Community Movies/Shows you have seen recently or looking forward to...

teezzy

formerly 'deftones r cool'
Apr 19, 2019
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Man, what a fantastic film Revenge of the Sith turned out to be. Typing on my phone, so I'll be brief, but I'm surprised by just how much I loved the prequel trilogy, especially after doing some Googling to discover who Anakin's dad was. Amazing stuff, Star Wars rules. Episode 9 is gonna be so killer.

Like what an epic ass franchise. Wow.
 

Mivey

MetaMember
Sep 20, 2018
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A local cinema here had Alien on for the 40th anniversary


It's amazing how the visuals still look so great and futuristic for something made in the 70s. It doesn't look like what we today would think of the future, but this strange idea of using 70s tech and feel but in a super high-tech context, is really amazing. In a way, I feel the movie only got more interesting visually as it aged. Some of the special effects look their age, though the brilliance of the art design usually makes up for it.
I also like how the movie sucks you into it's world. It has a very slow pace, even in the latter parts, but I feel that only serves to make the few moments when things happen quickly all the more effective.

The actual plot is very much your standard slasher movie, once the Alien is on board, which is a bit of a shame. And I still don't get why "the company" didn't just send an actual expedition team to look at the alien signal (since they clearly assumed that's what they would find). Most of the problems just stem from the crew not knowing what they are dealing with. If you had some experienced scientists and maybe more robots, this mission might have been a success. Let the robots do the grunt work (since they can't get infected), let the robots carry the eggs safely into the ship, and bring everything safely to a lab.
Instead they just "added" this super dangerous mission secretly to a normal mining operation, and yeah, it all went tits up.
I guess the real moral of Alien is how you should have more government oversight over intergalactic conglomerates, exploiting their workers for evil experiments.
 

Hektor

Autobahnraser
Nov 1, 2018
5,682
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^The first Alien is one of the very few movies i'd consider absolutely perfect in every way. The very, very slow build-up in the movie is fantastic and gets me every time even though i know the movie in'n'out by now.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _

Watched Escape Room (2018) yesterday. it's one of those movies i wouldn't call good, but entertaining.
Kinda just a shameless copy of saw with less gore, but people being forced to play games over life and death is something that gets me everytime.
 
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teezzy

formerly 'deftones r cool'
Apr 19, 2019
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Boy those infamous Plinkett reviews really rip the prequels a new one, and point out some jarring issues. I still stand by my position, but woof, it's hard to argue with a lot of the points RLM makes
 
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teezzy

formerly 'deftones r cool'
Apr 19, 2019
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George Lucas is such an odd duck of a director, and his debut feature is exemplary of that fact. THX 1138 has to be one of the coldest, existential dystopian nightmares I've ever seen. It's like Logan's Run without any of the charm. To think that Lucas followed this up directly with the fun-loving American Graffiti and A New Hope make THX all the stranger. Even more queer is that the only other movies in Lucas' filmography as a director are the SW prequels. THX 1138 makes me wish Lucas had spent more efforts helming experimental fare, which I guess downplays just how unique the Kurosawa-influenced space opera which he became synonymous with really was before it became so deeply associated with American culture. Star Wars was essentially an experimental film within its own right, no?

The version of THX 1138 I just watched was George Lucas' later-released Director's Cut with re-edited scenes, and minor CGI elements added in. While, as a videomaking hobbyist, I can see where Lucas is coming from when he claims that a film is never finished, I sure do wish he'd leave his work alone. Half the reason I watched this was to see what sorta chops Lucas had in '71. So odd to think that his entire filmography has been tainted with dated CGI at this point.

Like I said, George is such an odd duck.

On set, directing THX, he looks like someone I wouldn't mind grabbing a beer and musing about Fritz Lang with at some hipster dive bar.



Oh, George, you tortured artist, you.
 
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Mivey

MetaMember
Sep 20, 2018
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Anyone here a fan of Disenchantment? Because I'd love to hear what people enjoy about this.
Its pilot must have been the most boring thing I have ever seen in my life. Not a single joke was funny, none of the characters is remotely interesting and I couldn't care one bit about its predictable plot. It's like a bizarro Futurama, if it was written by a bunch aliens that read the Wikipedia page on comedy. It just makes me sad how good it looked, the animation and backgrounds were absolutely incredible. Shame it's wasted on this.
 
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Kuro

"Oh yeah? Aren't you gonna punish me?"
Dec 22, 2018
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Anyone here a fan of Disenchantment? Because I'd love to hear what people enjoy about this.
Its pilot must have been the most boring thing I have ever seen in my life. Not a single joke was funny, none of the characters is remotely interesting and I couldn't care one bit about its predictable plot. It's like a bizarro Futurama, if it was written by a bunch aliens that read the Wikipedia page on comedy. It just makes me sad how good it looked, the animation and backgrounds were absolutely incredible. Shame it's wasted on this.
So almost like all the new seasons of The Simpsons? Can't say much but I dropped it after the pilot too.
 

