NOW CLOSED ; List some movies you've watched recently. Theatre, rental, TV... and give a */10

[DigDog]

i watched more of those Sharpe miniseries, it gets repeptitive after many of them.
Decent for getting your fill of Sean Bean, and that's about it.

 

[DigDog]

RLM review of a Nic Cage film that apparently doesn't suck

 

[Dr. Detroit]

Mayhem - 9/10

Super enjoyable balls to the wall pandemic action comedy. No bullshit emotional storylines. No good guys are saved, everyone fuckin dies, and in a gruesome enjoyable creative way.

A+ Solid 90-minutes of violence!

 

[mikeymikec]

i watched more of those Sharpe miniseries, it gets repeptitive after many of them.
Decent for getting your fill of Sean Bean, and that's about it.

I agree. They're enjoyable, but possibly a good finishing point is when Pete Postlethwaite's Sergeant character makes his exit.

 

[DigDog]

I watched again

Bamboozled - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0215545/reference

A Spike Lee film, not one of his most well known, but in my opinion one of his best.
A - black, Harvard educated - TV writer is struggling to produce material for his job, and plans to get fired out of his contract by proposing an absurdly racist show. To his horror, the show is a massive success, and he finds his morals shifting as he starts profiting from defending the show as art.

I am extremely perplexed by the horrible production quality of this film, it seems to have been shot .. badly. with bad equipment. with shit lighting.
But despite the absolutely ghastly production, the material is top notch. There is a clever message that the struggle for identity is not at all straightforward. Or maybe there isn't, idk, i'm an idiot. But Bamboozled is great.
You need to keep an open mind, it used both visual mixed media, but also the same acting-equivalent, with the protagonist being theatrical, some characters being almost documentarial, some "real life" footage thrown in for good measure. And obviously the subject is completely insane.

7.5/10 - both good and absolutely unique.

 

[sactoking]

Finally got through Episode 6 of Loki. Thoroughly enjoyed the series, Hiddleston's Loki may be my favorite Marvel character to ever grace the screen. Solid 4/7, would watch again.

 

[DigDog]

Zardoz - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070948/reference

Zardoz zardoz zardoz zardoz zardoz;
zardoz zardoz zardoz zardoz zardoz, zardoz zardoz Zardoz zardoz zardoz zardoz zardoz zardoz.
Zardoz.
Zardoz zardoz zardoz zardoz zardoz zardoz, zardoz zardoz zardoz zardoz, zardoz zardoz zardoz zardo Zardoz.


My zardoz: Zardoz/zardoz

 

[DigDog]

So, Zardoz.

mixed feelings on this one. And also, my memory seems to have both omitted much, and, probably edited the beginning half of Zardoz with the second half of .. uh .. Logan's Run ? Yeah, the ice robot.

Anyway.

Zed is a post-apocalyptic barbarian, an Exterminator. He and few others like him worship this huge, flying, stone talking head, who supplies them with guns and orders them to kill indiscriminately.
Later on it is shown that the Exterminators do not just kill, but also enslave the population, the "Brutes", for their food production.

Zed is a clever Exterminator and one day he grows curious enough, and stows away on the flying stone head. He is taken to a typical 70s english cottage, where he finds a commune of hippies.
The hippies are Eternals, and have a host of various invisible powers, including immortality.

Zed generates interest in the Eternals, for various reasons, and during his interactions with them the plot is explained. Mankind attempted to reach a state of perfect existence, and while few have attained immortality, most have died, and what was left of society collapsed. The few Eternals who survived have isolated themselves into areas called Vortex, which isn't fully explained, but appears to be some combination of force field and stealth field. A particularly clever Eternal devised the flying head-god, to keep the non-Eternal population in check and to make sure Eternals did not have to work.
There is a subplot that involves the mediocre form of immortality that the Eternals have, which causes some of them to fall to excessive boredom into complete apathy.



There is much bad to say about Zardoz.

The most evident problem is that most of the film takes part in the cottage, and what you got is a commune of hippies with they' boobs out, waving their hands as if to conjure magik-crystal powers, and this looks ridiculous.
There is some actually acceptable dialogue, and the plot makes even sense, but there are no special effects, costumes, props or scenery to support this.
Connery's acting goes from near-mute (which is ok, he's a mindless barbarian) to overexagerated emotion, and while the latter might even be context appropriate, it tears the screen wall, being excessive compared to everything else that is going on around him.

