Amph What was the last movie you saw? (Ver. 2)

Well, she was better here, but still the weakest link imo. Thankfully, McAvoy, Fassbender, and Hoult often shared scenes with her so that made up for it.

As far as “mutant and proud”, if she was, why keep going back to human form movie after movie unless it’s a mission? (Lawrence aside, I am talking character here). If anyone was that, it was Erik.

Obviously, they catered to Ms.Lawrence going forward. Huge mystake imo. As far as the new Wolverine, eh maybe. Mystique was known for using her talents to disrupt Cold War stuff. So I wasn’t surprised they worked some of that into subsequent movies. I would have rather seen more focus on the bad mutants etc.

I love First Class, except Mystique. The nazi hunting was everything I’d hoped for and more. I could have watched an entire movie of Fassbender’s Mags doing stuff like that.

 

This guy?

Spoiler

 

In Hereditary, occult horror descends on a dysfunctional family. In Midsommar, a dysfunctional couple descends on a horror-cult. I may not be doing a good job tying those two movies together thematically. I can imagine Ari Aster having lunch with a friend, who says "I just broke up with my girlfriend. It was a ****ing nightmare." "****ing nightmare, you say?," says Ari Aster: "I can make a movie about that!" And lo it came to pass, and it was a ****ed up nightmare. Aster seemed to make an effort not to try to outdo the ****ed-upness of Hereditary, which was probably a good thing, but it lands somewhere in the vicinity. Holy ****, the bear.

Ari Aster and Jordan Peele are in a brutal cage match to see who will become the Alex Garland of horror. As you know, Alex Garland is the Wes Anderson of sci fi. Wes Anderson is the Quentin Tarantino of quirky low key family drama and stop motion animation. Quentin Tarantino is the the Paul Thomas Anderson of shallow, self-referential retro-nostalgic genre crossover pop cinema. I hope I'm getting all this right. I have a chart I made for reference. Paul Thomas Anderson is the Spike Lee of deeply layered character studies. Spike Lee is the Ethan and Joel Coen of poignant accounts of life in pre-post racial America. Ethan and Joel Coen are the Jim Jarmusch of movies with a budget of more than $1 million...

 

I find that I'm appreciating Midsommar more when it's framed as a fairy tale with horror elements, rather than as a straight-up horror film that features folk horror, breakup, and fairy tale elements.

 

Ken: I'm so dumb
JCC: How dumb are you Ken?
Ken: I'm so dumb that I actually thought Ophelia, starring Daisy Ridley, Naomi Watts and Clive Owen, was going to be a feminist critique of Hamlet in the style of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.

It's not. It's Dunning-Kruger Hamlet. It's the Plan 9 from Outer Space of Hamlet productions. I can easily imagine being entertained by a movie about a Hamlet production put on by entertainers too dumb to know they're too dumb to put on a Hamlet production, let alone too dumb to know they're too dumb to handle a feminist critique of Hamlet in the style of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. That might have been a good movie. An absurdist tragicomedy about people too dumb to make a feminist critique of Hamlet in the style of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, made in the style of Ed Wood. That's the movie I'm holding out for.

 

Halloween II (1981)

I've seen the original masterpiece at least 10 times and decided to give this a try.

It was nice how it picked up precisely where the other film ended, truly making for a horrific October 31, 1978. As if the first film wasn't horrific enough for Haddonfield. And the amount of terror poor Laurie goes through in one night is hard to imagine.

This sequel was decent. I noticed that Debra Hill and John Carpenter were still heavily involved in the writing and producing although JC did not direct.

The premise is that Michael Myers follows Laurie to the hospital where her injuries are being treated and he proceeds to kill everyone in the hospital; some of them making the usual stupid decisions people in these movies make. Like, how about you DON'T all split up for starters! Jeez. You almost want to yell at the screen when the characters start doing this dumb stuff lol. But I reckon there wouldn't be a movie if they just outsmarted and defeated Michael.

Myers is supernaturally overpowered, but for such an old film in this genre, I found the kills to be suspenseful and not gratuitous like a lot of the garbage out there in this genre.

Jamie Lee does a good job and it's nice to see Donald Pleasence back again. Oh, did I mention that people make stupid decisions and don't listen to him? Lol.

Halloween II is a good sequel and recommended for fans of the original, especially as it takes place the very same night.
One gripe is that I didn't care for the reorchestration of the classic theme music. They should have kept the original recording, at least for most of the time.

Not sure if I will be watching anymore of this franchise. Unless anyone has any suggestions of must see entries?

 

I thought the trailer looked unabashedly self-indulgent and stupid. Would you say that's a fair assessment?

 

Your'e too generous. Obviously this is the worst movie that Naomi Watts has ever been in, and she was in The Book of Henry. But more spectacularly, this it the worst movie that Clive Owen has ever been in, and he was in Last Knights.

 

Is it worth a watch to laugh at how bad it is, in a The Room style viewing? Or is it the painful bad, like the most recent Transformers film?

 

Clive Owen's performance is so over-the-top I suspect he may have figured out early that he was stuck in a train wreck. I must have missed the trailer, because I was caught completely off guard, was too surprised to enjoy it ironically, if that's possible. I'm not willing to go back and try to find out.

