Movies: Last Movie You Watched and Rate it | {Insert Appropriate Seasonal Greeting Here}

[Babe Ruth]

St. Vincent (2014)

My Tubi deep-dive continues..
Bill Murray plays a black-pilled, financially strapped, curmudgeon who befriends his new neighbors, a single mom with a young, fragile son.
Murray is kind of an Uncle Buck-type who reluctantly becomes a mentor to the kid.
Touching ending.. I think it's available on Tubi for a couple more days.

 

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

Bunch of films I've watched recently:

The whole Trogi quadrilogy (1-2 were rewatch). No great films, but a very fun autobiography (the weird thing is that, apart from the last one, you feel you've seen variants of all of these films before, but it still makes up for a pretty original and unique project).
1981 (Trogi, 2009) - Quite fun, not sure the humor would work outside Québec. 5/10
1987 (Trogi, 2014) - Almost as fun as the first one. 4.5/10
1991 (Trogi, 2018) - Nah. His love for cinema translated better when he wasn't trying as hard. It's the lesser one of the 4, but it's still enjoyable enough. 3.5/10
1995 (Trogi, 2024) - Best one IMO, on both comedy and artistry. I was a fan of the Course autour du monde and seeing it from this perspective made the film quite special too (it was a TV show where young directors were selected and sent across the world to make short films which were graded in the next episode, Trogi was one of the contestants). 5/10

The Idea of You (Showalter, 2024) - What a lame attempt at whatever that was. 2/10

Twisters (Chung, 2024) - I've never seen the original, and this one didn't do anything to get me to watch it. What a freakin' bore. 2.5/10

Embrassez qui vous voudrez (Blanc, 2002) - Rewatch because we wanted to finally see the "sequel". Very light comedy, with a great cast and this French je-ne-sais-quoi that makes everything a little better. 5/10

Voyez comme on danse (Blanc, 2018) - It's not a complete waste, but it's not close to the previous one. Ulliel, who had his first speaking role in the first one, was replaced for this one (I assumed when watching that he had died before the film was made, but nope, just a weird decision), and no mention of Lou Doillon's character (daughter of Jane Birkin and Jacques Doillon, half sister of Charlotte Gainsbourg), who was great (and so sexy) in the first one. Pretty bland overall. 3/10

Petits désordres amoureux (Péray, 1998) - Feels like a French middle of the pack Woody Allen flick, or a prequel to Emmanuel Mouret's filmography (a long list of middle of the pack Woody Allen flicks). You can predict the "punch" a mile away, but it's still kind of fun, even if pretty prudent for a French flick with this type of subject. 5/10

Sudden Death (Hyams, 1995) - It's just so stupid that it's enjoyable. Still not close in entertainment value to the best JCVD films. 3/10

The Order (Lettich, 2001) - Don't make a JCVD film if you can't edit a fight scene. Van Damme doing poor parkour moves disguised as a hasidic jew is quite something, but the rest is mostly boring. 2/10

Alien: Romulus (Alvarez, 2024) - I'm sure that at some point, I'll have something to say about this film, after one or more rewatch. I liked the premisse and the horror pregnancy, it worked well with the overall themes of the franchise, but for the rest, I felt that most of the sequences that were efficient were coming from other Alien movies, and I'm not much of a fan of rehashing stuff. I guess this particular franchise maybe needed something simple and cohesive to refocus the whole thing. It will probably change, but for now I'll go with 5.5/10.

Deadpool & Wolverine (Levy, 2024) - Those are tough films to rate for me. It's not a good film, but it does everything it aims for very well. Certainly a lot of fun. The Ryan Reynolds persona contributes (for me anyway) to the whole thing working as fine as it does. 4.5/10

 

[Babe Ruth]

Remember the Daze (2007)

I describe this is a poor man's 'Can't Hardly Wait'. It's the last of school 1999. And the movie follows around the overlapping cliques. Pretty standard high school movie plot.. very much like Can't Hardly Wait or Dazed and Confused.
They get the cliques down good tho, it was filmed only a couple years out from '99, so I guess it wasn't too hard to recreate. Nice, subtle ending.. reminding people that the little things & imperfections make our high school years & friends memorable. On Prime.

