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08-25-2018, 05:05 PM
(This post was last modified: 11-13-2018, 03:29 PM by ZpaceJ0ck0.
Edit Reason: Grammar
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Allright folks, the following review must be read with the right theme in the background.
So yesterday I finally got around and watched A Nightmare on Elm Street (the original one) and John Carpenter's Halloween from 1978, both in a single sitting.
A Nightmare on Elm Street: On one hand, the way they managed to keep the assasin as mysterious as possible by not showing too much of him (combined with channeling the mystery surrounding dreams) was certainly quite clever. I also liked how compared with other films in the genre, this one focuses more on the characters and the story rather than the gore.
On the downside, I must say the acting was rather weak. The only exception to this Robert Englund as Fred Krueger.
John Carpenter's Halloween: well, what is there to say about this film that wasn't already said a thoundsand times? The dark lighting, the long steady-cam shots, and (most importantly) that eerie music helped to create some well-executed claustrophobic and uncomfortable scenes. The acting department was ok, not too good but neither really bad, just a-ok.
Also, not really related to the review but I did a little research and... there are two "Halloween 2" movies? What? I know one is the original while the other belongs to a remake continuity of sorts, but they could have a least give it a subtitle so to avoid confusing the newbies.
Actually, while writting this thing I just did a bit more of research and apparently there are four timelines: 4-6, H20, 2007 Remake, and Final (the one from 1978 + the upcoming one). Not confusing at all....
And last but not least.... did I found those movies to be scary? Eh, a little. Not sure if it is because either I put my expectations WAY too high (I was legit expecting to scream at least once while watching any of those films. Didn't happen), because maybe the traditional/Hitchcock-style slasher genre of horror doesn't really do it for me (it was still fun, thought), or even both. I mean, there was some tension, but that's it. If anything, the dream demon raised my heartbeat a little faster compared to the serial killer, so there's that.
Even if I didn't found them to be as scary as most people did, I still recognize of all the innovations they brought to the horror genre.
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I saw A Quiet Place.
It was so hard for me to get through because I couldn't get into it at all. This family being so freaking stupid right from the start was hard to watch and the fact they seriously had another baby with creatures hyper sensitive to sound lurking around was basically suicide.
I was more upset about the raccoon dying. I felt nothing for any of these people and it's yet another horror movie I don't understand why people raved over.
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09-09-2018, 12:07 PM
(This post was last modified: 11-03-2018, 10:39 PM by ZpaceJ0ck0.
Edit Reason: Grammar
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Allright folks, the following review must be read with the right theme in the background.
So I watched John Carpenter's In The Mouth of Madness on September 1st, while the next day I've watched John Carpenter's The Fog and Tobe Hooper's/Steven Spielberg's Poltergeist.
In The Mouth of Madness: Sam Neill delivers an excellent performance as John Trent, filling the role of the "normal character in a fantastical setting". Altought the other actors did also a good job on their roles, such as Julie Carmen as Sutter Cane's assistant Linda Styles, and Jürgen Prochnow potraying Sutter Cane himself.
The script itself, written by Micheal de Luca, is just great. Themes such as such as the line between reality and fiction, as well as the concepts of God and free will are carried through nicely. Combine this with John Carpenter's directing skills and you have a really effective piece of film.
On the downside, the movie stars to lose some steam at the last 1/3 of the film (the ending itself, however, is perfect). Also, the special effects on some parts are.... eh.
Oh yeah, make sure to stay for the credits. Something funny in a dark way happens (well, at least I found it funny).
John Carpenter's The Fog: Let's keep this one short. The build-up is well done. The chilling music fits the movie perfectly. The production values are solid, and the cast did a good job on their roles. The story has some plot problems, but none enough to detract from the overall enjoyment of the film.
Overall, it's a nicely done, old-fashioned horror movie.
Steven Spielberg's Poltergeist: The various music choices work for each scenario, from the calm themes for the Freeling family, to the more "spiritual" and rough orchestal theme for the ghosts. The acting was spot-on. The special effects were pretty good as well.
As for September 7th? I've watched William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist (The Version You've Never Seen/Extended Director's Cut).
