The Movie (and TV show) Watching Thread

[Middle-aged Europe]

Movies I've watched since the start of the quarantine so far:


First time

- After Hours
- Catch Me If You Can
- Empire of the Sun
- King of Comedy
- Mid90s
- Sicario: Day of the Soldado
- Train to Busan


Rewatch

- Airplane!
- Baby Driver
- Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (animated)
- Batman: Under the Red Hood (animated)
- Contagion
- The Departed
- Jaws
- Joker
- Sicario
- Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
- Wind River

[Middle-aged Europe]

Has anyone else here seen the German film Look Who's Back? I just saw it tonight. It's done in the style of Borat, but I think it's ultimately much more provocative and effective than anything Sacha Baron Cohen has done (though Cohen is probably funnier). I think it would work in a back-to-back viewing with The Wave-- two German films, both about fascism and its undeniable allure. They're even structured similarly, with the first two acts building up a premise that seems like satire and roping the audience in, until the third act hits home with the film's message.

Haven't seen the film, I had only read the novel the movie was based on.

[Middle-aged Europe]

For the first time in four months I've been to the cinema.

Last film I had seen seen in the theater in early March was The Invisible Man with Elizabeth Moss. Today I went to If Beale Street Could Talk.

Due to the ongoing lack of new international releases they're showing a lot of films from last year or so. Even Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West and Stanley Kubrick's The Shining have reentered the regular program. But Christopher Nolan's new film Tenet will come soon.

[Middle-aged Europe]

For the first time in four months I've been to the cinema.

Last film I had seen seen in the theater in early March was The Invisible Man with Elizabeth Moss. Today I went to If Beale Street Could Talk.

Due to the ongoing lack of new international releases they're showing a lot of films from last year or so. Even Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West and Stanley Kubrick's The Shining have reentered the regular program. But Christopher Nolan's new film Tenet will come soon.

Did you like it?

I found it to be extremely well made but the plot didn't "flow" in a good way IMO. Good movie, could have been great.

Yeah, it's kind of slow, but overall well done. Good acting in particular.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Right now I'm watching Airplaine!
10/10 Hands down one of the best comedies of all time.

I just want to tell you both good luck. We're all counting on you.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Right now I'm watching Airplaine!
10/10 Hands down one of the best comedies of all time.

I just want to tell you both good luck. We're all counting on you.

Shirley, you're not serious.

I am serious... and don't call me Shirley.

[Middle-aged Europe]

I've seen Waves now... the third film I've seen in the cinema post-lockdown, following If Beale Street Could Talk and Richard Jewell. I certainly found Waves to be strongest of the three. The father-son conflict with a well-meaning, but domineering father who ultimately contributes to destroying his son's life with that kind of behaviour was strongly resonating with me due to my own experiences in that matter. It also approached the subject matter in a sensible and tender was. Pretty beautiful landscape pictures of Florida too. In a way it also dealt with the issue of racism, but with a new twist... the films centers on a relatively well-off, privileged African-American family which nonetheless is still somehow affected by racism albeit in form of a more subtle background noise.

One could say that I'm currently in the process of going through the last films that came out of America. Due to the new flareup of COVID-19 in the USA most English-language releases have again be postponed now, sometimes indefinitely. This includes the forementioned Tenet by Christopher Nolan that I had been looking forward to. It almost seems like Corona is slowly killing Hollywood. Conincidentally, most trailers that were shown before the start of the movie yesterday seemed to be French, in two cases Italian and Finnish respectively. Sometime this week I had also seen an article on that phenomenon, a potential rise of the European cinema against the backdrop of the Coronavirus pandemic.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Queen & Slim

Probably one of the most BLM films I've ever seen. It was essentially Black Lives Matter: The (Road) Movie. So, full-on Marxism, the whole 130 minutes of it.   Quite coincidentally, the subway station I used to get home afterwards was also the Karl-Marx-Straße station, so you could say that overall I had a pretty Marxist evening last night.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Last film I had actually seen in the theater was Tenet. Since then most new productions seemed to have been pushed back again to some date in 2021 at the earliest.

Streaming-wise I recently saw John Frankenheimer's Seconds with Rock Hudson in the main role as well as Duncan Jones' most recent film Mute (and before that, Cuties ).

Seconds: A surreal, kafkaesque, disturbing experience which is further amplified by the movie still being shot in black and white. It's quiet good although not really light fare.

Mute: ...or as I like to call it: Blade Runner: Berlin. It's a okayish, watchable neo-noir sci-fi crime drama which - as I had just indicated - rips-off more well-known productions. Since I do in fact live in Berlin, the film is probably more interesting/hilarious than for other people due to the overly futuristic face-lift some locations got.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Yesterday I watched Blood Simple, the Coen brothers' first film from 1984. I quite liked it, actually.

