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I prefer Nolan when he isn’t overtly concerned with exposition dumps to explain the logistics and rules of everything abound in his timey wimey play area, which usually ends up eating itself regardless. Here, it’s all play and plot and I didn’t mind at all. Among his best and I had no issues with the mix.





Nobody Sleeps in The Woods Tonight. Nice throw back to scary movies from the 80's. There is a small detail that turned me off a bit, but a fun movie nonetheless.
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Parallel (2018, Isaac Ezban)

I'm familiar with Ezban's work through El Incidente, and that was clearly a better film despite its flaws. This one was kinda similar to Bradley King's Time Lapse - in short, rather meh.



Ninja III: The Domination -


In a cave in the Arizona desert - of all places - there's a katana imbued with the soul of the evil Black Ninja. The soul's latest host is Christie, a lineworker who does aerobics, owns Patrick Nagel artwork and is essentially the 1980s personified. The movie is no Runaway Train or The Company of Wolves, but it is way better than the average Cannon production. Besides having decent action, stunt work and special effects, it's light on the tastlessness and misogyny typical of the production company. Also, and most importantly, it makes sense (well, as much sense as a story about ninjas and exorcism can make). There are a couple of obvious criticisms you could level at the movie, but I don't have issues with either one. The director himself said that audiences would not buy Christie as the hero, but I appreciated the change of pace of making the villain an innocent bystander, and with Lucinda Dickey's physique and her aerobics and dance skills, she's more than up to the task. As for Sho Kosugi only appearing in a small portion of the movie, he makes his scenes count. In short, it's one of the few Cannon productions that is worth sticking around for after the production logo displays. Word of warning - and not to spoil it too much - but you are less likely to enjoy it if you're a cop.



Ninja III: The Domination -


In a cave in the Arizona desert - of all places - there's a katana imbued with the soul of the evil Black Ninja. The soul's latest host is Christie, a lineworker who does aerobics, owns Patrick Nagel artwork and is essentially the 1980s personified. The movie is no Runaway Train or The Company of Wolves, but it is way better than the average Cannon production. Besides having decent action, stunt work and special effects, it's light on the tastlessness and misogyny typical of the production company. Also, and most importantly, it makes sense (well, as much sense as a story about ninjas and exorcism can make). There are a couple of obvious criticisms you could level at the movie, but I don't have issues with either one. The director himself said that audiences would not buy Christie as the hero, but I appreciated the change of pace of making the villain an innocent bystander, and with Lucinda Dickey's physique and her aerobics and dance skills, she's more than up to the task. As for Sho Kosugi only appearing in a small portion of the movie, he makes his scenes count. In short, it's one of the few Cannon productions that is worth sticking around for after the production logo displays. Word of warning - and not to spoil it too much - but you are less likely to enjoy it if you're a cop.
You’re two stars off and I’m not gonna say in which direction.



AERIALS (2016)
A film from the UAE



Didn't know a lot about films from the UAE, so I started browsing and this one caught my eye; first, because of the image above, and then because of the synopsis. The film is set during an alien invasion that has left people baffled. As huge spaceships float above cities, people are afraid and not sure of what will happen. The focus is on a couple (Saga Alyasery and Ana Druzhynina) that is isolated in their apartment forcing them to deal with their differences.

Although far from original, this could've been an interesting premise, if well executed. Unfortunately, the film is bogged down by a sluggish pace, bad performances, extremely cheap special effects, and a dull, uneventful script. The only thing that saves it is that director S.A. Zaidi does manage to create some eerie visuals during some potential alien appearances. Other than that, the film is a bore.

Grade:
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Raven73's Avatar
Boldly going.
Terminator Dark Fate
6/10.
Basically a re-hash of the original story. Don't waste your time.
WARNING: "spoilers" spoilers below
Both Sarah Connor and the 101 Terminator had a whole lot of time to come up with weapons to fight the Terminators, yet all they could muster were big guns. Why don't they get something creative, like a gun that shoots acid, or lava? And I found it hard to swallow that the 101 Terminator "Carl" had a family and nobody noticed he was an android.... This is a tired formula and bringing back the original actors failed to revive it.

