Movies Serious Movie Discussion

I thought it was really good too! The ginger from Breaking Bad was hilarious

His intro is the only time I can remember crying in a theater besides that one strange time years ago. It was so fucking funny.

I think I'm going to rewatch it in theaters again soon.
 
Ok, so this is LONG overdue, but it's finally mega post time. If you guys will remember, several months ago I asked you to post awesome movies from the last few years for me to watch as part of my catch-up movie marathon. I put that marathon on pause a few months ago. In the interim, I rewatched Burn Notice, which is such an absolutely fantastically phenomenal show, and am currently watching The X-Files for the first time, which I'm digging a lot more than I was anticipating. Regarding The X-Files: @HUNTERMANIA, you'll be interested to know that I now officially and unequivocally consider Hannibal to be the GOAT. The reason for that is because, having now seen so much of The X-Files, I realized that Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, for as amazing a show as it undeniably is, is not as original as I thought it was. They were literally working off of the X-Files Playbook. What they did with what they took was inspired and awesome, but the fact that Hannibal was a truly unique and one-of-a-kind show (despite actually going so far as casting someone from The X-Files :D) puts it ahead. So it's now officially Hannibal #1 and Terminator #2 for me.

Anyway, regarding my movie marathon, I still ended up watching a bunch of shit once I went into radio silence to finish my thesis that I never got around to posting about in here. Now, I can finally update you guys on what I thought of the last batch of new movies that I watched.

Killing Them Softly: Sigh, you'll be happy to know that I actually liked this one quite a bit. I didn't think I would based on the first third of the film. Aside from being a poor attempt at Tarantino, those two idiots were utterly intolerable. It was painful watching those fucking dumb shits. But the Pitt storyline - as well as his pairings with Jenkins and Gandolfini - was great and made it worthwhile. The bureaucratization of organized crime was hysterical, and while the political shit felt a little horned in, the ending provided a nice payoff. Overall, I think it could've been much better with a better writer at the helm, but I thought it was pretty good and certainly elevated by the work of Pitt, Jenkins, and especially Gandolfini, who I thought stole the show.

The Cabin in the Woods: @Johner, you better show yourself and explain to me what the fuck I did to you in the past to deserve a punishment like that. That was one of the worst movies I've ever seen. Ever. Absolutely fucking awful. Retarded concept with horrible execution. @Flemmy Stardust, didn't you used to shit on this movie all the time? In any case, I totally get why a person would feel the need to shit on that movie. I liked Sigourney Weaver showing up, but that was literally the only not terrible thing in the whole movie. Not even Bradley Whitford's presence could keep me from hating it, and @Ricky13 can attest to how much I love Bradley Whitford. What could you - or anyone else reading this - have possibly enjoyed about this movie?

Side Effects: KOQ and Ricky, kudos on this one. This is one of the best movies I've seen in recent memory. Just wickedly awesome. Brilliantly conceived and brilliantly executed. Ricky, you must've loved that script. Not one but two full reveal/turns, and both worked superbly. It was going along well enough in the early stages, but when it shifted to Jude Law is when it shifted into high gear.

I'm not too high on Rooney Mara generally, especially not as the cunning schemer she was supposed to be here. She was too flat and affectless. Catherine Zeta-Jones was surprisingly strong, though. And Jude carried that shit like a champ. His best performance IMO. My only real complaint is that I wished it would've ended on him and his family. I get ending it with Rooney for the sake of that rhyming end window shot to match the opening shot, but with the way the story shifted to Jude, I thought it should've stayed with and ended on him. But that's a very minor complaint. Overall, that was an extraordinarily well-made film.

