It's amazing as an action movie. It's everything I ever wanted to see in one. Stuff exploding, gunfights, knife fight, death by prop, etc it's got them all.
It have just enough plot and it set up just enough to fill the rest of the runtime with action scenes. The movie understand the assignment that no one cares about plot in an action movie and don't bore me with more lore than necessary to give context to why they're fighting. No deep dark depression type of plot or romance which is a plus. I come here to watch people fight, not fall in love
But what the fuck was that thing on the right? It's uncanny when it shows up but it have little screentime so I'm not complaining too much. During the end sequence I can't stop looking at the thing
Forensic Files is awesome. No true crime show or podcast will ever top it You get a good mix of the forensic experts and people from the family. Peter Thomas' narration just makes it the perfect show to listen to. Mixed in as well are some funny moments, unintentional ones, but funny moments.
Has anyone seen "From"? It's almost impossible to search for, given the generic name, so apologies if it's been brought up before.
I started watching the first episode earlier today, but only got far enough to hear the knockoff True Detective theme song (and knockoff Bradley Cooper in Limitless) before our tornado alarms went off and I had better things to do.
So far, it feels very 'LOST', probably nothing but endless mystery boxes and lore, but I never hear anyone talk about it, so maybe it's just a weird scifi show.
If I had to guess, I'd say the show's premise is inspired by stories of the Fay, as it reminds me of some old stories of people accidentally wandering into Fairyland. The way the monsters play with people, trick them, speak in human tongues; it's all like the Fay.
If there's a fairy circle or a ring of standing stones later in the show, it'll probably confirm it for me.
It also reminds me an old Stephen King story ("Crouch End" I think was the name, but I can't remember what book it was in): a couple driving through London suddenly get lost and are in a strange new world with Lovecraftian monsters, sort of a evil version of reality, everything is broken or run down. A common enough idea with King. I think the story called it a "touen", some "old druid word for a place of human sacrifices", a thin spot where worlds touch and you can step through accidentally.
It's Clint Eastwood in a film that's nominally a Western, but it's not like any other film I've ever seen.
A lot of Westerns have a light spirit, or failing that, a preachy spirit. Most of them are American PG movies, where all the violence (onscreen or implied) isn't any heavier than you'd see on a TV show, and there are enough down-home chuckles and self-aware moments to allow for an easy watch.
This is not that movie.
I went in totally cold, knowing nothing, expecting mid. I was totally rapt.
One of Eastwood's best film, in my opinion. You'd never get a modern film that opens with the "hero" raping a whore (and the film implying she sort of deserves/likes it rough like that). Closest equivalent I can think of is Indy telling Marian she "knew what she was doing" when she was 16, in Raiders of the Lost Ark.
High Plains Drifter is basically a horror film with some western elements, but not a modern jumpscare thing, a good old fashioned 70's ghost story. A restless ghost of vengeance shows up to punish the whole town, except for the two good people, the town midget he makes mayor/sheriff and the innkeeper's wife who leaves.
If you rewatch, you'll notice she says the dead marshal was buried in an unmarked grave, and the midget is putting a name on the grave at the end of the film as Eastwood's ghost fades away.
Also has one of the best lines in all of film, too:
Rob Ager made a Youtube video about HPD just the other day, that was a fun watch, if you don't mind his analysis style (guy loves Kubrick):
Thread Tax: I recently watched "Hundreds of Beavers"; it was a great film, I fully recommend it. It's definitely best seen cold with as little spoiled as possible, so I won't discuss it further. Amazing what you can do with a simple story and a $50 budget.
Pale Rider is another supernatural Eastwood western although its far less dark and horrific than HPD. Still a good movie but much more of a straightforward "mysterious stranger appears in a small town to right wrongs".
Has anyone seen "From"? It's almost impossible to search for, given the generic name, so apologies if it's been brought up before.
I started watching the first episode earlier today, but only got far enough to hear the knockoff True Detective theme song (and knockoff Bradley Cooper in Limitless) before our tornado alarms went off and I had better things to do.
So far, it feels very 'LOST', probably nothing but endless mystery boxes and lore, but I never hear anyone talk about it, so maybe it's just a weird scifi show.
I’ve been watching it from the start and I do like it well enough. Season 4 just started airing so you’re coming it at a good time.
It’s a pretty fun show but they have definitely leaned into the mystery box schtick a little too much. Hopefully we start getting some definitive answers this season.
There is a thread for it but it’s pretty quiet.
I'm sadly running out of lee van Cleef westerns where he's in a major role/hero. I think I've got one or two left.
Still a decent amount of "modern" 70s flicks though!
The Perfect Killer 1977
Lee can Cleef is an ex thief turned contract Killer planning to retire from the business, but his last job involves the partners that left him to rot in jail. Revenge is not a simple thing to commit to, but he'll wish it was.
This was a quaint almost trashy 70's movie, im not sure I can recommend it to a casual movie goer but I got a lot of mileage out of it. The major draw is the kickass 70s Italian music, and the vibrant cinematography as lee drives around italy in vintage cars and walks around a time capsule of an era.
Oh and him occasionally shooting people
It's an odd mix of slow burn intrigue paced with frantic editing as Lee tries to decide what he's going to do. He's playing a hitman with a heart, but he's not a "good guy". He'll play nice If he knows you as a human being or your not part of the job, but otherwise a target is a target. At the end of the day Lee's tale is a a semi realistic look at hitman trying and failing to be moral in a world of scum.
