Movie Time 2.0: TT mini reviews

[Issun]

Beau is Afraid is a weird-ass movie. It's basically a nightmare about what if your anxiety came true with heaping helpings of paranoia and abuse. It's darkly funny if you like watching a hapless chump get completely screwed by a kafkaesque surreal world.

It definitely hits close to home if you've got serious anxiety issues (hello!). I really liked it, though. It's my second favorite Aster film after Midsommar (Hereditary is probably better than Beau but while it is an incredible film up to the last 5 minutes or so, it didn't hit as hard for me as his other two films).

 

[Johnny Unusual]

Rewatching Romancing the Stone and Jewel of the Nile and Romancing isn't quite as good as I remember. Both are not great at portraying non-whites; in the first movie they are either background or criminals of some flavour and Jewel they are basically cartoonishly violent. This is to say, it's all very 80s. The set pieces aren't super great but at least Douglas and Turner have charm in the first one. The second one they are struggling there due to the script, which I feel like has a good starting point ("Hey, how do we deal with it when the heat of the moment cools down and are just living day to day") but it doesn't result in a good movie, sadly. Watchable enough. DeVito is trying so, so hard.

 

[Sarcasmorator]

Also made for a fun boardgame.

Real expensive to find now though

 

[Neo Skimbleshanks]

Stress Positions

 

[Issun]

Love Lies Bleeding is a banger of a crime thriller. Think True Romance except with butch lesbians, bodybuilding, surrealism, and epically bad 80s hair.

 

[Octopus Prime]

Boy Kills World is pretty much a two hour long fight scene, and that’s kind of exhausting even if you *don’t* have a headache before sitting down to it.

Despite that handicap, I really enjoyed it!

It was far less goofy than the trailer lead me to believe (jokes basically disappear by the midway point), but the whole movie works on Beat Em Up logic, complete with henchmen wearing gradually darker outfits to indicate how much more dangerous they are, and a suite of mini and level bosses.

If you want to see a jacked-as-all-hell Bill Skarsgard played by Archer and some kinda confusing internal logic, run, don’t walk, to your nearest movie theater and say “Make mine “Boy””!

 

[Issun]

Apparently lesbian crime films are The Big Thing for 2024, because Drive-Away Dolls is also one of those. It's less of a taut thriller than Love Lies Bleeding and more Ethan Coen flaunting that he's the one what does all the weird stuff. It gets a little in over it's head in being wacky but the cast carries it and the two leads have great chemistry. The film is also very sweet underneath all the violence and strangeness.

In the end, it's fun and it's only 84 minutes, which is refreshing when everything needs to be three hours long nowadays.

 

[Johnny Unusual]

I feel like a decade ago I decided to watch About Last Night... and I didn't like it. I decided to try again and I still don't. David Mamet dialogue goes a long way but from the jump I just don't care about the leads. I don't even actively dislike them, I'm just deeply indifferent and so when it switches to them sniping at each other, I become annoyed. It's not a tragedy of two characters who are unpracticed in being in a real relationship, it's just two bland people who become jerks (definitely moreso Rob Lowe). I think the ideas are somewhat well observed and Jim Belushi, a man I rarely say positive stuff about, is going for it with his character but I really feel like every other scene punctuated with a montage with an uplifting song about love messes with the intent of the text. This probably works better on stage, really.

 

[Paul le Fou]

Jodorowsky's Dune is a really interesting peek into a potential move adaptation of Dune that would have been absolutely fucking bonkers. If anything it makes me wish someone would pick up the book and animate it now. Also makes me want to track down Jodorowsky & Moebius's Incal comic.

 

[Johnny Unusual]

Snow White and the Seven Dwarves dedicates a lot of it's screen time to White puttering around the house with animals and speculating on who lives there, then meeting the people who live there and then making dinner for them and getting the dwarves to wash their hands. And I am here for it. Plot progression is overrated, let's just hang out with these filthy miners.

 

[Daikaiju]

Snow White and the Seven Dwarves dedicates a lot of it's screen time to White puttering around the house with animals and speculating on who lives there, then meeting the people who live there and then making dinner for them and getting the dwarves to wash their hands. And I am here for it. Plot progression is overrated, let's just hang out with these filthy miners.

To be fair, Snow White was more proof of concept than dramatic tour de force.

