I watched three movies this year: Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, Deadpool and Wolverine, and Alien Romulus.
While I enjoyed these films, I wouldn't praise them to infinity. All of them were like 8/10. It feels like some blockbuster films are taking a safe route which isn't always a bad thing. But I wish they did something unique to be reminded for.
I watched Transformers One and I thought it was pretty damn great! Way more compelling, emotional and much funnier than the marketing would have you believe. The tragedy of the relationship between Orion Pax (Optimus Prime) and D-16 (Megatron) deserves nothing but praise. While I was initially hesitant with the "all star" cast, I do honestly think everyone does a great job with their performances, especially Chris Hemsworth and Brian Tyree Henry who are absolutely wonderful. Hemsworth really impressed me during moments where he damn near sounds exactly like Peter Cullen. I was also really surprised with Steve Buscemi as Starscream even if he isn't in the movie a whole lot. I had no idea it was him at all but he does a great job being a sniveling asshole. The action in the movie is great, really fun and cool looking without being incomprehensible to look at, even with a high number of characters on display.
Obviously, not all the humour in the movie hit me, but there were some legitimately great jokes that had me laughing pretty hard. Bumblebee borders on being incredibly annoying for me since he rarely shuts up, which is also kind of a funny in itself considering the live action movies go out of their way to ensure he never speaks. Unfortunately the soundtrack also isn't super memorable, I don't think they even used the Transformers theme anywhere in the movie which was surprising. There's also a couple moments that I think could have been improved to further push the themes and character moments in the story, but they're pretty spoilery so I'll just leave it at that.
Overall I thought it was great. In my opinion it's the best storytelling I've seen in any of the Transformers movie, even if the bar isn't exactly high in that regard, and the characters are especially great. It's really fun, has a lot of heart, and surprisingly emotional. This might be one of my favourite movies of the year so far!
About a week ago, I watched the original 1979 Alien movie for the second time in quite a long time...
Also because I wanna revisit it because I've heard the new Romulus is pretty good, and inspired by going back to its horror roots... for whenever I go to see that thing.
It's such a good slow burn horror film. Also filmed in a way films aren't filmed anymore...
The scene where the crew wakes up from hypersleep is like a good 2mins I'm sure, with the camera slowly revealing each of their pods, and putting focus on Kane waking up with a lot of fade-transitions to different angles.
Definitely a slow scene that savours its runtime that wouldn't happen today...
also right after watching it I downloaded Alien Isolation again which may prove to be a fatal mistake once I finally choose to boot it up but we'll see... 🤔
I watched Dreamworks’ latest animated movie, The Wild Robot, and it's nothing short of spectacular. It may well be the best animated film of the year and it's one of my favorite movies of the year overall. From the stunning visuals and powerful score to its heartfelt characters and compelling narrative, this film shines in pretty much every way.
Set in the far-ish future, The Wild Robot follows Rozzum 7134, or "Roz" (voiced by Lupita Nyong'o), an everyday helper robot who finds herself stranded on an island teeming with wild animals. After a series of mishaps with the island’s inhabitants, Roz unexpectedly becomes the caretaker of a newly hatched gosling who she dubs Brightbill (initially voiced by Boone Storme, later by Kit Connor). Together with the help of a crafty fox named Fink (portrayed by Pedro Pascal), Roz navigates the challenges of raising the gosling in a wild environment. The voice performances in this film are exceptional. Lupita Nyong'o, Kit Connor, and Pedro Pascal each bringing so much emotional depth and chemistry to their characters.
The movie is pretty damn funny and often has some really dark undertones revolving around death. It's especially funny hearing these lines coming out of the mouth of the child characters. Speaking of dark, the movie deals with a lot of pretty mature subject matter, again mostly surrounding death and the circle of life. As for the music, it's honestly nothing short of breathtaking. There are several moments throughout the film that had me really swept up in the emotion of it all due to the visuals and music.
