Recently watched movies!

[Dr Kain]

[Benjamin Haines]

[lhb412]

^Baby Driver made me appreciate my iPod. Heck, it makes me want an iPod classic: no internet or camera or any of that junk - just a box that plays music!

[Benjamin Haines]

[Dr Kain]

Atomic Blonde - A well done, albeit flawed, movie that is full of terrific music and excellent camera work. James McAvoy and Charlize Theron are both phenomenal when they are on screen. Unfortunately, the performances are severely hindered whenever Sofia Boutella's horrid presence is put onto screen as she has no chemistry with any of the cast members, her character makes stupid decisions, and her acting is on par with what you would expect from a Twillight film, not one full of top names like John Goodman, Toby Jones, and then the aforemention Theron and McAvoy. The other biggest negative to this fim is it runs 10-15 longer than it should as there are a lot of areas where it slows down like a highway full of accidents. Oh, and the plot is nothing original. Thankfully, there is enough creativity to be found to keep you interested and the payoff in the end is well worth it. I give it an 8/10.

[Dr Kain]

Batman Mask of the Phantasm - Greatest Batman movie ever/10!!!!

The BD looks phenomenal 98% of the time. The other 2% happens when there are some close up shots that look a tad blurry, which is probably just the way the original print looks. If there was one thing I would change, it would be adding in a 5.1 audio track as sometimes the dialog can get muffled by the sound effects and music.

[Dr Kain]

Les Diaboliques - Aside from maybe shaving 10 minutes out of the movie, I really have nothing to complain about here. Yeah, by 2017 I have seen this plot done before, but that doesn't detract from how well shot this movie is. The acting was extremely top notch and it really delve on your psyche to make you question who is really playing whom. I do wish there had been a score to go with the movie, but the atmosphere kept you engaged that you don't even really realize there isn't a score until you think about it. I don't think I've ever seen any of this director's other movies, but he is clearly the French version of Alfred Hitchcock. I give it a nice 8/10. Oh, but I'm not sure why it is being considered a horror movie though.

[jellydonut25]

[canofhumdingers]

Well, as far as I can remember I've only seen eight movies in the theater so far, but here they are in order of how much I like them. Needless to say, there are still a LOT of movies I want to see from this year, and many more coming. 2017 really has been a GREAT year for movies.

1.Kong: Skull Island
2.Wonder Woman
3.Dunkirk
4.Guardians of the Galaxy 2
5.Spider Man: Homecoming
6.King Arthur: Legend of the Sword
7.Beauty and the Beast
8.Cars 3

I'd say the first 3 were genuinely great, the next two were very very good, and the final three were all decent. In fact, I'd say B&tB and Cars were actually better movies than King Arthur (which wasn't wonderful, but also wasn't nearly as bad as the reviews made it sound - and it had some surprisingly cool things in it that I quite liked), but I ranked them in order of how much I personally enjoyed them and not how good they are on a critical level.

I desperately need to see Baby Driver and War for the Planet of the Apes, but I'm not sure if I'll make it to a theater again before those are gone.

[Dr Kain]

I'll watch King Arthur when my library gets it, but I expect it to be almost as dogshit as Covenant, RE6, and Ghost in the Shell.

[lhb412]

Female Prisoner Scorpion: Jailhouse 41

This is the movie that made me seek out the rest of this series. After getting her revenge on the people who put her in prison Scorpion's vengeance now falls to the sadistic prison warden - but most of the movie follows Scorpion and a group of prisoners who escape and roam the countryside. Honestly, the plot is rather basic if you look at the script on paper, but this film is a stylistic bonanza, as the film makes even the simplest scenes colorful, surreal, or otherwise theatrical and imparts it theme of woman's simmering thirst for vengeance while being crushed underfoot by men through these amazing fantasy sequences. Interestingly, while the actual group of women in the film is frequently at odds (there's one psychotic prisoner who really has it in for Scorpion) the fantasy sequences depict all the women merging together, with Scorpion as the final form: a divine avatar of stabbing men in the face.

