What was the last movie you've seen?

[marurun]

I don't have a problem with trailers giving away spoilers so long as there's some indication of it before you commit. I'm one of those weird people who doesn't mind movies being spoiled. I don't need to see the revelations or twists in real time. Research has indicated that for most people, spoilers can actually increase enjoyment, because people are looking for the hooks and twists and it increases anticipation. Now, that doesn't work for everyone, and I know some folks who are aggressively anti-spoiler to the point they won't even discuss comic books if they're interested in a Marvel or DC movie they haven't seen. That level of spoiler-averseness actually really walls off conversation, but that's what a few people at least think they want. But I'm also one of those people who doesn't like re-watching most movies, even pretty good ones, so I tend to want to know what I'm in for. I have limited time and spoilers can tell me whether I'm going to be on-board for what a movie is dishing out or whether I'm going to want to bail midway. And again, it means I can watch for the foreshadowing and better appreciate the narrative construction.

[prfsnl_gmr]

My favorite are the trailers for Hallmark Channel-quality rom-coms. (They’re all over Prime Video.) I mean, the movies are ridiculously formulaic; so, you know what’s going to happen anyway. Still, the trailers are just a Cliff’s Notes version of the movie, playing out the conflict and conclusion over the course of two minutes. They’re so, so bad.

[Golgo 14]

I thought the trailer for Oppenheimer was better than the movie itself. Tremendous work by whoever put that together. I've watched the trailer since seeing the movie and it gets me pumped to see the movie again even though I don't have a lot of desire to do so.

[PretentiousHipster]

This might be the most impressive trailer to me:

It's for a low budget horror film called Monday at 11:01 AM. It makes it look like a mediocre horror film. However, I watched this because of someone I follow, and it's 100% outsider art that honestly rivals the work of Tommy Wiseau. I recommend it to people that are fans of those types of films, but no one wants to watch it because they say the trailer doesn't make it look like that type of film. Huge kudos to the editor of this trailer for making it look, I guess competent?

[Note]

My partner and I watched The Karate Kid, the 1984 original movie the other night. I hadn't seen it in such a long time and my partner had actually never seen it. The movie was a fun watch and aged well, IMO. I'd like to revisit the others and maybe check the Cobra Kai series too.

[Raging Justice]

Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984) - Uncut






So this is just sort of a silly, little, slasher movie about a Santa Claus going around killing people. It's got one or two fun moments, but is overall nothing special really and that probably would have been all I was gonna say about it...until I went to wikipedia. Holy shit did this movie generate a shit storm of controversy when it came out! The wikipedia page for this thing is more interesting than the movie itself. I'll just copy paste what's on there:

"The film was released by Tri-Star Pictures on November 9, 1984, where it received substantial controversy over its promotional material and content, which featured a killer Santa Claus. In addition to receiving mixed reviews, it was pulled from theaters a week after its release.

Silent Night, Deadly Night was one of the most controversial films of the 1980s due to its advertising campaign, particularly its posters and TV spots, that made significant emphasis on the killer being dressed as Santa Claus.[9] The PTA fought to have this film removed from theaters due to its subject matter and the fact that it was shown around Christmas, although an earlier film with a similar premise, Christmas Evil, had gone unnoticed. Television advertisements, which aired between episodes of family-friendly series such as Little House on the Prairie, led to parents complaining that their children were terrified of Santa Claus.[5] Large crowds (mostly angry families) formed at theaters and malls around the nation to protest the film; at the film's East Coast premiere at the Interboro Quad Theater in The Bronx in New York City, protesters picketed the theater and sang Christmas carols in protest.[10]

In response, Tri-Star Pictures (which was the joint venture between Columbia Pictures, HBO, and CBS), the film's original distributor, pulled all ads for the film six days after its release on November 15, 1984.[5] The film itself was also withdrawn shortly thereafter, due to the controversy.[11] In response to the public outcry, producer Ira Barmak told People magazine: "People have taken offense at Santa being used in a scary context... Santa Claus is not a religious figure, he's a mythic character. I didn't deliberately ride roughshod over that sensitivity and I didn't anticipate the objection to it."[12] An editorial published in Variety stated: "Most protests were generated by the feeling that the depiction of a killer in a Santa Claus suit would traumatize children and undermine their traditional trust in Santa Claus."[5] When the film was castigated at length by Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, the backlash against the film became louder and more widespread.

