What Movie Did You Just Watch

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

The Empty Man is a horror movie based off a comic book that was just dumped into a minimal amount of theaters last year due to the pandemic. Only recently has it really started to get some buzz due to word of mouth developing a bit of a cult following. Having just seen it myself, it really did live up to the hype for me. It's my ideal kind of horror movie and definitely one of the best I've seen in the last few years. It gets a strong recommendation from me provided you're into more psychological horror with not much emphasis put on answering questions or trying to make sense of everything.

[Mustang]

Tombstone
I might have to rethink my current favorite movies. It's always been top 2 for me, but it might move over Pulp Fiction. I have to rewatch Pulp Fiction some day to see if I still feel the same about it. The kicker, I'm not a fan of westerns at all, but I do love this movie. Anyway, of course Doc Holiday is my favorite (no surprise right? Everyone loves him). I've been quoting some of his lines the last couple of days, but there are some great lines all over the place from quite a few people. I have quite a few favorite scenes but Doc and Ringo meeting for the first time really stands out in my head at the moment.

The movie did make me want to check out the Red Dead games  but, as I've stated, I'm not a fan of westerns. I would probably jump on every western right now if I had an interest.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Watched Promising Young Woman earlier this week. It's a really uncomfortable watch, and the story likes playing with your head by casting actors usually known for nice or comic relief roles as pieces of shit, but I thought the final scene tied it all up pretty well.

Saw Mangrove too, and Shaun Parkes gives a pretty good performance.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

You can never go wrong with Tombstone. I came around to liking Pulp Fiction eventually, but if I'm being honest I'm among the few who actually enjoys Tarantino's later films a bit more than his earlier ones. I know I'm in the minority on that, though.

I just saw Kimetsu no Yaiba: Mugen Train and Mortal Kombat. The former was obviously something I really enjoyed, though a tad disappointing as an adaptation since it added nothing to the source material and could have stood to slightly re-work the narrative to better fit a feature-length film. On the other hand, it's still adapting one of my favorite arcs from the manga, so of course I still liked it.

Mortal Kombat joins Sonic the Hedgehog and Detective Pikachu as one of those movies that I can't really call good but is kind of passable for a video game movie. There's a lot of dumb writing in here which is all the more odd since there is a bit more source material to work with from the games to tell a better fleshed out story, but what we get is ultimately more of a "so ridiculous it's kind of fun" sort of affair.

[Avaitor]

I finally got around to Godzilla vs Kong, and I enjoyed it a good bit. I mean yes, the human characters are weak (although holy shit, when did the kid from Deadpool 2 start going through puberty?), and there's no effort to tie the story together, but who watches a Godzilla movie for character development or plot? It was a little weird how the characters from King of the Monsters almost never coincided with the characters from Skull Island, but that's fine, I just wanted to see monster action.

It did remind me that I still need to see Skull Island, but I'm more interested in digging through the Criterion set that I picked up last year. Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla is calling me. Should also finally see the Snyder cut, but I'll just wait for that to come back to HBO Max. I still need to see Man of Steel and BvS first, anyway. I'll probably end up doing Mortal Kombat instead soon.

I also got around to seeing Soul, which I did enjoy, although it's probably my least favorite of Pete Docter's films. I'm with the side uncomfortable with a white woman voicing a Black man, but besides that, I'm just growing increasingly tired of the Lasseter formula, who Docter in particular feels especially tied down to. But it's at least a lot better than Onward, which I thought was mostly uninspired, and I loved how the afterlife segments looked, as well as the soundtrack and mixing.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Thought Soul was all right, but it's frustrating how close it gets to being a great movie but doesn't quite accomplish that. Like an 8 that's so close to being a 9.

Watched Nomadland yesterday. I appreciate what it was going for, and I liked seeing Frances McDormand, but I don't get why this movie's been gobbling up awards left and right. Or maybe I'm just too stupid for these tone poem movies.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Thought Soul was all right, but it's frustrating how close it gets to being a great movie but doesn't quite accomplish that. Like an 8 that's so close to being a 9.

