Rate the Last Film You Watched

Otomo said:
If I remember correctly it had budget of $400,000. The sequel had 10 times the money and Max gets some character development. It's the better film.
On a positive note my Mum enjoyed spotting actors from her Australian soaps.
Go Goose.
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I intend to watch the rest of the movies, so it is going to be interesting to see where it came from and where it is going. I could definitely feel that shoe string budget but I wasn't aware that was the case so that has elevated my opinion of it somewhat.
 
Still on Mad Max, I was thinking that it is one of my favourite unveiling of the hero openings of all the films I've seen.
Maybe not original but hey.

A scene near the end meant I would have a nice chuckle at a scene at the end of Triage X where they did an homage/rip off. Delete as appropriate.
 
Hmm I am a few days late with these

Deadpool and Wolverine

If you have seen the other 2 Deadpool movies you know what to expect. I enjoyed it for being self aware.

Crisis on Infinite Earths Part 3

A bittersweet ending to a pretty good trilogy I thought overall. These will be movies I will certainly be going back to from time to time.
 
Godzilla Minus One/Minus Colour
The Minus Colour version of Minus One is now on Netflix. G-1.0/C didn't get a UK cinema release, so this was my first chance to watch it. It's a testament to the lighting and cinematography that it works so well; most of the time it looks like it was shot with black and white in mind from the outset, thanks to the high-contrast shadows and deep blacks. The domestic scenes in particular take on a starker atmosphere without the warmth that came from the earthy colour pallette, while Godzilla is even more menacing in the inky black of the opening night attack.

It's an interesting way to experience the movie, but I think the colour version will remain my go-to for most viewings.
 
Mapplethorpe (2018)

Matt Smith does his best (under a distractingly bad wig) in the story of iconic New York subculture photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, but there is a definite feeling of the Microsoft Paperclip spotting that they were making a ‘tortured artist biopic’ and asking if they needed some help. As others have commented, the most surprising thing about the film is that they do include quite a number of Mapplethorpe’s sexually explicit photographs, albeit in a fleeting ‘did I just see that?’ manner.
 
Mars Express (2023)

Just watched this on Blu-ray released by gkids/shout factory and felt i should post in here as i imagine many of you, being anime fans of course, world like this French sci-fi animation. Starting out as a sort of sci-fi noir thriller, with the main characters being detectives investigating a murder/missing person case, it becomes much bigger. It's got so many fresh ideas while sticking to a relevant and believable ethical/moral scenario about robot freedoms.

The animation and visuals took a little while to get used to, but the sci-fi plot, the characters and performances (i watched in English) were great and allowed me to move past any issues very quickly.

Trailer below for any interested

 
Come and See (1985)

A poor teenage farmer in Belarus joins the partisans fighting the nazis in 1943, in this famously haunting anti-war drama from the USSR. Even knowing some of the more famous images from the film beforehand, I still found this tough viewing, with seemingly any respite poor Flor manages to grasp amid the atrocities happening around him, snatched away almost immediately, leading up to the horrific village raid that dominates the second half. Not for the feint hearted, but an astonishing work of performance and cinematography, if you’re prepared for it
 
Avatar 2: Die Avatarder The Way of Water
A solid sequel if you have half a day spare to watch it. For such a long movie, the scope of the story was smaller than I expected, especially considering the genocidal stakes that are implied early on. That's not a criticism, as that gives it room for worldbuilding and more focused action. For the most part it's the story of a family on the run, bolstered by Cameron's skill at building sympathetic characters. The wider battle for Pandora is no doubt something that is being seeded for later sequels, if any of us are still alive to see them at the rate they're being made.

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania
I've heard nothing but hate for this movie since it's release, so I was pleasantly surprised to find that it's a massive improvement over the previous AMatW. It has a stronger plot structure and makes for an entertaining adventure with creative designs and memorable action set pieces. The only distraction was that it has the most egregious case of Helmet On/Off Syndrome in the entire MCU, and that's saying something considering how much of a meme that's become at this point.

No One Will Save You
A decent alien invasion movie that's given a distinctive tone by focusing entirely on one character and not having any dialogue. It's a bold flex to try and tell a feature-length story just with visuals, and it works for the most part, though some events in the final act are confusing in the moment and required some thought afterwards to figure out their significance. Some may consider the ending tonally jarring too.
 
Alien: Romulus

Finally managed to catch this on a decent sized screen at a reasonable hour of the day before it’s gone from cinemas. Overall I thought it did a good job of balancing the tension of Alien and the action of Aliens, I thought it was well paced and the design work was mostly gorgeous, really seamlessly sliding us back into that 1979 vision of the future. That said I don't think the xengineer is going to go down as one of the series' iconic designs (when are we getting our femalien goddamn it, when?) but I feel like Giger would be smirking down (up?) at the death by vaginal discharge. Andy was great, outside of the xenomorphs themselves, the synthetics really are a high point of the franchise with their ability to be both helpful and unnerving, Romulus understood and used this fact very well indeed.

