Movies Rate and Discuss the Last Movie You Saw v.16

[LeonardoBjj]

-Did you guys ever watched Bulletproof with Damon Wayans and Adam Sandler?

James Cann was great, and also the later Jeep Swenson. I usually use images of this movie in my drug-dealing threads.
It's one of the best buddie movies i've watched.

 

[revoltub]

-Did you guys ever watched Bulletproof with Damon Wayans and Adam Sandler?

James Cann was great, and also the later Jeep Swenson. I usually use images of this movie in my drug-dealing threads.
It's one of the best buddie movies i've watched.

Yeah, but havent seen it for years. I remember liking it. Probably needs a rewatch.

 

[Batjester]

-Did you guys ever watched Bulletproof with Damon Wayans and Adam Sandler?

James Cann was great, and also the later Jeep Swenson. I usually use images of this movie in my drug-dealing threads.
It's one of the best buddie movies i've watched.

Probably in my top 2 of Sandler films. Pixels being the other.

 

[TCE]

District 9

First time ever seeing this movie. Literally just got done watching it a couple hours ago. I'm shocked I haven't seen it until now.

I rewatched Chappie on Netflix beforehand, because I remembered I enjoyed it and hadn't seen it again since it came out. After the movie, I looked at other movies Neill Blomkamp had directed and wrote, and came across his first feature film also on Netflix. And what a film it was...

Peter Jackson also produced the movie, reportedly giving Blomkamp 30mil to direct any movie of his choosing, after the Halo feature film fell through.

Everything about this movie was bang on - the story, the characters, the "prawns", the action, the humour, the special effects. The lead actor was amazing. Awesome writing and directing.

Why has there never been a sequel, District 10?

9/10 for me.

 

[The_Renaissance]

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (2024)
Saturday night cinema visit, for this. Disappointing. I actually found it to be quite a boring addition to the franchise. There was too much dead space, with nothing happening really. Proximus got far too little screen time. It looked class, but that's about it.
6/10

 

[HenryFlower]

The Limey (USA, 1999)

American neo-noir revenge film directed by Steven Soderbergh and starring Terence Stamp, Luis Guzman, Barry Newman, and Peter Fonda.

Wilson (Stamp) is an old career criminal who was recently released from prison. He travels to Los Angeles to look into the recent death of his estranged daughter, Jenny.

Wilson becomes suspicious that Jenny's much older boyfriend, Terry Valentine (Fonda) and his sidekick, Avery (Newman), were responsible for Jenny's death.

This is a pretty straightforward crime/revenge film. There are not a lot of frills to the plot, evidenced by a brisk 90 minute run time.

Wilson and Valentine are old men well past their primes. Valentine is living off a reputation and fortune, both dwindling, that he made in the 60's. He remains famous enough to date beautiful young women but his current girlfriend cannot help but smirk at his insistence on decorating his home with tired old Gold Albums and telling the same motorcycle story over and over again. A party at his mansion in the Hollywood Hills has a great view but mostly shows an outdated decor and a group of less than glamorous guests. His bodyguards have an average BMI > 35 and Avery recruits hitmen from pool hustlers at a local bar.

Wilson is no master criminal either. He is street smart, determined, and ruthless but his criminal career mostly involved him getting caught and sent to prison (no less than 3 times).

I was struck by how unglamorous Soderbergh makes LA look. A road trip up the PCH to Big Sur is filmed with a narrow view on the road and faded out brown landscape.

Soderbergh uses lots of little edits to spruce up the solid but basic plot. Conversations are often cut across locations and times. That is, the characters start a sentence sitting at a table and finish the sentence while driving in a car and then back again at the table. It does not make much sense but it works well enough. Personally, I could have done without it and it felt like Soderbergh was trying to rizz up some clunky dialogue.

The direction is all over the place. There are some great shots like showing Wilson throwing a goon to his death with the scene captured over the shoulder of a man at a party. In another scene, Wilson is thrown out on the street by some goons. We see him draw a tiny gun and march back in. We hear shots and screams and one of the goons comes sprinting out. It is a brilliant way to capture the action without even having to show us everything. On the other hand, a couple of minutes earlier Wilson is wandering around an industrial part of LA and the scene looks like something a high school student would shoot.