The Wild Robot feels like an absolute triumph by Dreamworks, which seems fitting considering this'll be their last entirely in-house movie. This is a movie that deserves to be remembered. I absolutely love it!
I watched Dreamworks’ latest animated movie, The Wild Robot, and it's nothing short of spectacular. It may well be the best animated film of… more the year and it's one of my favorite movies of the year overall. From the stunning visuals and powerful score to its heartfelt characters and compelling narrative, this film shines in pretty much every way.
Set in the far-ish future, The Wild Robot follows Rozzum 7134, or "Roz" (voiced by Lupita Nyong'o), an everyday helper robot who finds herself stranded on an island teeming with wild animals. After a series of mishaps with the island’s inhabitants, Roz unexpectedly becomes the caretaker of a newly hatched gosling who she dubs Brightbill (initially voiced by Boone Storme, later by Kit Connor). Together with the help of a crafty fox named Fink (portrayed by Pedro Pascal), Roz navigates the challenges of raising the gosling in a wild environment. The voice performances in this film are exceptional. Lu… [view original content]
It's fantastic, easily one of Dreamworks' best. If you've seen Puss in Boots: The Last Wish it's very much in that same vein, with a nice mix of comedy and drama.
Last night, I went to go see Alien Romulus in theatres, because I found out that apparently it's still around my area.
Overall I had a great time watching the film, it had some really spooky and tense moments and some very fun and interesting setpieces/obstacles the main cast had to deal with.
The style of the environments is really fun to look at. I love all the clicky buttons and lights and bulk of this ancient-future tech. Fancy holographic touch-screen stuff would never be cooler than this.
There are some grisly kills (though I wish the main trailer didn’t showcase a few of them) loooots of Aliens to contend with by the end, and some fun twists and reveals.
I quite liked one involving an android’s personality getting overwritten, letting its actor completely change the way he behaves and comports himself on-the-fly.
I’ve only ever seen Alien and Aliens, Prometheus, and played the game, so I don’t know how this movie compares to the rest of the franchise, but I think this Alien film does a pretty good job of getting back into Horror, adds in some dashes of action, and also calls back to the original Alien in some fun ways.
There are a lot of really well-shot horror moments, and it’s awesome how the production wanted to focus on practical effects and puppetry over CGI, as it evident in almost every scene. Almost.
I’m reminded of “the pod on the wall” scene and how that was the most beautiful terrifying thing I’ve ever seen. The slow reveal of the Xeno popping out of that thing, seeing its iconic tube-head, then its claws, oooohh man it was a perfect re-reveal of Scary Alien is Back babyyy!!
That said, the movie isn’t without faults that made me eye-roll or shattered my suspension of disbelief.
Overall I definitely enjoyed the whole package, but it’s due to some repeating issues that I’m giving this a 6.5/10. Great fun horror movie, but with issues they should have ironed out.
Spoiler-talk of my issues:
For one thing, I feel like Fede Alvarez needed to not be afraid to end the movie with a darker ending. Everyone dies, even the main Alien, kind of thing. Because main character Rain ended up surviving like 5-6 reeeeally risky/dangerous situations or getting way too lucky with the Alien’s behaviour in a row near the end, and it ended up becoming a little ridiculous. The Xeno needed to stop chewing the spooky scenery and just go in for the kill sort of thing.
This would have also made this film an interesting, darker mid-quel entry after Alien, since it already solidifies in the first 3 minutes that Weyland-Yutani won despite everything Ripley went through. They just… get a craft to pick up the frozen Alien in space after the Nostromo explodes, excavate it out of a space rock, and boom, they have their Perfect Organism to experiment on as they please. Having all that, plus main characters who survive the encounter by the end, feels a little too much like a re-hash of the first film.
Speaking of, the movie has quite a few verbatim callbacks to the original Alien and Aliens (plus maybe some more from other films I haven’t seen. It got a little silly with how much the film “paid homage” to the films by just straight-up copying or recreating its iconic lines, just for some 'member-berry points.