The Martian: Sigh and Johner, this was another one that I liked more than I was expecting to. And that was actually kind of a bummer, because now I can no longer annoy the shit out of my friend who loved it by telling him that I'll never watch it because it's just the Matt Damon sequence from Interstellar turned into a movie. That's absolutely what it felt like, but that turned out to make for a better movie than I was expecting. Of course, it helped that Jeff Daniels showed up. But really, there's a very small handful of actors who could carry a "solo" film like that (and Tom Hanks ain't one of them, which is why Cast Away can go fuck itself), and Matt Damon is absolutely one of them. With that casting, the film was in pretty good shape. And the way they worked out the rest of the storyline allowed for all of the pieces to fit together very nicely. The farming section was a lot of fun (I was cracking up when he blew himself up) and it's always a plus when a film ends on a strong note, and I thought they ended really strong here.

Run All Night: Sigh, you mentioned this when KOQ and I were talking about A Walk Among the Tombstones. I thought Run All Night was WAY better. First of all, Ed Harris being there obviously elevated the awesomeness (and offset Common's silly presence). But Neeson's character provided a solid anchor and the action was of a surprisingly high caliber. That apartment scene felt like it came out of nowhere with how fantastic it was. Definitely one of Neeson's strongest action outings.

And then, for some of the movies that none of you guys nominated but that I watched because they were "big" releases:

Argo sucked. It was a boring and unfunny version of Wag the Dog. The only good part was the Groucho/Karl Marx joke between John Goodman and Alan Arkin.

The Purge was disappointingly dumb. That's one of those movies where the plot seems too awesome for the film to fail, but they managed to fumble that one.

Straight Outta Compton started off strong, but once the Ice Cube character left, it splintered and became a big messy jumble with no anchor. It kind of just turned into a quasi-documentary. Still a decent movie, and the fact that I like that music obviously helps, but far from some kind of groundbreaking masterpiece or any of the shit that the hype seemed to be making it out to be. Boyz n the Hood this movie was not.

Triple 9 was extremely poorly-made. Horrendous fucking set-up first of all, the Winslet mafia storyline with the one black guy's kid was GARBAGE, and the Mexican cop angle was very weak. The only good thing - surprisingly - was Casey Affleck. And he wasn't just good comparatively speaking. I thought he turned in a brilliant performance. It actually gave me hope for Manchester by the Sea.

The Foreigner was surprisingly cool. Jackie is a psycho. I can't believe that dude's still doing that shit at his age and after all that his body has been through...and that it's still awesome! That guy can still pull it off. The best surprise, though, was Pierce Brosnan. I don't think I've ever liked him anything (except maybe as the severed head in Mars Attacks!) but he was tremendous here. Very small and modest film, but well-written with strong characterizations and performances and some cool action scenes with Jackie.

Gary Oldman 100% deserved Best Actor for Darkest Hour, amazing performance.
Big time. I didn’t see DDL’s film yet and I’m sure he’s great too. But Oldman gave a phenomenal performance in a good not great movie.

Ah, so the film itself may not be the best but Oldman's performance was still top notch.

Calavry by John Michael McDonagh which was absolutely superb

Yeah, I loved that movie.

So this week was the last week of the film class I'm doing the TA shit for, and for the last screening, we watched Calvary. Anyone who hasn't seen that movie needs to watch it pronto. It's a combination of Diary of a Country Priest, In Bruges, and an SVU episode. The script is phenomenal, Brendan Gleeson gives a tremendous performance that's as hilarious as it is moving, the cinematography and editing are way more sophisticated than I expected, it's just excellent on every level. The tone shifts quite a bit, but since it has an episodic structure, the tonal shifts match the shifts to and from different people with different temperaments and who are dealing with different problems.

The opening scene should go down as one of the GOAT, very ambitious way to kick things off and the long take worked brilliantly. And then the scene about midway through when Gleeson visits the serial killer in prison, that's the type of scene you can show literally anybody in the world, and when it's over, tell them, "That's how you direct a scene." And honestly, moving forward, I'll very likely actually do that myself. It's an absolute masterclass in every last fucking respect. I honestly can't think of a better individual scene from a movie that's been released in the last few years.

Highly recommended.

Watched Witchfinder General (1968) earlier.
You watched Michael Reeves/Vincent Price flick and didn't tell me about it in advance!!!?

