Recently Watched Movies 2022

[Palatine]

Wow that’s some stiff competition. Worse than Batman and Robin?

The Batman. It is difficult to describe how bad this film is, did I say bad? It's terrible, awful, tedious, slow, uninteresting, poorly written and directed. The characters are one dimensional. All of them. No one grows, or regresses, or has any insights, just the same dull mono-pitched nothing over and over by everyone.

A lot of it is just plain stupid. Batman uses facial recognition software that identifies anyone in seconds. Yet even though his mask barely covers his face, no one knows who he is. He is unconscious and in police custody for hours. Yet, no one looked under his mask to see the universally famous Bruce Wayne. His escape from the police station is a joke. There is no attempt to be even minimally plausible. And it goes on for three hours -three hours. It even manages to make an exploding city causing a tidal wave flood seem dull.

I feel bad for Robert Patterson. The good news is this movie is so forgettable and dull that it will not last in the public consciousness for very long. No stars.

 

[HuskyHawk]

The Northman. 2022. A bulked up Alexander Skaragard, a plastic surgery deformed Nicole Kidman. Do not watch this movie. Don’t pay. Not free. If offered money, women or wine to watch it, tread carefully. You may feel like Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange with his eyes propped open.

For those who hated The Batman, it is a cinematic masterpiece compared to The Northman. Since I feel I must say something positive, some of the scenes of Iceland were pretty and you get Anya Taylor Joy’s butt in one of them. But that’s the extent of it.

 

[nwhoopfan]

Do not watch this movie. Don’t pay. Not free. If offered money, women or wine to watch it, tread carefully.

Oof, you're killing me here! This was getting good critic reviews when I took a peak last night. Sounds like it's very violent and maybe kinda bleak, but they weren't hating on it. Well it was probably gonna be a wait for DVD for me anyway, but I think this confirms it.

 

[Palatine]

The Northman.
For those who hated The Batman, it is a cinematic masterpiece compared to The Northman. Since I feel I must say something positive, some of the scenes of Iceland were pretty and you get Anya Taylor Joy’s butt in one of them. But that’s the extent of it.

WOW!

 

[HuskyHawk]

Oof, you're killing me here! This was getting good critic reviews when I took a peak last night. Sounds like it's very violent and maybe kinda bleak, but they weren't hating on it. Well it was probably gonna be a wait for DVD for me anyway, but I think this confirms it.

I suppose some critics would like it. It’s very arthouse style. It’s broken into several chapters, each introduced with an old Norse word that isn’t explained. It shifts into black and white at times, where things stray into the mystical. But the people are simple, stupid, crude and driven by base emotions. Eggars claims it’s accurate, maybe it is. It feels more so than most romanticized accounts. But I have a hard time believing the Vikings prospered and spread the way they did unless the ones in this film were the dumbest of them.

 

[dbmill]

The Painting (2011) - This is an animated feature length movie. It starts out as a story of racism and discrimination of characters who are part of a painting. The more fleshed out, detailed, and colorful characters in the painting feel far superior to those characters who are less so and who are more sketchy, and they put those feelings into action. A group of characters decide to go in search of their creator, the painter, to find out what his ideas are and if he ever intends to further “complete” these characters. So in addition to being being a story of mistreatment between various peoples, it is also a lively adventure as characters go in search of the painter, as they traverse different landscapes, paintings, and occasionally the "real" world. While some people may find this movie to be a bit too preachy for their tastes, it is also a rather entertaining, imaginative, and colorful film with a fair amount of adventure to it.

 

[ZooCougar]

The Batman. It is difficult to describe how bad this film is, did I say bad? It's terrible, awful, tedious, slow, uninteresting, poorly written and directed. The characters are one dimensional. All of them. No one grows, or regresses, or has any insights, just the same dull mono-pitched nothing over and over by everyone.

