Topic: Movie thread.

Watched Black Christmas (1974) last night. It's often cited as the original slasher film, predating Halloween by four years. Anyway it's great, holds up surprisingly well. My favourite character is the alcoholic sorority house mother.

Forgot to mention it here but I went to see Wonka on Monday with a couple friends and honestly really enjoyed it! I hadn't really seen much from it in the buildup to release and, with the last Charlie and the Chocolate Factory theatrical spin not really doing it for me in the slightest, I went in with pretty low expectations overall. But I'll be damned: it was actually really fun! I had somehow never learned that it was a musical so seeing all the songs strewn throughout the film was a great surprise, the case was pretty well-acted for the most part, with special mention towards Timothee Chalamét as Willy Wonka himself and the Horrible Histories acting group as numerous characters (always a delight to see them performing in any production) and the story was simple yet very touching all the same. I'd say my one major gripe was that the VFX was....rough to put it mildly (seeing Hugh Grant's face on an Oompa-Loompa scared me more than anything in Halloween) which I do see as an annoying large misfire given how much time is spent using special effects, but other than that? Yeah this was a very pleasant surprise of a film and one I'd definitely recommend you go see if it interests you. 8/10

@OldManHermit great film. I love it.

watched all of the old Friday the 13th movies DVD Deluxe Editions this month. Still enjoy the movies.

Then next week i need to watch the Unrated DVD of Jason Goes to Hell and rewatch Freddy vs Jason and I still have the good 2 disc special edition.

then on Tubi there's some stuff i need to watch before Tubi gets rid of them

@OldManHermit Yeah Black Christmas is a great flick.

I thinks that’s more of an American thing of calling it the first slasher though. Italians have a genre “giallo” which are really slasher films years before Halloween, Black Christmas etc plus the Brits were making stuff like Psycho and Peeping Tom before that. A lot of those 60s horror films hold up like Blood & Black Lace as swinging 60s European cinema had more visual flair which Hollywood/US took awhile to catch up to plus American mainstream films tend to be more boringly conservative compared to world cinema.

@jump Yeah, I suppose when I say slasher I mean the North American style of slasher flick that was popularized throughout the 80s. Usually a group of young people in a singular setting getting picked off one by one by a killer. I'm not familiar with 60s Giallo, but I've seen a bunch of 80s ones, Tenebrae and Opera being a couple of my favourites.

Here's all the movies I saw at my theater this year (alphabetical order):

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania
Avatar: The Way of Water
Barbie (x2)
Castle in the Sky
Coraline
Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
Elemental (x2)
Five Nights at Freddy’s
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
Haunted Mansion
Hocus Pocus
Howl’s Moving Castle
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
Kiki’s Delivery Service
Knock at the Cabin
M3GAN
Missing
My Neighbor Totoro
Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind
Oppenheimer
Over the Hedge
Paw Patrol: The Mighty Movie
Ponyo
Porco Rosso
Princess Mononoke
Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (x2)
RiffTrax Live: RAD
Ruby Gillman: Teenage Kraken
Sonic the Hedgehog 2
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
Spirited Away
Spirited Away: Live on Stage
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (x2)
The Bad Guys
The Boy and the Heron
The Little Mermaid (2023) (x2)
The Lorax
The Marvels
The Nightmare Before Christmas
The Super Mario Bros. Movie (x4)
The Wind Rises
Trolls: Band Together
Wish (x2)
Wonka

@IceDomino, great idea!

65
A Man Called Otto
Avatar: the Way of Water (3D)
Godzilla: Minus One
Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3
Oppenheimer
The Creator
The Super Mario Bros. Movie (3D)

@IceDomino That's a lot of movies. Awesome job!

For me, I saw at my theater...

Guardians of the Galaxy 3 (3D)
John Wick Chapter 4
Puss In Boots: The Last Wish
Ruby Gillman Teenage Kraken
Strays
Super Mario Bros. Movie
Trolls Band Together (FIVE TIMES!!!)

I have tickets to see Migration on Tuesday. My friend saw John Wick for his birthday, and he wanted to see Strays and wanted me to tag along. Trolls Band Together holds a really special place. Not only because it's my favorite series, but it's also the very first time I went to a movie by myself, and the first time I went to an early access showing. By far, my favorite movie this year.

