hard), and the unconscious anachronistic nature of the storytelling isn't an issue, then enjoy this “lemonade” of a frivolous romance that happens in a single day.

“3615 code Père Noël” or “Deadly Games” on AMC is a French Horror movie with a Christmas theme. This was the original Home Alone released a year earlier and there was a good case that Home Alone plagiarized it.

I found this to be legitimately scary because Father Christmas is not evil, but a homicidal vagrant that breaks the norms of what you expect from a Hollywood movie. He is nuts, and you don't know what he will do.

The kid also gives an incredible, sometimes tear-jerking performance. You see the horror through his eyes. The culture has a Santa each for good and bad kids, so he thinks this is the real Santa breaking into his home and trying to kill him.

sleeping_gorilla wrote:
“3615 code Père Noël” or “Deadly Games” on AMC is a French Horror movie with a Christmas theme.

Not my scene! I don't really like horror movies in general but setting in on Christmas is just mean XD

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I have been watching the old British 90s sitcom Men Behaving Badly.
This was a big breakout for Harry Enfield, Neil Morrisy, Martin Clunes and Caroline Quinton back in the day. (I hated it back in the 90s)

The premise is that the guys are immature and “laddish” to quite a degree, also pretty selfish and venal. The women are much less so… It suffered from this trait in comedy where men are allowed funny flaws and to be silly characters but women aren't. Mostly because they had too many male writers and they couldn't write women well.

The structure of the shows is very simple and that's appealing. It makes for a tight format. The characters are exaggerated and awful people mostly but still charming and realistic - when you account for the stylisation.

This was an influential comedy because of its success and a lot of other British shows imitated it, most notably Red Dwarf, to its detriment. The influence was obvious and crap, it was FARRRR better before they incorporated it.

Ozoneocean wrote:

I have been watching the old British 90s sitcom Men Behaving Badly.
This was a big breakout for Harry Enfield, Neil Morrisy, Martin Clunes and Caroline Quinton back in the day. (I hated it back in the 90s)

The premise is that the guys are immature and “laddish” to quite a degree, also pretty selfish and venal. The women are much less so… It suffered from this trait in comedy where men are allowed funny flaws and to be silly characters but women aren't. Mostly because they had too many male writers and they couldn't write women well.

This era marked the rise of the ‘New Lad’, a reaction to the ‘New Man’ of the late eighties. Women preffered their men to be beer swilling mysoginists, at least according to the tabloids, lad's mags and male writers of sitcoms like this. Dreadful stuff, but at least it's not as bad as Brush Strokes.

Ironscarf wrote:
but at least it's not as bad as Brush Strokes.

HAHAHA! Indeed!
That show was painful.

Ozoneocean wrote:

sleeping_gorilla wrote:
“3615 code Père Noël” or “Deadly Games” on AMC is a French Horror movie with a Christmas theme.
Not my scene! I don't really like horror movies in general but setting in on Christmas is just mean XD

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Indy Horror ala Blumhouse is the closest I can get to good Science Fiction these days. It's that or Nu-Star Wars which is either too stupid or stupid pretending to be smart. Have I mentioned how terrible Andor is?

I am not defending “3615 code Père Noël” or saying you must go see it. It is a solidly directed movie, with a story that makes you route for the hero to defeat a truly menacing villain. This kid actually made me cry a little bit.

That said, I've been going through Joe Bob's Christmas specials and the Into the Dark movies. So here is a list of what I would recommend, most of these are just fun.

