I saw it in its entirety for the first time just a year or so ago, and I agree. Really good film.
This has been one of my all time favorites for so long, it surprises me when i hear of anyone who hasn’t seen it. But then it gives me the opportunity to share my joy with a newbie.
There are so many flaws … like, if Doyle Lonagan had just said “Wait…do you mean Blue Note to win, or place?” the whole scheme would fall apart but it doesn’t matter.
I also like how there is not a single character who makes an honest living … even the train conductor. There’s somebody who runs an entire business furnishing office equipment for underground betting parlors, for crissake.
It’s a very niche market. 
“Flat rate!” 
Jackass 4ever
Can a funnier movie be released this year? No, not likely.
Is this the funniest Jackass movie? Absolutely.
This is an amazing part four of a movie. I was rolling around laughing several times during this movie. I haven’t laughed as hard at a movie in a long time. Is it immature? Of course. Is it hilarious? Oh, yes.
I 100% recommend Jackass 4 to people. It was….Outrageous. Hilarious. Shocking. Mind-blowing.
I can’t believe they came back for a fourth one and made it legit the best one. You HAVE to see this movie.
Caught a couple movies on a plane ride:
CODA about the only hearing child in a family. I didn’t know what to expect, and had no idea what the movie was about. I really enjoyed this, and laughed out loud at a number of times. Also very heart-warming (albeit cliched) story.
The latest Dune movie. Given the previous attempts to do a movie of this, I did not have high hopes. But I was very pleasantly surprised. It seems the director/writer decided to just omit a lot of stuff that tended to confuse people, and really stick with the main storyline. They also seemed to pare down the number of characters, so it was less confusing to keep track. I found that having read the books (many eons ago), it did help. So I don’t know how well all the “dumbing down” will work for those who haven’t read the books. The CGI was well done, and I thought made for a very realistic depiction of Arrakis.
Here’s our thread about it: Dune (Film) Post-release thread (open spoilers from film)
Last night we watched Death At A Funeral, starring Alan Tudyk. It was really good, but the whole time I kept saying, “I feel like I’ve seen this, but there were more black people in it.” Turns out they remade it just three years later, with yep, Chris Rock, Martin Lawrence, Kevin Hart, etc.
Scream 5
This is being marketed as Scream, but there is a roman numeral “V” in the title(the M hangs down on the word “SCREAM”. It’s also a joke-title since late sequels often reuse the original name, like Halloween or Ghostbusters.
Anyway, I did not love this movie, but I guess I should expect that since I’ve come to realization that Scream as a series is not that great. First one was cute enough, all the rest have been lame. This one is hardly any better than Screams 2-4, but it perhaps deserves a little bit of credit for trying a little bit harder?
No jokes land except one. At the very final second of the movie(like, after “The End”), it cuts to a quick image of Ghostface Killer slashing the screen. This is actually a funny enough ending, as so many movies today like to have one more “jump scare” like this even thought it makes no sense.
I’d probably rank the movies like this if pressed:
- Scream
- Scream 5
- Scream 4
- Scream 2
- Scream 3
There isn’t a single one of them that is very good, though. Even Scream 1, which I saw opening weekend, is not that great. What might have seemed very “meta” then is not very compelling now.
Presently watching Free Guy on HBO, which is pretty amusing. Another Ryan Reynolds vehicle.
Watched Brightburn (2019) on UK TV.
It is often summed up in one line. Namely
The Superman origin story if Superman used his superpowers for evil
The reason I have blurred that is because, having watched the film, I concluded that is really all there was to it. No great plot. No engaging characters. No excitement. If you know the bit I have blurred out that’s all there really is to it.
Although lacking in impact to a horror film veteran like me (aren’t I the tough one?) there were a few relatively gruesome set pieces. I felt they were badly handled cinematically. The prime example being the first.
A character gets a shard of glass in their eye. They then slowly and in clear, detailed close up extracts it. The CGI special effect is well done… But I found it faintly ridiculous that a character could do it unflinchingly and without even a mirror. Took me right out of the movie. Not that I was ever really into the movie.
TCMF-2L
We watched Power of the Dog last night. The consensus amongst my parents and me is: we don’t get it. It was sooooooooooooo slow and there seemed to be too many things that we had to infer or guess at. By the end we were still wondering what exactly happened. I don’t think I wouldn’t have caught on at all without the IMDb trivia section on the film.
Beautiful cinematography; excellent performances. Still didn’t get it.
I watched The Dead Centre (2018) on UK TV and feeling this supernatural horror was fairly average I wasn’t going to mention it. But it has stayed with me so I am inclined to post about it. It haunts me NOT because of the actual movie but because I feel the ingredients were there that it could have been better.
The narrative structure had potential. The body of a suicide victim returns to life while left overnight in the hospital morgue. The next morning the coroner due to deal with his remains, finding the hospital and the police overworked and uninterested in the missing corpse, decides to investigate himself starting with the suicide scene and working back from there. Meanwhile a troubled psychiatrist has found the victim initially mute and with amnesia and against hospital policy admits him to the psych ward.
So two men, unaware of the other, are both trying to solve the mystery of the suicide man. I liked this as a narrative structure.
Sadly the coroner took stoic too far. He was basically simply dumping exposition on the viewers. The psychiatrist was over written and unfocused so we learned as a child he found his mother having committed suicide (which was pointless since suicide wasn’t really the underlying theme of the film), he was losing his job, possibly an alcoholic, possibly too obsessed with his patients so that he wasn’t putting their interests first…
In the end the coroner and the psychiatrist never (really) met so the two narrative lines never amounted to much. The actual ending I thought was good enough but hardly original.
I appreciated the film made clear from the start this was supernatural. The dirty, downtrodden underfunded hospital was atmospheric…
But the double narrative never worked. To be honest I felt like they had repurposed a script for an episode of the X Files. Scully the rational coroner and Mulder the too involved.
That said it was a decent 90 minutes. Not too gruesome although it is a horror film and has its moments. Watchable but could have been much better if the script had been tuned up. Or, frankly, if they just dropped the whole coroner character and concentrated on a single protagonist.
TCMF-2L
Sent from my iPad
My biggest disappointment from the year it came out. What a crap movie and a wasted premise.
Agreed. It was OK, but hardly all that great.
Nightmare Alley (HBO), checking off Oscar nominees.
I liked it; didn’t love it. At 2:30, it drags. But the cinematography, costumes, set design are all great to look at.
It’s basically two films. The first (approx 45 minutes) is set in the carnival, where Bradley Cooper learns his mentalism act. Then – “Two Years Later” – we get the film noir story with Cate Blanchett. The movie could basically have begun at that point and you wouldn’t have missed a thing, with one big exception: the context for the powerful final scene.
I’m curious about how the 1947 original told the same story.
We’ve now seen 7 of the 10 nominees. My favorite (and I believe the favorite to win tonight) is CODA.
I agree. I hate eye stuff so much, I usually can’t watch, but this was just so over the top that it wasn’t as disturbing as it should have been. The car crash scene however, that was nasty. I still remember that effect.
I think this is a pretty mediocre winner if that is the case, though I pretty much agree. If I could pick some good winners for the prize this year, they would be:
Titane
The Green Knight
Censor
Shang-Chi
The Mitchells Vs. The Machines
Any of those would have been memorable and good winners.
I’m trying to slog through Blade Runner 2049, but it’s getting harder to keep my eyes open. Very long, very dark, very dreary.
Oscars have long since stopped being about “good”.