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Hopefully this latest Terminator will drive a stake through the franchise. It was an inspired premise and endlessly creative at the outset but subsequent iterations have added nothing except maybe a hopelessly tangled mess of a story arc.



Thanks for the heads up. It was an interesting article. I've seen a handful of the movies it mentioned but I do remember One Eyed Jacks in particular. I had no idea that Brando had also directed it but I do remember it was different from all the other westerns I had seen. There was this foreboding undertone to it. I know it was a revenge story but you were still left feeling that it wouldn't end well. And there was also a sexual tinge to it. Offbeat but fascinating movie. Long too if memory serves.



The Westerner - 1940 Western directed by William Wyler and starring Gary Cooper and Walter Brennan. Itinerant cowboy Cole Harden (Cooper) runs afoul of "The Hanging Judge" Roy Bean (Brennan). He's able to talk himself out of a death sentence by pretending to have met British stage actress Lily Langtry, with whom Bean is obsessed. Bean is also involved in a dispute between local cattlemen and a recently arrived crop of homesteaders. One of the farmer's daughters (Doris Davenport) comes to Harden's defense and he eventually finds himself taking sides against his dangerous friend Bean. This is one of those rare Westerns where the bad guy is actually much more interesting than the good guys. Brennan won a well deserved Oscar for his role and his portrayal of Bean is a well rounded, complex and even sympathetic one. Cooper uses his usual laconic, soft-spoken persona but his character is also quick-witted and cagey and he and Brennan play marvelously well off each other. 90/100







1st Re-watch...I loved this movie just as much as I did the first time. The screenplay is overly cute at times but Jodie Foster's direction is focused and sensitive and the brilliant ensemble cast is working at the top of their form, especially Robert Downey Jr who steals the show as Tommy.






Klaus, 2019

Geez, Klaus, you were supposed to be a little light animated holiday movie, not make me cry under a pile of cats on the couch. (Okay . . . the cats and the couch would have happened anyway, but still!!).

Jesper is the spoiled son of a wealthy postmaster. Given an ultimatum--to prove himself or be cut off financially--Jesper must create a functioning postal system on a small island whose inhabitants are engaged in a centuries-old feud with each other. Jesper eventually befriends a reclusive woodsman, Klaus, and together the two accidentally begin a very familiar holiday tradition. . .

This was an incredibly charming film, and one that I could see little children enjoying and adults. The voice performances are on point, and the animation looks really good.

The heart of the film is a simple message about one kindness leading to another, but it's also about the power that we have to transform our surroundings and create the kind of communities in which we would want to live.

The story does borrow a few beats (and some direct images) from The Grinch Who Stole Christmas), but it manages to cobble together an interesting narrative arc for its main character and the rest of the supporting cast. (Rashida Jones plays the obligatory love interest, a woman who is supposed to be a teacher but has transformed her classroom into a fish shop and is saving her pennies to escape the island).

I found the movie genuinely involving and I thought that the way it ended was very sweet and unexpected.






Sound of Metal, 2019

Going off of word of mouth on here I decided to check this one out. I thought it was pretty fantastic.

Ruben (Riz Ahmed) is a drummer in a metal band with his girlfriend, Lou (Olivia Cooke). Suddenly, Ruben's hearing begins to sharply decline, and he discovers that he only has about 25% hearing in both ears. Ruben ends up in a community of other people with partial or entire hearing loss. Facing a world without music and unsure of how he fits into his own future, Ruben must navigate his own emotions and try to make a life for himself.

The thing that I found most compelling about this film was the way that it portrayed the despair of being trapped between two worlds. It's not just Ruben's hearing loss: he is a recovering addict (and Lou also has struggled with self-harm), he must decide whether or not to try to use cochlear implants to try and "fix" his hearing loss, he repeatedly finds himself in situations where he is not "fluent"--unable to understand ASL, and later not speaking French. This sense of not 100% belonging anywhere helps us to understand Ruben's sense of alienation and frustration. As a viewer there are times that we do not understand what is being signed or (in my case) what is being said in another language. The film puts us in Ruben's shoes so beautifully, it allows us to draw general meaning from a very specific circumstance.

