Recently watched movies 2025

[nwhoopfan]

Spectral. Netflix 2016. Decent cast of non-star actors. There's a war in Moldova (filmed in Budepest). The troops are capturing something in these special glasses they were. Then it kills one of them. They send for the designer of the glasses. The locals call them "ghosts of war". Now these special forces teams and this brilliant engineer and the kinda cute (Emily Mortimer) CIA agent have to find out what is actually going on and how to stop it. I'd call this sci-fi mostly, and it's surprisingly original and pretty good.

Yeah I stumbled onto that several years ago, I've watched it multiple times.

 

[nwhoopfan]

Hmm...I just didn't get it with "Sinners." If Coogler just made a period piece about music and the South, it might've been something. Mixing it w/ a generic vampire flick didn't do anything for me (I saw several reviews on imdb say it was basically "From Dusk Til Dawn," only not as good, hard to argue with that). Had a good cast and some good performances. Michael B. Jordan was always an athletic well built guy, but dang he was stacked in this one.


Wow, they snuck Lola Kirke into this and I didn't even recognize her. I thought she'd pretty much quit Hollywood to focus on music.

edit--one of the songs during the movie I thought sounded like The Carolina Chocolate Drops, sure enough Rhiannon Giddens was listed in the credits; so was Lars Ulrich from Metallica; Lola Kirke sang several songs too

 

[Palatine]

Man of Steel (2013)

With the recent Superman hype decided to rewatch this Zack Snyder effort. I holds up very well and is a much better movie than I originally thought. First of all, Henry Cavill is Superman. This is perfect casting. He plays it straight with a smile. The rest of the cast is top shelf. The story by Chris Nolan is entertaining and true to the comic. There are a few holes in the plot but they tend to come from the film making.

Snyder tends to the indulgent. The entire Perry While hero section should have cut. And the final showdown between Superman and Zod should have been treated as an anti-climax not the full out epic Zack delivers. It actually detracts from a very satisfying end. I also have to take issue with the sound. The movie is big enough without turning the volume up to eleven to make it dramatic. It would be a better experience if the sound was less extreme on both ends.

That said three stars. Giant spectacular movie making. A lot of fun. I'm surprised how much I enjoyed it.

 

[temery]

I saw Jurassic World Rebirth over the weekend in 3D. I think it was PG-13 because the violence was cartoonish in that it would never happen. I.e. 95% involved a dinosaur. Make no mistake though, there is a fair amount of gore and death.

I can't really rank it in terms of the Jurassic Universe, because I don't think I've seen any other since the original Jurassic Park. The CGI was good, but the story and some of the details were a little far fetched, even considering it revolves around dinosaurs.

Now because I watched it in 3D, I wonder if I'll react to it when it comes out on a streaming service. The last Action/Fantasy movie that I saw in 3D was Avatar. I remember liking it in the theatre, but being underwhelmed on a 47" HD TV.

I just streamed it on Amazon. 30 bucks was a bit much for a movie that was at best ok. Most of the action was very predictable.

 

[Hey Adrien!]

The League (2023)

Watched on the plane on Sunday and it's about the history of various Negro Leagues. While I had some knowledge of what's now commonly known as "The Negro League", it was fun to not only learn about the style and stars of that league, but also the deep history of Black Americans in baseball, dating all the way back to the 1870s when racial integration existed prior to Jim Crow.

A must-watch for any baseball history fan.

 

[nwhoopfan]

"A Working Man" is about what you expect from a Jason Statham movie. Had Michael Pena, David Harbour and Jason Flemying in small roles. Fairly solid entertainment.

 

[ZooCougar]

Man of Steel (2013)

With the recent Superman hype decided to rewatch this Zack Snyder effort. I holds up very well and is a much better movie than I originally thought. First of all, Henry Cavill is Superman. This is perfect casting. He plays it straight with a smile. The rest of the cast is top shelf. The story by Chris Nolan is entertaining and true to the comic. There are a few holes in the plot but they tend to come from the film making.

Snyder tends to the indulgent. The entire Perry While hero section should have cut. And the final showdown between Superman and Zod should have been treated as an anti-climax not the full out epic Zack delivers. It actually detracts from a very satisfying end. I also have to take issue with the sound. The movie is big enough without turning the volume up to eleven to make it dramatic. It would be a better experience if the sound was less extreme on both ends.

That said three stars. Giant spectacular movie making. A lot of fun. I'm surprised how much I enjoyed it.

It’s what a Superman film ought to be; no other riff raff.

I love the line “I’m from Kansas, how much more American can I get?”. Or something like that.

 

[nwhoopfan]

Been on a losing streak lately. Just finishing "The Radleys." Interesting premise, but didn't deliver. Suburban family in UK...who happen to be vampires. Mom and Dad have been abstaining from drinking blood for a very long time, their teenage kids are clueless about their true heritage. Until a boy from school assaults the daughter, and she vamps out on him. They bring in the uncle, who has not been abstaining and is a hedonist, to help clean up the mess. Only he brings utter chaos with him and makes everything worse. The movie treats vampirism as if it is an addiction, like alcohol or drugs. Don't think I've seen that before. Started off interesting but then bogged down. The actors tried their best. I really like Kelly Macdonald, she was the mom. Damian Lewis had a double role as the dad and the uncle.