Stamp is absolutely incredible. He emanates a casual coolness and an underlying menace. He is by far the best part of the film.

I really wanted to like this film but is tops out at slightly above average. If you like noir movies, it is worth watching for Stamp's performance alone.

Rating: 6/10

Terrence Stamp doing shit in the background of a shot is a lot of fun

 

[GearSolidMetal]

Was listening to Critical Drinker's 'After Hours' podcast and someone sent in a superchat... a paid message for him to read aloud, which are usually questions... and this one caught my ear -

"Have you seen 'Unicorn Wars?' Its a 2022 animated war film and the writer/director's primary sources of inspiration were..
*Bambi.
*The Bible.
*Apocalypse Now."

I'm typically a very jaded movie viewer, even the great movies are somehow derivative and unoriginal... so when I heard of that description for a movie I knew I had to watch it.

Very much worth watching.... but not with kids.
Hell, I'm not sure its even the type of film you'd want to watch twice.



Only thing you should know beforehand is... there isn't an English dub, only spanish with english subtitles... but that doesn't hender the enjoyment in any way.

BTW, if you laughed at the ridiculousness of the trailer you're not alone. You may get the feeling its a parody, but it takes itself very serious... which is why it could be considered a 'dark humor film.'

@Dragonlordxxxxx I know you like unique movies, and I'd say this very much qualifies as that.

From wikipedia - 'reception' - On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an 84% rating based on 31 reviews from critics with an average rating of 7.20/10, with the critics' consensus reading "while its humor may strike some as needlessly crude, Unicorn Wars is a visually audacious strike against cultural and military fascism".[16] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average of 73 out of 100 based on 7 critic reviews, indicating "generally positive reviews".[17]

Look up if your preferred streaming platform has it, and if not... well..

I did see a BluRay copy on Ebay for $20, but IMO that's too much for an animated movie without an English dub... that you'd probably watch only once, or twice maximum.

 

[revoltub]

Late Night with the Devil

-

The best part is definitely David Dastmalchian. The guy has been a reliable character actor for years now, and it is cool to see him lead film, at least the first time I've seen him do so. He pretty much nails the 70s game show host character.

Has decent atmosphere too. Presented in the feel of a 70s late night talk/variety show. It clearly takes inspiration from the James Randi magic debunk stuff that was going on around then, as Ian Bliss's character is obviously based on him.

For me, it has too many moments that go a bit over the top and pull me put of the zone. Though it does have one scene that I thought was really really well done.

Overall though it is only 90 minutes and a fun watch with good atmosphere. I think it would have been better if it reeled it in a bit with certain moments.

6.2/10 range

 

[I Am Legion]

Road House remake--6.5/10
This was not as bad as I was expecting. Just a straight forward violent, action type movie. Jake does fine, although he always looks goofy to me. His voice is not tough although he got in great shape. Connor was hysterical. But the issue was there was no real central baddie. He was a loose cannon not really on a side. The main villain was kind of weak....daddy's boy and they did not do a great job of really making you hate him like you did Ben Gazzara in the original. I couldn't figure out how they had this gorgeous boat and fancy cars and lived in a shithole with a half empty pool. Made no sense. This is not the original, but it is a fine watch to kill some time. Some nice comedic moments to go along with the bloodshed.

 

[Joe_Armstrong]

Just saw Dune 1 and 2 from 18:00 till 00:30 tonight back to back.

It was okay, I don't understand the Zendaya love some people have.
But the movies were decent, 7/10

 

[eddymotto]

U Turn (USA, 1997)

Pulpy neo-noir crime film directed by Oliver Stone. It stars Sean Penn surrounded by an incredible supporting cast including Billy Bob Thornton, Jennifer Lopez, Nick Nolte, Powers Boothe, Joaquin Phoenix, Claire Danes, and Jon Voight.

Bobby Cooper (Penn) is driving through the backwaters of Arizona in his red 1964 and 1/2 Ford Mustang Convertible when his car breaks down outside a town called Superior. Bobby is in debt to a Vegas based Russian gangster and is down to 8 fingers as a result. He needs to get his car fixed and get the $13,000 in cash that he is carrying to Vegas to save his own life.

