Name & Rate the Movies/TV You've Watched.

[AJG]

Arcane - FULL PRICE. WATCH THIS SHOW IMMEDIATELY!!!

 

I had to rewatch this show just to be sure. This thing is just damn fine. Fantastic and inventive animation for those of us that have grown tired of the standardised style seen in Disney, Dreamworks, and Illumination. Interesting and beautifully designed characters at all corners. 

The action is just spectacular, fluid like a cartoon but snappy like a comic book panel. It’s like an evolution of the action seen in Spider-Verse.
The relationship between the two lead sisters is heartbreaking and I just want the absolute world for them, it’s also a great anchor as the show builds the world around them.  There’s an actual LGBT relationship forming at the centre of the show, not a weird 2 second afterthought handhold like in Legend of Korra, or a single line of Tumblr fan service like in Loki. The Jayce and Victor story may be a little cliché but I think there’s great promise for what it could bring to season 2.
The idea that this thing came such a small looking top-down game like League of Legends is mind blowing. I downloaded League to see what the game actually is after watching the show and still can’t believe it.

seriously - what the fuck is this?

 

This game has no story apart from paragraph long character descriptions online and some tie-in YouTube vids. The central relationship between the 2 sisters in the show is apparently the result of fans misunderstanding one of the in-game character taunts. This show is a fucking miracle. A Spider-Verse for video games. Between ‘Maya And The Three’ and ‘Arcane,’ Netflix are about to start running TV animation. I don’t think I’ve heard of a new popular Cartoon Network or Nick show in quite a while.

[lorddemaxus]

3 hours ago, AJG said:

The idea that this thing came such a small looking top-down game like League of Legends is mind blowing. I downloaded League to see what the game actually is after watching the show and still can’t believe it.

seriously - what the fuck is this?

 

What's this shitty mobile version of the game? And honestly, considering the amount of lore in the game (which I personally never gave a shit about), not that hard to make a TV show about it. 

 

I really need to get to watching this tho as someone who spent a lot of time (more than I'm willing to admit) into this game. The first episode was a bore, but I'm giving it the benefit of the doubt. Most first episodes are boring.

Edited November 30, 2021 by lorddemaxus

[Ronin46]

A Prophet (2009) - French thriller about an Arab convict who changes in his time in jail.  9/10 (my 2nd viewing after a 10 year gap)

 

Le Samourai (1967) - Alain Delon is a hired killer. Stylish and cool. Delon is probable my favourite french actor. 8.5.10 (3rd viewing)

 

 

[TheDude391]

1. After Hours - 9/10
2. Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time - 8/10 Really underseen film from this year, lovely directorial debut that's dripping in atmosphere.
3. Taxi Driver - 10/10
4. Eternals - 7.5/10
5. Thunder Road - 8/10
6. The Wolf of Wall Street - 5/10 An hour too long, I don't mind films where utterly detestable characters are your protagonists but these guys are beyond obnoxious. Rob Reiner the GOAT in this. 
7. The Irishman - 10/10 Mean Streets is my personal favourite but I think this may be his best film? Sits alongside Once Upon a Time in America as the greatest gangster films.
8. Lost Highway - 8/10
9. Mulholland Drive - 10/10
10. Dune (2021) - 9/10 Third time seeing in IMAX, only thing holding it back from a 10 is that it's half a story.
11. One Man Up - 6/10 Paolo Sorrentino's debut film is extremely hard to find. Had to import a European DVD, rip it to my PC then add subtitles that I found online since the disc had no English. Was hoping it'd be better after the effort put into watching it but still good.
12. King of New York - 9/10 My favourite Abel Ferrara that I've seen.
13. The Animatrix - 7/10 An anthology of some of the best and worst stories in the series. Worth a watch for Second Renaissance alone which should have been given an entire miniseries or film.
14. Unforgiven - 10/10
15. The Consequences of Love - 9/10 Extremely underseen and underrated film, highly reccomended.
16. The Straight Story - 10/10 Top tier David Lynch.
17. The Family Friend - 6/10
18. House - 8/10
19. Boss Level - 8/10 Really fun spin on the Groundhog Day concept, but this time as a pulpy action comedy, super fun time.
20. The Evil That Men Do - 6/10 
21. Il Divo - 8/10 One of the most insane political biopics I've ever seen.
22. Zeros and Ones - 8/10 Abel Ferrara the GOAT. The most radical art film of the year, entirely incomprehensible but so enthralling as a tone piece. The best Covid movie.
23. This Must Be The Place - 7/10 Nothing in my life prepared me for goth rocker Sean Penn. 
24. Planes, Trains and Automobiles - 10/10
25. The Power of the Dog - 9/10 My first Jane Campion and it blew me away. Second favourite of the year (behind Last Duel)
26. The Great Beauty - 10/10 One of the best films of the 2010s, an overwhelming and touching experience that hits me just as hard every time I see it. 
27. The Battle At Lake Changjin - 7/10 The biggest film of the year! Genuinely the most fun I had at a theatre all year, absolutely absurd levels of nationalism and dunking on the US, chuckled throughout. I'm Canadian but it was funny to see "our side" as the bad guys in a movie for once. The large scale war scenes were fantastic, great to see 100s of real physical people charging on screen.