The line “Get away from her … … … You bitch.” stuck out very sorely to me as nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake in an already ridiculous moment.
Plus there’s just a bunch of smaller things that don’t make all that much sense in the script, like how After the first Chest-Burst, why do the characters around that area (who got knocked out) know immediately to be quiet and creep around? They should be calling out for each other. Or, “rewriting an Android’s clearance” takes a very clear few minutes in the beginning of the movie, but only takes like 20 seconds near the end, because any longer would get the characters killed.
Just stuff like that, which was a little weird.
Oh yeah, and also, the movie employs some really weird deep-fake techniques to recreate and add in the late Ian Holm’s face to an android in reference to his character Ash in the first film.
I looked it up, and the team had a lot of cooperation from his family, and especially his widow, who know he wanted to return to the series but never got the chance. And they employed a lot of puppetry and real-actor stand-ins to recreate it, so that’s good. But… I dunno, the CGI use for his mouth was always strange when not behind a fuzzy screen, and they used some generative AI and other tech to recreate his voice over-top someone else’s.
While I like that it adds onto the idea that of course Androids of a similar model would look identical which allows Holm’s face to reappear, it feels strange that he was given such a pivotal and extended role… because he’s been dead for 4 years, he couldn’t have agreed to any of this.
Did a fun little horror movie marathon with some friends and wanted to share some quick thoughts of each of them.
Barbarian
If I wasn't watching this movie with friends I think I would have just straight shat my pants. Really creepy atmosphere, the characters are great, not super deep but fun to watch, and the movie also does a surprisingly good job of making a certain character very empathetic (if you've seen the movie you'll probably know who I'm talking about). It's also a surprisingly funny movie at times that feels like it belongs in a comedy. There are also some absolutely disgusting scenes, not in terms of gore though there is some of that, but in... other ways. The movie also does a good job of really keeping you guessing and leading you into a false sense of security before swiftly loosening your bowels.
Ready or Not
It's just a really fun movie. The characters are great, super unlikable in the you can't wait to see them get it kind of way, I really like the main character Grace. Someone who knows how to take care of herself, while not being hyper competent. She feels like a fairly grounded character in what is overall a kind of silly movie. Some really fun kills, good laughs, and a pretty wild finale.
Thankgiving
Another fun movie though. Really dumb and cheesy, but highly entertaining. Some gory kills that absolutely sent a shiver up my spine. Also pretty funny, especially the intro which was so over the top you really can't help but laugh. I will say that the movie really seems to hate women. All the men get it super quick and more often than not painless deaths. The women though get it really fuckin' bad. Slow, painful and borders on fetishizing. This has nothing to do with the plot of the movie, it's just how the deaths in the movie go. Outside of that it's honestly a fun movie. Funny, gory, and very absurd.
I really liked all three of the movies. Very different, but overall very fun movies, especially with friends.
Did a fun little horror movie marathon with some friends and wanted to share some quick thoughts of each of them.
Barbarian
If I wasn't … morewatching this movie with friends I think I would have just straight shat my pants. Really creepy atmosphere, the characters are great, not super deep but fun to watch, and the movie also does a surprisingly good job of making a certain character very empathetic (if you've seen the movie you'll probably know who I'm talking about). It's also a surprisingly funny movie at times that feels like it belongs in a comedy. There are also some absolutely disgusting scenes, not in terms of gore though there is some of that, but in... other ways. The movie also does a good job of really keeping you guessing and leading you into a false sense of security before swiftly loosening your bowels.
Ready or Not
It's just a really fun movie. The characters are great, super unlikable in the you can't wait to see them get … [view original content]
Hello everyone I’m back , I saw Terrifier 3 last week on Monday . It was awesome I love the creative kills in the 3rd film David Howard Thornton continues to make me smile.
The first three episodes of Arcane season 2 are out and my verdict is...
