I Just Watched (Films)

[Animalmother]

Blink Twice
Really enjoyed that. A couple of girls end up blagging their way into a billionaires private island and shit isn't what it seems. Kind of meanders through the first while but that's all part of it. As Alan said I didn't like the last couple of minutes either, but apart from that it's worth a watch. First time I've seen Geena Davis in anything for a long time.

Was going to watch Borderlands but even the dodgy sites have taken it down

[Alan]

A young me has such a thing for Gina in The Long Kiss Goodnight being a badass with her bleached hair. Now she’s 68 and still looking great!


Bringing Up Baby
Genuinely really funny. I put off watching it on my Cary Grant trip because I don’t like babies and I don’t much care for Katherine Hepburn. Turns out the baby in the title is a leopard and Hepburns overzealous line delivery works perfect here! Loads of laughs and it has Asta, the adorable dog from the Thin Man movies in it. Wins!

[Animalmother]

When your saying The Thin Man I keep thinking of that fucker from Phantasm, who is actually The Tall Man. It's all very confusing anyway.

[ManBearSquid]

The Substance

That. Was. Fucking. Wild.

I enjoyed it. Not for squeamish folk.

[Rusty]

I've been trying to steel myself to watch this. Body horror isn't my thing but... peer pressure and all that.

[Wrathbone]

I’m off work with covid, so I decided I may as well use the time to finally endure Madame Web and see what the fuss is about. In short, working would have been preferable.

This is the second worst Marvel film I’ve seen, with The Eternals being the absolute worst (mainly because it’s longer). Even the rightfully-buried, pre-MCU disaster that was Elektra was better. The writing and acting are at the level of a high school talent show skit, minus the talent. Dakota Johnson is dead behind the eyes, impossible to root for - I’ve seen sock puppets with more personality. The first half consists almost entirely of her having pre-cognitive visions and being confused about it in a variety of situations, like someone’s baby shower or a catastrophe at the docks. On a side note, I missed how she knows the pregnant woman or the relevance, but they keep coming back to her as though she’s somehow part of the story, when she’s not at all.

Anyway, eventually a doctor tells DJ to watch some old movies to fix it, so she watches A Christmas Carol (despite it not being Christmas time at any other point of the story) so she can scoff at Scrooge suggesting that his visions are only things that may be, not will be. Then immediately she has a vision of a pigeon hitting her window and she prevents its death by opening the window. Superpower established, it’s time to… spend more time being confused while kidnapping three teenagers, convincing them they’re in mortal danger, then abandoning them to said peril, only to return in the nick of time and berate them for being in peril.

I spaced out for the final third, which is a dreary CGI mess, and I lost track of what the deal is with the villain. He’s bad and something something spiders? If anything, his performance is worse than DJ’s - which is an impressive feat - with line deliveries that barely register as human. There’s a truly terrible scene early on where he’s in a bed with a character called Beautiful Woman (I checked), making insipid pleasantries, then without skipping a beat or changing tone he starts talking about jungle spiders and an NSA conspiracy. Because - would you believe it - Beautiful Woman works for the NSA! Incidentally, the NSA password he tortures out of her is only 8 characters long, which was the most entertaining moment of the film.

3/10

[Raid]

Incidentally, the NSA password he tortures out of her is only 8 characters long, which was the most entertaining moment of the film.

Did it have at least one number and one special character? I feel like this is probably more important than the plot given the rest of the review.

It's funny how Sony have published both the best and the worst Spiderman films. The first Venom film was exceedingly average, the second was worse, Morbius and Madame Web are both train wrecks (I've not seen the latter, but I haven't seen any dissenting reviews), and then the Spiderverse films are the superhero-genre's very best. Can they not just get the writers of their various studios in the same room?

[Wrathbone]

Incidentally, the NSA password he tortures out of her is only 8 characters long, which was the most entertaining moment of the film.

Did it have at least one number and one special character? I feel like this is probably more important than the plot given the rest of the review.

Numbers and letters (all lowercase, I assume as she never specified otherwise) and no special characters. Shambles.

If I was being extremely generous, the film is set in 2003, so perhaps it was subtle commentary on how password standards have changed in the last 21 years. Or maybe Sony’s writers are incredibly easy to hack.

[Alan]

Deadpool & Wolverine
Laughed my arse off all the way through. Didn't look at my watch once and could have happily watched another hour, massive achievement for a Marvel joint. The story is utter Marvel dogshit that's not even worth thinking about but it doesn't matter when the moment to moment parts are just so damn great! Might be the best thing Marvel have done, definitely the best in a long long time.

Speak No Evil
We just randomly picked it to go see because McAvoy was in it and he's always entertaining. I didn't expect much because I kind of assumed it was a demonic possession thing from the title but its not. Two couples meet in Italy and hit it off. The Londoner couple are invited to stay for a weekend at the other couples Devon farmhouse. Things get a bit weird. Naturally its another film McAvoy carries and makes it a really good watch. Very pleasantly surprised.

[Alan]

The Substance
Fucking glorious.


Alien Romulus
Hey, remember that classic scene from another alien you liked? What if we were to recreate that, that would make it great yeah? It has some good (sometimes very very silly) original ideas but the constant “remember when Riley stood like that? Isn’t she like Riley?” “Remember when Riley said that? Isn’t that cool?” I found quite tiresome.