[FilmFincher]

NOVEMBER

 

Movies

 

Ponyo - 9/10 - This is one of the most adorable films I’ve ever seen.

Bride of Frankenstein - 8/10 

Ghostbuster: Afterlife - 8/10 - This was incredibly heartwarming, I found myself preferring it to most of the superhero fare this year, both from a technical perspective and an emotional one. 

The French Dispatch - 8/10 - Charming, whimsical, I liked Jeffrey Wright’s story the most. Lacks the depth of other Andersons but I chalk that up to the format.

Creature from the Black Lagoon - 7.5/10 

Spencer - 7.5/10 - Kristen Stewart in incredible in this, the film is a little repetitive at times, needed a stronger sense of escalation. Heavy ‘The Shining’ vibes throughout. 

tick, tick…BOOM! - 7/10 

Mandy - 7/10 

Stir of Echoes - 6.5/10 

The Harder They Fall - 6.5/10 - A little generic and slow in the middle but it’s sure and confident in it’s style as opposed to another film I saw this month. 

Red Notice - 6/10 - Chemistry was surprisingly solid all round, and the final cameo had me rolling. 

The Mummy (1932) - 6/10 

Airplane II - 6/10 - The best gags are callbacks to the first but it’s fun enough.

Eternals - 5/10 

Loch Ness - 5/10 - An attempted nostalgia hit, I vaguely remember this film as a child. Probably should have left it that way.

Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man - 4.5/10 

End of Days - 4/10 

Gunpowder Milkshake - 2.5/10 - Trying so hard to be this cool pop-y Wright/Tarantino/Rodriguez mashup but falls flat at every turn. Everything is stilted. Lena Headey is always fantastic though.

 

 

 

 

TV

 

Arcane - 9.5/10 - I fell in love with this show straight away. Completely unfamiliar with the game, the strongest thing about it is that it’s driven by the characters and emotions of the story. It’s really a tale of two sisters at it’s core and it’s an emotional rollercoaster. Never gets bogged down in the lore or world, strikes a nice balance. The animation, style, action, voice-acting, score are all top notch. I love the world/characters. 

 

If had some nitpicks it’s that it can be a little idiosyncratic with it’s editing style (namely in cross cutting). Sometimes the music video per episode was great, other times it was meh. There's a couple of contrivances as well but it is an action heavy show that moves at a pace so it's too be expected. 

 

But outside of that I freaking loved it. I’m obsessed, can’t get enough of it. 

[Joel M]

Zombieland 2. Nothing paycheck movie for everyone involved, good for them.

F9. Eeh. It's fine but I expected way more from Justin Lin's return to the franchise.

The Breadwinner. Decent if not a little cloying, probably the weakest cartoon saloon movie.

