Well, Sean William Scott is great in Goon, which is a fun little movie.

Why isn't anyone discussing Blomkamp's new project, Oats Studios? The three longer shorts are really great, all of them presents universes or stories I'd like to see fleshed out more. EDIT: I guess most of you know about it, bit for those who haven't heard, Oats Studios is Blomkamp's new experimental movie studio where they make kinda concept short films (3-25 mins) that might or might not work as full length features or even series, I guess. He wanted full creative control and a new way of financing movies, so now he tries to build this up and see if it'll float. So far Oats has made some weird 3-5 minute shorts, and some really awesome sci-fi/horror longer shorts, 20-25 minutes - all for free on youtube. Check out the movies Rakka, Firebase and Zygote for some brutal alien invasion, magical-Vietnam-war-horror and a gritty The Thing pastiche, respectively.

Here he talks some more about the whole concept of his experimental studio, around 30 mins. Most of the articles/interviews I've seen are more about the individual short films than Oats it self, and full of spoilers, so I won't link those. But his overall idea with the studio and the short films are really interesting, I think

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPRIHKKtzIA

Are any of them better than fuckin' anything else Blomkamp made that wasn't named District 9? I should certainly hope so. Then again, something being worse than Chappie would be sort of interesting.

Yeah, I think they're really cool, though not perfect, and I'm not a die hard fan of the dude - I like District 9 well enough (the action is great, but the symbolism is very, very heavy handed, though I must admit I liked the movie a lot when it first came out), hate Elysium and didn't bother with Chappie at all.

It ultimately comes down to entertainment right? It also shows that nothing will change your view. You just revealed that you personally would rather watch the FD sequels and claim them superior. The four FD sequels are utterly pointless and took a slightly interesting concise story and otherwise creative death scenes to just pure stupidity. In the first FD only Tod's demise showed any death throes, otherwise they were very brief and slightly more believable. Also, since Alex saved Carter it gave the impression there might be a chance for survival and therefore raised the tension. The first FD was still a film I'd say was average and not worthy of repeat viewings, much less taken seriously, and it was the best the series had to offer. All of the sequels had everyone guaranteed to the die in both the premonition and throughout the film, no mystery, surprise or tension.

The first time I saw FD 2 it was on DVD and I said, "The logs would not have bounced like that!" and I turned the movie off. The same reaction that I had with

- I could not turn my brain off for even the opening abattoir and everything that followed is stupid and logic defining. This has always been an issue for me, since the story had the chance to be a lot more than it became. The villain is supernatural so the deaths could still be convoluted like they were but each death scene in the sequels had at least one glaring element that I could identify on first viewing as to why the scene defies physical parameters. Since all the deaths are clearly not realistic in both the set up and payoff then I could not give a shit about them.

I mentioned before but I do not consider any Saw besides 7 to truly be "torture porn" even though I concede it heavily influenced the genre. To compare, Saw is to torture porn what Black Sabbath is to "Metal". Ozzy era Sabbath may be viewed as Metal and that is fair but they were not the "start" of Metal, that would be Judas Priest. To that, Judas Priest is to Metal proper what Final Destination, Human Centipede or Hostel is to "torture porn." I think Saw's influence on "torture porn" was mostly due to popularity and, as follows, the imitation of its overall style over any kind of real identity within the genre...

So yes while FD know they are pointless excuses to show improbable mindless death scenes that seem to desire showing the torture endured, the Saw sequels had characters, mythology and room to grow in a saga. If all you need is entertaining then FD could somehow be on Saw's level but not for me. Even the worst Saw film, which for me is the original, is better than the first FD film, the only one that should exist, imo.
No, your entire description of the sequels is pure fiction. It is one thing to assert you think something is as you describe but you just asserted as fact that there was no depth and only exist to show gore. I say pick any film in the series and prove this...

Haven't seen any of the Saw films. Anyone here a fan?

The Saws seem to be getting more violent and more gay at an even ratio

Speaking of FD, I just read about Wish Upon and it sounds like a teenage remake of Wishmaster meets FD, only edited for PG-13.

There are barely words to describe how worthless and lame the Final Destination movies are. Just utter swill.

