BobColesNasalCavity
Registered User
Total Recall the Arnold version
12/10
12/10
Underrated Iron Maiden song.The Loneliness of The Long Distance Runner (1963) - 7/10
That's some pretty good British cinema. Bit of a prison film which avoids the usual prison crap via flashbacks. The flashbacks themselves are good scenes I just don't generally like flashbacks and also didn't enjoy the somewhat montage-riddled bombastic and dejected ending. Lead was also allowed to show off a bit more charisma in Billy Liar tbh.
Well.... I've studied film, semiotics, art history and I've taught film studies at University. I've watched so many great films. Last 10 years, I went another way, I'm super busy and pretty much only watch films at night to fall asleep - my brain power is limited and I don't feel I have the resources to watch good films - so I mostly watch crap (reason why I have real respect for guys like kihei and Pink Mist). But I do enjoy most of it. My ratings include a lot of room at the top in order to differentiate between good films, great films, and masterpieces - I tought it was more important than to distinguish banal films (3) from ok films (4). I just don't use that part of the scale much right now. I'll get back to it..... someday.Ive never seen someone watch so many movies who clearly doesn’t like movies
Ok, my turn... Again, nothing that deserves a real comment.
Hell Comes to Frogtown (Jackson & Kizer, 1988) - That I had never seen, but TUBI proposed it to me after Cherry 2000. It got out the same year as They Live, but for some reason, Roddy Piper's face here is very weird (bloated with hormones is my guess). Anyway, he plays one of the last fertile guys and his junk is government protected, but he still needs to go rescue a bunch of (also rare) fertile women that were kidnapped by frogmen in order to inseminate them. It starts with a (kind of smart) allusion to Planet of the Apes, acknowledging its debt, but it really is just a mess. It's the kind of b-movies that you'd want to be so bad it's good, but it's not exactly there, it's mostly boring (and very very dumb). I think some might still read it as SoBIG, and I really don't know how to rate it otherwise, so I'll go with 1/10.
Never Rarely Sometimes Always (Eliza Hittman, 2020)
Autumn (Sidney Flanagan) is a 17-year-old girl living in rural Pennsylvania who has become unexpectedly pregnant. Although she wishes to terminate the pregnancy, since she is under 18 she cannot do that without parental consent and instead needs to travel to New York in order to privately get an abortion. Bringing her cousin along, the duo makes the trip to NYC and navigate the streets of New York and stares of creepy men to pay out of pocket for an abortion. Shot in a Dardenne brothers like naturalistic style, Never Rarely Sometimes Always feels like an American sister film to 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days about the struggles to get abortions in a society hellbent on oppressing women. With the recent overturning of Roe v. Wade in the US, it is also impossible to view this film as anything other than a reality many women in a post-Roe v. Wade America (of course as this film shows, for many, abortion rights were already heavily restricted). The film is very subtle but does makes the pointed choice to show the daily harassment of (teenage!) women in society – there are no redeeming male characters in the film, all interactions with men have implications of potential violence or degradation – something some may find off-putting but I thought was effective at getting into the heads of the characters. Going into the film I thought the title was kind of stupid, however there have been few scenes in recent months that have devastated me more than the titular scene – what a heartbreaking interaction that was and Hittman makes the wise decision to make it mostly a long take of Flanagan’s face who effectively conveys the trauma of her character. Great performances by Flanagan, who I believe was a first-time actor, and I can see why the film was considered one of the best of that year and its story and themes were very prescient.
Alright - finally figured it out.
Supercop
I was only able to find the English dub, sadly enough, but it didn't detract much since it sounded like Yeoh and Chan at least did their own VO.
Holy shit this movie doesn't waste a frame on anything but fun. It was a tight 93 minutes and there were at least 3 awesome set pieces. Honestly you could have easily spent 10 more minutes on just some minor establishing and plot scenes and it wouldn't have hurt the pacing and maybe help the story but honestly? f*** the story.
It's a shame Yeoh and Chan didn't do 20 movies together because they were f***ing awesome together. Yeoh did as much crazy shit as he did. Also she's gorgeous and I love her.
Every issue I had with 2 they fix in 3. It's funny. It doesn't bog you down with an overly serious plot or lulls in the action. Really terrific action and stunt work. Best one of these so far, and I really liked the first.
8/10
Scenes From a Marriage (Television Version) / Scener ur ett äktenskap (Ingmar Bergman, 1973)
Marianne and Johan (Liv Ullmann and Erland Josephson) are a middle-aged couple who have been married for 10 years. Although seemingly happily married, the differences between them create a tension and eventually a rift which rocks their marriage into affairs and eventually divorce. Scenes From a Marriage is technically a five-hour long television miniseries, but its pace and story feels a lot more cinematic and with a clear auteur vision that I think it is better classified as a film. Though there is a slightly short 168-minute film version that was released later the next year. And what a bleak 5 hours this film/miniseries is. The lengthy runtime allows us to watch this relationship crumble at watch how the toxicity slowly enters each of their conversations and how glances and misconstrued words spark fights. Focused almost exclusively on just conversations between the two characters, Ullmann and Josephson put on an acting masterclass of a couple who clearly are tied to each other but are totally toxic for each other. Bleak although very powerful film. Unsurprisingly when the film was shown on Swedish television in the 1970s, the divorce rates and marriage counselling in the country shot up. Maybe a coincidence, but maybe a testament to the authenticity of the relationship shown in the film.