I mean... what can be said about this film that hasn't been said over 8000 times? ( yes, that was a forced DBZ reference). A great screenplay by William Peter Blatty (based on his book), intelligent directing from William Friedken and outstanding performances from all the cast, particularly Ellen Burstyn as the traumatised mother make this film a winner.
And before anyone starts asking, while I did not found this movie to be as scary as most people did, it was still out there. To be more specific, there were certainly moments of tension, but that's it. I wasn't at the edge of my seat like when watching The Shining (even thought I watched The Exorcist late at night, same with Halloween and Elm Street. If you remenber my review on The Shinning I said I watched that one on daytime). Which is kinda funny because moments before watching the film I had this odd feeling that "something bad" was gonna happen. That the movie would creep me out to the point of being stuck in my head (in a bad way) for a couple of days. But upon actually watching I was like "wait.... THAT'S IT?!".
P.S I think I'm going to take a break from the horror stuff after watching so many of those films in such a short period time. I don't want to grow tired/get burnt out of the genre.
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My brother brought two movies up the last time that he was up here
Spider-Man: Homecoming. I really don't know why I didn't like this one. It could be that my brother was pointing out how everything in the movie was amazing or it could be that it's not as fantastical as the rest of the movies I've seen. I still think that it's a good movie, just not as great as everyone else thinks it is.
Deadpool 2. Also a good movie. Not as good as the first I would say and Wade is still as annoying as ever, but I did like it. Apparently, I'm smarter then both my brother and my mother because Spoiler:I knew that they were going to bring back Vanessa. We have a movie where one of the main characters is a time traveler and you want to pretend that death is permanent. I will give them that I was psyched out when they used the one time use thing on Wade instead, but I should have known that Deadpool wasn't going to stick to the rules.
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Alright, wanna be catched dumbfounded and mortified?
Well go watch Under the Skin, a crazy movie that I don't want to spoil but it does showcase the acting prowess of Scarlett Johansson.
It's available on Netflix so get on it! ![[Image: resetti_animal_crossing_discord_emoji_by...an3hxm.png]](https://orig00.deviantart.net/4502/f/2016/306/2/0/resetti_animal_crossing_discord_emoji_by_omgtehcolors-dan3hxm.png)
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(09-13-2018, 03:51 PM)Berry Wrote: Alright, wanna be catched dumbfounded and mortified?
Well go watch Under the Skin, a crazy movie that I don't want to spoil but it does showcase the acting prowess of Scarlett Johansson.
It's available on Netflix so get on it!
Funny story. Found out about this movie becuse it shares the same name of an underrated Capcom game. It's .... differently something.
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09-21-2018, 05:52 PM
(This post was last modified: 10-28-2018, 09:41 PM by ZpaceJ0ck0.
Edit Reason: Grammar
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So I watched Jumanji: Welcome to The Jungle on September 9th, while on the 10th I've watched The Pursuit of Happyness (the first movie in which Will and Jaden Smith starred togheter).
Jumanji Welcome to the Jungle: I am not going to waste my energy reviewing this film since gamemaster already speak out my mind.
What I am going to do instead, however, is to give my own explanation for the confusing (at first) ending. Yes, there are people who are confused about the ending.
So as you may remenber, Welcome to the Jungle is what people call an Independent sequel/Soft rebbot, right? As in the sense of "you can enjoy this work indenpendently without prior knowledge of the prequel". You better keep this in mind as we go along.
I am not going to take into account the original children's book written by Chris Van Allsburg and published in 1981, since 1. I did not read it and 2. from what I could find Alan Parrish and Sarah Whittle did not exist back then (correct me if I am wrong), and they are pivotal in order to understand the ending of Welcome to the Jungle and how it connects to the original movie adaptation from 1995.
SO... recap time.
In the first Jumanji movie, Alan Parrish and his friend Sarah Whittle found the cursed board game 'Jumanji' in 1969. They started playing and at one point Alan gets sucked into the game. Later some bats come out of the chimney and Sarah runs away, but at the cost of the round being left unfinished and Adan getting trapped inside of the game for the next 26 years.
