Rock wrote:

Just watched this. Did you give it five stars for unintentional comedy reasons?

Sort of. It obviously has some wildly bad stretches that I found incredibly entertaining because of how stupid they were. And what they do with the Burstyn character, while possibly infuriating me on a different day, I found so perversely offensive to the point I couldn't help but laugh at it. And this isn't even getting into how pandering it is, to the point it almost feels lock a mock up of dunderheaded inclusivity and progressive Twitter brain.

But beneath that, I found it set itself up fairly well. Green studied the editing beats of the original, to the point of almost complete erasure of his own identity, but that I appreciated as a homage. And some of the family drama I actually found moderately successful. And there was even the occassional moment or image that I thought had some amount of power attached it it.

Now this is all in relation to what I was expecting, which was that it would be considerably worse than most of the Hollywood horror that supposedly passes the sniff test these days. But I actually think it was better than most of those. It knew how to do the pandering kind of shit better than most of the big budget Hollywood nonsense that is getting cranked out. I think the negative reviews, reaching the point with some where people think it's the worst movie ever made, is beyond hyperbole. At worst, I think this is casual crap to the average viewer. But to me, it was like the Citizen Kane of lowered expectations.

Now I wouldn't read too much into the five stars. That's just a barometer of how much I enjoyed something in the moment, and for once, this movie made me remember the thrill of empty popcorn entertainment. Unsurprisingly though, by the rest of the world, this was the one movie that couldn't even wring that basic emotion out of an audience.

So five stars it is.

I would also add that, compared to the other sequels, it's obviously worse than the original and the third one. But it's clearly better than that shit that came out about 15 years ago. And it's probably most comparable to The Heretic, which also was far from the worst thing ever made, and that didn't ever have a chance to get out from the shadow of the original.
 

crumbsroom wrote:

Rock wrote:

Just watched this. Did you give it five stars for unintentional comedy reasons?

Sort of. It obviously has some wildly bad stretches that I found incredibly entertaining because of how stupid they were. And what they do with the Burstyn character, while possibly infuriating me on a different day, I found so perversely offensive to the point I couldn't help but laugh at it. And this isn't even getting into how pandering it is, to the point it almost feels lock a mock up of dunderheaded inclusivity and progressive Twitter brain.

But beneath that, I found it set itself up fairly well. Green studied the editing beats of the original, to the point of almost complete erasure of his own identity, but that I appreciated as a homage. And some of the family drama I actually found moderately successful. And there was even the occassional moment or image that I thought had some amount of power attached it it.

Now this is all in relation to what I was expecting, which was that it would be considerably worse than most of the Hollywood horror that supposedly passes the sniff test these days. But I actually think it was better than most of those. It knew how to do the pandering kind of shit better than most of the big budget Hollywood nonsense that is getting cranked out. I think the negative reviews, reaching the point with some where people think it's the worst movie ever made, is beyond hyperbole. At worst, I think this is casual crap to the average viewer. But to me, it was like the Citizen Kane of lowered expectations.

Now I wouldn't read too much into the five stars. That's just a barometer of how much I enjoyed something in the moment, and for once, this movie made me remember the thrill of empty popcorn entertainment. Unsurprisingly though, by the rest of the world, this was the one movie that couldn't even wring that basic emotion out of an audience.

So five stars it is.

I would also add that, compared to the other sequels, it's obviously worse than the original and the third one. But it's clearly better than that shit that came out about 15 years ago. And it's probably most comparable to The Heretic, which also was far from the worst thing ever made, and that didn't ever have a chance to get out from the shadow of the original.
 

I thought the dramatic scenes were a lot better than the Halloween movies because the characters actually talked like real people. But I was less charmed by the scares.

Jinnistan wrote:

This film is triumphant in many contexts, reclaiming the franchise to its Japanese roots both thematically and aesthetically (undermining the Hollywood dogma which has sought to sideline Asian faces in the cast), and subverting the Hollywood budgetary dogma by acheiving a box office success - 10x its $15 million budget - while its recent American franchise installments have not yet surpassed 3-4x their substantially larger budgets, and all while snatching the VFX Oscar from their Hollywood competitors to boot, as the final verdict on the erroneous ideology of spending one's way to quality.

