what was the last movie you watched?
- Thread starter Folsom Al
- Start date
Löwenherz
Starter
I don’t typically poke my head around the horror genre, so I’d never seen an Ari Aster film before Bugonia (even as a producer rather than director). And I’ve never seen the South Korean original Save the Green Planet! either, so my criticism is a little uninformed.
Thought it was a brutal but compelling examination of conspiracy theory fanaticism up until the ending that I felt undercut the theme a tad. But overall a worthwhile watch.
Then I saw Midsommar. My God that is an awesome movie that I absolutely fell in love with in spite of its “horror” typing. Stellar festival experience minus the cult murders.
Maybe I’ll try Hereditary next … eek, probably not.
I thought the Bugonia ending was inevitable - I would have been really disappointed if it went any other way.
Midsommar is absolute nightmare fuel, just builds the atmosphere of dread really well.
Hereditary didn't grab me for whatever reason, but that one jump scare...holy cow
Löwenherz
Starter
From what I’ve seen and read of Save the Green Planet! sounds like the bonkers “twist” ending was more thematically appropriate with the rest of the film. Ex: In one scene the CEO accidentally resuscitates someone by stomping on his chest in anger, and we get a Mortal Kombat-style close-up X-ray view of the heart as he does. The kidnapper’s partner isn’t his special needs cousin, but his circus-performer girlfriend.
Bugonia, while still nutty, seemed to lean more into realism and humanizing the conspiracy theorists. With this shift, I wonder if leaving the ending more ambiguous might have worked to internalize the conspiracy theorist’s mindset of conviction and certainty without definitive evidence for the audience.
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Hereditary is the first time in a while that I was truly horrified. If you're a parent, the first scene is, well, let's just say you knew SOMETHING was going to happen after the maybe-hard-to-notice setup.
And Midsommar, yeah.
I think the attention to detail with several crunches and squelches got me.
I think what I like about his movies are the frenetic pace at which the movies pick up speed. Some horror movies seem to have peaks and valleys, but Aster's seem to have an initial hit, then a methodical pace up until chaos ensues, hit after hit.
For the record, I hate the horror genre overall, but I can't stop watching his films.
Without giving away too much, I thought it was ending when Teddy detonated.
Löwenherz
Starter
I will absolutely not be rushing out to watch Hereditary.
Midsommar is two and a half hours and not a moment of it is filler. Exquisitely paced. Remove any one scene and there would be diminishment.
Hereditary is a hard pass. But would you recommend any of Beau is Afraid, Eddington, or Death of a Unicorn? Reviews seem mixed on all three.
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whitechocolate
Bench
What happened to this thread? It used to be about nothing but guys wearing spandex, codpieces, and capes.
Löwenherz
Starter
If you wanted us to talk Shakespeare you could just say so directly.
OK, best modern (say 1980 forward) Shakespeare film adaptation:
I'm going to go with Julie Taymor's Titus (1999) - Anthony Hopkins as the title character, with Jessica Lange, Colm Feore, Laura Fraser and Alan Cumming, just a spot-on and artistic presentation of one of Shakespeare's bloodiest. The art direction is a meld of ancient Rome and fascist Italy and Taymor has a real eye for the palette throughout.
Honorable mention to the Baz Luhrman Romeo+Juliet with DiCaprio and Danes. I was always amused by the "sword" play in this one.
Löwenherz
Starter
Gonna second Cap’s honorable mention of Baz Luhrmann’s William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet as the great post-modern MTV generation adaptation of the Bard.
Because with that cutoff date I can’t say Roman Polanski’s (yes Roman Polanski) 1971 MacBeth. Just a viscerally dark and bleak adaptation with sword fights that legit look like dudes in heavy armor slugging it out.
The wrestling thread is two doors to the left.
I picked up a copy of The Relic and watched it tonight - first time since I saw it in the theater in '97 if I recall correctly. This monster horror flick is based on an excellent book by the same name, and that's actually the reason I first watched it (a friend of mine recommended the book to me right before the film came out). Unfortunately, they pulled out one of the main characters from the book in this adaptation (actually THE main character for their book series that followed this one) and moved the setting from NY to Chicago (apparently the American Museum of Natural History couldn't reach a deal about filming there so they moved it to the Field Museum of Natural History).
Tom Sizemore and Penelope Ann Miller are the leads with Linda Hunt in a good supporting role. Audra Lindley (aka Three's Company's Mrs. Roper) has a great little turn as the forensic pathologist in her last film role.
Sam Winston took the lead on the practical creature effects. The computer-generated ones for it running and jumping were actually pretty darn good for the time period.