 

[Rascally Badger]

I did not expect Madame Web to be good, but I really expected its badness to have been overstated. I don't think is was. This is shockingly bad, especially the first 30 minutes. The first thing that comes to mind is that, if you are going to use odd and disorienting camera movements to depict visions, maybe the camera should just be normal the rest of the time. And, occasionally, just stop moving for a few seconds.

 

[Octopus Prime]

The Fall Guy is a heap of fun, and also two unrelated movies constantly interrupting each other. Luckily both of those unrelated movies are good, and the ratio was more in favor of “Stunt Double winds up mired in a web of murderous intrigue and danger” over “Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt Romantic Comedy”

I’d love a sequel that’s just Winston Duke and a Very Good Dog solving Movie Crimes.

Biggest issue I had is that the whole theme of the movie is that stunt men and cinematographers are the real reason anyone goes to movies and stars and producers are, at best, obstacles to be overcome… but, like… Ryan Gosling is right there, on the screen, constantly. I don’t think he’s the one being kicked out of helicopters or exploding a boat

 

[Neo Skimbleshanks]

I also noticed that and was expecting a stunt person during the opening “thank u for seeing this in theaters” clip with Gosling and the director. It does seem like stunt people were pretty prominently credited during the credits. Moreso than usual, I think.

Good movie, though.

 

[Octopus Prime]

Yeah the blooper reel being entirely the stuntmen showing off that they were stuntmen was a nice touch

 

[Johnny Unusual]

I also noticed that and was expecting a stunt person during the opening “thank u for seeing this in theaters” clip with Gosling and the director

The stuntmen were interviewed by the stars in the pre-show thing that they play in Cineplex.

 

[Octopus Prime]

The Beach House was a pretty good slow burn horror movie. First forty minutes or so are… tedious as all hell, but then the Spooky Stuff kicks off and we’re off to the races.

Felt a bit like Colour Out of Space, but without the trippy visuals or Nic Cage. Also definitely felt like it was a Covid Movie, since it came out in 2020 and it was about a deadly super virus (as represented by a creepy murder fog). Or else weird sea monsters, y’know, depending on which they had the budget to depict.

 

[Baudshaw]

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes was pretty good. Very similar to the other 3 movies.

 

[YangusKhan]

I watched a romcom over the weekend called Anyone But You. I did not know this beforehand, but it's an adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing, and once I realized that, it made a lot of the strange choices make much more sense. The problem is the movie also isn't very good. I'm not even sure who the movie is supposed to be for? It's certainly millennial laser-focused, but then you've got stuff like actual slapstick mixed with horny and attractive adults that want to jump each other's bones (again, the Shakespeare influence makes a lot of sense). It's even got pseudo-4th wall characters that serve the same purpose as Shakespeare's "gallery" actors.

So, it's not a bad choice if you want to stare at Sydney Sweeney's cleavage for 90 minutes.

 

[Octopus Prime]

Furiousa is a 15/10 masterpiece and I still don’t think it’s as good as a Fury Road

 

[Baudshaw]

I don't know or understand anything about Mad Max. Isn't Furiosa a spinoff or something?

 

[Purple]

Yes. Fury Road, the really freaking great one that everyone who's seen it loves honestly has exceptionally little to do with ostensible franchise lead Max, and is mostly about this super badass woman named Furiosa rebelling against this post-apocalyptic despot, and the new movie is a spinoff to flesh out her backstory. Also rar I can't afford movie tickets.

 

[Pombar]

I don't know or understand anything about Mad Max. Isn't Furiosa a spinoff or something?

Yeah, though the creator wrote Fury Road and Furiosa together, and debated which to make first. So it's possible you could see Furiosa first and then Fury Road (the chronological order) and it might still work? Though the end credits of Furiosa show clips from Fury Road so maybe not ideal.

 

[Johnny Unusual]

Me and friends decided to do a scary movie double bill last night. Barbarian is a fun ride. It's at its most scary when in act one before anything scary happens but that's me and anticipation. Then it goes to some wonderfully wild places. Definitely a movie to check out knowing little if possible but I will say I love every time it changed gears. Late Night with the Devil is not as good but I do give it a soft recommendation. It's a real slow burn and a few of the effects kind of make the tone a bit cheesier but overall it's a good watch and goes to some good places. The best part is in the middle when one of the guests just won't stop staring into camera and seems to know exactly which camera to look at.

