We just watched Dune Drifters. I'd recommend it to anyone liking low-budget sci-fi.

kokorodoko wrote: Sat Oct 23, 2021 12:49 pm In particular though, the movie is just infuriating. This looks like it's supposed to be a kind of childhood-adolesence reminiscing and it has seniors bullying freshmen as a kind of fond memory of an exciting rite of passage. Yeah sure some kids get their revenge on a guy later but to the main guy it's just like ok we've beaten the shit out of you, now we can hang. Cool! What the fucking fuck. I hate it.

I'm very uncomfortable with American highschool movies because even when they try to be sympathetic, they're so extremely tiered in their portayal, it's very clear who belongs where, who gets to be a character and who is only there to be joked about. This is not really how D&C works, but I just thought about it.

Hey, yeah. Infuriating & uncomfortable describes the American high school experience for me. So that much is authentic. We even had an asshole who excused his taking senior year twice as an opportunity to beat up freshmen. He probably got it from that movie. That pituitary malfunction really didn't beat anyone up too badly. Usually just slapped the shit out of someone a third his size when they didn't see him coming or maybe rip their back pack off and toss it down the stair well. My freshman gym class shared a locker room with the senior weight lifting class he was in. Sucked. He put me in a corner one time as I was changing shirts or something. I was probably going to get one of those punches in the gut like made this other kid puke. Ugh. I was tiny too. So I just emote absolutely nothing and refuse to break eye contact while saying, "I will cut your fucking brake lines." Held the note long enough and just got a quick throttle against the lockers. I guess these days I'd go to jail or something, but that's just not fair. What was it Hobbes said about the state of nature? Something about how big dudes can beat the shit out of you, but little dudes can hide in a tree all day sharpening a stick waiting for you to doze off before stabbing your eyes out. Take grizzly retribution off the table and lil dudes don't have much.

Krev wrote: We just watched Dune Drifters. I'd recommend it to anyone liking low-budget sci-fi.

I put it on the list.

Watched the new restoration of The Servant this morning. Still an absolute classic.

I watched Harmony (2015) again last night. I don't often rewatch or reread things and those things I really like kind of have the weight of the moment around them - I remember that time and how it hit me right then and there.

Because of this, in rewatching something there's always a bit of uncertainty - was I just overwhelmed by impressions the first time?

Not so. This movie is fantastic. One of my favourites. Go see it, everyone.

John Wick 2 - Not as good as the first one. Loved the opening sequence, with the cinema screen mirroring the events in the scene. But the guy gets hit by a car at full speed - twice! - and stands up and walks like it's nothing? That's too much even for this kind of movie. Nice in-joke of having another Swede play the Russian mob boss, but also inexplicable - what happened to that guy afterwards?

Is the mirror hall art installation a real thing? I would like to visit something like that.

Ghost in the Shell (2017) - I'm not part of the hardcore fanbase of the 1995 movie. I think Shirow is a frickin' bore, and the "philosophy" I find very superficial. Nonetheless I'll happily watch it for the music, the art and the mood. Visually, this recent one is fine - up to the fighting scenes. Who asked for all this slow motion? Is it like saying "Yeah we know The Matrix was inspired by the earlier movie so now we make a reference back to The Matrix wink wink" or something like that? I don't know, but it just looks kind of tacky and cliche to me.

I can't shake the feeling of a cynical underside to a project like this. It's like they take a few memorable signifiers from an earlier classic and mash it into a pretty typical Hollywood storyline. There always has to be a clearly identifiable villain and so on. That Spielberg/Jackson Tintin movie had lots of this. Can't you take at least some chances?, I want to ask them.

Saw the Green Knight. I liked it. Interesting subversion of the source material. Lots of pretty scenes. Not super weird, but weird enough to be interesting.

On Ghost in The Shell, I never saw the new one. Saw the animated movie when young. I'll watch it on mute it I like the visual style so much. But I do like the story. The philosophy is of a time. It is easy to take for granted a lot of Cyber Punk ideas these days. It is actually mind blowing to look back at what the speculation was and when it was made (in the genre, this movie being towards the end). Still, push past all that and think about that poor trash dude who's entire memory is a lie just as easy as your phone can get hacked. I'm able to appreciate that stuff even more lately. I did just review some Gilbert Ryle also but it's not as related as you might want.

The Card Counter

Meh. Nice style, last act is a real damp squib.

Have had a rip of it for a while, and have known about it for ages, but it was only a few days back that I finally managed to cross Out of the Past off the bucket list. Will be rewatching it at some point. Cronenberg's A History of Violence, something of a riff on the film, is more visceral in its action. The Tourneur film is by contrast weirdly low-key at certain critical junctures, almost poker faced. Mitchum is great, but I especially love Jane Greer's mixture of conniving "femme fatale" and doe-eyed "girl next door." A classic performance.

Got Tron on blu-ray the other day. Looks stellar, and it was only eleven bucks. Have always liked it. As with the original three main Star Wars features, I wish the franchise would've quit while it was ahead, but...

Speaking of blu-ray, a friend of ours gifted us Criterion blu-rays of Tokyo Story and Make Way For Tomorrow for a wedding gift. I've seen the former, but have not seen the latter. Thing is, we don't have a blu-ray player - just a regular DVD one - so we had to add one on to our wedding registry!

zircona1 wrote: Thu Nov 11, 2021 8:26 amTokyo Story and Make Way For Tomorrow

^^^Both very good movies.