As is typical for something like this, the book is somewhat better than the movie - the flick is a bit dated and cheesy, but still somewhat entertaining.
If you get a chance, read the book. It's very good.
Tom Sizemore and Penelope Ann Miller are the leads with Linda Hunt in a good supporting role. Audra Lindley (aka Three's Company's Mrs. Roper) has a great little turn as the forensic pathologist in her last film role.
Sam Winston took the lead on the practical creature effects. The computer-generated ones for it running and jumping were actually pretty darn good for the time period.
As is typical for something like this, the book is somewhat better than the movie - the flick is a bit dated and cheesy, but still somewhat entertaining.
If you get a chance, read the book. It's very good.
This movie I do not know. Yet.
Sluggah
All-Star
No Pendergast is a wild move. Makes me think Preston and/or Child was fine to give the rights to the story but not the character.
Tetsujin
The Game Thread Dude
Haven’t been this excited for a Spielberg film since Lincoln at least. Wildly good cast as is to be expected from Spielberg (but I mean c’mon, Colin Firth, Emily Blunt, Josh O’Connor and Colman Domingo?) and John Williams is reportedly signed on to score the film despite claiming to be retired. Spielberg also has a perfect batting record on UFO movies (his War of the Worlds is severely underrated and pretty much set the stage for every single blockbuster movie that has come out since).
Might have to do a marathon of his filmography leading up to release (disclosure) day.
Now that’s a trailer. Looks great
Löwenherz
Starter
This is becoming a cool tradition for my wife and me watching the best picture together for the first time fairly immediately after the Oscars.
One Battle After Another (2025) - Amazon
PTA is a filmmaker I admire and appreciate even if I don’t personally love his movies. I’ve seen all of his features except Hard Eight and marvel at the twisting depths of his narratives and his uniquely personal and compelling style that manages to span the breadth of his filmography. Clearly fantastic cinema I fully celebrate, that somehow doesn’t connect viscerally with me on a personal level in particular. It happens; There’s no accounting for taste.
One Battle though fits within PTA’s stylistic throughline while being nothing like any of his previous films. I would have never expected PTA to create a political action thriller with explosions, gun fights, and car chases, but here we are with him summoning his inner Michael Bay.
And there are so many individual parts of this that I love, including the phenomenal cinematography, casting choices and performances, the portrayal of the police action against the sanctuary city, and specifically the final 40 minutes I found especially gripping.
Yet I still can’t fully say if I loved the film as a whole. I think I need one more run through to be fully sure, but it should say something that I’m willing and eager to take the ride again.
For my wife’s part, she abandoned it halfway through. Thought the narrative was unfocused and wasn’t particularly drawn in by the performances.
No accounting for taste.
One Battle After Another (2025) - Amazon
PTA is a filmmaker I admire and appreciate even if I don’t personally love his movies. I’ve seen all of his features except Hard Eight and marvel at the twisting depths of his narratives and his uniquely personal and compelling style that manages to span the breadth of his filmography. Clearly fantastic cinema I fully celebrate, that somehow doesn’t connect viscerally with me on a personal level in particular. It happens; There’s no accounting for taste.
One Battle though fits within PTA’s stylistic throughline while being nothing like any of his previous films. I would have never expected PTA to create a political action thriller with explosions, gun fights, and car chases, but here we are with him summoning his inner Michael Bay.
And there are so many individual parts of this that I love, including the phenomenal cinematography, casting choices and performances, the portrayal of the police action against the sanctuary city, and specifically the final 40 minutes I found especially gripping.
Yet I still can’t fully say if I loved the film as a whole. I think I need one more run through to be fully sure, but it should say something that I’m willing and eager to take the ride again.
For my wife’s part, she abandoned it halfway through. Thought the narrative was unfocused and wasn’t particularly drawn in by the performances.
No accounting for taste.
This movie was filmed in large parts locally, including some scenes in my little town (that were later cut out, I believe). I have yet to see this but want to.
Watched Sisu 2 and Peaky Blinders The Immortal Man….both on netflix
Both Sisu movies are outstanding if you like the action movies. If you squint, there are elements of Road Warrior in there but in a post war setting….dozens and dozens of people trying to take out The Legend, over the top action sequences
Big fan of PB so figured I would really like this one and I think it delivers
Both Sisu movies are outstanding if you like the action movies. If you squint, there are elements of Road Warrior in there but in a post war setting….dozens and dozens of people trying to take out The Legend, over the top action sequences
Big fan of PB so figured I would really like this one and I think it delivers
To be fair, I would agree that the second half of the movie is much stronger than the first half. It takes a long time to get to the big action finale and if I hadn't been watching it in a theater, my attention may have drifted as well in the 2 hours of run up before the drawn-out climax. I did have to excuse myself and take a bathroom break mid movie which I almost never do. There are some great performances throughout and some great individual scenes, but as a whole the lack of focus in the narrative was a problem for me too. And I don't like this recent trend of movies which should be 2 hours and 10 minutes at most being padded out into 2 hour and 40 minute near epics with lots of extraneous diversions that seem to be there mostly as self-indulgences for the director and cast.