 

The Possessed (1965)

Finally saw Luigi Bazzoni’s first horror, a proto giallo shot in b&w (the cinematography is unbelievable). The movie is worth watching for that alone.

Bernard, a novelist and journalist. Came back to a favorite hotel of youth to work on his next book. He really came back to hopefully get reacquainted with the lovely maid, Tilde.

Told by a friend that she died and -probably not from suicide- plunges Bernard into the perverted secrets of the family that owns the hotel. Like Pupi Avanti’s slow burn giallo horror, The House with Laughing Windows (1976), The Possessed gets deep into the disturbing underbelly of one family’s psychosis and how this effects their community. The difference between the two movies is this was loosely based on a real event, which is why I probably won’t revisit this beyond a few shots. I thought this was very well crafted and acted, but I prefer my human monsters to be as fake as supernatural ones. For gialli by Bazzoni, I’ll stick with Footprints on The Moon & The Fifth Cord.

If you like true crime stories, this might interest you.

 

I'm pretty well in line with your take on Halloween II. I really, really like the way it picks right up where the first one ends; it's like, "oh, so Laurie got put in an ambulance; why did you think that meant she was safe?" It's a neat subversion of the way these kinds of horror movies often end with a kind of arbitrary "everything is over now" ending. It really helped that I actually watched them back to back on the same night, the first time I saw them. Really made it feel like a miniseries or something.

That's the best thing about it; second best is the use of the hospital setting, which is well done. Beyond that, it doesn't have nearly the artistry of the original. That was one downside of watching them both on the same night; the quality drop is pretty obvious when you've just finished the first movie.

I would say that the 2018 sequel is very good. It was divisive, particularly its take on Laurie, but I really liked it. And it essentially functions as an alternate Halloween II since it retcons all of the sequels out of continuity and is meant to be a follow-up to the first film. All things considered, it's a better Halloween II than Halloween II, in my opinion. I think there's a solid thirty to forty minutes in there that's just flawless; and the rest is quite good. But it is divisive, so if you do watch it, I'll be curious to hear your thoughts.

I don't know that anyone really defends any of the others, except for those who think Season of the Witch is so crazy as to be worth watching. I haven't seen it, so I couldn't say for sure.

 

The Last Samurai. You can argue about the whole “white lead in a foreign movie” thing, but Cruise is solid and the cast around him is excellent, in a very handsome film. Its romanticized message is simplistic, but it’s a compellingly entertaining general-audience epic. I enjoyed it.

Also, it has a samurai-vs-ninja battle sequence and how could I possibly ask anything more from a film?

 

@Rogue1-and-a-half
Completely agree about the drop in artistry between Halloween and Halloween II.
Especially regarding the cinematography and the editing. There are some terrible edits in II, especially during the last third of the film. Just goes to show how incredible Carpenter's original achievement was, and on a $300,000 budget or thereabouts.
I think II had a $2.5 million budget and it was made only three years later.

That's cool you watched them back to back, that would be fun. I'll have to try that sometime.

As for the 2018 sequel, I'll be sure to check that out. I'm curious if it retcons one major spoiler from Halloween II (1981).

@The2ndQuest
Thanks for the suggestions.
Next up is the 2018 version and then we'll see. The premise of the franchise was getting old in II, so not sure I will dig much deeper than the newest one, although you're the second person to recommend H2O.

 

Well, it’s free on Amazon Prime right now if you don’t own it.

 

Yeah, they're almost worth watching just because Zombie is clearly bringing his own really personal style to the films and it's very weird and not at all just the kind of cheap cash-grab remakes you might expect them to be. But they're just so bad. Interesting, but ultimately too bad to be worth it, in my opinion. God, the performances are so ******* terrible. Even Malcolm McDowell, especially in the second one. Brad Dourif is good; he's the only one.

 

Insomnia kept me busy: The strike out with my Arrow video sales purchases continued, as I watched the remaining quartet, starting withThe Grand Duel.

Lee Van Cleef’s grizzled lawman helps a young gunfighter evade his demise after being framed for killing “the Patriarch”. Some interesting set pieces and Van Cleef’s presence make this almost work.

Wasn’t thrilled with the early Hitchcockian giallo, The Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion. In which bored wife Minou is told her husband is a murderer and refuses to believe the man blackmailing them. Instead she gives into the blackmailer’s demands and agrees to submit to the blackmailer’s risqué photo shoots.

And revisited The Iguana with the Tongue of Fire. A bad giallo across the board: One of the few that made me think ‘Well that sucked’ right out of the gate. Very mean spirited, disjointed and poorly done who dunnit that tries to implicate a diplomat for murder. I love the title, but that’s it.

So five out of six purchases were a waste, which left me with the one great movie I picked up.

I rewatched Enzo Castellari’s Keoma, albeit silently. A great spaghetti western save for its atrocious soundtrack that overwhelms every scene. Franco Nero is the title character, a weary, mixed race Civil War vet who fought for the Union, only to come home to find his town overrun by an awful gang led by his bigoted half-brothers. When Keoma also defends a young widow sick with some plague, the bullets hit the fan.