 

[CDJ]

Blink Twice (2024, Zoe Kravitz)

Haven’t seen Channing Tatum as an antagonist before. Always nice to see Alia Shawkat as a big arrested development fan. Fun thriller, big girl boss vibes.

7.6/10

 

[Bounces R Way]

Couple recent ones I've watched.


Boy Kills World(2024) - 6/10

Kill Bill meets CODA meets.. Crank maybe? Story centers around boy, a deaf orphan that has been trained by a martial arts Shaman since young to become the ultimate assassin. Played by I'm losing track of which Skarsgard, the movie covers how boy extracts revenge on the man who killed his family. H Jon Benjamin(Archer, Bobs Burgers), who I'm a big fan of, gives voice to boy's inner dialogue. Cheeky and unserious it follows along as boy infiltrates a criminal empire, befriending another prisoner that helps him out and gives the script some shape.

More or less a John Wick videogame revenge shoot em up type movie. Definitely had its' own unique style. Couple twists along the way, enough to keep you invested. Many higher brow cinema types hack on consumable throw away entertainment but there's good reason it keeps getting made. Little too videogame narrative for me to give full marks too but I understand that choice as well.

Twisters(2024) - 8/10

Admit firstly that I have a bit of a soft spot for the original. Oldest child in the family and was always forced to babysit my siblings and cousins so it was either Twister on VHS, Parent Trap, or Fifel Goes West. Probably had a couple Disney ones but I can't remember exactly. Twisters was a sequel that took notes during Top Gun Maverick. Just a fairly simple straight forward tropey popcorn movie that has a bit of that pre digital classicism. It's a war on the elements which actually I've found often works well in film. Nobody is cheering for the tornado. The tornado doesn't need a whole long backstory and villain setup. The tornado took cute blonde's friends lives and she's out for revenge. A tornado is a force you understand.

I don't want to like Glen Powell as much as I do in this movie but he makes it pretty hard. He plays a cowboy youtube storm chaser and somehow nails it. Storm sequences were cool with the modern CGI. Pretty decent love triangle. I'm not sure there was anything that you could say stood out as excellent about it but most components were executed well. Gave me everything I could think to ask for in a Twister sequel. RIP Bill Paxton

Deep Blue Sea(1999) - 7/10

Another VHS nostalgia trap. Great shark movie, obviously not up there with Jaws but among shark movies I would rate it high. I f***ing loved sharks as a kid. They're older than most current species of trees. Thomas Jane plays the ex con down on his luck shark wrangler working at a research center in the middle of the ocean. Basically those damn egghead scientists are at it again making these sharks smarter in the hopes of solving degenerative brain disease. Things go wrong one day extracting shark brain juice and head science guy gets his arm bitten off. Following a dramatic scene in a heavy storm involving a helicopter rescue, the research center starts to flood.

Cast is great, the OG Skarsgard, Samuel Jackson, Michael Rappoport, even LL Cool J for some reason is in this movie. Female lead was someone named Saffron Burrows and she kind of dragged it down a bit. Just not super likeable. I think it accomplishes what it sets out to.

The Instigators(2024) - 6.5/10

Another Affleck Damon Boston Bromance movie, only now maybe Casey is stealing Ben's man. Two small time crooks are hired to rob the mayor on election night. Damon plays the troubled vet, in need of money but still with reservations about the whole thing. He insists he's not actually a bad guy. Affleck plays the ne'er do well alcoholic Cobby with no prospects and a clear lack of ambition, he's in debt to the man putting them up to this. Jack Harlow who I'm told is a musician plays the other robber in on the job. I would call it more of a comedy than a crime thriller, although the car chases, shoot outs, and explosions were all cinematically well done.

Satirical idiocy displayed by basically every character in this movie. Ocean's Eleven this crew is not. They take Damon's shrink hostage. She tries to talk him into all sorts of strange stuff with Cobby wisecracking while shot in the arm. Basically stumble and bumble their way to narrowly avoiding the cops several times, who in turn might be even dumber than our protagonists. Casey Affleck's character really makes the whole thing work for me, I thought he was hilarious. Something about that brunt nihilistic sarcasm that I relate to maybe. Always happy to see more Ving Rhames. Plot moves along at a good clip, well paced there wasn't any extraneous scenes.