Fastfoward to the year 1995 and the Shepherd family moved to the mansion fomerly know as the Parrish Mansion, were brothers Peter and Judy Shepper rediscover 'Jumanji' and they decided to play the game. Because he (Peter) got a second turn, he rolls a 5 and releases Alan Parrish. Then the three go to find Sarah Whittle who joins the game. A bunch of stuff happens and the round from 1969 get's finally finished, reseting the timeline back to where it all began, with only Alan and Judy remenbering stuff that never happened, although certain elements/modifications the Jungle suffered where left untouched, but that's something we are going to talk about later. They throw the board game into the river so that nobody has to experience something similar ever again. Unfortunely the game gets washed away to the French coasts where it's found by two ramdon girls, likely repeating history.
Fastfoward to 1996 and Jumanji gets dragged back to the coast of Brantford. Alex Vreeke's father finds the game and gives it to his son as a present. Because of Alex Vreeke's lack of interest in board games, Jumanji transforms into a video game. Much like Adam, he gets sucked into the game/jungle, where he finds Adam's old posse. The round gets unfinished until 20 years later, where four high school students play the game after finding it while on detention inside of a "donate" box. With the help of Alex (Aka Jefferson "Seaplane" McDonough), they complete the game and the round of 1996 gets finished. Thsi is where things differ vastly from the original movie.
Where in the original Jumanji movie the time line was completely restarted and the Shepper brothers don't remenber any of the events, in Welcome to the Jungle the rest of the players returned to 2016 with their memories intact, meanwhile Alex was sent back in time to 1996 to the moment he left, altering history somewhat.
OK, so how did this happen?
The fact the the time/reality bending abilities where changed could be explained as a side effect of Jumanji going from a cursed board game to a cursed video game. But what does that mean? How does that even work? How can the players from 2016 remenber everything that happened while Alex gets sent back in time?
Simple, instead of reseting the timeline, the game alters history in the sense that some events happened, just not in the way they (the players) remenber.
For example, at the beginning of the film Spencer and Anthony decided to meet in front of the haunted house, that's what THEY remenber, but not everyone around them. What they saw was Spencer and Anthony reuniting in front of the Vreeche's family house. In other words, the players from 2016 are timeline displaced.
"but what about the game?" wouldn't Alex want to destroy it as soon as he got out of there?"
Well, It's likely that Alex wanted to destroy it but he couldn't for one reason or another. Maybe Alex instantly fell asleep (or hit itself in the head, I'm sure you can come up with something better) as soon as he got out of the game. And the next morning he finds out that his father grabbed the old console and donated it, much to Alex' misfortune. Like I said, the same events but under different circumstances.
So yeah. This is the hypothesis I came up with after discussing the ending with a friend. Any feedback?
And yes. The whole "recap time" was neccesary.
Also, I cannot believe it took me this long to find out Zathura is a Jumanji spin-off! It was so obvious! This is even worse considering I loved that movie back in the day (and still do, to certain extent).
The Pursuit of Happyness: Not much to say about this movie (this doens't mean it is bad). Is based on a real story about overcaming hardships. Will Smith nails it as the single father who constantly gets the short end of the stick.
As for September 14th? I've watched Avengers: Infinity War!
I liked it. It is easily the best Avengers movie to date.
The interactions between the different characters were great, specially the ones invloving Tony Stark/Dr. Strange and Thor/Rocket, and the screentime each of the many characters recieved was balanced really well. The action scenes were great too, my personal favorite being the fight against Thanos on Planet Titan.
As for the ending? Well, it did not affect me that much. Maybe it's because I was spoiled beforehand and that it was announced that a new Spider Man movie was on the way (meaning that at least Parker would survive his "fate"). That being said, it's still a really well done scene and thankfully I wasn't spoiled about the rest of the movie/what happened before... well, the ending.
Speaking of which. Here are my favorite moments in the film:
1. The return of The Red Skull: for 7 years since the first Captain America movie came out, fans were wondering about what happened to this iconic villian. And now we finally got our answer after waiting for so long. This particular moment was the one who caught me out of guard the most.
2. When Teenage Groot cut off his own arm in order to make the handle for the Stormbreaker: decent character evolution for Groot. I also liked it because it was kind of hardocore, I'm not going to lie.