Advent Calendar (Excellent movie)
Black Christmas 1974 (John Carpenter's Halloween was conceived as a sequel to this film.)
Christmas Evil (Taxi Driver / Joker with Santa Claus)
Christmas Horror Story (Knock down drag-out brawl between Santa and Krampus.)
Deadly Games (3615 code Père Noël)
Gremlins
Rare Exports (Finnish monster hunting)
Silent Night, Deadly Night 2 (Yes THAT movie, it is hilarious)
Santa's Sleigh (Goldberg as Santa!)
Troll Hunter (Norwegian monster hunting)

THE READER - (2008) Kate Winslet, (be still my heart), Ralph Fiennes, David Kross, Lena Olin, Bruno Ganz. Kate won the Oscar for her performance. Starts off in 1958 Germany with a scorching affair between a 36 yr old tram worker (Kate) and a sickly 15 yr old boy (David). Only lasts the summer and Kate gets promoted? as a Nazi guard. She is sentenced to life in prison for murdering 300 Jewish women prisoners when she wouldn't unlock door to the burning camp bldg. Years later Ralph is now the older version of David and connects with the much older Kate but they seem somehow distant. What will happen? Ending is very complex getting a 2 1/2 on the Moizmeter.

Amsterdam.
Christian Bale movie.

Bale is one of those actors who've gotten big enough so that when they do movies now they can just do what they want and be all actory… 😅
If you know what I mean?

This movie is all over the place. The dialogue is just so sloppy. It's not bad dialogue, it's just boring and dull. It's like the actors were allowed to improvise on all there lines and the way they did that was just running on with sentences.

Under that there's a neat structure to the movie but because of the way the actors are always BLah blahhhh blahing with such a GOD-AWFUL awkward rhythm it's all smothered and lost.
Annoying movie.

Oh Brother Where Art Thou

Cohen brothers classic. This is the first time I finally saw it.

The lovely old American folk songs are great and the singing is really good.
The story was fun and engaging. It's an interesting look at 1930s poor America in the South.

It was “loosely based on Homer's Odyssey”… Very loosely 😅
It had a few disjointed bits of the Odyssey in it, in very different forms and in a mixed up order. I really don't know why they bothered with the Odyssey stuff, I think they just thought it'd be cool to do some of the scenes (like the sirens) but then completely lost interest in the idea and just decided to go their own way.

It's certainly NOT a retelling of the Odyssey, the way some claim 😅
It's a really good film though.

moizmad wrote:
THE READER - (2008) Kate Winslet, (be still my heart), Ralph Fiennes, David Kross, Lena Olin, Bruno Ganz. Kate won the Oscar for her performance. Starts off in 1958 Germany with a scorching affair between a 36 yr old tram worker (Kate) and a sickly 15 yr old boy (David). Only lasts the summer and Kate gets promoted? as a Nazi guard. She is sentenced to life in prison for murdering 300 Jewish women prisoners when she wouldn't unlock door to the burning camp bldg. Years later Ralph is now the older version of David and connects with the much older Kate but they seem somehow distant. What will happen? Ending is very complex getting a 2 1/2 on the Moizmeter.

I love that movie and book. It's not the average coming of age story, but an attempt to understand how tender memories of the youth at the time and the shameful realities of the damage nazism caused are not inreconcilable. It asks the question what a nation can do to heal from a dark history the world will never forget and I think it answers it in a satisfactory manner while also showing that the fear of being seen inferior, inedaquate can make people compliant in things that amount to oppression and essentially even genocide. How the care to educate is crucial if we don't want to repeat the crimes and mistakes of thepast.

WILD MOUNTAIN THYME - Emily (be still my heart) Blunt, Jamie Dornan, Christopher Walken, Jon Hamm. In Ireland, Emily and Jamie live on farms separated by a fence and gates. They've known each other since childhood but never got involved. Later on after their parents die, Emily wants to get something going with Jamie but he's a bit of a goof. She meets Jon and has a brief fling on a day trip to New York but goes right back and will she finally get Jamie??? Watch and see and hear some fine Irish accents maybe? Only Emily's beauty kept me on board getting it a 2 on the Moizmeter.

