Movie 2021 MOVIES DISCUSSION

[Log]

The wife and I watched The Godfather again last night.  

Hot take: It's a really great movie.

Also, she's going to attempt Clemenza's sauce recipe this week and we're going to watch part 2.

[Curt McGirt]

You should combine it with Ralphie's technique from The Sopranos and see what comes out, or do the Pepsi Challenge with both. 

Yeah, all he does is add butter, so you could do both.

Edited August 2, 2021 by Curt McGirt

[Mister TV]

32 minutes ago, Curt McGirt said:

You should combine it with Ralphie's technique from The Sopranos and see what comes out, or do the Pepsi Challenge with both. 

Yeah, all he does is add butter, so you could do both.

Clemenza is showing you the recipe for the sauce(gravy) and Ralphie is showing how to get the "macaroni" to absorb the gravy(sauce). I don't get Ralphie's addition of the butter, maybe that's another New Jersey thing like calling sauce "gravy" and all pasta "macaroni". 

[Dolfan in NYC]

Butter (or preferably olive oil) keeps the pasta from sticking together.  

Though butter on pasta by itself is fine when you're completely out of gravy.  

Source - I dated an Italian dude for a few months.  He was batshit, but man could he cook. 

[RIPPA]

I am just gonna post this depressing Coen Brothers news and move on from you heathens and your inability to cook pasta

 

[The Natural]

Really hot and unpopular take coming...I find the Coen Brothers overrated.

[Contentious C]

Haven't done this in a couple of weeks, and the movies are piling up...there are some re-watches that I tossed in and felt relevant, so I'll mark them with && - wouldn't want anyone to think I gave a shit movie two stars by using asterisks.

So, here's my New Movie Every Day Catch-Up Post (Day 24 and counting), Largely Acceptable Elizabeth Debicki Edition

Hot Garbage

Westworld - I get how ahead of its time it was, but man is this ever a Michael Crichton movie.  Interesting idea that is presented in such a sterile way that you don't actually give a rat's ass and somehow feels too long at barely 90 minutes.  Plus, it's got the five thousand instances per 70s sci-fi film of wasting your time with a practical effect that goes on too long because hey, we spent 30% of the budget making that robot look intricate, so it'd better get a big splashy death scene that lasts for at least a minute.  Fun fact: the Roman World bits were shot at Harold Lloyd's estate: Safety Last! indeed, Delos!

Punisher War Zone && - I had watched up to the "I'm Jigsaw" scene prior, so this didn't count towards a "new" one to my mind. But I finished it and it's exactly as fucking terrible as people said.  I actually would have liked Ray Stevenson in the role; he has the right eyes to emote, "I'm going to kill you because I'm already dead inside" in every single scene.  But, the rest is so bad.  So, so bad.  The worst scene is the church bit with him and his by-the-book FBI foil, where they slog their way through every cop script cliche ever.  It's like the "what kind of cops are we?" scene from the Chicken4Dayz episode of BoJack, except they play it straight.  Yep, that bad.

The Fast and the Furious && - This was another case of having watched a bit before turning it off.  Finished it tonight, and oh God, nothing in this movie makes a lick of sense.  The hijack scenes are so badly done in terms of the *actual hijacking part* that you really don't have a sense of progression or completion, story beats just move on from one to the next with no rhyme or reason, and of course the acting and script are terrible.  This is like the nadir of BaySPLOSIONS!-style big, dumb movie-making, and they made EIGHT MORE OF THESE AND A SPINOFF!  And I only watched this because I felt like I had to so I could follow the others!  Argh.  Plus, it's so very very clearly a piss-poor ripoff of another recent rewatch, our first Acceptable in...