It's fuckin' great. The animation and visuals are as beautiful as ever, and the writing is just as heartbreaking. Only complaint is that there is definitely a lot of set-up for the final six episodes, it's great set-up don't get me wrong, but it does feel like they had to sacrifice the pacing a bit. There isn't a lot of room to breathe as every minute that goes by feels as important as the last. Aside from that it's wonderful. I absolutely cannot wait to see how it all ends!
It's great! Much more room to breath with more moments of characters just talking to each other. Of course there's still a lot of action but things no longer feel like they're going through hyperspace. I await the finale with bated breath, but I will be very sad to say goodbye to Arcane. What an absolutely incredible show.
Light spoiler
I can't believe season 1 can now be considered the happy season.
Comments
Aliens
I watched three movies this year: Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, Deadpool and Wolverine, and Alien Romulus.
While I enjoyed these films, I wouldn't praise them to infinity. All of them were like 8/10. It feels like some blockbuster films are taking a safe route which isn't always a bad thing. But I wish they did something unique to be reminded for.
Nick went from skinny to fat back to skinny. I'm glad he's finally done this. And hopefully he stays this way.
The fact that we got Niko's redemption's arc before The Wolf Among Us 2.
What kind of world am I living in anymore?
He did it in a shorter timespan than the time of GTA 5 and GTA 6.
I watched Transformers One and I thought it was pretty damn great! Way more compelling, emotional and much funnier than the marketing would have you believe. The tragedy of the relationship between Orion Pax (Optimus Prime) and D-16 (Megatron) deserves nothing but praise. While I was initially hesitant with the "all star" cast, I do honestly think everyone does a great job with their performances, especially Chris Hemsworth and Brian Tyree Henry who are absolutely wonderful. Hemsworth really impressed me during moments where he damn near sounds exactly like Peter Cullen. I was also really surprised with Steve Buscemi as Starscream even if he isn't in the movie a whole lot. I had no idea it was him at all but he does a great job being a sniveling asshole. The action in the movie is great, really fun and cool looking without being incomprehensible to look at, even with a high number of characters on display.
Obviously, not all the humour in the movie hit me, but there were some legitimately great jokes that had me laughing pretty hard. Bumblebee borders on being incredibly annoying for me since he rarely shuts up, which is also kind of a funny in itself considering the live action movies go out of their way to ensure he never speaks. Unfortunately the soundtrack also isn't super memorable, I don't think they even used the Transformers theme anywhere in the movie which was surprising. There's also a couple moments that I think could have been improved to further push the themes and character moments in the story, but they're pretty spoilery so I'll just leave it at that.
Overall I thought it was great. In my opinion it's the best storytelling I've seen in any of the Transformers movie, even if the bar isn't exactly high in that regard, and the characters are especially great. It's really fun, has a lot of heart, and surprisingly emotional. This might be one of my favourite movies of the year so far!
I watched Silence of the Lambs for the very first time.
While I didn't understand everything about it, I had a helluva time with it and I am already crushed on Jodie Foster's character. A true gem.
About a week ago, I watched the original 1979 Alien movie for the second time in quite a long time...
Also because I wanna revisit it because I've heard the new Romulus is pretty good, and inspired by going back to its horror roots... for whenever I go to see that thing.
It's such a good slow burn horror film. Also filmed in a way films aren't filmed anymore...
The scene where the crew wakes up from hypersleep is like a good 2mins I'm sure, with the camera slowly revealing each of their pods, and putting focus on Kane waking up with a lot of fade-transitions to different angles.
Definitely a slow scene that savours its runtime that wouldn't happen today...
also right after watching it I downloaded Alien Isolation again which may prove to be a fatal mistake once I finally choose to boot it up but we'll see... 🤔
I watched Dreamworks’ latest animated movie, The Wild Robot, and it's nothing short of spectacular. It may well be the best animated film of the year and it's one of my favorite movies of the year overall. From the stunning visuals and powerful score to its heartfelt characters and compelling narrative, this film shines in pretty much every way.