As I've been lurking the SMD these past few months, I hadn't seen you around much, europe, but I knew that if anything was going to get you to come out of hiding it'd be somebody watching a Vincent Price movie :D

Haven't seen Price in anything else to compare his performance here too, but I thought it was very good.
I now know what the Conquistadors felt like when the Indians told them that they had never heard of Jesus Christ.

And as quickly as you'd reappeared, I was worried that that post of Rimbaud's might've killed you.

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Rimbaud, the two must-see Vincent Price classics are House of Wax and House on Haunted Hill. He also famously appeared in numerous Roger Corman films, most of which were adaptations of Poe stories. For what is arguably his best acting performance, though, you could check out the early Sam Fuller film The Baron of Arizona.

Check out Theatre of Blood

This was the last VHS tape that I ever rented. I was visiting my dad in Arizona when I was in high school, we went to his local library, and I saw a Vincent Price movie that I'd never seen that sounded way too awesome to pass up. It was low quality even by VHS standards but totally worth it.

The only movie that ever really scared me was the American version of The Ring.

You know, this past Halloween I was thinking about having a little horror movie marathon. I watched The Ring for the first time in years and it did absolutely nothing for me. I was heartbroken. For the longest time, I'd considered that film to be not just genuinely creepy (the first time I saw it, the quick insert of the first dead girl in the closet scared the fuck out of me, but on repeat viewings, it was just unnerving) but a truly well-made mystery-type of film. But rewatching it a few months ago, I couldn't get invested no matter how hard I tried. It just fell completely flat. I didn't even watch it all the way through. I stopped it even before Brian Cox showed up, and aside from him being awesome generally, the sequence with him was always my favorite part.

I'm hoping it was just a weird mood thing that threw me off, but I was very surprised that that movie of all the horror movies that I've liked in the last two decades would've fallen off like that.

@Bullitt68 you see phantom tthread?

Dude, I haven't even seen Dunkirk or Molly's Game. You think I'm going to drag my ass to the theater to watch that? I'm legit not a PTA fan. In fact, it's his fault that I put my movie marathon on hold; I tried three days in a row to get into The Master and just couldn't give less of a shit, and then, when I tried to skip over it to get to Inherent Vice, that one seemed like a dud, too. Plus, of all of the possible roles to watch DDL in, that one does nothing for me. So that one's at the bottom of the barrel for me.

If you saw it, what did you think?

I specialise in 17th century history

You asked me the "What do you do?" question earlier. Now it's my turn: What exactly are you studying? And why? Are you planning a career in academia?

Annihilation.

I randomly found my way into Dragon's thread for this movie a week or two ago. I had no idea it was already out. It looked like it could be pretty cool from what I read, but I'm still wary since I thought Ex Machina was an overrated turd.

I also saw Marked for Death

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That movie fucking rules.

It might've been Seagal's most brutal Film although stuff like Out for Justice or Under Siege has better fight choreography.

I think you need to rewatch Under Siege, because there are no fights that need choreographing in that one. Aside from tripping a guy and Karate chopping his neck and then knife dueling Tommy Lee Jones, that's a straight shoot-em-up for Seagal.

Regardless, Above the Law is the only film that can even come close to competing with Marked for Death in the realm of fight choreography. The jewelry store fight and the fight in Screwface's compound are not only Aikido masterclasses, they're brilliantly choreographed, shot, and edited.

I do agree, though, that it's Seagal's most brutal film. Uncompromisingly brutal, take-no-prisoners violence was always Seagal's MO, but in Marked for Death, he was a whole different level of bad ass.

You should all see Game Night.

Hadn't even heard of it but from the plot and the cast it seems like it'd be awesome.

The most fun I've had in a theater since that one strange time years ago.

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I'd agree with you on Cabin in the Woods, a terrible film that's far to pleased with what it thinks is a clever concept, I have to admit this was the point I pretty much stopped paying attention to the "horror community" dispite a lot of my favourite films being in the genre.

For something horrish(dark comedy really) to wash the bad taste out of your mouth I'd recommend Killing of a Scared Deer.
 
