What's the latest movie you've seen?

[Guybrush]

Watched Borgman once again, probably for the fifth time now.
I just love this movie so much. It's so entertaining and creepy and funny and weird and yet internally logically consistent.

Looks interesting, @grindy 🙂 thanks for the rec!

[DJChameleon]

Saw Nightswim yesterday. I was in the mood for a horror movie in theaters but was treated to a basic jump scare fest.

I wish they focused on the lore more. They could have squeezed a sequel out of the short film that was made into a feature film.

The short film this movie was based on was awesome in comparison. They pretty much remade the short film in the first act of this movie but they didn't know how to stretch the concept out to a proper film.

If they are gonna make a haunting movie. You have to make us care about the characters or the tradegy that created the hauntings in the first place. They failed to do that. There were some great underwater shots though especially in the third act.

[Guybrush]

^Thanks for the tip, DJ. I'll see if I can find that short 🙂

We finally saw this. Well, I did. My wife fell asleep. Wes Anderson's Asteroid City:



Its not one of his best, but I liked it a lot. And in terms of being Wes Andersony with the carefully designed sets and shots, this movie is great for all who love that. More than his other films, this one doesn't look real. The sky is turquoise and the dirt is a homogeneous near-orange. Everything looks intentional down to minute details, unlike the real world. But then it also has meta layer where our actors generally play two roles, a character and the actor who plays that character as Asteroid City is the fictional story inside the story. So I find that also fits with the look of everything.

There isn't too much of a plot going on. It's more tossing a bunch of characters together and seeing them interact in that kinda detached way where they say they have emotions, but don't quite express them beyond words. Wes is capable of having real, emotional moments in his movies, but this feels more like a comedy and I quite like Wes' quirky sense of humour.

The cast for this film is amazing. So many old collaborators and some new ones too (afaik) like Bryan Cranston and Tom Hanks. The ones I liked the most were actually some of the smaller roles, like Matt Dillon as a mechanic (kinda nice to see him again), Maya Hawke as a teacher and Tilda Swinton as an astronomer.

All in all, it couldn't keep my wife awake, but I rather enjoyed it. Might be better on the second watch too, I figure.

[Psy-Fi]

Frau im Mond (1929)

Silent B&W German sci-fi film by Fritz Lang, with a love story within the plot. The video I saw looked very good considering the age of the movie. I watched a version with English subtitles added because my German is rudimentary at best. The directing was as good as I expected, the acting was fairly typical of films of the era, and I thought the special effects were good for the time. Supposedly, the countdown sequence for the rocket launch was the first time that a countdown was ever used to depict a rocket launch. The story had some ridiculous and scientifically wrong aspects to it but it was fairly entertaining and managed to keep me interested despite the rather long running time of 166 minutes.

[Psy-Fi]

The Big Chase (1954)

Early 50's B&W crime flick disaster. A rookie patrol cop crosses paths with a couple of ex-cons and their two cohorts during a heist. The idea of the plot isn't bad but the script is. Mediocre acting, bad script, incompetent directing, the only good thing about the movie was its short running time of 59 minutes.

[grindy]

Le Trou (The Hole)
I've seen it many years ago and loved it and probably loved it even more this second time. This movie is just perfect from start to finish. It's about a prison break and the best one of this kind I've ever seen. It's based on a true story and one of the guys who participated in the real thing plays one of the major roles. Even apart from that it's very detailed and realistic and a fascinating insight into french prison life in the 40s. It has a certain calm intensity about it. There is very little drama, no music at all, few cuts, understated acting and yet it really grabs you. We actually had to split watching it into two days because at some point my GF couldn't bear the tension any more and wanted to relax a bit.
Highly recommended. This is such a great relief after watching a lot of modern stuff which is rife with overwrought drama, ridiculously over the top music and the plot being driven by people being idiots. Here we have several people calmly and intelligently solving a difficult problem and it's a delight to watch.

[Guybrush]

Nice one, @grindy ! Adding it to my list.

[Hope]

Watched this the other night. Don't know what it would have been like to just watch it, because I had read the book first. This is a prequel centered around Snow and how he became an evil shit.

Wonderful book series.

[Guybrush]

Watched The Void as it seemed like something I'd find enjoyable enough.



It's a B movie that has its cast of characters holed up in a partly burnt hospital under siege by cultists and Lovecraftian/Carpenterian monsters.

It definitely is rooted in a kind of 80s horror and a scene or two in here seems very The Thing-inspired. Something that is great is I didn't see any overt CGI in the monster designs, so that helps add that 80s feel.

It's decently acted for what it is - a B horror flick. None of us are expecting a riveting dramatic performances.

All in all, it feels like a mixture between Dead Space (the computer game and its story) and Hellraiser. Not great, but quite ambitious and kinda fun.

It sits somewhere between:

&

[grindy]

Are there jump scares?

[Guybrush]

Are there jump scares?

Yes, a few, although it doesn't overuse them.

I didn't find it scary, but it's fun to watch monsters.

[grindy]

Being John Malkovich
Used to love it as a teenager but haven't seen it in many years.
Still think it's a cool movie but a lot of it didn't hold up well. Some scenes just seem kinda lame and juvenile.

[Guybrush]

Being John Malkovich
Used to love it as a teenager but haven't seen it in many years.
Still think it's a cool movie but a lot of it didn't hold up well. Some scenes just seem kinda lame and juvenile.

Hmm.. I haven't seen that one since it was new. While I remember the premise being kinda fun and weird, I can't actually remember finding the movie to be very entertaining 🤔

I might actually like it more today. Who knows.

[Psy-Fi]

Okinawa (1952)

B&W WWII war movie about an American destroyer assigned to a formation of ships around the island of Okinawa, to help protect the supply ships and American troops from Kamikaze attacks. The story mainly focuses on several crew members assigned to operate one of the main guns on the ship. A lot of stock combat film footage of Kamikaze attacks against American ships is used throughout the film, all of which I've seen countless times before, but it fit in well with the story so I didn't mind seeing it yet again. The running time of the movie was rather short at just over 1 hour. Not what I would consider an essential WWII flick, but fairly realistic and watchable. 

[tristan_geoff]

The Zone of Interest (2023)
9/10

It's a film drenched in symbolism that will turn your gears the entire time you're watching it.  I don't want to talk too much about even the themes because this movie is best went into blind, spoiling the themes even reveals too much.  Maybe I've said too much already.  Oh well, this is one of the best movies of the decade so far.