I saw Dr. Strangelove last week (the home-town theater chain shows a $5 classic movie every Tuesday.) Still great after 60+ years.
Just finished The Rule of Jenny Pen. This is a thriller starring the incredible messrs. Geoffrey Rush and John Lithgow as two rivals in a care home in New Zealand. Yes, JL puts on an accent, and no, it is not good. That aside, his performance is a treat.
Geoffrey Rush is excellent as always. I didn’t realize how long it had been since I’d seen him in anything until I watched him for several minutes before recognizing him.
I vaguely recall seeing a preview in the theatre not too long ago and now it’s already on Shudder. I can see how it’s not exactly ‘mainstream’, but based on the stars alone I would have thought it would get more press. Highly recommended if you like a bit of quirk with your thriller.
I missed Hackers the first time around and so I took the chance to watch it last week. It was so very goofy. The heroes were all teenage cyberpunk outlaws and the bad guys were all in suits and it was very 95 where the Internet was this new thing. It was neat seeing actors like Angelina Jolie, Matthew Lillard, Lorraine Bracco, and Wendell Pierce from way back then and the movie is kind of fun but also very popcorny.
I know Electric State was mentioned above but we watched that a few days ago as well. I actually liked it more than I thought I would given the reviews but my wife and teen were not into it and were commenting throughout the movie. The movie does feel like a Marvel movie but with less wit and character development. Millie Bobby Brown is OK and Chris Pratt plays a skinnier, tired version of Starlord but Stanley Tucci really gets the chance to chew some scenery as the movie’s villain. I guess if nothing else, these kinds of movies give you the chance to watch a really good actor enjoying himself hamming it up as a bad guy.
A tech classic that holds up, I feel. Sure, modem speeds and RAM specs don’t impress anyone now but the “1337” Speak is on point and it’s clearly trying it’s own visual style. It was an early hallmark for me, put Matthew Lillard in anything and let him chew scenery. It’s all so god damn quotable:
“I got Hendrix, Elvis, Mama Cass, all artists that have asphyxiated on their won vomit. You can’t buy this in stores, man.”
“Hey, Boys Meets World, I’m trying to save you from yourself but you have to stop letting your momma dress you, ok?”
It’s not what a real hacker like Kevin Mitnick looked like, but it sure is how he would want to look and the world he wanted to inhabit.
Yeah I enjoyed The Rule of Jenny Pen. It’s a very slow-burn horror that I found terrifying not in a “scary” sense but in a “this is something that could actually happen in real life and it’s horrible to contemplate” way. It’s been a while since I’ve hated a character as much as Lithgow’s!
Black Bag is the sort of the movie there should be more of: an incredibly stylish spy thriller that bounces interesting (but not always likeable) characters off each other, explores issues of marital trust/fidelity through the lens of espionage and betrayal, with enough Le Carre to feel sophisticated and enough Bond to feel fun, and wraps up cleanly and satisfyingly after 90 - count them - minutes. Stop off at the local diner and this is at the top end of cosy couples mid-week date night stuff. More please.
There’s a conversation in another thread about why people don’t go to the cinema any more, and alongside the excellent point about the ease and comfort of home streaming, I going to suggest it’s because there aren’t enough mid-budget, middlebrow movies where the writer, cast and director know the brief and execute in concise and stylish fashion.
He was a great villain in Transformers: Age of Extinction, and then around halfway
he does a sudden heel face turn and joins the good guys. And it felt quite organic and believable, without any long scenes of him gazing into a mirror and muttering “What have I become”.
I found that even Stanley Tucci was only adequate in that movie and he is usually so good. He basically is phoning it in. I’m not sure the movie had any room for much more, though.
His one good scene was when he saw his mother…everything else was flat.
The more I think back on this movie, it just kind of felt like a flat, lifeless attempt. Not a great script.
I saw a peculiar French-language movie on Tubi (which actually has a nice selection of quirky movies) called The Brand New Testament.
