Kidnap is a pretty bad movie, full of plot holes and bad acting. I should just say one bad actress because it’s almost monologue, and she can’t hold the movie by herself. In fact, it had to be pretty hard and act that poorly to allow the audience feel almost no connection whatsoever to the mother of the kidnapped child. It’s just so awful… I went because a friend celebrated her birthday and picked this terrible movie. Good news though. If you are stuck watching it like I did, it’s only 81 minutes of blah. One of the shortest movies I’ve seen recently. Maybe they could have thrown in some plot to make it better and longer.
Korean WWII film making its way through AMC right now, I will recommend
This film starts out as a fairly typical Korean film, but it does develop into some good threads. It is fictional based around events in history.
Be aware it gets quite violent and graphic as it moves on.
Ingrid Goes West had potential with a great cast who I enjoyed even when they weren’t given much, but the movie doesn’t know what to do with its premise. The tone bounces around but at all times feels insubstantial. Light, but not light-hearted. It’s light but about to take a dark twist. Or light but trying to be endearing. Or light but trying to to be tragic. Or light but trying to say something important. And it’s never any of those things.
More than a handful of lines got a laugh out of me, and again, I liked the whole cast—they all deserved better. But save this is only going to be worth it as a curiosity if you’re a big Aubrey Plaza fan and stumble across this on a streaming service a few months from now.
So are we violating the spirit of this thread if we also discuss Netflix originals?
Curious if anyone’s seen Little Evil. Tom mentioned it on one of the recent podcasts (not that he’d seen it, but that he was aware of it), and hey, Adam Scott’s usually funny.
Wasn’t sure if it was worth carving out time from my Destiny 2 schedule though.
There’s supposed to be a new Star Wars movie coming out in a year or two. Given there are so few Star Wars fans on this forum, I thought maybe we could discuss it here.
No345
Adam Scott is funny in it, but the rest of the movie is obvious and ham-handed. The single Tyler Labine scene is pretty funny. But it’s got none of the cleverness of the early parts of Tucker and Dale vs Evil. :(
-Tom
I concur. Little Evil’s engine for generating comedy runs dry pretty early, and it winds up undermining its own premise in the 3rd act. Hell Baby is a better version of that same premise.
It also has a nice scene for people who like Riki Lindhome. If you’re into that kind of thing.
Regarding Little Evil, has any seen the movie Joshua? Sam Rockwell is in it. It is much more of a family drama/horror film. Worth checking out. Maybe hard to find.
Not at all!
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0013KMOIM
Joshua is great. Orphan is better!
https://www.amazon.com/Orphan-Peter-Sarsgaard/dp/B002UIE5GA
-Tom
Nice, Orphan sounds familiar but I am thinking The Orphanage which is a different film. I need to fix this.
Directed by Paul Verhoeven. Enough said.
Without spoiling anything, there is plenty of sexual violence, it is almost repeating itself but each time it happened the plot thickens just a little bit. It is just bizarre. It is probably worth mentioning in the 3x3: sexual assault in movies thread, but frankly I haven’t seen enough movie with sexual assualt in it. I have a weak stomach for pretend sexual assault, but I can stand fake blood and gore just fine.
Anyway, the plot is just bizarre. As far as dealing with taboo subjects, Verhoeven sprinkled it with plenty of his irony/black comedy. There is even room for a cameo gameplay footage of Styx: Master of Shadows. But it is almost absurdist. Isabelle Huppert deserves all the awards she got, because a lesser actor would not have even signed onto this. I prefer the way Pedro Almodóvar’s Volver dealt with sexual assault. IMO Verhoeven at the end almost trivialised it, but Almodóvar dealt with it with humanity.
American Made. Tom Cruise directed by Doug Liman. It’s not a great pic, or a particularly deep one, but it’s fun watching Cruise have fun with this role. And it’s his first non-action role in more than 5 years, so it’s refreshing to see him in a movie where he’s literally not hanging off an airplane or getting into shoot-outs.
I saw the Lego Ninjago movie with my kids. It’s was a bunch of meh. The Ninjago stuff usually has a quirky sense of humor, as do the Lego movies, but the combination didn’t work for me. I thought Lego: The Movie was a lot funnier and more original. That said, my kids loved it. :)
This is out and about, or just about to be, and is hitting the hype train. Anyone see it?
I was planning on seeing the Snowman, but that was before I heard about all the craziness. To wit, Scorsese signed on to do an adaption of one of megapopular Scandinavian-noire author Jo Nesbo’s novels. Top-notch cast with Fassbender is signed on to do the movie. And then right before filming, Scorsese drops out, and they have to bring in Tomas Alfredson at the last minute. He’s a great director (Let the Right One In, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy). But he spent the press tour bashing his own movie, saying they didn’t let him film it the way he wanted, and that literally 10-15% of the screenplay was never filmed. It’s really difficult to edit a coherent story with that much plot missing, but they give the job to Academy Award-winner Claire Spooner. And then they give her cut to Academy Award-winner (and Scorsese’s go-to editor) Thelma Schoonmaker. It’s not a co-editing credit. She literally recut Spooner’s cut.
The result is reportedly insane. It’s less a suspense movie and more like an experimental movie.
I’ll wait for it on video.
I saw it last night. It’s not very good. It should make for some decent opsis material on the podcast. I couldn’t get over the lead character’s name in the movie and spent most of it trying to convince myself I made a mistake.
No need to play coy, I don’t think anyone would consider this a spoiler: Fassbender plays a character named Harry Hole. Yes, for reals.
It’s a great story, very troubling actually in a number of ways, and the two leads do a great job. It’s not exactly a great movie, but if you like period type pieces that mostly follow truth and you’re curious about this buried relationship, worthwhile. I am a big movie goer, and this is the kind of movie that does not hugely benefit from a large screen, would play well at home, but sometimes you just want to go out and enjoy.
So apparently there’s a new Amityville Horror movie and it was released in theaters this last weekend. And apparently this movie earned $742 on its opening weekend. No, that’s not a per-theater average, that’s total.