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[MOVIE] FEBRUARY 2016 DISCUSSION


RIPPA

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I guess I'm going to talk about TV in here until we get a new thread.  Feel free to move this when the time is right, Rippa.

 

Anyone ever watch Blackish?  I actively avoided it before today, but with the buzz about last nights police brutality episode I thought I would give it a go and holy hell!  It reminded me of a sitcom from another time with the impressive mix of tackling an issue AND still being really funny.  Anthony Anderson's monologue about Obama's inauguration legit hit me in the feels.  Like, "How come he don't want me, man?" Fresh Prince level of feels.

 

On to the jokes.  The Boys n the Hood inside joke cracked me up right away.  Pretty much every line from the grandparents had me rolling.  Fishburne had two really amazing ones.  

 

After the oldest kid name-dropped Coates: "They'd be no funny named colored boys if it wasn't for James Baldwin."

 

After Anthony Anderson said "you were a bobcat': "Panther adjacent. Still part of the radical cat family."

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I guess I'm going to talk about TV in here until we get a new thread.  Feel free to move this when the time is right, Rippa.

 

Anyone ever watch Blackish?  I actively avoided it before today, but with the buzz about last nights police brutality episode I thought I would give it a go and holy hell!  It reminded me of a sitcom from another time with the impressive mix of tackling an issue AND still being really funny.  Anthony Anderson's monologue about Obama's inauguration legit hit me in the feels.  Like, "How come he don't want me, man?" Fresh Prince level of feels.

 

On to the jokes.  The Boys n the Hood inside joke cracked me up right away.  Pretty much every line from the grandparents had me rolling.  Fishburne had two really amazing ones.  

 

After the oldest kid name-dropped Coates: "They'd be no funny named colored boys if it wasn't for James Baldwin."

 

After Anthony Anderson said "you were a bobcat': "Panther adjacent. Still part of the radical cat family."

If you like heavy mixed with funny, you should give MOM a try. . . .

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I watched Hummingbird, with Jason Statham. It's not quite his usual, at the start his character is a homeless alcoholic with long hair. But then (like Daniel Craig in Love is the Devil) he falls through a gay man's skylight and it changes his life forever (although unlike Daniel Craig in Love is the Devil, he doesn't spend the rest of the movie doing full frontal nudity and gay sex scenes). Instead, it sort of... turns into a Jason Statham movie, with gangsters and violence and that. But it's different, because it kind of looks at what the psychological consequences of being a Jason Statham character would be, with the guilt and the self-disgust and the PTSD... and the doomed attempts to redeem oneself and try to be a good person when you're only good at doing terrible things.

 

It's pretty good, yeah.

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The Forest: Eh, kind of average. I'm wondering if Natalie Dormer might be a bit like Sarah Michelle Gellar in that she's just far more suited to TV and comes off as a bit flat on the big screen. Or it might have been the bad accent they had her doing. Regardless, she wasn't good here and the scares weren't much special. 

 

I did think the twist at the end was cool though:

 

of course the forest wanted the more innocent, naive sister all along. The darker, more messed up one was already too damaged for her to be of any use to it or the ghosts there

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I was so so disappointed with Triple 9, so much potential but ultimately a missed opportunity. Could nitpick a lot of it but the story is a mess,most of the cast is misused,Kate Winslets accent,a hamfisted and rushed ending are just some of the things that are wrong.

I wont say its awful because it had some good action scenes but i just wonder would it have worked better as a 6 or 8 part series??

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Rise of the Footsoldier might be the nastiest crime film I've ever seen. Just completely reprehensible characters who you can only give points to for self-restraint, and some brutal -- brutal  -- gore. I mean this is as rough as any splatter film I've ever seen and I've seen 'em all. I don't recommend watching it unless you want to feel like you've seen something jaw-droppingly disgusting without any moral merit whatsoever, though really well made and acted. In that case, go for it. Caveat emptor.