Again I would say The Instigators falls under the category of empty calorie consumable content but if I'm being honest with myself that's what I choose to watch most nights. There's not a lot of subtext or imagery or metaphors to decipher. I can still settle in for a demanding movie occasionally and I'm happy people are making them but really what I'm looking for most times picking a flick I just go with whatever looks good to turn your brain off to.

 

[Hippasus]

I appreciate all the reviewers here (not me). I check out this thread for examples of good writing even more than ideas for movies to watch.

 

[Nakatomi]

Madeleine Collins - 5/10

All the build-up for that being the big reveal? Come on, France. Felt like it was going to turn out way more tense than it was.

 

[Chili]

Moonage Daydream-2022

'Time may change me...but I can't trace time'

Would say it's excellent viewing for any Bowie fan. It's like a visual autobiography with David expressing his thoughts on many subjects. He came across as a self motivating, articulate and brilliant artist, someone often seeking new challenges. Footage of a lot of his songs that I didn't know as well as some of the classics. Believe I need to watch this several times to fully appreciate. Well done.

The Quiet American-2003

A rarity for me, finding a remake that far exceeds the original. Set in Saigon 1952, a British journalist, Fowler (Michael Caine) is covering the shifting winds for control of the country which seeks independance from France. He lives with a beautiful young Vietnamese girl, Phuong (Do Thi Hai Yen). Pyle (Brendan Fraser) is an American whose reason for being in the country is revealed later on. He becomes friends with Fowler and is smitten when he meets Phuong. The film is based on Graham Greene's best selling book which I read is somewhat autobiographical. Some fine location cinematography. Very good film, I learned some Vietnamese history in the process.

I had seen the 1958 film of the same name with Audie Murphy, which I did rewatch. It strays far from Graham Greene's book, has an Italian girl playing the Vietnamese female lead and I found the film too long. There was some location shooting and I was engaged earlier on in the story, but I had completely forgotten that I had seen it only a few years ago.

Bunny Lake is Missing-1965

A parent's nightmare, a child goes missing. The mother (Carol Lynley) has taken her four-year old daughter Bunny to her first day at school and left her in the well named First Day room. She has just moved in London with Steven (Keir Dullea) and has to meet the movers. When she returns later to pick her up, Bunny is nowhere to be found. This is a much more complex story then a missing child and stretches credibility. Otto Preminger spent several years with some of the best screenwriters before he read one draft that he would make into this film. It's beautifully photographed in black and white, which was probably by choice since Otto had made several colour films prior. Strong supporting cast of eccentric characters including Noel Coward, Martita Hunt, Finlay Currie (Great Expectations) and Laurence Olivier as the detective. The last few scenes are told much through facial expressions. It's a mystery thriller that kept my interest, well-acted for the most part, the believability of the revelation though takes some of the shine off the film.

Simple Men-1992

Two very different brothers, Bill (Robert John Burke) who is on the run from the law and Dennis (Bill Sage) a college student, want to find their father who is still wanted himself for a 1960's protest bombing. Bill joins Dennis on the road to try to find dear old Dad. It's a serious story line, yet there is comedy throughout. There is a bizarre dance scene mixed in which has little do with the plot but it is fun. Hal Hartley has made some of my favorite original, out of the box films (i.e. Trust and The Unbelievable Truth). This is another film which is similar in style in dialogue and dueling delivery to his prior films. An out of the ordinary tale.

The Straight Story-1999

73-year-old Alvin Straight (Richard Farnsworth) learns that his brother has had a stroke. The two brothers have been estranged for several years but Alvin wants to visit him. It's around 200 miles away and Alvin can't drive a car anymore, he is determined though to find a way. I enjoy road trip films; the camera tells a lot of the story. Richard Farnsworth is great, always find him to be such a likable dude. A different film for David Lynch, based on a true story, a scenic old favorite,

 

[MadDevil]

Horizon: An American Saga, Chapter 1

A decent Western, but probably towards the bottom of Costner's Westerns. A bit meandering, but overall it was okay for somebody who likes the genre. Although the "this season on..." preview of the next chapter at the end felt a bit odd. I'd probably give it a 6.5/10 overall.

