What was the last movie you've seen?

[Limewater]

I am with you on Speed Racer being unfairly maligned. I only saw it once in 2009, but I thought it was a great. You (Raging Justice) basically wrote all of the good things I would have said about the movie and then some, though probably a bit more coherently.

Other than The Matrix, it's probably the only Wachowski's movie I thought was genuinely good, though I didn't watch Cloud Atlas and I will admit that Jupiter Ascending was fun.

But yes, Tom Cruise does have a great filmography. He's in, generally, really good movies, which makes his star power that much more valuable. I saw American Made just because it was a Tom Cruise movie and it was hilarious. I can't off-hand think of any other actors with such a reputation.

[Raging Justice]

So it turns out there is a native 3D version of Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning. I kind of wish I had known that, though I no longer have a 3D TV so I wouldn't have a way to watch it unless I hooked up my Playstation VR, which is a hassle.

Speaking of which, the PS VR 2 has no backwards compatibility and can't watch 3D movies? Why does Sony expect people to buy this overpriced thing again? I'm becoming more and more of a Nintendo Switch person lately. Sony's getting lame.

I am with you on Speed Racer being unfairly maligned. I only saw it once in 2009, but I thought it was a great. You (Raging Justice) basically wrote all of the good things I would have said about the movie and then some, though probably a bit more coherently.

Other than The Matrix, it's probably the only Wachowski's movie I thought was genuinely good, though I didn't watch Cloud Atlas and I will admit that Jupiter Ascending was fun.

But yes, Tom Cruise does have a great filmography. He's in, generally, really good movies, which makes his star power that much more valuable. I saw American Made just because it was a Tom Cruise movie and it was hilarious. I can't off-hand think of any other actors with such a reputation.

Yeah, Cruise is fairly consistent. I'm hearing great things about the new Mission Impossible...which I may check out soon.

Speed Racer is fun, Spritle is annoying though. I wonder who the target audience for the movie was. I mentioned that it feels like a kid's movie, yet I forgot that Speed has a bit of a potty mouth in some scenes. Anyway, here's some scenes that I loved, though there are some others too that I just couldn't find on youtube.

[Raging Justice]

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One



This movie seems weirdly topical. There's been a lot of stuff in the news lately about the dangers of AI as we're seeing it getting incorporated more and more into our daily lives. Then along comes this movie with a sentient, evil AI that Ethan Hunt has to fight. Sure, AI is not new in sci fi, but like I said, it's been much more of a reality today than it was years ago when we first starting seeing this stuff in sci fi.

Anyway, the movie is great. The plot's engaging. The humor is on point. It's not an action spectacle like some other stuff I've seen this year but there are two memorable set-pieces involving a train and an absolutely bonkers car chase sequence that you just have to see.

I've always liked this franchise. I'm more into it than the Bond movies. It's unusual to have a long running franchise be consistent but Mission Impossible is still awesome

The performances are mostly great, though there are a few evil, intelligence agency characters whose performances are a bit dry IMO, but they get very little screen time (mostly just one scene really). Hayley Atwell and Cruise deliver the strongest performances and Simon Pegg continues to be fun and funny in these movies.

Vanessa Kirby and Pom Klementieff are SMOKING hot in this movie as The White Widow and Paris and I loved every moment that they were on screen.

One of those fun movie tropes is the two dudes (cops, agents, whatever) spending the whole movie chasing the protagonist. We get that here with Jasper Briggs and Degas and it makes for some fun scenes.

Anyway, this is another 2023 highlight. Cruise rarely misses and he's riding high right now with this and Top Gun Maverick from last year

[Raging Justice]

Baby Driver





I've always liked Edgar Wright movies, but having fallen out of regular movie watching until very recently, I missed out on some of his stuff the past few years like Baby Driver and Last Night in Soho. So I'm doing a little catching up.