Lone Wolf and Cub: Sword of Vengeance

Starting this series again. My opinion is still the same for this first LW&C film: good not great. The film cuts between Ogami Itto (hate that the Criterion version switched the names around in the subs, the only mark against an otherwise superb set) and son Daigoro on one of their assassination jobs and flashbacks explaining their origin story, where Itto was the Shogun's executioner before he was framed by the Yagyu, a powerful rival clan, and exiled from the capital where he now exists as an assassin team with his baby son and a stroller full of hidden weapons. The problem here is that the origin story stuff is so much stronger than the framing story, which is a solid but unspectacular caper for them. Further movies do a better job of combining the vignettes from the comics into a satisfying single story.

[Rody]

[Dr Kain]

Zunes were so much better than iPods. A shame they didn't take off. You didn't need to format your music to Apple's bs format. You didn't have to deal with DRM. You didn't have to get your music solely off iTunes. And they even had SD card capabilites.

[lhb412]

Eff this crap. I'm getting a turntable!

[canofhumdingers]

[Dr Kain]

Shin Godzilla - It was nice to finally get to see this movie without a billion text titles everywhere, but seriously, do we really need to know that they are in the corridor of the 2nd floor? Why does that even matter? Hell, why not show them in the bathroom and subtitle it, "Executive's Private Bathroom 5th Floor East Quadrant 35 degrees to the West of Tokyo."

Seriously though, the movie was just as good as it was in theaters as I love how disorganized the government is as they have no idea how to handle a monster attack. Not to mention all of the politics involved just to hold a friggin press conference and then again to determine what course of action can be taken. I do love how the situation effects the entire world and not just Japan.

Character wise though, I've come to realize there are only 4 characters that truly matter, and one of them can't even speak English despite being an American born citizen. Thankfully the other three make up for her and it is also cool to see the dude from Gamera the Brave/Kamen Rider Ryuki in this (not one of the important characters though).

The video quality on the BD was quite impressive and I'm not sure if the CGI was touched up a bit or if it was just because I wasn't watching it on the big screen, but it didn't bother me as much this time around. THere are still a few scenes that look really bad (like the dentistry scene and the train bombs), but I wasn't apalled by them as I was initially. Sadly though, the audio was meh. I had to turn my receiver way up just to hear the dialog clearly and the music was quite low. The only time I could tell my subwoofer was working was during the explosion scenes. Despite being ripped right out of Evangelion, the soundtrack is excellent (one of the few things Evangelion does have to its name) and I do love the Ifukube bits.

I'm still unsure where I will place the movie, but it is just as good as the 84 film, if not better. I do think you still could have shaved off a good 20 minutes though. I'm sticking with my 8/10 score.

Oh, that Nerds vs Shin Godzilla feature was terrible. The dude in the red shirt had no idea what he was talking about half of the time. He kept saying Godzilla Jr was in SpaceG when that is Little Godzilla. He said Godzilla changes his beam against King Ghidorah when that was MechaGodzilla. So many mistakes it's like he didn't even watch the films but rather just highlights so he could participate in that segment.

I wish they had done some type of feature on the voice actors or have the people who had to sub the movie talk about their experience subbing it.

[lhb412]

I've watched Shin Godzilla every day since I've got the disc. I've gone off the Shin Godzilla deep end!

[Dr Kain]

Detroit - A tad longer than necessary, but it tells a story that needs to be told, especially with what has transpired over the last several years. This movie features a full range of top notch actors who really give it their own in this intense situation that is full of suspense. In some cases, you would think this was a horror movie as it pulls off tension that would be the vast majority of modern horror movies to shame. The dude that plays the main cop does his job at playing a racist with such brilliance that it makes you want to punch him in the face if you were to ever see him on the street. Both Anthony Mackie and John Boyega are great in the roles they have been given, but it is Algee Smith who single handily steals the show with a promising singer who just happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, changing his life forever. The only downside is that I'm not sure how much replay value the movie has, so I'm going to have to give it an 8/10.