Acceptable

Point Break && - I used to be firmly in the camp of thinking this was a bad movie.  Man, I was a dumb fucking kid.  This isn't a great movie, but it is a *good*, albeit really flawed, movie.  This is Patrick Swayze's best role by a country mile, and not talked about enough as far as compelling action film antagonists go.  I mean, everyone else who matters here is also pretty good (for them), but he really puts this on his back and runs with it.  The action scenes are still fucking great.  I'd like this as Keanu's 3rd or 4th best role (depending on how you feel about Matrix, John Wick, & My Own Private Idaho), except he just *murders* the final scenes of the movie with his terrible fucking delivery.  Busey is the right sort of corny, so is McGinley, Lori Petty is great...this actually *is* a big dumb fun movie.

True Romance && - Couldn't remember if I'd seen this or not, either, so I just watched it again.  Pretty sure I had, once I was reminded of Brad Pitt's character.  I'd forgotten about things like James Gandolfini's insane starring moment, for example.  I think this feels like Tarantino having his most fun with a script, which is...strange, I guess.  But there's just something a little more unfettered and undiluted about this.  You could chop the first 90 seconds out of it and show it to someone who had never heard of it, knew nothing about it, and they could instantly guess he wrote it: first time, every time.  There's good and bad included with that, but there it is.  And I could see Tony Scott being a decent enough pick to direct something like this - the hotel scene at the end is a highlight - but when most of the emotional resonance of a movie comes from watching people get beaten up, you're not necessarily invested.  I only wanted Clarence & Alabama to get away with it because everyone else was worse than them.

Frantic - I didn't realize who directed this until I saw Emmanuelle Seigner's name in the credits and remembered who to blame for her career.  I also noted the letters "POS" occur in that order in his last name, so I can just call him POS instead of referring to him directly.  Seigner's actually not terrible in this, but the rest of the film is largely just...there.  It just feels like a lot of stuff you've seen before if you've seen almost any noir movie ever.  Some of the camera work early in the hotel room is interesting, but eventually keeping up with the ludicrous plot gets in the way of all else.  But you know what this does have?  A FUCKING GARFIELD PHONE!  Seriously, look up "Garfield phone beach" if you haven't already. That was honestly the highlight for me.

The Kingdom - I never watched "Alias", so I really had no idea Jennifer Garner was going to do a big-damn-hero cool stunt scene at the end of this.  That was arguably my favorite part of the movie, although the rest is capable, I suppose.  The performances are fine, the direction is fine (even though you've seen it all before from better directors like Michael Mann & Ridley Scott), it's just...it's fine.  But I kind of hoped it would have something more insightful to say, and it didn't.  Too politically boring to really register or serve as any kind of rebuke.

Thief - speaking of Michael Mann, this was pretty good, one of the better candidates to jump up to "Awesome", but I don't care much for James Caan, and I didn't think there was a real spark with Tuesday Weld, either.  But this has some neat set pieces, like the intro that Nicolas Winding Refn basically stole for Drive, and the really cool heist scene that's at the center of what goes on in the picture.  There is a palpable sense throughout that nothing will work out right, and that really helps push things forward more than you might first expect.  Plus, anything where Jim Belushi gets blown in half with a shotgun is fine by me.

My Left Foot - this really should be an "Awesome" entry as you might imagine, but it's not for two reasons.  First, it appears to have been produced by Granada Television, which did the really good Sherlock Holmes around the same time.  But the transfer is just *dreadful*.  This desperately deserves a remaster; maybe the Criterion version is better?  Maybe not; certainly awful on HBO.  The other reason is that it's apparently a total fiction.  Christy Brown's wife was allegedly abusive and neglectful to the point of potentially being responsible for his death, and several stories came out over the years about this, but those didn't get turned into a movie, because what widow is going to let a film company tell the truth when she owns the rights?  But, Jesus tapdancing Christ, that restaurant scene might be one of the best things ever committed to film.

Tenet - Pretty, and pretty meaningless: that sums this up effectively.  This is frankly fucking breathtaking in terms of keeping everything straight and shooting it all and making it hang together as much as it does, so for craftsmanship, it's wonderful, but it's the most Nolan movie to ever Nolan, because you don't give a fuck about any of these people.  Robert Pattinson really tries to make us care; so does my lovely queer giraffe Elizabeth, but no.  Other than his accent, this is the only time I can think of Branagh as menacing, rather than "kindly, slightly creepy dad" or "guy who isn't punched in the face enough". Debicki Sightings: 1!

