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Ghostbusters: Afterlife - This showed all kinds of promise when it was first announced. No shortage of talent signing on and a clear-cut tie-in with the first two movies. I actually enjoyed the 2016 all female reboot but I did like this one a bit more. The only thing is I should have preferred it by leaps and bounds given it's pedigree.
WARNING: spoilers below
Directed by the son of the original director and with a sizable contribution from most of the surviving original cast members. No cameos this time. They played their actual characters.

There are clear attempts at setting up sequels but I'm gonna go"Negative Nelly" here and wonder if there's any way to produce a successful Ghostbusters movie. And I'm not talking financially here, I mean an emotionally satisfying continuation of a beloved franchise. Ghostbusters: TNG anyone?

Some (maybe a lot) of people might say this qualifies. There's a story arc here that addresses what was probably the major stumbling block that led to the franchise languishing all these years. But honestly the big payoff at the end seemed more like a coda to me than a promise of more to come. It should have been a home run but it was more like a standup double. Respectable but ultimately disappointing.

75/100



I’m confused. Lauren Ambrose (Six Feet Under) was newly-born in 1978.
I presume Yomi was talking about the original Coma:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coma_(1978_film)



I forgot the opening line.

By The poster art can or could be obtained from the distributor., Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=56422146

The Ritual - (2017)

Probably the best horror film I've watched this year, The Ritual captivated me, and it's creepy mood mixed with spot-on visuals seemed to draw inspiration from the best from past decades. 4 British hikers in Northern Sweden (sounds like the beginning of a joke) decide on a shortcut after one of them injures his leg - but that shortcut takes them through a forest, and once there it turns out to be the creepiest forest you're ever likely to encounter. It's kind of a mix between The Blair Witch Project and Hereditary as they find gutted elks hanging from trees and weird witchcraft symbols carved into the wood. When night falls, and it's starts to rain, they come across what they think is an abandoned cabin and decide to sleep there - of course, it's the creepiest cabin in film history. On the upper floors is a straw man that has been decapitated, and during the night they all have extremely upsetting nightmares. From there on out, they're about to be picked off one by one... The film is great for almost it's entire running time, but a little too much is revealed by the end I thought - nevertheless, I was captivated by The Ritual - its absolutely my kind of movie.

7.5/10


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His House - (2020)

After enjoying The Ritual I was inspired to seek out the best the genre had to offer which I hadn't seen yet. His House is the story of two Sudanese refugees who are granted temporary, kind of provisional asylum in Britain. They're given what appears to be a haunted house to live in unfortunately, although later it's implied that a traditional Sudanese demon has followed them across the ocean. Loads of ghastly and ghostly goings-on, including one creature that I've been seeing stills of a lot recently - so I was happy to clear up the mystery of where that horrifying thing comes from. Of course, this film is pretty highly rated because it's not just exploitation, but instead has a lot of metaphorical meaning, and a twist three-quarters of the way in. I enjoyed His House a lot, so it was a rare two-for for the genre, which struggles to attract great filmmakers and screenwriters.

7/10


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Creep - (2014)

What would a horror night be without found footage? Mark Duplass as Josef is really a gift for this film, someone eccentric, pathetic and always slightly suspicious. Josef hires videographer Aaron (Patrick Brice) for a day, explaining to him that he has a brain tumour, and that his wife is pregnant with their first child. He says he wants to leave something for the kid (he specifically mentions My Life with Michael Keaton) and immediately gets Aaron to record him having a bath - something awkward and worrying. Throughout the day, Aaron continually tries to frighten Aaron, and mentions things like the axe he has out the front of his place - but also tries to manufacture a bond with him. When Aaron tries to leave, Josef won't let him, and as time progresses he discovers the various lies he's told - but Aaron's real motivations only get more vague, until the film's conclusion. This was worth if for the performance from Mark Duplass, and is followed by Creep 2.

