What did you watch this week my ninjas?(07/29-08/04)

i haven't seen a single one of yours this week, sk!

my week in film:

unfriended: dark web (2018) 3/5 like the first film, this gets a reasonable amount of mileage out of its simple concept & limited budget. i found some of the acting & characterizations a bit wobbly early on, & i think they would have been better off keeping the plot a bit leaner & less conspiratorial. there's stuff that happens in the back end of this thing that may sprain your eye muscles from all the rolling they'll be doing. but if you put that aside, i think this is still a fun, efficient & highly enjoyable film. never checked my watch once.

the signal (2007) 2.5/5 fun if not particularly unique premise. started off with a bit of a bang, but sort of meandered along to what i thought was a rather muddled, unsatisfactory final 2/3s.

troubled water (2008) 3.5/5 a man who killed a small kid when he was a teen tries to start a new life when paroled as an adult. slightly reminds me of the brilliant 2012 film the hunt, but doesn't quite get to that film's level of greatness for me. where the hunt kept things small & low key, this got just a touch too heavy-handed at times. still worth a watch if you're up to the challenge of its crushing morosity.

the bloodettes (2005) 2/5 a film from cameroon, an oddity that looked great, very stylish really, but was very confusing & oddly relaxed to the point of being dull. even the action scenes are lifeless. a movie about two beautiful prostitutes on the run after accidentally killing a politician should have quite a bit more spark than this.

brand upon the brain! (2006) 5/5 a man recounts his bizarre childhood while he repaints the lighthouse where he grew up. i love it when films create their own alternate universes where people act in ways that seem unrecognizable, yet still maintain a coherent, understandable world. thoroughly bizarre, singular & original, yet completely lovable.

5 dolls for an august moon (1970) 3/5 murder mystery from mario bava. made not a bit of sense to me, but it was undeniably fun to watch.

revenge (2017) 3.5/5 i was going to give this a 4 or 4.5, but there are a few details that brought this down a touch after it sat with me for a while. in particular, there are a few uses of imagery & a dream sequence that are really a bit too on the nose. but this has a great style, tension & tone, & a great soundtrack too that, when coupled with it's occasionally glossy visuals, reminded me of drive & mad max fury road at times. & when it gets violent, it gets violent in a very tough, cringe-inducing, ugly & very very satisfying way. and it very adeptly & consciously avoids the uglier aspects that most films of this type usually wallow in.

the rider (2018) 5/5 a young rodeo performer has to make peace with his new life after sustaining an injury that will keep him from riding again. this will almost certainly be near the top of my favourites of this year. i had an emotional reaction to the end unlike anything i've seen in a film in years. a bit like classic malick meets the wrestler. truly great.

As Far As My Two Feet Will Carry Me (2001)
"At the end of WW2, a German POW doing hard labor in the Soviet Gulag escapes from his Siberian camp to return to Germany but he's pursued by a Soviet NKVD officer." Very good survival movie. I also have the book on the way. Free on Snag Films. 7/10.

Bosch (Season 1)
Surprisingly good considering I've never been into Cop/Detective Shows. Will definitely continue with Season 2. 8/10

"Three Identical Strangers".
It's a very chilling documentary about triplets (boys) given up for adoption at birth. At six months of age they're placed in three different homes, one a blue collar family, one a middle class family, and the third an upper middle class family. They are reunited by accident at age 19. Everything is wonderful, but then they and their adoptive families begin to question the situation. The film takes a very dark turn when they find that the homes they were placed in were NOT chosen at random. 8/10.


😎

Stargate (1994) - 5/10

The Piano Teacher (2001) - 6/10

The Towering Inferno (1974) - 7/10

Drugstore Cowboy (1989) - 8/10

Get Smart (2008)(re-watch) - 5/10

Movies I watched this week:

Mission: Impossible - Fallout (2018): Possibly the most subtitleiest film of the year, but also one of the best. What is it like to live inside Tom Cruise's head, I wonder? Is he able to perform so many death-defying stunts on account of his ability to battle the alien spirits out of his head? This movie at times seems like a knowingly self-parody when at one point a character yells into Tom Cruise's ear: "Stay straight, Ethan, stay straight!"

