Original Movies (not sequel, not reboot, not spin-off)
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The Machine (2023) directed by Peter Atencio
Comedy. I like this one, surprisingly a lot more than I thought I would. Story follows a stand-up comedian telling jokes about his experience with Russian organized crime when he took a trip to Russia as a college student. The comedian's story attracted the attention of a Russian mob boss that then led to the comedian being kidnapped to Russia. The comedian's father also shows up attempting to save the comedian. Within the Russian mob family, the mob boss' children are also busy trying to hurt one another as they vie to inherit the mob family from the sick, aging mob boss. The comedian and his father got caught in all this. Hilarity ensues.
I expected laughs, this movie delivered. I did not expect much heart or emotional tug, but the movie delivered those too, in spades. That elevated the movie from comedy into something quite a bit more.
The mob boss' daughter started out really cold, giving out that stereotypical assassin ice queen boss lady sort of vibe. She gets slightly warmer as the movie progress. But at the end she cracks two killer jokes that floored me. Seemingly coming out of nowhere, completely out of character for her, yet somehow fits so brilliantly in the movie overall, her last joke is like a bow that wraps up the movie nicely.
Highly recommended. Heck, watch it as a Father's Day movie with your adult children.
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Sanctuary (2022) directed by Zachary Wigon
Psycho drama? More like a two person play than a movie. It involves two people playing psychological domination games, a business man paying a professional to do so. It's about people playing psychological games, so lots of contrition in the plot. Nice ending, but most the rest of the movie felt like a waste of time.
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@89th and @Aqua-Letifer how do you feel about Ax stealing your movie review format? I feel you should get a cut of the revenue from this thread.
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@Horace said in Original Movies (not sequel, not reboot, not spin-off):
@89th and @Aqua-Letifer how do you feel about Ax stealing your movie review format? I feel you should get a cut of the revenue from this thread.
I don't feel threatened. Reading Ax's movie reviews is like reading a peer-reviewed study on Reggae.
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@Horace said in Original Movies (not sequel, not reboot, not spin-off):
@89th and @Aqua-Letifer how do you feel about Ax stealing your movie review format? I feel you should get a cut of the revenue from this thread.
I'd comment but litigation is pending.
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I guess you could call this a remake, but it's a very original take on the classic story of Frankenstein.
Link to videoSet in present day Los Angeles and told entirely from the perspective of the Monster. After he is artificially created, then left for dead by a husband-and-wife team of eccentric scientists, Adam is confronted with nothing but aggression and violence from the world around him. This perfect creation-turned disfigured monster must come to grips with the horrific nature of humanity.
Very interesting take on the story. In the beginning, nothing is said about how the "monster" is created - it just happens in the lab of Victor (Danny Huston) and Elizabeth (Carrie-Anne Moss) Frankenstein.
Lots of allusions to the classic story (the mob that tries to kill the monster, the little girl, the poor isolated man) set in a contemporary story.
Exceptionally violent and gory.
I'm not sure it brings anything new to the tale, but it's an interesting take, and, in its own way, kind of faithful to Shelly's book.
2 ½ stars. Worth a watch, perhaps, if you're into this kind of thing.
https://www.dreadcentral.com/reviews/124226/frankenstein-2015/
Melodramatic at turns, Bernard Rose’s Frankenstein is nonetheless a remarkably affecting piece of filmmaking sporting some wince-inducing gore and extreme violence. Scenes are held together via passages narrated by the monster himself, speaking eloquently and deeply about his and the human condition – but it doesn’t quite fit with the character that we’re watching and his narrative trajectory, especially given the film’s ending.
We already know that Adam’s trial can’t end well, but the key to Rose’s tale is that we, as the audience, can’t help but hold out hope that it will – that perhaps after all this time humanity would have learned to treat the unfortunate with compassion rather than distrust and disgust.
Highly intelligent and deeply wounding, Frankenstein stands as a stark reminder that in these so-called enlightened times, we still haven’t made it that far.
I loved Shelly's book when I read it. Perhaps it deserves another read.
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Reading Ax's movie reviews is like reading a peer-reviewed study on Reggae.
Too funny.
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The Devil's Own
Link to videoShort summary - Brad Pitt plays an IRA terrorist (!) who comes to the US to buy missiles for use against the government. Through a connection, he's given a place to stay - the home of a NYC cop (Harrison Ford) who knows nothing about Pitt's mission.
Contrived and silly. Fun to watch Pitt's Irish accent, and Ford is, well, Ford. Rumor is that Pitt was going to drop out because it was so bad.
Yeah, 1 ½ stars.
Collateral
Link to videoTom Cruise plays the bad guy, a hitman who has to carry out several hits before the night is out. He hijacks a cab to transport him around as he goes from job to job.
Contrived, and not as silly as The Devil's Own, but, c'mon, man! Cruise is OK as the bad guy, and that's unexpected. He does a very credible job. But the coincidence of who the cabbie's first fare of the night is and later events is stooopid.
Two, maybe 2 ½ stars.
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"The Green Book"
A feel-good (mostly true) story about a bouncer ("Tony Lip) from the Copacabana, looking for work while the club is being remodeled, gets a job chauffeuring noted jazz pianist, Don Shirley. Shirley's on tour from New York to the deep south in 1962.
Viggo Mortensen is unrecognizable as Tony Lip (he put on 45 lb), and Mahershala Ali does a great job of faking playing piano.