I just watched Zygote the other night actually but was not very impressed. For the folks who haven't seen John Carpenter's version of The Thing but have seen the newer prequel and liked it, you will probably like Zygote too. It's of very similar caliber IMO. Otherwise, I imagine most folks would be about as disappointed as I was. It had a pretty silly script, was full of sci-fi cliches left and right, characters making particularly dumb choices, etc. And I thought the little twist about the main character's identity was especially silly and contrived. But it was entertaining and there are certainly far worse things out there. I guess I was just perplexed as to why Zygote was even made? There is nothing original or creative about it (other than perhaps the creature itself which I thought was pretty cool looking). If this Oats Studios exists to experiment, then why retread what's already been retreaded repeatedly by others?

Suspiria - I really wanted to like this. I wanted to file it next to Texas Chainsaw as a horror movie from the 1970s that would have blown my mind if I'd been around to see it then, but which is still effective when viewed today. Although there were things I appreciated about it, like some of the visuals and the scene with the


it didn't really work for me overall. The main character was bland, and even when people around her were dying I didn't feel the tension increasing like I should have. The final showdown was quite lame as well.

50 / 50 odds I end up liking the remake more.

Careful now, you're risking opening up a huge can of worms.

Anyway...

So, with the knowledge that Blade Runner 2049 is coming out, I rewatched the original, and I mean, I actually really paid attention this time. The movie has never grabbed me the way it has for so many others, and I wanted to understand that. I can say I like the movie now, but it still doesn't have that hold on me the way so many others obsess over it.

I was joking.

I've been watching a ton of stuff on Netflix, lately -- too much to review everything separately. I'll just say this: The Babadook, Zodiac, and Taking Lives are all good movies. Hellraiser I & II are a bit outdated, but overall still pretty amusing.

Edit: Ah, fuck. I'll go into greater detail even though I'm on my phone.

The Babadook: a suspenseful creepy movie with a great atmosphere. Personally speaking, the scariest movies are the ones that leave room for your imagination to emphasize the scenes. The Babadook does this well. Plus, it's an Australian film and that fact adds an interesting cultural element into the mix. Plot-wise, it's about a single mother moving into a new home with her young child. She discovers a creepy children's book that may be a bit more than just a book.

Zodiac: Again, atmosphere is great. It follows the real-life Zodiac Killer case. Jake Gyllenhall and Robert Downey, Jr. Not much else needs to be said.

Taking Lives: Angelina Joelie plays an FBI profiler who is assigned to a serial killer case. Lots of twists and turns throughout. Good movie.

Hellraiser: Very nostalgia-inducing. Like I already mentioned, it is somewhat outdated as it relies on body horror scenes of the old-school variety (pre-CGI, obviously). However, it's a classic that everyone should watch at least once.

Hella late to the party, but I thought Get Out was really good overall, even if the ending was a bit of a

Also, John Wick 2 was completely and totally fine, far better than the Raids or fucking Dredd.

Sorry, Woo-inspired gun-fu with a cornball premise and cheesy dialog will always stand above rickety wannabe epics with schmaltzy melodramatic romance (Raid 2) or wannabe Die Hards with heaping amounts of pointless grimdark bullshit to show you they're H4rdc0r3 (The Raid, Dredd).

Man, I don't think you realize how real that movie was for some people. I thought the ending was fine and having a downer ending would've made it too uncomfortable/unpleasant for many. In this case, the comic relief was literally that and made it an enjoyable movie with at least a glimmer of hope.

That ending would've been too far even for me and I liked the tension the police lights inscribed into the viewer (echoing what it's like to be black in like Birmingham), but I thought the comic relief guy was too generic for the otherwise fascinating cast of characters and the movie just ended literally 15 seconds after the climax where about 90% of the plot occured.

That said, a court scene wrapping up all the loose ends into a neat little bow would've been generic and shitty and betray an otherwise fearless film. Eh.

Also also, I'm a huge fan of Daniel Kaluuya (he's all over British TV) but his American accent wasn't exactly... convincing. Maybe I'm just too used to his native accent.

I've only seen him in Black Mirror and I thought he sounded fine. Keep in mind, there's no single "black accent" and it varies widely around the US.

Anyway I'm not saying Get Out is above criticism or anything, there are certain things that could've been improved, but let's not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. It was an excellent movie from a new director and I think it will be worth watching even ten or twenty years down the line.