The film was due to be re-released by an independent distributor, Aquarius Films, in May 1985, with an ad campaign replacing the original "Twas the night before Christmas"-themed trailer with a new one that centered on the controversy surrounding the film

In the United Kingdom, the movie was never submitted for certification to the BBFC, and its sequel was denied a video certificate in 1987 after the distributors refused to make the cuts required for an '18' certificate. However, in 2009, Arrow Films submitted the film to the BBFC for classification, who passed the film uncut with an 18 certificate.[14] The UK DVD was released on November 23, 2009.

According to Robert Brian Wilson, the film had to be re-submitted 4 times to the MPAA to secure an R rating. When released to theatres, Tri-Star originally made these cuts, but when released on home video, the film was unrated. The film was sourced from another master copy containing these scenes. The Theatrical R-rated version never received a home video release until December 4, 2017. Due to the film having these scenes missing from other master copies, Anchor Bay DVD and Blu-ray releases were released as composite cuts. In hopes that Shout! Factory would find uncut footage from the original negatives, their search was unsuccessful. According to them, Tri-Star edited out all uncut footage from all their negatives.[citation needed]

Siskel and Ebert condemned the film and Siskel went as far as to read names of the film's production crew on air, telling them, "Shame on you". Gene Siskel also said that all the money the filmmakers were making off of this film was blood money.[17]

Leonard Maltin also denounced the movie, calling it a "...worthless splatter film", citing it as a "BOMB" and asking: "What's next, the Easter Bunny as a child molester?"[18] A Daily Variety review argued that whatever arguments the film was making on the commercialism of Christmas were overshadowed by the graphic violence, which the reviewer saw as off-putting. Michael Wilmington wrote in the Los Angeles Times: "[it's] safe to predict that Silent Night, Deadly Night... will start making 'Worst Movie of All Time' lists almost immediately"."

Wikipedia also states that, "there has yet to be a release of the full, uncut print from a single source"

I noticed while watching it that at one point the quality of the picture noticeably changed.

So yeah, this movie stirred up a hornet's nest. There are a bunch of sequels it seems. The movie ends on...sort of a cliffhanger, that does have me curious about the second movie. I may check it out, but overall this movie is sort of a standard slasher movie that is a little bit silly at times. There's one or two scenes that got a laugh out of me like one showing a kid punching out a guy in a Santa suit and another one involving a creepy old man in a mental institute. It's nothing noteworthy though. However, clearly having a movie with a killer Santa Claus was a big deal at the time and got this movie a lot of negative attention. Ironically, the fear that parents had about how this would effect their children mirrors the movie's plot as it literally deals with how seeing a killer in a Santa outfit affects a young boy's mind. I'm guessing that the commentary tracks for this thing are probably interesting. I think there's a documentary too.

My partner and I watched The Karate Kid, the 1984 original movie the other night. I hadn't seen it in such a long time and my partner had actually never seen it. The movie was a fun watch and aged well, IMO. I'd like to revisit the others and maybe check the Cobra Kai series too.

Cobra Kai is great, even more so for people familiar with the movies. It references them a lot, though the show's stories never require that people be familiar with them though.

[REPO Man]

Hope SNDN gets a 4K UHD release.

And speaking of 4K releases the last two films I watched were The Evil Dead and Zombie.

I am SO glad I didn't screen The Evil Dead for my nieces. Hopefully they'll be ready by next year.

Zombie, released as Zombi 2 in its native Italy, is one of my favorite zombie films of all time. It also serves as an inspiration for a zombie film idea I'm working on.

[Raging Justice]

Demolition Man



I really wanted to love this, but it didn't quite click with me. Some of that may be due to casting choices. I'm not a big Stallone guy. When it comes to 80s or 90s action heroes, I've always been into Schwarzeneggar, Jean-Claud Van Damme, Dolph Lundgren, and Jackie Chan, with a little bit of Seagal and Bruce Willis here and there. I wasn't wowed by Stallone's performance as John Spartan and didn't feel that he had much on screen chemistry with Sandra Bullok (Lenina Huxley). I actually think Karl Urban and Olivia Thirlby had more chemistry in Dredd (I also enjoyed that movie more than this one). I also found Bullock's character kind of annoying. I know her goofy, dorky demeanor is meant to be a product of the film's future time period, but it was still annoying. Maybe it's just cause I'm more used to seeing Sandra Bullock in more dramatic roles. I didn't like Wesley Snipes in this. He plays this over the top, Joker like character (Simon Phoenix), with lots of really awful jokes and one liners. Seriously, who wrote his material? It's crap. Some guys like Heath Ledger or Jack Nicholson can give an over the top character like that some menace, but Snipes never comes across as genuinely scary or intimidating. It doesn't help that every time he's onscreen they play this really goofy sounding hip hop theme, like he's literally a joke character...not the movie's main villain. I also don't like Denis Leary. He's the poor man's Bill Hicks. Something about him just puts me off. I would have enjoyed someone else playing his role.

