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Movie reviews and discussions
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I loved Evil Dead Rise. Felt fresh and enough like the old one to make me happy! My S/O got through it way better than they thought they would and liked it. But I loved it, she has only seen the first evil dead before, so not addicted like myself.
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I was disappointed by Evil Dead Rise, and can’t recommend it. The spoilers that follow don’t mention anything specific, but do speak in generalities that might give away more than you want to know. I’m mostly spoilering it because I feel kind of guilty about being so negative about a movie I was looking forward to.
Long story short, I was bored throughout the whole movie. The editing made it seem almost like the TV cut of an R-rated movie. I enjoy the Evil Dead movies because they are all transgressive in some way and do not flinch from showing us the violations they visit upon their characters, often breaking horror movie rules to do something truly shocking and upsetting. This movie kept the violence at arm’s length. Hell, several of the kills literally happen off-screen, which, after the visceral brutality of especially the movie’s predecessor, I found underwhelming at best.But more substantively, I just don’t think it’s very well made. I felt the scares were all telegraphed so far in advance everything felt predictable, and that’s an absolute death knell for horror. The movie had good ideas it seemed to not have either the budget or the technical skills to achieve, judging by how it was edited to never let us see the monsters, the attacks, the kills. The writing kind of grates, with characters regularly expositing their relationships in dialogue or inserting references to previous movies at the absolute worst spots like it’s actively trying to pull me out of the moment and make me say, “Oh yeah, I also remember when that guy said that thing thirty-five years ago.”
The actors are doing their best but seem to be getting no direction, just standing around making faces at something off-screen instead of doing anything interesting. The setting is interesting enough, moving things to an urban location and coming up with new ways to isolate the protagonists from any help, which makes it feel super weird they include five or six minutes of the Deadites going back to the woods for no apparent reason. There are big changes to the lore that are potentially intriguing but feel wasted here because things that could have been surprises for the audience get explicitly listed off to the audience by NPC exposition.
The whole thing feels like a giant misfire to me. I really hope everyone else enjoys it more than I did.
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Moonage Daydream was amazing. I’m a huge Bowie fan and it was perfect. Just perfect.
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Hey, you. Yeah you, right there. Go see Spiderverse 2. It is good and everyone should see it. EVERYONE.
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Barbie knocked it out of the park.
In Occam I trust.
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@Coin said in Movie reviews and discussions:
Barbie knocked it out of the park.
Watching the crowds all dressed up in pink was almost as much fun as the movie.
Almost.
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I give the Barbie movie 3 stars.
I give the hilarious meltdowns over it 5 stars.
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@Kestrel said in Movie reviews and discussions:
I give the Barbie movie 3 stars.
I give the hilarious meltdowns over it 5 stars.
Both of these feel like they are rated far too low.
Mummy Pun? MUMMY PUN!
She/her -
@Jennkryst said in Movie reviews and discussions:
@Kestrel said in Movie reviews and discussions:
I give the Barbie movie 3 stars.
I give the hilarious meltdowns over it 5 stars.
Both of these feel like they are rated far too low.
12/10. Would watch the screeching man-baby tantrums again.
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I really liked The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.
It exceeded my expectations for the YA dystopia genre. I never read the books, because the fad hit its stride when I was just exiting my YA phase. And I think I wrote off the entire series because I mentally associated it with Twilight nonsense.
Honestly though, I recently rewatched the entire film series and now feel like I was actually too young to understand it when it first came out. Propaganda, the main theme of the series, was too big of a word for me at the time. The events of Mockingjay are surprisingly topical to current events, and the series got better with each successive instalment.
My Jewish arse watched the new prequel on Christmas Eve, the very last day of it being shown in cinemas in my local area, so it may be too late for most people to catch it in on the big screen now. But I’d recommend streaming/pirating it; don’t write it off for its target audience. The storytelling is heavy-handed in places, but the themes are surprisingly mature.
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@Kestrel We saw that last weekend, and REALLY enjoyed it. It was beautifully done.
Also, we saw Wonka today. And while a MUCH lighter version… The same concept of evil corporate empires vs. dreamers and collaborators was subtly but beautifully woven through it.
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Godzilla Minus One was the live-action Grave of the Fireflies/Kaiju film mashup I never knew I needed in life.
It’s wonderful but also a gut punch.