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I thought Cabin in the Woods was great. It was such a brutal inditement of all the lazy written, trope-filled horror flicks that come out I remember thinking that it might have killed that shit (obviously it was wishful thinking on my part).
 
The Foreigner was surprisingly cool. Jackie is a psycho. I can't believe that dude's still doing that shit at his age and after all that his body has been through...and that it's still awesome! That guy can still pull it off. The best surprise, though, was Pierce Brosnan. I don't think I've ever liked him anything (except maybe as the severed head in Mars Attacks!) but he was tremendous here. Very small and modest film, but well-written with strong characterizations and performances and some cool action scenes with Jackie.

Thought The Foreigner was surprisingly decent, Brosnan's accent was somehow terrible though.

Here's my thoughts from the the thread for it:

Well the film was decent, nothing special but a reasonably enjoyable political thriller with some action scenes...some of the Sinn Fein/IRA intrigue was actually done reasonably well, though obviously it would have worked far better if it was set, or released, in the 90s. But the way they adapted to a modern setting wasn't too bad...sort of fit with the type of thing that happened in 2015 with the Jock Davison and Kevin McGuigan killings. Maybe because I wasn't expecting any kind of straight-up action film, but the 'slowness' or political aspects didn't really bother me either. Bit moralising at certain points...on the whole, not great, but not bad either. The actions scenes, when they did come, I quite liked as well..I always prefer grittier type stuff anyway, I guess it was kind of influenced by Bourne films...though they constantly emphasised that Chan's character was old.

Overall, better than I was expecting but if I was gonna recommend someone a recent revenge thriller set in nothern ireland I'd suggest Bad Day for the Cut 10 times out of 10:


Rimbaud, the two must-see Vincent Price classics are House of Wax and House on Haunted Hill. He also famously appeared in numerous Roger Corman films, most of which were adaptations of Poe stories. For what is arguably his best acting performance, though, you could check out the early Sam Fuller film The Baron of Arizona.

I'll check 'em out when I get a chance.

You asked me the "What do you do?" question earlier. Now it's my turn: What exactly are you studying? And why? Are you planning a career in academia?

I am studying/researching for a History MA. It's taught postgrad rather than solely research, but the majority of it is based on my dissertation which I will starting soon. My undergraduate dissertation was on religious violence during the 1641 Rebellion in Ireland, and my postgrad dissertation will be entitled 'Thomas Waring, the Writing of History and New English Identity in Seventeenth Century Ireland'. We have particular 'strands' on the MA for the taught modules (along with more general ones) and my area is Religious Identity and Conflict, a lot of which is focused on the Early Modern Period.

In terms of long-term goals I am gonna wait and see how I do in the MA, if I get a distinction (or a high commendation but distinction in the diss) then I will probably look to get funding for my phd and go down the academia route - my supervisor asked me if I was going to apply this year so he seems to think I would have the ability, but just wanna wait and see. The MA dissertation will obviously be tougher.

If not, then I'll still have a masters degree under my belt and will look for some sort of graduate job, civil service etc. Teaching is always an option but not sure about that, it can be hard to get into in NI so I would probably have to move abroad - even just to Britain.
 
I finally watched IT (2017)

and it was absolutely awful

No idea how it is 85% on RT and 7.5 on IMDB

I have been watching a lot of horror/slasher/thriller movies recently but IT was the worst one I have watched, I turned it off with only 20 minutes left because it was that terrible and I rarely do that.

If i was to rate it, I wouldn't give it a 2.
 
I admit I haven't seen it yet, Pennywise looking like a juggalo's idea of an evil clown is too much of a turn off.
 
Annihilation.
Definitely the best Film to come out in 2018 so far.
Sucks that it didn't come out on the big screen outside the US & China.
Natalie Portman & Jennifer Jason Leigh are the standouts in this.
Typically for an Alex Garland Film, it's visually gorgeous with some really creepy images & scenes that took me back to stuff like Alien (esp. the Alien spacecraft scene).
It's probably too nihilistic for general moviegoers,which is why the Producers wanted to change it.
It's hard to even find similar Films to this, probably something like Solaris,Stalker,2001 with a bit of Lovecraft.

