I hear the director’s cut is even better.
Aliens: Romulus
8.5 / 10
I said Twisters was a perfectly serviceable summer blockbuster, this one is an above average blockbuster. It doesn’t really transcend being pure entertainment, but it was fun. If you have a passing enjoyment of the Aliens franchise you’ll like it.
Where I do have to get a great shout out is to the set design. It absolutely fucks. I had seen a tweet saying they avoided using green screens and built as much of the set as possible and it really shows. Everything feels lived in and feels real. Also I liked their restraint. When they do these kind of soft reboots they try to mimic the aesthetic of the original but inevitably think ‘with this new technology we could show the aesthetics of the world even better’, I’m looking at you George Lucas and the Star Wars movies, and it inevitably it comes off fake, but there was almost nothing in the actual sets that couldn’t have been filmed in the 70’s or 80’s.
I would be disappointed if this didn’t win some kind of set design award.
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Really looking forward to this
Watching E.T. for the first time since the 80s. Gotta have a Rewatchables to listen to for my Friday walk.
NCFOM is amazing and worthy of its BP win.
But there have been days where Ive had the hot take thought that its the 4th best film that year behind also Zodiac and The Assassination of Jesse James.
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Agree. I would place both those above no country. Jesse james is criminally under rated. It’s maybe the best looking film ever!
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Meh. The lighting was so dark, much of the action was difficult to follow. The big reveal was in no way shape or form a surprise. Characters were pretty thin, we didn’t get to know them.
MU/TH/R was good to see again
B-
It may have been that I saw it in Imax, but I thought the production values were keyed perfectly. Things were dark but not murky, the volume levels were perfect; loud when it was needed without being overbearing.
The sound vibrated the speakers which was a good thing.
I wonder if IMAX would have helped the action pieces as I probably would have still thought the plot was weak.
There Will Be Blood and No Country are honestly both probably in my top 5 favorite Westerns with maybe Assassination of Jesse James and The Good, the Bad and &tc both in there. idk what #5 is.
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Furiosa is a beautiful movie. I love the universe, i love the character but this story felt unnecessary. Anna taylor joy is great but she has a very distinctive look to her and she just doesn’t look like furiosa, for one.
And also, according to this prequel furiosa is her given name, like from childhood. She was born a healthy baby girl in an idyllic garden paradise and they named her furiosa. It has nothing to do with the fury road, the people who named her never heard of the fury road at all lol that is so stupid.
That being said, i loved this movie I’m giving it 4 bags of popcorn
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Guess I don’t really think of There Will Be Blood as a western no matter the landscapes it operates in. Think my top five westerns would look something like:
- The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
- No Country for Old Men
- The Assassination of Jesse James
- High Noon
- The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
Honorable mention to The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, which I could consider swapping into #5. Disclaimer: I have more blind spots in westerns than the average genre, so this certainly isn’t drawing from everything.
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How many John Ford westerns have you seen?
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Westerns are pretty hard to evaluate and rank. They go back 100 years. The Searchers is objectively a great piece of film making and is objectively horrendous in it’s superficial portrayal of Native Americans, Unforgiven is a great movie but it really depends on the viewer having decades of tropes about “Westerns” in mind in order for it to land. Etc.
Dances with Wolves also holds up pretty well.
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Does Killers of the Flower Moon count as a Western?
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Three. Liberty Valance, The Searchers, Grapes of Wrath.
I was going to say in the prior post that I could sooner fit Killers into western than There Will Be Blood, but I tend toward no on this. No strong argument that it isn’t one though. If it is, it joins my top three.
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Shane too
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Shane is neatly tucked away in the “I have blind spots” part.
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You could fill in a lot and be surprised
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