Sulphur on 14/7/2024 at 11:05
I heard a lot about X as well as its prequel, Pearl, so I thought I'd give 'em a go. Saw X last night, and it's... interesting. It's a well-made movie, with a mean funny bone and classic slasher action. I'm not entirely sure it's more than somewhat above-average, though. Much has been made of it being a subversion of slasher tropes, and I suppose it does do that. There's a conversation it's trying to start about how the final girl isn't necessarily saved by innocence, but it doesn't quite get beyond that thesis point. Also, it's nice that an attempt to provide motivations for the villain was made, but it still lacks much in the way of emotional context, so it's a paper-thin premise for the bloodshed that follows. I suppose Pearl provides that, but I went with the release order, so X will have to stand or fall on its own merits and failures.
As is, it's punchy, gory, and ratchets up tension effectively. There's some neat editing, and the craft gone into creating it is plainly evident. Plus, the needle drops are perfectly placed (much love to the performance of Landslide that at once comes out of nowhere and is still very welcome). But it fails to do some heavy lifting in the text - there's a great conversation about sex and love, and the perspective shift needed if you're going to bone someone while you're in love with someone else, which is necessary if you're in the indie art cinema porno scene that these poor schlubs are trying to create. But it doesn't seem to say anything about what happens next; or if it did, I may have missed it completely.
Anyway, what I find myself most interested by and disapproving of at the same time is what the movie's saying about age. It comes across as unrealistic that the villains aren't spring chickens and yet they manage some kills that demand a certain level of physicality, but I think Ti West was betting that the audience was willing to overlook this in the name of bloodletting, and I think he was right. But more than that, I think the movie's central premise is really that growing old and what it robs you of is the real, monstrous enemy at the heart of why (almost) everyone in this film dies. There are a lot of lingering shots and sequences involving naked, wrinkled skin that are designed to inflict unease, disgust, and dread - and I'm not sure I ever saw a reason to not think of any of it as a cheap shot. There's even an overhead sex scene that's intended to make you heave while there's wrinkly heaving going on in front of you. I get it: being a fossil and still wanting to get your rocks off isn't attractive, because we're biologically wired to be repulsed by it. But in a movie that appears to place a lot of focus on who's doing the killing and why, it does a really bad job of portraying anyone as more than a one-dimensional straight line. This is a problem, because while it's subverted the idea of morally policing sex via crazed bogeyman, it's transferred the problem in retrograde fashion to agesim. This cheapens the end result, because it could have been more thoughtful, had the capacity to be, but instead just says, 'old people, yikes forever' instead. So really, a net zero in that department.
It's still a good slasher film though, let me not take that away from it.
Anyway, on to Pearl. I'm pretty sure it won't save X from its problems, but hopefully it does more with its premise.
rachel on 14/7/2024 at 14:03
I watched Red Notice earlier this week, it was as exciting as a stale burger. Shoulda known.
mxleader on 15/7/2024 at 03:07
Quote Posted by rachel
I watched
Red Notice earlier this week, it was as exciting as a stale burger. Shoulda known.
Every movie with The Rock and what's his name are usually very saltine cracker like.
rachel on 15/7/2024 at 15:15
Quote Posted by mxleader
Every movie with The Rock and what's his name are usually very saltine cracker like.
Agree in general. The
Jumanji movies were surprisingly good imho but it was thanks to the ensemble cast not just Johnson. RR's Netflix streak has been underwhelming indeed to say the least, no surprise there.
Sulphur on 15/7/2024 at 15:30
He's reliably workmanlike, which can be boring sometimes, but I gotta say I loved his voice role in Moana.