Castellari makes this feel mythic with Keoma’s religious analogue, the Sam Peckinpah slow motion violence, the racial tensions (genre vet Woody Strode plays a family friend of Keoma who helped raise him) and shades of Bergman with the old woman standing in for death. I love his staging of flashbacks that sees Nero on fringe of the frame watching his younger self endure all kinds of trauma. Also, the dusty, sepia atmosphere adds to it too. Watching this silently adds even more power to the character and story, as Enzo was one of the most unique visual directors in a country full of them.

Enzo and Franco made several good to great films together (and the failed spaghetti western satire Cry, Onion), and Keoma is among the top of their collaborations. Apparently, they are preparing to film a sequel with an obviously older take on the character. Should be interesting. Just wish someone would release their amazing police movie, High Crime in HD already.

Debating if I upgrade my digital of Sergio Martino’s Torso. I had mixed feeling about that the last time I watched, but maybe I will. Also Romero’s The Crazies.

I am happy I waited to buy most of these movies until this sale. With a few exceptions, Arrow seems to generally scoop up fourth rate Italian genre fare, so waiting for these $3.99 sales to buy most releases -unless it’s a movie I already enjoy- is a solid move.

 

Mrs. Meadows .

this is a pretty unusual film ,
Katie Holmes plays Meadows who is like an Alice in wonderland character with impeccable manners and likes to tap dance down the sidewalk. She also murders muggers and rapists when the chance occurs .

so it's a black comedy , but actually there's not much comedy , it seems a bit sweeter than that. it's very well directed , but somehow doesn't really work .
I'd never heard of it .
anyone else seen it?

 

Spider-Man: Far From Home

 

IMO, You’re good with not watching anything else. The first is the best.

Before I got into horror, my grade school social studies teacher showed us this movie. I had nightmares for quite awhile. That wasn’t fun.

Even after I got into horror, I generally skipped most slasher movies. I still do not like them and my horror watching remains delightfully void of seeing many of them. Apparently, I am becoming burnt out on gialli too, save for a few exceptions. That’s fine. I’ll take supernatural-fake monsters any day over murderers.

Rolls off soap box.

 

Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms (2018)
This was a borrow from Hoopla streaming. I had favorited it awhile back to watch at a future date, so I figured this morning as I'm home for the Independence Day holiday I might as well see what it's about. It's certainly not like I thought it would be. When you look at the main cover art for the film, you probably get the impression that it's just another animated fairy tale movie with knights, maidens, and a love story.


But it's really far more than that. The fair-haired girl in the picture is among a race of people who never grow old; they call themselves "the separated" because they choose to live apart from regular humans. Suddenly their island is attacked by outsiders, and survivors are forced to flee. The girl you see in the picture is on her own as a result, but she hears the cries of a baby in a nearby village. She decides to take the baby as her own, and the story really takes off from there. It's movies like these, especially animated ones, with a beginning, thorough story body, and appropriate ending (i.e. one that doesn't necessarily have to leave room for damn sequels) that I really appreciate. I'm already looking to buy the Blu-Ray of this film; which is a big deal because I'm extremely picky in movies I choose to keep for my own home library.

 

The Edge of Seventeen (2016)

It is about goddamned time I watch a good film. Reading my last post itt feels like I gave up. This is a wonderful coming-of-age dramedy about a teenager (played by the always terrific Haylee Steinfeld) who finds herself in the awkward situation of her very best friend dating her older brother. Everything works here. The central performances, the supporting performances, especially Woody Harrelson. It is somewhat similar to Lady Bird in its themes. That one came out a year later and received a lot of awards attention and several nominations at the Oscars. This one received almost no love whatsoever besides a Golden Globe nomination for Steinfeld. I think this is the better film by a smidgen. A smidgen.

Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993)

Woody Allen directs, and stars, and re-teams with Diane Keaton as they play a middle aged couple that are investigating the untimely death of the wife their apartment neighbor and if he killed her or not. Keaton thinks foul play was involved and gets increasingly neurotic about it, while Allen....well he's really really ****ing irritating in this and his Woody Allenness is dialed up a ridiculous notch. There are some decent supporting performances, Alan Alda as a struggling mystery writer that is as obsessed with the possible murder as Keaton is, and Angelica Huston as poker player turned mystery writer who has fondness towards Allen. Zach Braff (!!) is briefly in this as well. Ultimately, it has a plot twist that is disappointingly obvious to the point that maybe it wasn't a plot twist after all, but I won't spoil anything even though I don't think people watch Woody Allen films right now. I'm not sure why I watched this one. Annie Hall is probably still his best film.

The Stratton Story (1949)

Baseball biopic starring Jimmy Stewart who plays the real life Bobby Stratton (although wikipedia has him and Montgomery, so idk) who was an up-and coming baseball player that had to have his leg amputate during a hunting accident and then beat the odds and played in the minor leagues. It's a decent, if conventional film, that works because of Stewart. Despite his politics, he's always been one of my favorite performers. It's a fine film to watch during this holiday weekend.