Yeah, I watched VU a couple of years ago. Great introduction to the sport, especially the Yosemite scene. I kind of wish there was a climbing movie that focused on the technical aspects of big wall climbing. Even though I am familiar with all of the terminology and most of the gear, I liked the sections of the Dawn Wall where they were explaining how pitches work and how they were descending to the camp every night and what the procedures were for attacking the wall and how Tommy spent years just hanging from the wall trying to map out the route. I’d love to see something that focuses on how to set up a portaledge, what the anchoring systems look like, the technical aspects of setting up a belay, using aid gear, etc. There was no mention, for instance, that the fixed protection on the Dawn Wall is mostly copperheads and beaks, which are pretty sketchy pieces of gear to take dozens of falls on. I’m kind of a gear-head and am consistently fascinated by the gear and systems in climbing. That shit takes up a huge chunk of time on a big wall push, but it’s always glossed over in these films. Show me the detail of the systems that Kurakami used to free rope solo the Nose last year. That’s a fucking achievement.
I just saw The Endless on netflix and would recommend it. I thought maybe Tom wrote about it and that was why I was interested, but I couldn’t find anything on the site so I’m not sure where I heard about it. It was on my watch list for close to a year, and I can now say I’m glad I finally got around to seeing it.
It’s the kind of movie where I feel like saying too much about it would be detrimental to the experience, so I’ll just say it starts as story of two brothers who return to visit the cult they ran away from 10 years earlier. It’s a low budget production, but has a pretty solid cast and inventive script. Although the only actor I recognized was Callie Hernandez from La La Land and Alien: Covenant.
It reminded me a bit of Primer, not so much for it’s content, just that Primer (which I love) was also something I stumbled across, and like Primer, The Endless was made by two guys who did a lot of other work on the movie including playing the two leads. Checking out the movie on imdb I also found out that Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead made another movie called Resolution, which apparently features some of the same characters from the endless. So I guess The Endless is a sequel of sorts, not that I could tell while watching it. I want to check out the other things they’ve made but haven’t found them on any streaming service yet.
Anyone else seen this or the two other movies I saw they made, Resolution and Spring?
Yes, I’ve seen both. Resolution was awesome. Tom reviewed it on the front page - Justin and Aaron and one of the actors popped up and chatted a little bit in the comments, too. It’s also discussed in a month long feature we did for Halloween a few years back (which is why I saw it). Spring is a very different sort of movie, more of a romance with a monster. (One guy does get eaten but frankly he deserved it.) It’s not quite as cool but I still enjoyed their style and the relationship, even if I had some issues with the movie’s take on love.
Spring is streaming on Shudder (and the Shudder channel on VRV). I don’t think Resolution is streaming anywhere, or at least I couldn’t find it either for a rewatch once I realized the ties in The Endless.
Thanks so much, I managed to dig them up. I can’t remember seeing neither the review nor the feature discussion the first time around, they must’ve just passed me by. Now I really need to find Resolution.
https://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2014/10/27/golden-age-horror-resolution-2012/
Resolution can be found for streaming on Amazon and Google Play. I was looking for Resolution myself and found it by checking on Justwatch.com, a good place to search for hard to find movies.
Bookmarked, thankyou!
“Streaming” usually refers to being available as part of a streaming subscription plan, and as far as I can tell those are rentals.
High five! Of course, if you really want to be a La La Land roommate completionist, there’s Jessica Rothe in Happy Death Day and Sonoya Mizuno as Oscar Isaac’s dance partner in Ex Machina and as a bad-ass assassin in The Domestics.
Yes. Yes, you do.
-Tom
It really is amazing how many “where to stream” site simply do not perform that core function.
Amen to that; I’ve struggled for ages trying to find a reliable one, but justwatch seems to be ad-free, breaks it down neatly into subscriptions/rentals/buying, and I really like the layout. Only stuff it’s missing are references to some of the minor streaming sites and services, but hopefully those will come in time.
I watched The Highwaymen today. Such a great movie. Kevin Costner driving across the country looking for killers, with who else in the car with him other than Mr. Woody Harrelson. Just like Season 1 of True Detective. Kind of. I had no idea Bonnie and Clyde had so many fans at the time. That’s kind of fucked up.
I watched Bird Box last night. I just found it to be a fantastic movie. It’s not often that the casting of a movie can surprise me anymore. Most people don’t consider the casting a spoiler, so it’s usually posted all over the place. But this movie had a lot more actors than just the fantastic Sandra Bullock, and they were all excellent and memorable.
There’s a scene where one of the characters reveals his sketch pad drawings and laid them out on a table. That is the first time in a long time that a movie has inspired a feeling of real fear inside me. I was genuinely scared, and that hasn’t happened in a long, long time. That’s how much this movie drew me in. Obviously it didn’t get that great a reception here at Qt3, but I absolutely loved it.
Well, I for one greatly enjoyed the base concept of Birdbox. The climax the movie was setting up from the onset and ending was just really ho-hum lol wat this is really dumb!
I do agree that the last act was the weakest. To me the real climax of the movie was in the flashback sequences at the house. The actual climax felt more like an epilogue than a last act.
I just watched The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind and it’s fantastic. True story about a family in Malawi who experience famine after crop failures. The boy decides to learn some things from school to turn their fortunes around.
We watched that last week and I also strongly recommend it. It’s not a spoiler to say the young man overcomes a lot of obstacles in his journey. Lots of good feels!
The Wandering Earth hits Netflix tomorrow. Very curious to check it out, if only to get a sense of where big budget Chinese film-making is at.
I saw it at the cinema and really enjoyed it. I’m a fan of the author whose work it’s based on, and there’s certainly more of a blockbuster air to the film but it still has a thoughtful foundation.
Well that was pretty dumb. I hope the book is better (not least because I’m halfway through the Three Body Problem trilogy). It was fine as silly blockbuster, I suppose, with a few decent setpieces and a couple of really nice backdrops, but it really wasn’t trying to do anything with the genre, the plot made no sense, and the character motivation was laid on ridiculously thick. The attempts at humour fell pretty flat too, but that may be a cross cultural thing.