Shang Chi. A marvel movie.

The Green Knight. My favourite Lowery film and quite easily one of my favorite movies this year. Dev Patel is just sensational here.

Candyman. It's so obvious but it didn't bother me. It has a great vibe from start to finish.

Barb and Star go... Really funny, best comedy in quite some time. Baffled that Wiig didn't push stuff like this earlier and closer to her Bridesmaids afterglow.

Dune. Love it, already seen it too many times. I might even love the anticlimactic ending.

Secret life of pets 2. This weirdly has a surprising structure that basically seperates everyone in 3 different stories for most of the runtime. Ofc they do nothing with it, it's an Illumination movie.

Fantasy Island. I feel most Blumhouse movies lately just wanna be like the dumb fun teen movies that went extinct some time ago but they always have to shehorn in a horror angle because that's the brand.

Tick Tick Boom. Not my cup of tea. Garfield is very good though.

Jungle Cruise. Fun first half, cursed 2nd half.

The Last Black Man in San Fransisco. Beautiful, magical, almost surreal. Can't believe I let this movie pass me by when it came out. Jonathan Majors is so vunerable in this I just wanna hug him.

Don't Go Breaking my Heart. Apparently Netflix has Johnnie To movies. Just a great rom com beautifully shot by a master.

Red Notice. Nope.

Annette. I love Holy Motors but this was mostly cringe.

The Mexican. People must reclaim this movie someday as a whole, not just Gandolfini's performance.

West Side Story. The old one. The brownface will always look comically bad to my modern eyes, but everything else is best musical of all time material.

 

[CoolioD1]

Hellbound - this was ass. after the train to busan sequel and now this show this director is starting to look like a one hit wonder to me. stupid AND slow the worst combo.

Spoiler

though switching almost the whole main cast halfway through the season was an interesting gambit. would love to see what a good show could do with that. didn't really work here because they ended up dumping their one decent character

 

Spencer - lmao. no.

 

The Power of the Dog - loved this. perfectly directed unsettling slow burn. i did think in the early goings Cumberbatch was miscast in this type of role but he makes sense the deeper it gets into the narrative.

[Ozymandias]

JOKER - Phoenix is obviously great from start to finish, even a bit disturbingly so in a few moments, but I think the first 2/3rds of this movie aren't nearly as good as the final act where things start to pick up.   To me, its one of those movies thats by no means terrible but I'll probably never watch again because its dour subject matter.

 

I will say though that after finally seeing this, it makes all that media "controversy" surrounding it look even worse in hindsight.  While watching this, I never once felt like this was "incel-y" or could be seen as pro-violence... its a movie about mental fucking illness and the shittiness of classism, lol.   Every movie critic and pundit who said this was an incel movie that promotes violence should be absolutely embarrassed.  Lol good job, your tedious manufactured outrage no doubt help give the world its first billion dollar R-rated film.

[Eric Duncan]

I spent all of December watching 25 separate adaptations of A Christmas Carol, one per day, because I hate myself. Was definitely an interesting experience to say the least, but I can't say I didn't have a good time.

 

Ranking them all:

 

1. The Muppet Christmas Carol

2. The Richard Williams animated one

3. Mickey's Christmas Carol

4. The George C. Scott one

5. The Jim Carrey mocap one

6. The Alastair Sim one

7. The Reginald Owen one

8. The Guy Pearce miniseries

9. Carol For Another Christmas

10. The Smurfs one

11. The Seymour Hicks one

12. Bugs Bunny's Christmas Carol

13. Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol

14. The Man Who Invented Christmas

15. A Flintstones Christmas Carol

16. The Albert Finney one

17. The Patrick Stewart one

18. The Barbie one

19. Scrooged

20. Bah, Humduck! A Looney Tunes Christmas

21. The Tim Curry animated one

22. The Kate Winslet/Nicolas Cage animated one

23. Ghosts of Girlfriends Past

24. An American Christmas Carol

25. An American Carol

 

I really thought people were capping when they said the Muppets one was the best, but like...shit man, that one hits hard. Everything there just clicks. Scrooged was a huge disappointment though. Just a bizarre, inconsistent, cruel mess of a film.

