Review The Last Thing You Watched

[Booyakasha]

Holy crap, but the new episode of MLPFiM MAS (aka S-2E-2) was impressive. The animation is close to show-quality, plus they did full lip-sync. Humour was spot on. The guys at DawnSomewhere are nuts, man.

[Galefore]

Anomalisa. This is an "adult stop motion" film, and man... what a great piece of filmmaking. A story about a man who percieves everyone around him as the same person, the film utilizes its medium in unexpected ways, and does a wonderful job setting up complex characters with just dialogue and well- made "long takes" that still breath and feel alive. I think that's the most truly impressive thing about this film; there are times where the animation and dialogue are so well executed, it looks like love actors almost indistinguishably. It's marvelous and thoughtful. I love it.

[Galefore]

Stand by Me. I had never seen this one, so my girlfriend and I decided to watch it together. It's really really well done, with four child actors who naturally all went on to have prolific careers. It's a tight examination of childhood trauma and suffering, filmed in gorgeous wooded backdrops and filled with a subtle, sweet nostalgic feeling that makes this relatively simple film go from good to great.

[Galefore]

The Panic in Needle Park. Al Pacino is phenomenal in this picture. Seriously. This is a very controlled, subtle Pacino who unleashes, in small bursts, that trademark mania only when it counts. Kitty Winn is remarkable as well, both actors digging into the frenzied pathos of low level dope hustlers and addicts. I thought, though the scenes were compellingly shot, there were jusssssst a few too many shots of needle use, though the film makes up for it in its unrelenting slosh through Needle Park. There's some great editing here that takes us through scenes of depravity cut with scenes of genuine warmth, jarring the viewer with the suddenness with which situations turn emotionally. The pacing read to me as intended to mirror the lost time and frenetic lives of heroin addicts, and it has an interesting effect on the narrative flow. And then there's those lowlife side characters, all played with delightful moral ambiguity. The performances here provoke something that feels real and not rehearsed, and it's a credit to everyone involved.

[Calamity Panfan]

The Walking Dead: Season 6, Episode 6. It's kind of silly to say for a show I'm watching through season 6, but I'm not sure I even like this show. I feel like I'm just watching it to see how much it can piss me off.

[I REALLY HATE POKEMON!]

Dragon Ball Super Episode 77

Overall decent, but too slow. It accomplished very little and I just want to see the fights already. The Whis/Goku/Vegeta scene where they discuss Bulma's pregnancy is funny though. Beerus considering murdering Goku was cool.

[Galefore]

^^man I feel that on a molecular level.

[Galefore]

Goodfellas. This is a movie I've wanted to see for years, but for some reason I always had trouble finding it or getting an opportunity. I'm glad I finally got to sit down and just enjoy this masterpiece. The acting and dialogue here are on their own level, as tends to be the case with Scorsese. I liked the use of camera motion to give us a dynamic point of view without having to fall into shakiness or "mocumentary" style filming. And man, lemme say it again, the ACTING. This film is loaded with A++ performances from everyone involved. I am very pleased to check this one off the list of must- sees, and throw it instead onto my list of nearly- perfect movies.

[Galefore]

Glengarry Glen Ross. THE LEADS. But seriously, what a cool movie. I like stage shows adapted to film well, the dialogue is crispy and witty and the actions feel perfectly staged. Again, Pacino is on here, and I wanted to highlight Ed Harris and Jack Lemmon as well for both giving incredible performances. I also really enjoyed that the film was careful to keep the viewer locked in with the characters in tiny places, showing us only glimpses of neon signs through shots of windows and reflection. It makes those characters' desperacy more palpable, as though they're imprisoned.

Trolls. Watched this with the kiddo and girlfriend. This was cute, full of fun music and color. Visually, the redesign to the admittedly horrifying Trolls and their world works, with the highlight of the film being the visually delicious scenes in the forest, but of course the plot here is what you'd expect. There's a dim line of darkness hiding beneath the character Branch, and I liked the message here. I would have preferred original tunes to top 20 covers, because the few original tunes provided are really fun. All around, a solid kids' movie.