 

[Babe Ruth]

Bad Boys for Life (2020)

This felt like a depressing effort to import 1996 in to the 2020s.
Martin Lawrence shows more than routine aging, he looks like he suffered a stroke minutes before filming.
There's a terrible CGI'ed fight scene between Smith and a bad guy.
In the opening chase scene, there's a dumb joke aimed at the uptight White people of Miami Beach.. in a city where Anglos have basically gone extinct.

The whole movie is a 90s cop-buddy meme unawarely (or indifferently) crammed in to 2020.
In fairness to the movie, I fell asleep for about 20 minutes and may have missed something cool or funny, but..
And I'd take 1996 over 2020 too, but this movie didn't help that nostalgic desire.

 

[Epictetus]

Justice League (2017)

Utter trash.

 

[Unholy Diver]

Alien Romulus - 7/10

Thought it was pretty good overall, first time I've felt that way about and Alien or Alien adjacent movie for quite some time, thought Rain was a solid lead, and Andy did a nice job with the "split personalities"

 

[Babe Ruth]

Dumbbells (2014)

This is a pretty funny, low-budget comedy. A college basketball star suffers a catastrophic injury and ends up working for an empty gym. But when the gym is conscripted to be in a reality show.. his life starts to come in to focus.
The gym is located in the Valley, and the movie parodies (some) Hollyweird culture. Some throwback cameos, Tom Arnold, a middle-aged Urkel, and an aging Fabio.
Pretty good watch, on Tubi.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

Westbound. Another lean, mean Randolph Scott-Budd Boetticher Western. As with the others, this is a tight, entertaining story that has you salivating in anticipation of the bad guys getting their just desserts in the end. Not quite as good as some of their other outings. As much as I praise the running time of these (about 70 minutes give or take), this one actually could have used some more time if it really wanted to sell you on one character's late-movie turn. Though I think I'd prefer to do without the attempt at redemption at all. I also dock it some points because the Civil War set story has the classic Hollywood #NotAllConfederates subtext that I just have no stomach for anymore.

Billy the Kid and the Green Baize Vampire. A weirdo 80s British horror musical about a punky Brit and a kinda sorta vampire facing off in a high stakes snooker match. I was completely and utterly charmed by this! I was, I will note, a bit zonked on a combination of lack of sleep and prescription drugs. But this really worked on me. Good music. Good direction.

Billy the Kid vs. Dracula. Not good, but plays it pretty straight. A fun-enough curio.

Billie the Kid. Ok, so I got on a little bit of a roll here and decided to fire up this low-budget recent cheapie that I swear to god I did not realize was also another vampire western. The best thing I can say about it is that, unlike most el-cheapo crap, this is pretty earnest. Everyone is trying. No one winks or acts as if they KNOW what they're doing is bad. But it's still bad. Acting is ok for this sorta thing. But the effects are bad. Pacing is awful. The look of this thing has you convinced it's going to turn into a porno at any moment.

Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid. Unstoppable force (my love of Sam Peckinpah and revisionist Westerns) meets immovable object (my general aversion to Kris Kristofferson as an actor and an ambivalance toward the entire Bob Dylan experience). I guess we'll call it a draw? Maybe it needed more vampires?

 

[kihei]

Westbound. Another lean, mean Randolph Scott-Budd Boetticher Western. As with the others, this is a tight, entertaining story that has you salivating in anticipation of the bad guys getting their just desserts in the end. Not quite as good as some of their other outings. As much as I praise the running time of these (about 70 minutes give or take), this one actually could have used some more time if it really wanted to sell you on one character's late-movie turn. Though I think I'd prefer to do without the attempt at redemption at all. I also dock it some points because the Civil War set story has the classic Hollywood #NotAllConfederates subtext that I just have no stomach for anymore.

Billy the Kid and the Green Baize Vampire. A weirdo 80s British horror musical about a punky Brit and a kinda sorta vampire facing off in a high stakes snooker match. I was completely and utterly charmed by this! I was, I will note, a bit zonked on a combination of lack of sleep and prescription drugs. But this really worked on me. Good music. Good direction.

