Topic: Movie thread.

I remember laughing my butt off when I saw The Babadook for the first time (the actual monster, not the movie). He looks so silly to me holy lord

It's not scary at all, but I recommend Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil.

Watch Martyrs a French horror film if you looking for something unsettling to watch. Best horror films shock you and that truly did.

Watched the Outsider (Netflix Original Film) last night. Set in 1954 Osaka, it follows an expat named Nick who is welcomed into the world of the Yakuza after saving one of their own in prison. There are some things it leaves unanswered as it focuses on the here & now instead of the past (such as why Nick was in a Japanese prison to begin with), but if you like 20th century period pieces and/or Japanese themed films I feel it's very much worth a watch.

Also recently watched Geostorm which is a decent enough popcorn flick if you can turn your brain off for a bit, lol.

@WaveBoy Unfortunately, that's the fate of pretty much anything that becomes so iconic that its sound design and imagery becomes synonymous with the genre.

I'll have to disagree, though. It's a perfect little horror movie, and I enjoy it every time I watch it, whereas I've found I can't even sit through a Friday the 13th film without dozing off or getting distracted by something.

But then, I'm of the opinion that most films in the slasher genre are terrible are are missing the artistry that made films like Halloween and Psycho classics.

On the topic of slasher sequels... I don't disagree that Halloween fared the worst in that regard, although I will say that I think H20 is a decent film and is head-and-shoulders above most slashers I've seen. I watched ALL the films recently, and it was really striking how trashy the series got as it went on, culminating in Halloween Resurrection, one of dumbest horror films ever made (I know it's far from the last, but it's the worst, so I watched it last). As much as I hate to admit it, though, it was so bad I actually kind of enjoyed watching it.

Busta Rhymes making Bruce Lee noises and kicking The Shape through a window is one of the few times a film has ever made me laugh uncontrollably, so I'll give it that!

A Nightmare on Elm Street is another childhood favorite of mine, and while I don't see it as much of a classic as Halloween and Psycho, it's still a fine little 80's horror movie, and I really dig the surreal imagery, inventive premise, and creepy synth score. Freddie's long slinky arms in that alley is a bizarre, haunting image that really seared itself into my child brain and never went away. I also think it fared pretty well in terms of the sequels, even if Freddie got increasingly silly over time. Dream Warriors was a pretty strong film, and Wes Craven's New Nightmare is a fascinating and strangely inventive commentary on the horror genre as a whole, as well as an interesting spiritual predecessor to the Scream films.

Have you ever watched the sequels to Psycho? They're... surprisingly good films. Anthony Perkins reprises his role as Norman Bates in them, and they're thoughtful and intelligent thrillers in their own right.

December 2018 was a great month for movies! Aquaman, Bumblebee and Spider-Verse were all pretty great &/or fun films!

I will admit though i'm weary of the future of cinema with all the creepy giant corporate buy-outs, Disney/FOX is gonna hurt a lot of people, as well as content creators and consumers rights in the long run, not to mention theaters ticket & concession prices are gonna become even more ridiculous going into the next decade! And ATT's buy out of Turner/Warner Bros. seems pretty iffy as well. Sufficed to say i'll probably start going to the movies much much less often in the future.

That said there are still films i'm looking forward to. Jordan Peele's Us looks spectacular! And I really hope i'm able to see How To Train Your Dragon 3, Shazam!, Secret Life of Pets 2, Godzilla & Detective Pikachu as they are released over the course of 2019.

Beyond that I know there's a Trolls Sequel in 2020 and if Illumination and Nintendo ever do get the animated Mario film off the ground I look forward to that, hoping Hasbro gets the Hanazuki, animated Transformers film and second MLP films made some day.

But yea, beyond those gonna be very wait and see going into the 2020's about what I do and don't see in theaters as I have no desire to pay even steeper ticket and concession prices then the ones we already have.

Bleach (Netflix Original Film) - Japanese produced live action adaptation of the popular manga/anime. Really don't waste your time on this. It has the typical concessions of adaptations of this type, reworking an entire arc's worth of story into a less than 2 hour runtime, and while that's understandable, there's still a lot of stuff (including characters) they had to omit, and overall the film was simply a bore for most of it's runtime, and the costuming was particularly low budget with the actors looking like they were just wearing store bought Bleach cosplay outfits. The climactic battle was actually pretty fun in a cheesy sort of way, but that in itself isn't enough to save the film.

I actually kinda liked the live action FMA film, but not this one.

Honestly I find the live action remakes of animated films Disney's doing to be pretty disgusting and tactless. They're nothing but shameless Nostalgia cash grabs and insults to the Hard working animators that made set originals.

Plus they don't have anywhere near the soul the originals do.

Alita: Battle Angel (theater) - Apparently this was helmed by the same creative team that made Avatar, so my brother (who is a major fan of that film) invited me to go see it with him (in 3D, to boot). Not sure how faithful it is to the source material (though apparently it's a bit of a passion project for James Cameron as a fan of the original, so I'm guessing it followed the manga closer than these things tend to), but just as a movie watching experience it's leagues above any other live action manga/game adaptation I've seen.

It's absolutely full of awesome cyborg on cyborg combat, with a richly detailed sci-fi world, and I thought the 3D was pretty fantastic. Alita herself is a fully CG character (made to look mostly realistic, just with slightly exaggerated facial features to hit a balance between realism and her original manga appearance) amongst a cast of mostly live-action actors, but it worked for me so much that I never really noticed while watching (maybe it was because she technically isn't human, and/or the handful of other CG cyborgs sprinkled in). My only real issue is that they built up a big bad that she wasn't able to confront by the film's end, setting up for a sequel we may never get due to how well manga adaptations tend to pan out. I know they probably can't fit the entirety of the manga's story into one movie without major pacing issues, but I at least wish they were more subtle about the big bad's presence in a way they could still set up for the sequel, while making the villain she does confront seem more meaningful.