Tizoc

Retired, but still Enabling
Oct 11, 2018
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I am about to start season 8 of simpsons. Really like the series tho i prefer the first handful of seasons more due to how '80s' they feel among other things :p
I will stop by season 10.
 

Kvik

Crossbell City Councillor
Dec 6, 2018
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Downunder.
The Criterion boxset of Police Story/Police Story 2 is releasing today.


A classic.
 

Ex-User (307)

MetaMember
Dec 11, 2018
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Pather Panchali - ★★★★
It really is as lovely a movie as people say, and the work that went into recreating it for an HD version is pretty inspiring. There isn't a whole lot to critique, but I couldn't help but feel that it tries to do a little too much. All of the characters are interesting, but because they're all so compelling, the time spent trying to juggle them hurts the movie just a tiny bit. This isn't actually that noticeable of a critique, until you see Aparajito.

Aparajito - ★★★★½
Yeah, so far 2/3 of the Apu Trilogy watched, this is hands down my favorite. It's like the quintessential coming of age story, but done in such a simple, beautiful, meditative way. I loved almost everything about it, and I think it's now become the standard by which I'm going to judge other coming of age stories.

Vertigo - ★★★★
So maybe my expectations were too high after years of seeing this top the Greatest of All Time lists put out by polls of producers, directors, critics and other industry people. Don't get me wrong, it's still really, really great. But on a first viewing, it's not something that I found myself thinking belonged in my pantheon of Top 3-5 movies. It's definitely something I'm open to revisiting though, because Jimmy Stewart did seem quite sensational, and it's the first time I've ever seen him in something where he's not an unambiguously "good" guy.

A Grand Day Out - ★★★★
I vaguely remember watching these Wallace and Gromit shorts as a kid with my grandfather, but besides some fond but nebulous memories of hijinks involving cheese, a spaceship and penguins, I didn't have any particularly firm memories of what they were like. I saw someone I follow on Letterboxd write a raving review though, so I decided to revisit it. I always worry about revisiting childhood movies since you often discover that it doesn't quite stand the test of time, but this little short passed with flying colors. It might be the most perfect 20-something minutes ever put to film actually. I can't think of a single thing I dislike about it. I love the colors, the voices, the cozy spaceship that they design, the resolution and the general upbeatness of the whole thing.

Thunder Road - ★★★★½
If Thunder Road looks familiar, it might be because you watched the original 12 minute short that came out back in 2016. Turning a tight short film into a feature length film is a pretty dangerous proposition, but it absolutely works here. Perhaps even more incredible is that it's directed by, written by, starred in, edited by, and soundtracked all by one dude. There's a pretty amazing depiction of grief, middle American families and parenthood in here, and it's a terrible shame that it basically came and went during the awards season and got zero attention.

The Wrong Trousers - ★★★★
This doesn't quite reach the highs that A Grand Day Out reached, but it's still a spectacularly fun and well-paced short. Nothing is wasted, nothing is drawn out, it's just 30-ish minutes of absolute fun. Again, I was super pleased that this held up and was as much fun as I seemed to remember having way back when I first saw these during summers with my grandfather. As a kind of broad aside about Wallace and Gromit, they have that excellent quality of being absolutely friendly to kids, but not in a way that makes them unfriendly or boring to adults. This is 100% all-ages entertainment that everyone should be able to enjoy together.

Blindspotting - ★★★★
Look, I don't want to relitigate the Oscars too much between my comments about Blindspotting and Thunder Road, but it's truly bizarre that something as milquetoast as Green Book could win awards, but this doesn't even get any nominations. I get that this is a pretty rough movie for most people to handle in terms of the message it's throwing in your face, and I'll even say that I found some parts pretty silly (the climactic scene is almost laughable in terms of what the main character does, and the circumstances of him happening to be in a position to do it). But it's a really thoughtful, funny and deep movie, and it's a bummer that more people won't even bother to see it.

Æon Flux - ★½
This movie is simply a gigantic piece of garbage. I've never seen the TV show, so I have no idea what the source material is like, but this is just the worst. To its credit I suppose, it did keep me engaged almost the whole time, but not in a "this is so good!" kind of way, but more like in a "wow, look at this train-wreck unfolding right before my eyes!" I actually found the terribleness kind of nostalgic, because it reminded me of the kind of movie I'd have spent my afternoon watching in senior year study hall, many years ago.