Ahmed's lead performance is incredibly strong. His anger, disorientation, and sorrow are all mixed together in his words, facial expressions, and gestures/signing. He is well matched by Cooke and Paul Raci as the leader of the retreat where Ruben spends several months. I found that all of the characters--even those in small supporting roles--felt incredibly lived-in.

There's a larger message that I took from this film about things in our lives that we can and cannot control, and how to cultivate a kind of "productive acceptance" to our own circumstances. I thought the whole thing was really beautiful and empathetic.

I would highly, highly recommend this one.






Contagion, 2011

About a week after my school closed due to COVID, I ended up watching Outbreak just out of, I don't know, some weird sense of masochism? Or maybe for the comfort of saying, "Well, at least it's not THAT bad."

I had some similar feelings watching this film, in which an unfaithful wife, Beth (Gwyneth Paltrow), manages to trigger a global outbreak of a respiratory virus that quickly kills its victims. The film juggles a half dozen subplots, a few of which overlap, following Beth's husband (Matt Damon) who struggles to keep their daughter safe; workers for the CDC and WHO (Laurence Fishburne, Kate Winslet); a corrupt conspiracy-theory blogger (Jude Law); a research scientist (Eliot Gould); and others.

The most interesting part of the film for me was the scientific stuff: the steps of sequencing the virus and trying to come up with a vaccine. I was only moderately engaged by the whole "society breaking down" element--soldiers refusing to let people leave their state, people looting grocery stores, etc. Though there is a part where Damon's character goes to the grocery store where most people are wearing masks, and a woman without a mask coughs right on him and I was like . . . yup.

It's interesting watching this film and comparing it to our current pandemic reality. The virus of the film is a lot deadlier than COVID (much like Outbreak, contracting the virus seems to be a death sentence) and the social collapse in the film is rapid.

The main selling point of the film, in my opinion, is the way that Soderbergh moves his camera, and what he keeps on and off screen. He does a great job of building suspense, so that a cough from off-camera immediately raises our concern. There are some really great tracking shots conveying the spread of the virus, and he alternates close ups and far away shots in an interesting way.

It should also be mentioned that the cast in this film consists of seemingly every actor ever. In addition to the ones I already mentioned there were probably another dozen big name actors. This gives an interesting flexibility to the film, because it can kill off two or three A-list actors and still has another handful of them kicking around.

Ultimately I felt that the "many narrative arcs" approach kept me a bit at arm's distance. And there were three narratives that just . . . didn't resolve? Or maybe their final moments were cut for time? Damon's bewildered yet determined father and Jennifer Ehle's similarly determined medical researcher were probably my favorites in terms of connecting with them.

Anyway, if you like feeding your anxiety, or if you'd like to be able to say, "Yeah, I can't go to a concert, but at least the trash is still getting picked up!", you might check this one out.




I haven’t been here for a while, these are the movies I’ve viewed in December so far and I thought I’d share, the majority are first views. Don’t be put off by my letters after the release date these are just to help me score them out of ten on my notes as I use a different set of categories to score movies on based on genre. C is comedy, H is horror and M is everything else.

Frost/Nixon (2008) M= 8.2
Repo men (2010) M= 7.6
Jojo rabbit (2019) C= 9
The nightingale (2018) M= 8.3
What we do in the shadows (2014) C= 7.6
Babel (2006) M= 7.2
1917 (2019) M= 8.4
Borat 2 (2020) C= 7
Highlander (1986) M= 7.4
Scream (1996) H= 8.1
Scream 2 (1997) H 7.7
In hell (2003) M= 5.8
Logan lucky (2017) M= 8.2
IJ: Kingdom of crystal skull (2008) M= 6.8
Stay (2005) M= 6.5
Prom night (1980) H= 5.5
Halloween 2 Theatrical cut (2009) H= 8
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Welcome to the human race...
WARNING: "spoilers" spoilers below
Both Sarah Connor and the 101 Terminator had a whole lot of time to come up with weapons to fight the Terminators, yet all they could muster were big guns. Why don't they get something creative, like a gun that shoots acid, or lava?
This is the stupidest complaint about a movie I've seen in a long time.

The Pervert's Guide to Ideology -


I can think of two things wrong with that title.
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Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0