There's a decent amount of boobs, the villain is a vibrant bastard and there's an amusing/horrifying scene of Italian tranny's trying to kill a dude. It's certainly unique and it had a pretty memorable (based) ending.
Recently watched Fight Against Evil 3 a new Chinese DTV action-comedy film starring Xie Miao as hard-nosed, straight-arrow detective Li Hongqi, who seems to be exasperated at times by how often he has to go up against criminals who'd rather fight than go quietly. Back in the mid-1990s, Miao co-starred a child martial arts prodigy in the Jet Li films New Legend of Shaolin and My Father is a Hero then went off the radar for a while, before returning to HK and Chinese film in the late 00s, and becoming a go-to lead for martial arts DTV and "web" movies. The first two films were dark and gritty, with comedic elements, this one goes from Northwestern China to the tropical island of Hainan, as Li prepares for his wedding to be held in this colorful locale, but runs up against a gang of human traffickers. Lots of body-slamming and people getting tossed into walls and vicious fight scenes.
It certainly has gotten me anticipating another upcoming action film, starring Miao and Joe Talsim, The Furious, where some considerable talent in front of and behind the camera was gathered, including director Kenji Tanigaki and fight choreographer Kensuke Sonomura, and stars like Joey Iwanaga, Yayan Ruhian and self-taught talent Brian Le, who runs with a group of grassroots martial artists/short film makers/choreographers called Martial Club, who have shorts and such up on Youtube. The hype on this film has been insane, that it takes martial arts fight choreography up a level or two.
I watched the Breadwinner from 2017. Good movie, first movie to make me consider supporting feminism, unironically. That girl deserves a good life.
Also 1990 Total Recall. Arnold is just playing Arnold, Ironside is playing Ironside, Cox is playing Cox but Sharon Stone is so hot. I think her in Total recall is one of the best looking female characters in the history of cinema.
It has two things I like: mountains and Bill Paxton. I need to find some kind of AI to scan audio for female screams and mute them. I'm saying this because I look at screenshots from this movie and I can already tell the chick on the poster probably makes animalistic shrieks every 5 minutes.
Pippin: I didn't think it would end this way. Gandalf: End? No, the journey doesn't end here. Death is just another path, one that we all must take. The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass, and then you see it. Pippin: What? Gandalf? See what? Gandalf: White shores, and beyond, a far green country under a swift sunrise. Pippin: Well, that isn't so bad. Gandalf: No. No, it isn't.
Now, films and TV shows about Dementia, in succession, do my tits in, but, at the risk of sounding like one of them annoyingly pretentious foreign language film snobs, this one does it quite subtly, as in, throughout the film, especially early on, it's hard to tell whether if he's always been odd, he has weird social cues, like laughing at a joke uncontrollably, hours after he heard it, or whether it's the illness spilling everything, every bit of self-control, or repressed feeling, out in the open, like a former serial killer somehow having Bendii Syndrome, as the nearest nerdy comparison I could think of.
He even does a cat and mouse game with the boyfriend of his daughter, who he's convinced is also a serial killer at large, and he goes through periods of seemingly genuine senility around him, and the young man gradually falls for it. Alright, I won't spoil any more of it.
I finally got around to watching James Gunn’s Superman (2025). I like that it didn’t have that dark, grimey filter that all CGI movies have nowadays. It was vibrant and colorful most of the time. The plot was all over the place and there was a lot of ”telling instead of showing” which I find incredibly lazy. Not a lot of animal torture in this one so props to Gunn for that.
I was trying to figure out which real life conflict they were drawing parallels to and thought I had nailed it with Russia/Ukraine (since the leader of the invading party is Slavic af). This all fell apart when the leader started speaking Serbian of all languages. Toward the end of the movie you get to see the country that’s getting invaded and everybody’s brown, so unless I’ve missed something and Serbia started bordering Bangladesh, I don’t think they’re trying to make any political statements.
I also watched Saw X (2023). I think I’ve only seen the first 5 movies so I was concerned that I’d have no idea what was going on, but it’s set somewhere between the first 5 movies so I lucked out.
The Jigsaw killer gets scammed and takes revenge on the people that screwed him. I like the premiss, storytelling and cinematography, but I spent the better part of the movie looking away and actually got nauseous at one point. Special effects have gotten too damn good or I have become a wuss.
It at least kept my interest which isn’t common for newly released movies. Unfortunately the ending was anticlimactic. They pulled the old, ”we made it look like the plan was failing but that was actually a part of the plan all along, gotcha!”, but they took it too damn far, making it seem implausible. It kinda made me a bit nostalgic though and Im probably going to revisit the old movies (and see if they were as gorey as this one, I don’t remember them being this bad).
Has anyone seen "From"? It's almost impossible to search for, given the generic name, so apologies if it's been brought up before.
I started watching the first episode earlier today, but only got far enough to hear the knockoff True Detective theme song (and knockoff Bradley Cooper in Limitless) before our tornado alarms went off and I had better things to do.
So far, it feels very 'LOST', probably nothing but endless mystery boxes and lore, but I never hear anyone talk about it, so maybe it's just a weird scifi show.
Exit 8 (2025)
Japanese guy gets trapped in a liminal space loop within a subway station and needs navigate through a series of anomalous hallways to find a way out.
Enjoyed it far more than I expected to. It's well shot, well acted, well put together. It's not groundbreaking cinema by any means but it's a fun time. It's based off a videogame and definitely one of the best adaptations I can think of.
Would heartily recommend if you're looking for a slightly different horror movie.
