by jellydonut25 » Thu Dec 21, 2017 2:19 am
I've watched a TON of movies recently...so just some of the highlights:
A Dark Song - A woman goes through dark magic rituals to try to meet her guardian angel in order to ask it for an ultimate favor (revenge for her son's death, in this particular case). It's a slow burn, but it's really good. 4/5
Wind River - A tracker gets pulled into an FBI investigation surrounding the rape and murder of a Native American girl. Another fairly slow one. It gets a little too over the top out of nowhere at the end, but another really good one. 4/5
Creep 2 - If you liked the first one (on Netflix, it's a 3 or 3.5/5), you might be like me and REALLY like this breezier, funnier, all-around more well-characterized sequel. It's pretty lacking in scare factor, but still enjoyable. 3.5/5
Berlin Syndrome - Kidnapping and psychological torture. It's really slow, but the ride is overall worth it. It can be refreshing when a movie has dramatic things happen without over-dramatizing them. 3.5/5
Hounds of Love - Kidnapping and psychological torture. Less slow, a little more dramatized, WAY more messed up in the head. 3.5/5
Super Dark Times - Like Stranger Things if the kids were all a little annoying and then one killed another and things got WAY too real. 3.5/5
The Discovery - What if science proved the existence of the afterlife? According to this two things: 1 - massive increase in suicides. 2 - take the next logical step and try to find out WHAT the afterlife is. It's certainly more drama than sci-fi, but it's interesting and unique. Somewhere on the spectrum of Source Code. 3.5/5
mother! - an interesting film, and not just when it goes off the rails and becomes a stream-of-conscious decent into hell. Talking too much about what it is gets into spoiler territory, especially since I came into this movie cold, knowing only that it was an Arronofsky film, Jennifer Lawrence was the star, and for a brief period, before we all (myself included) acted like Star Wars was anything other than a soulless franchise sucking our money with as much fervor as possible, people were talking about this movie. It was supposedly controversial, with arthouse people calling you dumb if you like it and blockbuster people calling you pretentious if you like it and had some huge shock value moments and was called one of the most hated movies of the year.
The message is decidedly mixed, as the lead, title role of the film is left the most ambiguous, with Jennifer Lawrence's character acting as a potential stand-in for at least two different "people," but I think sometimes you have to just roll with what a filmmaker is trying to do and say symbolically and not get bogged down in the details of how those symbols fit reality. Granted, it's not easy. Even saying that, I still feel a nagging pull of being bothered by the ways mother played a little too fast and loose with its allegory, and how some of the on-the-nose symbolism ultimately took away from the shock of certain scenes. I feel like the scene that caused certain people to revolt and call it a disgusting shock piece in particular has a lot of its oomph sapped away by the film having tipped its hand well before that point.
Still, mother! scratched an itch I haven't quite felt fully satisfied yet this year: the small-yet-big filmmaker-driven movie that's big on ideas and has a clear vision. It's not quite up to the level of something like last year's The Handmaiden, but it's that KIND of entertainment for me, where I'm appreciative of everything happening because the care gone into it is obvious. Also, Javier Bardem is really good.
4/5
Brawl in Cell Block 99 - AMAZING. A prison-set exploitation fighting movie from the director of Bone Tomahawk. It's got heart and character, and BRUTALTIY and VIOLENCE and Vince Vaughn's best performance EVER. This is flirting with a perfect score for me, but there are just a couple little nitpicks, and limitations given that it's pretty much an exploitation film and makes no bones about being one. 4.5/5
Leatherface - Not really "good"...but not bad. Enjoyable if you can just kind of approach this from the mindset that the Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise should have ended after the second film anyway and it hasn't done anything remotely good since then, so at least look for the series trying to do something, ANYTHING kind of new. Leatherface is a little clichéd and has some fan service moments but I was able to mostly enjoy it. 3.5/5.