Small, but very satisfying movie that explores racial animus, friendship and music. Worth the rental.
Link to videoIt’s pure formula, of course. Two men—one white, one black—from polar opposite backgrounds with wildly contrasting personalities get thrown together under unusual circumstances. They learn from each other, change each other for the better and discover that—guess what?—they’re not so different after all.
“Green Book” is all that and more: It also takes place while the two men are driving across the American South during 1962, so it contains multiple formulas at once. It’s the mismatched-buddy road trip movie with a message about race relations, arriving in theaters at the height of awards season and the holidays, just in time to make us all feel better about the world—or at least give us a brief glimmer of hope during this period of political and ideological division. As an added bonus, it also happens to have been inspired by a true story.
But damned if it doesn’t work beautifully for nearly the entirety of its two hour-plus running time. “Green Book” is the kind of old-fashioned filmmaking big studios just don’t offer anymore. It’s glossy and zippy, gliding along the surface of deeply emotional, complex issues while dipping down into them just enough to give us a taste of some actual substance.
The trailer makes it look sillier than it is.
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Elemental (2023) directed by Peter Sohn
Disney animation. Good music, nice enough plot, good production in general. Visual style looks a bit like "Inside Out" to me. Have the usual Disney morals about be/accepting yourself and importance of family and such. Don't the take physics seriously. Entertaining and a good family movies to watch with young kids.
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The Blackening (2023) directed by Tim Story
A black slasher comedy; black as in the cast of main characters is almost all black. Among the jokes is when most of the main characters are black, who dies first? And at the end of the slashing ordeal, the survivors still don't want to call the police -- a play on #BLM, why risk being shot by cops after surviving a psychotic murderer? The survivors called the Fire Department instead, and they suffered some indignities from the FD anyway. Don't take the film too seriously, just laugh along and it's an entertaining enough movie.
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Adipurush (2023) directed by Om Raut
Hindi film based on mythology in the Ramayana. The plot is about the gods/demigods, some good, some bad, battling each other for one reason or another. Seems to me the producer/director really tried to make it an EPIC (which it is in the Ramayana) but somehow doesn't quite make it -- and this is a common theme in reason Bollywood fantasy "epics"; they try, sincerely, but somehow the CGI and cinematography are just not quite there. Still, a good enough production.
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No Hard Feelings (2023) directed Gene Stupnitsky
Comedy. Plot is around a crass, down-on-her-luck 32 year old woman being hired by a rich couple to date/seduce their 19 year old boy out of his low self-esteem shell. Most of the jokes are around the woman's advances failing in the face of the boy's social awkwardness. A bit surprised to see Jennifer Lawrence exhibiting full frontal nudity and fighting fully nude in the movie, not in a "sexy" way but in a Borat-like cringey and laughable way. No idea how the producer/director talked Lawrence into it, but she pulled it off admirably. Nothing ground breaking, but an entertaining movie nonetheless.
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Asteroid City (2023) directed by Wes Anderson
Very good movie. Not really in the visual style I like (rather "retro," most of the set looks like a stage for a play rather than a movie), but I enjoyed the movie. It's a complex movie, with play inside play, multiple parallel plots, etc. So, being entertained aside, it keeps the brain engaged. Direction and acting are all top notched. If you feel like watching something "not stupid" or "not braindead," this is a good one to watch.
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Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken (2023) directed by Kirk DeMicco
A DreamWorks animation that "flip the script" somewhat by make the krakens "good" and the mermaids "bad" to start. Has the usual cartoon-for-kids morals about accepting yourself and the importance of family and such. I get the sense that the target audience are "girls" rather than "children" in general. Certainly has that DreamWorks quality and is a good production. Good family movie to watch with kids.
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Joy Ride (2023) directed by Adele Lim
Asian-American comedy, second generation, post-Crazy Rich Asians. A lot of self-awareness for being second generation Asian-Americans. The plot revolves around an Asian young woman who was adopted by a white couple embarking on a journey to China to look for her birth mother, then ended up finding out that her mother is actually Korean. Of course she has a cast of wacky friends who tag along. Many crass, cringey, contrived jokes. Not the best in the genre, unfortunately.
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Shortcomings (2023) directed by Randall Park
Asian-American drama. The movie centers around a young Asian-American man with innate character flaws. He wants to be a great filmmaker, yet he could not help making decisions that screw up his relationships and his own life. In many ways, that character reminds me of Adam Sandler's character in Uncut Gems (2019) -- well-intentioned, but cannot help his self-destruction turns after turns.
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Theater Camp (2023) directed by Molly Gordon and Nick Lieberman
Basically a musical-comedy whose plot is about a bunch of misfit summer theater campers putting up a show to save their beloved theater camp from foreclosure. Though formulaic in many ways, it's entertaining enough as a musical-comedy. And of course there is that "final number" that the protagonist struggled to compose that comes together beautifully at the end to save the show -- I don't really think the song/music is all that remarkable, but ultimately find the lyrics moving.
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Jules (2023) directed by Marc Turtletaub
Sci-fi/drama, ET for old people. The story is about some senior citizens in a small town finding then befriending an extra-terrestrial who crash landed in someone's backyard. The senior citizens have their quirks and the ET performed a few miracles. No big action, nothing iconic like the Spielberg ET riding a bike that flies across the moon. Still, a nice movie with some subtleties.
