What Did You Watch Today? 2023 edition

[Krabby]

Finally went to the Super Mario Movie and it was just a ton of fun!

[TheGrandAvatar]

Watched Prescription Murder.

The 1st pilot episode of Columbo, before the first series episode of 'Murder By The Book' after another TV pilot of "Death Lends a Hand".

This is the better of those early two episode's produced. The TV Pilot movie is something else. Often enjoy a rewatch before I work back into the Columbo watch along happening soon. Always manage to notice news thing's about it, appreciate the earlier character version of Columbo, and how it was filmed. There's a great opening title sequence. 

Spoiler

 

[Toe]

I watched Suspiria (2018) not too long ago. As a big fan of the Argento original, I was hesitant to watch this remake. By the end, I was hooked. There is some dodgy CGI, but other than that it's a fantastic movie that is clearly inspired by the original but goes in it's own direction.

[Lint]

On 02/05/2023 at 20:38, Your Mom said:

Finally saw the Nick Cage as Nick Cage movie. I'm sure everyone who wanted to see it already has but it was really fun and I liked seeing Perdo Pascal be funny

I watched this last weekend with my nephew, his wife Drea and some of their friends and yea, it was just a fun movie.  Enjoyed it fully.

Read somewhere that Nick Cage wanted to play the superfan, and someone else play Nick Cage.  Not sure if that would've been better or not, but it would've been interesting to see

[Your Mom]

How long do I give The Fablemans before I give up on it? I'm like 45 minutes in and it's doing nothing for me

Feel free to dub me a philistine but this is just not for me at all. I normally love Spielberg too so was just wondering if it's possible I come around?

[Your Mom]

I stuck with it and I'm really really glad I did

Spoiler

I especially appreciated the ending after just discovering John Ford myself through wanting to watch more classics this year. Loved the way David Lynch played him too. I actually watched that one scene like five times

 

[GhostMachine]

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, via Paramount +.

I thought it was the best D&D movie so far, and was extremely happy that it used the Forgotten Realms setting. But, I'll mention a few disappointments:

Spoiler

1. Nailed Forge being the bad guy early on. But I didn't suspect that he intentionally let the others be caught.

2. As soon as they showed Holga mortally wounded, it was way too obvious that Edgin would use the tablet to bring her back instead of his wife.

3. Wish they hadn't made Simon Elminster's descendant, because I'd rather have Elminster actually show up in the sequel. Elminster being race-swapped, however, was no big deal. Because if they had portrayed him properly, he'd look too much like Gandalf.

Ed Greenwood did a video on his Youtube channel regarding some things the movie got wrong, but as he says in the video, most are minor nitpicks: 

For those of you who are unaware, Ed Greenwood is THE expert on Forgotten Realms, because he CREATED the Forgotten Realms. Basically, he is Elminster.

[Your Mom]

29 minutes ago, GhostMachine said:

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, via Paramount +.

I thought it was the best D&D movie so far, and was extremely happy that it used the Forgotten Realms setting. But, I'll mention a few disappointments:

  Reveal hidden contents

1. Nailed Forge being the bad guy early on. But I didn't suspect that he intentionally let the others be caught.

2. As soon as they showed Holga mortally wounded, it was way too obvious that Edgin would use the tablet to bring her back instead of his wife.

3. Wish they hadn't made Simon Elminster's descendant, because I'd rather have Elminster actually show up in the sequel. Elminster being race-swapped, however, was no big deal. Because if they had portrayed him properly, he'd look too much like Gandalf.

Ed Greenwood did a video on his Youtube channel regarding some things the movie got wrong, but as he says in the video, most are minor nitpicks: 

For those of you who are unaware, Ed Greenwood is THE expert on Forgotten Realms, because he CREATED the Forgotten Realms. Basically, he is Elminster.

Spoiler

Obvious does not mean bad. They weren't trying to fool you

 

[GhostMachine]

Just got back from Fast X. If you've seen the other movies, you pretty much already know what to expect. It does have a mid-credits cutscene that fans will love. Other than that, I'm not posting any spoilers, except one criticism:

Spoiler

If you've ever wanted to see Jason Momoa play The Joker, this is your chance. His villain, Dante, the son of the bad guy from Fast Five, is more or less a scene chewing madman. And a couple of times he comes off exactly like The Joker. You'll know what I mean if you see the film.

 

[Your Mom]

I just finished 65 which if you don't know is basically Adam Driver vs. The Dinosaurs. I had fun with it. Going to post a minor spoiler I think? I didn't really get too much into the marketing but it's from the first 10 minutes of the movie anyway

Spoiler

I went into this assuming it was just another Future Man falls through a time portal thing. You know that old trope  But it's actually not! Adam Driver is from a totally different planet from Earth that is super advanced and the whole thing actually takes place 65 million years ago the whole time! Blew my mind man! Blew Adam's mind too. He ends up on Earth and doesn't know what the fuck a dinosaur is. It was pretty wild. Don't think about it too much and have fun  

 

[Kaney]

Anyone else slightly disappointed with each new John Wick film? Watched part 4 last night and I dunno. They're still enjoyable films with awesome action scenes but I feel like the more they show you behind the curtain of the assassin world the less interested I am.

[Hobo]

1 hour ago, Kaney said:

Anyone else slightly disappointed with each new John Wick film? Watched part 4 last night and I dunno. They're still enjoyable films with awesome action scenes but I feel like the more they show you behind the curtain of the assassin world the less interested I am.