Menace II Society - I suppose some people could defend the narration as good, but I Don't Like Narration in Movies, and the lead's delivery in those bits is...I don't know.  Granted, he just isn't any good throughout the whole movie, frankly.  This holds together mostly due to Jada Pinkett as well as the sheer force of the crazy shit these kids put themselves through, but I'm surprised people think this is "great".  It's what first movies look like, and it cribs so much from Goodfellas. The scenes with Charles Dutton & especially Glenn Plummer towards the end are really effective, though.

8 Mile - This is like the anti-Good Will Hunting but I'm not sure that actually works.  Same crew holding him back, same dingy city as a character all its own, same sudden appearance of a girl who makes him grasp for something else...are we sure Dan Harmon didn't actually write this on his Hero's Journey clock bullshit?  But hey, there's a really young Anthony Mackie who hasn't quite figured things out yet, and there's a slightly-less-young Michael Shannon who knew EXACTLY what the fuck he was doing from the word 'go' because Michael Shannon is the fucking best, and I don't have to fight you if you say otherwise because MICHAEL SHANNON WILL FIGHT YOU HIMSELF.  But, this is all right; again, certainly not worthy of the praise it's received over the years, but all right.

The Suicide Squad - I think this might be the DCU's best movie - the last watch of Wonder Woman I did really didn't hold up well - but it might also be their ceiling.  This would have been 10 minutes shorter if we didn't have a script that laboriously explained to us what the objective in every frigging scene was when we already heard it 5 minutes ago the last time you laboriously explained it to us but apparently you think we're idiots, so hey thanks.  The tower collapse bit seemed, err, in bad taste as well.  Margot Robbie was the only good thing about the first turd, but she might be the weakest part of the core group here.  Everyone else hit their marks pretty well, but I didn't love this.

The Great Gatsby (2013) - It's been decided: films can only be good in spite of Tobey Maguire, not because of him.  I almost noped out on this when I realized I was going to have to put up with his crap for 2 hours, but hey, Elizabeth Debicki!  Oh wait, they neutered the Jordan Baker character here, so all she does is tower over people when she's (rarely) on-screen.  What a waste.  It's typical Baz Luhrmann; you get some interesting visuals only he would have the nerve to come up with, but you get just as much dross like Isla Fisher's ridiculous death scene, which has all the pathos of a man stepping on a rake, then stumbling backwards into a second, parallel rake.  Once in a while, though, this hits the mark, especially with the general scuzziness of all the characters and the way it clicks with Fitzgerald's morbid fascination with moneyed folk. Debicki Sightings: 2!!

The Disappearance of Alice Creed - this little gem probably came as close to anything as being "Awesome" this time, except that the ending is just super-predictable.  But, it's just 3 characters, two of whom are played by Gemma Arterton and Eddie Marsan, so I was gonna have to watch.  It's a decent little thriller, and probably the only time you will ever get both a moment of panic and a belly laugh out of a bullet casing, of all things.  It has a very theater-like vibe to it, too, and the first 5+ minutes are in silence, as all you get are set-up shots, detailing the enormous amount of work that goes into what these guys are doing.

WTF Did I Just Watch?

Come and See - Hey, we're done!  This goes into the special "Winner Winner, Chicken Dinner" category of "great films I will probably never watch again".  Say hi to Requiem of a Dream for me!  But Jesus, this is just spectacular.  I was in love with the way the movie looked from the opening scene, and then I had to try to remind myself, "This is great, this is great, just keep watching" as more and more atrocities poured off the screen and into my brain.  The photography is just wonderful and the restoration that was done recently isn't just good or great; it's important.  I could say more great things about this, but my thoughts want to shy away from the actual plot of the film, like the Big Bad that only lurks in the corner of your eye but never straight-on.  That's how profoundly fucked-up everything about this film is.  Be prepared, put in the time, but be ready to be changed, or have a lot of alcohol on hand afterwards.  Man.