We've had the PTA discussion here before, briefly. I'm aligned with you I think in appreciating his movies more than I actually enjoy them. The one exception being Inherent Vice because I am fully on-board with any story about a stoner Philip Marlowe type stumbling through 1970s Los Angeles, never quite finding the plot as weird happenings befall them with little reason or explanation given. Robert Altman did it first with The Long Goodbye (which clocks in over 30 minutes shorter at a tidy 1 hour and 52 minutes) but PTA crafted a worthy companion piece I think.
And Sinners should have won Best Picture, imo.
Löwenherz
Starter
That’s so funny you say Inherent Vice is your favorite PTA movie, because before One Battle After Another, that was my go-to “favorite” as well. I think Vice and One Battle are his most fun, as well as both being based on Thomas Pynchon novels. (One day Gravity’s Rainbow. One day.)
I liked The Master, but that’s partially because the subject matter is fascinating, and mostly because of Phillip Seymour Hoffman.
There Will Be Blood and Phantom Thread are objectively stellar period pieces, and Daniel Day Lewis is god-like, full stop. But I view those as almost museum pieces worthy of admiration behind glass rather than something I’d take home for the joy of it. And Phantom Thread starts with one of the most awkwardly surreal first dates ever put to celluloid, which fits the mutually abusive codependent narrative, but fractured my suspension of disbelief in accepting our two leads ever getting together in the first place. Laced the rest of the film with a subtle off-putting creepiness beneath the veneer of elegance, which I suspect was the point, but still made it hard to watch.
Licorice Pizza is a chill 70s in the Valley American Graffiti-style romp of interconnected pseudo-vignettes and its cool for what it is, but didn’t have much staying power in my thoughts. Saw Boogie Nights too long ago to have developed any kind of in-depth opinion beyond loving Heather Graham’s Roller Girl and tittering about Mark Walberg’s “reveal” at the end. I can appreciate why people celebrate Punch Drunk Love (and as I’ve mentioned before, dig the Superman parallels), but didn’t have a visceral connection to it as many do.
And I absolutely hate Magnolia. The set-up emphasizes eerie coincidences, like a man who lived on Greenberry Hill being murdered by a Mr. Green, Mr. Berry, and Mr. Hill. Then resolves all of its loosely intertwined narratives not with eerie coincidences or even a single eerie coincidence, but with a straight up Deus ex Machina. I have never seen so many professional critics and Hollywood insiders fawn over the use of a Deus ex Machina in a modern film before or since. Completely turned me off to PTA movies for the better part of a decade.
Still not exactly a “fan” but glad I can celebrate and enjoy his filmography now.
Löwenherz
Starter
A year of anxious anticipation to see this. Still processing if it was worth it. So much I absolutely love, but one too many rough edges.
The Surfer (2025) - Hulu
This unexpectedly seems to function as a companion piece to 1968’s The Swimmer with Burt Lancaster - even follows narrative beats too similar to be a coincidence as a possible homage and then apparent subversion of The Swimmer. If you know that film, you’ll have an idea what you’re getting into here.
Impressed by the disciplined focus on setting, making it feel as though this lone surf spot constitutes the entire universe.
Adore the beach color pallet of natural turquoise, teal, caramel, and copper, the stark primary colors of red and yellow cars and surfboards, and the pale dune shrubbery green in the day juxtaposed with the sickly unnatural green hue at night.
Excited by the “villain” as a Point Break-style Bodhi surf philosopher rather than a “Locals Only” brute, and the importance of the seemingly off-hand Shaolin Monk comment.
But some of the zooms, cuts, and camera angles come off as a little too hokey for me. The abjectly disgusting portions make it difficult to stomach. And if the villain was more charismatic Shaolin master and less man-o-sphere YouTube pundit, I would have found his world more appealing.
Nic Cage films are a genre unto themselves, and while there are more misses than hits for me, they’re rarely boring. This one’s probably worth it.
Probably.
The Surfer (2025) - Hulu
This unexpectedly seems to function as a companion piece to 1968’s The Swimmer with Burt Lancaster - even follows narrative beats too similar to be a coincidence as a possible homage and then apparent subversion of The Swimmer. If you know that film, you’ll have an idea what you’re getting into here.