I also saw Marked for Death, which is the last of Seagal's "good" movies i hadn't watched.
It might've been Seagal's most brutal Film although stuff like Out for Justice or Under Siege has better fight choreography.
The Jamaican Voodoo drug dealers were pretty fun.
Overall i think it's more raw than Seagal's other early stuff and this is what differentiates it from those.


I thought Annihilation was awesome. Looking forward to another watch down the line. Some of the creepiest/most unsettling moments I can think of in a recent film. Good narrative and very solid performances too. JJL is underrated. Her character really was annoying the shit out of me with her monotone voice and lack of empathy. Which means she was doing a good job lol. Plus I thought to myself how different a character this was from the last movie I saw her in The Hateful Eight. You almost wouldn’t know it’s the same actress.

Marked for Death was a lot of fun. I saw it a few years back cause of @Bullitt68 s recommendation.

That car chase scene followed by when Seagal and Keith David face off with the drug dealers in the shopping center is definitely my favorite part of the film. Classic Seagal.

Plus it has a moment I thought was absolutely hilarious cause of Seagal’s demeanor and delivery. One of the heavies takes a female shopper hostage threatening to do her harm if Seagal comes near him and Seagal is super casually like, “I don’t give a shit about her. Do it. I don’t care.”

And you know how in movies when that happens- like Godfather Part III- and you know the character in that position is bluffing to get the villain to let his guard down. The vibe I get from Seagal’s character is that he absolutely legitimately did not give a shit...not the most noble hero out there lol.
 
Personal taste of course but I was just left feeling that film lacked the depth it seemed to think it had. The switch at the end really fell rather flat for me especially, simply not enough invested in Del Toro's character either personally or in his relationship with Blunt's.

For me, that was one of those movies where the thematic juice came more from the setting and it's ambiance rather than from your—I presume—character-focused perspective.

Take the ending for example, where the boy plays fotball. All the kids are doing their best FIFA-shit. Then the sound of gunfire howls in the distance. Everyone stops and looks around apprehensively. Then the play again, but the boy experiances a sort of tunnel-vision, he arduously blots out everything around him, focusing squarely on the football because that's the only way to avoid the violence in a society as his.

In Sicario, I like more the feeling that you get of a brutalization process. How violence degrades everything it touches and spreads outwards like the tendrils of an ocypussy. Some of the scenes in the film—like the opening raid at the cartel safe-house and the ghastly corpses found inside—capture this essence of violene on the spread. The drug-war in Mexico has already heinously polluted that society—and now it's spreading over the border, like a cancer remained unchecked. And not to mention how this process is threated as being unhinderable even by towering organizations like the CIA.


Also, these "—" markings are really dope. Why aren't they more common in the english language? They are very aesthetically pleasing in a sentence and make you feel creative using them. Could you english-speaking people please start using them more in your daily lifes so that they become more normalized to use? Thanks in advance.


I hadn't seen you around much, europe

Man these days I can barely keep up with the Sherdog Movie Club, let alone the Serious Movie Discussion thread. Sometime it feels like I lurk in this thread just to pounce on Rimbaud82 whenever oppertunity arises like some 9-to-5 panter.

But yeah, I'm just not as communicative these days.

the two must-see Vincent Price classics are

Don't act restrained and shit, they are all must-sees.;)

I finally watched IT (2017)

and it was absolutely awful

No idea how it is 85% on RT and 7.5 on IMDB

Man I watched that in the cinema with my friends and for the first 20 minutes we were just like poking at each other, asking "Is this a parody? Are they fucking with us? They can't be serious with this shit can they?"

I'll say this though. For all it's faults, the film does have that youthful sense of earnestness to it. I can see kids really digging it for that reason. And that obscene kid with the glasses could be funny at times.

