Movie & TV Show Recommendations

[Foltest]

Glad to see another Liam fan here @Michael Wade .
Have you seen Rob Roy? That one fucking owns!

 

[Fuckyoudad]

I swerved this one hard back when it came out.. I couldn't get over the cheesy title and hadn't built up any appreciation for Richard Gere as an actor. These days we're in the habit of sifting through the many 2000s era mainstream movies we skipped over.

Much of this is a reaction to the reality that much of what's produced in the 2020s is fucking dire. I was really surprised by how much I got into The Mothman Prophecies.

I was ready for Arthur Everest from The Tick chasing Gere around in a Halloween costume and instead got a cooky conspiratorial thriller that feels like its mining the same vein as some of the better X Files episodes.

Perhaps it doesn't quite stick the landing but if you enjoy movies that give you that feeling of displacement like In the Mouth of Madness or Rosemary's Baby give it a shot. Not that I'm saying its as good as either of those of course but I found it pretty effective in keeping you locked into that sumn weird's going on here headspace.

Just don't watch the trailers because they cut some pretty bad ones for it.

 

[AnOminous]

Since we're doing Gere, Primal Fear, which also features Ed Norton in one of his earlier standout roles, as a murder defendant, a former altar boy who murders the Archbishop of Chicago (for reasons I doubt I need elaborate). I won't go into plot details since they'd be spoilers.

It's not phenomenally directed and somewhat clumsily plotted, but it features two great actors at the top of their form.

 

[Commander X]

Intrigued that after three films, Yugo Sakamoto's Baby Assassins, about the life and times of a couple of young hitwomen, the outgoing Chisato Sugimoto (Akari Takaishi) and introverted Mahiro Fukagawa (stuntwoman Saori Izawa) in Tokyo working for a hit-brokering agency will be returning in a TV series

This is after the recent release of Baby Assassins: Nice Days, where the duo are on vacation in a resort city, getting in a lot of beach frolicking and hitting restaurants, when the agency they work for asks them to fill in on some local wetwork, taking out an embezzler. Unfortunately, the job's been double-booked and a vicious, perfectionist freelance hitman (played by Sosuke Ikematsu) is after the same target and he doesn't care for competition, and in the wake of their first encounter our duo must work with a couple of strict veteran operatives from their own hitman guild to take out the rival hitman, the target and protect their agency's reputation.

 

[Ged!]

Liem Neeson is one of my favorite actors so im gonna highlight some of the movies ive seen.

I'm sorry, but your entire post reminded me of this:

---

Surprised you didn't mention Darkman.

Easily my 3rd favorite Sam Raimi film (I'll give you three guesses what the top two are, and the first two guesses don't count). Don't let the fact that it's a superhero film throw you off, it's not one of "those" superhero movies. Check it out if you haven't.

On the topic of "not of of those superhero movies" I might as well recommend Mr. Freedom (1969).

(if that cast listing doesn't sell you, I don't know what will)

This is one of those satires that doesn't quite play like a satire anymore, but it's supposed to be about a white nationalist superhero sent on a mission to save France from itself (the French, being the niggers of Europe, are the white man's burden, you see). The exact political underpinnings are a little beside the point, the film is 90 minutes of delightful manic insanity. One of those rare counter-culture films that genuinely transcends its origins.

 

[The Feline Solution]

Since we're doing Gere, Primal Fear, which also features Ed Norton in one of his earlier standout roles, as a murder defendant, a former altar boy who murders the Archbishop of Chicago (for reasons I doubt I need elaborate). I won't go into plot details since they'd be spoilers.

It's not phenomenally directed and somewhat clumsily plotted, but it features two great actors at the top of their form.

Great film, great ending, definitely has that 90's thriller charm. Caught it on TV way back when and liked it, said before ITT how much i like Norton and he was good already as a youngin. Gere is pretty good in it, too.

Surprised you didn't mention Darkman.

I did a 80's/90's horror film marathon with films i didn't catch as a kid/teen earlier this year, watched Scanners, Hellraiser 1&2, Candyman (exceptionally well-made for a slasher film, the on-location shooting in the Cabrini-Green projects was a great choice for a backdrop) and Darkman, amongst others. I like Neeson a lot as an actor but i found Darkman to be severely lacking. Just a goofy film, and not the funny and entertaining kind of goofy. Surprised that it has such large cult following. Had some neat effects for its time, i give it that.

I'm about to watch The Coffee Table, a spanish dark comedy from 2022. Heard good things about it, mostly that many viewers couldn't see the comedy in this supposedly very bleak and brutal film and that intrigued me. Hope my TV isn't gonna fuck me over with the subs, it does it sometimes when they are integrated in the video file and not a seperate .srt or .sub/.idx file. Finally ordered a long enough HDMI cable so i can just stick my desktop in my TV and will never have to deal with this problem again in the future.