While this goal seems simple enough in most circumstances, Superior becomes a purgatory for poor Bobby and not just because it looks hotter than hell. It is the sort of backwater town beloved by noir films where everyone is oversexed, malevolent, and mean. The inhabitants spend so much time scheming and lying, you wonder when they find the time to fuck. But don't worry, they do. As Bobby exclaims at one point; "Is everybody fucking everybody else in this goddamn town?".

Of course, any such town is populated by a shifty mechanic (Thorton), a corrupt Sheriff (Boothe), a jealous husband (Nolte) and a femme fatale (Lopez). I don't want to leave out Jenny (Danes), a moron who throws herself at every guy she sees so that her hotheaded, even dumber boyfriend, Toby N Tucker (Phoenix), can threaten to beat them up while in a jealous rage. Toby helpfully tells Bobby that his friends call him "TNT" and asks the out of towner to guess why. Bobby deadpans; "because they lack imagination?".

The plot if a fairly conventional neo-noir story and Stone turns to weird characters and lots of camera tricks to spruce up the excitement. I wish that he had just spent more time on the plot. He should also have accepted that there is not enough of a story to justify a 2 hour runtime.

Stone goes so over the top with most of the characters that the film often feels more like a black comedy than a crime thriller. There is no way to feel like these characters are in any way real people who could exist in a real time and a real place. Exactly what Stone had is mind is difficult to know for sure but it feels like a lot of cocaine was consumed as part of the creative process.

Penn is great as the lead. Bobby is an amoral loser who probably deserves bad things to happen to him. Yet, I could not help myself wishing that he could just get the fuck out of that godforsaken town. As an aside, the film seems to imply that Buddy was most recently some sort of low level tennis coach, which is so random for this movie that it made me laugh. I wonder how Bobby managed to get into $13K of debt with the Russian mob to start with. The dumbfuck reason is probably both weirder and more stupid than I could imagine.

All the performances are pretty good even if they mostly feel pointless. Nolte plays a buck toothed pervert who is less a man than a collection of malevolent urges. I don't recall ever seeing him drink but I am positive that he reeks of cheap booze and dried sweat. Lopez is a classic femme fatale who we are never sure is predator or prey. Or maybe it is more that we do know but want to convince ourselves that we don't.

I always want to love films like this and the 90's produced a lot of them. Stone is overindulgent and undisciplined on this one. Or maybe he was just making a comedy and did not tell anybody else. Despite all that, I mostly like this film. If a director did too much cocaine and hallucinated a neo-noir movie, U Turn might be the result.

Rating: 6.5/10

 

[eddymotto]

Death Wish (USA, 1974)

(Also released under the title Bernhard Goetz's Wet Dream)

American crime film directed by Michael Winner and starring Charles Bronson.

Paul Kersey (Bronson) is a happily married architect living in NYC. He is politically liberal and was a contentious objector during the Korean War. His colleagues complain about out of control violent crime in the city but Kersey seems mostly sanguine about it.

Kersey's world is shattered when his wife and adult daughter are attacked by a gang of hoodlums (shout out to a young Jeff Goldblum as a bug eyed punk).

Kersey finds himself drawn to vigilantism as a way to fight back against the chaos and violence in New York.

This is an overtly political film and is not particularly subtle about its quasi-fascist world view. NYC is portrayed as a violent hellhole and the solution to urban crime is good guys with guns. The film does raise the moral quandary that Kersey actively goes looking for trouble so that he can dispense violence against those who would seek to commit violence against him. (In Winner's NYC, all it takes to be mugged is to ride the subway or wander around the city at night). Is Kersey a victim if he actively seeks these violent encounters? Kersey initially becomes physically sick at his own actions. The internal conflict is short lived. Kersey likes being a vigilante. He appears almost addicted to it.

