What MOVIE(s) have you been....seeing? watching?

Going to see it in a couple hours. After Sicario and HOHW and your rave, I'm worried my expectations are now too high for it to be something mind-blowing. But yeah, I'm sure it's on a high level, at least.

Just watched The Naked Gun with the kids.

Sagrilarus wrote: Just watched The Naked Gun with the kids.

Much as I love Airplane, and realize that is more iconic and has more quoteable lines, I think Naked Gun holds up a bit better. Plus, it's great to see O.J. get injured again and again, even if it's only pretend.

Grudunza wrote:

Sagrilarus wrote: Just watched The Naked Gun with the kids.

Much as I love Airplane, and realize that is more iconic and has more quoteable lines, I think Naked Gun holds up a bit better. Plus, it's great to see O.J. get injured again and again, even if it's only pretend.

I had forgotten how good it was, and how bawdy the humor. The scene on the ledge had my boys busting up.

Can't find Police Squad! on any of the streaming services. I haven't seen that since it was on TV.

A Mr. Papsmear is here to see you sir.

Sagrilarus wrote:

Grudunza wrote:

Sagrilarus wrote: Just watched The Naked Gun with the kids.

Much as I love Airplane, and realize that is more iconic and has more quoteable lines, I think Naked Gun holds up a bit better. Plus, it's great to see O.J. get injured again and again, even if it's only pretend.

I had forgotten how good it was, and how bawdy the humor. The scene on the ledge had my boys busting up.

Can't find Police Squad! on any of the streaming services. I haven't seen that since it was on TV.

I found a DVD of the whole series (like, 6 episodes) at Walmart for $10. No brainer.

Wind River is atmospheric and interesting, and like Sicario and Hell or High Water (same writer for all three) puts you on the inside of a certain time and place, in this case a Wyoming reservation and a murder investigation. I agree with Vlad that it has an incredibly tense standoff moment about 2/3 in that is amazing. But although I was invested otherwise, it was only alright for me. I think both Sicario and HOHW are more entertaining and gripping throughout. Granted, this was meant to be more personal and smaller scale. Worth a look, for sure, though.

But...but... it had a VLAD recommendation!!!


I do really want to see it, but I doubt I will

Black Barney wrote: But...but... it had a VLAD recommendation!!!

Well, at least I had my 15 minutes of moral superiority.

Wind River is way smaller in scale than Sicario and had probably about half of its budget (although getting good photography in the snow is harder than in the desert).
I really need to watch Hell or High Water now.

Watched Nocturnal Animals last night, and I can't recommend it. You will get a wonderful performance by Jake Gylenhaal, but you can get that from any Jake film. Other than the detective who helps him, the other actors aren't great and the script isn't that great, either. Jake does kill it, though.

The Island is okay, and better than I was expecting. Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson star, plus there are small parts for Steve Buscemi and whoever that actor is who played Neelix on Star Trek: Voyager. The movie feels like a mixture of Logan's Run, 1984, and Minority Report, but after a while, it definitely takes on the texture of a movie based on a Philip K. Dick story. Except that The Island wasn't actually based on his work, and just happens to address his favorite topics: identity games, dystopia, surveillance, social norms, and science. At around 2:15, it runs a bit long for my tastes, but there is plenty of action and some interesting ideas. In the end, it seemed like everything about the movie was solid, except that the dialogue didn't quite bring the characters to life. The Island might get you thinking about medical ethics a bit, but the movie isn't so good that you need to seek it out.

Finally watched Hell or High Water. This and Wind River definitely feel like companion pieces, even more so than Sicario.
Like Grudunza says, they're all similar in a way how they use the crime theme to put the viewer in a specific place, but while Sicario feels like hack job to me (and I've written about this enough, so I'll just shut up here), both HOHW and Wind River feel very authentic.
I think I liked HOHW more than Wind River as a whole, I was just feeling more invested in those characters from the start. Besides, Jeff Bridges is a fucking genius, and there's no actor of his caliber Wind River. And compared to the dark-dark tone of WR, HOHW feels like a light buddy movie sometimes. But I wouldn't say one movie is better than the other. I think if you like one, chances you will like the other one, too.

So what donchawant?


Shell, I just saw Neelix in Glory yesterday. That dude is everywhere.

I finally got Sundance channel and a few movie channels in HD, looking forward to it

Jeez, I hope Steve Buscemi won't be haunting my nightmares tonight. He showed up again in my recent viewings, this time in Art School Confidential. This movie seems to want to be a dark comedy or even a rom-com, but the biting sarcasm directed at modern art is too arch, and the story gets really dark. And the budding romance drops the usual rom-com conventions in the trash and goes off in a different direction. Buscemi plays a very minor role, but John Malkovich has a somewhat bigger part which he phones in with maximum ennui. I didn't recognize the male or female lead characters from anything else, but they are well cast here. I do like dark comedy, but this movie didn't make me laugh at all. And yet, the unpredictability of Art School Confidential kept me interested, though not necessarily fully entertained. If you're looking for something different, Art School Confidential might be good enough.

Saw IT. Now, although I was a big Stephen King fan back in the 90ies, I somehow managed to miss both the book and the miniseries, so i came in completely unprepared. I read in the reviews that it was really scary. My wife was still scared shitless of the book she read 20+ years ago, to the point I literally had to drag her in. Her nervousness and the trailers put me in this "'I'm-going-to-suffer-why-did-I-even-want-to-see-this" kinda mood. The first scene was pretty good.
And then, it was not scary, like at all. There were some (undeserved, imho) cries from the audience, but I found it pretty sterile. Not a bad movie per se, the cast is great, their banter is great, the cinematography is very good, the 80ies nostalgia is... OK, look, we had the brilliant Stranger Things just a year ago, and it was much better than this movie in almost every aspect. And I know that Stranger Things is inspired by Stephen King (and now I see that particularly by IT), but this movie in turn is inspired by Stranger Things... and just how many teenage mystery-solving, bike-riding misfits from the 80ies can I handle?

But anyways, my main gripe is that IT wasn't scary enough. There're a number of good, crazy scenes, but just not terrifying

And there was no sense of place, really, or of dread... it is a little town where children go constantly missing, a contortionist/omnipresent clown on the loose, it should be freaking oppressive, but it wasn't. Maybe it is because of the overuse of CGI, or because almost every apparition of the clown was very clearly signalled. Or maybe because the real dramas of these kids were exposed in such a formulaic manner (like there's a scene when we realize there's some serious child abuse is going on, and it should be shocking, but had very little emotional impact on me: my brain was like, OK, this kid is going through some shit, let's keep it in mind, it will probably play out later), or maybe it is because I was really hyped to get scared. In conclusion, I am mildly interested in Chapter 2, but not nearly as much as in Season 2 of Stranger Things.