What I like about Wright is that he's good at taking an established genre and adding his own particular quirks to it. Like for example, he'll give you something that looks like it's gonna be a typical zombie movie and then it turns into something a bit more than you expected like Shaun of the Dead (which I think is where I first discovered the talents of Simon Pegg and Nick Frost). I've always found it interesting how he seems to move from genre to genre every time he makes a new movie. It's hard to just pin him down to one specific kind of movie. He likes to change things up regularly. He's done buddy cop action, comedy, zombies, a video game/comic book movie, sci fi, the man is unpredictable. He's influential too as supposedly the director of the latest Mission Impossible movie had to change the entire movie when Edgar Wright pointed out an audio cue from the film that Wright didn't pick up on while watching it, prompting the director to realize that many people in test audiences also missed it. Anyway...



So Baby Driver is him basically doing a heist movie with a focus on lots of cool chase scenes. What's quirky about the movie is the central character (Baby) having tinnitus. Thus, he listens to music constantly to drown out that irritating, ever present, noise that people who suffer from this condition are familiar with (and I know someone who has this in real life). I posted a thread once about a fun youtube channel about a guy who seems to be able to find music in everything in life (the channel is Andre Antunes). Baby is like this. He always got ear buds in his ears and a lot of what he does in life is kind of in tune with whatever he is listening to. The movie reflects this in a fun way. There are several scenes (mostly involving car chases) where everything onscreen happens in sync with whatever he's listening to. You know those rhythm based video games like Rhythm Thief & the Emperor's Treasure, Space Channel 5, or Patapon? Imagine a movie where many scenes play out that way with everything on beat with the music. It's really cool.

Beyond that, it's a tense movie where the plot revolves around Baby getting sucked into the world of crime and dealing with the consequences of that.




The cast is fantastic. John Hamm (from Mad Men and more recently some lame Progressive Insurance commercials), Jon Bernthal from The Walking Dead and The Punisher (playing the usual hyper masculine type of character he does so well), Jamie Foxx (who convincingly plays an unhinged psycho), Kevin Spacey (playing a very interesting role as the guy putting the heists together) and Ansel Elgort as Baby.

The movie has some fun dialog (like Sisu or some of Tarantino's movies...or all of Wright's movies actually), some action, lots of chases as I already said, and lots of fun. This isn't a deep, thought, provoking movie, but it's fun and quirky all the way through. How Baby sees the world, and how weird he appears to everyone else, is a heavy focus of the film beyond the usual crime/heist movie tropes. He almost comes across as someone with autism. The way the movie does these amazing car chases mixed in with awesome music with everything onscreen synced up to the beat like a video game creates this sublime visual/audio experience. It's just gets you amped up and wanting to turn up the volume (and inevitably getting someone in your house yelling at you).

I really enjoyed this movie and very much recommend it. I've never seen an Edgar Wright movie I didn't like though, so maybe I'm biased?

[Raging Justice]

Sicario



Wikipedia has a pretty good summation of the plot

"The film follows a principled FBI Special Agent who is enlisted by a government task force to bring down the leader of a powerful and brutal Mexican drug cartel"

I think this is the same director who is doing the Dune movies

So on the plus side, the movie is great at creating tension, has great cinematography, and great acting

On the negative side, it's a pretty bleak movie. There's never like, a feel good moment. There's never a positive moral/ethical lesson. There's no good triumphing over evil. In fact, many of the "good guys" in this movie do evil things and show a flagrant disregard for the law, morals, or ethics. It's a movie that ultimately just leaves you feeling empty...kind of like early seasons of Game of Thrones.

I don't know how to feel about movies like this quite honestly. I know there's a certain type of person who enjoys stuff like this. I'm not one of them. It's a very, shall we say, nihilistic sort of movie, and I guess that's really the point of it. It's a movie about "good guys" doing awful things to capture "bad guys", which in the context of this movie just means guys who are more devoid of a conscience than the good guys are. It's the cinematic equivalent of the old saying about the world being full of only two types of people, the wolves and the sheep.