Triangle of Sadness

I loved Östlund's Force Majeure and I think he had a good approach, keeping some distance from his subjects, like a good nature photographer would. Well, that goes out the window with Triangle of Sadness. About as repulsive, cynical and misanthropic as some characters and works of Peter Greenaway, but lacking the visual genius to accompany it and it manages to make you uncomfortable for its almost 2 and a half hour runtime, but nothing is really subtle here anymore, the captain's character perfectly reflects Östlund's approach: a drunk man in charge, judging and rambling to a sickened crowd who bought their tickets, but it's in vain, the message never makes it to the shore and it's far too shallow to meditate on, ultimately it's about class conflict and how the established hierarchy maintains itself, how money and power corrupts, it does have a very dark humor, but apart from it being mean-spirited and judgmental, it doesn't really strives to be anything.

“The Witcher, Blood Origin:” The set design was pretty good. The costume design was fantastic. The special effects were really good too. All the other stuff, like strength of characters, strength of narrative, skill of writing, intriguing concepts? Pretty forgettable.

Avatar 2 - Way of SPOILERS

So I never watched the sequel to Disney's Pocahontas, but apart from the sci-fi and fantasy aspects of it, just purely based on the script, this could still work as one. Watching it in 3D really pays off and I imagine IMAX 3D is the real thing, so no point going regular with this one. It doesn't build a lot on the first film, in fact it brings in more characters and provides some of these with a personal theme to explore, but both the level of destruction and the overall character progression are very limited here, obviously, because Cameron wants to build everything up in the five movies and possible additional sequels, it'd be pointless for him to go all out now and cripple himself with it for the rest. This means we get a plot barely more complex than Mad Max: Fury Road's, something that would've easily fit in a 2h movie and we get an additional hour worth of material that at some point will most likely produce a wave of disappointed marine biologists.

The film is doing a good job introducing new characters but it does very little to explain the motivations of the villain, who seems to be hell-bent on taking out our protagonist and for some macho reason, they still didn't pull the money-plug on him, after he obviously failed to conquer this new world. From what I've heard, they're keeping him around for the entire series, which makes me wonder how much more of the same we'll see before they offer him some permanent death or redemption. The most complex character here is Spider (a name for some mysterious reason got translated to “Gecco” where I live) whose struggles to be consistently loyal allows a (very short) peek at humanity in our antagonists and some darkness in Mrs Sully, which would've make for a great awkward moment between the two.

Otherwise it's still very clear-cut black and white: colonizers are cruel greedy fucks, natives are beatiful and understanding dancing with nature, but you want to be entertained by the contrast and the lack of genitals flopping in the wind, not here to see bigger conflicts resolved, there will be plenty of time to meditate on that if you're willing to look at this movie with its otherwise mediocre plot as just part of a whole, that will hopefully be a worthy saga when its out.

7/10

Good avatar review ☺️

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I just started watching the 3rd lord of the rings movies and I'm already disappointed 😅
The second one was silly with its illogical departures from the actual story and the way the characters behaved and already in the very beginning of the 3rd movie there's the same thing!

Flashback with Gollum to when he was still a Hobbit. As soon as he sees the ring he goes batshit and tries to murder his friend… Sort of undermines the entire premise of all the entire story that Hobbits are the best people to give the ring to because it takes AGEs and ages to corrupt them so it's power is dampened. But a big fat NOPE in Peter Jackson's adaptation.

O saw it through to the end.
Overall, if you ignore a lot of details the feeling of the film is right.

It's got a lot of annoying bits in there, includes ng absolutely everything with Legolas and Gimili- just edit them both out completely and it'd improve things about 20%
And the battle wasn't well filmed, there's no logic to it, it's just people charging here and there right into certain death for no reason and Mount Doom is just 20 minutes ride away across a field 🤣 Jesus…

Even with all that it was the best epic fantasy film to date, they really put the effort in, Jackson loved the subject, and the sentiment was correct.

I don't like Wednesday, maybe I am the problem. I am a fan of the character, specifically the Barry Sonnefeld films and Christina Ricci's performance.

The two main issues I have are the casting and the story.