I specialise in 17th century history

As a fellow fan of the past, do you ever watch a historical movie with a notebook in hand and just write down all the inaccuracies that you encounter? Being dyslexic I don't do that... I just keep all the notes in my head instead. I think you can actually have some fruitful and thought-provoking musings that way. I actually thought I reached some good insights doing that to Kingdom of Heaven (even turned it into an essay in Uni) and The 13th Warrior was another fun one doing that.
 
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For me, that was one of those movies where the thematic juice came more from the setting and it's ambiance rather than from your—I presume—character-focused perspective.

Take the ending for example, where the boy plays fotball. All the kids are doing their best FIFA-shit. Then the sound of gunfire howls in the distance. Everyone stops and looks around apprehensively. Then the play again, but the boy experiances a sort of tunnel-vision, he arduously blots out everything around him, focusing squarely on the football because that's the only way to avoid the violence in a society as his.

In Sicario, I like more the feeling that you get of a brutalization process. How violence degrades everything it touches and spreads outwards like the tendrils of an ocypussy. Some of the scenes in the film—like the opening raid at the cartel safe-house and the ghastly corpses found inside—capture this essence of violene on the spread. The drug-war in Mexico has already heinously polluted that society—and now it's spreading over the border, like a cancer remained unchecked. And not to mention how this process is threated as being unhinderable even by towering organizations like the CIA..

Honestly its the kind of cinema that's normally very much to my taste but I didn't really think the atmosphere added up to as much as it thought it did either. To me Villeneuve just ends up feeling a bit too polite with his visuals, tasteful but to the extreme that he seems rather afraid to really do anything interesting with them. He did somewhat more with Arrival I spose you could argue and I think that's clearly his best film, the Blade Runner sequel though I think highlighted this issue for me next to Scott's original.
 
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As a fellow fan of the past, do you ever watch a historical movie with a notebook in hand and just write down all the inaccuracies that you encounter? Being dyslexic I don't do that... I just keep all the notes in my head instead. I think you can actually have some fruitful and thought-provoking musings that way. I actually thought I reached some good insights doing that to Kingdom of Heaven (even turned it into an essay in Uni) and The 13th Warrior was another fun one doing that.

While we are finding out everyone does, what did/do you study at uni?

And I'm not bad enough to make a notebook of inaccuracies lol, though of course I sometimes can't help noticing things as they go along. Although I can see how it could lead to some good insights. I have never actually seen The 13th Warrior.
 
While we are finding out everyone does, what did/do you study at uni?

Teaching (History, Religion, Math)

And I'm not bad enough to make a notebook of inaccuracies lol, though of course I sometimes can't help noticing things as they go along.

When I was writting my essay in History me and my supervisor would just sit and bitch about the El Cid movie with Charlton Heston for like half of the first meeting.
 

I once threaten to spam the SMD with math problems if Bullitt68 ever bad-mouthed Chinatown ever again. Now that I know your weakness, that same threat shall now extend to you as well.
 
Movies, brahs. On average, how much movies do you watch per week? I can barely get time to watch 3 movies these times. It is sad.
 
Movies, brahs. On average, how much movies do you watch per week? I can barely get time to watch 3 movies these times. It is sad.

Changes massively depending on how much work I'v got to handle(self employed) and indeed social meetings. Generally though my film viewing has increased massively over the last few years whilst my TV viewing is a tiny fraction of what it was. Ironically the best of the "golden age of TV" to me highlighted just how crap the majority of it really is these days, why waste your time watching that?

Honestly as well I tend to think that really only quite a small percentage of stories have the depth to them to demand long form series, a lot of what were seeing now seems like a good idea for a film pushed way too far with lower production values. To take a cynical view I think a big issue is simply that the shift to longform productions creates more volume of material.
 
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Movies, brahs. On average, how much movies do you watch per week? I can barely get time to watch 3 movies these times. It is sad.

6-7 films per week on average. Had that streak for maybe... 3 years.

This last month... maybe 5 per week.

