Kicking this off as, while things were down, I started a movie league table with a friend. Twenty films are on the board at any one time - seventeen, then the three worst. A big bin holds all the films that are in the space between (about ninety are in there as of now).

We aggregate how we rated each movie the day after viewing.

At the moment, the board looks like this.


The Empire Strikes Back (despecialised)
Apostasy
Hunger
The Parallax View
Marathon Man
Mikey and Nicky
Capricorn One
Orphans (1998)
Stray
Three Days of the Condor
When the Wind Blows
I, Daniel Blake
A Matter of Life and Death
Night Moves
Saint Maud
The Reflecting Skin
Ulzana's Raid
- - - - - - - - - -
City Limits
Shock Waves (1977)
Breach (2020)

Following on from the despecialised TESB, watched Return of the Jedi last night. It was fun, although a few of Harmy's choices in the assembly didn't sit with the original despecialisation remit (Vader's eyebrows, come on....)

Went straight in the bin as it's no Ulzana's Raid, but much, much better than the bottom three. Plenty of great moments, but the indignity of Boba's knocking into the Sarlacc pit and Ewoks take some gloss off.

I don't understand how this game worked. Are these all movies you plan to watch? Have you chosen some movies you think are probably good and some you think are probably crap, and then pick which one to watch at random?

Anyway.

I watched The Nightingale (2018) yesterday. Not as sharp as I expected from The Babadook (which I think is amazing, and about the only horror movie that really is horror to me). Even more so considering the subject matter of this one. The Nightingale felt kind of... safe. Like it was going somewhere but not taking the step fully. Something about the camera shots made scenes too explicit (as in unsubtle, too obviously directing the gaze). Dialogue is so-so.

The day before I watched Ex Machina (2014). Phew... very uncomfortable movie. It cruelly plays with my emotions and evokes some of my worst dystopian fears. There are so many different points of sadness here and I will rewatch it if I can bear it. It's difficult to elaborate without giving things away, so by all means go watch it. Just be warned it's a very, very sad movie.

The day before that I watched Immortals (2011). Man, this one was weird... It's basically a sort-of adaptation of the Theseus legend, only it mixes and invents shamelessly with mythological and historical material. In addition to the main revenge tale there's a meta-story of the decline of religion in the Greek world and the decision of the gods to leave humans to sort themselves out, and at the same time there's a strong pro-religious and anti-pacifist message? Yeah, weird. Production design is aesthetically unified and looks cool, especially the temple. The Minotaur teminded me of The Mountain in Game of Thrones, fucking scary.

Earlier this week I finally watched Django Unchained. Sure it's entertaining, but man does that guy overwork his scripts sometimes. Thinking particularly of the German character. I know that's Tarrantino's "thing", I guess I'm just not impressed by that "thing" anymore. Sam Jackson's character was great.

A week before that another on-my-list: El Mariachi. I always kind of figured Robert Rodriguez as a "Tarrantino light", but that has certainly not been the experience watching some of his movies, being very pleasantly surprised by Alita (2019) and Sharkboy and Lavagirl (2015) earlier. El Mariachi is gritty, suspenseful and touching. I like the "modern western" feel, and it made me want to go to Mexico.

It's pretty straightforward. Watch films and rank them - the list is the seventeen best and the three worst. These are held on a physical noticeboard with a bin separating them. That bin is full of about 110 films at present; all better than the bottom three, but not as good as the top seventeen. Any film we watch goes on the board, irrespective of genre, age &c.

Not much change on the board recently. A made for TV version of The Saint (2017) is now rock-bottom. Watched a decent UK movie a few night's back - '71, set in Northern Ireland at the height of the troubles. Had some lousy bookending but the meat of it was good. Not Ulzana's Raid good though, so in the bin it went.

Hell Boy (better than first viewing)
Mother (great)

The other day I watched The Sum of Us (1994), an early Russell Crowe movie where he plays a gay, rugby-playing plumber. I hear many Australians love it, though I suspect there's a fair bit of patriotism influencing that opinion (a film from our own country gets internationally recognized, all that). The dad in this film is supposed to be cool and tolerant and everything, I think he's fucking creepy. Suffocating. No respect for other peoples' space. I would go insane if I had a parent like that. Reminds me of that bit Zizek does where he talks about how parents being too encouraging of childrens' sexuality can be even more damaging than shaming them. That wasn't the case in this movie, still.

The ending gives the film a quite disturbing subtext. Spoiler:

It's as if his dad had to have a stroke in order for the son to be allowed to live his own life. Now the dad can no longer intrude on his life, and then finally he can start seeing the guy he likes.

New Jack City (1991) is a pretty crappy movie by any metric. Bad acting, bad script, bad montages, clumsy ways of moving the plot forward, cliched, preachy. Being a hardcore Ice-T fan kid I'm glad I didn't dissapoint myself with this one at the time. His white sidekick was the one character that showed some inventiveness, and he had some actually funny moments, but he never got to do anything interesting. Why was he considered a loose cannon? We never know. Their "heartfelt" dialogue on the rooftop was the worst in the movie.

What's cool though is that they inadvertently made a science-fiction movie. The apartment complex thing freaked me the fuck out. The movie is worth watching for that fact alone. The parallels between Reagan-era business mentality and gangster culture I also like, but there are probably other movies that have done it better.

kokorodoko wrote: Thu Jun 03, 2021 9:29 am New Jack City (1991) is a pretty crappy movie by any metric. Bad acting, bad script, bad montages, clumsy ways of moving the plot forward, cliched, preachy. Being a hardcore Ice-T fan kid I'm glad I didn't dissapoint myself with this one at the time. His white sidekick was the one character that showed some inventiveness, and he had some actually funny moments, but he never got to do anything interesting. Why was he considered a loose cannon? We never know. Their "heartfelt" dialogue on the rooftop was the worst in the movie.

I rewatched this not too long ago. I agree, it isn't that good. I think it could've been better if it were longer, or a TV series a la The Wire. It just tries to cram too much stuff into 100 minutes.

Also, I didn't really care much about any of the characters (except maybe Chris Rock's).

kokorodoko wrote: Thu Jun 03, 2021 9:29 am

What's cool though is that they inadvertently made [New jack City] a science-fiction movie. The apartment complex thing freaked me the fuck out. The movie is worth watching for that fact alone.

Set design was very good in this, that's about all I remember of it, even having seen it a number of times.

zircona1 wrote: Thu Jun 03, 2021 10:16 amAlso, I didn't really care much about any of the characters (except maybe Chris Rock's).

Yeah, he was by far the best actor.