Set in the far-ish future, The Wild Robot follows Rozzum 7134, or "Roz" (voiced by Lupita Nyong'o), an everyday helper robot who finds herself stranded on an island teeming with wild animals. After a series of mishaps with the island’s inhabitants, Roz unexpectedly becomes the caretaker of a newly hatched gosling who she dubs Brightbill (initially voiced by Boone Storme, later by Kit Connor). Together with the help of a crafty fox named Fink (portrayed by Pedro Pascal), Roz navigates the challenges of raising the gosling in a wild environment. The voice performances in this film are exceptional. Lupita Nyong'o, Kit Connor, and Pedro Pascal each bringing so much emotional depth and chemistry to their characters.
The movie is pretty damn funny and often has some really dark undertones revolving around death. It's especially funny hearing these lines coming out of the mouth of the child characters. Speaking of dark, the movie deals with a lot of pretty mature subject matter, again mostly surrounding death and the circle of life. As for the music, it's honestly nothing short of breathtaking. There are several moments throughout the film that had me really swept up in the emotion of it all due to the visuals and music.
The Wild Robot feels like an absolute triumph by Dreamworks, which seems fitting considering this'll be their last entirely in-house movie. This is a movie that deserves to be remembered. I absolutely love it!
Is it really that good? I was feeling tempted by the trailers. Interesting...
It's fantastic, easily one of Dreamworks' best. If you've seen Puss in Boots: The Last Wish it's very much in that same vein, with a nice mix of comedy and drama.
I watched Joker: Folie a Deux.
This movie is poop from a butt.
This flop from WB will make a fine addition to my collection.
Last night, I went to go see Alien Romulus in theatres, because I found out that apparently it's still around my area.
Overall I had a great time watching the film, it had some really spooky and tense moments and some very fun and interesting setpieces/obstacles the main cast had to deal with.
The style of the environments is really fun to look at. I love all the clicky buttons and lights and bulk of this ancient-future tech. Fancy holographic touch-screen stuff would never be cooler than this.
There are some grisly kills (though I wish the main trailer didn’t showcase a few of them) loooots of Aliens to contend with by the end, and some fun twists and reveals.
I quite liked one involving an android’s personality getting overwritten, letting its actor completely change the way he behaves and comports himself on-the-fly.
I’ve only ever seen Alien and Aliens, Prometheus, and played the game, so I don’t know how this movie compares to the rest of the franchise, but I think this Alien film does a pretty good job of getting back into Horror, adds in some dashes of action, and also calls back to the original Alien in some fun ways.
There are a lot of really well-shot horror moments, and it’s awesome how the production wanted to focus on practical effects and puppetry over CGI, as it evident in almost every scene. Almost.
I’m reminded of “the pod on the wall” scene and how that was the most beautiful terrifying thing I’ve ever seen. The slow reveal of the Xeno popping out of that thing, seeing its iconic tube-head, then its claws, oooohh man it was a perfect re-reveal of Scary Alien is Back babyyy!!
That said, the movie isn’t without faults that made me eye-roll or shattered my suspension of disbelief.
Overall I definitely enjoyed the whole package, but it’s due to some repeating issues that I’m giving this a 6.5/10. Great fun horror movie, but with issues they should have ironed out.
Spoiler-talk of my issues:
For one thing, I feel like Fede Alvarez needed to not be afraid to end the movie with a darker ending. Everyone dies, even the main Alien, kind of thing. Because main character Rain ended up surviving like 5-6 reeeeally risky/dangerous situations or getting way too lucky with the Alien’s behaviour in a row near the end, and it ended up becoming a little ridiculous. The Xeno needed to stop chewing the spooky scenery and just go in for the kill sort of thing.
Speaking of, the movie has quite a few verbatim callbacks to the original Alien and Aliens (plus maybe some more from other films I haven’t seen. It got a little silly with how much the film “paid homage” to the films by just straight-up copying or recreating its iconic lines, just for some 'member-berry points.
The line “Get away from her … … … You bitch.” stuck out very sorely to me as nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake in an already ridiculous moment.