So, it's not that it's bad, it's that it's not convincing.

Boorman's exterior shots are as always great, the ... ok so .. the original teathrical release begings with the fog and the arrival of the stone head. Because Boorman really wanted to drive home the idea that this film is shit, he later added a scene where Niall Buggy (Zardoz), or rather, his "severed" head, with SUPER OBVIOUS black board under his neck, wearing a horrid pencil-made fake goatee and moustache, floats around the screen to give a speech that both ruins a good bit of the plot, and serves no purpose aside from explaining taht you should prepare yourself for one of the shittiest films ever made.


Zardoz reminds me a lot of a similar product, the TV show "The Prisoner". Here too the set is just a normal place, with normal people, where the audience is asked to pretend that they are something more.
I mean .. they had a big-ass beach ball pretend to be a supernatural entity. Come on.

The initial concepts of Zardoz are still somewhat salvageable, and it would probably be one of those films that actually becomes better through a reboot.

You got a fish-out-of-water protagonist. Zed is an outsider to the Eternals, but later the plot reveals he is an outsider to the Exterminators as well - he has inherited the pre-war genetic makeup that makes him as smart as the Eternals, without succumbing to apathy.
Zed infiltrates the Vortex and he is mocked for being inferior, while at the same time stirring us the repressed sexuality of the Eternals who can no longer have sex. As he punches and fucks his way into the respect of the Eternals, the plot is revealed: succumbing to apathy, the immortal Eternals can do nothing but eat and exist. A living graveyard is shown of Eternals who cannot die, but have aged horribly and exist in a state of living death.
in disgust, Zed breaks the barrier that holds them safe into the Vortex, with the Eternals embracing death as an better alternative than meaningless life. Zardoz is destroyed and the world will beging again to repopulate and maybe return to its former beauty.

None of the weird ESP powers of the film have to remain.


See, the script isn't complete trash, and with a decent director, you can make a good post-apocalyptic film out of it - certainly better than the A Boy & His Dog film adaptation. But good god, Boorman just kept taking liberties with the suspension of disbelief, where by the end of the film you feel like you have been made a fool of.



Zardoz is absolutely worth watching for everyone. It absolutely does deserve its cult film status, as it is such an outrageous product, and one that at no point can you raise your finger and say THAT IS BAD. No, even Sean Connery in red underwear being made to drag a buggy as if he were a horse, even at that point you can't say if you are watching a disaster, or art.

My vote: 7 Zardoz out of 10 Zardoz.

Edit: you should know that Boorman is the mind behind the incredible Excalibur (1981), and a host of other good films, including several who were award-nominated.

 

[Ajay]

Underworld:Awakening. 5.5/10. First 2 films were good, but now we go down the rabbit hole with more reboots. Don't think I can stomach watching Bloodwars.

 

[Muadib]

Underworld:Awakening. 5.5/10. First 2 films were good, but now we go down the rabbit hole with more reboots. Don't think I can stomach watching Bloodwars.

This is one group of film I never watched. I saw the first one ages ago, and didn't hate it. I need to catch up.

 

[MrSquished]

The white lotus - hbo Max series. 3 of 6 episodes released so far. Dark comedy anda sort of murder mystery and on a slower pace, but I'm really digging it. Takes place at a high end Hawaiian resort and follows some staff and three groups of guests over the course of a week long stay. Very curious to see how it finishes. Most critics give it solid reviews. It's on a weekly release every Sunday night, so pretty much three weeks to go.

 

[SMOGZINN]

The white lotus - hbo Max series. 3 of 6 episodes released so far. Dark comedy anda sort of murder mystery and on a slower pace, but I'm really digging it. Takes place at a high end Hawaiian resort and follows some staff and three groups of guests over the course of a week long stay. Very curious to see how it finishes. Most critics give it solid reviews. It's on a weekly release every Sunday night, so pretty much three weeks to go.

I am quite done with weekly release schedules for streaming shows. I watched the first episode of this thinking it was all there, but no, I have to wait a month to watch the rest of it now.
While I found the show mildly entertaining I give HBO Max 0/10000 for removing the very reason I prefer streaming services. I might go back and watch it once it is all released, but honestly I doubt it because it simply was not so gripping that I'll remember it in a month.