In it, God is in the form of a rather unpleasant man in Brussels, where—via his divine computer—he takes pleasure in wreaking misery, or at least annoyance, on humanity.
His 10 year old daughter Ea, gets tired of this, so—acting on the advice of her brother JC, who is living in their apartment incognito as a statue—she runs away to find her own disciples, but not before breaking into God’s computer, locking him out of it, and causing every human being to know the exact time and date they will die.
And that’s the movie—Ea collecting disciples, God roaming the earth looking for her, and people around them coming to terms with knowing exactly when they will die.
It’s not a masterpiece—the ending is kind of pat, and the world-building somewhat incoherent. But it’s well-made, funny, dark, and the young actress who plays Ea is exceptional.
Black Bag
Not recommended.
Wow, I appear to be in the minority on this one(96% on Rotten Tomatoes). This movie was boring and unoriginal. A real snoozefest, totally by the numbers.
I have nothing much to say. One of my least favorite movies of 2025 so far, if not my least favorite.
Skip it.
Ooh, I must go see Black Bag. Not that I’m dissing your judgement, just that when it comes to personal taste in films, some of my favorites have been ones that you seemed to absolutely hate, so it’s worth a shot.
Yeah Black Bag was a lot of fun. A really well done tightly crafted spy thriller.
Definitely worth seeing.
I’m seeing a new movie being born right here on this thread. Working title: 10 Paces at Dawn.
Eh, I kinda like how different posters can have wildly different perspectives on the same movie. And perspective differences between posters aren’t constant, either. I’m still baffled how it comes about that Mahaloth and I agreed on liking, for example, The Northman and Keanu, but didn’t come within a country mile of consensus on, for example, American Fiction and The War of the Rohirrim. But, whatever, it’s difference of opinion that makes horse races!
What did I say about the War of Rohirrim? Perhaps I was too harsh. It wasn’t terrible by any means.
I did not enjoy American Fiction, though. That one you are quite right on.
What were your favorite 2024 movies? Here is my list:
Okay, since I’ve decided to watch Tarantino movies, I watched Pulp Fiction in its entirety for the first time last night.
Yep, I can see why it’s considered a classic. It’s episodic, with all the episodes interrelated and overlapping, the performances are great, and it has very dark humor. But best of all, in my opinion, it doesn’t follow cliches. The various plots went in completely different directions than what traditionally might have happened, which I love. The style kind of reminds me of the best Coen Brothers movies.
I did have to avert my eyes at the first sight of ball gags, as I, like Spice Weasel, hate torture scenes. But I got through it.
Some of those have no to unreadable text. Perhaps instead of an image, just a plain text list might work better.
- Furiosa
- The Substance
- Heretic
- Longlegs
- Abigail
- Stopmotion
- Deadpool & Wolerine
- Strange Darling
- Azrael
- Siska Kubar (Grave Torture)
Coffee and Cigarettes. A rewatch; I saw it some number of years ago and fired it up yesterday on the Criterion Channel for another look. It’s a Jim Jarmusch film, an anthology of eleven scenes showing people sitting around, drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes, and talking. If you’re in the mood for some low-key quirky stuff, recommended. For example, if you’ve ever wondered what would happen if Jack White were to show Meg his Tesla coil, this movie has the answer.
Lessee, the 2024 American movies I saw, in chronological order of release, were
Dune: Part Two
Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes
Back to Black
Furiosa
Inside Out 2 (didn’t finish it)
Despicable Me 4
Alien: Romulus
Rob Peace
The Wild Robot
Conclave
Wicked
Moana 2
The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim
A Complete Unknown
Huh, I thought I went to the movies more than that, but I guess that’s counting opera and foreign films. There were quite a few others I wanted to see but didn’t get to.
I am not much into horror, with grudging exceptions for Jordan Peele films, so my watches and yours don’t overlap that much.
If I had to pick a top 5 of those, I don’t think I could rank them definitively, but I’m sure they’d include Furiosa, Conclave, A Complete Unknown, and Rob Peace. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes or Dune Part Two would probably make the fifth.