Also I have to at your summation of Dredd. You realize the OTT grimdark setting is, like, the whole deal, right? You might as well criticize Warhammer 40K for being grimdark, or a western for having cowboys in it.

Dredd sucks, but not because it's "grimdark". It was just really boring and annoying to watch.

I found it really exciting and fun to watch. I've seen it twice.

We're all entitled to be wrong once in awhile.

The Raid films, John Wick 1/2 and Dredd are some of the best action movies to happen in the last decade or more (along with a handful of other movies). Dredd's slo-mo stuff is incredible, and I loved the pulpy ultra-violence. Both Raid films are masterclasses in amazing fight choreography and smartly ramping up tension to raise the stakes while still keeping it grounded. John Wick succeeds in letting an action scene breath and showing what John Wick can actually do instead of relying on quick cuts and fake camera tricks to make the action seem more "brutal". It's a very classic style of filmmaking, and one that has been lost to time, sadly.

One of the coolest things about the Raid movies is that although there's plenty of great action in both, they save the best of it for the movie's climax. Even if I end up going years without re-watching them, if somebody asks me in 2023 "Hey what did you think of that final fight in The Raid 2?" I'll know exactly what he's talking about.

I like the John Wick movies too, but I only watched the sequel a few weeks ago and I already forgot most of it. Can't even remember what the climactic action scene was, to be honest.

Yeah quick cuts in fight scenes especially are so fucking bad. As good as the Christopher Nolan Batman trilogy is in some ways, its fight scenes on the whole are pretty fucking awful, considering one of Batman's defining traits is his unmatched mastery over basically all martial arts.



Granted it's an old guy versus a guy in a big rubber suit, but c'mon, you can barely see what's happening.

I just saw Brothers with Tobey Maguire, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Natalie Portman. Goddamn, how did Tobey not win an award for this movie? His portrayal of a PTSD ridden soldier is just so raw and heavy, especially towards the end of the movie.

Just got back from Dunkirk. Definitely a Best Picture nominee. Surprisingly short, though.

I personally wouldn't say it's a great film, for various reasons, but it is a good picture that ticks all the necessary boxes for a highlight film of the year.

I thought it was a great film. The further away Nolan gets from Spielberg, the better. Spielberg can be great and all, but Spielbergisms just don't suit Nolan, IMO.

Anyway, I thought Dunkirk was brilliant. It felt ages long (in a good way). Absolutely horrifying to watch. Other than one brief scene toward the ending it was just nonstop tension and terror. I have no problem with putting this near the top of a "greatest war films ever" list. Possibly Nolan's best movie so far, too.

That Cersei Ma-Ma death scene; the long psychedelic fall, the background chaos in Peach Trees, the smoke clouds, the resignation on her face, the slow splitting of the face and skull... Goddamn beautiful, just complete and total embrace of the gore and violence, as it should be. Probably my favourite villain death scene of any movie ever.

Also, for people who haven't heard the sped-up version of the Slo-Mo music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItOSsolA7uc

AND to all the haters:

Or otherwise silly movies with a silly comic book premise played with the kind of gravitas usually reserved for Holocaust biopics. But mostly, it was just boring, especially every action scene not in slo-mo, which is a cardinal sin of these types of movies.

Watch John Wick 2 instead!

Oh, also, I loved Get Out, perhaps even more now that I thought about it. I was just picking nits because everything else was almost goddamn flawless. Can't believe it cost only $4.5 million and managed to pull in a quarter billion. Good for Jordan Peele, though it makes a Key & Peele reunion even less likely now .

My first impression of it from the trailers was that a lot of it looked too clean (the soldiers themselves, their weapons, their helmets, etc.), which is something that really puts me off in war movies because you see it so often these days. Since everyone is saying it's a good film, though, I guess I'll have to watch it.

Just watched Creepshow for the first time last night, and boy what a ride that was. I loved the nice Ayn Rand parable on the last story, that was probably the best one for me.

"They're creeping up on you?" - That was my least favorite of the five stories, despite finding E.G. Marshall to be a wonderful - albeit forgotten - actor who did very well in the role. Despite all of that, I cannot watch this last one easily because, yuck, cockroaches.