All of that fits the underdog narrative that doesn't really require the execution of the film itself.  But fortunately, in terms of scale and spectacle, GMZ matches the awe of its contemporaries as well, as sheer entertainment.  And while, it's true, this film isn't exactly immune from some of the more corny melodrama that's become accustomed to the franchise, the sometimes pitched emotions still feel far less contrived than the Freudian dysfunctions that American audiences have been forced to suffer in thier recent Godzilla soap operas, and with far less excuse (again, context).  But in terms of efficacy and satisfaction, it should be sufficient to belie our inflated blockbuster priorities.

8/10
 

Yeah, I really liked this. Both the spectacle and the melodrama worked for me.

I'd been avoiding this film for a number of reasons, maybe because I accidentally posted the wrong Hitman trailer in the Coming Soon thread last year, or maybe because the Hit Man, as an archetype, is one of the most boring and basic which had already been thoroughly, strip-mined in the 90s, and frankly most hitman films after Grosse Point Blank just seem to have missed the joke ever since.  But nonetheless the Hit Man has persisted as a, particularly American, pedestrian fantasy fetish, and it's not a surprise that I could confuse another film with the same name made in the same year due to its steady proliferation.

On the positive side, Linklater's Hit Man is self-aware enough to understand the nature of this fantasy fetish and makes this the central conceit of its humor.  Playing off of the statistical reality that 99.9% of contract killers, hired by normies not affiliated with organized crime, are actually undercover policemen, the film establishes the cosplay of it all, and the vicarious attraction of the hypercool ultra masculine lethal but vaguely ethical and potentially tameable appeal that is exactly what audiences have been glomming onto since goddamn Alain Delon.  Glen Powell, a philosophy professor and tech nerd who unsuspectingly finds himself in such a sting operation, manages to balance his charm between his real life bashful geek and his various fantasy avatars.  A theme in the film is self-determination and the plasticity of personality, and Powell finds a way to align "Gary" and "Ron" into one convincing affectation.  Adria Arjona is both sweet and sexy in a similar feat of duplicity.

On the negative, the film isn't as clever as it acts like it is.  Maybe that's the point, in order to hook in all of the normies who otherwise would actually want to watch yet another by-numbers hit man movie (maybe hungry after typically pedestrian Netflix content like Gray Man or The Killer), but whatever the intent the results are largely predictable and still stay firmly in the standard formula.  Also, sticking with its philosophical pretensions, there's a sour ubermensch aftertaste to it all, which isn't exactly countered by its postscript that "that part" was made up.  Then why was this addition to Gary Johnson's true-life story necessary or warranted?  I imagine it's precisely to drive the ubermensch point home, which would be interesting as a comment on the motives of audiences' desire to cosplay as a hitman except it's really just more of a justification for those motives.  In the end, the film is slight but pleasant and modestly more entertaining than your typical Netflix mid-budget release.

7/10





Whether or not there was ever a master plan here in what seems to be an eventual trilogy, or whether Ti West, along with co-writer and lead actress Mia Gith, after realizing what a waste of time X ultimately was, decided to compensate with an unquestionably superior film, who knows?  Since Pearl rests on the strength of Goth's performance, I'm content to assume that her more involved creative role had a lot to do with the improvement.

This film is less hindered by its genre contrivances, although some do remain and they are just as confused.  Although the film is set in 1918, West decides to go with a template style of the 40s and 50s.  (Maybe it's all the same "old" to him.)  In a way, I get the point, which is to establish Pearl's ersatz technicolor fantasy worldview in tones of a Disney musical.  Either way, these flourishes are the least interesting aspects of the film and thankfully not intrusive enough to weigh against the more substantial aspects.  Unlike X, the genre references do not dominate the film, and Pearl is also far less dependent on any particular horror formula, allowing for a more original vision to peak through.  Again, the film rises and sets on Mia Goth's terrific performance as Pearl, which is pathetic, empathetic and perfidious in equal measure.  And, thankfully, unlike that too-cutesy poster up there, thoroughly, unforgivingly and frightfully tragic.  The film's final sustained shot is destined for horror glory.  But it's still well beneath the very thematically similar Eyes of My Mother and also docked for the annoying attempts at covid lockdown commentary.

