Topic: The Movie Thread

Films I watched over the weekend.

Alien Romulus (Cinema) - No overwrought lore and overbearing technical jargon kept to a limit, this is a back to basics affair that follows a group of scared youths fighting for their lives against unimaginable horrors amongst the decaying husk of an orbital research station. It's absolutely stunning, brutal, tense, icky, and the best thing I've seen in theatres since Dune Part 2. If you have even a passing interest in deep space/future sci-fi you owe it to yourself to see this.

Gran Torino (Blu-Ray) - Every once in awhile my parents will introduce me to a movie that I otherwise wouldn't watch but end up loving, and this is one of those films (though this isn't the first time I watched it). Clint Eastwood plays the role of a crotchety (& kinda racist) old man who forms a connection with a new immigrant family next door, and in his own way tries to keep their teenaged children from falling in/victim to the local gang(s).

Heaven's Lost Property Final (Blu-Ray) - What a load of crock. Following on from the preceding two TV series & film in the HLP franchise, this film seeks to be the big finale, or at least the title would lead you to believe so. However in practice this has to be the most ill conceived/mismanaged efforts in closure I've ever seen (even by anime standards of "we're cancelling the series before reaching the manga's conclusion", it's terrible). Starts out in the middle of the big climactic final battle with no context as to what's going on, precedes to have a 40 minute long flashback (which is like 90% of the film's runtime) that never gets around to addressing how the final battle begins, then in it's final moments returns to the "present" only to not show how things end either.

Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs (Blu-Ray) - For the first ever feature length animation this has a lot of elements that still impress (like a lot of the water effects, such as when the camera is looking up at the titular heroine from the inside of a well), you can really tell that the animators really poured their heart & soul into this as they had everything riding on it. That said it's characters don't have much in the way of character, especially Snow White (and her "Prince Charming", who shows up like twice), although the dwarfs have a few good comedic relief bits.

@CJD87, sorry for taking awhile to get back to you. Haven't seen the Watchmen TV series since we don't subscribe to Max (& honestly I really haven't found the time to stream much even on the services we do get ever since I started collecting & watching more physically. Especially dedicating myself to TV shows).

@LN78 I saw they used the same horrible tech to ‘resurrect’ a dead actor and immediately knew I didn’t want to watch.

I made another one of my "custom" double-features at the cinema on Sunday; first watching Blink Twice and then moving across the hall to see Alien: Romulus

Blink Twice is a psychological thriller and the directorial debut of Zoë Kravitz and even comes with a trigger warning before the movie starts! I had gone in blind and did not know what to expect other than it was a thriller and initially I was a little disappointed. The first act was maybe a bit too long and dragged a bit, and while Kravitz managed to lace the proceedings with a slight tinge of dread, I found myself thinking it took too long setting the stage for the next two acts.
When act two came around, however, it got simultaneously quite creepy and quite funny and I started enjoying it quite a bit more. Act three was almost pure brilliance and made me come away from the movie feeling quite satisfied. Far from perfect, but a very solid first effort from Kravitz and she may be a director to look out for.

Alien: Romulus will probably not need any sort of introduction, so I'll cut right to my impression of it: I liked it, but I also had quite a few issues with it. First and foremost, I think this would have been better if Alvarez would have been able to make his own movie without having Scott looking over his shoulder. It feels like the movie was compromised by the need to accommodate everything that has come before, including the unfortunate retcon that took place in Scott's own Prometheus. There are also some incredibly heavy handed callbacks in there that pulls you right out the proceedings.
Also, the practice of digitally resurrecting dead actors needs to stop. It's not something I'm up in arms about and it won't necessarily ruin a movie for me, but here it is wholly unnecessary and feels exploitative. Unfortunately, I don't see this going away until a successful lawsuit sets a legal precedent that will make typically risk averse movie studios shy away from the practice. Until that happens, I can only hope that the practice will be mostly limited to short, heartfelt homages sanctioned by the next of kin, like they did in Ghostbusters: Afterlife.
Now, this may be unfair (and maybe even completely wrong), but I don't fault Alvarez for the things I felt went wrong with this movie; it feels very much like Scott (and maybe Disney) interference to me.
Still though, in sum, I felt that this was a decent Alien movie and the best one to have come out since Alien 3 in my opinion, thanks to some really tense moments and Alvarez' trademark brutal, almost sadistic, treatment of his characters (one character in particular goes through the wringer here). It also contributes with some decent world-building by showing us how daily life in the shadow of the massive Weyland-Yutani corporation is in the opening act.