A lot of it is just plain stupid. Batman uses facial recognition software that identifies anyone in seconds. Yet even though his mask barely covers his face, no one knows who he is. He is unconscious and in police custody for hours. Yet, no one looked under his mask to see the universally famous Bruce Wayne. His escape from the police station is a joke. There is no attempt to be even minimally plausible. And it goes on for three hours -three hours. It even manages to make an exploding city causing a tidal wave flood seem dull.

I feel bad for Robert Patterson. The good news is this movie is so forgettable and dull that it will not last in the public consciousness for very long. No stars.

I would actually pay money to make sure I never have to watch this movie.

 

[Kolumbo]

Signs - 2002
Mel Gibson, Joaquin Phoenix, Rory Culkin who I thought reminded me a lot of Macaulay, Abigail Breslin
First time I saw this movie and it wasn't at all what I expected. A very strange and intriguing flick, the pace was slow but kept me in suspense throughout. The ending is interesting. Kind of a lead in I suppose to War Of The Worlds which was a much more involved film.

 

[Palatine]

Signs - 2002
Mel Gibson, Joaquin Phoenix, Rory Culkin who I thought reminded me a lot of Macaulay, Abigail Breslin
First time I saw this movie and it wasn't at all what I expected. A very strange and intriguing flick, the pace was slow but kept me in suspense throughout. The ending is interesting. Kind of a lead in I suppose to War Of The Worlds which was a much more involved film.

Pretty decent flick. Some of it gets silly. But for the most part, good performances, real drama and highly watchable. Much more interesting than the Cruise WOTW film.

 

[Kolumbo]

Pretty decent flick. Some of it gets silly. But for the most part, good performances, real drama and highly watchable. Much more interesting than the Cruise WOTW film.

I agree the performances were very good. Extreme tension, the unknown, and a few silly moments. I do enjoy the big action films with Cruise though.

 

[CL82]

Signs - 2002
Mel Gibson, Joaquin Phoenix, Rory Culkin who I thought reminded me a lot of Macaulay, Abigail Breslin
First time I saw this movie and it wasn't at all what I expected. A very strange and intriguing flick, the pace was slow but kept me in suspense throughout. The ending is interesting. Kind of a lead in I suppose to War Of The Worlds which was a much more involved film.

M. Night Shyamalan's films are very much hit or miss. I thought his career was over before Split although it’s success may be due to James McAvoy‘s acting. I was actually looking forward to seeing his take on “the last Airbender“ but he really killed that film. Admittedly though, it was a tough property to bring to the screen.

 

[Deadrody]

I don't trust critic reviews. Some of what they love is trash. Some of what they hate is good. But audience reviews are somewhat reliable. Still more people who think negatively tend to take the time to "review". True for restaurants, hotels, whatever. So if it's bad reviews across the board I'll probably skip it, unless it has some particular quality that makes me want to see it.

Case in point: The Bubble. Terrible critic reviews, meh audience reviews. But, it's light hearted satire I was in the mood for and Karen Gillan is in it. So, I watched. No regrets, even if it wasn't "good". Sometimes I'm looking for a movie to expand my mind, or the depth of my emotions or whatever. But not always. Fun or funny can be enough.

Yeah, IMDB reviews look halfway decent, at least. Overall underwater, but the ones rated "most helpful" are ok

 

[nwhoopfan]

Well I didn't go into this one blind, I knew it didn't get a very good reaction. But I was curious, so tried it anyway--"Wolf" (2021). It's a strange one. First you have to decide if it was intended to be taken at face value being about species identity disorder, or if it is supposed to be a metaphor for something else. I'm honestly not sure. George MacKay gave an interesting performance as a young man who feels he's a wolf trapped in a human body. The physical performance was quite a feat. When he walked on all fours, he wasn't crawling on his hands and knees, he was up on his toes, and there was a smoothness to his movements that obviously took a lot of work and practice. Lily-Rose Depp was interesting as well. Most of the movie takes place at an inpatient clinic that specializes in treating this disorder...except they seem to have no idea what they are doing and don't help any of their patients. The lead doctor is a bully, borderline sadistic. Frustrating movie, not really sure what to do with it in the end.