Ant-Man & the Wasp (Netflix) - Not quite as fun as the first film, but still a good watch.

@RR529 It was actually directed by Robert Rodriguez (who made From Dusk Till Dawn, Sin City etc) and James Cameron was the producer.

Not really as video games movies always suck, I'm don't even have hope that the Mario movie will be decent as it's being made by the Minions studio.

Joysticks (Amazon Prime Video) - 80's comedy centering around a video game arcade. It's the typical youth culture versus the establishment yarn, as the city's teens band together to keep the arcade safe from the mechanations of a stuck up parent's plans to try and shutter the place for being a "den of moral decay".

You have all the cliches present such as the jock, the nerd, and of course the gaming addicted slob, and it didn't skimp on the very gratuitous female nudity, which is only matched in prevalence by Pac-Man iconography. While other notable titles get some screentime, Pac-Man is so prevalent that I'm almost willing to guess there may have been some sort of marketing/licensing deal in place (it even climaxed with a "the Wizard" Super Mario Bros. 3 style jumbotron showdown, with Super Pac-Man).

I wouldn't say it's a good movie, but as someone who enjoys the occasional 80's cheesefest, along with being interested in what it would be like as one of the earliest Hollywood attempts at tapping into gaming culture (it came out 5 or 6 years before the Wizard), I'd say I overall enjoyed my time with it.

I watched Raging Bull and The Breakfast Club yesterday.

InuYasha the Movie 2: Castle Beyond the Looking Glass (Amazon Prime Video) - I was feeling nostalgic tonight, and since I'm a big fan of the series (as you can tell from my avatar), I decided to impulse buy this on Amazon this evening and give it a watch. I went with the second film since it's my favorite one (I last watched it a few years ago, and even then it was either a poor quality YouTube upload or on an unreputable website), so watching it in HD was a treat and I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

I really should purchase the series one of these days (last time I watched it through was when Toonami re-aired it 6 or 7 years ago, man it didn't seem so long ago), but I'm not sure where I'd find the time to squeeze in a near 200 episode anime series (counting the Final Act too, naturally).

Dragon Ball Super: Broly (Amazon Prime Video) - Noticed this was now available for home video, so I bought it last night and stayed up way later than I usually do watching it with my brother. This is the absolute best Dragon Ball Super has ever been. It's obviously not a deep film, but it's fun, the action is absolutely fantastic (what I've always dreamed a DBZ battle would look like with modern animation & a big budget), and they actually provided some explanation behind Broly's unusual power level and reworked his history to make him more of an actual character, so for a Dragon Ball film it was good from the storytelling angle as well. Also, in terms of style it looked more like DBZ than the Super TV anime (Now I'm not talking about the animation quality, as I know DBZ didn't look nearly this good, but in terms of style, especially the coloration and use of shadow of the super sayain form, best exemplified when Vegeta first transforms in the film, they captured that look better). The only hiccup was that Frieza wanted the Dragon Balls to become taller, rather than immortal. It was unbecoming of the series' most notable irredeemable villain, just so they could add an extra scene of comic relief to a film that already had a decent amount of it in more appropriate scenarios.

Godzilla VS King Ghidorah (Amazon Prime Video) - Watched this Friday evening. An early 90's era Godzilla film, that sees time travelers from the future attempting to destroy Japan's dominance in the 23rd century by preventing Godzilla from being created, and replacing him with King Ghidorah to destroy Japan in "modern day". You don't watch a "Godzilla VS" film for the story though (which didn't make much sense in practice), and it was just a good comfort food time.

I watched 'Love, Death and Robots' and 'Shazam', enjoyed both very much

I know i'm gonna get some looks but i don't give a damn;
I really love Hotel Transylvania.

Ghost in the Shell 2017 (Amazon Prime Video) - The live action adaptation, and it was actually pretty decent. Questionable casting choice aside (and of which I personally ultimately didn't mind, as it was explained in the context of this version's story) it didn't do anything wrong, as in it checked all the boxes correctly in terms of world, characters, design, and even the basic themes that permeate the series (with a proper budget to boot), but it's big fault is that it just felt very "diet GitS", in an effort to make it a more easily consumable popcorn flick (I had to rewatch the original film multiple times to get it & I STILL don't really understand Stand Alone Complex, but I was able to piece together the basic plotline of this film quite early on), and partially probably an effort to appease the China censors (toned down the general "adult" content of the series, in terms of blood & sexualization). It's not bad though, and still a decent watch if you're into the series just to see the characters translated into live-action, or just want to watch a decent sci-fi flick.

Top Gun 2 maverick Tom Cruise jacket. Very nice Outfit. Top Gun 2 Jacket

Like the entire film itself the casting missed the point of why it was an issue and then decided to put out the fire by pouring gasoline on it. It's more akin to Asian erasure since the movie itself is a Japanese story, with a Japanese setting but then goes she's Japanese anyway LOL, if it was handled better they could of got away with it but the entire film was badly handled. It looks like Ghost In The Shell is about the only praise it can be given and largely appeals to the fans of anime who like the pretty fast moving colours. Without the deeper nuances of a reflection humanity that the original flicks offered it's a fairly shallow flick.