Billy the Kid vs. Dracula. Not good, but plays it pretty straight. A fun-enough curio.

Billie the Kid. Ok, so I got on a little bit of a roll here and decided to fire up this low-budget recent cheapie that I swear to god I did not realize was also another vampire western. The best thing I can say about it is that, unlike most el-cheapo crap, this is pretty earnest. Everyone is trying. No one winks or acts as if they KNOW what they're doing is bad. But it's still bad. Acting is ok for this sorta thing. But the effects are bad. Pacing is awful. The look of this thing has you convinced it's going to turn into a porno at any moment.

Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid. Unstoppable force (my love of Sam Peckinpah and revisionist Westerns) meets immovable object (my general aversion to Kris Kristofferson as an actor and an ambivalance toward the entire Bob Dylan experience). I guess we'll call it a draw? Maybe it needed more vampires?

Are you Kidding me?

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

Are you Kidding me?

I never Kid.

 

[Osprey]

All of those Billy the Kid movies and no Young Guns or Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. I am disappointed.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

All of those Billy the Kid movies and no Young Guns or Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. I am disappointed.

He's not in the title of either of those!

Plus I've watched both (and Young Guns II) in the past year. My summation of the two Young Guns movies is that while young me thought Billy was funny and cool old me thinks he pretty much gets everyone killed because he can't stop being an asshole.

 

[Nakatomi]

House of Games (1987) - 4/10

My exploration of Mamet films continues, and the guy lowers himself in my esteem with each viewing. While it is quite a solid outing for a directorial debut, I have to assume this is a case where the film is underwhelming because ideas from it have been copied elsewhere.

Predictable, banal, and really not worth the time.

Homicide is the last Mamet film I have on my to-see list, but I may take a break from him for a bit to see it more "fresh" for his style.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

The Equalizer series (1-3). These never held much appeal to me. Denzel Washington seems to have migrated to two modes in his later career -- serious actor alternating with aging action hero. I'm not judgy. I like action, but these always struck me as pretty generic so I never sought them out. Finally got motivated to watch them and I was right and I was wrong. Where I'm right is that these are pretty generic revenge flicks. Where I'm wrong is in how much I underestimated the sheer presence of Denzel Washington. What giant, swinging gravitas this man has. And I KNEW that in a broad sense, but then to be reminded of it, repeatedly, from a man who is literally the same age as my parents. There may be no other actor who gives you so much pleasure from watching him merely think about beating someone's ass as you get from him finally beating someone's ass. And unlike someone like Tom Cruise, they steer into Denzel's natural "I'm getting too old for this vibe" rather than making him into an Ethan Hunt-like machine.

These are obviously very close in many ways to the John Wick series. I prefer the sheer artistry and dance-like choreography of its action to the more straightforward brutality of The Equalizer, but Denzel at one point shoves a gun through the eyeball of an adversary and then proceeds to shoot other people with that gun through that poor asshat's skull and I am a simple human with simple pleasures so this winds up being a little closer than I would have initially thought.

Also special shout-out to the Italy-set part 3 which has so much Italian in it I would swear it could qualify as a foreign movie at the Oscars. (Not a hurdle for me but I was genuinely shocked at the amount of non-English in such a mainstream American action movie.)

 

[Osprey]

I recently watched a YouTube video on 1980s sword and sorcery movies that introduced me to several that I hadn't seen and started me down a dubious (and dub-filled) rabbit hole.


Thor the Conqueror (1983) - 2/10

Italian 'Conan' rip-off about a barbarian in a loin cloth and bad wig who seeks vengeance against the man who killed his parents. It opens with a man and his newborn baby both getting shot in their necks with arrows. This kills the healthy, grown man, but the newborn shrugs it off and grows up to be the muscular but dimwitted warrior Thor. He's followed around by a mystic who can turn into an owl and likes to watch as Thor fights for his life and makes love to women. At one point, Thor is bedding his latest conquest in a cave and the camera pans over to this guy grinning and narrating what's happening for us. When owl dude isn't being a sexist perv, he delivers exposition to try to explain what's going on to us and our clueless hero (who seems to know fewer words than your average dog). The most helpful thing that he does is conjure up a horse and then explain to Thor what it is and what it's good for. Thor then rides it back and forth in front of his enemies, who practically surrender out of fear. I guess that that was less expensive than staging a large battle. The whole thing is very cheaply filmed in and around a forest (which is picturesque, at least) and feels like a TV movie, especially since it's rather tame for an R-rated entry in the genre. I expected trashier, especially from the Italians.