The Gray Man (2022) - 4/10
Grown men fight over a locket. That's about what I understood of the plot. I see what people mean about it just being an excuse to string action sequences together. I wish that I could've at least enjoyed those, but most were too CGIed for my taste. Gosling is also an actor that I find to be so uncharismatic and boring. The 12-year-old girl acted circles around him, IMO. Evans was more charismatic, but his character was a caricature, and Ana de Armas seemed wasted. Somehow, despite the movie being full of action, I was bored most of the time.
Jurassic World Dominion (2022) - 3/10
Everyone who's ever been in the franchise returns for its funeral. You know that the franchise has run out of ideas when the movie isn't even really about dinosaurs. It's about an evil corporation that genetically engineered giant locusts to control the world's food supply (insert evil laugh) and kidnaps the little girl from the last movie because she has super special DNA that they can exploit. Our heroes mobilize to rescue her and thwart the evil locust plot and just happen to have to evade dinosaurs along the way. The story is a mess and nothing makes sense. Things just happen for the sake of the plot. For example, at one point, locusts inexplicably escape a secure chamber, fly around outside while literally on fire and ignite the whole valley just so that the third act can have a forest fire backdrop. Also, the film opens with all of the trouble that dinosaurs on the loose are causing and closes with that problem solved, but nothing that happens in the two hours and ten minutes in between explains the change. It's such a lazy script and a real "eat your popcorn and don't think" kind of movie.
The Lost City (2022) - 5/10
A romance novelist (Sandra Bullock) and her hunky cover model (Channing Tatum) are forced to team up in real life to find an ancient city. It's an adventure comedy that seems to rip off Romancing the Stone and wasn't as funny to me as it tried to be, especially during all of the deliberately awkward scenes with Bullock and Tatum. Just imagine Sandra as clumsy and bossy and Channing as a dumb lackey as they both traipse through the jungle and you have a good idea of most of the movie. What I found more amusing and entertaining were the supporting actors: Daniel Radcliffe as the villain and Brad Pitt with an extended cameo as a tracker. To me, they stole every scene from the two stars and elevated the movie a bit. It's generic and dumb like the above movies, but at least I understood the plot and wasn't bored.
Great review. Bergman at the top of his considerable game. One of the most powerful movies I have ever seen. Stuck with me for weeks when I first saw it.
Scenes From a Marriage (Television Version) / Scener ur ett äktenskap (Ingmar Bergman, 1973)
Marianne and Johan (Liv Ullmann and Erland Josephson) are a middle-aged couple who have been married for 10 years. Although seemingly happily married, the differences between them create a tension and eventually a rift which rocks their marriage into affairs and eventually divorce. Scenes From a Marriage is technically a five-hour long television miniseries, but its pace and story feels a lot more cinematic and with a clear auteur vision that I think it is better classified as a film. Though there is a slightly short 168-minute film version that was released later the next year. And what a bleak 5 hours this film/miniseries is. The lengthy runtime allows us to watch this relationship crumble at watch how the toxicity slowly enters each of their conversations and how glances and misconstrued words spark fights. Focused almost exclusively on just conversations between the two characters, Ullmann and Josephson put on an acting masterclass of a couple who clearly are tied to each other but are totally toxic for each other. Bleak although very powerful film. Unsurprisingly when the film was shown on Swedish television in the 1970s, the divorce rates and marriage counselling in the country shot up. Maybe a coincidence, but maybe a testament to the authenticity of the relationship shown in the film.
Absolutely agree with the first sentence. Then we part ways....Bergman at his finest. It is fine that he has a bleak view of marriage, but he just has to bring everyone down with him. I always thought he really should have just stuck with period pieces, because that allows the illusion of detachment from reality.
I would consider all these popcorn movies, so it had me thinking, why not throw up a ranking list of all the 2022 popcorn/big-budget movies I've seen so far based on level of enjoyment:
The Batman (definitely belongs here based on budget)
Minions: The Rise of Gru (the child in me lives strong still)
Thor: Love and Thunder
Top Gun: Maverick
Doctor Strange: In the Multiverse of Madness
Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore
Moonfall
Jurassic World: Dominion
Uncharted
Surprisingly, there are a number of movies with budgets in the $60-$95million range that I did not want to include. Production money is still out there for movies post-covid. And at minimum that I know of, Black Adam, Black Panther 2, Shazam 2, and Avatar 2 are still to come this year. And for what it's worth, the vast majority of the films are sequels and 1 reboot (Batman).
I would consider all these popcorn movies, so it had me thinking, why not throw up a ranking list of all the 2022 popcorn/big-budget movies I've seen so far based on level of enjoyment:
The Batman (definitely belongs here based on budget)
Minions: The Rise of Gru (the child in me lives strong still)
Thor: Love and Thunder
Top Gun: Maverick
Doctor Strange: In the Multiverse of Madness
Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore
Moonfall
Jurassic World: Dominion
Uncharted
Surprisingly, there are a number of movies with budgets in the $60-$95million range that I did not want to include. Production money is still out there for movies post-covid. And at minimum that I know of, Black Adam, Black Panther 2, Shazam 2, and Avatar 2 are still to come this year. And for what it's worth, the vast majority of the films are sequels and 1 reboot (Batman).
Absolutely agree with the first sentence. Then we part ways....