Are we having FUN yet?
Part 3 comes with one of the most bizarre movie themes ever:
Watched a couple recs from this forum :
Triangle (2009)
Was fun enough for what it was, and Iâm always happy to see Melissa George in a leading role (been a fan of her since Alias). I guess one issue is that by nature the plot is a bit too predictable, except for the very last act ? Part of it is on me for randomly watching another time-loop movie a few days earlier (Predestination), thatâs too much for one week.
Poltergeist (1982)
So this is basically Carpenterâs âPrince of darknessâ but for children ? I donât see the appeal, I liked the opening scene but then never got into the rest of it, had to force myself to make it to the end. I guess this is one situation where you kinda have to hand it to grueâs point above, maybe if there were some nostalgia factor it could help, but the fact that itâs from before I was born makes it completely unappealing.
Another movie I saw recently :
Have you ever wondered what if, instead of casting old Brando in the last act of Apocalypse Now, Coppola had waited a few decades so he could have instead, an aging Jean-Claude Van Damme ?
If the answer is yes (why wouldnât it), you owe it to yourself to watch Universal Soldier : Day of reckoning (2012)
This is the 4th film in the franchise, I had only seen the first one (was sufficient plot-wise), if youâve seen it you know itâs a standard mainstream 90s blockbuster. This one has a VERY different (much darker) tone which I wasnât quite prepared for (gf bailed 2 mins in). It opens like a horror movie, then goes to (very violent) action (hand-to-hand combat, gunfights, car chases) . This was a DTV movie but has better production value than most movies, didnât know this was possible tbh. The plot is obviously not super deep but still has enough layers to keep it interesting. Highest recommandation.
(content warning : ultra-violence&gore, nudity, a lot of flashing lights, an old&bald jcvd)
2 Likes
Are you just fishing for a dril tweet, or�
1 Like
Yes, but it wasnât intended to be from what I remember. It helped having the actor being gay but playing straight, but the director and writer just kind of stumbled into it.
Well not really fishing, just that English isnât my native language, I learned it from the internet, 50% of which is the same 20 dril tweets reposted over and over. Sorry if it shows 
(the other 50% is meta-commentary like the below)
7 Likes
FWIW your English is great.
3 Likes
I gotta see this. Van Damme was always considered a B-tier action hero back in the days of Stallone and Arnold, but I think his garbage action movies like Double Team, Knockoff, and Street Fighter really hold up and are a ton of fun to watch if you like silly movies. Iâm glad to see his cheese movies getting re-evaluated.
Also, Rifftrax has a riff of Universal Soldier II thatâs a lot of fun.
that is correct, but just to avoid misconceptions, this film is from the later part of his career (of which Iâve seen very little) where heâs too old to be the leading man, so his part is not that big (in screen time at least). Main guy is Scott Adkins which I wasnât familiar with before (like jc, he acts more with his feet and fists than with his face).
Thereâs actually zero difference between good & bad movies
5 Likes
Flew back from Denmark on Wednesday afternoon, so wasnât tired. Movie selection was quite good, but there was a loud child within two rows of me and all I had were crappy earbuds, so I wanted something with subtitles and most of them didnât have those. The Disney films did, and I donât have Disney+, so this was a good opportunity to watch some of those.
Inside Out 2
I was a bit tentative going in, but this is a worthy sequel to the original. I donât think was quite on the emotional level as the first one, but it had enough and still managed to be well-written and funny.
Encanto
First off, I did not like the songs at all. The guy who wrote Hamilton wrote these? I have no idea how these came to become a force in pop music for like four months in 2022. Iâve heard them before, of course, but I thought maybe Iâd like them more in the context of the movie. Nope. As for the movie itself, the screenplay is just all over the place. The best part about it was the animation style, which was outstanding.
Turning Red
This is from the same person that wrote Bao, a 10/10 short film about familial relations in Asian-Canadian culture. Turning Red has many of the same ideas spread out into a feature film, andâŚI absolutely hated it. Bao was perfect because it of the big reveal that the whole story was a dream sequence. Here, there are abrupt jumps between fantasy and reality that were completely nonsensical. Maybe if I had been a 13 year old girl, I might have gotten more out of it, but I had no problem with the Inside Out 2 protagonist of the same age just a few hours earlier. This takes the top spot from Cars as my least favorite Pixar movie ever.
Luca
Itâs a little silly in parts and incredibly predictable, but was still a fun watch. Compared to the elite films in the Pixar catalog, itâs not memorable at all. But sometimes a movie can just be disposable fun and doesnât need to be more than that.
I realize that I gave positive reviews to the two films with white protagonists and negative reviews to the two with non-white ones, and thatâs not the best look in a vacuum. But hopefully this isnât the first time youâre reading something from me.
Inside Out 2: 8/10
Encanto: 4/10
Turning Red: 2/10
Luca: 6/10
3 Likes
Turning Red was a bust for me too; maybe not as aggressive of a bust as 2/10, but still.
1 Like
Aw I liked Turning Red.
Period allegories ftw
1 Like
Youâre certainly not alone. Most online rankings of Pixar films have it solidly in the middle (which considering the stuff at the top of the list, is pretty high praise).
1 Like
I didnât want to jinx anything, but this is the movie out of your original list that I was most eager to see you review. I rented this movie for a sleepover when I was 10 or 11 (along with Revenge of the Nerds - great parental oversight), and thought it was terrifying and amazing and even the teachers at school were talking about how great it was.
And then a couple of months ago, I sat down with my 14-year old son and was like, âSon, it is time for you to watch what might be the best horror movie ever made.â And it was so dated and slow and uninteresting that we turned it off after like 10-15 minutes. Huge disappointment on my part, so at least Iâm comforted by your 2.5/5 that I havenât lost my mind completely.
âDream Warriorsâ as a song still slaps, though.
lol, posted that before suzzerâs post.
1 Like
Funny, because I thought that was some of the strongest material in the movie.
1 Like
I may be a bit harsher than I should be because my expectations were high considering how much I liked her short film. No way do I go over 3/10 though. I really did like Cars better, and Cars sucked.
1 Like
I recently watched Nightmare on Elm for the first time and it didnât hold up at all for me. Very overrated.
2 Likes
The first Cars is fine family fluff.
The second cars is a cinematic abomination.
3 Likes