Visually fantastic (minus a cgi character), audio is fantastic, story premise is garbage, overall it’s mid tier. It’s the best post alien trilogy movie…. maybe. The finale is just…


Heretic
Hugh Grant is excellent. The first half is some very good tension building. The second half is so dumb that if you think about it for more than a second your brain will shrink.


The Mad Miss Manton
Barbara Stanwyck, a socialite, finds a dead body but when it vanishes nobody believes her so she sets out to prove them wrong. It’s charming fun.

[Animalmother]

24 Hour Party People
I'd seen bits of this but never watched in it's entirety. About the rise of the 80's to early 90's Manchester music scene. Filmed almost like a documentary it's very funny with Steve Coogan pretty much playing a slightly toned down Alan Partridge style character. The acting is great and almost feels (very well) improvised with the real people being portrayed having small cameos. There's Andy Serkis, Peter Kay, Simon Pegg and Paddy Considine all before they became really big. Loved it

Worth a watch and easy enough to find on YouTube now.

[Hatredsheart]

Alien Romulus
Hey, remember that classic scene from another alien you liked? What if we were to recreate that, that would make it great yeah? It has some good (sometimes very very silly) original ideas but the constant “remember when Riley stood like that? Isn’t she like Riley?” “Remember when Riley said that? Isn’t that cool?” I found quite tiresome.

Visually fantastic (minus a cgi character), audio is fantastic, story premise is garbage, overall it’s mid tier. It’s the best post alien trilogy movie…. maybe. The finale is just…

As a lifelong fan of the Alien franchise I really wanted to enjoy this and found it mostly enjoyable - right up to that cgi appearance, which killed it for me.

[Sly Boots]

Alien Romulus
Hey, remember that classic scene from another alien you liked? What if we were to recreate that, that would make it great yeah? It has some good (sometimes very very silly) original ideas but the constant “remember when Riley stood like that? Isn’t she like Riley?” “Remember when Riley said that? Isn’t that cool?” I found quite tiresome.

Visually fantastic (minus a cgi character), audio is fantastic, story premise is garbage, overall it’s mid tier. It’s the best post alien trilogy movie…. maybe. The finale is just…

Saw this just recently and agree 100%. The constant nods and references to the original films just felt increasingly awful the longer it went on. That kind of fan-service, 'member-berry writing is exactly what made me not enjoy The Force Awakens or Ready Player One.

[Wrathbone]

Watched quite a lot recently:

Don't Worry Darling
Reasonable psychological thriller about a seemingly idyllic 1950s gated community of nuclear families, but something is clearly amiss. Sadly I guessed what was going on in the first four minutes, but it's decent enough, and it turns out Harry Styles isn't a terrible actor.

6/10

Safety Last!
I picked this up in the Criterion sale as I've always been fascinated by the total insanity of early cinema with regards to safety, and Harold Lloyd took that to a staggeringly reckless level. A couple of years after blowing part of his hand off with what he thought was a joke bomb (yes, really), here he is climbing a high-rise building with zero safety considerations. The stunts aside, the jokes throughout the film are surprisingly funny and it's quite endearing.

8/10

Texas, Adios
I was in the mood for a classic spaghetti western I'd never seen, and Arrow Video releases are always a treat, so Texas, Adios ticked all the boxes. It's about as close to a paint-by-numbers western as you could produce - gunfights, banditos, rampant misogyny, revenge for a dead relative, etc, but it's perfectly watchable. The one thing it's lacking is a good soundtrack, as the eponymous title song is bloody awful.

5/10

The Sword and the Sorcerer
How on earth this got a deluxe 4k special edition release is beyond me, but here we are. A B-movie gore-fest from the height of the early 1980s high-fantasy craze, what it lacks in quality it more than makes up for in stupidity. Our chiseled (and oiled) hero wields a sword with not one, not two, but three blades, two of which can be fired at enemies like a rocket-blade. It's the most impractical sword I've ever seen in a film and I love it. It's no Conan or even Beastmaster, but evil machinations and badass demons abound and it's a lot of fun.

7/10

Election
Great dark comedy with Matthew Broderick and Reese Witherspoon about a school student president election. I think it helped that I went in with zero knowledge, as it takes some unexpected directions. Well worth a watch.

8/10

Cross of Iron
Refreshing might be the wrong term to describe a brutal war film following a German platoon on the Russian frontlines in WW2, but it makes a nice change to see the human element of the German lower ranks with little choice but to fight as they're told. A little hamfisted in its anti-Nazi messaging, perhaps, but on the whole it's a strong war film.

9/10

[Animalmother]

Haven't seen Cross of Iron for a bit but I remember it being pretty graphic for a film from the era (late 70's?) The slo mo action scenes are awesome.

Alien Romulus
I really enjoyed that way more than I thought I would. The set design and photography are amazing. The effects are also excellent apart from the aforementioned bit that stops the film like a ton of bricks, what the fuck were they thinking? It's a best of collection from all the previous films, some a bit laboured. I saw one review that said it was like an extremely well made fan made film. Apart from that it's really worth a look if your a fan of the series.