Recently watched movies!

[jellydonut25]

[lhb412]

Gamera vs. Gyaos

I used to turn up my nose at the Showa Gamera films, but I've found myself becoming more and more of a Gamera fan over the years and I think this one is pretty good.

[Dr Kain]

Batman Bad Blood - Well, this one was at least an improvement over the last movie. They have completely destroyed Talia though by turning her into Ra's 2.0, which completely makes her into an utterly unlikable ****. Good god I hate what they did with her here. Also, the "villain" the movie starts out with is barely even in the thing, making him completely pointless. The only thing that makes the movie not garbage is the great one liners and insults the characters were constantly throwing back at each other. Other than that, there isn't anything here worth talking about. Only watch it if you need to see every DTV. I give it a 6/10.

[O.Supreme]

^ That's pretty much how I've felt since the main focus of the DC Animated films has been the new 52, with few exceptions (Gods & Monsters, and The Killing Joke coming out later this year). Hopefully now that DC comics has ended the New 52, their animated films in 2017 will be more independent stories, or stories based on comics prior to N52.

In a similar vein, I recently watched again both Superman/Batman Public Enemies & Superman/Batman Apocalypse. -The animation style of both takes some getting used to, and since these two are tied directly together, it would have been nice for their to be a little consistency. But anyway... The familiar voices from the DCAU were as always welcome in both entries. Overall I probably like PE better simply because of the sheer number of character cameos, but I think Apocalypse may have had a better story, and the fight at the end on the Kent Farm with Darkseid is still fun to watch. Also I really like the inclusion of Barda in this one, loved her character design.

[XvGojira]

So at friend's house we watch two movies that showed how horrible young people are....

Unfriended - This movie is absolutly terrible. But I enjoyed this immensely. It is so stupid it's genius. The terror of LOADING BARS! And seriously, the big twist was that... does anyone really care if I spoil this movie? Eh, I'll cover it.. . I'm sorry, but that's all sorts of hilarious. But yes each and every character, even ghost girl, were total jerk faces and most of the deaths were great (the first girl's death was kind of creepy but also kind of dumb too).

A Boy Named Charlie Brown - Jesus! Poor Charlie Brown. EVERYONE just craps on him the entire movie. Hell, there was even a song called "Failure Face" about him. And the message at the end of the movie "Life might suck, but the world didn't end. Suck it up." Kids in the 70's sure as hell were not coddled. If this was released today, I'm sure some one would call it child abuse.

[lhb412]

[Dr Kain]

[XvGojira]

Yeah, cyberbulling has been cover too much in movies. But I still say the reason all this came to be was pretty hilarious.

And as a fan of the found footage genre, I thought it was an interesting twist to it. Although the movie will be HORRIBLY dated as soon as Skype or facebook alter their UI.

X-Files: I Want to Believe - (Just copy/past from Facebook) Long story short. It was good, I liked it a lot more than I was expecting. It was a great random episode stretched out to nearly 2 hours. The mystery behind the production and fake out leaks (I remember a werewolf pic floating about back in the day) probably killed it more than anything else. Ironically, if the production was a bit more truthful and less conspiratorial, I think it might have done a bit better. But several years after the fact, away from all the pre-release hype and most of the post-release shitting, I actually liked it. I get why they had Scully's B-story with the sick kid, but the lack of her and Mulder together investigating was a bit disappointing.

And I am now totally caught up with X-Files for Sunday's premier.

[lhb412]

Rocky Balboa

Much like his character in this movie, Stallone came back to his long-dead franchise and actually hit one out of the park. I mean, the central conceit is a bit outlandish, but the movie does a good job of selling it as just plausible enough.

Should be seeing Creed on the big screen in a few days!

[Dr Kain]

The Boy - If you are looking for a horror movie that does fake jump scares, has a boring first act, a really intriguing second act, and then turns the third act into a completely mess, this is the movie for you. The acting was average at best and there is very little in the way of suspense, but it did have some uniqueness going for it that was thrown out of the window for the last third. This was a total disappointment and is as generic as horror movies can get. This is the first movie I have seen of 2016 and I can already guarantee this will be on my top 10 worst list. A 4/10.