---

Conquest (1983) - 3/10

Leave it to giallo maestro Lucio Fulci to deliver the trash. His take on the genre is full of gratuitous gore and nudity, story be damned. People are impaled, scalped, beheaded and split in two, get their brains sucked out through straws and suffer oozing boils that the camera has to zoom in on. The female villain spends the whole movie topless, but with her face hidden behind a golden mask. She must be shy. The plot is hard to describe because there isn't much of one. The young hero has a magical bow that topless lady wants, but he'd rather share it with another half-naked, muscular man that he just met. Hmm. Together, they fight dog people, fish people, underground monsters, zombies, poor people and poor visibility, because there's hardly a scene in this movie that isn't foggy or hazy. Fulci must've rented every fog machine in Italy. It makes it hard to see much, but at least it gives the movie a lot of atmosphere, literally. That haziness, the synthesizer soundtrack (from one of the founding members of Goblin) and a lot of slow motion that would make Zach Snyder proud contributed to the film feeling like a fever dream. It's a lot more artistically made than the previous film, not that that saves it from being bad. At least the weirdness and imagery made it a little less boring. It just occurred to me, though, that I don't remember any swords in it. Maybe it doesn't quite fit the genre, but "bow and sorcery" doesn't have the same ring to it.

 

[Babe Ruth]

Kill the Irishman (2011)

Story of Irish gangster Danny Greene. Set in '70s Cleveland, Greene became a powerful gangster.. until he has a falling out with a Jewish gangland mentor. The falling out triggers a domino effect of bombings and killings that basically immolated organized crime in Cleveland.
I watched it on Tubi, not bad.

 

[Jack Straw]

Just watched The Battle of Algiers. I had never even heard of this film but all I can say is it’s amazing. Most of the actors were not actually professional actors, a couple of them were actually prominent members of the FLN (the organization that led the resistance to the French occupation of Algeria). It has very much of a newsreel/documentary feel to it. Highly, highly recommended.

The Battle of Algiers - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[hangman005]

Couple recent ones I've watched.



Twisters(2024) - 8/10

Admit firstly that I have a bit of a soft spot for the original. Oldest child in the family and was always forced to babysit my siblings and cousins so it was either Twister on VHS, Parent Trap, or Fifel Goes West. Probably had a couple Disney ones but I can't remember exactly. Twisters was a sequel that took notes during Top Gun Maverick. Just a fairly simple straight forward tropey popcorn movie that has a bit of that pre digital classicism. It's a war on the elements which actually I've found often works well in film. Nobody is cheering for the tornado. The tornado doesn't need a whole long backstory and villain setup. The tornado took cute blonde's friends lives and she's out for revenge. A tornado is a force you understand.

I don't want to like Glen Powell as much as I do in this movie but he makes it pretty hard. He plays a cowboy youtube storm chaser and somehow nails it. Storm sequences were cool with the modern CGI. Pretty decent love triangle. I'm not sure there was anything that you could say stood out as excellent about it but most components were executed well. Gave me everything I could think to ask for in a Twister sequel. RIP Bill Paxton

Well usually, so much of it comes down to the Characters, I have watched so many "B" disaster movies on youtube.... most of them are mindless garbarge or unintentionally hilarious, I think there was one with a volcano, the whole cast of characters was so insufferable, like zero redeeming qualities.... I was cheering for the disaster in that one Oh and also in San Andreas

 

[CDJ]

Couple recent ones I've watched.


Boy Kills World(2024) - 6/10

Kill Bill meets CODA meets.. Crank maybe? Story centers around boy, a deaf orphan that has been trained by a martial arts Shaman since young to become the ultimate assassin. Played by I'm losing track of which Skarsgard, the movie covers how boy extracts revenge on the man who killed his family. H Jon Benjamin(Archer, Bobs Burgers), who I'm a big fan of, gives voice to boy's inner dialogue. Cheeky and unserious it follows along as boy infiltrates a criminal empire, befriending another prisoner that helps him out and gives the script some shape.