Looking foward to Avengers 4.
Oh yeah, sorry for uploading this one so late. Life got in the way. I was also planning on creating a TGS thread to talk about all of the announcements made as they were revealed (kind of like the Gamescom 2016 or our yearly E3 threads). Either that or find an existing thread about a TGS from a previous year and turn it into a TGS general thread BUT....
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I watched the Heavy Metal Movies.
The first one is just about some evil orb intending to kill off a little girl who was supposedly the only one who could defeat it. Rather than do this right away he shows her all stuff he was responsible for before somehow her future self still kills him. There isn't really a whole lot going on and they showed naked chicks every chance they could get. It's a bit disturbing to go from an innocent little girl to showing her full blown naked and putting on the skimpiest battle gear I've ever seen in my life. IT'S NO WONDER SHE'S SLASHED UP AND BLOODIED IN THE FINAL FIGHT. Also, to make sure she stays as nothing but eye candy, she doesn't speak once when shown as an adult. Giving women a personality isn't sexy.
The rotoscoping could be pretty impressive for some shots but mostly looks really bad and dated to today's standards. Some parts look like real effort was put into the visuals so I guess I can kind of appreciate that? However, it's really laughable about how sluggish the combat is. I got pretty bored and didn't watch the whole thing in one sitting.
The second one saw an improvement in animation and toned down the nudity a bit. The story follows a woman wanting to get revenge on this dude who killed nearly everyone on her planet and kidnapped her sister. He's intending to make himself immortal.
Story falls flat again, the "humor" doesn't hit its mark even once, but at least combat is a little better except of course the main female gets put in a sexy outfit again. Also, the CGI at the end is so freaking bad I was laughing.
Give these movies a miss. You're not missing a thing.
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Highly disappointed with The Predator. Same dude that made Iron Man 3, I just can't imagine why he directs these types of films when he should just focus on original movies(because he did make Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and The Nice Guys).
Can they just leave Predator alone? Is that so hard to ask, not every classic movies has to be franchised and milked to death.
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So I watched the first film in The Chronicles of Riddick series: Pitch Black.
It was good. The design of the creatures was interesting. The actors did a good job with their roles. The pace of how the story plays out is pretty decent.
Looking forward to the second and third films.
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So I finally got around and watched the first film in the John Wick series.
It was good. It is not "one of the best action films ever made" like some people say, but still an entertaining revenge story. Looking foward to chapters 2 and 3.
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If you watch Venom, there are two scenes after the movie.
One mid-credits.
One after-credits.
The after-credits scene is an scene for the comic book style animated Spider-verse movie.
I was not impressed.
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10-18-2018, 12:45 PM
(This post was last modified: 10-18-2018, 02:53 PM by ZpaceJ0ck0.)
So I watched John Carpenter's The Thing.
A great film about paranoia. The cast did a really good job with their roles, seeing them more distrusting and fearful of each other (and so is the viewer not knowing who is real and who is fake) is an unique experience.
Combine this aspects of paranoia with a well paced plot, a claustrophobic setting and really good practical effects for the gore and you get yourself a shinning example of a horror movie done right
John Carpenter's The Thing and Stanley Kubrick's The Shinning are easily the best horror movies I have seen this year.
EDIT: oh yeah, I almost forgot. Here is an excellent short story that narrates certain events of the movie from the perspective of the eponymous Thing. Published on Issue 40 of Clarkesworld Magazine, January 2010. Written by Peter Watts.
http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/watts_01_10
I would love to see a movie based on a similar concept as this.
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10-21-2018, 09:50 PM
(This post was last modified: 11-08-2018, 01:25 PM by ZpaceJ0ck0.)
So I finally got around and watched the semi-biographical Ip Man trilogy of films (the ones directed by Wilson Yip and starring Donnie Yen).
I liked them. The action scenes were really well done, you could almost tell the intensity of the strikes. The plot moves foward at a brisk pace. This movie also features a solid performance from Donnie Yen itself as Ip Man.
If you want to just sit back and enjoy what is basically a fun lie based on a true story, then check this movies out.
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