Watched Nomadland yesterday. I appreciate what it was going for, and I liked seeing Frances McDormand, but I don't get why this movie's been gobbling up awards left and right. Or maybe I'm just too stupid for these tone poem movies.

Agreed on both counts. Soul is mostly a good movie but has various plot issues and kind of pussies out with it's ending (IMO).

And yeah, I tried to get the appeal of Nomadland, but it's a stark reminder of why I don't like art films. I've seen Chloe Zao's two previous films as well, and I honestly don't think I can understand the hype behind this director. I thought The Rider was at least interesting enough that it didn't outright bore me, but it's not exactly something that I would ever care to re-watch.

Still, oddly enough I'm kind of interested to see The Eternals if only to figure out what Kevin Feige and Marvel Studios saw in her that would be a good fit for one of their movies.

I haven't seen all of the Best Picture contenders this year, but of the ones that I did Judas and the Black Messiah is easily my favorite to win.

[Dr. Insomniac]

It's always been a case in superhero movies to hire a director not known for action films. Who would have expected the Elf guy to make Iron Man, the Saw guy doing Aquaman, or the Fruitvale Station guy to do Black Panther? Even back in the day, Tim Burton was considered a surprise choice to direct Batman because he was mostly known as the Pee-Wee/Beetlejuice guy then.

[Avaitor]

I felt more or less the same way about Nomadland. It's gorgeously shot and has some genuine compassion to it, enough so that I think Tim Brayton is a little unfair to it, but it's not going to stick with me the same way Parasite or OUATIH did.

Honestly, aside from maybe Chicago 7, I don't think there was a real stinker in this year's BP race, but there also isn't that one film that I truly loved, either. Nomadland and Promising Young Woman were among my favorites, but I don't see myself owning them, and they'd probably rank among the middle fair from last year.

I do wonder if I would have reacted better to most of these films if I got to see them in theaters. No matter how much the studios keep trying to push their streaming services on us, even despite their convenience, nothing will compete with the big screen for me. Now that I'm fully vaccinated, I'm hoping to finally go back. I tried to see the first two Heaven's Feel films a while ago, but someone sitting a few seats away from me kept his mask off for as long as I could see, so I walked out after the first film ended, and have refused to go back until now.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

It's always been a case in superhero movies to hire a director not known for action films. Who would have expected the Elf guy to make Iron Man, the Saw guy doing Aquaman, or the Fruitvale Station guy to do Black Panther? Even back in the day, Tim Burton was considered a surprise choice to direct Batman because he was mostly known as the Pee-Wee/Beetlejuice guy then.

True, but in those cases all of those directors had proven that they could do mainstream crowd-pleasers beforehand, like James Wan with Insidious and The Conjuring, Ryan Coogler with Creed (not to mention that the racially-driven narrative of Fruitsvale Station is an element that made him an attractive pick for what they wanted to do with Black Panther), and Tim Burton with both movies that you mentioned. To add to that, James Gunn had both Slither and Super under his belt by the time they hired him for Guardians, and even more indie directors like Taika Waititi still had movies that were easy to get into even if they weren't very popular. And Sam Raimi had definitely already reached a very well-renowned cult status well before the first Spider-Man.

Chloe Zao's movies are VERY niche and it's not as outright obvious (at least not yet) what quality of her style makes her a good fit for a property like The Eternals. I'm not really criticizing their choice here (as I said, I'm actually interested), but I'm also not quite sure what she has in mind for a big-budget Hollywood movie given how her movies are the polar opposite of having mainstream appeal, even compared to other similar directors. Again, that could absolutely be to Marvel's benefit here in the same way that Denis Villeneuve was a great choice for Arrival and Blade Runner 2049 despite not having really done big-budget Sci-Fi before that point (and subsequently why I'm so excited for Dune). It's just not as obvious yet why she would be a good fit for her respective big-budget movie until maybe we see it for ourselves.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I do wonder if I would have reacted better to most of these films if I got to see them in theaters. No matter how much the studios keep trying to push their streaming services on us, even despite their convenience, nothing will compete with the big screen for me. Now that I'm fully vaccinated, I'm hoping to finally go back. I tried to see the first two Heaven's Feel films a while ago, but someone sitting a few seats away from me kept his mask off for as long as I could see, so I walked out after the first film ended, and have refused to go back until now.