Empire Records - ★★½
Maybe this is unfair, but the record shop setting had me hoping for some kind of teen-oriented version of High Fidelity (one of my favorite movies of all time), and it is most certainly NOT that. It has a charming enough cast, but it has zero of the self-awareness, insight and depth that High Fidelity had in its depiction of relationships. But let's be real, me expecting a High Fidelity, simply because it shared a mere location setting was pretty stupid. But even so, taken on its own merits, it's still not that great. It's filled with lame cliches, melodrama and a ridiculously fantastical ending of the little guy winning against "The Man," but in a resolution that's completely inane. I don't begrudge anyone for liking it, but in terms of teen drama, you can do a LOT better

The Edge of Seventeen - ★★★★
Speaking of both coming of age movies (as mentioned with Aparajito) and teen dramas (as mentioned above with Empire Records), here's a really solid one. I can't say that my high school experience exactly mirrored Nadine's in this movie, but there was a lot of drama and genuine angst that I found familiar. Not to be too much of a prude, but I found it a little excessively vulgar at times (although I suppose that might have been the point), in a way that was hamming up the vulgarity of high school a little too much, and beyond what I recognized from my experiences. But even so, it's pretty cool that someone created a movie that (similar to The Spectacular Now actually), where the main character's struggles are depicted both compassionately, and reprovingly at the same time. We often see people getting into semantic debates over someone's "bad behavior" and if their "explaining" the problematic behavior is actually an excuse. And in the case of The Edge of Seventeen, we have a movie that's sympathizing and explaining a girl's behavior, but not necessarily excusing it. It's a really human depiction of high school and particularly of a high school girl, in a way we almost never get.
 
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Swenhir

Spaceships!
Apr 18, 2019
3,534
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I'm currently watching through Star Trek Discovery and I'm amazed by how much more Star Trek this is than any of the reboot movies. There's something about the fact that science isn't pushed back into the background that I really like. The character's writing is also surprisingly good. I don't think I've found a single character unbearable and they are mostly interesting, if a little bland, so far.

For example, I never thought I'd see a character that would remind me of what a Michelle Henke would look like if the Harringtonverse ever got an adaptation.
 

crimsonheadGCN

MetaMember
Jan 20, 2019
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Next movie that I'm seeing is John Wick Chapter 3 with my brother and father on Memorial Day weekend. Then after that I'll be seeing Godzilla with my brother, Aladdin and maybe Saving Private Ryan Fathom Event (since I never saw the original in theaters) by myself.
 

RionaaM

Vogon Poetry Appreciator
Sep 6, 2018
887
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Saw Detective Pikachu last night. I expected a lot from the trailers, and I'm glad to say it didn't disappoint at all. What a fantastic movie, I was laughing all the way through. It has A LOT of references to the franchise as a whole, and it's obvious the director put a lot of care into it. It has some hilarious
double entendres, social criticism and more. The plot is nothing to write home about, but it doesn't detract from the experience. If you are a Pokemon fan, this is a must-see.
 

Rosenkrantz

Once Punched Man
Apr 22, 2019
1,020
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I saw 2 episodes of Chernobyl and this is such a well-done show. Fantastic acting, eerie atmosphere, the creative team clearly has done a lot of research on the subject. I was surprised to see some very Russian things in the show, like that speech from Scherbina on why "it should be done" is really something I can picture happening in real life with almost exact words.

I saw some people on Era complaining about no Eastern European accent, in my opinion it was the right decision, to me, as someone who lives in Russia, it would've been extremely dumb to hear people speak with a thick fake Russian accent when they're supposed to be fluent in a language. Alternatively, HBO could've cast the entire ensemble consisting of actors from the former post-Soviet states, but I'm not sure we still have that many decent actors left.
 

ISee

Oh_no!
Mar 1, 2019
3,220
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Watched Brimstone yesterday.


I randomly selected it, without much thought. It needs a bit of time to start developing, but once it does...
One of the few movies where I started hating the antagonist more and more, with every chapter. Good movie, but it can be a bit disturbing and it will left you with a bitter feeling in your stomach.
 

Dandy

Bad at Games.
Apr 17, 2019
1,515
3,753
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Chernobyl has been amazing so far. Hard to believe it's real.

I just finished The Society on Netflix. It's YA but doesn't look like a CW show -- the actors don't look like air brushed super models, and when the guys take off their shirts they look like normal people :LOL:
 

Kurt Russell

SUPREME OVERLORD OF EVIL
Sep 6, 2018
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Mar del Plata
I'm adding yet another recommendation for Chernobyl, saw the 2 episodes that are out and it's sincerely amazing. Great acting, great sets, seems true to what happened. Also nice to see so many actors from other great shows I've seen in the past.
 

Rosenkrantz

Once Punched Man
Apr 22, 2019
1,020
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So, after seemingly half of Era scolded me for not giving Aaron Taylor-Johnson a fair chance, I watched Nocturnal Animals. This is what his performance reminded me of:


...I guess it's kind of decent...for him.