Just as an example, this weak I watched


Body Donors (Marx brother tribute that was funnier than any Marx brothers film I've seen. Note: have not seen Duck Hunt)
Victor Frankenstein
Port of New York (A film where Yul Brenner has hair. It was super-creepy)
Shinobi No Mono 2
Shinobi No Mono (maybe the first ninja film)
The Snowman (hilariously bad, we dubbed it "the film that doesn't know how ice works")
Something Creeping in the Dark (good old Italian non-logic)
In the process of watching Trollhunter as well
 
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Not seen it but the Snowman seems a pretty shocking fall from grace after how good Tinker, Tailor, Solider, Spy was, that wouldn't be far off my top 20 of the decade.

Fassbender seems in danger of going the Michael Cain/Cage route when it comes to bad carrier choices, I spose he has X-men which he's definitely well cast for but other than that a lot seems to be questionable. As I mentioned in the thread on it I could definitely see him as the lead in a Highlander remake, that role I think needs someone with a touch of strangeness to them rather than a typical action lead.
 
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I'd agree with you on Cabin in the Woods, a terrible film that's far to pleased with what it thinks is a clever concept

Yep.

For something horrish(dark comedy really) to wash the bad taste out of your mouth I'd recommend Killing of a Scared Deer.

I didn't get a chance to do my double-header of The Lobster/The Killing of a Sacred Deer on my last marathon, but it's still on my list.

I thought Cabin in the Woods was great. It was such a brutal inditement of all the lazy written, trope-filled horror flicks that come out I remember thinking that it might have killed that shit (obviously it was wishful thinking on my part).

Nah, I don't buy that. Making a terrible piece of shit doesn't constitute a valid mode of aesthetic critique.

Thought The Foreigner was surprisingly decent

I was genuinely expecting my viewing to consist of me skipping from action scene to action scene but I was thoroughly invested from start to finish.

Overall, better than I was expecting but if I was gonna recommend someone a recent revenge thriller set in nothern ireland I'd suggest Bad Day for the Cut 10 times out of 10

Not to be a dick, but honestly, that trailer actually made me want to avoid that movie. The lead seems lame and the character/revenge arc interrelation - loser momma's boy goes off to avenge his mommy's murder - brought the cringe for me big time. What about that movie hits the spot for you?

I am studying/researching for a History MA. It's taught postgrad rather than solely research, but the majority of it is based on my dissertation which I will starting soon. My undergraduate dissertation was on religious violence during the 1641 Rebellion in Ireland, and my postgrad dissertation will be entitled 'Thomas Waring, the Writing of History and New English Identity in Seventeenth Century Ireland'. We have particular 'strands' on the MA for the taught modules (along with more general ones) and my area is Religious Identity and Conflict, a lot of which is focused on the Early Modern Period.

In terms of long-term goals I am gonna wait and see how I do in the MA, if I get a distinction (or a high commendation but distinction in the diss) then I will probably look to get funding for my phd and go down the academia route - my supervisor asked me if I was going to apply this year so he seems to think I would have the ability, but just wanna wait and see. The MA dissertation will obviously be tougher.

If not, then I'll still have a masters degree under my belt and will look for some sort of graduate job, civil service etc. Teaching is always an option but not sure about that, it can be hard to get into in NI so I would probably have to move abroad - even just to Britain.

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Very cool. I hope that you do well with your MA so that you can join me and @Ricky13 in PhD Land :cool:

I finally watched IT (2017)

and it was absolutely awful

Well, it was better than I thought it'd be, but I agree, it wasn't very good.

I watched It. No reason. I just saw it on the list and wanted to watch it. It was better than I was expecting but I still preferred the miniseries. I did get hit with one jump scare, but the movie wasn't genuinely creepy or unsettling. The miniseries, even with its low budget and huge helpings of cheese, actually manages to creep me out even now. The one thing the movie has over the miniseries, though, is the actual friendship between the kids. I thought the friendship dynamic was much better and more enjoyable in the movie. It'll be interesting to see how they handle the next chapter.

And, if you ask me...

Pennywise looking like a juggalo's idea of an evil clown is too much of a turn off.