[Middle-aged Europe]

I just came back from the cinema, having watched A Quiet Place Part II.

It was the first time I went to a movie theatre since August 2020.

[Middle-aged Europe]

The last films I saw in the theater were Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Dune, and No Time to Die.


In the past two weeks I had also a bit of a French movie marathon at home that included:

Amélie
The Intouchables
Blue Is the Warmest Colour
Irréversible
Les Misérables (the 2019 film unrelated to Hugo)
La Haine

[Middle-aged Europe]

I saw The French Dispatch last week.

[Middle-aged Europe]

I went to see Licorice Pizza on Sunday. I enjoyed it as kind of a nostalgic feel-good trip, although it probably wasn't PTA's best work. In some ways it also seemed oddly reminiscent of George Lucas' American Graffiti too - don't know whether this was an intentional hommage on PTA's part.

It was also the first time since they have changed the COVID rules for cinemas, apparently. Instead of creating the required minimum distance to the other consumers by leaving a couple of seats unsold (as it was the case in Germany since the beginning of the pandemic) you have now to wear a FFP2 mask at your place. Gives the cinemas the advantage that they can sell more tickets, although it makes the experience more uncomfortable for the customer. But that's capitalism for you, I guess.

[Middle-aged Europe]

I went to see The Batrman. Boy, was that intense. Compared to The Batman The Dark Knight is lighthearted comedy and Christian Bale's Batman a cheerful fellow with a positive attitude. Pretty good movie, albeit a tad long. A little trimming was required.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Liam Neeson's Blacklight > The Batman.

In every single respect.

I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want. If you are looking for agreement to your review, I can tell you that I don't have that bad of a taste. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long movie-watching life. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you stand back from your review now, that'll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you...and I will force you to watch The Human Centipede ten times over.

[Middle-aged Europe]

I recently rewatched Knives Out, The Man Who Wasn't There, and Eyes Wide Shut.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022)

This movie is in theaters right now and it's REALLY unique and VERY good. It's one of those movies that is breaking the mold and NOT the same-old same-old Hollywood constantly churns out. I STRONGLY urge people to go out and see this in theaters and financially support it. Don't watch a trailer, it's one of those movies that's better if you know almost nothing about it beforehand.

The reviews and hype and INSANE right now on IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes, Letterboxd, and though I have to say that it didn't deliver on just how good people are saying it is, it was still really really good and a breath of fresh air to see something different. The directors of this previously did Swiss Army Man, if you want an idea of how unique this might be before you go to see it.

I'm anxious to see it, but since it is not a big studio production but an independent film it was not concurrently released here in Germany. Will have to wait till April 28.

[Middle-aged Europe]

As a science fiction fan, I loved it, but i could imagine that it would not be everyone's cup of tea.

Nope (2022)



The sub-plots were interesting. He always interjects his films with extreme violence to darken the mood, even if it adds nothing to the story, it is the evidence of the threat that the remaining cast members are being exposed to.

I like Jordan Peele's movies. "Get Out" and "Us" were excellent.

I liked Nope too.

It's pleasure to watch Peele's distinct auteur style which, this time, also happens to pay hommage to the early Spielberg (Nope is basically "Close Encounters of the Third Kind meets Jaws", I guess). He's also very effective at being scary while using minimalistic means.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Also, Robocop holds up.

Aside from the overly obvious 80s hair and 80s clothing the story, the acting, the satire, and the action of this movie is still top notch and no RoboCop installment, including the 2014 remake, managed to come close.

(The terrible RoboCop 3 is actually a guilty pleasure of mine... they tried very hard to emulate the satirical style and tone of the first film, but went completely overboard with it, so that it seems like an unintentional parody. But at the end of the day it amuses me, and I prefer it over RoboCop 2 - where the humour is so bleak that it comes across as cynical and borderline misanthropic IMO, and it also lacks the iconic Basil Poledouris soundtrack.)

[Middle-aged Europe]

I just finished watching "Dark" on Netflix, and holy moly -- go watch this right now. This is one of those series that is better served going in completely cold, imo.

Yeah, Dark is an absolutely amazing show that sadly nobody has seen. People REALLY need to give it a chance.

It started out great, but I thought that it got a bit too convoluted by its third season when... (spoilers below)















... it was revealed that everyone was somehow biologically related with everyone through the use of time travel, often in a incestuous manner. Suddenly you were getting the younger version of your own great-aunt pregnant so that your son could eventually become your half-brother or something.


Fun fact about Dark though: That school building in the fictional town of Winden that is extensively depicted especially in the earlier seasons is IRL located at the Western outskirts of Berlin and I visited that film location sometime last year, I think.