Didn't like the film at all. Gyllenhaal and Shannon were great, Amy Adams did everything she could with the role she was given, but outside of acting, cinematography and a few chilling minutes in the beginning I thought it was pretty boring.
 

crimsonheadGCN

MetaMember
Jan 20, 2019
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I loved John Wick Chapter 3. The action was great, but it didn't really move the story forward that much.

I'm seeing Brightburn on Tuesday night. I'm excited.

I might see Saving Private Ryan on June 5. They are bringing it back to the theaters and I loved the movie. I want to experience it in the theater.
 
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Blizniak

MetaMember
Sep 19, 2018
368
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Just finished Deadwood the movie. It's nothing amazing by show's standards but it's a nice way to tie things up in lieu of proper season 4. Very fucking enjoyable and all you limy cocksuckers should watch it.
 

JMTHEFOX

Planning to Be a Game Designer
Oct 4, 2018
517
688
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Brooklyn, NY
New Magic The Gathering Anime series for Netflix confimed

Makes sense since the card game has a solid fanbase in Japan.
 

Spamlynguist

I can never decide on an avatar
Dec 31, 2018
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Saw all of The Toys That Made Us last week and holy shit the episode that detailed the behind the scenes shenanigans in the making of the Masters of the Universe and She-Ra toys had me in stitches.

A little taste of what to expect:
 
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crimsonheadGCN

MetaMember
Jan 20, 2019
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I've seen Godzilla: King of the Monsters and Brightburn.

Brightburn was good, but could have been so much more. I hope it does well enough for a sequel and expanded universe.

Godzilla: King of the Monsters was great, but not as good as Godzilla (2014). I'm excited for next year's Godzilla vs King Kong and I hope the contract between Toho and Lionsgate is extended so that more movies can be made in this universe.
 

bobnowhere

Careful Icarus
Sep 20, 2018
1,665
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Swamp Thing Already Cancelled.

Just a week into the first season, Bloody Disgusting has confirmed this report that DC Universe has already canceled “Swamp Thing”.
There were reports of an early shut down prior to the filming of the season finale and it appears the show lost support from executives before it even aired. The DC Universe streaming service isn’t even a year old, but execs are already nervous about subscribers and reach. “Swamp Thing” was reviewed positively among critics (read our review of the first two episodes) and celebrated by fans globally, but DC Universe isn’t giving the show a chance to grow and is already abandoning the swamp.
I thought the first ep was fantastic.
 

Rosenkrantz

Once Punched Man
Apr 22, 2019
1,020
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Hopefully they can uncancel Swamp Thing if it performs well, first 2 episodes were great, but it seems everything DC related is a friggin nightmare at WB, unless it's a teen trash from CW,
 

Rosenkrantz

Once Punched Man
Apr 22, 2019
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I dunno how many of you guys have watched Korean TV shows, I dabble in them from time to time and usually runaway because they either look awful or have an idiotic romance subplot that no normal human should be able to tolerate. So, right now I'm watching Stranger (Secret Forest) and surprisingly so far (I'm halfway through the series) it doesn't have any romance elements, the cast is pretty good and the story is quite engaging. There're still hiccups of course, the story, while interesting, is very convoluted and has some ridiculous scenes (they don't know what witness protection is in Korea?), the pacing could've been better, and yes, it does look like a cheap Russian tv show on NTV, still, I didn't expect Korean show to be this well-made.
 
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Rosenkrantz

Once Punched Man
Apr 22, 2019
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I've started watching Doctor Who, and gotta say, for a show with such silly villain designs (Daleks, Cybermen) it sure as hell loves to kill buttloads of people in almost every episode. I was ready to give up after the first season, but Tennant's performance hooked me on the show. Is Torchwood worth visiting? From what I've read it's a lot edgier.
 
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Tizoc

Retired, but still Enabling
Oct 11, 2018
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Oman
ko-fi.com
I've started watching Doctor Who, and gotta say, for a show with such silly villain designs (Daleks, Cybermen) it sure as hell loves to kill buttloads of people in almost every episode. I was ready to give up after the first season, but Tennant's performance hooked me on the show. Is Torchwood worth visiting? From what I've read it's a lot edgier.
Not really far as Torchwood goes. From what I remember, Who fans were divided about it, and I'd suggest sticking to Doctor Who, and enjoying the sexiness of David Tennant.
...and Matt Smith
...and Ecceleston
 
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Ge0force

Excluding exclusives
Jan 12, 2019
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Watched Dunkirk last night. It's amazing how a movie without a story can be great from start to finish!

Also watching Stranger Things season 3. Really love that show.
 
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