Winner is a no fuss director and the film is a streamlined 90 minutes. The first few minutes of the movie showcase Winner's style. Kersey and wife are on the beach in Hawaii. Kersey and wife are at dinner in Hawaii. Kersey and wife fly back to NYC and are immediately stuck in traffic. Kersey goes to the office and his co-workers talk about nothing but violent crime statistics. We are 3-4 minutes into the film and Winner has already told us what we need to know. Kersey and his wife are a loving couple with money (a trip to Hawaii in 1974 would have been considered a major vacation), NYC is a violent hellhole, and Kersey is a liberal. Winner does not waste time. Every scene has a purpose and there is no fat left on the bone. On the other hand, there is not a modicum of style to the film. It feels utilitarian. I hated the score.

Bronson is passable in the main role. I think that this is the first time I have ever seen a Bronson movie and so I did not have much baggage. He has undeniable screen presence and his calmness works really well for the character. He lacks range but so does the movie. This is not Shakespeare, it is about a dude who decides to kill to avenge his wife and discovers that he likes it.

People can decide what they want about the politics of the film. The movie itself is a solid thriller.

Rating: 6/10

The trailer gives away too much but I have linked it for reference.

 

[Pliny Pete]

Ministry Of Ungentlemanly Warfare is a rip roaring WW2 adventure that takes place on the ocean and a beautiful island paradise off the coast of Africa and it was good, really, really good!
It's not on the level of Snatch or Two Smoking Barrels but its Guy Ritchie's best movie since those two imo, has the same kinda witty weird foreign language and accents with some charming and bad ass characters
Probably the most knife murders in any movie ever, dang near every scene had several people getting gutted like a fish
The chick in it was gorgeous and apparently the main good guy was the real life inspiration for the James Bond character
Theres no twists or turns or surprises, just a straightforward ass kicking "Based on a true story" murder fest about a bunch of tough guy lunatics sent on a secret mission by Winston Churchill to murder the fuck outta some Nazis
Its exactly what you expect it to be from the trailer and I loved every bit of it
I give it my Official Highest 7 Thumbs Up Recommendation

 

[Pliny Pete]

Probably in my top 2 of Sandler films. Pixels being the other.

 

[Batjester]

I know I'm one of the few people who liked Pixals, but it just hit my nostalgia.

 

[eddymotto]

The Last Voyage of the Demeter (USA, 2023)

Vampire horror film based on a chapter from Bram Stoker's novel Dracula.

Set in the late 1800's, the Demeter is a merchant sailing boat transporting cargo from central Europe to London. Among the cargo are mysterious boxes filled with dirt.

Bad things start to happen during the voyage.

If you are familiar at all with the novel, pretty much any Dracula movie, or just pay attention to the first scene of this film, you mostly know how this ends. If you happen to miss all of those clues, you won't care anyway by the time you get to the end.

The concept is like Alien but on a boat, the monster is a vampire, and you don't care about any of the characters. On the other hand, if you really really like shallow focus leading to jump scares, you are gonna love Demeter.

The film demonstrates a basic level of competence, but it is not very good and perhaps more damningly, it feels pointless.

For the love of all that is holy, if you are going make a pointless vampire slasher film that takes place on a boat at least make it 90 minutes or less. I am inordinately annoyed that this movie is 2 hours long.

I spent much of the movie trying to figure out why Universal is making Dracula films without using Dracula in the title (Renfield being the other recent example). The entire idea of making these movies is because you own the intellectual property and so why hide the link to said IP? Universal marketing people are not dumb and so I assume that they somehow don't own the rights to use the name in a title. Thinking about this was more enjoyable than watching the movie.

I am trashing this movie but it is not that bad. It is mediocre and I am annoyed as a matter of principle that is runs for 2 hours.

Rating: 4.5/10

 

[ufcfan4]

Death Wish (USA, 1974)

(Also released under the title Bernhard Goetz's Wet Dream)

American crime film directed by Michael Winner and starring Charles Bronson.

Paul Kersey (Bronson) is a happily married architect living in NYC. He is politically liberal and was a contentious objector during the Korean War. His colleagues complain about out of control violent crime in the city but Kersey seems mostly sanguine about it.

Kersey's world is shattered when his wife and adult daughter are attacked by a gang of hoodlums (shout out to a young Jeff Goldblum as a bug eyed punk).