6.5/10
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Latest Review : Le Circle Rouge (1970)




Ghostbusters: Afterlife - This showed all kinds of promise when it was first announced. No shortage of talent signing on and a clear-cut tie-in with the first two movies. I actually enjoyed the 2016 all female reboot but I did like this one a bit more. The only thing is I should have preferred it by leaps and bounds given it's pedigree.
WARNING: spoilers below
Directed by the son of the original director and with a sizable contribution from most of the surviving original cast members. No cameos this time. They played their actual characters.

There are clear attempts at setting up sequels but I'm gonna go"Negative Nelly" here and wonder if there's any way to produce a successful Ghostbusters movie. And I'm not talking financially here, I mean an emotionally satisfying continuation of a beloved franchise. Ghostbusters: TNG anyone?

Some (maybe a lot) of people might say this qualifies. There's a story arc here that addresses what was probably the major stumbling block that led to the franchise languishing all these years. But honestly the big payoff at the end seemed more like a coda to me than a promise of more to come. It should have been a home run but it was more like a standup double. Respectable but ultimately disappointing.

75/100
i didnt like the movie much but loved that they put cgi of Harold Ramis






The Lost City - People with a high tolerance for romcoms are probably the target audience. Sandra Bullock plays burned out romance novelist Loretta. Channing Tatum plays Allan, her Fabio. She's abducted by an increasingly villainous member of a media conglomerate owning family. Daniel Radcliffe does well as the scumbag Fairfax. His is the more interesting character and he makes the most of it. There's a brief appearance by Brad Pitt as an ex-SEAL hired to rescue Bullock's character.

Bullock and Tatum play well off each other up to a point but then the script sort of wheezes to a crawl and their riffing starts sounding a little labored. It's trifling and somewhat pedestrian and you'll be hard pressed to summon up much of anything about it. A poor man's Romancing the Stone.

70/100



Vigil -


New Zealander director Vincent Ward's first movie is one of the most impressive debuts I've seen. Set on a sheep farm in an otherworldly valley that could only be in that country, we watch budding teenager Lisa process a tragedy that forces her to transition from childhood to adulthood much too quickly. As is typical of the director, it's largely a journey in which she contemplates spirituality and mortality. Hastening and complicating her journey is Ethan, a mysterious drifter and new employee of the farm who may or may not be responsible for the tragedy.

One quality of the movie I find to be a strength is that it doesn't fit into any one genre. Like The Spirit of the Beehive, which it reminds me of a lot, you could label it as horror, mystery, drama or coming of age and you would not be wrong. I also appreciate that it's free of the sentimentality typically found in the latter genre. Instead, the overriding vibes of the movie are shock and confusion. This is appropriate given Lisa, her mother and her grandfather having to adjust to a new situation, but the vibes hit hardest while Lisa tries to decipher just who Ethan is and his intentions. Their relationship is indeed the most important and interesting one in the movie and the one from which its most interesting themes arise, whether it's how distant, unhelpful and unknowable adults can be to children or that God can be to anyone. It helps that Frank Whitten is very good as Ethan, especially for how he never shows his hand. The movie's secret weapon, however, is in the cinematography by a veteran you may not have heard of, but whose work you've probably seen: Alun Bollinger, who helped make the Lord of the Rings movies look as good as they do. Besides the way he accentuates New Zealand's natural beauty, he makes Ward's spiritual themes resonate - a shot of Ethan in front of a window while clouds are reflected against him especially resonates - and I approve of how he makes the farm a place where life and death are always side by side. All in all, the movie succeeds at depicting the process of transitioning to adulthood and all the pain, fear and confusion and that comes with it. While it may not be the most entertaining movie in the traditional sense, it left me feeling enriched, with more to think about and the feeling that I've witnessed something beautiful.






The Lost City - People with a high tolerance for romcoms are probably the target audience. Sandra Bullock plays burned out romance novelist Loretta. Channing Tatum plays Allan, her Fabio. She's abducted by an increasingly villainous member of a media conglomerate owning family. Daniel Radcliffe does well as the scumbag Fairfax. His is the more interesting character and he makes the most of it. There's a brief appearance by Brad Pitt as an ex-SEAL hired to rescue Bullock's character.