 

[DwayneTheSockJohnson]

This absolute beauty of a film.

 

[Commander X]

Speaking of Raimi, his one foray into the Western is a pretty entertaining, pulpy pastiche of Italian Westerns, The Quick and the Dead, where a semi-retired outlaw chieftain has a quick-draw duel competition set up in the town he uses as a base, attracting all sorts of colorful characters, including Russell Crowe as a former colleague he has had kidnapped to participate, and Sharon Stone as a gunwoman going for the Eastwood-as-the-Man-with-No-Name deadpan. Hackman plays the part as the bandit chief like he'd studied various unrestrained performances from Italian films, giving one on a par with the likes of Gian Maria Volonté.

 

[Felis Meanis]

I'm watching "Alien: Romulus", and the following scene makes me bigly perplexed:

Spoiler: Spoilers

Approximately halfway throughout the movie, the asian lady has the alien, which has been injected into her previously, burst through her chest (chestburster), and as a result of the pain, one of her legs spasmodically kicks what I can only assume to be the spaceship's gear stick.
Ponder upon that for a while: an advanced space ship, which is a marvel of technology and is designed to fly through the wonders of the cosmos seemingly without problems, has a gear stick, and if you accidentally push/pull it, your spaceship will go haywire just as a manual car would. This scene, even though intense and interesting, did take me out of the movie by virtue of crushing my suspension of disbelief for a while.

I also hate the way they treat the previous Alien-films as fodder for what I can only describe as "nostalgia bait".

I'm not even sure if I would recommend the movie, to be honest, even if I'm not disappointed of having watched it in the first place.
Then again, "not being disappointed" is a rather low bar.

At least the visuals are very nice.

 

[AnOminous]

Hackman plays the part as the bandit chief like he'd studied various unrestrained performances from Italian films, giving one on a par with the likes of Gian Maria Volonté.

Hackman gives a top-notch performance in every single movie he's in. It doesn't matter what. Even on the few occasions he's been in a crap movie, he acts like he's performing in a Shakespeare play.

Pretty sure I've mentioned it before, probably on multiple occasions, but The Conversation, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, may be his best performance. FFC did it between the first two Godfather films and I think it may be better than both.

Another favorite would be in The Royal Tenenbaums by Wes Anderson. This is one of the best scenes he ever did. Danny Glover was excellent too.

 

[sarna]

Speaking of Raimi, his one foray into the Western is a pretty entertaining, pulpy pastiche of Italian Westerns, The Quick and the Dead, where a semi-retired outlaw chieftain has a quick-draw duel competition set up in the town he uses as a base, attracting all sorts of colorful characters, including Russell Crowe as a former colleague he has had kidnapped to participate, and Sharon Stone as a gunwoman going for the Eastwood-as-the-Man-with-No-Name deadpan. Hackman plays the part as the bandit chief like he'd studied various unrestrained performances from Italian films, giving one on a par with the likes of Gian Maria Volonté.

This whole thing is a festival of great character actors. If you squint you can recognize Mark Boone Jr. -- Bobby Elvis on Sons of Anarchy, he's in most of Christopher Nolan's pictures -- as the first guy Sharon Stone shoots. Gary Sinise, Keith David, Leo DiCaprio before he was a leading man.

And yeah, Hackman is one of those guys who's been in a bad movie but never delivered a bad performance. The Package was a minor one I liked, old Cold War thriller with Hackman and a very early Tommy Lee Jones.

 

[Steven Soyberg]

Since some of y'all are talking about good Liam Neeson kino: This film is fucking incredible. Go into it blind. Do not watch any of the trailers.

 

[The Feline Solution]

I watched The Coffee Table / La mesita de comedor and it is fucking good. Touted as a dark comedy, dark doesn't even begin to describe the sheer bleakness of this movie. I did laugh heartily but more out of a "WHAT THE FUCK?!" sense than actual comedy, the film is mostly played straight. You get to the "WHAT THE FUCK?!" stage five minutes in and it piles on from there, things are just getting worse and worse for the protagonist from there. I didn't know any of the actors or the director before but the cast is doing a great job, especially the female lead.
Very mild SPOILERS: You might want to give this a pass if you are a young father, the movie's plot is centered around one of the most primal fears of a parent, it is very graphic in that regard, too.
If i had to compare this film to any other i'd chose Takashi Miike's Visitor Q, same absurdity of the plot, same extreme subject matter. I would've liked if they'd cut the last two minutes of the movie but that's just me being nitpicky.