 

[CL82]

Heads of State (2025)

They say there's no new ideas in Hollywood. So the question becomes how do you take old concepts and brush them up a bit so they seem at least "kind of" new? This movie is a semi successful attempt at polishing up the "buddy movie" concept to give it a fresh look and load it up with a lot of CGI. All the basic elements of the body movie are still there: 1) two protagonists, 2) who don't like each other, but 3) are forced to worked together, 4) in a cross country trip 5) against insurmountable odds, 6) gradually coming to like and respect to each other. I enjoy the concept, with my favorite probably being Midnight Run, so I didn't mind this movie. It's not great, but it's watchable and mildly entertaining.

The premise is that John Cena is the president of the United States. He's a former action star who somehow manages to be elected president. He's at the start of his presidency and is enormously popular but inexperienced. Idris Elba is the Prime Minister of Great Britain. He is struggling in the favorability polls, but does have experience. The two don't like each other because Elba gave seen opponent a photo/soft endorsement during the election. Pretty implausibly they end up on a dramatically under protected Air Force One, which gets shot down. Amazingly, they survive by jumping out of the plane and are forced to make their way across Russia to Poland to get to a US safe house. It delivers the expected contrast of styles, humor, and reasonable action sequences.

Two supporting actors help the movie considerably. The lovely Priyanka Chopra as the uber-competent spy/ex-girlfriend of Elba, and Jack Quaid as a CIA safe house facilitator. Quaid is good in his too short role, managing to be both a funny fanboy and a competent operative.

Overall, it earns a very solid "three Deepsters" (to borrow from Fishy's rating system).

 

[nelsonmuntz]

Sicario (2015) - I don't think I have ever watched this movie end to end until today. I remember some of the more famous scenes, but I did not realize how disjointed the plot was until I just watched it with my kid. There are several major logic leaps by characters, starting with Emily Blount's character joining the special group in the first place, and her boss' encouragement of her to do that. The scene with Jon Bernthal makes no logical sense, nor does her storming into the bank. The end is completely ridiculous.

While the movie feels like a good movie in the moment because Villeneuve is such a good Director and the cast is strong, the movie is really just a bunch of cool scenes inside a story that is kind of stupid. The more Taylor Sheriden stuff I watch (I am almost done with Season 1 of Landman, gave up on Yellowstone 5 minutes into season 1, ep 4), the less I like him. Everything of his that I have seen is pretty sexist, with female characters that are always very attractive and generally pretty useless, overly sexualized, and/or shrill. He leans heavy on stereotypes in both this and Landman in his portrayal of Mexicans. His plots always seem to revolve around an alpha male character or two that have virtually superhuman capabilities, so after a while it is hard to care because you know the alpha character is going to win. That is a sign of lazy writing. He is pretty good with turns of phrase, and with the right director his scenes can look good, but overall Sheriden sucks.

 

[temery]

Is the new Superman movie animated or not? I've seen trailers that look animated and some that don't.

 

[superjohn]

Sicario (2015) - I don't think I have ever watched this movie end to end until today. I remember some of the more famous scenes, but I did not realize how disjointed the plot was until I just watched it with my kid. There are several major logic leaps by characters, starting with Emily Blount's character joining the special group in the first place, and her boss' encouragement of her to do that. The scene with Jon Bernthal makes no logical sense, nor does her storming into the bank. The end is completely ridiculous.

While the movie feels like a good movie in the moment because Villeneuve is such a good Director and the cast is strong, the movie is really just a bunch of cool scenes inside a story that is kind of stupid. The more Taylor Sheriden stuff I watch (I am almost done with Season 1 of Landman, gave up on Yellowstone 5 minutes into season 1, ep 4), the less I like him. Everything of his that I have seen is pretty sexist, with female characters that are always very attractive and generally pretty useless, overly sexualized, and/or shrill. He leans heavy on stereotypes in both this and Landman in his portrayal of Mexicans. His plots always seem to revolve around an alpha male character or two that have virtually superhuman capabilities, so after a while it is hard to care because you know the alpha character is going to win. That is a sign of lazy writing. He is pretty good with turns of phrase, and with the right director his scenes can look good, but overall Sheriden sucks.

Lolz.

Hell or High Water and Wind River are two of the best movies of the past decade.

 

[nelsonmuntz]

Lolz.

Hell or High Water and Wind River are two of the best movies of the past decade.

I liked Hell or High Water, but “best of the decade” is a typical SJ exaggeration. I looked up some reviews of Sicario and Sicario 2, and found I had some company in my assessment of Sheridan leaning heavily on stereotypes.