[TheDude391]

1. Last Night in Soho - 5/10
2. Youth - 8/10
3. Rocky IV - 8/10
4. The Matrix - 10/10
5. The Making of Rocky vs. Drago by Sylvester Stallone - 8.5/10 A feature length behind the scenes of Sly reediting Rocky IV during the pandemic ended up being one of the best behind the scenes film docs I've seen in years. Cool look at the post production process and an incredibly intimate portrait of an older artist reflecting on the sins of his youth, Sly's equivalent to a late era Eastwood film.
6. Rocky vs: Drago Directors Cut - 8/10 Missed the robot but it was a great experience to see a childhood favourite in a new way on the big screen.
7. Who's That Knocking At My Door - 6/10
8. Universal Soldier - 7.5/10 The only good Roland Emmerich film.
9. Drive My Car - 7/10
10. Benedetta - 8/10 God Verhoeven.
11. Bound - 9/10
12. Nightmare Alley (1947) - 8/10
13. Universal Soldier: Regeneration - 6/10
14. Loro - 7/10
15. The Beta Test - 7/10
16. The Matrix Reloaded - 9/10
17. The Hand of God - 9/10 One of my favourite films of 2021, so beautiful and touching.
18. Nightmare Alley (2021) - 8/10
19. The Souvenir - 4/10
20. Siberia - 7/10 Abel Ferrara making the two most incomprehensible art films of the year between this and Zeros and Ones.
21. The French Dispatch - 9/10 Not a big Anderson fan generally outside of his animation but I thought this was his best live action work.
22. The Matrix Revolutions - 8/10
23. Copshop - 8/10 
24. Quo vadis, Aida? - 9/10 The most heart wrenching film of 2021 that needs to be seen by more people. Exceptional stuff.
25. Cloud Atlas - 9/10
26. Speed Racer - 10/10
27. Avengement - 6/10
28. The Dead Pool - 7/10 Clint's deadpool is much funnier (albeit unintentional) than the other two DP films.
29. Jupiter Ascending - 6/10
30. The Matrix Resurrections - 7/10
31. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - 8/10
32. The Matrix Resurrections (rewatch) - 9/10
33. Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy - 8/10
34. Barb and Star Go To Vista Del Mar - 8/10
35. The Punisher (1989) - 8/10 One of the best Marvel films because its just an ultraviolent 80s action flick.
36. The Shop Around the Corner - 9/10
37. Hi, Mom - 7/10 I love that this mid budget dramedy is one of the highest grossing films of the year. Its decent for the most part but that final 20 mins and twist (which the whole film rides on) left me a blubbering mess.
38. Slap Shot - 8/10
39. Dear Comrades! - 8/10
40. 300 - 7/10
41. Pig - 8/10
42. This is Not a Burial, It's a Resurrection - 9/10 The most unique film of 2021, most beautiful to look at for sure. Left me completely spellbound for much of its runtime and is in need of a rewatch to get my head around it all. Highly recommended since so few have seen it!
43. The Card Counter - 10/10 Rewatching this again after theatres put this as my favourite of the year for now. Schrader is the only director aside from Eastwood who can capture the mundane so authentically.
44. Five Easy Pieces - 8/10
45. It Happened One Night - 9/10
46. West Side Story (2021) - 8/10
47. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington - 9/10
48. It's a Wonderful Life - 10/10
49. Phantom Thread - 10/10

Great way to end the year!

[lorddemaxus]

Ended the year with a bunch of great rewatches:

 

Gonna try to time the fireworks in Oceans 13 for next year's NY midnight.

 

2021 as a whole for me:

 

 

Edited January 1, 2022 by lorddemaxus

[CoolioD1]

Brought in the new year with Takeshi Miike's First Love (a lot of fun, one of the best movies i've seen from him in a while). Now I just need to remember to watch a movie called "Last ____" on December 31st.