 

[Issun]

Barbarian

Probably the best horror flick of the decade, though Talk to Me is some serious competition. I especially love how it makes you question dude's motivations and then he turns out to be cool before being brutally murdered followed by surprise Justin Long

 

[Violentvixen]

Yeah, though the creator wrote Fury Road and Furiosa together, and debated which to make first.

Oh dang, I did not know that!

My mom, who doesn't know what Mad Max is and hasn't seen Fury Road is curious about the Furiosa movie. I'm wary because this style of movie (any sort of popular action blockbuster) is something she normally hates.

I'd be curious if anyone could comment on the amount of violence in Furiosa compared to Fury Road? I think the amount of violence in Fury Road is the most she could handle, but I'd also like to know if this film ups the types of violence specifically against women (the scene with the baby being cut out of the dead body is one I don't think she'll be able to handle). If they went the usual stupid hollywood way and have (content warning, but I can't warn without saying what it is) rape as part of her origin story I'm going to be so damned disappointed.

 

[Issun]

If you want to know about any possible triggers in a film, Does the Dog Die is the best place to find out

 

[Sarcasmorator]

Oh dang, I did not know that!

My mom, who doesn't know what Mad Max is and hasn't seen Fury Road is curious about the Furiosa movie. I'm wary because this style of movie (any sort of popular action blockbuster) is something she normally hates.

I'd be curious if anyone could comment on the amount of violence in Furiosa compared to Fury Road? I think the amount of violence in Fury Road is the most she could handle, but I'd also like to know if this film ups the types of violence specifically against women (the scene with the baby being cut out of the dead body is one I don't think she'll be able to handle). If they went the usual stupid hollywood way and have (content warning, but I can't warn without saying what it is) rape as part of her origin story I'm going to be so damned disappointed.

Furiosa is a bit of a rough watch in spots. The movie has a tendency to pull back from some action scenes or obscure things or point the camera away at key moments so you don't actually have to SEE the worst of what you can imagine (an interesting thing to do in itself, because you don't often see what would be a bravura action scene from 300 yards away, barely able to hear the carnage). The action scenes don't quite hit the heights that Fury Road's do, and there isn't actually a lot of explicit blood or gore (a lot of people blown up or burning or pulled under wheels, but not eviscerated or bleeding out or that sort of thing, mostly).

So it's less in-your-face in some ways, but we've all seen Seven, right? Sometimes not seeing what's in the box lets your mind fill in worse. Thematically it's darker, there's almost no levity (compared to the spare-but-there comic relief of FR) and it is not, ultimately, a hopeful story. It leaves what hope there is in that world to Fury Road. So between the two, I'd definitely suggest trying that one first.

 

[Violentvixen]

If you want to know about any possible triggers in a film, Does the Dog Die is the best place to find out

I feel silly, but I legitimately thought that site was only about animal deaths, I had no idea you could look up other things, I'll be bookmarking this.

Furiosa is a bit of a rough watch in spots. The movie has a tendency to pull back from some action scenes or obscure things or point the camera away at key moments so you don't actually have to SEE the worst of what you can imagine (an interesting thing to do in itself, because you don't often see what would be a bravura action scene from 300 yards away, barely able to hear the carnage). The action scenes don't quite hit the heights that Fury Road's do, and there isn't actually a lot of explicit blood or gore (a lot of people blown up or burning or pulled under wheels, but not eviscerated or bleeding out or that sort of thing, mostly).

So it's less in-your-face in some ways, but we've all seen Seven, right? Sometimes not seeing what's in the box lets your mind fill in worse. Thematically it's darker, there's almost no levity (compared to the spare-but-there comic relief of FR) and it is not, ultimately, a hopeful story. It leaves what hope there is in that world to Fury Road. So between the two, I'd definitely suggest trying that one first.

This is helpful, thanks! I haven't seen Seven but have heard of it. I'll stick with suggesting she watch Fury Road first and go from there.

 

[Octopus Prime]

The dead baby scene is maybe the roughest the movie gets. as noted, a lot of the other violence is either implied or kinda off screen.

That being said there’s a lot of violence that’s implied or somewhat off screen.