The FP (2011): Recently I've become obsessed with this movie. That tends to happen when I find one tends to cross my path. With a great look by a professional cinematographer and a script that cleverly combines absurd dialogue and effectively built worlds, I find it hard to fault this film.

Ocean's 8 (2018) - An entertaining caper I'll elaborate on at a later date after fully contemplating its flaws compared to the Steven Soderbergh films.

Predator (1987) - I watched a newly remastered version on a huge screen, and I can say with full authority that this is one beautiful motherfucker.

Also I watched several other movies that I feel too unhinged to write about at the moment, so may everyone have a good night!

After going literally months without watching any movies, I finally watched a few this last week.

The Room (2003, US)
I've been meaning to watch this one forever, and finally got around to it. I felt like I was high the whole time I was watching it. I laughed just about the whole way through. And reading the reviews on IMDb afterward, watching reviewers dissect the movie, was ten times funnier than the already-hilarious movie was. Honestly I barely know what to even make of it. This is a movie that defies the very concept of rating; I don't know whether to give it a one or a ten. It deserves both, lol.

High and Low (1963, Japan)
I've seen this one before but felt like watching it again. Just as a shoe company exec is making a risky grab to take over the company for himself, his chauffeur's child is kidnapped for a ransom that could ruin him. The first half of the movie is about his struggle to decide whether to pay the ransom to save the child while losing his company in the process. The second half is about the police searching the slums for the kidnapper. Behind it all is a powerful examination of class antagonism in Japan. One of my favorite Kurosawa movies. 10/10.

Breaking With Old Ideas (1975, China)
Set in the 1950s during the Great Leap Forward, the film centers around a communist schoolteacher who campaigns to democratize education, which even after the revolution still remains a preserve of the privileged, divorced from the realities and needs of workers and peasants. He puts his ideas into practice in a rural school in the Chinese countryside, and struggles against reactionaries who look down on workers and peasants and want to keep education a privilege for the upper classes. This was one of the last communist movies made in China. 8/10.

Braveheart (1995, US)
In medieval Scotland, when English soldiers attempt to rape his wife and then murder her for resisting, William Wallace organizes a war of resistance against English rule over Scotland. While this is a highly fictionalized story that bears little resemblance to the real William Wallace and the times he lived in, it’s still an enormously entertaining film. 8/10.

None of yours this week for me, SK. I feel like I've seen AL: Vampire Hunter, but I also am not sure...

Orange is the New Black, Season 6
A bummer of a season, some ok new characters.

Órbita 9 (2017)
A girl lives alone on a malfunctioning space ship. A space repairman comes to repair the ship. Love blossoms. Then a revelation happens. Then another revelation happens. Etc. The revelatons happen way to easily, and uninterestingly, in this film. The acting is so-so. Characterisation is also not that good. And concidering all those big revelations, there isn't much of a personal conflict, which is something good to have in a movie dealing with the themes this one does. Meh.

Papillon (1973)
The story of Papillon, and how it takes him a million tries to escape from a penal colony in French Guyana. My dad's favourite film, so I finally decided to watch it. It's a good movie, but not fully my cup of tea. Acting was top-notch. I did not care for the soundtrack.
Bonus review from PapaVladimir: "The Russians can never make a movie like this!"

The Rover (2014)
A guy's car gets stolen, so he goes on to kill a bunch of people to take it back. Also, everything is shit in the New Great Depression. It seems like this movie is slowly making it's way through the whole WDYWTW gang. Robert Pattinson can act when he's not sparkly. Guy Pearce is as good as usual. I have a problem with just killing people willy-nilly, but I understand that it's a part of the story. I like bleak and depressing movies, so I liked it for the most part. Recommended for a double feature with John Wick (And they call it puppy love...)

The Divide (2011)
It's the nuclear holocaust, and a bunch of neighbors are stuck in a shelter underneath their building. Things get very ugly. Speaking of bleak and depressing, this movie is a doozy. The bad guys are scarily bad, made even more scary by the excellent performances. Interesting, ugly, tale of loss of humanity, and going bat-shit crazy.

...

Mission impossible fallout 7/10

I maybe seen others,but I can't remember