Speaking of Raimi, his one foray into the Western is a pretty entertaining, pulpy pastiche of Italian Westerns, The Quick and the Dead, where a semi-retired outlaw chieftain has a quick-draw duel competition set up in the town he uses as a base, attracting all sorts of colorful characters, including Russell Crowe as a former colleague he has had kidnapped to participate, and Sharon Stone as a gunwoman going for the Eastwood-as-the-Man-with-No-Name deadpan. Hackman plays the part as the bandit chief like he'd studied various unrestrained performances from Italian films, giving one on a par with the likes of Gian Maria Volonté.

It's a fucking great and very, very entertaining film, the ensemble cast is its strongest point. Didn't know it was a Raimi film. It's that peak mid-90's shit, i used to watch this every time it was on TV.

Another favorite would be in The Royal Tenenbaums by Wes Anderson

Have this on my watchlist since forever but i'm just too burned out on Wes Anderson, especially on the cinematography in his films. "Moonrise Kingdom" is fucking top-tier and probably my favourite of his movies, Wes' casting director has a good hand for picking child actors. Norton and Willis are amazing in it, too.

 

[AnOminous]

Have this on my watchlist since forever but i'm just too burned out on Wes Anderson, especially on the cinematography in his films.

I seriously think this is one to make an exception for, even though the twee in set and costume design is through the roof.

Also this is autistic as fuck but I love Anderson's use of Futura and Helvetica.

 

[dick brain]

Red Rooms is a good movie for farmers. I went into it with low expectations but it's not too French, not too sensationalist, and it doesn't go full retard on the depiction of dark web, OSINT, hacking, etc. The Frenchness mostly comes through in the cinematography and sound design rather than the plot, which is a very good thing in my opinion.

Leans a little hard into portraying people who engage in morally and/or legally dubious behavior as fucked up weirdos so you don't run the risk of implying that the people who engage in this kind of behavior are human beings just like anybody else because that might give the audience ideas and god knows we can't have any of that but otherwise I enjoyed it. Worth the watch.

Also a welcome reminder to be grateful that I don't live in Canada.

Edit: also +1 to The Royal Tenenbaums being exceptional, I've only bothered with about half of Anderson's films but Tenenbaums felt the most human -- and not in the sense that the acting is any less subdued, the characters and motivations and conflicts are just better put together and more believable/natural/relatable.

 

[Pokemon Conquistador]

What's the perfect Halloween movie?

You're wrong. It's Killer Clowns from Outer Space:

Filmed on a low budget, but every penny was efficiently used. The sets and props look impressive for the time, and the villains all have distinct looks and personalities. I do fear that this movie will become to Halloween what "A Christmas Story" became for Christmas; a charming cult movie dampened by overexposure and attempts by the rights owners to market it to oblivion. (The Killer Klowns have pretty much become the official mascots for the Spirit Halloween stores.) But don't let the hype dissuade you. It's a cute, fun movie that never takes itself too seriously.

 

[Ged!]

It's OK. The Dickies soundtrack is easily the best part.

 

[Bunny Wigglesworth]

Easily my 3rd favorite Sam Raimi film (I'll give you three guesses what the top two are, and the first two guesses don't count). Don't let the fact that it's a superhero film throw you off, it's not one of "those" superhero movies. Check it out if you haven't.

If I could only pick 3 it would be:

Army of Darkness
A Simple Plan
Darkman

I have a soft spot for Drag Me To Hell because it’s so relentlessly hilarious & mean-spirited. I remember liking Crimewave & Hudsucker Proxy when I was a yute but I should rewatch them. I can’t really think of any Sam Raimi movie I haven’t enjoyed.

 

[AnOminous]

I remember liking Crimewave & Hudsucker Proxy when I was a yute but I should rewatch them.

Hudsucker is great. I was going to say but wait that's a Coen Bros. film and then realized I'd never noticed he co-wrote the screenplay, cameoed and even did some of the directing.

Cool deep lore bro.

 

[Jonah Hill poster]

Back to recommending anime, only this time, it’s favorites that I think one should recognize or at least find interesting:





The Big O and Read or Die (R.O.D) were pretty much two unique, though semi-popular, anime that I found out more than a few years back. Though, in my case, I never managed to watch that much of the latter. Instead, I read some of the manga when they had it in my local library where I live, but you never see much about the DVD version of it. Whereas with the former, it used to air on G4TV’s Anime Unleashed block in the early 2000’s, but I only managed to see clips and not the true real thing as it was meant to be seen.

Overall, the high paced action and occasional Science fiction tropes really help advance the storytelling in both of these anime, and I am willing to argue that it deserves its placement in the best of late 90’s-early 00’s list of anime that you need to watch. It still makes me wish that they had more of the R.O.D manga in libraries and bookstores alike, since it’s getting rare to find any copies of them in current day.