The Last Movie You Watched

[Rev. Rye]

FINALLY got to watch The House that Jack Built on DVD. When I heard the news of its Cannes premiere in 2018, this was my reaction:





While the violence was significantly tamer than I had been building up in my head (the ducking scene in particular was a lot less horrible than I had been expecting; that little guy’s real leg is still clearly tucked under there after Jack supposedly cuts it off), it still ended up being, well, Von Trier’s best work since Dogville. In particular, it feels like he learned from the self-indulgence of Nymphomaniac, making the digressions work for the film, and an ending that really feels like the logical conclusion, especially after it becomes clear that this is also a riff on the Divine Comedy as much as a serial killer film, creating a legitimate catharsis wholly absent from his last film. And this end credits music seems to be the icing on the cake:

[Mister Agenda]

Underwater and The Turning. I'm not saying Underwater features Cthulhu, but it's Cthulhu. The Turning is an adaptation of The Turn of the Screw by Henry James, which I should have been able to pick up from the trailers but didn't.

[brewer]

Bubba Ho-Tep. I like Bruce Campbell movies.

[onlinebiker]

Bubba Ho-Tep. I like Bruce Campbell movies.

I have a copy on DVD.

fun movie..

[The Valkyrie]

Not a movie, but I watched Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman.

8/10

[Silver]

Midsommar.

It was actually rather good.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

'Alita: Battle Angel'.

What a plotless, themeless, pointless piece of utter dreck. Plot holes you could drive an articulated lorry through, a completely unconvincing love story, distracting CGI (it should add to a film, not take away from it), and a societal back story that gives every impression of bad fan fiction all combine to make what looks like the fourth-place finisher in a student film competition.  People tell me the manga are better - they'd have to be.

Someone needs to grab Christoph Waltz by the shoulders, shake him really hard, and remind him that he's better than this.

0/10

Boru

[Rev. Rye]

This week in the Deep Hurting Project is a film with a reputation: Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever. As I write this, it has 118 reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. Not a single one of them is positive. The only film that comes close is One Missed Call, the worst live-action film I have ever seen. That's one Hell of a reputation to live up to. So, how does it hold up?

• Well, this early fight scene certainly sets the tone for the rest of the film:
  
  
  It's like it was made by a Martian who decided to assimilate some schlocky turn-of-the-millennium action movies and turn out scenes based on their cliches, regardless of whether or not they work in context, or even make sense, like having an assassin who wears a hooded cloak, kickboxing some guys who are just driving into an alleyway, with fog because it looks cool, and some nu-metal/N64 music hybrid blaring in some attempt at making it look badass, but failing to give the audience a reason to give a shit. And there's dozens of scenes like this throughout the movie.
• Jeremiah Ecks? That's really the name you're going with? And he's a retired FBI agent who left the job after his wife was killed in a car bombing. And apparently, the FBI faked her death and decided only now to tell him about it. Dafuq?
  
• The big MacGuffin of the movie: an implant called Softkill that can be implanted inside a human body and can cause heart attacks at will. It apparently removes the human factor somehow, even though you still have to get close enough to inject it into someone, and, of course, the assassin's going to know what's going down.  And why does it look like a frog?
  
• Why does the Vancouver Public Library look like a mall? And why are all these DIA agents ready and waiting to attack her? And why is nobody all that shocked that AMERICAN AGENTS are publicly wreaking havoc in a foreign nation? And why did we have to see some guy trying to rape some girl? And why didn't they notice the shootout that was happening just feet away? And why do Vancouver's garage doors have all the strength of styrofoam?
  
• So, we go from this massacre in Vancouver, to Antonio Banderas just staring awkwardly at an Asian girl for a few minutes.
  