(I know other streaming services are doing this too, they get the same rating. If this shit gets any worse might cancel all my subscriptions and to go back to getting my shows on the internet high seas.)

 

[MrSquished]

I am quite done with weekly release schedules for streaming shows. I watched the first episode of this thinking it was all there, but no, I have to wait a month to watch the rest of it now.
While I found the show mildly entertaining I give HBO Max 0/10000 for removing the very reason I prefer streaming services. I might go back and watch it once it is all released, but honestly I doubt it because it simply was not so gripping that I'll remember it in a month.


(I know other streaming services are doing this too, they get the same rating. If this shit gets any worse might cancel all my subscriptions and to go back to getting my shows on the internet high seas.)

Agreed, it's very annoying. As you mention, others have been doing it, big example is Disney +. Has Hulu been doing it with shows like the Handsmaid's tale?

I like HBO enough to deal for now.

 

[DigDog]

I am quite done with weekly release schedules for streaming shows.

i feel the other way around.

I am getting my weekly drip-feed of Rick & Morty and i am glad that someone else is preventing me from binge-watching the entire season in one day, watching it for more hours than i actually enjoy, and then crying for 2 years because there's no Rick & Morty. Spread out over a few month is better, or rather, i get more enjoyment out of the show.

 

[RearAdmiral]

i feel the other way around.

I am getting my weekly drip-feed of Rick & Morty and i am glad that someone else is preventing me from binge-watching the entire season in one day, watching it for more hours than i actually enjoy, and then crying for 2 years because there's no Rick & Morty. Spread out over a few month is better, or rather, i get more enjoyment out of the show.

My technique is to save the last episode for months, this way it is still "alive". Stupid, yes.

 

[kn51]

The white lotus - hbo Max series. 3 of 6 episodes released so far. Dark comedy anda sort of murder mystery and on a slower pace, but I'm really digging it. Takes place at a high end Hawaiian resort and follows some staff and three groups of guests over the course of a week long stay. Very curious to see how it finishes. Most critics give it solid reviews. It's on a weekly release every Sunday night, so pretty much three weeks to go.

It's shall we say interesting. Not sure who I hate more. The daughter or the newlywed guy.

 

[Dr. Detroit]

The Hunt - 6.5/10

Fun popcorn flick with some very dark death scenes that come across as very unexpected. Great kill scenes with a thin plot.

Kinda reminded me of Surviving The Game (Busey & Ice-T starred) & The Purge.

 

[mikeymikec]

This is one group of film I never watched. I saw the first one ages ago, and didn't hate it. I need to catch up.

Watch the second one and pretend there aren't any more. The third is OK (a prequel that doesn't do anything worthy of note), just forgettable. 4 & 5 are dross.

 

[zinfamous]

Underworld:Awakening. 5.5/10. First 2 films were good, but now we go down the rabbit hole with more reboots. Don't think I can stomach watching Bloodwars.

what are you talking about? see my review of the Underworld movies from many pages ago:

they are all 11/10.

They have Beckinsale in leathers. What the fuck more do you want?

 

[mikeymikec]

what are you talking about? see my review of the Underworld movies from many pages ago:

they are all 11/10.

They have Beckinsale in leathers. What the fuck more do you want?

If this is what you're like now, what were you like when you were 15?

 

[snoopy7548]

If this is what you're like now, what were you like when you were 15?

 

[JujuFish]

I'm thinking about watching Suicide Squad when it comes out next week. I haven't seen the first one (or most of DC's movies). Should I bother watching the first one beforehand?

 

[Ajay]

They have Beckinsale in leathers. What the fuck more do you want?

Yes, I recall your comments. Kate Beckinsale in a tight leather outfit is the only redeeming quality for the later movies. Also, I must have less testosterone than when the later movies came out 🙁

 

[shortylickens]

I jerked off to her ONCE in 1997.
Why the fuck does anyone think she's not just a big deal today, but also a Must-See?

 

[shortylickens]

The new dexter is allegedly going to have 10 episodes.

Dexter: New Blood (TV Mini Series 2021–2022) - IMDb

Dexter: New Blood (TV Mini Series 2021–2022) Reference View

www.imdb.com

And apparently an all-new cast.