 

[CL82]

Almost Friends (2017)

This is a coming of age movie. Freddie Hightower (most recently from The Good Doctor) stars as Charlie Brenner a once promising chef… well, sort of. He was promising in that he was a runner up in a town cooking contest and was in college setting to be a chef. For reasons that get explained later in the movie, he left school, moved back in at home and has been treading water as an assistant manager in a movie theater. he has been living at home for an unknown number of years. He is comfortable.

He has a crush on a high school aged barista Amber (Odeya Rush) who “makes terrible coffee” and gradually works up the nerve to talk with her. I think his courtship/friendship in the movie with Amber was intended to be charming, but it comes off as vaguely creepy stalking with a 20 something-year-old guy pursuing a high school kid.

Marg Helgenberger and Christopher Meloni’s play Charlie’s now estranged parents in a vaguely interesting subplot. They are underused and seem to be sleep walking through the roles. Haley Joel Osment plays Charlie’s friend/driver. He doesn’t see dead people, but probably has a glance of his morbund career.

There is some other subplots about the people in Charlie’s life including a weird romance between Charlie’s best friend Heather (Rita Volk) and Amber‘s cousin/roommate Jack (Jack Abel).

The movie is decidedly underplayed but watchable if not memorable.

 

[dbmill]

News of the World (2020) - During this movie my wife said the same thing that she said when we saw “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood”, that “Tom Hanks can do anything!”

In this western set in post Civil War Texas in 1870, Hanks plays a former newspaper man and Confederate soldier named Jefferson Kidd who now travels from town to town reading stories out of recent newspapers to the local townsfolk for a small admission fee. He’s not getting rich doing this, but he does get by.

In his travels he comes across in the wilderness a 12(?) year old girl named Johanna after her adult escort had been killed. She is a white girl who had been abducted and had been living with the Kiowa Indians for the last six years, and she pretty much speaks the Kiowa language. Turns out both her birth parents and the Kiowa’s she had been living with are dead, so as it is said in the move, she is an orphan twice over. No doubt due to this, Johanna is hardly a happy camper when she first encounters Kidd. After Kidd consults with local Union soldiers, he takes on the task of transporting the girl to her relatives, an aunt and uncle, so that she can live with them. However, it is a 400 mile trip, so Kidd and Johanna share a number of adventures together, during which they both prove quite resourceful in surviving the events that they face, and also learn to communicate with each other and develop some trust in each other.

Johanna is played by Helena Zengel, who was born in Germany. You expect Tom Hanks to be quite good in most any acting job he takes, but Zengel is terrific in what seems to be her first English language movie/television project. Hanks and Zengel prove to be a great team. This movie is very good, and my wife and I quite enjoyed it.

 

[JustbrewitMan]

The Northman. 2022. A bulked up Alexander Skaragard, a plastic surgery deformed Nicole Kidman. Do not watch this movie. Don’t pay. Not free. If offered money, women or wine to watch it, tread carefully. You may feel like Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange with his eyes propped open.

For those who hated The Batman, it is a cinematic masterpiece compared to The Northman. Since I feel I must say something positive, some of the scenes of Iceland were pretty and you get Anya Taylor Joy’s butt in one of them. But that’s the extent of it.

My wife took me to this movie last weekend. Just horrible (not my wife, the movie).

How does someone sucker a studio to foot the bill for such trash? All-time fleece job!

 

[HuskyHawk]

News of the World (2020) - During this movie my wife said the same thing that she said when we saw “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood”, that “Tom Hanks can do anything!”

In this western set in post Civil War Texas in 1870, Hanks plays a former newspaper man and Confederate soldier named Jefferson Kidd who now travels from town to town reading stories out of recent newspapers to the local townsfolk for a small admission fee. He’s not getting rich doing this, but he does get by.

