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AUGUST 2017 MOVIE THREAD


RIPPA

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Wife and I have gone through a few movies that received middling to bad reviews, but we actually found pretty funny. Started off with Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates a few weeks ago. This was funnier than it had any right to be. I think it was mainly one of those things where it was so, so stupid that it wound up being funny. Zac Effron is always entertaining as the lovable goofball and the other guy from Workaholics is basically his character from Workaholics and that works well for him.

Next up was Fist Fight. We both love Charlie Day, Jillian Bell, and oddly enough, Ice Cube. We laughed our asses off. It's completely ridiculous and silly, like an episode of It's Always Sunny. What works is that goes so far over the top that it winds up working. This was our favorite of the three.

And finally I caved and watched Snatched. I really didn't want to watch this one, she did, and so I agreed to do so since I figure I've had her watch a bunch of my choices. I was pleasantly surprised at funny it was. It's not great or anything. It's certainly the least funniest of the three, but I would say it's good enough for a watch if there's nothing else on. Christopher Meloni continues his string of showing up in movies playing an off the wall character, which I love. I'm so happy that my first real exposure to him was Law and Order SVU. I saw him in Wet Hot American Summer, but didn't even realize it was him until a re-watch years later. Anyway, I always think of him as ultra serious Elliott Stabler and then he's the crazy PTSD stricken cook at the camp, Freakshow in Harold and Kumar, his character in Snatched, and something silly in a bunch of other movies.

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Anytime someone mentions or I see Christopher Meloni I think of Chris Keller in OZ and that image refuses to leave my mind. Talk about unfortunate stereotyping! 

Just to low-key brag, The Friends of Eddie Coyle is gonna be showing at the local Art on Sunday. Even if I don't get to see Deceased in Chicago on Saturday I get something awesome to check out this weekend. 

 

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THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS is fucking terrific. If there's a better horror movie this decade I can't think of it.

and Glenn Close is a surprising actress, which is something you can't say about many of her contemporaries.

 

edit: yes even better than GET OUT.

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11 hours ago, Control said:

THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS is fucking terrific. If there's a better horror movie this decade I can't think of it.

and Glenn Close is a surprising actress, which is something you can't say about many of her contemporaries.

edit: yes even better than GET OUT.

I liked it better than It Comes At Night, but I am still somewhat enamored with Get Out.

The Girl With All The Gifts is still pretty fucking awesome, though.  Probably the most thought provoking horror film since Get Out or The Babadook.

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I liked the music and the fight scenes. Theron and McAvoy were good. A bunch of "oh, that guy" in the cast.

I can't remember if I read the original source material comic or not,so that might be why I figured out the twist. One of them anyway..

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On 8/4/2017 at 7:15 PM, EVA said:

THE DARK TOWER was an incredibly faithful adaptation of the YA classic.

I saw it on Friday. Taken as a stand alone movie, it was a perfectly acceptable fantasy movie. As a DT junkie and huge Stephen King fan, it was garbage.

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So Detroit is really, really good.  It's definitely going to make you want to smash stuff.  Does a good job of covering the events of 1967 without devolving too far into caricatures or nonsense.  It's 2-1/2 hours of fast-paced, high-intensity drama.  Highly recommended.

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Hell or High Water was a surprisingly good movie. Not amazing, but a lot better than I had expected. The soundtrack helped a lot, I admit. The one thing I disliked was 'the locals', but perhaps that's got to do with me being completely unfamiliar with Texas culture.

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3 minutes ago, Roman said:

Hell or High Water was a surprisingly good movie. Not amazing, but a lot better than I had expected. The soundtrack helped a lot, I admit. The one thing I disliked was 'the locals', but perhaps that's got to do with me being completely unfamiliar with Texas culture.

No, the locals were the worst part.  You can tell the director was a guy from the UK who'd probably never been to rural Texas before this.  It's almost ugly, the way his camera regards them.

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I finally got around to watching Alien: Covenant.  Damning with faint praise, it was better than Prometheus (or, as I told a coworker, slamming my balls in his office door would be better than Prometheus).  I'll say it was pretty average.  Inoffensive, but nothing to write home about.  The two things I dislike:

Let's ignore all the other bullshit and just focus on Alien and Aliens.  Great, simple movies.  Now these new films are building this massive, important mythology there where it's unnecessary.  i feel like it's a matter of just making "bigger" films because they can't make better films.

Also, I'm frustrated by the xenomorphs' constantly shifting effectiveness.  In the first film, one Alien wiped out a whole crew.  In the second, waves of Aliens were disposable cannon fodder.  I used to hand wave it as, "well, we're talking inexperienced space miners vs actual Marines."  But this film featured nigh bulletproof Aliens absolutely wrecking shop.  So it just feels like Aliens vary in ability based on what the script needs from them.  Which is inconsistent and shitty.  

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On ‎8‎/‎6‎/‎2017 at 9:08 AM, Control said:

Picked up the Sonny Chiba samurai action pack at a sidewalk sale. $2 DVD with Shogun's Ninja, The Bodyguard, and Legend of the 8 Samurai.

pretty pleased.