Plus there’s just a bunch of smaller things that don’t make all that much sense in the script, like how After the first Chest-Burst, why do the characters around that area (who got knocked out) know immediately to be quiet and creep around? They should be calling out for each other. Or, “rewriting an Android’s clearance” takes a very clear few minutes in the beginning of the movie, but only takes like 20 seconds near the end, because any longer would get the characters killed.
Just stuff like that, which was a little weird.
Oh yeah, and also, the movie employs some really weird deep-fake techniques to recreate and add in the late Ian Holm’s face to an android in reference to his character Ash in the first film.
I looked it up, and the team had a lot of cooperation from his family, and especially his widow, who know he wanted to return to the series but never got the chance. And they employed a lot of puppetry and real-actor stand-ins to recreate it, so that’s good. But… I dunno, the CGI use for his mouth was always strange when not behind a fuzzy screen, and they used some generative AI and other tech to recreate his voice over-top someone else’s.
While I like that it adds onto the idea that of course Androids of a similar model would look identical which allows Holm’s face to reappear, it feels strange that he was given such a pivotal and extended role… because he’s been dead for 4 years, he couldn’t have agreed to any of this.
I have been watching all the Conjuring films the past few days.
Did a fun little horror movie marathon with some friends and wanted to share some quick thoughts of each of them.
Barbarian
If I wasn't watching this movie with friends I think I would have just straight shat my pants. Really creepy atmosphere, the characters are great, not super deep but fun to watch, and the movie also does a surprisingly good job of making a certain character very empathetic (if you've seen the movie you'll probably know who I'm talking about). It's also a surprisingly funny movie at times that feels like it belongs in a comedy. There are also some absolutely disgusting scenes, not in terms of gore though there is some of that, but in... other ways. The movie also does a good job of really keeping you guessing and leading you into a false sense of security before swiftly loosening your bowels.
Ready or Not
It's just a really fun movie. The characters are great, super unlikable in the you can't wait to see them get it kind of way, I really like the main character Grace. Someone who knows how to take care of herself, while not being hyper competent. She feels like a fairly grounded character in what is overall a kind of silly movie. Some really fun kills, good laughs, and a pretty wild finale.
Thankgiving
Another fun movie though. Really dumb and cheesy, but highly entertaining. Some gory kills that absolutely sent a shiver up my spine. Also pretty funny, especially the intro which was so over the top you really can't help but laugh. I will say that the movie really seems to hate women. All the men get it super quick and more often than not painless deaths. The women though get it really fuckin' bad. Slow, painful and borders on fetishizing. This has nothing to do with the plot of the movie, it's just how the deaths in the movie go. Outside of that it's honestly a fun movie. Funny, gory, and very absurd.
I really liked all three of the movies. Very different, but overall very fun movies, especially with friends.
I just watched Thanksgiving a week ago. The ending was a big surprise,
Hello everyone I’m back , I saw Terrifier 3 last week on Monday . It was awesome I love the creative kills in the 3rd film David Howard Thornton continues to make me smile.
The Halloween Franchise movies.
The first three episodes of Arcane season 2 are out and my verdict is...
It's fuckin' great. The animation and visuals are as beautiful as ever, and the writing is just as heartbreaking. Only complaint is that there is definitely a lot of set-up for the final six episodes, it's great set-up don't get me wrong, but it does feel like they had to sacrifice the pacing a bit. There isn't a lot of room to breathe as every minute that goes by feels as important as the last. Aside from that it's wonderful. I absolutely cannot wait to see how it all ends!
I watched act 2 of Arcane season 2...
Oohhhhh, the miseryyyyyy 😭
It's great! Much more room to breath with more moments of characters just talking to each other. Of course there's still a lot of action but things no longer feel like they're going through hyperspace. I await the finale with bated breath, but I will be very sad to say goodbye to Arcane. What an absolutely incredible show.
Light spoiler
I can't believe season 1 can now be considered the happy season.