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My partner and I watched The Green Knight (2021) over the weekend. It's a strange fantasy film, based on a poem. The cinematography is stunning, but I felt the plot and dialogue left a lot to be desired. I have mixed feelings about it. Anyone else watch it by any chance?

I watched Extraction



It's a very good movie. Nice to see Chris Hemsworth in a serious role given the joke that Thor turned into in the MCU. This movie has great action sequences. Most of them are done in long, uninterrupted takes which is really nice. I don't see that often in movies or TV shows. Some of the action feels a little John Wick-ish, but a bit more grounded in reality as the main character isn't quite the unstoppable, force of nature that is "Baba Yaga" from the Wick movies.

There's a good story. It's simple of course, as this is an action focused movie, but it works. The acting is good. Hemsworth's character shows some genuine emotion as he bonds with this kid he has to rescue.

All in all, just an entertaining action romp, maybe the best I've seen since the John Wick movies

Note wrote:My partner and I watched The Green Knight (2021) over the weekend. It's a strange fantasy film, based on a poem. The cinematography is stunning, but I felt the plot and dialogue left a lot to be desired. I have mixed feelings about it. Anyone else watch it by any chance?

I saw it. There were definitely aspects of it I really liked, but the pacing was awful and so it felt like more of a slog than it really should have. I appreciate the idea of bringing an ancient legend/myth into the world of modern cinema, but it felt like there were some pretty unnecessary aspects (eg Gawain eating mushrooms and hallucinating a land of giants, I feel like all the scenes of Gawain walking could have been half as long). It was beautiful to look at, but not compelling enough for it to hold my interest as much as it should have. And I'm a fan of slow arthouse films!
If nothing else, it was much better than the director's previous film, A Ghost Story.

Oh, and I recently made a Letterboxd account for myself. Anyone curious about my cinematic habits ought to follow me there. Even though I don't post about it too much here, I'm very much a movie person. (I'm currently slowly copying the information from the notebook in which I've been logging every movie I watched since 2008)

Watched Cruella last night. It was a pretty great film. It's worth noting that its story doesn't seem to correspond to any prior version of the character.

From Dusk Till Dawn...

I am not sure what to say

Is this a B-movie? Is this a parody? Is this an all time Hollywood classic? i don't know. Sure kept me engaged and surprised. Tarantino is nuts Didn't know he did acting.

Tarantino was an Elvis impersonator on an episode of The Golden Girls and IIRC his residuals from that helped fund Reservoir Dogs.

Last two movies watched:

Deranged



You ever read about the crazy serial killer Ed Gein? Well, this is basically his bio-pic, without technically being his bio-pic. Instead it tells Gein's story through the lens of one Ezra Cobb, with occasional commentary by a bespectacled narrator. It's a sometimes hokey, but also very disturbing look into the life of a man who ended up with a LOT of issues, and how he got to the point of becoming a monster. Parts of it end up being a little cheesy, and some parts are fully made up, but other parts are seemingly taken wholesale from the police reports (right down to the last thing he bought at the store before being caught), so despite some of the odder inclusions it still makes for a very interesting and highly unsettling watch.

And here's one I know prfsnl_gmr liked:

The Shout



I really enjoyed this one. It's one of those 'adult' horror outings, which usually means it's more subtle and psychologically based, rather than being all bloody and in-your-face "boo!". Although there are some very disturbing elements in it that will very likely give you a chill. I do still have a couple of questions (especially regarding those damn rocks), but overall it's a highly well-acted and solid production that I found very entertaining.

The Shout! I did really like that movie, and I’m glad you enjoyed it too, Michi. Also, really great review, as always,

Meanwhile, I have also continued to watch my usual level of crap, this time putting .myself through Albert Pyun's Omega Doom, which is basically Yojimbo with robots in post-apocalyptic EuroDisney. I wish that was a joke. I also wish it was good, but even Rutger Hauer can't save the problems present in this movie.

And then I followed that with a movie about truckers in space delivering an illegal load of supposed sex dolls, which are in fact killer robots.

You can't see it, but I just hung my head in shame after typing that sentence. Some days, I lament my taste in movies.