Not seen 4 but that's generally how Ive felt about the sequels. I enjoyed them for their action scenes but the world building was less interesting to me as it went on

[livid]

I actually think 4 is the best one. I love all the movies in the franchise, though. 

[stokeriño]

Asteroid City.

I saw one of those semi-inspirational memes recently which described an art teacher telling a student "I don't like your art, but that's okay. Someone will. Just don't hold back trying to placate people like me who are never going to like it - you should be going all in on it. Make people like me HATE it, so that other people REALLY love it."

Anyway, I thought of that meme when watching this latest Wes Anderson film. It feels like his film style is a parody of itself at this stage.

Not that it wasn't decent. I liked it more than The French Dispatch, although it came nowhere near the tier that I hold Grand Budapest Hotel and Fantastic Mr. Fox on. It seems those will always be my favourites. It certainly has that relentless (but quiet) ridiculousness that is the main charm of his films, I think.

I think my main issue with this film is how deconstructed it got with the play and the... kind of documentary about the play, that we kept going back to? And then they do things like have the actors discuss a scene that was cut rather than doing the scene itself (and we 'miss' part of the play because we're following an actor off-stage). I'm sure it's all very clever and has layers I didn't appreciate at the time, but perhaps I wasn't in the mood for that sort of thing.

[GoGo Yubari]

Finally saw Fast X. Even by the standards set by that franchise this movie is dumb. Sometimes it's the absolute right kind of dumb (this is a movie that announces where the characters are in big old text popping up on the screen every time they go to a new country and that leads to a pretty good gag) but more often it's just dumb dumb. At this point all the crew feel like overleveled RPG characters, like they might still have things they vaguely specialize in but also they've taken points in all the things they were not good at even when that makes them less interesting. John Cena was playing a character in the last one but now he's playing John Cena, which is still charming enough because unlike a lot of the other people in the movie his personality hasn't worn out its welcome.

Spoiler

Of course, he seemingly dies in the third act in this one but nobody stays dead whose death would be sad (welcome back for some reason, Gal Gadot) so I'd put decent odds on him showing up in the next one.

Speaking of "showing up in the next one," extremely funny that Dwayne Johnson has mended fences and come back just in time for people to seemingly be tired of these movies.

 

[Captain Kirk]

Watched this earlier, really good watch if you like understated films.

[Hobo]

Ive watched Crash (1996) and But, I'm A Cheerleader (1999) in the last couple of days.

Crash is definitely exactly what I expected. Its quite obvious why certain elements freaked people out. But its a great movie.

But Im A Cheerleader is good too.  Its got great and very 90s in set design. The plot is fairly standard rom com but with high school lesbian Natasha Lyonne. It was really strange to see her when she was 19 or 20.

Both  had actors from films I'd watched a lot as a kid. It was really weird seeing Elias Kotas in Crash having only ever seen him in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Movie. While Dante Basco pops up in But I'm A Cheerleader and until then he was simply Rufio to me.

[GhostMachine]

On 28/06/2023 at 04:33, GoGo Yubari said:

Finally saw Fast X. Even by the standards set by that franchise this movie is dumb. Sometimes it's the absolute right kind of dumb (this is a movie that announces where the characters are in big old text popping up on the screen every time they go to a new country and that leads to a pretty good gag) but more often it's just dumb dumb. At this point all the crew feel like overleveled RPG characters, like they might still have things they vaguely specialize in but also they've taken points in all the things they were not good at even when that makes them less interesting. John Cena was playing a character in the last one but now he's playing John Cena, which is still charming enough because unlike a lot of the other people in the movie his personality hasn't worn out its welcome.

  Hide contents

Of course, he seemingly dies in the third act in this one but nobody stays dead whose death would be sad (welcome back for some reason, Gal Gadot) so I'd put decent odds on him showing up in the next one.

Speaking of "showing up in the next one," extremely funny that Dwayne Johnson has mended fences and come back just in time for people to seemingly be tired of these movies.

 

Pardon me for the long time in replying, but its been that long since I've even checked this thread.

I agree about it being one of the dumber entries. The stunt at the dam is one of the more unbelievable driving sequences in the series that don't involve using a car to take out another vehicle. And as I said, Dante = the Joker in a couple of scenes.

The actress who played the stewardess that helps Jakob on the plane is Paul Walker's daughter, by the way.

Now, a few other things:

Spoiler

I'm expecting Jakob to turn up alive in the next movie. Maybe his car was armored as all get out, or something. Hope he has at least one scene with Hobbs, if its true.

HOWEVER,  I cannot wait to see what convoluted piece of bullshit they pull out of their hats to explain how the hell Gisele survived that fall out of the plane. The only reason I can see for even bringing her back is to give Han a happy ending. (And killing Han off was a huge mistake in the first place.)

I expect that Hobbs' return will be much like how he appeared in the last film in the series he was in: Almost no screen time with both Johnson and Diesel, and camera tricks/editing to make them appear in the same scene. From what I understand, they filmed the scenes they were in separately last time.

Also, I figured out that Aimes was a bad guy way before the reveal. Hopefully Mr. Nobody shows up alive and personally takes him out, if Tess doesn't.

 

 

[Roster Depth Sicko No. 2]

Babylon felt like two hours of cool cinematic set pieces masking a nothing of a plot and then I turned it off because I lost interest. Why is it three hours long?

On the opposite end, Train to Busan was probably the best thing ive watched in ages and Hunt was really interesting until the last twenty percent of the film before falling apart in my opinion.

[zero]

Oppenheimer may be Nolan's best. I think I'll always keep The Prestige closest to my heart, but Oppenheimer is truly incredible.