Jenna Ortega is not the problem, she is great and carries the show. She is so good that the other Nickelodeon-level actors look bad. It's like watching Alec Guinness in Star Wars or Merl Streep in a school play.

My other gripe is the story. The Addams Family and The Munsters were funny because they looked like monsters, but were really nice normal people. Wednesday is going to Hogwart's school for weirdos and we're supposed to believe she is the outcast there.

It would have worked better if she was at a boarding school full of spoiled normals who were used to solving all their problems by throwing money at it. They could have checked off the diversity quota and served the concept better.

Instead, Wednesday is among Vampires, Witches, and Werewolves, her social peers. Nothing she has done so far makes her stand out, it just makes the other characters look like dull idiots. Her funny, threatening quips are aimed at people who don't deserve them.

Two episodes in and I am confident I know how the first murder happened, where the plot is leading, and who the villain is.

Update: In completion, it's an OKAY show. The performance of its star upstages the lackluster plot. Basically, it relies too heavily on untrustworthy narration to tell its story. Wednesday herself is the only character that matters and you can't trust any of the information you are given until the last episode.

I thought the best episode was when the entire Addams Family was featured and they addressed the alleged murder committed by Gomez Addams, which was mentioned in the 1992 movie and one of the reasons Morticia was so attracted to him. Wednesday had some great moments with Pugsley, they should have him go to school with her in the next season.

Black Christmas (1974) - It's well regarded, a Canadian film, and a slasher flick that came out several years before Halloween! I thought I'd seen it before but I hadn't.

Very interesting camera work, with those panning closeups, and multiple actors I recognized from their later work.

Most important, this thing was scary! Full of tension. The still shots of the empty hallways and doorways were very creepy - the stalking scenes (again with the closeups) had me on edge, and the phonecalls were super creepy.

I don't think it ever explained what the heck was going on in the end – but it still worked for me. Glad I saw it finally!

The little movie marathon I've planned for New Year's Eve includes
Another Round
Everything, Everwhere, All at Once
and The Suicide Squad.
All rewatches, but the pal who's coming over probably haven't seen either and they're all entertaining enough. Might include one I haven't seen yet though if I'd get tired. Django Unchained was a good choice a few years ago, Tenet was not, just like anything that's already hard to follow without alcohol.

Banes wrote:
Black Christmas (1974) - It's well regarded, a Canadian film, and a slasher flick that came out several years before Halloween! I thought I'd seen it before but I hadn't.

Black Christmas was excellent, one of the best slashers I have seen. In fact, Halloween was sold to John Carpenter as a kind of sequel. What would the killer do next?

Check out Deadly Games. It came out a year before Home Alone and is a real horror film. Two movies that will be on my yearly Holiday watch list.

sleeping_gorilla wrote:

Banes wrote:
Black Christmas (1974) - It's well regarded, a Canadian film, and a slasher flick that came out several years before Halloween! I thought I'd seen it before but I hadn't.

Black Christmas was excellent, one of the best slashers I have seen. In fact, Halloween was sold to John Carpenter as a kind of sequel. What would the killer do next?

Check out Deadly Games. It came out a year before Home Alone and is a real horror film. Two movies that will be on my yearly Holiday watch list.

And it's on YouTube for free. A pre SCTV Andrea Martin! I'd have to check the SCTV episodes but they might have spoofed this.

InkyMoondrop wrote:
The little movie marathon I've planned for New Year's Eve includes
Another Round
Everything, Everwhere, All at Once
and The Suicide Squad.
All rewatches, but the pal who's coming over probably haven't seen either and they're all entertaining enough. Might include one I haven't seen yet though if I'd get tired. Django Unchained was a good choice a few years ago, Tenet was not, just like anything that's already hard to follow without alcohol.

I saw Everything, Everwhere, All at Once the other day and I really liked it. It had a lot of heart. Very touching!
People compare it to Dr Strange because of the dimensions thing (including Jamie Lee Curtis) but they really aren't comparable. Everything, Everwhere, All at Once has better depiction of same sex couples though.
It was a really good film.