vurt on 15/7/2024 at 15:43
Pearl (2022). Horror/crime. The main actress did an excellent performance, quite unsettling and really graphic at times. 6.5/10
Hot Rod (2007). Comedy. Kind of enjoyed this, super goofy. Not as good as Napoleon Dynamite though, another movie about nerds. This movie is really self aware, which can sometimes be good/fun but also come of as a bit lazy when you can see that the actor doesn't give a shit that his performance is bad. But it's balanced in a good way. 6/10
Hobbit movies (The Battle of the Five Edits, fan edit). Really enjoyable, way tighter than the originals. The last part being the worst, still. I'm super glad they made these movies, and i do think i enjoy rewatching these more than LOTR, but i would still not rank them as high. 8/10
mxleader on 29/7/2024 at 03:34
I watched Deadpool and Deadpool 2 today for the first time ever. I thought that I had seen them before but maybe I started them and realized that I couldn't watch them in front of my kid and then didn't go back to them until today. Now my bunghole is thoroughly prepared to go see Deadpool & Wolverine soon. I'm sure it will be disappointing though. Maybe not. The first movie was awesome and shocking for a Marvel movie. The second one was less shocking but had more humor I think. There were parts of the second movie that probably could have been edited down because they seemed to make the movie longer than it needed to be. Now I've seen everything up through Wandavision.
Tocky on 10/8/2024 at 02:28
McKenna's Gold. I saw this when I was a preteen last and then three times recently. I ran across it on Movieland channel which has a lot of good free movies from the seventies and back. I watched it by myself and then with my sister when she came to visit then last on Cinevault TV on accident. Movieland has a lot of good old films but also a lot of crap. They have Omega Man and The Dirty Dozen and things everyone should see once in their lives and then a lot of crap nobody should ever see. This is one western you should see.
It starts out with an old Apache Indian making his way across the desert. If you can stand to last through the buzzard song (an odd one) then it gets good. The Indian shoots at Gregory Peck who is a sheriff because he thinks he is following him but actually Peck is following the outlaws who are after the Indian. Peck is a better shot (from the hip which is bullshit) and hits the Indian. As he dies he tells of a valley of gold, way more than Jack London's "All Gold Valley", and shows Peck a map which Peck burns because he doesn't believe this crap. The old guy dies and only in Pecks memory is the map which is lucky because the outlaws show up and outgun him.
It's a long and interesting tale and with a moral much as "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre". Imagine if one of the bullshit tales of gold turned out to be true. Imagine streaks of gold six feet wide and thousands of feet across. Imagine more gold than ever existed in total in one place. Imagine the gold fever of men. Imagine only one man hasn't that fever and doesn't believe. Imagine he is wrong.
Also it has Telly Savalis and Lurch from the Adams family. Even better, it has a naked Julie Newmar, the only Catwoman I will ever have a crush on. My first crush in fact. She is an Apache with a crush on Peck. It's a good movie. Before there was a Raiders of the Lost Ark there was this movie. Worth watching for the shear amount of gold but also for the tale itself. A western for every treasure hunters secret heart.
Neb on 18/8/2024 at 19:31
Quote:
03/03/24 - Trees Lounge
03/03/24 - Pinocchio and the Emperor of the Night
15/03/24 - Metropolis
31/03/24 - Aliens
01/04/24 - Talladega Nights
06/04/24 - True Lies
06/04/24 - Caché
07/04/24 - Christine
08/04/24 - Three Colours Blue
16/04/24 - Glengarry Glen Ross
16/04/24 - The Fifth Element
17/04/24 - Conan the Barbarian
17/04/24 - Scream
04/05/24 - Eye In The Sky
10/05/24 - Halloween
11/05/24 - Naked
14/05/24 - Another Year
18/05/24 - High Hopes
18/05/24 - The Man From Earth
21/05/24 - Career Girls
21/05/24 - Honey I Shrunk the Kids
25/05/24 - Being There
26/05/24 - I, Daniel Blake
27/05/24 – Happy-Go-Lucky
11/06/24 - The Matrix
29/06/24 - Blow Out
07/07/24 - Sherlock Holmes
13/07/24 - The Enemy Below
21/07/24 - Ron's Gone Wrong
16/08/24 - Menace II Society
17/08/24 - Persona
17/08/24 - Letters from Iwo Jima
I have seen Metropolis twice now, both screenings with a live soundtrack performance. Last time (2001) was a small avant-garde orchestra and it was wild, so I wasn't expecting a single guy on a keyboard to do it justice - but he did a fantastic job. After a couple of minutes you forget it's not part of the original.
I also watched and rewatched a bunch of Mike Leigh (couldn't help myself) and saw Naked for the first time. It really was something else. It has so much sexual violence in it that it's hard to see it being made this side of the 90s, but I'd recommend it.
[video=youtube;TdKPbyvS0qc]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdKPbyvS0qc[/video]