[FilmFincher]

DECEMBER

 

 

 

Movies

 

 

West Side Story (2021) - 9/10

Pig - 9/10 - A lot more propulsive energy than I was expecting. Nic Cage gives a genuinely great performance. 

The Card Counter - 9/10 - Love the atmosphere.

The Power of the Dog - 9/10 - Very intimate character study, and an interesting exploration of masculinity and repressed identities. 

Sleepless in Seattle - 8/10 

Twilight Zone: The Movie - 8/10 - The last two stories in this were so much fun and filled with glorious practical effects that it won me over.

King Richard - 8/10 

The Humans - 8/10

Spider-Man: No Way Home - 8/10

Encanto - 8/10 - Songs were top notch

Kung Fu Hustle - 8/10

You’ve Got Mail - 8/10 

No Sudden Move - 8/10 

Love Actually - 7/10 - Some stories are absolutely charming, others completely fall flat. 

Hercules (1997) - 7/10 

The Little Mermaid - 7/10 

Little Women (1994) - 7/10 

National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation - 7/10

What Lies Beneath - 7/10 - Zemeckis doing his best Hitchcock/De Palma impression.

Don’t Look Up - 7/10 - I thought this pretty funny, especially Mark Rylance as an evil version of his Ready Player One character.

House of Gucci - 7/10 

The King’s Man - 7/10 - Really slow in parts and plot is all over the place, but it has the best hand-to-hand action since ’Nobody’ and Ralph Fiennes is a great lead. 

Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome - 6/10 

Treasure Planet - 6/10 

Wrath of Man - 6/10 - Ritchie handles the action well but stumbles with his non-linear storytelling which kills the pacing.

Sonic the Hedgehog - 6/10 - Pretty decent kids film. 

The Matrix: Resurrections - 5/10 - Extremely mixed bag. Biggest let down was the action/filmmaking, what a drop in quality. The meta elements were really interesting and it’s the most likeable Neo has been since the first. Loved Jessica Henwick as well. 

The New Mutants - 5/10 

Resident Evil: Welcome to Racoon City - 4/10 - I enjoyed this more than most of the Anderson films but it’s let down by an awful script and repetitive horror gags.

 

 

 

 

TV

 

The Beatles: Get Back - 9/10 - Simply a joyous experience

Scenes From a Marriage (2021) - 8/10 - The chemistry between Chastain and Issac is off the charts but this is a tough watch.

Hawkeye - 7/10 

The Grand Tour Carnage a Trois - 7/10  

Wheel of Time Ep 1-4 - 5/10 - Not continuing with this show, gave till Ep. 4 which people said was the best at that point. Never clicked for me, you can always feel the production of it. 

[TMP]

Finally got around to Succession season 3. Incredible stuff, probably my favorite season of TV since The Leftovers season 3

edit: also Dasha from redscare as kendall's PR lady was pretty funny lol

Edited January 2, 2022 by TMP

[TheDude391]

Ushered in the new year with two of my favourite films. Soylent Green which takes place in the far future of 2022 and Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

[Ozymandias]

DRAGGED ACROSS CONCRETE - Holy shit this was great.  With Bone Tomahawk, Brawl in Cell Block 99, and now this, I think I'm now officially an S. Craig Zahler fan.  Looked him up and he doesn't seem to have anything else in the oven right now... I wonder if COVID scared him away from movies or something.

 

LAMB - I feel this movie is too minimalist for such a bonkers premise.  Its eerie and unsettling in parts and it should've had more of that. 

[TheDude391]

14 hours ago, Ozymandias said:

DRAGGED ACROSS CONCRETE - Holy shit this was great.  With Bone Tomahawk, Brawl in Cell Block 99, and now this, I think I'm now officially an S. Craig Zahler fan.  Looked him up and he doesn't seem to have anything else in the oven right now... I wonder if COVID scared him away from movies or something.