Edited August 8, 2021 by Contentious C

[Curt McGirt]

49 minutes ago, Contentious C said:

Acceptable

 

49 minutes ago, Contentious C said:

Thief

Jesus H. Christ, you're a hard person to please. 

As far as Come and See goes, I had a lot of alcohol on hand before and during and I still don't think I was drunk enough to watch that. Never Again, indeed.

[Octopus]

On 8/2/2021 at 1:16 PM, Log said:

The wife and I watched The Godfather again last night.  

Hot take: It's a really great movie.

Also, she's going to attempt Clemenza's sauce recipe this week and we're going to watch part 2.

Wife and I watched these and other mob movies around the time the Irishman came out and they were so fun to revisit. The Godfather 1 and 2 was her first time watching them. I made myself Godfather cocktails (scotch and amaretto) and was pleasantly tipsy.

[Contentious C]

12 hours ago, Curt McGirt said:

Jesus H. Christ, you're a hard person to please. 

As far as Come and See goes, I had a lot of alcohol on hand before and during and I still don't think I was drunk enough to watch that. Never Again, indeed.

Well, it's certainly got an interesting script and a lot of good moving parts, but James Caan is basically a negative-charisma guy for me.  Unfortunately, I don't see that changing like it did for, say, Adam Driver, because this was the role people pointed to if you wanted to like James Caan.  John David Washington, oddly enough, is about the only other guy who outdoes him in that department.  If I can't connect to the main character on any level past, "Well, I guess I'd do that, too", then it ends up feeling like wasted time to me.  It makes me wonder if you could put 90s Willem Dafoe (or Fassbender or Josh Brolin) in a time machine and have him there in place of Caan; would I like it more?  Probably.  And what I said about True Romance holds for Thief as well; there really are no good people here, just varying degrees of awful ones.  Except Jim Belushi, who still needs to get got with that shotgun no matter how pleasant he seems.

[Curt McGirt]

I did not think Clarence, Alabama, Richie, Floyd, even Hopper or Willie Nelson were bad people in those two movies. They had to do/did bad things maybe but I thought they were sympathetic enough. There are definitely films, even TV shows (I'm looking at you Rick and Morty) where there are just awful people that you can't empathize with at all but I don't think either film falls under that category for myself. I can see the complaint but I just don't feel it. 

[Kang]

Westworld. 

[Tabe]

Tabe's been watching movies again:

 

Gamer - Action movie set in a futuristic world where people control action human beings in online multiplayer games, one being a game similar to "The Sims" and another being an FPS.  Gerard Butler is one of the humans being controlled in the FPS.  He's a prisoner who killed a former friend against his will.  Michael C Hall is the Mark Zuckerberg Evil Genius controlling it all.  I remember liking this a lot when it came out and I saw it in the theater.  I have no idea what I was thinking then.  This is an interesting premise but it never rises up to meet the premise and ends up being just a vapid and empty movie, just like Amber Valetta's character in it.  3/10.

Cake - Jennifer Aniston is a woman suffering from severe chronic pain.  She's in a pain support group where a member (Anna Kendrick) has just committed suicide.  In between being awful to pretty much everyone, Aniston decides to visit the widowed husband of Kendrick's character.  Thus starts an unlikely relationship that eventually leads to Aniston wanting to improve her life.  This is not a great movie but it is good.  Aniston is incredibly good in this, showing a depth that her other work just hasn't shown.  The movie suffers from not developing some of the other characters - William H Macy's character being a prime example - but as a portrayal of someone dealing with unbearable physical, emotional, and mental pain, it works very well.  7/10 for the movie, 14/10 for Aniston's performance.