More or less a John Wick videogame revenge shoot em up type movie. Definitely had its' own unique style. Couple twists along the way, enough to keep you invested. Many higher brow cinema types hack on consumable throw away entertainment but there's good reason it keeps getting made. Little too videogame narrative for me to give full marks too but I understand that choice as well.

Twisters(2024) - 8/10

Admit firstly that I have a bit of a soft spot for the original. Oldest child in the family and was always forced to babysit my siblings and cousins so it was either Twister on VHS, Parent Trap, or Fifel Goes West. Probably had a couple Disney ones but I can't remember exactly. Twisters was a sequel that took notes during Top Gun Maverick. Just a fairly simple straight forward tropey popcorn movie that has a bit of that pre digital classicism. It's a war on the elements which actually I've found often works well in film. Nobody is cheering for the tornado. The tornado doesn't need a whole long backstory and villain setup. The tornado took cute blonde's friends lives and she's out for revenge. A tornado is a force you understand.

I don't want to like Glen Powell as much as I do in this movie but he makes it pretty hard. He plays a cowboy youtube storm chaser and somehow nails it. Storm sequences were cool with the modern CGI. Pretty decent love triangle. I'm not sure there was anything that you could say stood out as excellent about it but most components were executed well. Gave me everything I could think to ask for in a Twister sequel. RIP Bill Paxton

Deep Blue Sea(1999) - 7/10

Another VHS nostalgia trap. Great shark movie, obviously not up there with Jaws but among shark movies I would rate it high. I f***ing loved sharks as a kid. They're older than most current species of trees. Thomas Jane plays the ex con down on his luck shark wrangler working at a research center in the middle of the ocean. Basically those damn egghead scientists are at it again making these sharks smarter in the hopes of solving degenerative brain disease. Things go wrong one day extracting shark brain juice and head science guy gets his arm bitten off. Following a dramatic scene in a heavy storm involving a helicopter rescue, the research center starts to flood.

Cast is great, the OG Skarsgard, Samuel Jackson, Michael Rappoport, even LL Cool J for some reason is in this movie. Female lead was someone named Saffron Burrows and she kind of dragged it down a bit. Just not super likeable. I think it accomplishes what it sets out to.

The Instigators(2024) - 6.5/10

Another Affleck Damon Boston Bromance movie, only now maybe Casey is stealing Ben's man. Two small time crooks are hired to rob the mayor on election night. Damon plays the troubled vet, in need of money but still with reservations about the whole thing. He insists he's not actually a bad guy. Affleck plays the ne'er do well alcoholic Cobby with no prospects and a clear lack of ambition, he's in debt to the man putting them up to this. Jack Harlow who I'm told is a musician plays the other robber in on the job. I would call it more of a comedy than a crime thriller, although the car chases, shoot outs, and explosions were all cinematically well done.

Satirical idiocy displayed by basically every character in this movie. Ocean's Eleven this crew is not. They take Damon's shrink hostage. She tries to talk him into all sorts of strange stuff with Cobby wisecracking while shot in the arm. Basically stumble and bumble their way to narrowly avoiding the cops several times, who in turn might be even dumber than our protagonists. Casey Affleck's character really makes the whole thing work for me, I thought he was hilarious. Something about that brunt nihilistic sarcasm that I relate to maybe. Always happy to see more Ving Rhames. Plot moves along at a good clip, well paced there wasn't any extraneous scenes.

Again I would say The Instigators falls under the category of empty calorie consumable content but if I'm being honest with myself that's what I choose to watch most nights. There's not a lot of subtext or imagery or metaphors to decipher. I can still settle in for a demanding movie occasionally and I'm happy people are making them but really what I'm looking for most times picking a flick I just go with whatever looks good to turn your brain off to.

I gave Boy Kill World the same score iirc

Fun movie for what it is- huge Kill Bill vibes like you alluded to

Thought the same of Twisters. And Glen Powell too. I wanna dislike him I just can’t