In his travels he comes across in the wilderness a 12(?) year old girl named Johanna after her adult escort had been killed. She is a white girl who had been abducted and had been living with the Kiowa Indians for the last six years, and she pretty much speaks the Kiowa language. Turns out both her birth parents and the Kiowa’s she had been living with are dead, so as it is said in the move, she is an orphan twice over. No doubt due to this, Johanna is hardly a happy camper when she first encounters Kidd. After Kidd consults with local Union soldiers, he takes on the task of transporting the girl to her relatives, an aunt and uncle, so that she can live with them. However, it is a 400 mile trip, so Kidd and Johanna share a number of adventures together, during which they both prove quite resourceful in surviving the events that they face, and also learn to communicate with each other and develop some trust in each other.

Johanna is played by Helena Zengel, who was born in Germany. You expect Tom Hanks to be quite good in most any acting job he takes, but Zengel is terrific in what seems to be her first English language movie/television project. Hanks and Zengel prove to be a great team. This movie is very good, and my wife and I quite enjoyed it.

This was quite good. Good description.

 

[Palatine]

News of the World (2020) - During this movie my wife said the same thing that she said when we saw “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood”, that “Tom Hanks can do anything!”

In this western set in post Civil War Texas in 1870, Hanks plays a former newspaper man and Confederate soldier named Jefferson Kidd who now travels from town to town reading stories out of recent newspapers to the local townsfolk for a small admission fee. He’s not getting rich doing this, but he does get by.

In his travels he comes across in the wilderness a 12(?) year old girl named Johanna after her adult escort had been killed. She is a white girl who had been abducted and had been living with the Kiowa Indians for the last six years, and she pretty much speaks the Kiowa language. Turns out both her birth parents and the Kiowa’s she had been living with are dead, so as it is said in the move, she is an orphan twice over. No doubt due to this, Johanna is hardly a happy camper when she first encounters Kidd. After Kidd consults with local Union soldiers, he takes on the task of transporting the girl to her relatives, an aunt and uncle, so that she can live with them. However, it is a 400 mile trip, so Kidd and Johanna share a number of adventures together, during which they both prove quite resourceful in surviving the events that they face, and also learn to communicate with each other and develop some trust in each other.

Johanna is played by Helena Zengel, who was born in Germany. You expect Tom Hanks to be quite good in most any acting job he takes, but Zengel is terrific in what seems to be her first English language movie/television project. Hanks and Zengel prove to be a great team. This movie is very good, and my wife and I quite enjoyed it.

NOTW was a bit slow for my taste.The concept of the traveling news reader is novel. And the post-Civil War era lends some real atmosphere as the backdrop to the movie. But the movie telegraphed every move so you always knew what was coming. The characters with the exception of Hanks were pretty shallow but that is a given for most westerns. It's a nicely made but not all that interesting two hours. Two stars.

 

[ZooCougar]

My wife took me to this movie last weekend. Just horrible (not my wife, the movie).

How does someone sucker a studio to foot the bill for such trash? All-time fleece job!

Because it was time for another Viking movie.

 

[storrsroars]

Just finished The Gentlemen (Netflix). Guy Ritchie fans should enjoy this. Great cast, good storytelling, albeit in typical jumbled out-of-sequence Ritchie style, and enough comedy to make it all go down smoothly. I found it good fun.

 

[CL82]

The Batman. It is difficult to describe how bad this film is, did I say bad? It's terrible, awful, tedious, slow, uninteresting, poorly written and directed. The characters are one dimensional. All of them. No one grows, or regresses, or has any insights, just the same dull mono-pitched nothing over and over by everyone.

A lot of it is just plain stupid. Batman uses facial recognition software that identifies anyone in seconds. Yet even though his mask barely covers his face, no one knows who he is. He is unconscious and in police custody for hours. Yet, no one looked under his mask to see the universally famous Bruce Wayne. His escape from the police station is a joke. There is no attempt to be even minimally plausible. And it goes on for three hours -three hours. It even manages to make an exploding city causing a tidal wave flood seem dull.