Which Scuicide Squad?
I like the first one. The second one is good too but I've only seen it half way because my silly ex turned it off in the middle and I never got back to it 😅

Ozoneocean wrote:

InkyMoondrop wrote:
The little movie marathon I've planned for New Year's Eve includes
Another Round
Everything, Everwhere, All at Once
and The Suicide Squad.
All rewatches, but the pal who's coming over probably haven't seen either and they're all entertaining enough. Might include one I haven't seen yet though if I'd get tired. Django Unchained was a good choice a few years ago, Tenet was not, just like anything that's already hard to follow without alcohol.

I saw Everything, Everwhere, All at Once the other day and I really liked it. It had a lot of heart. Very touching!
People compare it to Dr Strange because of the dimensions thing (including Jamie Lee Curtis) but they really aren't comparable. Everything, Everwhere, All at Once has better depiction of same sex couples though.
It was a really good film.

Which Scuicide Squad?
I like the first one. The second one is good too but I've only seen it half way because my silly ex turned it off in the middle and I never got back to it 😅

Yeah, Everything Everywhere All at Once is great, it has its own world and logic built up in one film, so crazy and random and yet it still works. The Daniels duo directed it, who are also responsible Swiss Army Man and the music video for Turn Down for What, I'm convinced that they're one of the most creative voices in filmmaking today and are Charlie Kaufman level of players. They also shot the film during COVID and did most special effects without CGI, the old-fashioned way.

The second Suicide Squad movie. It was similar to the first one just a lot more enjoyable. There's a lot of unnecessary gore, but all the characters and the humor were spot-on this time without the film falling apart.

But we ended up watching just two films instead: Everything Everywhere… and The Good Nurse. It was an okay film, Redmayne really sold it, one of the few portrayals of a serial killer who's not fetishized as some psychopathic monster and is an otherwise genuinely kind person, which offers a really weird perspective without trying to relativize the morality of what he did. It's based on a true story, probably with very little dramatization compared to average Hollywood.

I think Knives Out was a decent whodunnit, but Glass Onion struggles to live up to it. It doesn't want you to invest in the case just wants to pull the rug out from under you and it more and more feels like that Rian Johnson just uses the murder as an excuse to really punish and humiliate certain types of characters that he finds morally detestable and he has his favorite pick that aside from Blanc is in the absolute moral right and gets to really show the middle finger to all the non-woke ones. It's like an adorable power-fantasy, which you can at least tolerate, regardless of your political alignment, but I just really wish this was a more engaging story for the viewer, not something where it doesn't matter how smart you are, because what they show you is already misleading, so they could have this gotcha moment later on. That's a cool thing, it has great entertainment value, I like twists like that, it's just… as traditional crime-solving mystery that people like to join in on… it's not smart.

InkyMoondrop wrote:
as traditional crime-solving mystery that people like to join in on… it's not smart.

I liked the over-the-topness of the characters and the setup.
The position of the film-maker: all those people are “shitheads” XD

Yeah, it's a tiny bit on-the-nose that the villains HAVE to be the traditional “cis-white male” and stupid the men's rights guy while the hero has to be the young black female, while the old whit guy detective gets a pass because he's gay… all that is high school level culture politics, directly equivalent to the old style villain with the black hat and curly mustache and the hero in the white hat.

But simply because it's so obvious and cartoonish I think it gets a pass because it's meant to be a silly film with big, broad tropes and parodies of these types of people. You're in no way getting a clever film but you are getting a fun one with a really obvious point of view.

I liked it better than the first one. The first one tried too hard to be clever and never really fully got there, it just had the IMAGE of cleverness so it came off as a bit too pretentious to me and not very fun. The pretension in glass onion is drowned out by the fun.

Ozoneocean wrote:

InkyMoondrop wrote:
as traditional crime-solving mystery that people like to join in on… it's not smart.