[lhb412]

Creed

Fantastic! Maybe the best Rocky movie since the first one! Glad I ran the whole series before seeing it, as there's a ton that rewards longtime viewers (they put Rocky's statue back up! Apollo won the private fight at the end of III!)

2015 shaped up as the year of the excellent belated sequel with this, Star Wars, and Mad Max. Of course, Star Wars was the only one that was a classic corporate cash-in: Fury Road happened because George Miller made it happen and Creed happened because Ryan Coogler wanted to make a Rocky movie, wrote a script, and when Stallone read it he said yes.

[Dr Kain]

The Seventh Son - Man, I should have watched the first six Son movies because I was completely lost. It starts out with a witch being trapped for about 10 seconds before she breaks out by just randomly calling out a Blood Moon. Jeff Bridges was pretty much just playing himself, an old bearded drunk but the movie never answered one important question, WHAT IS THE SEVENTH SON? Even the damn extra on the DVD didn't answer that question. This whole movie felt like someone just took the major cut scenes from an 80 hour RPG and spliced them into a 90 minute movie without showcasing any of the development along the way. There was no character development, no plot, and it had every type of fantasy cliche thrown into it. This was worse than Pixels, Jupiter Ascending, Hunger Games, and maybe even Fant4stic. It gets a 3/10.

Galaxy Quest - My friends showed this to me and today and all I want to say is BEST STAR TREK MOVIE EVER!!! 8/10.

[lhb412]

The Church

The things you see on TCM Underground! In Medieval times, knights massacre a village of supposed witches and then have an immense, gothic church built on top of the mass grave. Naturally, this means the church has a hellmouth in the basement and when the seal is broken in modern day there's all sorts of demonic possession and creatures lurking about, which isn't good for all the people who happen to be within the church when the complex clockwork mechanism that activates in case of just such an occasion traps them in said church to prevent the evil from getting into the outside world.

This is one of those exceptionally stylish European horror films that is dripping with atmosphere, but maybe is less concerned with story and character than with looking gorgeous. It was not surprising to learn that the director here has performed assistant director duty to Terry Gilliam, as he shares that baroque style. Music by Keith Emerson, Phillip Glass, and Goblin.

[Hybrid Gojira]

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone - It's been a long time since I've visited any of these films. I'm a casual fan of the franchise and have never read the books. All that said, this movie handled itself well and I rather enjoyed it. I expected to be bored and the movie ended up rather fun. 7/10.

[lhb412]

I continued a my mini-marathon of Showa Gamera by watching my other two favorites from that era: Gamera vs. Guiron and Gamera vs. Jiger. Jiger I think is especially underrated, as I don't think people talk about it much - which is crazy for a film where kids go inside Gamera's body to kill a parasite and Gamera defeats his enemy by stabbing her in the head with a whistle! With the miracle of fast-forward and chapter skips I've also skimmed through the rest of the '65-'80 Gamera films. As I've said before: I like vs. Gyaos, vs. Guiron, and vs. Jiger significantly more than the others because I feel most of the Showa Gamera films are ridiculously padded. Giant Monster Gamera and vs. Barugon just go on and on for longer than they should, Gamers vs. Viras feels so slight it's almost not an entire movie, and vs. Zigra in particular makes me sleepy!

I just noticed that the Showa Gamera films propose that most problems are better solved with either mini-submarines or bathyspheres. Is that really the case?

[Hybrid Gojira]

[klen7]

[Dr Kain]

Since I have released my reviews of Gamera and Gamera vs Barugon I decided to watch the MST3K version of Gamera tonight. It's quite hilarious and I think my favorite joke they make is when Hidaka tells Kyoko, errrrrrrr, Karen I think was her dubbed name, she needs to stop being a scientist and being Alex's goddess and they say, "Yeah, you can't do both because you're a woman." I also love when they rib on Toshio/Kenny. Good god, they made him even more unlikable in the dub. How the hell is that possible?