There's a sequel, and a planned third film, though I can't think of any reason why I'd want to watch them.

[marurun]

So basically, too much reality bleeding into the moral/ethical messaging…

[Golgo 14]

Sicario

I loved this movie. So much so that after I first saw it in a theater I turned right around and watched it again. I enjoyed it as a lurid thriller, but what most knocked me out was the cinematography by Roger Deakins. There are a few shots such as the one below that are so beautiful you could freeze frame them and put them on a wall in an art museum.

I don't share the movie's paranoid worldview or what I take to be its reactionary politics, but that's not necessary for me to enjoy it as a movie.

[Raging Justice]

So basically, too much reality bleeding into the moral/ethical messaging…

Well, what's interesting is that Emily Blunt's character (Kate Mercer) and her friend Reggie are the movie's moral/ethical center. The thing is, the entire movie really portrays them as weak, naive, and really unable to affect their world in any way. Some of the other characters treat them in an almost condescending way like they're kids playing around in an adult world, as if that's some sort of message regarding people who care about morals, ethics, or the law. The only time when it seems that Kate has any semblance of real power in this movie is one scene where she is tempted to do something that goes against her morals and to, thematically speaking, become one of the wolves. The fucked up thing is that, while choosing to succumb to that temptation would go against who she is, in that moment I felt like she would be justified if she chose to do so.

If there is anything resembling a "message" in this movie, it's that people with principles, morals, etc. are just pawns in the grand scheme of things. They exist either to be used by "wolves" or to be....removed from the board shall we say. And if you're an "innocent" in this world, may God have mercy on your soul. For you have even less value than the pawns do.

Sicario

I loved this movie. So much so that after I first saw it in a theater I turned right around and watched it again. I enjoyed it as a lurid thriller, but what most knocked me out was the cinematography by Roger Deakins. There are a few shots such as the one below that are so beautiful you could freeze frame them and put them on a wall in an art museum.

I don't share the movie's paranoid worldview or what I take to be its reactionary politics, but that's not necessary for me to enjoy it as a movie.

Yeah, objectively speaking I can see why some people think very highly of this movie. Everything is done very well including the way that the movie uses its score to create tension. I just don't really enjoy it's very bleak perspective. It's kind of depressing, especially given the state of the world in the past few years. Now more than ever I kind of don't enjoy watching stuff like this, but I digress.

[Raging Justice]

Violent Night



This movie was a blast! In fact, I might even say it's the perfect Christmas movie for people who don't like Christmas movies. Though I think people who love them will probably enjoy it too. It's got a lot of what you look for in a Christmas movie, just with a lot of violence, blood, and gore. It's a little bit Home Alone, a little bit Die Hard (and the movie is not subtle in showing its reverence for those two movies), mixed in with the kind of lunacy that reminds me of some old Sam Raimi movies. There were a few times while watching where I was like, "What the fuck!?" There's definitely some fun surprises and some good comedy too. I burst out laughing a few times.

I love when movies and shows get wacky with the Santa concept, like the murdering Santa robot from Futurama or that crazy South Park episode where we get the gun toting Santa/Jesus action movie team up.





Minor nitpick for physical collectors, I think the disc only comes in 1080p. Only the digital version of the movie comes in UHD. I think this is becoming common with some physical releases. This might not matter to some people but I thought it was worth mentioning.

Anyway, check this movie out or end up on the naughty list!

[marurun]

Saw Barbie today with my wife. I have no idea how this movie got made. It is incredibly insightful, stylish, subversive, and yet also self-aware of how ineffectual it is to think a movie can actually have anything meaningful to say with real-world effect. There’s also a stunning song-and-dance number.

Yes, it is a flawed movie. It also has some elements that will be quickly dated due to reliance upon current cultural awareness. But it’s still a fun watch so long as you don’t have too many social-structural hang-ups.