Traitor - Don Cheadle is an American operative gone bad who is now working on behalf of a terrorist group.  As expected, Cheadle is great but this ends up being a very standard political thriller with a twist that's either not intended to be a twist or is unintentionally super-obvious.  Reviewers talk about this being a "balanced" or "nuanced" portrayal of the war on terror.  Nah.  It's standard fare that never rises up.  6/10.

Unstoppable - Denzel Washington is a veteran train engineer partnered up with Chris Pine, a young train conductor, for the day.  They're hauling a big train of cargo when they learn that another train of toxic cargo is running unmanned at high speeds toward a densely populated area where it will derail and crash.  They set out to stop the train before it's too late.  This is SOOOO much better than it should be given the subject.  This was the last movie of director Tony Scott's incredible career and he was still in excellent form.  The pace is relentless with lots of action and intensity throughout.  There's one or two brief bits of repeated footage and WAAAAAAY too much reliance on sweeping drone shots of the trains and so on, but it all still works anyway.  Rosario Dawson rounds out the cast as the sassy train company employee who knows better than everybody else what to do if they'd only just let her.  This is based on the true story of the CSX 8888 incident.  Incredibly, other than juicing up the final bits, all the major aspects from the movie actually happened in real life - enough to where you can safely say you've seen the real story by watching this movie.  8/10.

[Jiji]

The Green Knight is my favourite movie since The Witch. I don't watch many new movies tbf tho. I was basically doing the Vince backwards fall in chair gif afterwards. 

[J.T.]

4 hours ago, Jiji said:

The Green Knight is my favourite movie since The Witch. I don't watch many new movies tbf tho. I was basically doing the Vince backwards fall in chair gif afterwards. 

A few of my friends are raving about it so I think I may go see it tonight since the local bistro movie place has tickets for four bucks on Wednesdays.

A24 continues to be the awesomest production company.

Edited August 11, 2021 by J.T.

[odessasteps]

I watched The Bkack Hole fir the first time since seeing it in the movies when i was 9.

i get more of the symbolism now, but still not very good. Also see now ut was 20,000 Leagues in Space.

[The Natural]

On 8/7/2021 at 11:05 AM, The Natural said:

Really hot and unpopular take coming...I find the Coen Brothers overrated.

Cheers, @Tabe!

Just watched this:

Iconic villain, the T-1000 played by Robert Patrick.

[Dolfan in NYC]

 

[Contentious C]

Welp, I went and did it.  I finally watched the stupidest fucking movie I've ever seen.  Here's New Movie Catch-up (Day 31 and counting), Mostly Hot Garbage and Borderline-Garbage Edition.

Hot Garbage

Space Jam

Space Jam: A New Legacy - The less said about both of these, the better.  But I like the original more for two reasons.  First, it has the sense to recognize it's a kid's movie and is less than 90 minutes as a result.  Second, Daffy Duck admits out loud that he likes to smoke PCP.  I mean, we all knew, but first steps and all.

2 Days in the Valley - Oh look, it's 1997, and everyone's trying to make another Pulp Fiction.  This was actually a restart, since I never got through it the first time I tried (you can guess what scene I stopped at (twice)).  There are some laughs, and Charlize Theron's death scene is super-creepy because she looks like a literal doll, but otherwise this was oddly short for having so many characters, and yet it still finds time to waste on toupee jokes and Jeff Daniels' weird backstory that goes nowhere whatsoever.  Did Rysher Entertainment ever make anything good?

Acceptable ("acceptable" meaning anything short of awesome but not anything actively terrible, which would include things like "good" and "very good"...)

Blow the Man Down - this was close to dipping, because it spends too much time focusing on the wrong characters, and the framing device for the story isn't that interesting, but it does have Character Actress Margo Martindale being her usual self, and there are sea shanties.  But it's got its problems, and it's a little too twee, so I'd probably never watch it again. 

