Dammit.
I watched The Harder They Fall and thought it was fairly decent.
It Follows is back on Netflix. Great horror flick!
100% I always assume fans of horror have already seen it.
I watched it again last night, but I can’t remember what service I watched it on before, but some of the scenes I (thought I) remembered weren’t there.
I did a bit of internet searching, but couldn’t tell if there were deleted scenes /alternate versions.
E. G. I thought I remembered a news story Jay heard about a bunch of boaters being killed. I also seem to remember an sfx shot of It with some blurry gray /silver whirlwind “slashes” which seemed to be missing.
Anyone know about any deleted scenes /alternate versions?
I saw the movie in the theater and I don’t remember that. But I do remember having a substantial conversation on the podcast about what might have happened with those boaters. I wouldn’t be surprised if your brain “invented” a memory about the aftermath.
Of course, it’s also possible there are alternate cuts of the movie.
-Tom
I watched it Friday, quite good. I never stepped away and these days that’s pretty high praise, my attention span isn’t what it used to be. I’m sorry I missed taking about it when it came out, lots of fun speculation on how to handle the situation is required. (Go to Amsterdam!)
I enjoyed it. I can’t really think of many specific flaws with it. There were lots of good performances and technically it was well produced and fun to watch. But ultimately I found it a little less good than the sum of its parts in a way that is hard to put into words. I think part of it is the plot was very “on rails” and out of all of these intriguing characters, most of them don’t have much depth. Certainly a movie I don’t regret watching but I also expected a little more out of it.
I’ve now watched the first half of The Harder They Fall and am loving it. I love just about everything about it. I mean… I’m pretty straight, but Jonathan Majors and Idris Elba in the same film? Holy shit, that’s some hardcore beautiful man action there. Regina King and Zazie Beetz? Delroy Lindo as Bass Reeves? There’s nothing not to love here. Maybe it falls apart in the second half though.
Its a sign of security in your sexuality and maturity to acknowledge that those are spectacularly handsome men. Sometimes I may not always get why such and such celebrity is considered ‘hot’, but for Idris Elba? I get it.
I plan on watching this myself soon, and am encouraged by the more positive reception here.
Couldn’t find this mentioned anywhere. So this is based on a novel by Shirley Jackson of The Haunting (of Hill House) fame. My daughter had picked up the book to read for school so we watched the movie.
I love Taissa Farmiga (her older sister is also great in everything (It’s in the GENES!) and she plays the role of a quiet near-hermit young woman so well. Alexandra Daddario was so much better than I expected as a damaged young woman who barely holds it together with insane levels of positivity, but I am not sure why my expectations were low because thinking back she’s been good in everything in which I have seen her. I don’t think I’d seen Crispin Glover in anything in a while and his performance of restrained intensity (best I could do) was shockingly good. The Winter Soldier perfectly plays one of the biggest gaslighting assholes I have ever seen on screen.
And the story is great.
Curious if anyone else has seen it. It has its faults, but the performances carry it well past what I expected from it.
Oh thanks for reminding me about this. Been meaning to watch it!
The Summit of the Gods is good. It’s a French animated movie about climbing Everest. Well it’s about more than that but that’s high level. English dub seems good too if you want to avoid subtitles.
There was a thread around here about actors you will watch in anything, and mine were Sandra Bullock and Denzel Washington. So of course, since there’s a new Sandra Bullock movie on Netflix, I had to check it out.
The Unforgiveable qt3 thread.
I’ve watched about 20 minutes last night. I’m really enjoying it so far.
I just watched it and I came here just to echo similar sentiments. It was beautiful! I NEVER want to go mountain climbing! I loved it!
To add something to the topic, I also saw the thriller Coming Home in the Dark and was similarly impressed. There is a nonchalance to the actors performances that evoked such white-knuckle unease over any kind of comfort. That’s a hard line to walk, even if in the end I felt like it was a bit too literary over visceral, as movies based on books can tend to be. The talent coming out of New Zealand is something else!
I dunno if I already mentioned this, but even if I did, I’m gonna mention it again. Freaks (2018)
I just re-watched it, and man, I really like this movie. Just the way it reveals itself, the setting, the backstory, the characters, and their relationships. It isn’t maybe super high budget (maybe they spent it all on Bruce Dern. Did I mention it has Bruce Dern?), but it looks great, with some awesome set design and physical production.
I guess I’d categorize it as sci-fi thriller, with a some blood, but not gory. Highly recommend.
Watched The Fable this morning. It’s basically a Japanese version of John Wick but slightly more stylish and with the gimmick that the main character is supposed to avoid killing anyone. It’s a fun film with a couple of good setpieces. The film’s sequel showed up on Polygon’s list of Best Action Scenes of 2021, so I’m looking forward to checking that out next.
Hey, Freaks was pretty good! Thanks for the reco!
And I watched Fable 2 aka Fable: the Killer Who Doesn’t Kill. The action sequences in this film are genuinely jaw-dropping. The opening sequence was spectacular, and then an extended sequence later in the film in and around an apartment block is truly amazing, including a scaffolding sequence that far outshines the similar scene in Shang-Chi.
The rest of the film is pretty meh. The writers don’t seem to know what to do with their female characters. Yoko is potentially awesome and gets to do way more in this film than she did in the first one. (In the first one, her main skill was apparently out-drinking men.) But I would’ve loved to see her hold her own alongside Akira. Misaki is just a perennial victim, targeted because she did a quick stint as a pin-up model at one point. And Hinako, ugh–all sorts of problematic shit going on in how the film treats her, both as someone who was trafficked (victim blaming) and as someone who is disabled (healing through willpower.) Even the Jackal Tomioka segments (he’s a character in a television show who only Akira finds funny) in this film are weirdly sexist in a way they weren’t in the previous one, though I suspect there’s a bit of cultural mistranslation there. I believe Jackal is meant to be funny specifically because he’s so unfunny. Japanese pop-culture stuff can sometimes seem very weird to me.