Bullock and Tatum play well off each other up to a point but then the script sort of wheezes to a crawl and their riffing starts sounding a little labored. It's trifling and somewhat pedestrian and you'll be hard pressed to summon up much of anything about it. A poor man's Romancing the Stone.

70/100
I think I liked this a little more than you did...I thought Tatum stole the show and Radcliffe's role was written for Peter Dinklage, who I guess wasn't available



'Everything, everywhere, all at once' (2022)


I struggled. Alot. Action scenes aren't my friend at the best of times. This was relentless. Fast paced with just so much in your face craziness, short edits, screen movement that I zoned out for pretty much the middle hour of the film. I kept waiting for it to settle down, but it never did. It is more like a video game than a film. It's very well made, must have taken so much to bring a film like that together, funny, clever and the performances / message are great. The good bits were really good, they were just drowned in so many stop start images that took me out of the film. There's no jeopardy. There's no drama. Anything can happen and anything does happen. It's got the tone of a superhero film.

There's a very beautiful scene towards the end, but by that point I was so zombified by the pulsating action my brain couldn't focus on it. Despite obvious homages to great films from the likes of Wong Kar Wai, kubrick, star wars, Edward Yang It's just sadly not my bag.




I think I liked this a little more than you did...I thought Tatum stole the show and Radcliffe's role was written for Peter Dinklage, who I guess wasn't available
Oh wow, I didn't know that about Dinklage. I can see your point about Tatum. He was playing against type. At least his leading man roles. Plus they were skewering that whole romance novel heartthrob thing.

I watch movies and I immediately type something up. Maybe I should allow some time for reflection. I also watch some films and immediately gush over them. Take Ghostbusters: Afterlife for instance. I've been wanting to re-watch that. Once I thought on it I realized there were additional things there to like. There were elements that were right in my wheelhouse.



I forgot the opening line.

By http://www.impawards.com/1970/conformist.html, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7627704

The Conformist - (1970)

The Conformist is extraordinary in the visual way it tells it's story, with a continual stream of cinematographic artistry and editing that flows in such a way that every few moments you'll find yourself another favourite shot or composition. 30-odd years after Italian fascism was dropped like a really bad idea, Bernardo Bertolucci explores a personality swayed into colluding with fascists simply as a way of blending in and denying troublesome, sexual aspects of his personality. This is the kind of film a cinephile is drawn to, like a moth to the flame, as every aspect of cinema is utilized to the full to create something beautiful, with vibrant use of colour, shadow and sound. It's the clearest, most defined film I've seen where I can also say with confidence that it's a work of art. I only wish I could hang it on my wall to see all the time.

10/10

Foreign Language Countdown films seen : 88/100


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My Octopus Teacher - (2020)

In this remarkable documentary a man develops a relationship with an octopus, returning each day to foster and develop it. He finds out that these creatures are far more intelligent than you'd think, and continues the interaction for the entirety of it's life. Man, I had tears in my eyes by the end of this - rare for me. Won an Oscar for Best Documentary Feature at the 2021 Academy Awards - very much deservedly so.

8/10


By The poster art can or could be obtained from the distributor., Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=50431883

Under the Shadow - (2016)

Set during the Iran-Iraq war, this film about a djinn (a Middle-Eastern demon) fits so neatly metaphorically about the specter of living under threat of bombardment and living with death stalking your corridors that it's a shame it has such a tacky, 'ghost-ride' type ending that leaves us high and dry. For most of it's running time, the subtle presence of evil and basic stress of living in a nation at war (it involves a father who has been called to the front, and a mother alone looking after her very young daughter) is very nicely drawn, paced and acted. The last 5 to 10 minutes are so different from the rest of the film, and seem like something imposed on the filmmakers, rather than a direction they wanted to go in. But who knows. This is Babak Anvari's first feature film. Up until that point, it's a very tense and enjoyable journey.

6/10



My Octopus Teacher - (2020)

In this remarkable documentary a man develops a relationship with an octopus, returning each day to foster and develop it. He finds out that these creatures are far more intelligent than you'd think, and continues the interaction for the entirety of it's life. Man, I had tears in my eyes by the end of this - rare for me. Won an Oscar for Best Documentary Feature at the 2021 Academy Awards - very much deservedly so.