Beast - This is the more recent "horror" movie that came out with the odd-looking girl in it.  It's not really horror as far as I'm concerned; it's just a relatively standard thriller that feels lifted from a lot of other sources.  This is like the Millennial Whoop of movies; you've seen nearly every piece of this somewhere else, just not in this particular order.  It's another movie saved by a performance, as Jessie Buckley is pretty great in it.  The last quiet scene prior to the ending seemed ambiguous to me (in a good way), as one character's remarks could be read as either truth-telling or placation, and that works well.  This is a film probably better left without a clear-cut set of answers, as it makes you wonder just how far down the rabbit hole this woman has gone.

Tender Mercies - Maybe I wasn't quite in the right mood for this to hit me, but I kind of hoped for more out of a multiple Oscar winner.  Then again, Oscar history is filled with movies like this, so maybe the issue is what they keep choosing for winners.  It's pretty good, but not something that has aged particularly well.  The only character besides Duvall's that really seems like a whole person is Betty Buckley's character, and everyone else is there to kind of revolve around them.  There are definitely traces of this in movies ever since, though - Crazy Heart is an obvious example; Manchester by the Sea maybe a little less so - so there's something to be said for Horton Foote's ability to write these kinds of quietly suffering characters.

Totally Awesome and Number One and the B--hahahahah, no, This Is Hot Fucking Garbage

The Crow: Wicked Prayer - I'm surprised it didn't make my eyeballs bleed, but then I'd be just like Tara Reid's character in this pathetic shitshow, and I already have too many things in common with this film, like the English language, the ability to see colors, and the air I breathe.  I really can't think of a movie I truly believe is dumber than this.  Badly written, badly directed, badly acted, bad stunts, bad editing, bad music, just...just no.  You can even take total crap like The Happening or The Dark Tower and pull some amount of...something out of them.  One good performance, the ability to make you think it's so bad that it's good...something.  The only thing this ever did was harm the world by letting Edward Furlong keep his SAG membership and waste all the resources it took to make it.  I really would like to find out what this film's carbon footprint was and make David Boreanaz & Co. pay a carbon tax for it.  Fuck. This. Forever.

But we don't end on a bad note; not now, not ever.  And here was my birthday present to myself...

Winner Winner, Chicken Dinner Emerging from my Abdomen Vagina/VCR/Hellscape Portal

Videodrome - I'll start with what I don't like about this.  I think the ending is really weak.  The last 20 minutes or so just feel like a major tonal shift compared to the rest, what with the exploding people who provide convenient exits and the optometrists' conference, and the random finish in a shipyard.  And there are enough little details scattered throughout that time that it makes the conclusion you are supposed to come to as an audience a little obvious (watch some of the scenes when Max is "pointing" at people and see what you notice; I have a hard time believing Cronenberg just left that in because he couldn't reshoot it.  It's a clear choice).  But HOOOOLEEEEEEEE SHIT is the first hour of this just about perfect.  It just gets weirder and crazier and keeps upping the ante in ways that I don't know any movies or TV shows since have done as carefully or as well as this; even with the ending, it might still be the best movie of the 80s.  I could say plenty about how ahead of its time it was, how good the practical effects are, how much it took another classic like Network and somehow leapt even further forward, but you've probably read all that before.  I think what I like the best about this is how James Woods was the perfect creep to play this, and now he's turned into the kind of wackdoodle he portrayed in what's easily his best role.  Long live the new flesh, indeed.

 

Edited August 15, 2021 by Contentious C

[Octopus]

Spam Derp 

Here’s a trailer to my film on the festival circuit, Ode to the Whale of Christ. 30 minute B&W silent film, a woman carries around a man who is eternally asleep. By the end of the year it should’ve finished with its premier obligations so I’ll hopefully be able to upload it in full.

In the meantime, here are some reviews that have been coming in for it:

Rome Prisma Independent Review

A Philosophical & Aesthetics Analysis by K. Akrivos, PhD

Luminous Frames review

Lots of hard work went into this passion project. I’m happy to say it is doing alright with small festivals.

End of spam.