 

LAMB - I feel this movie is too minimalist for such a bonkers premise.  Its eerie and unsettling in parts and it should've had more of that. 

Dragged is his best imo, I think his producer/the production company he was with went under when one of the main guys got metoo'd which delayed things. He has a few projects and scripts of his in development but nothing concrete.

https://councilofzoom.co.uk/2021/03/s-craig-zahler-announces-new-film-projects-and-a-western-miniseries/

[Joel M]

King Richard. It's fine. Will is good in it. People have won oscars for way worse stuff.

Benedetta. Absolutely loved this. Not nearly as scandalous as I expected but nevertheless the best Verhoeven in decades.

House of Gucci. Maybe a bit too long and messy, but it's good and Gaga gives the most fun performance of the year.

The Last Duel. The much better 2021 Ridley movie and sadly the one I didn't see in theatres because I'm a dumb millenial. Probably in my top-5 of the year.

The Power of the Dog. Feels a bit shapeless in the first half but becomes pretty powerful once it focuses on Kodi Smith-McPhee. If I have one real quibble with it is Cumberbatch. He wasn't bad, I just couldn't buy him in this role.

West Side Story (2021). Gorgeous looking movie, not better than the old one, but still the best Spielberg in 15 years. Between him, Verhoeven and Ridley Scott, it's been a big comeback year for old auters I haven't been excited about in ages.

Spiderman: No Way Home. Might still operating in a bit of a nostalgia high but I think it's the best of MCU spidey by a lot.

Raimi Trilogy. I've seen them too many times during the 00s, but haven't in almost decade. 2 is as perfect as I remember, 1 has aged much better than I thought and 3 which I hated with intensity when it came out, I'm kinda ok with now. It has some good stuff and the general idea behind it is pretty solid even if most of it still doesn't work.

Amazing Spiderman 1+2. Besides the obvious that Garfield-Stone is the only genuinely good thing in these movies I kinda disagree with the general consensus than the first was a so-so mid movie and the second an unmitigated disaster. 1 was an ugly boring mess and 2 was a somewhat fun colorfoul mess.

Don't Look Up. Won't solve global warming but I liked it. Watched it twice and find it even funnier the second time around.

Lamb. Interesting idea but gets old fast.

Last Christmas. Kinda angry at this movie. I knew some vague version of the spoiler that it takes the song literally but didn't expect them to waste a perfectly hot rom com couple into this ghost life coach bullshit. Why is it so hard to make a rom com without some stupid hook that undermines the whole thing?

The Hand of God. Sweet sad movie. Really captures how much of a religious figure Maradona was at Napoli.

The Matrix Trilogy+Animatrix. The original is one of those rare perfect movies and the sequels I begrudgingly liked back then, I like them way more now.

Matrix Ressurections. The action is not exciting at all but I kinda liked it. It's amazing how every Wachowski project ends up more crazy than the one that came before.

Little Women. Everytime I watch it, I think it's even more perfect. I like Lady Bird but this is so much better imo.

 

[CoolioD1]

Lost Daughter - Lol

Pig - A little slight but I appreciated the different approach for a film like this. Cage rules. Surprisingly photogenic pig.

The French Dispatch - First segment great, lost me with the middle one, but loved the third one most. Probably Anderson’s best looking movie imo.

[Ozymandias]

THE IRISHMAN - This isn't bad but I'm aghast at the incredibly high reviews it got.  And rarely do I say this, but it was too long...did this really need to be as long as Return of the King?  Also, was the CGI cream they put on DeNiro/Pacino's faces really distracting to anyone else?

 

GRAVITY - Just added to HBOmax so I decided put it on and I turned if off after 40 minutes, I just can't with Sandra Bullock's annoying character and the visuals are not enough to makeup for that in addition to nothing else to latch onto like plot.  Back in 2015 the internet was jokingly calling Gravity, Interstellar, and The Martian a trilogy.  Yeah, I'd recommend watching those other 2 vastly superior films instead.