That sucks to hear. I can't stand it when even just one inconsiderate person has to ruin an experience for everyone else. It's not that hard to keep a mask on during a film. If someone isn't willing to do at least that much, they might as well just stream the movie at home.

[Dr. Insomniac]

It's always been a case in superhero movies to hire a director not known for action films. Who would have expected the Elf guy to make Iron Man, the Saw guy doing Aquaman, or the Fruitvale Station guy to do Black Panther? Even back in the day, Tim Burton was considered a surprise choice to direct Batman because he was mostly known as the Pee-Wee/Beetlejuice guy then.

True, but in those cases all of those directors had proven that they could do mainstream crowd-pleasers beforehand, like James Wan with Insidious and The Conjuring, Ryan Coogler with Creed (not to mention that the racially-driven narrative of Fruitsvale Station is an element that made him an attractive pick for what they wanted to do with Black Panther), and Tim Burton with both movies that you mentioned. To add to that, James Gunn had both Slither and Super under his belt by the time they hired him for Guardians, and even more indie directors like Taika Waititi still had movies that were easy to get into even if they weren't very popular. And Sam Raimi had definitely already reached a very well-renowned cult status well before the first Spider-Man.

Chloe Zao's movies are VERY niche and it's not as outright obvious (at least not yet) what quality of her style makes her a good fit for a property like The Eternals. I'm not really criticizing their choice here (as I said, I'm actually interested), but I'm also not quite sure what she has in mind for a big-budget Hollywood movie given how her movies are the polar opposite of having mainstream appeal, even compared to other similar directors. Again, that could absolutely be to Marvel's benefit here in the same way that Denis Villeneuve was a great choice for Arrival and Blade Runner 2049 despite not having really done big-budget Sci-Fi before that point (and subsequently why I'm so excited for Dune). It's just not as obvious yet why she would be a good fit for her respective big-budget movie until maybe we see it for ourselves.

Yeah, I've been curious where they're going with that film. A director swimming in awards directing a Z-list Marvel team, and the only tangible connection with the rest of the universe is that the characters are loosely the same race as Thanos. Not expecting it to be niche or anything, they have Angelina Jolie, Salma Hayek, and Kit Harrington front and center in the cast listings and the film's budget sounds about the same as the others, and I'd be an idiot if I thought "Does this Golden Globe-winning director have what it takes to direct a blockbuster?",  but it's been one of the biggest enigmas in the franchise in a while. A little on the level of if Marvel one day said "Heads up. We've announced Bong Joon-ho's Power Pack!"

[Dr. Insomniac]

So I went and watched Midsommar. On the bright side, it was a well-directed remake of The Wicker Man with stunning location shots and cinematography. But once I realized it was just Wicker Man, it all became predictable and fell into that same problem lots of other horror movies face where all the characters who die gruesome deaths were just dumb assholes. I get it was also an analogy to grief and how you can't process grief when you're in a bad relationship, but I came out of it more annoyed than unnerved. And it's disappointing too, because I really liked Ari Aster's short film Strange Thing About the Johnsons.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

While I don't often post about it, I've been in the habit of watching a couple of classic movies every weekend over the past year or so. I've discovered a lot of great stuff over that time, most recently being Night of the Hunter which is probably one of my favorite films that I've seen in quite a while. It's a movie that I know has been influential among many directors and now I can finally see why. There is a sharp use of cinematography as well as stylistic uses of framing and lighting that feel ahead of their time (though I do know of other movies from this era with similar levels of care and forethought in their filming styles). This is also another one of those rare movies with a surprisingly good child actor in the case of John (Harper's son). However, it's Reverend Harry Powell (played by Robert Mitchum) who steals the show, and who may have just secured a spot as one of my all-time favorite movie villains. I'll definitely be giving the film a re-watch one of these days, but it definitely managed to leave a strong impression on me right from my first viewing.

[Avaitor]

I was working on a draft about that one for my blog, but I haven't touched it in a while.

I'm glad to see you like the movie, though! It's a very impressive film, and deserves the following its received over the years.