Seen quite a few things lately...

Synecdoche, New York - Slow moving, orchestral and art-y, this is a Charlie Kaufman film all the way, with its human, powerful themes told through the lens of a quietly absurd story. About a stage director played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, who embarks on a lifelong quest to make a sort of never ending play about his life, this had a lot to say about how we relate art and life and how sometimes they begin to bleed together. I found this a sort of subtly funny and also humanizing film that later turned into something breathtakingly tragic. By the end it's turned into something like the reckoning of a life as a whole and starts questioning everything possible, and at that point it becomes as heavy and weighty and all-encompassing as the tides. Just a masterful work. Took my breath away.

Enter the Void - Super odd, hypnotic two and a half hour ride through the psyche of a recently killed drug dealer, Oscar, as he alternates between watching a bunch of people have sex in brothels and remembering his fraught past with his sister, who he has a bond with after the two of them were in a car crash as kids that killed their parents. This was super slow moving and rolled over you in waves, just this slow dirge of scenes that built on one another with repetition and great, oddball visuals and lights, and it turned into something I'm sure would be great to watch on drugs. I dunno how good this actually was, but I found it engaging, artful and uncompromising.

Side Effects - This started off really artful and well directed, with good characters and a kind of creepy, slow-building story that I found really cool, about a woman who seems depressed now that her husband is returning from jail. But as the film unfolds it becomes a deeply cliche, rote Hollywood type of thriller that loses any of the tension and directing power it had early on - a huge disappointment and it just gets more ridiculous as it goes on, with less likable characters and scenarios more befitting of a bad crime TV show than anything else. Pretty lame.

The Bad Batch - Well this was an odd film. Deeply psychedelic, trippy and atmospheric... a somewhat different take on a post-apocalyptic story, set in a desert wasteland where criminals are cast out to live away from society. This was full of great music, and enough detailed, fascinating scenery to keep the eyes occupied. The story was almost chameleonic and moved through a lot of different parts... stark violence, odd moments of serene desert beauty and everything in between, without a normal arc like you'd think you would see in a movie. Not a normal film, but I like watching stuff that doesn't fit into normal boxes.

Yeah that's exactly how I felt about it. What seemed like a thoughtful, stylish exploration of depression/mental illness and its distortion of personal relationships ended up becoming a brainless thriller. It seems like the writer started out going one way but either couldn't think of a good resolution or was pressured to make it fit the typical Hollywood mold.

Also Synecdoche, New York is one of my all-time favorite movies. Glad you liked it.

I watched the first 20 minutes or so on Saturday night after midnight when I got home and was falling asleep, so I decided to finish it the next morning - I was like, wow, I'm really looking forward to this shit. Then I was tremendously disappointed by the rest of it. I actually liked it incrementally less the longer it went.

I don't remember being a big fan of either Oceans 11 or Traffic from director Stephen Soderbergh, so I guess I am just not a fan of his.

And yeah Synecdoche was great... really just took the wind out of me both times I saw it in the last week. It's a movie I think most people can project themselves onto a bit.

IMO it's both Kaufman's and Hoffman's best work. And that's saying a lot considering they're some of the best to ever work in their respective fields.

I'd agree that it is probably Kaufman's best one. For Hoffman, I think I may like Capote a bit more, but they're both about equal and it'd just depend on my mood I think. They're both sort of about the same themes of the life of an artist and how we process things creatively.

Capote is obviously really good and his acting is amazing but it didn't have nearly as big of an impact on me. I just empathized with Synecdoche a lot more, whereas with Capote it was more a purely left-brained appreciation.

I just wasted ~2 hrs of me life on doctor strange. what a load of crap. I even liked 50 shades darker better. think I've lost my interest in marvel movies for good... :/

can one of you enthusiasts sell me dunkirk, cos I see it as a saving private ryan reboot and can't for the life of me get meself to watch it... ta.

Doctor Strange was so fucking bad.

Eh, the first Thor was bad, Doctor Strange was just a little generic which should probably be expected at this point, as they're building towards Thanos and his plot and not as concerned anymore with each film being good so much as needing it to lead into another. This isn't to say that average or samenes is all well and fine, but it is what it is at this point.