• This scene of Sever playing with the files for SoftKill would be so much more interesting if anything was happening. Hell, she hasn't even killed the kid she kidnapped. Oh, yeah, she kidnapped a kid. It's apparently the son of the head of the DIA, who was injected with SoftKill  BY HIS FATHER to transport it safely to America from Berlin, despite it killing within a few hours. The rudiments of a plot this film has are so hard to follow that I've had to resort to the Agony Booth's recap just so I could know what was even going on.
  
• And, apparently, there's officially no inquiry and everyone involved was suspended. This is what happens when the FBI decides to start going to Hell in CANADA.
  
• Why is Ecks' wife's photo in his FBI file?
  
• And why is Lucy Liu making a paper crane while she's talking on the phone? Is it because she's Asian? And why the fuck does she have Tefillin on her hands?
  
• Why are the Vancouver PD so dead-set on fucking up Antonio Banderas when a lot of people witnessed Lucy Liu declaring war on the Vancouver Public Library? And why is he alone on the prison bus, not in shackled, and with a paper clip ready to jimmy the lock?
  
• ...please tell me that isn't "Train Kept a-Rollin" playing while Antonio Banderas on the bus.
  
• Wow. A motorcycle that's just ready and waiting for Antonio Banderas to ride. Does Vancouver have a free Motorcycle-sharing program? And it's interesting to see that they can stack used cars on top of each other.
  
• It's incredible, every big action scene that doesn't make sense is followed by an extremely quiet scene of discussions that don't make sense.
  
• And now, it looks like Sever was apparently on Ecks' side all along, since she hands him his wife's address. So, there's no real vs., they have one scene where they fight, and they're together for the second half of the movie.
  
  
  Say what you will about Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice. At least that titular conflict was actually a big part of the movie. Sure, they eventually figure out that they didn't need to fight each other, but at least the title wasn't fucking lying to us, even if it was a letdown.
• So, apparently, there was this ludicrously convoluted plot involving multiple car bombings, Ecks and his wife thinking the other died, and nobody checking to follow up on it for several years.
  
• Did Antonio Banderas forget his own character's first name? It's Jeremiah, not Jeremy. 
  
• Here's a foolproof method of suicide: every time you see an action movie cliche in this film, take a shot. Try it, and before the credits roll, YOU. WILL. DIE. Hell, you probably won't even live to see Antonio Banderas slow-walk past the explosion.
  
• It's really a testament to how little plot the last third of the movie has that part six of the Agony Booth's six-part recap opens before the one-hour mark. Of this 91-minute-4-second film.
  

• Why is Gant surprised that his son tested positive for KillSoft when it kills within hours and the span of the movie has been longer than that?
  

Well, overall, this is surprisingly not the worst film in the Project. Perhaps in the hands of someone who knew what they were doing, and with some massive script rewrites, this could actually be decent. Antonio Banderas is good, as is usual, even if everything else is stupid as Hell, but then again, this is probably what you should expect from a director who goes by the name Kaos. Although, to be fair, that's actually not so much a pseudonym as an abbreviation of Wych Kaosayananda's actual name. It's not like One Missed Call when Margaret Cho's giving a performance that's clearly phoned in and you realise she's STILL putting far more effort than anyone else involved. That said, I don't think there's another film in the Project that was this incoherent.

[Rev. Rye]

Just watched Joker.

I think this may very well be my favorite film of the 2010s. Why?





Because, as it turns out, we live in a society.

[OakTree500]

The Foreigner

Plot:
A terrorist attack by a group from Ireland/Northern Ireland causes the death of a young Chinese girl. Her father, an aged up Jackie Chan, wants to find out who did this and take his vengeance upon them. It turns out that he is a former American Special Forces Trained Vietnam survivor, and uses his skill to hunt down the bombers. Pierce Brosnan also stars as a Northern Irish minister who also is trying to locate the bombers.

Thoughts:
This was awesome. Not your usual Jackie Chan romp, but a more serious film for Chan to show off his actual acting ability . Brosnan also shines in what seems to be his best role in years. Awesome movie and well worth a watch!