[Curt McGirt]

I cannot dislike the end of a movie that involves a man exploding with tumors and James Woods shooting himself. 

Contentious, have you ever seen The Apostle? I've never seen Tender Mercies but that one is another Robert Duvall pic of the same nature that might be more palatable. Haven't seen the whole thing but I came in at the middle once on TV and it caught my attention (probably because he beat a man into a coma with a bat). 

Edited August 15, 2021 by Curt McGirt

[Contentious C]

It's been on the to-watch list for a long time; it sounded interesting even back when I was in high school and it came out in the first place.  I'm still bouncing around streaming services, so maybe I'll get lucky and find it on one (Letterboxd doesn't seem to say it's streaming anywhere, though).

[odessasteps]

I haven’t seen it since it came out, but I recall it being pretty good. 

[caley]

Rewatched [b]Commando[/b] which is still top-tier Schwarzenegger. The best one-liners, the best action sequences, the best villains, some of the silliest action sequences (when he sets off the explosives and the soldiers are CLEARLY cardboard/wooden cut-outs. Alas, I missed the goofy opening with Schwarzenegger and his daughter feedin the baby deer.

Rewatched [b]Kindergarten Cop[/b] (It was Schwarzenegger morning!) which is so great and completely flummoxing now. Like, it's a silly family comedy with a cop having to look after mischievous kindergartners. Also, it has gunplay, criminals, drug overdoses, child abuse, Munchausen by proxy and a genuinely violent climax. It's quite fascinating to look back at with a modern eye.

Watched [b]Dude, Where's My Car[/b] (I wanted something I hadn't seen but wouldn't have to pay close attention to!). Somehow I'd never seen it. I should have left it that way. I felt bad for Jennifer Garner watching this.

Watched [b]Black Friday[/b] which was an insane B&W Bela Lugosi/Boris Karloff vehicle in which a doctor transplants part of a mobster's brain into a dying man's brain in order to hypnotize him and awakening the mobster's brain to try to track down a hidden fortune. I was only half-paying attention, but it was quite funny that Boris Karloff pulled rank and demanded Lugosi's role which meant that neither of them became the star but rather Stanley Ridges (Who does a pretty admittedly good job in the lead dual role).

Rewatched [b]Eagle vs Shark[/b] which is just the best, insane Taika Waititi interpretation of a romantic comedy. This wasn't intended to be his feature film debut but ended up being and it's one of the most bizarre ones for an eventual box-office/Oscar-nominated director. Like, he's so certain of what he wants it to be: the weird soundtrack which seems to be mainly demo songs off of 90s keyboards; the stop-motion animated sequence with the discarded apples; and the fantasy-ish sequences that you're never quite sure are or aren't happening. I love it a lot.

Watched [b]Cabin in the Woods[/b] and was not really a fan. I know a lot of people here like it, but I thought they gave the whole conceit away way too early and the ending was kinda stupid.

Watched [b]Delirious[/b] which is one of the bigger John Candy films I had never seen. It was not a very good one. He plays a soap opera writer who gets knocked out and wakes up inside his own soap opera. It's weird, because it's a parody of soap operas but despite coming out in 1991, it seems to be parodying soap operas of the 50s/60 mixed with the more modern ones. It also makes no real sense as actions that happen  inside his own head are somehow representational of what happens in the real world. I did not care for this.

Watched [b]I Saw What You Did[/b] which was good, weird Willam Castle nonsense. Two teenage girls make crank calls saying "I saw what you did, I know who you are" and end up pranking a guy who had just killed and buried his girlfriend. The teenage girls are, of course, intensely stupid but it was really enjoyable in a campy Castle way.

[Tabe]

Kindergarten Cop is a movie that I quite enjoyed but that also bothered me A LOT when I saw it in the theater. Yeah, it was PG-13 but it was sold as a light PG kiddie comedy movie. And it sure as heck isn't. Between the child abuse and really violent ending, the actual movie was way different than the advertising. And that bothered me despite being just a dumb teenager at the time.