7.5/10






Arrebato is a cult Spanish film and only feature film from underground artist Ivan Zulueta.  The film is hallucinatory and hypnotic, and is quite explicitly a drug picture, with heroin specifically being not only an element but practically a plot point in order to put the film's narcotic atmosphere into context.  The story is a fractured structure, involving a film director, having difficulty with his latest film, his wife, and a mysterious associate who sends shipments of audio cassettes and reels of homemade film which try to lay out the complexities of what's supposed to be happening.  This associate, Pedro, we learn has been filming himself while he sleeps, which he attributes to producing a euphoric reaction upon awakening, but each time more and more red frames begin appearing in the celluloid.  The metaphor between camera = narcotic isn't difficult to decipher, and likewise Pedro finds not just euphoria, as well as dependence, on his camera but also that it seems to be draining his life essence at the same time.

The film is pretty crude, technically, and, as should be obvious, the film's tone and visuals are probably best understood in an intoxicated context.  But it is a fascinating curio, a metaphysical horror even, and I believe it's my first film in the post-Franco "La Movida" movement in Spain.  (Which also reminds me that I really should get around to watching Pedro Almodovar's first four films in this movement.)

7.5/10
 

Revenge of the Dead occupied the place of worst movie I ever saw when I was 13.

Decided to revisit it about ten years ago just to see what was so bad about it, and it turned out to be not bad at all.

Avati's House of Laughing Windows is by now a clear classic, and his Arcane Sorcerer is alright too. Don't know if I've seen anything else.
 

I wouldn't exactly call this a 'missed opportunity'.  No, the real missed opportuity was after Dolemite, which gave Eddie Murphy a great deal of audience good will and enthusiasm, and he then proceeded to squander that opportunity by neglecting his promised return to stand-up and only delivering two unsolicited 80s sequels in addition to a family Christmas trifle (Candy Cane Lane) and one extremely lame and way passed dated race comedy (You People, a Guess Who's Coming retread which had already been rebooted a decade ago).  So Eddie Murphy chose not to use his "comeback" as an opportunity to exercise his more mature talents as either an actor or a comedian.

So, basically, there's no reason for this particular sequel to have ever been made if not for both Hollywood's (or Netflix's) and Eddie Murphy's complete creative bankruptcy, and the film fails to prove any purpose beyond cheap nostalgic product.  As an example of Murphy's aloof carelessness is the decision to work with relative amateur and uncreative writers and director, working from an extremely predictable script with every lazy contrivance imaginable, from its pedestrian crime scenario (cartels and corrupt cops!) to its even more pathetic Freudian soap opera (introducing the resentful daughter).  Worse than any of that, the humor is even more predictable than that and maybe it was a warning how they couldn't find a single line to carry the trailer.  It doesn't really seem like anyone was even trying, rather than resting on throwback recognition of the stale nostalgic cues.  In other words, it's exactly the kind of script you'd expect from an A.I. chatbot that only knows how to recycle rather than create.

Outside of the cheap nostalgia, none of the acting fares much better than what the script would allow.  Joseph Gordon-Levitt is especially soggy in his attempt at sensitive masculinity.  Eddie Murphy smiles a lot but most of his charm has faded.  At the most positive, Kevin Bacon manages a dependably reptilian impression of Paul Gleason, and, like brief parcels shipped in from some presumably better film, there's exactly two cameo-level moments, from Nasim Pedrad and Affiom Crockett, which provide the film's only actual laughs.  (I'm tempted to assume that they were allowed to improvise their lines.)

It's interesting how many reviews for this film amount to "it's good enough".  That attitude is a big part of the problem.

5/10
 

Rock wrote:

the theme played a bunch

Probably the most admirable aspect was the score's adherence to that Jan Hammer-esque synth and drums 80s action patented sound.  I was wondering whether they were actually using the vintage incidental music, but apparently not.

Rock wrote:

Lorne Balfe did something similar with the new Bad Boys movies

Speaking of which, is that film any better than this?  On par?  I noticed it's written by the same guy.

Jinnistan wrote:

Rock wrote:

Lorne Balfe did something similar with the new Bad Boys movies

Speaking of which, is that film any better than this?  On par?  I noticed it's written by the same guy.

I’d say so. Smith and Lawrence are operating at full charisma and the action direction is pretty strong. Apparently those directors were attached to BHC 4 at one point, it’s possible they could have made something more engaged.

The writing is definitely not the strong point, though.

There are definitely jokes in the new Bad Boys. They’re mindbogglingly stupid though.