Some people have said this movie is special because it's prophetic about things that we see in our times now. I think that's giving the movie too much credit. There are signs of things in our world today moving into a much more sinister direction than anything in this movie. In fact, this movie seems to want to make a statement about the dangers of too much government over reach and control into people's lives...but does a pretty poor job of it. I mean the people of this movie's futuristic society have given up a lot of freedoms and deal with lots of surveillance, yet they all seem pretty content and are living in a relatively idyllic society that is clean, free of violence and crime, and provides enough for every one. They quite literally have no problems. In fact, this society is so goddamn perfect that the citizens have developed a child like innocence. There's an old man cop who remembers what the world was like before this, and even he doesn't seem too bothered by all of the societal changes that have happened since his younger days.

I think Equilibrium with Christian Bale does a far better job of showing some of the horrors of a governing body ruling tyrannically over the people in the interest of removing all conflict and violence from society. That's a pretty good movie by the way, I watched it recently but I don't think I did a write up for it in this thread for some reason. It has some ridiculous elements in it(like gun kata), but I enjoyed it.

Everything in Demolition Man just feels too silly. It never feels like anything has any real stakes to it. Even Simon Phoenix doesn't feel all that dangerous, it's just that everyone on their police force is too incompetent to deal with him. I know that's the whole point. The movie is trying to show us that this overly idyllic society can't deal with real criminals, but I still wish the movie made him seem more legitimately dangerous and scary, instead of a goofball with bad hair and horrible lines.

Nobody really has a story arc either. Lenina Huxley seems like the most likely person to get one, but she's mostly the same character at the end of the film as she is at the beginning of it. We also get a romance story involving her and John Spartan, but it's handled poorly and like I said, her and Stallone had ZERO chemistry.

Why the hell is John Spartan called Demolition Man? Outside of the first scene of the movie, I can't think of too many examples of him just causing massive property damage every where he goes. You'd think that every single building he enters in the film would blow up like a Michael Bay movie. That trope of the cop getting yelled all the time because of every case he is on resulting in tons of stuff blowing up and getting damaged isn't really reflected in this movie. I think Simon does more damage in this movie than he does.

So yeah, I'd heard a lot of things about this being a good movie, but I wasn't really into it. As I said before, it made me think of these other two movies that I actually did enjoy so I'll just plug them again I guess:

Dredd
Equilibrium

[REPO Man]

I think Honest Trailers nailed Demolition Man's future when they described it as what right-wingers think a leftist utopia looks like.

[Raging Justice]

Pearl



How I felt after watching this:



This movie makes you uncomfortable...like...a lot, but it's supposed to so kudos. This is a horror movie after all. So many scenes masterfully put you on edge or just make you go, "This feels really, reeeeally...wrong".

There's some great cinematography that helps with that and some cool visual tricks including a trippy and disturbing montage at one point in the film. Also, the movie is a period piece from 1918 and it has homages to classic movies from The Golden Age of Hollywood too. So that gives the film a cool vibe and aesthetic, like you're really watching a movie from a different period in time.

The end credits...Jesus fucking Christ, one of the best end credits sequences I've ever seen

I think I read somewhere that this is a prequel to an already existing movie. So I guess I'm watching these movies out of order

I guess it doesn't matter. Prequel means I'm seeing the story in the right chronological order at least.

If slasher flicks are your thing, this one is pretty good. It's an A24 film just like Everything Everywhere All at Once. I know some people really like the films these guys put out.

You know there's one theme that seems to run through a lot of these types of movies, just like Silent Night, Deadly Night. I guess you could also call it a trope. That theme is:

Spoilers

Kids being raised by uptight, strict, religious women tend to become psychotic killers

EDIT: Now that I think about it, there's one criticism I have of the film. There's a monologue at one point that is waaaaaaay too long