My only real gripes are that perhaps they could have done a bit more to make me care about some of the crew before offing them (I don't think that really classes as a spoiler in an Alien film, does it?) and I would really, really like a cut of this film that omits the cringe-worthy “I understood that reference” moments, that would be great. Particularly “Get away from her…” he’s going to say the line everybody! Just wait for it! Let the anticipation build for a genuinely awkward amount of time and, “You bitch!” Please clap. There were only about half a dozen people in my screening and at least three of them, including myself, audibly groaned. How did that make it past test screenings?
 
Inside Out 2
Just as charming as the original movie. The interplay between Riley's actions and her anthropomorphised emotions is endlessly inventive. By adding new emotion characters and focusing on a different type of conflict from the first movie, it doesn't feel like it's retreading much ground.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
This was fine. Not terrible, and definitely not up to the standard of Raiders, but fine. Like Crystal Skull, it suffers from a need to over-explain its titular McGuffin in a way that can be easily understood, robbing it of the persistent sense of the unknown that gives Raiders its enduring power on repeat viewings. Aside from that it's a pretty good adventure with some okay action scenes, though most of them suffer from a heavy reliance on green-screen, so again they suffer in comparison to the visceral practical stuntwork of the early films. It also drags on half an hour too long, like so many modern action movies.
 
I’ve got my 31 Days of Halloween! 2024 list mapped out similarly to last year - though I think with some days I may just have to excise them from the usual summaries, as the films in question are on the more controversial side to say the least.

These entries are balanced out with some lighter watches like the Jaws sequels and the remaining Chucky sequels, however, plus I’ll be getting through some of the horror entries from the Radiance Films catalogue, plus a fair few entries from 88Films and 101Films for good measure.
 
HWR said:
I’ve got my 31 Days of Halloween! 2024 list mapped out similarly to last year - though I think with some days I may just have to excise them from the usual summaries, as the films in question are on the more controversial side to say the least.

These entries are balanced out with some lighter watches like the Jaws sequels and the remaining Chucky sequels, however, plus I’ll be getting through some of the horror entries from the Radiance Films catalogue, plus a fair few entries from 88Films and 101Films for good measure.
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Like last year I am kind of pre-picking movies from my collection but also winging it as I want to see new stuff too. I wish that J Horror collection from Arrow would release sooner but alas. Last year I only watched the one movie from my Grudge box set so I will watch the rest this year.
 
Yeah some of the timing for upcoming releases just doesn’t quite align, like the Critters movies from Arrow coming in December and the Slumber Party Massacre set from 101Films being a November release. The Blair Witch Project from SecondSight also misses the spooky season.
 
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31 Days of Halloween 2024! Day I: The House on the Edge of the Park (1980, Ruggero Deodato), A Blade in the Dark (1983, Lamberto Bava)

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To kick off this year’s marathon we have a pair of films tangentially related owing to their Italian origins and 88Films 4K releases.

THOTEOTP was director Ruggero Deodato’s next film after Cannibal Holocaust and the infamy it caused - we’ll get to that film later this month, and sees a pair of criminals charm their way into a posh social gathering only for the situation to turn violent and brutal when the duo are mocked by their fellow partygoers. It’s an uncompromising watch once the violence kicks off, and the performances are solid all-around which adds to the shock factor.

ABITD, meanwhile, is a Giallo film once intended to be four 30-minute shorts for television, but ended up being re-edited into this feature. This has some solid set pieces despite the acting being a mixed bag but it isn’t one of Lamberto Bava’s strongest directorial efforts. 3.5/5, 3/5
 
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Day 1

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Halloween Ends

For day 1 I decided to finish this trilogy I started last year and it was easily the weakest of the three I thought. Sadly I don't have a lot of positives I can say about it. They sidelined all the main characters to tell a doomed love story filled with unnecessary guilt tripping on the logical level of "my friend was killed by Michael Myers and it was your fault." The actual romance between the two leads which was the main focus of the story had no chemistry so it falls flat on its face.

Although the Movie is the series finale that is supposed to bring closure. Micheal Myers, the franchises boogeyman and Laurie aren't the focus of the movie and barely appear at all. Michael himself just pops up at the end to get himself killed, not really doing anything.

Last year I was pretty hard on the previous movie Halloween Kills, and now I am wondering if perhaps I was too hard on it. Although the characters were pretty dumb to the point of being unbelieveable, at least it had it's focus on continuing the story of Micheal Myers in it's own way. Since I gave that a 3/10 last year I will give this a 2/10 this year. Got to say I am a bit disapointed.
 
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