...what they tried to do with Pennywise was a huge factor as far as why it wasn't very good.

Marked for Death was a lot of fun. I saw it a few years back cause of @Bullitt68 s recommendation.

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Plus it has a moment I thought was absolutely hilarious cause of Seagal’s demeanor and delivery. One of the heavies takes a female shopper hostage threatening to do her harm if Seagal comes near him and Seagal is super casually like, “I don’t give a shit about her. Do it. I don’t care.”

And you know how in movies when that happens- like Godfather Part III- and you know the character in that position is bluffing to get the villain to let his guard down. The vibe I get from Seagal’s character is that he absolutely legitimately did not give a shit...not the most noble hero out there lol.

The only thing that I would say in response to this is that I don't think Seagal's preferred outcome would've been her getting killed. His character was definitely of the type to where he wouldn't have been slowed down by her getting killed. But, similar to the way he starts off a bit morally disturbed after killing the hooker at the beginning, I think that would have left him shaken afterward. In the heat of battle, though, whether he killed her or not, Seagal was going to kill him. Nothing was stopping him there. He was in Terminator revenge mode.

The key moment for me in that sequence, based on my sense of his character, is the way, after he saves her, he just grabs her and literally throws her out of his way. It kind of reminds me of the look that Tom Cruise shoots Jamie Foxx in Fever after he saves his life. It's like they're saying, begrudgingly, "You're welcome. Now get the fuck out of my way, I've got shit to do."

Talking about this foregrounds what I've always found the most compelling aspect of Seagal's characterizations, which is the way his characters always complicate ethical action. From Above the Law through Exit Wounds, he's always walking a very fine ethical line - and, more often than not, crossing that line, for reasons that may or may not justify the crossings - and that makes the action that much more engrossing.

Man these days I can barely keep up with the Sherdog Movie Club, let alone the Serious Movie Discussion thread.

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Real life only gets more and more in the way of my Sherdog life. It's a very sad state of affairs. So I feel your pain.

Don't act restrained and shit, they are all must-sees.;)

I actually did have to restrain myself from recommending The Bat and The Tingler :D

I once threaten to spam the SMD with math problems if Bullitt68 ever bad-mouthed Chinatown ever again. Now that I know your weakness, that same threat shall now extend to you as well.

Rimbaud and I aren't afraid to say it:

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Movies, brahs. On average, how much movies do you watch per week? I can barely get time to watch 3 movies these times. It is sad.

No idea. But my viewing habits have changed so drastically that I can now go weeks, or even months, at a time not watching a single film. Then, I'll spend weeks, or even months, watching north of 20 movies a week. I went most of my early life probably hovering around a solid 8-10 movies a week (factoring in school growing up, that translates to at least one movie a day after school plus multiple movies per day on weekends), with rewatches mixed in with first-time viewings.

Now, though...

Generally though my film viewing has increased massively over the last few years whilst my TV viewing is a tiny fraction of what it was. Ironically the best of the "golden age of TV" to me highlighted just how crap the majority of it really is these days, why waste your time watching that?

...I'm the opposite of this. I reached a point several years ago where I felt that I'd seen enough movies to where it was more pressing for me to up my TV viewing. So, for the last several years, I've never not been (re)watching a series, yet I'll often go through spells where I'm not (re)watching movies.

The Snowman (hilariously bad, we dubbed it "the film that doesn't know how ice works")

I actually found that film to be so bad that it blew right past the "hilariously bad" and made its way into offensively bad territory.

I watched The Snowman. Holy shit, that movie was atrocious. I genuinely cannot recall a worse thriller. Pick a Lifetime killer movie at random and I guarantee it's easily twice the film The Snowman is. I can't believe that Martin Scorsese's name is on that piece of shit as an executive producer and that Thelma Schoonmaker edited it. It's seriously one of the sloppiest, most poorly-made films I've seen in recent memory. Nothing in that movie worked. I'm not exaggerating. Nothing. Not a single character worked, not a single plot point worked, not a single coherent theme was conveyed. It was just a steaming pile.
 
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