Impressed by the disciplined focus on setting, making it feel as though this lone surf spot constitutes the entire universe.
Adore the beach color pallet of natural turquoise, teal, caramel, and copper, the stark primary colors of red and yellow cars and surfboards, and the pale dune shrubbery green in the day juxtaposed with the sickly unnatural green hue at night.
Excited by the “villain” as a Point Break-style Bodhi surf philosopher rather than a “Locals Only” brute, and the importance of the seemingly off-hand Shaolin Monk comment.
But some of the zooms, cuts, and camera angles come off as a little too hokey for me. The abjectly disgusting portions make it difficult to stomach. And if the villain was more charismatic Shaolin master and less man-o-sphere YouTube pundit, I would have found his world more appealing.
Nic Cage films are a genre unto themselves, and while there are more misses than hits for me, they’re rarely boring. This one’s probably worth it.
Probably.
Project Hail Mary
A very enjoyable movie, we all liked it a lot.
They cut out large portions of the book to make it fit a movie runtime. They took a few liberties with the material but stuck very close to the overall story. They hammed up Rocky a bit for comedic value. It lightened the tone a bit but I don’t know that it made the movie “better”. They simplified the science quite a bit.
Not 100% faithful to the book, but the author was on set helping with the adaptation and I think that helped them walk that line of simplifying the book to make the movie fit a time frame and reach a somewhat wider audience than if it had followed all the details more accurately.
I do think the details really helped the book, though. I think the problem is that although they could have made the movie much longer or a two-parter, the source material wasn't well enough known (like Dune, or LotR, or whatever) to be able to pull that off.
A very enjoyable movie, we all liked it a lot.
They cut out large portions of the book to make it fit a movie runtime. They took a few liberties with the material but stuck very close to the overall story. They hammed up Rocky a bit for comedic value. It lightened the tone a bit but I don’t know that it made the movie “better”. They simplified the science quite a bit.
Not 100% faithful to the book, but the author was on set helping with the adaptation and I think that helped them walk that line of simplifying the book to make the movie fit a time frame and reach a somewhat wider audience than if it had followed all the details more accurately.
I do think the details really helped the book, though. I think the problem is that although they could have made the movie much longer or a two-parter, the source material wasn't well enough known (like Dune, or LotR, or whatever) to be able to pull that off.
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I mostly enjoyed it. One criticism that I've read in other reviews and which certainly rang true for me is that the emotional scenes in the movie were somewhat undermined by the music. What I mean by that is that every time I was starting to feel something the music would come in annoyingly loud and take over telling me exactly what I was supposed to be feeling. Generally it wasn't far off, but it became very heavy-handed and unwelcome through repetition. Once or twice over the course of the movie I can excuse but I'm sorry your movie doesn't get to have 10 different emotional climaxes, all of which the composer and/or sound mixer seem to think are equally important.
All in all, that was a pretty minor complaint though. It was a touching story and I really enjoyed the camaraderie between the main characters. It didn't reach the level of The Martian for me as an adaptation because that movie somehow made the science parts of the story both entertaining and interesting. I could feel the science being mostly Cliff-Noted out of the script here in favor of bigger action beats and character development. I don't think that was a terrible decision. It was the same screenwriter in both cases and it seems like Ryan Gosling was the driving force behind purchasing the rights and putting this into production so it stands to reason the script would be tailored more to his taste. It seems Gosling, Goddard, and the Miller/Lord directing team were aiming for accessibility and universal appeal but in comparison it was a little more typical Sci-Fi where The Martian transcended the genre conventions by being both entertaining and also really grounded in the hands-on minutia of solving problems logically through the scientific method.
And since I can't help but take a little dig at an adaptation that I hate and most seem to really like, I thought this was a far better version of the "two alien races meet and learn to communicate with each other" narrative than what Denis Villeneuve and writer Eric Heisserer did in translating (butchering in my opinion) Ted Chang's "Story of Your Life" short story for Arrival.
LoungeLizard
Starter
Saw Project Hail Mary last night. Very much enjoyed this one. Haven’t read the book, so I went in blind. Ryan Gosling has grown on me, even though he seems to be somewhat of the same character in most of his films. Highly recommend seeing this in the theater for the sound and visual effects.
Agreed, I used to not care for him much but I think he did well in this one.
Have you read the book? The book is excellent. There is definitely more "science" than was shown in this movie - they must have cut out over 90%. Even so, the book seemed like it would still be accessible to "non-sciencey" folks. Not like Three Body Problem (while I still enjoyed it, that one was pretty out there).