I liked the over-the-topness of the characters and the setup.
The position of the film-maker: all those people are “shitheads” XD

Yeah, it's a tiny bit on-the-nose that the villains HAVE to be the traditional “cis-white male” and stupid the men's rights guy while the hero has to be the young black female, while the old whit guy detective gets a pass because he's gay… all that is high school level culture politics, directly equivalent to the old style villain with the black hat and curly mustache and the hero in the white hat.

But simply because it's so obvious and cartoonish I think it gets a pass because it's meant to be a silly film with big, broad tropes and parodies of these types of people. You're in no way getting a clever film but you are getting a fun one with a really obvious point of view.

I liked it better than the first one. The first one tried too hard to be clever and never really fully got there, it just had the IMAGE of cleverness so it came off as a bit too pretentious to me and not very fun. The pretension in glass onion is drowned out by the fun.

I just realized what these films are. Glass Onion, Triangle of Sadness, The Menu… they're all “Richsploitation” films, where the wealthy gets tortured for our enjoyment. And unlike in the early 90s horrors where home invaders and psychos targeted the somewhat wealthy family men, there is no redemption here, just torture. Richsploitation.

THE PALE BLUE EYE - Christian Bale, Harry Melling (as Edgar Allen Poe!), Gillian Anderson, Lucy Boynton, and Robert Duvall in cameo role. Takes place way back around 1840ish, Bale is a private detective? called to a military academy to investigate a grisly murder. He meets Poe and they work to find killer. Suspects galore and another murder happens and then another! Wait for stunning ending, fooled even me! But one of those films where they leave final scene up to viewer to decide what happens. Still not a bad watch getting a 3 on the Moizmeter.

HOLLOW IN THE LAND - Dianna Agron, Michael Rogers, Jared Abrahamson, Shawn Ashmore. A fine Canadian film shot in and around Castlegar, B.C. Dianna's (in virtually every scene) father is in prison for a murder he didn't do. She is looking after her young brother (Jared) who is now main suspect in another murder and Chief of Police (Rogers) is going to get him no matter what. Dianna leads us thru many somewhat confusing scenes while she tries to find her bro. Finally she finds the bad guy and kills him and her bro is found alive and well. An OK watch getting a 2 1/2 on the Moizmeter.

I'll tell you what I'm not watching: this painfully awful-looking remake of SNOW DAY that Nickelodeon felt was necessary to make for some reason.

I mean, sue me, I actually liked the original movie, even though I know everybody hates it, but the remake actually looks terrible. Chris Elliott was great as the original Snowplow Man, despite being a little hammy, he made the character seem menacing and sociopathic . . . the new Snowplow Man seems like a fruity GLEE character . . . not helped by the fact that Nickelodeon also decided that apparently the remake needed to be a musical.

I re-watched School Of Rock staring Jack Black.

I does not hold up.
I saw it many years ago, not expecting much because I didn't really know about Black at the time and it looked like a kid's film. I loved it and thought it was really fun and engaging. Loved the inclusion of the music too. I really remembered it very fondly.

On this watch however it just seemed dumb. I kept thinking that Black's fake teacher character was stupidly depriving the kids of a valuable education. His passion for the kids was good and the fact that he stopped being a slacker was great too, but he's mostly just an extremely selfish bastard and all the great music licensed for the movie is only used in a very token way for 20 second clips of the starting riffs.
Overall it's just a shallow formula film The only good parts are Jack's mannerisms, which are his own rather than the character.

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I watched all the Back to the Future movies.
They hold up. The first one is very tight in its writing, references and call backs. None of them are clever intellectual films, but they're clever in their structure and internal logic. They're all very well made.

The second one opens up more of Marty's world and gives us a great glimpse of the future. The third one was made at the same time as the 2nd so it fulfills a lot of references from it. They're not as tight as the first movie but they're all really quite well done.
The Green-screen could use some digital remastering to blend things better though.