Topic: The Movie Thread

Last night we watched Under Paris, it reminded me of Deep Blue Sea. Daft but entertaining enough.

We also watched Emily the Criminal. A great crime thriller with Aubrey Plaza. She was fantastic in this, the first time I've seen her in a serious role.

Just finished watching Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One. I remember people saying last year that this wasn't a good movie, but I thought it was very good. Just like the other movies, this one had a lot of cool scenes. The concept of an AI becoming self-aware, while cliché in movies in general, is rather cool for the series. Also, Hayley Atwell being in the movie definitely made it more compelling. She's just absolutely gorgeous.

@MightyDemon82 Yeah Aubrey Plaza is great. Think I first saw her in Legion, and I don't think I've seen her give a bad performance since. If you liked Emily the Criminal, I can reccomend Ingrid Goes West and Black Bear. I advise going in blind for the latter film, as you are better off not much about it.

@JohnnyShoulder OK thanks for the recommendations 👍

@MightyDemon82 - although not a movie, Aubrey Plaza was one of the main cast within "The White Lotus" season 2. She is/was incredible in that series, and plays very much 'against type' as a fairly inhibited and reserved character. The whole show is awesome, both seasons are great in fairness.

Well that was disappointing. Great work from Vanessa Kirby and a couple of good battle sequences but not much else.

@LtSarge I consider myself a huge fan of the franchise and felt that it kept getting better and better and better with each movie.... and I absolutely hated Dead Reckoning Part 1... with a passion
Glad you enjoyed it, though

"Longlegs" - tremendously atmospheric horror/thriller police procedural thrown slightly off axis by a typically unhinged performance from Nic Cage. I really liked it but perhaps not as much as Perkins' earlier genre movie "The Blackcoat's Daughter". As an aside, I honestly thought the lead actress was Ella Purnell from the "Fallout" show but it's actually Maika Monroe - they look really similar. Oh, and it's weird seeing that Alicia Witt - who played the little girl in Lynch's "Dune" - is now playing middle aged mothers. How time flies.

@LN78 Yeah, I remember Witt primarily from Twin Peaks, where she played Donna's little sister and I couldn't understand how she'd manage to outgrow me... then I remembered that I'm fifty and she's a year younger than me
I thought Cage's manic performance here was slightly dampened by the layers of makeup they put on him and that was definitely a good thing. Great use of tension in this movie and not too many cheap jump scares. One of my favourite horror movies this year.

The teaser for Leigh Whannell's "Wolf man" just dropped and I think it looks very promising!

@FuriousMachine It was one of the best things I've seen so far this year - as I mentioned earlier I sort of knew about the twist having overheard a conversation about the movie a while back but that didn't really dampen the experience - it was just really solid from top to bottom. If you haven't seen "The Blackcoat's Daughter" definitely give it look - it's full of the exact same sort of constant foreboding tension without ever once resorting to cheap scares - plus no borderline campiness in the performances to spoil the tone.

@LN78 Yeah, "Blackcoat's Daughter" was good. Haven't seen any of Perkins' other films, but I think one of them currently resides on Netflix, so I'll give it a look down the line.

@FuriousMachine I'll definitely be keeping an eye on him - he has the potential to be a genre writer/director up there with Ari Aster, Eggers or Flanagan.

@LN78 Absolutely! I'm a huge fan of Flanagan, but I'm still a bit unsure on Aster and Eggers, I've only seen "Hereditary" and "Midsommar" of Aster's and while I liked them fine, they didn't blow me away (Hereditary was chuckleworthy due to how batcrap insane it got, if memory serves). As for Eggers, I've only seen "The Witch" and found that slightly underwhelming after all the praise it got. Been meaning to see more of his work, but haven't gotten around to it yet.

I typically shun Netflix produced movies as they, more often than not, are completely empty mediocrities that are just void of anything remotely interesting. Some of them are not even bad, just incredibly bland.
So, imagine my surprise when I read a positive review of Rebel Ridge, an action/suspense movie from Jeremy Saulnier that dropped yesterday.
I enjoyed Saulnier's "Green Room" (with Patrick Stewart playing a neo-nazi of all things) so I decided to give this one a chance. And I'm glad I did, as I found it to be an engaging movie that, on paper, reads a bit like a "First Blood" rip-off (an ex-marine runs afoul of a small town's police force), but really isn't.

Apparently, John Boyega walked away from this movie, which took four years (and two shut-downs) to complete and I would say that was his loss. Instead, we get relatively unknown (to me, at least) Aaron Pierre in the lead role and he nails it. Don Johnson and Annasophia Robb fills out the main cast, both doing a fine job and James Cromwell shows up briefly doing his usual thing.

A rare thing this, then: A Netflix movie that entertained rather than bored me

@FuriousMachine @Malaise If you enjoyed "Green Room" (not sure if that's the right word - I have the scene with the box cutter etched into my brain) then have a look a the same director's earlier movie "Blue Ruin". It's equally... memorable. 😉.

@Malaise I've only seen him in Attack the Block and the Star Wars movies and thought he was fine in both. However, he would not have fit in this one, IMO, and the movie is most likely a lot better with Aaron Pierre
@LN78 "Blue Ruin" is on my watchlist; just one of a million movies I haven't gotten around to yet

@LN78 I plan to check out Blue Ruin - just seen its on Amazon Prime in UK, so I've kicked off the download! Green Room remains one of the best horror/thriller films I've ever seen, utterly terrifying in the sense that "this could actually happen" etc.

I saw something recently with a similar level of relentless intensity, albeit not a horror movie at all... moreso a drama/thriller - "Uncut Gems", starring none other than Adam Sandler. If you enjoy movies that are essentially non-stop stress watches, then UG absolutely ticks the bill. A brilliant showcase for Sandler also, who I'd never really considered as a 'credible/serious actor... he shines in this film.

@CJD87 I actually turned "Uncut Gems" off after about an hour - it was so frenetic that it was raising my IRL anxiety levels - which is definitely testament to the quality of the filmmaking. I'm really not a Sandler fan (I think I have "Punch Drunk Love" somewhere) but his performance was really impressive.

@LN78 @CJD87 I too didn't not enjoy Uncut Gems as i found the experience too stressfull. Still thought it was a good film and it is undoubtlely Sandler's best performance I've seen. I can reccomend Good Times by the same directors, the Safdie brothers and stars Robert Pattison.

I can also vouch for Blue Ruin which has a similar vibe to Green Room. I see the latter has just got a 4K release, which i have added to my rental list.