Topic: The Movie Thread

Just saw the trailer for The Blue Rose, a movie billed as a "surreal noir" and boy does that description seem fitting! This seems to be just my kind of "weird"; hope it delivers on the promise of the trailer

As were are sharing trailers, here is one for Nosferatu, from Director Robert Eggers.

@JohnnyShoulder Really looking forward to that one! Looks spectacular! I'm not the biggest Eggers fan; I've only seen The Witch (which I felt was perfectly fine, but a bit overrated), but this one looks to be a hand-in-glove fit for me

So following a nostalgia-fuelled chat with @Malaise on another thread, the missus and I are gonna start watching all the John Carpenter movies (well all the good ones anyway). We’re gonna watch one every Saturday night, starting tonight with The Thing. Pretty amped tbh as it’s been around 20-30 years since I’ve watched any of these.

@LN78 the missus has seen Halloween and wanted to watch something she hadn’t seen before… we’ll circle back though 😉

@colonelkilgore One of my favourite films there... got it on 4K blu ray. Love the practical effects, love the soundtrack, love how tense it is in some scenes. Hopefully the upcoming remaster of the game, which is an official sequel to the film still holds up today.

Last night watched In a Violent Nature and it was probably my favourite horror film of the year so far. It changed up the slasher formula by following the antagonist third person over the shoulder style rather than focussing on the group of victims. Some really nice slow paced nature shots of outdoor Canadian countryside and some gruesome deaths.
Recommended 👍

@colonelkilgore
Yeah The Thing is still great. Amazing how well some of the practical effects still hold up after all these years.

Good reminder guys. I got the 4k of The Thing for Christmas and I’ve realised I still haven’t checked it out.
Need to stop falling back on the lazy option of going to Netflix and Prime and start watching stuff I haven’t touched from my physical collection.

Just got home from seeing A Quiet Place: Day One and I quite liked it! It doesn't do anything particularly new, but what it does it does well and both Lupita Nyong'o and Joseph Quinn deliver very good performances. The movie has the expected amount of jump scares (a couple very cheap ones as well), but it is also good at building a proper amount of tension at times, so I can forgive the worst offenders in this one (and they are by no means the cheapest jump scares I've seen in the theatre this year).

@AgentCooper oh of course mate 😉

@AgentCooper It's funny, because I was about to ask the same thing. I'm curious as to what "proper" Hellboy fans think. I actually thought it looked like a potentially cool supernatural horror flick with images of Hellboy spliced in For all I know, this is the kind of tone the comics set, but I really couldn't say.
I loved the first Del Toro movie, didn't care all that much for the second and skipped the new non-Del Toro version completely, so I don't have all that much experience with the character.
And Hellboy looked a bit "off" to me, but that is probably because Perlman inhabited that character so well that it just feels weird when it's someone else

@AgentCooper @FuriousMachine I first got into the comics because of Del Toro's movie's. I do really like those movies, but they are nothing like the comics.

The last movie was plagued with lots of stuff behind the scenes and had lots of unfinished looking FX shots. But it was pretty faithful to the comic, just a strange point in HB's life to adapt as it's quite a lengthy story in the comics so squeezing it into one film definitely didn't help.

As for the new one. It's taken from a fantastic story drawn by the excellent Richard Corben. Apart from not having yellow eyes, the design of HB looks great. The sloping shoulders, the coat all look spot on. In the comics big red is never consistently the same colour. Depending on lighting and what his situation is he will be different shades of red, he's even been greys and other dull colours.

This is one of the stories where Hellboy just happens to be thrown into investigate and doesn't really explore his background. It's more of the horror vibe from the comics rather than the fantasy that Del Toro went with for his outings, especially The Golden Army!

@AgentCooper @MightyDemon82 I watched the trailer again just now and I must say I'm liking the full on horror vibes it gives off and hope that's the tone in the movie as well. I'll definitely keep an eye out for this one. Probably won't come to the theatres over here, but here's hoping!

@FuriousMachine The thing is that Hellboy is a quiet comic for the most part. People want a blockbuster but in reality, the lower budget horror dripping in atmosphere is where Hellboy will fit very well. I've been a fan of Hellboy and Mike Mignola's art/ storytelling for 20 years. Always happy to check out adaptations but nothing can beat the comics especially when Mike is behind both the story and the art.