@LN78 Been wanting to see it for a while now, but it hasn't been available here yet. It's showing as a part of Oslo Film Festival, but it sold out while I was on holiday, unfortunately. Hopefully it will open wide after the festival or hit a local streamer soon

@LN78 It's simply a case of the things I liked outweighing the things I didn't. Granted, it's a long time since I saw "Prometheus" and "Covenant", and I've seen them only once, so I may feel more charitable towards them if I were to see them again. I remember coming out of "Prometheus" feeling annoyed and "Covenant" feeling indifferent, but after this one I at least felt that I'd been entertained.
I'll probably go through all of them again at one point and I may change my mind then, but for now I enjoyed this one more than I did those two (I would also add that I found even the first AvP more enjoyable than those two, so there's that. Only the second AvP movie is completely useless to me and thus lands on the bottom of my list)

The prequels are just so forgettable. The only thing I even remember in Covenant is the weirdly hot Michael Fassbender selfcest with the two androids.

Anyway, I haven't seen AvP, but in terms of the mainline movies, I highly doubt anything will ever be worse than Alien Resurrection. I'm noticing horror sequels with "Resurrection" in the title tend to be the worst entries in their respective series.

@LN78 Would it be safe to say that Covenant left you feeling… alienated 😂

Star Trek 2009 (Blu-Ray) - I may be a bit biased as it's one I watched in theaters when it first came out, but this one is a blast. The cast has great chemistry & seems to be having fun, and it's a big fun roaring sci-fi film. I can't really speak on it's qualities as a "Trek" film as it was never really an important franchise for me growing up, but on it's own merit I always have a good time watching this.

Cutthroat Island (Blu-Ray) - I hadn't heard of this until now, but as I didn't yet have any seafaring/pirate movies in my collection, I picked up the BD when I saw it at a thrift store. Nothing particularly noteworthy, but it's a fun enough swashbuckler (I really liked the big ship battle in the climax though).

@RR529 Ah, Cutthroat Island, the Guinness World Record holder for biggest flop of all time and the movie credited with bankrupting Carolco Pictures (though, in reality, the company had always been struggling, in spite of huge blockbuster success like the Rambo movies, Terminator 2, Total Recall, etc, so the company was already going under when they released Cutthroat Island).
I haven't seen it myself, so cool to hear that it isn't entirely abysmal

@LN78 Damn, now you poked my morbid curiosity. I will try to resist

Last night we watched Under Paris, it reminded me of Deep Blue Sea. Daft but entertaining enough.

We also watched Emily the Criminal. A great crime thriller with Aubrey Plaza. She was fantastic in this, the first time I've seen her in a serious role.

Just finished watching Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One. I remember people saying last year that this wasn't a good movie, but I thought it was very good. Just like the other movies, this one had a lot of cool scenes. The concept of an AI becoming self-aware, while cliché in movies in general, is rather cool for the series. Also, Hayley Atwell being in the movie definitely made it more compelling. She's just absolutely gorgeous.

@MightyDemon82 Yeah Aubrey Plaza is great. Think I first saw her in Legion, and I don't think I've seen her give a bad performance since. If you liked Emily the Criminal, I can reccomend Ingrid Goes West and Black Bear. I advise going in blind for the latter film, as you are better off not much about it.

@JohnnyShoulder OK thanks for the recommendations 👍

@MightyDemon82 - although not a movie, Aubrey Plaza was one of the main cast within "The White Lotus" season 2. She is/was incredible in that series, and plays very much 'against type' as a fairly inhibited and reserved character. The whole show is awesome, both seasons are great in fairness.

@LtSarge I consider myself a huge fan of the franchise and felt that it kept getting better and better and better with each movie.... and I absolutely hated Dead Reckoning Part 1... with a passion
Glad you enjoyed it, though

@LN78 Yeah, I remember Witt primarily from Twin Peaks, where she played Donna's little sister and I couldn't understand how she'd manage to outgrow me... then I remembered that I'm fifty and she's a year younger than me
I thought Cage's manic performance here was slightly dampened by the layers of makeup they put on him and that was definitely a good thing. Great use of tension in this movie and not too many cheap jump scares. One of my favourite horror movies this year.

The teaser for Leigh Whannell's "Wolf man" just dropped and I think it looks very promising!

@LN78 Yeah, "Blackcoat's Daughter" was good. Haven't seen any of Perkins' other films, but I think one of them currently resides on Netflix, so I'll give it a look down the line.

@LN78 Absolutely! I'm a huge fan of Flanagan, but I'm still a bit unsure on Aster and Eggers, I've only seen "Hereditary" and "Midsommar" of Aster's and while I liked them fine, they didn't blow me away (Hereditary was chuckleworthy due to how batcrap insane it got, if memory serves). As for Eggers, I've only seen "The Witch" and found that slightly underwhelming after all the praise it got. Been meaning to see more of his work, but haven't gotten around to it yet.