I feel bad for Robert Patterson. The good news is this movie is so forgettable and dull that it will not last in the public consciousness for very long. No stars.

Despite this post I decided to give the Batman a try. I got about 20-25 minutes in. Amazing how a “action“ film can have so much exposition.

 

[HuskyHawk]

The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent. 2022. At the cinema. In many ways, this is an ode to Nicholas Cage movies, made by Nick Cage. But it's awesome, because he doesn't take himself seriously, so he's largely parodying himself. It's rather unique and it works. It's funny all throughout and both Nick and Pedro Pascal do a great job. The basic premise is that Cage is divorced, has a lot of expenses, and worries he's become known for making bad movies like Con Air. He struggles to connect with his 16 year old daughter (Lily Mo Sheen) and lives in a hotel, where he hasn't paid the bill in a year. Hi agent tells him some rich guy in Spain named Javi (Pedro Pascal) wants him to come out for a weekend and will pay $1M. He can use the cash, so he goes. Can't say too much more, but the CIA is involved, organized crime, and meanwhile Javi and Nick try to flesh out a screenplay for a movie. So it's a movie about an real actor, who gets caught up in things and is trying to make a movie screenplay, that then essentially becomes this movie. It's clever and it's a blast.

The whole movie is chock full of Easter eggs and references to movies Nick Cage was in, minor replicated scenes (the drinking a beer in the pool scene in Leaving Las Vegas). Even casting Lilly Sheen as the daughter of an actor, when that's what she is. There is an article on all of them at Screenrant, and I'll put it here with a spoiler tag.

Spoiler: All the Easter eggs and references

Unbearable Weight Of Massive Talent: Every Nic Cage Easter Egg & Reference

Every Nic Cage reference in Unbearable Weight.

screenrant.com

Don't look at that until you see the movie.

 

[CL82]

News of the World (2020) - During this movie my wife said the same thing that she said when we saw “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood”, that “Tom Hanks can do anything!”

In this western set in post Civil War Texas in 1870, Hanks plays a former newspaper man and Confederate soldier named Jefferson Kidd who now travels from town to town reading stories out of recent newspapers to the local townsfolk for a small admission fee. He’s not getting rich doing this, but he does get by.

In his travels he comes across in the wilderness a 12(?) year old girl named Johanna after her adult escort had been killed. She is a white girl who had been abducted and had been living with the Kiowa Indians for the last six years, and she pretty much speaks the Kiowa language. Turns out both her birth parents and the Kiowa’s she had been living with are dead, so as it is said in the move, she is an orphan twice over. No doubt due to this, Johanna is hardly a happy camper when she first encounters Kidd. After Kidd consults with local Union soldiers, he takes on the task of transporting the girl to her relatives, an aunt and uncle, so that she can live with them. However, it is a 400 mile trip, so Kidd and Johanna share a number of adventures together, during which they both prove quite resourceful in surviving the events that they face, and also learn to communicate with each other and develop some trust in each other.

Johanna is played by Helena Zengel, who was born in Germany. You expect Tom Hanks to be quite good in most any acting job he takes, but Zengel is terrific in what seems to be her first English language movie/television project. Hanks and Zengel prove to be a great team. This movie is very good, and my wife and I quite enjoyed it.

Based on your recommendation, I just watched it. It was excellent.

 

[CL82]

Cry Macho

Clint Eastwood plays an old cowboy who gets set into Mexico to retrieve a 13-year-old boy. It kind of meanders and Eastwood looks and sounds his age, but it’s decent.

 

[nwhoopfan]

I'm in the middle of watching "Gone" (again, seen it a couple times). It's new on Hulu. Decent way under the radar thriller starring Amanda Seyfried, set in and around Portland, OR.