@MightyDemon82 Love to hear that! If this new movie pulls off the "horror dripping in atmosphere" thing it will so be my jam
Read up on the movie over at bloody-disgusting.com and the fact that Mignola and Christopher Golden are writing it fills me with promise. Brian Taylor as a director takes away some of that promise again, though (apart from "Crank", his movies have been... not very good, in my opinion)

@Malaise I gave a whole ton of DVDs to a charity shop when I got a PS4. Since then I've tried to only only buy films on disc that I know I like and will rewatch, especially on 4K as they are bit more expensive. My collection is now mainly films I grew up with like Alien, Aliens, Predator, The Thing to more recent films like Sicario, Get Out, The Batman.

Used be much more a scattergun approach with DVDs. Ended up with a wholemload films I only watched the once and didn't like. Much like PlayStation games with all the sales on the store, I've accumulated way too many games I know what to do with. Which is why I almost never buy any games these days, and either play something that is in my backlog or whatever is on PS Plus.

@Malaise I've seen 12K videos pop up on YouTube! 🤣

@Malaise You can see the actors’ and actressess’ imperfections too. Some of them aged like 20 years immediately when seen in 4K. 😅

I think we will have 8K though. At 80 inches it is already available, and I think it will be available in some smaller sizes eventually, but I’m not sure how much difference it will show on the smaller screens. It will be great for the large home theater setups though.

@Th3solution I’m not ready for 4K being the standard. It’s not that cheap to begin with xD.

I’m ok with larger screens being more common though. I think 55 inch screens in particular should be standard. I sit far from the tv quite often. XD

I understand this will likely be a little TL;DR, but here are all the films I watched over the past couple weeks (with the exception of Malena & the anime titles, I picked up everything thrifting).

Daredevil (Blu-Ray) - the 2003 version (Director's Cut). I think this actually started out pretty strongly, but got a little shaky as it went on. Still has some good elements though, and I wouldn't call it terrible.

Elektra (Blu-Ray) - This on the other hand wasn't very good at all. Only watched it because it was included with Fantastic 4 & Daredevil (got the three pack at a thrift store for $2, so can't complain).

Gladiator (Blu-Ray) - Haven't watched this in a good while, and am glad to report it's still fantastic. Easily the best thing I watched over the past couple weeks & am now pretty excited for the legacy sequel coming out.

Gurren Lagaan: Childhood's End (Blu-Ray) - The first half of the TV series abridged into film format. There is some new animation which is cool to see (along with a bunch re-used from the show), but it's best watched as a refresher for existing fans, rather than a jumping on point for newbies.

Gurren Lagaan: the Lights in the Sky are Stars (Blu-Ray) - The second half of the TV series abridged into film format. I give it pretty much the same assessment as the first.

Independence Day (Blu-Ray) - Watched this on the titular holiday (with the dog on my lap as he's afraid of fireworks). Haven't actually sat down to watch this one in a long time, but it was a pretty fun time, even if the film itself was pretty uneven. I think it jumps around a bit much and would probably be a bit tighter if they cut out Randy Quaid's storyline, but at the same time he has some of the best bits in the film so I'm not sure I'd want that, lol. Similarly, I think it does a great job setting up the tension when the saucers are entering the atmosphere, but once the action gets going the effects start tearing apart at the seams.

Malena (Blu-Ray) - Picked up the uncut Imprint release. Coming of age story set amongst the backdrop of WWII Italy. Could be pretty tonally inconsistent, but it was worth the watch, IMO.

the Monuments Men (Blu-Ray) - Pretty breezy film about a group of academics who are sent into Europe during WWII in order to identify & protect art/historic sites, etc. with a pretty all star cast. It wasn't a masterpiece itself, but I really enjoyed watching it.

Shazam (Blu-Ray) - It's not a perfect movie, but man is it a fun time. Really captures the vibe of all the kinds of mischief a kid would get into if they suddenly had superpowers. Definitely the best out of all the superhero flicks in this list.

Spider-Man 3 (Blu-Ray) - It definitely had it's moments, but was definitely stretched a bit too thin with the three antagonists. Like Independence Day it's another one I hadn't seen in a long time & wish I would have liked a bit more, even if there were good parts.