[lhb412]

^That kid really comes across as deranged in any version. Must've seemed like a gift from the gods to the MST3K crew.

[lhb412]

Watched Gamera: Guardian of the Universe and Gamera 2: Advent of Legion last night. Love these movies to bits, especially Legion, which is practically a perfect movie for me.

[O.Supreme]

[Rody]

I finally saw a couple of 2014 films I've been meaning to get to.


Edge of Tomorrow was pretty good overall. Tom Cruise's character develops nicely (more so than in the original manga, in fact), and both the humor and suspense present in his situations were really well balanced, sometimes going hand in hand. This certainly wasn't a profound movie in any way, but it uses its gimmick just fine. I'm getting more and more tired of "shaky cam" action scenes, though, and the alien designs were kind of bland too. I'm not sure how I feel about the ending; I mean, time travel stories are always tricky, but I can't decide whether I found it satisfyingly resolved or not.
At the end of the day, though, it's a solid, entertaining sci-fi/action film.
Grade: B-

The Grand Budapest Hotel was pretty interesting. Having never seen a Wes Anderson film, I didn't know what to expect. Thankfully, it wasn't as vulgar as I was afraid a modern R-rated film would be (or maybe I'm finally getting calloused to that), and while the plot (again) wasn't anything profound, it's an extremely well-told story with a rather "classic" feel to it, albeit with a much drier sense of humor and more language. Ultimately I thought it was a pleasantly adventurous and beautifully shot film. Honestly I wish more movies looked like this.
Grade: B+/A-

I also watched Captain America: The Winter Soldier for the first time since it was in theaters. It's still an excellent action/thriller movie, and probably my favorite Marvel film to date. Grade: A

[jellydonut25]

Room:
(Copying and pasting from my letterboxd review)

This is a difficult movie to discuss without using spoilers, but since most of the people who might read this will likely not have seen this yet, I'll give it a whirl.

Room tells the story of "Ma" (Who we later find out is named "Joy") and Jack, a mother and son who are confined to a single room all day every day. They get visited once a week on Sundays by "Old Nick" who brings them food and clean clothes. We learn over the course of the film (mostly the first half) that Jack and Joy are not exactly in the room by choice. We don't know whether they are being held there against their will, or there's something in the outside world that forces them to be there, or if it's something Joy agreed to do once upon a time with a specific end-date but the isolation is starting to wear on her. The truth of the matter becomes clear before too long, but figuring it out is part of the greatness of watching the movie and informs so much of Joy and Jack's relationship and the audience's perception of it, that I really don't want to spoil it.

We come to understand Jack has never been outside "Room" and learn the way he views "the world" and the way it forms his personality.

Ultimately, the movie (especially the extraordinarily strong first half) is about the relationship between Joy and Jack and how we, the viewers, feel about it. My biggest complaint is that the second half doesn't have anything quite as emotionally powerful as the pivotal moment at the middle of the film, but at the same time, I don't know if I would change the film, because so much of the second half gives us insight into how being in Room has affected Jack and his world view and his relationship with his mother.

Propelled by spectacular performances by Brie Larson (Oscar, please), and child actor Jason Tremblay (one of the best, if not THE best, child performances I've ever seen in a film; shame he isn't nominated), Room is a hard-hitting, emotionally powerful film that proves "small, independent, critically revered, and nominated for many awards" doesn't mean "stuffy, cold, emotionless, and pandering to the specific tastes of the Academy." Go see Room, it's absolutely fantastic.

5/5.

[lhb412]

Gamera 3: Revenge of Iris

Love this, naturally. Some points:

- I guess the military going after Gamera is partially due to the influence of wacko Gyaos-worshipers in the higher echelons of government, huh? Man, I really am slow.
- Finally saw the Kirin beer product placement in this one: Nagamine is drinking a can while she's on her laptop.
- That's the older doctor from the Sapporo Science Center in G2 on the TV news panel, right?

[Reaper G]