 

I thought about it for a second and the only crime film more sadistic than this is Fulci's Contraband. As in having no moral quandaries whatsoever, just showing really really awful shit happening. And this might be worse.

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Unfriended: This was, eh, interesting? I kinda feel like I might have to watch it again to fully get it. I did appreciate that it required the audience to pay attention to everything on screen. Innovative, if nothing else. 

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I know that, on this board, I am being incredibly late to hitch a ride on this particular movie's bandwagon. But holy shit, Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky is just the greatest thing ever. It's like a 15-year-old Stephen Chow got hopped up on a marathon of 1970s prison exploitation flicks and Sonny Chiba karate movies, and decided to make a fanciful X-rated mashup of all of the above, with the child who writes Axe Cop providing the script. It is fucking awesome, to the point where the movie's ridiculous ending (one of those "why didn't the hero just do that at the START of the movie, if he was capable of that the entire time!" deus ex machinae) got me to laugh with it rather than laugh at it. Even the production design is oddly effective, creating a sort of environment which gives the odd feeling of being slightly futuristic despite not actually showing a single overt sci-fi-ish element.

The weird thing is, I'm not much of a fan of MODERN Asian splatter films of the past dozen years or so. More often than not, they just come off as sadistic and gratuitous and gross (looking at you, Machine Girl!). But the violence in Riki-Oh is so goddamn goofy, like watching a live-action version of Itchy & Scratchy. And it probably helps that the gore effects are so obviously phony-looking too, it adds a sense of humor to the proceedings which might be lacking with more grimly realistic blood and guts.

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I know that, on this board, I am being incredibly late to hitch a ride on this particular movie's bandwagon. But holy shit, Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky is just the greatest thing ever. It's like a 15-year-old Stephen Chow got hopped up on a marathon of 1970s prison exploitation flicks and Sonny Chiba karate movies, and decided to make a fanciful X-rated mashup of all of the above, with the child who writes Axe Cop providing the script. It is fucking awesome, to the point where the movie's ridiculous ending (one of those "why didn't the hero just do that at the START of the movie, if he was capable of that the entire time!" deus ex machinae) got me to laugh with it rather than laugh at it. Even the production design is oddly effective, creating a sort of environment which gives the odd feeling of being slightly futuristic despite not actually showing a single overt sci-fi-ish element.

The weird thing is, I'm not much of a fan of MODERN Asian splatter films of the past dozen years or so. More often than not, they just come off as sadistic and gratuitous and gross (looking at you, Machine Girl!). But the violence in Riki-Oh is so goddamn goofy, like watching a live-action version of Itchy & Scratchy. And it probably helps that the gore effects are so obviously phony-looking too, it adds a sense of humor to the proceedings which might be lacking with more grimly realistic blood and guts.

 

This has been a favorite of mine for years and I got to see it in a theater on Friday night.  The one-liners in there are great, too.

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Unfriended: This was, eh, interesting? I kinda feel like I might have to watch it again to fully get it. I did appreciate that it required the audience to pay attention to everything on screen. Innovative, if nothing else. 

 

Using Skype as the only set piece was very unique!

 

It would've helped if any of the tormented / tormentors would've had a single shred of virtue between them.  Far as I was concerned, everyone got the poetic justice that was coming to them,

 

even the bullied bully that offed herself and was no better than the people she tormented.

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The Forest: Eh, kind of average. I'm wondering if Natalie Dormer might be a bit like Sarah Michelle Gellar in that she's just far more suited to TV and comes off as a bit flat on the big screen. Or it might have been the bad accent they had her doing. Regardless, she wasn't good here and the scares weren't much special. 

 

I did think the twist at the end was cool though:

 

of course the forest wanted the more innocent, naive sister all along. The darker, more messed up one was already too damaged for her to be of any use to it or the ghosts there

 

Grave Halloween did more with a similar story in the same setting with a far less budget.

 

There is a very interesting but rather graphic documentary by VICE about Aokigahara that is far sadder and more disturbing than either movie.

 

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