Aww.  Too bad that collection doesn't have the campy and awesome The Executioner which tries to ape nearly every 70's exploitation genre on earth into one movie.  It is part ninja movie, part spaghetti western, part Blaxploitation movie, part 70's Italian crime movie, and God knows what else.

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2 hours ago, Technico Support said:

I finally got around to watching Alien: Covenant.  Damning with faint praise, it was better than Prometheus 

So if you really liked PROMETHEUS would you fucking love this film? Asking for a friend...

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The Great Wall is both really silly and slightly offensive.  So this Chinese army has been battling these mythical beasts for a while, preparing for the latest attack for 60 years, and immediately after taking a random white (his accent comes and goes) thief/warrior, said thief/warrior can instantly out-battle and slaughter the rampaging beasts than the guys who have been training for this for 60 years?!  But it's really mostly just a fairly drab, unoriginal fantasy film.  That it's directed by Zhang Yimou makes it even sadder as it has none of the balletic artistry of his martial arts flicks, nor the simple poetic realism of his smaller-scale dramas.  It's basically what would happen if you had a movie-making machine and selected: Setting=China; Star=Matt Damon; Enemy=some sort of mythical beast that won't upset any minority group. 

Nocturnal Animals: This was staggeringly great.  Amy Adams plays a rich artist, living in luxury who is mailed a manuscript written by her ex-husband that he would like her to read.  The film cuts between three stories: Adams reading the manuscript in the present, flashbacks to her past with her ex-husband, and the manuscript, itself, playing out in her head as she reads it.  It's super gripping and super disturbing stuff, with lots of beautiful cinematography and costuming, as well as some top-notch performances: especially the Oscar-nominated Michael Shannon, the Golden Globe-winning (But not Oscar nominated) Aaron Taylor Johnson, as well as Jake Gyllenhaal, and Adams.  Although, I think most people will end up discussing those opening credits with the obese naked women dancing sexily.

Manchester By the Sea: Was really good.  It's somehow more sad, but also more hopeful than I'd been led to believe.  Casey Affleck is, of course, amazing as a shell of a man due to past tragedy charged with taking guardianship of his nephew after the death of his brother (Played by the amazing Kyle Chandler!).  It's really sad, really moving, wonderfully acted and observed.  I really liked it, but don't want to give up too much of the plot by discussing it.  But I will warn parents...there's some pretty devastating stuff in here for anyone, but that will really hit home if you have children of your own.

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Alien is my favourite franchise and I'll be DAMNED if I let some FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT like ALIEN FUCKING COVENANT RUIN IT FOR ME!

I'm going to watch Alien and Aliens back to back now. Fucking cocksucking piece of shit.

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14 hours ago, Control said:

So if you really liked PROMETHEUS would you fucking love this film? Asking for a friend...

LOL!  Yes, please let your friend know that they'll probably enjoy this if they liked Prometheus.  Very very mild spoliers

Spoiler

There's only one moment of abject stupidity ("I'm very suspicious of you but yeah, sure, I'll go ahead and peer straight into these xenomorph eggs you're showing me in this hidden chamber that's not creepy at all OH HOLY FUCK"), so it's still miles ahead of Prometheus in the realm of "people who should know better making dumb choices to advance the plot."   Nobody takes their helmet off in an alien atmosphere, pets a space cobra, or gets lost despite being the map guy of the team.  There is one mechanic or engineer totally out of her depth trying to fight and alien and fucking up literally everything, breaking for foot and blowing up a spaceship because she can't aim, but she's not a soldier so it's cool.  But nothing as bad as two people who don't know to simply run sideways.

 

So yeah, it's got all the huge import and world building of Prometheus if that's your friend's jam (it's not mine) and not as much dumb shit.

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That trailer was much too kind as far as I'm concerned. It should just have been a recording of a child dying to Ebola.

I paid for it today because it was after 4AM when I finished watching them, but I'll be damned if Alien and Aliens don't remain absolutely fantastic.

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On 8/6/2017 at 8:08 AM, Control said:

Picked up the Sonny Chiba samurai action pack at a sidewalk sale. $2 DVD with Shogun's Ninja, The Bodyguard, and Legend of the 8 Samurai.

pretty pleased.

That reminds me, my cheapo disc of The Street Fighter has this on the back end of it. Let me know how it is; I've never watched it and need to bust it out. 

Re: Covenant, the more I thought about it the less I liked it after the viewing. The main problem, like Prometheus, is that the plot in both requires a bunch of ostensibly really bright people to do incredibly dumb shit to get themselves in trouble. In Alien, we had really bright people that got sabotaged with numerous disadvantages to their survival. In Aliens we had well-armed people that still got sabotaged with numbers at a disadvantage*. In Prometheus and Covenant, we get people that should know better going in and blatantly fucking up in all manner of ways, and it just comes off as cheap. Slasher movie tropes like "let's split up!" don't befit the intelligence of the series. 

* Hell, you even have to take in mind they couldn't use all the weapons at their disposal. Then again, using explosive rounds on creatures filled with acid probably isn't the best of ideas either

EDIT 3 ZILLION: Now I just read Technico's post and he refuted some of what I said, but I stand by the irksomeness of it. The world building is fun and Fassbender gets to chew the scenery, so I liked that. And I liked Danny McBride. CGI Xenomorphs can fuck off though

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