[Benjamin Haines]

[canofhumdingers]

Shin Godzilla - ah, the blu ray of this from Funimation is quite nice. I thoroughly enjoyed the packaging design choices (see my post in the BD thread about the reversible cover!) and the actual presentation of the film is very nice. I watched the dub and was quite pleased with it. While I won't completely do away with subtitled viewings, I think the dub will be my preferred method of watching this from now on.

As for the film, this is the third time I've seen it and it gets better each time. I love how the film feels like Japan itself: radically modern, to the point of being extreme while simultaneously being steeped in tradition and built on a VERY conventional framework. It is the archetypal blending of old and new, classic and modern.

[lhb412]

The Hidden

Pretty fun '80s action thriller/sci-fi horror combo. An alien slug monster crawls inside of people and, taking control of their bodies, indulges in its favorite human activities like killing people, stealing cars, listing to heavy metal music, and killing people. Naturally, police are baffled by what is from their perspective a series of people with no criminal records becoming maniacs, but Kyle MacLachlan (almost playing a proto-Agent Cooper) shows up as an FBI agent to help the police catch the killer.

[O.Supreme]

Guardians 2

This is my 2nd time seeing this film. The film just came to my local budget theater, so I decided to take my kids to see it since they did not go with my wife and I the first time. The humor was just as fresh, if not more so because it seems like I missed some things the first time. Also--Congrats & Curses to Marvel at the same time for making a fool like me cry during a comic-book movie. Actually I shed no tears, but I think I would have felt better if I did...that funeral scene with Cat Stevens *Father and Son* is damn powerful. Unlike the fictional story of Starlord, I had my father around me all my life until 4 years ago he made a terrible decision which lead to us parting ways, so he's basically dead to me, and since I'm already an adult I have basically nobody to fill that void. But at the same time I'm looking at my own 11 year old son and in my mind promising that I'm never going to be like that. Needless to say, the film way much more powerful and entertaining than I recall. Good show Marvel, good show.

Even though in the comics Starlords father is J'son of Spartax, instead of Ego, I think they had the same basic preface of his father abandoning him early on. Has Starlord in the comics by chance fathered any children, with Gamora or anyone else?

[jellydonut25]

[Dr Kain]

The Lodger - As cool as silent movies are, I'm not going to lie, I have a trouble sitting through them. As such, I was kind of hesistant on this one despite being a Hitchcock film. Well we just watched it and wow, I am quite impressed. Not only is this easily the best silent film I have ever seen, but it was down right phenomenal. I was so engrossed in the film I didn't realize how far we were into the movie until the last scene. It was very good and continues to show how even without dialog, Hitchcock was a master of his craft. The movie itself had a lot of tension in scenes, made you question whether the lodger was the killer or not, trying to figure out what is going on, etc. It was great. I think I'm going to give this a 10/10.

[Dr Kain]

Ace in the Hole - Wow, what a piece of "OH GODZILLA! WHAT TERRIBLE LANGUAGE!"! Oh wait, sorry, I should have worded that better because the movie was great, it was the characters who were pieces of "OH GODZILLA! WHAT TERRIBLE LANGUAGE!". Kirk Douglas does a pheonemal job playing a selfish jackass who gets what he deserves, yet manages to slightly redeem himself in the last 20 minutes of the film. Of course, it also just goes to show how down right disgusting humanity is when it comes to the expense of a man's life being in danger. The whole film was craftily staged with scenes that make you stick to the edge of your seat wanting to know what is going to happen. Whether Tatum was going to gain a heart or if he was fully going to profit off the situation. Wondering if the worthless wife was going to grow up or be just as selfish as every other individual around. Overall, I do think about 20 minutes could have been shaved off, but that aside, it was a very good movie. Oh, and I never realized how close Michael Douglas looks like his dad before. Wow! I'll give it an 8/10.