Topic: The Movie Thread

@Pizzamorg Yeah, I'm like a kid looking forward to Christmas with that one. I love old, classic movies, and to get to see these on the big screen has me really excited!

@BearsEatBeets I agree with you on Rebel Ridge, I was pleasantly surprised by that one. I typically find Netflix produced movies to be very "vanilla", but this one I actually enjoyed. Woman of the Hour will be getting a short theatrical release here starting November 1st, so I will try to catch it then. Looking forward to it

So, I just saw Smile 2... I actually thought that I had seen this year's best horror movie with The Substance, but I'll be damned if "Smile 2" doesn't make a serious play for the throne. I'm not completely sure it manages to get there, but it is fairly close.
It starts right after the events of the first one and quickly gets things underway with a bloody bang, before we are introduced to the new victim to be tortured by the entity, pop megastar Skye Riley, who is already tortured by traumas of the past. Almost every minute of this movie is steeped in tension and unease and a couple of jump scares had me almost out of my seat. And I wouldn't consider them cheap either, they were well earned, in my opinion.
The movie also manages to go quite off the rails towards the end, in the very best way (though not to the level of finale of "The Substance").
I would say that if you liked the first "Smile", you are almost guaranteed to like this one as well, though I guess it could be criticised for not doing anything really new with the formula.
If I may attempt a simile here: If the first one was a delicious meal put together by a young chef, this would be the same chef trying out some new ingredients and putting a little twist on the original recipe; though it is ultimately the same recipe. I thought the second meal tasted even better than the first one, but your mileage may vary. The secret ingredient this time is actress Naomi Scott, who does a phenomenal job in the lead role here. One to watch!
If you like these kinds of movies, do yourself a favour and catch it in a dark theatre with a game audience; this is one of the better ones and deserves a big screen

EDIT: In the interest of fairness, I should add that this is not a subtle film; it is quite camp and the performances are not exactly dialed back, but that's what makes it work so well, in my opinion

Outside of The Wolfman which I didn't love, I watched through a BluRay boxset a couple years back of all of the 30s Universal Movies and the 50s Black Lagoon and was just kinda floored by how well every film in that collection holds up like a hundred years later.

I'm also so glad to hear you liked Smile 2! Kind of surprised to hear Smile 2 is camp though, did you think that about the first one? Cause one of the things that impressed me about the first one is it could have been just a piece of tween throwaway fluff, but explorations of trauma and grief while mostly underbaked still just gave it a little of something extra. I kinda worry a more camp approach might take away that something extra that pushed Smile into the "better than I expected" territory.

We have ordered an Indian takeaway and are going to watch SMILE on Netflix. Perfect for a dark night with heavy rain smacking off the windows!

@Pizzamorg I wouldn't call the first one camp, and I'm not sure me calling the sequel camp is being entirely fair either. It's difficult to say how you will react to "Smile 2"; you may very well think it inferior to the original due to it being.. i don't know, "more"? Understated it is not, to put it that way. I think it's still quite a ways off from being vapid or fluff, though. Either way, I hope (and think) you won't hate it when you see it

Checked out Godzilla Minus One. This feels like a direct response to the complaints people had with Shin Godzilla. They aren't complaints I shared, so I felt like this was a huge downgrade from Shin.

The one exception here are the special effects, Minus One has effects that are an astounding leap over the oftentimes pretty ropey effects in Shin. But even then, something about how grounded and haunted Shin was made those set pieces work even with the limitations of the effects. Minus One is more like a theme park ride, so the effects are better but the set pieces are weightless.

They also have only one set piece actually set in a populated area and its easily the best moment of the entire film. It also comes in around half way through this thing which is a good two hours, so it just made it a bit of a slog for me. Felt like the movie peaked and then I had another forty five minutes of cheesy melodrama to wade my way through before we had a limp final set piece in the middle of the ocean and a goofy cliffhanger ending.

@PorkChopExpress Hitchcock is genuinely brilliant and is rightly lauded as one of the greats. I love Rope, Strangers on a Train and The Lady Vanishes in particular.

@PorkChopExpress @Bob_Salat I need to see more of his work; the ones I've seen have been uniformly good. Particular favourites are Rear Window (which made it easy to see why the world fell in love with Grace Kelly) and North by Northwest. Will have to check to see what's available on streaming around these parts.

I just read the Hollywood Reporter interview with 20th Century Studios head Steve Asbell (which can be read here) and he touched on many of the projects they have in the pipeline, including two Predator movies coming next year.
Both are directed by Dan Trachtenberg, who did Prey, and one is Predator: Badlands, which we already knew about, with Elle Fanning and it was confirmed that it indeed will get a theatrical release in November next year.
The other one is shrouded in mystery, however, but it will apparently drop ahead of "Badlands" and may be streaming only. There have been rumours of Amber Midthunder returning to the franchise, which was confusing as "Badlands" was specifically billed as not being a sequel to "Prey". This second, secret project might be a more direct sequel with Midthunder reprising her role, then. Interestingly, Asbell referred to "Badlands" as the "live-action Predator movie", possibly indicating that this other project is animated, maybe?
Anyway, if it's releasing before "Badlands", it probably won't be too long before we learn more about it.

@PorkChopExpress Admittedly those three aren’t talked about as much as your Psychos and Birds but that’s what is incredible about his work, there’s always something great to be discovered. I tend to sprinkle in a double bill every couple of months to keep things enjoyable.

@FuriousMachine Rear Window is an excellent shout. Have you ever seen Disturbia from 2007? I’m yet to see North by Northwest but I almost feel I know it through cultural osmosis.

@Bob_Salat The one with Shia LeBoeuf, right? Yeah, but I wasn't huge fan, if memory serves. Don't really remember much about it, to be honest.

@FuriousMachine Yes indeed. It was a sort of modern riff on Rear Window. What is Shia Le Beuf even about? I can’t fathom his career.

Re-bought some Studio Ghibli blu-rays for my burgeoning new collection and it’s shocking the quality difference from the digital files I’ve been subjecting my youngest son to for months. He probably won’t appreciate it but it really is night and day, My Neighbour Totoro is utterly stunning.

Speaking of AV quality upgrades, "The Crow" on 4K disc represents a massive step up in detail and clarity from the old blu-ray transfer which (in retrospect and somewhat ironically) had completely borked black levels. Very impressed.

@LN78 I'll take that any day over the recent remake, which I'm avoiding like the plague.

@JohnnyShoulder Same. I'm typically not all that bothered by remakes as long as the original still is readily available to enjoy, but this one rubs me the wrong way, for some reason. It could be a good movie, for all I know, but I seriously doubt it.
Luckily I have the 4K release @LN78 mentions on my shelf

@JohnnyShoulder @FuriousMachine From what I can gather the remake is essentially "John Wick" in rubbish goth cosplay. I'll be giving that a miss, then.

"Prince of Darkness" - criminally underrated entry into director John Carpenter's loose "apocalypse trilogy". A pervasive sense of foreboding is let down by a slightly shonky third act. Much, much better than I remembered.

"Late Night With The Devil" - imaginative but overhyped - it should've had the courage of its "found footage" convictions and not had the widescreen black and white (obviously digitally shot) behind the scenes cutaways during the "commercial breaks" . I thought that the pompous James Randi-inspired sceptic/debunker character getting his comeuppance was very amusing.