8/10
I cried so much, not gonna lie.
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Strange with a very abrupt ending, but not bad at all. Glad it was made pre-Covid since there’s an extraordinary amount of kissing strangers & god knows what else.



Oh wow, I didn't know that about Dinklage. I can see your point about Tatum. He was playing against type. At least his leading man roles. Plus they were skewering that whole romance novel heartthrob thing.

I watch movies and I immediately type something up. Maybe I should allow some time for reflection. I also watch some films and immediately gush over them. Take Ghostbusters: Afterlife for instance. I've been wanting to re-watch that. Once I thought on it I realized there were additional things there to like. There were elements that were right in my wheelhouse.
I'm sorry, didn't mean to mislead...I meant that Radcliffe's role seemed to be written with Dinklage in mind. The whole time I was watching the film, I kept picturing Dinklage in that role, I think he would have been a lot more interesting in the role than Radcliffe was. I loved Ghostbusters Afterlife




My Octopus Teacher - (2020)

In this remarkable documentary a man develops a relationship with an octopus, returning each day to foster and develop it. He finds out that these creatures are far more intelligent than you'd think, and continues the interaction for the entirety of it's life. Man, I had tears in my eyes by the end of this - rare for me. Won an Oscar for Best Documentary Feature at the 2021 Academy Awards - very much deservedly so.

8/10
I thought that it was like watching an especially good-looking Windows 95 Screensaver: utterly gorgeous underwater footage, but extremely boring otherwise. I was kind of over it after 5 or 10 minutes.



28th Hall of Fame (REWATCH)

The Travelling Players (1975) -


This is my second time watching this film and it's just as great as I remember it being. In regards to Angelopoulous, the only other film I've seen from him is Landscape in the Mist, which I also really enjoyed, but I like this one much more. Landscape in the Mist is definitely the more accessible of the two films since it has a greater emphasis on characterization, but while I enjoyed that film quite a bit, I prefer this film for its greater focus on its mysterious charm.

I stopped caring about the story and the characters about half an hour into this film and instead focused on the film's style. Angelopoulos seamlessly blends personal and political history in a number of hypnotic ways in just about every single sequence. And this is accomplished despite the film being almost four hours long! Throughout all the long takes in the film, Angelopoulos managed to drop my jaw a number of times. For one, he found all kinds of creative ways for the various political figures and set pieces to creep into the frame and intrude on or interrupt the characters lives. For example, the film sometimes showed the sounds of a patrol of Nazis or a political march in the distance get louder and louder until the characters eventually entered the frame. Also, sometimes when the characters would exit from the frame of a shot, it would linger in that location for a while until a soldier or a military vehicle would enter the frame, often indicating the film is jumping from past to present. This unconventional shooting style gave a hypnotic style to the film which I found quite mesmerizing and poetic.

The way violence is shown in this film is also impressive, specifically in regards to which bits are shown onscreen and which are shown offscreen. A recurring aspect to the violence was that, right when a violent bit would start, the characters would run away from the frame and the sounds of gunfire, explosions, or screaming could be heard in the distance, creating a strong sense of claustrophobia and (at times) fear of the unknown in the process. In many other cases, the violence served to prevent the actors from performing time and time again. The main highlight to the violence though is a lengthy sequence in the middle where the actors come across a gunfight between a patrol of Nazis and a group of Communists while sneaking through a town at night. The way the violence and the military units in this sequence are framed (they're only shown through the gaps between various houses and stores), in addition to a dose of surrealism, is nothing short of perfect.

Really, this film kept me glued to the screen from beginning to end in a way that few films have accomplished, and that it accomplishes this in spite of its length makes me all the more impressed by it. Some people may take issue with its lack of characterization, but I didn't mind that at all since it contributed to the film's mysterious power. Of course, I understand that many people will be intimidated by this film's length (which is understandable as I was worried it would be a chore to get through when I first watched it), but I still recommend giving it a chance anyways.
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