[Galefore]

Raging Bull. I have a weird tendency to go backwards in great directors' filmographies. I did this with Quentin Tarantino, and I have now done it with Scorsese, whose Taxi Driver is next on my list of his films. He's a genius, absolutely, and that's not hard to see. This film is **** elemental. I mean, jees, the fights are just marvelous and surprisingly subtle even in their fury and heat, and goddamn, godDAMN Robert DeNiro **** destroyed this role, that bitter, barely human performance. There's a climactic scene I won't detail too heavily involving a temper tantrum that will stand out to me forever as a moment of acting and filming genius. I love seeing classic films like this for the first time now, rather than before I might have been able to focus a bit more on them. This one was beautiful, just beautiful.

[HeterodoxalVoxel]

Hardcore Henry

No matter how many times I've watched this since it's release (2 times in theatre, 6 times on DVD) and it never gets old. Great acting, cinematography, and music.

[Galefore]

Ed Wood. This one was very interesting to me. Notably, it's a biopic that seems to have set out to capture a spirit, not an perfectly accurate picture of the subject. I feel like most biopics do this, but this one really homes in on Ed Wood's sense of unending hope and energy. The director isn't treated as a freak here, or given the "what even is he" treatment Tommy Wiseau gets as Ed Wood's spiritual successor, but rather he is portrayed as a manically determined, dare I say it, true artist. If Ed Wood was half as passionate in his projects as portrayed here, then even in their completely broken and confused form they're documents of somebody's passion, and to me that matters. Johnny Depp gives Wood a bit too much of a manic positivity as to almost become un-human, but it reads here more charming and tragic, especially when shreds of anger or grief poke through, than the creepy "positive" performance he turned in as Willy Wonka. Martin Landau, of course, steals every ounce of the bottled thunder Depp might have collected up from this one, because his portrayal of Bela Lugosi is central to this film. There's a scene towards the end,

[spoiler]where Lugosi is being checked into rehab for his morphine addiction, and Burton films him from below, startling the receptionist with his theatrical person. The musical score wrapping around the silences in the dialogue is cheesy 50s Hollywood horror, but Landau gives Lugosi a trembling edge as he asks for help. Then, it cuts to Lugosi screaming in absolute horror and pain as he experiences opiate sickness, and the score faithfully keeps to the schtick, creating a brilliant contrast that will stick with me. It's cheesy enough that it shouldn't work, but it manages to be evocative all the same. [/spoiler]

The black-and-white filming on this one completes the effect, playing with light and contrast in its unique way and coming together to create beautiful, well-composed shots of Ed Wood poorly composing his own. This was one of the better biopics I've seen; it felt from the beginning like a legitimate tribute to a clueless, but God-bless-him passionate, **** director.

[Apollo the Just]

A bunch of Gintama episodes.

I swear the only anime that **** on Yamcha more than DBS is Gintama lmfao

[I REALLY HATE POKEMON!]

^ I watched DBS E5 dub and Bulma was trying to convince Vegeta to go to a party, and Vegeta was like "Yeah, sure, let's go see YAMCHA." He was so sarcastic, it was great. I don't remember that line from the sub though.

[Calamity Panfan]

I saw John Wick Chapter 2 and it was the pinnacle of cinema. Everybody can stop making movies now.

[HeterodoxalVoxel]

[QUOTE="Pantagon Dark, post: 1622156, member: 29448"]I saw John Wick Chapter 2 and it was the pinnacle of cinema. Everybody can stop making movies now.[/QUOTE]
Yeah it's pretty great

[Booyakasha]

New SU was kind of rough.

[HeterodoxalVoxel]

Just got out of the theatre for John wick: Chapter 2.
Film of the decade.

[I REALLY HATE POKEMON!]

Dragon Ball Super Episode 79

Pretty great, seeing Buu is action again was cool. I'm hoping he uses his Candy Beam or absorbs someone eventually. I kinda like how the tournament exhibition doesn't have proper rules, too, allowing the fights to be more complicated. Gohan fights next, but the previews show him as a Super Saiyan so I'm curious if the "Mystic Gohan" thing is gone for good.

[Calamity Panfan]

I saw Knowing starring Nicolas Cage for the first time today. I don't know if I liked it or not. It was definitely interesting. Thought it dragged a bit, had some very corny moments and the dialogue was laughable but it had some interesting visuals and I thought it was different in a good way.