Kersey finds himself drawn to vigilantism as a way to fight back against the chaos and violence in New York.

This is an overtly political film and is not particularly subtle about its quasi-fascist world view. NYC is portrayed as a violent hellhole and the solution to urban crime is good guys with guns. The film does raise the moral quandary that Kersey actively goes looking for trouble so that he can dispense violence against those who would seek to commit violence against him. (In Winner's NYC, all it takes to be mugged is to ride the subway or wander around the city at night). Is Kersey a victim if he actively seeks these violent encounters? Kersey initially becomes physically sick at his own actions. The internal conflict is short lived. Kersey likes being a vigilante. He appears almost addicted to it.

Winner is a no fuss director and the film is a streamlined 90 minutes. The first few minutes of the movie showcase Winner's style. Kersey and wife are on the beach in Hawaii. Kersey and wife are at dinner in Hawaii. Kersey and wife fly back to NYC and are immediately stuck in traffic. Kersey goes to the office and his co-workers talk about nothing but violent crime statistics. We are 3-4 minutes into the film and Winner has already told us what we need to know. Kersey and his wife are a loving couple with money (a trip to Hawaii in 1974 would have been considered a major vacation), NYC is a violent hellhole, and Kersey is a liberal. Winner does not waste time. Every scene has a purpose and there is no fat left on the bone. On the other hand, there is not a modicum of style to the film. It feels utilitarian. I hated the score.

Bronson is passable in the main role. I think that this is the first time I have ever seen a Bronson movie and so I did not have much baggage. He has undeniable screen presence and his calmness works really well for the character. He lacks range but so does the movie. This is not Shakespeare, it is about a dude who decides to kill to avenge his wife and discovers that he likes it.

People can decide what they want about the politics of the film. The movie itself is a solid thriller.

Rating: 6/10

The trailer gives away too much but I have linked it for reference.

Great review. I’d be on board for a 6-7 rating. I felt like its reputation was a bit higher than my actual opinion of it. I do think it’s a pretty spot on ideal role for Bronson and that’s probably why they kept going back to the well with it in those excessive sequels. How many bad things are going to befall this guy and his loved ones? He’s like the Book of Job meets John Wick.

I think you could do a lot worse than watching the 2018 Eli Roth remake starring Bruce Willis. A lot of people hated it but I thought it was, for the most part, well done.

 

[TKing]

The Last Voyage of the Demeter (USA, 2023)

Vampire horror film based on a chapter from Bram Stoker's novel Dracula.

Set in the late 1800's, the Demeter is a merchant sailing boat transporting cargo from central Europe to London. Among the cargo are mysterious boxes filled with dirt.

Bad things start to happen during the voyage.

If you are familiar at all with the novel, pretty much any Dracula movie, or just pay attention to the first scene of this film, you mostly know how this ends. If you happen to miss all of those clues, you won't care anyway by the time you get to the end.

The concept is like Alien but on a boat, the monster is a vampire, and you don't care about any of the characters. On the other hand, if you really really like shallow focus leading to jump scares, you are gonna love Demeter.

The film demonstrates a basic level of competence, but it is not very good and perhaps more damningly, it feels pointless.

For the love of all that is holy, if you are going make a pointless vampire slasher film that takes place on a boat at least make it 90 minutes or less. I am inordinately annoyed that this movie is 2 hours long.

I spent much of the movie trying to figure out why Universal is making Dracula films without using Dracula in the title (Renfield being the other recent example). The entire idea of making these movies is because you own the intellectual property and so why hide the link to said IP? Universal marketing people are not dumb and so I assume that they somehow don't own the rights to use the name in a title. Thinking about this was more enjoyable than watching the movie.

I am trashing this movie but it is not that bad. It is mediocre and I am annoyed as a matter of principle that is runs for 2 hours.

Rating: 4.5/10

Spot on review, I remember watching and thinking about it inflated my score a bit so I tried to rewatch and I ended up bored. On paper this movie had big potential for something different with a nice setting, instead it was a drag, they could have cut 30 minutes easily and had a swift pace of a movie. They must have felt like longer run time=more tension but they were wrong for sure on this one.