@Sunsy Yeah, I had a goal back in 2020 to see one movie at my theater each week for a whole year, which would be 52 movies. Unfortunately, I only managed to get to 10 before the pandemic hit and forced our theater to close down for a year.

After a few years of on-off again because of variants and not enough vaccinated people, I finally managed to start going last January, and I even had some weeks where either I saw a movie 3 times in one week, or two movies in one day (like with "Elemental" and "The Little Mermaid", and "Super Mario Bros. Movie" and "TMNT Mutant Mayhem" for World Cinema Day).

So in conclusion, I got to see 53 movies (with "Wonka" being the newest one), and I'll go back to my usual schedule, I'll definitely be attending Ghibli Fest 2024 once details are posted on GKIDS. In the meantime, my next movies in January include "Migration" and "Soul". (Yes, the Pixar film, they're finally putting the three skipped movies (Soul, Turning Red and Luca) in theaters during the next three months, which means my personal "Pixar Streak", where I've see every Pixar movie in theaters since "Toy Story" will be fixed)

Films I've seen in the cinema this year:

Marcel the Shell With Shoes On
The Super Mario Bros Movie
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-verse
Barbie
Elemental
Miss Hokusai (not a new film but it was showing as part of an anime festival)

Also hoping to see The Boy and the Heron whenever it comes out over here.

I'm always one for trend-hopping so why not XD

Puss In Boots: The Last Wish
Sing 2
The Super Mario Bros Movie
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
The Canterville Ghost
Wonka

Wasn't too active at the cinema this year (mainly sticking to streaming services/what was on TV for the most part) but I still made my way over there whenever I had the time (especially alongside friends). Best movie I saw in cinema was unquestionably Spider-Verse, though Puss In Boots is a close second

Ah not long then! I can't seem to find any showings at my local cinema but hopefully they'll get it eventually.

@Rambler There isn't one near me unfortunately, but I've just checked the cinema nearest where I go to uni and it's showing there just after the next term starts, so I should be able to fit it in then!

Top 3 Christmas Movies everyone?
Mine are as follows..

1) Christmas Vacation
2) 8bit Christmas
3) A Christmas story

@Dogorilla Normally on a Tuesday/Wednesday they update the schedules for the rest of the week based on how films did at the weekend, with Aquaman being a donkey they will probably start showing The Boy & The Heron with it’s good word of mouth to make sure people go out to the cinema. Something similar happened to me when I was really looking forward to seeing the new Evil Dead, the nearest cinema wasn’t showing Evil Dead Rise but were showing that cringy Nicholas Cage Dracula movie, the next week after Dracula flopped they put on Evil Dead as people were actually going out to see it.

I saw The Boy & The Heron awhile ago at a film festival, it was the subtitled version and I’m tempted to go to the cinema to see the dub version as the voice cast is a powerhouse. Christian Bale, Florence Pugh, William Dafoe, Robert Pattinson, Dave Bautista (who’s impressively become a great character actor even though he made his name a wrestler), Gemma Chan etc.

@jump That makes sense, I expect I'll get a chance to see it before too long then. I don't really mind which version I see but the dub will probably be more widespread. I've never seen a Ghibli film at the cinema before so should be good either way.

(Merry Christmas by the way!)

long christmas day today. watching a few movies here and there on Plutotv : planes trains and automobiles and Scrooged and IGN stuff

@Dogorilla merry Xmas to you too!

@NintendoByNature I don’t think I’ve seen any one of them. It makes a change from the usual Die Hard, Scrooged, Elf which is on every list though.

I can’t be arsed for rankings but I did see some Xmas films over the last few days I enjoyed.

Advent Calendar, a French horror where a women gets an antique wooden advent calendar but each door contains either a curse, wish or a cursed wish.

It's A Wonderful Knife, a final girl on xmas eve stops a slasher killer however a year later she develops PTSD so she wishes she was never born and now is in a world where she was never around to stop the killer. I'm not saying this is better than It's A Wonderful Life but that film bugged me as the baddie got off, this film however has their baddie killed so maybe it is better than A Wonderful Life!

The Holdovers, cosy old skool style heartwarming film where Paul Giamatti learns to understand and connect with people. It's the right kind of sweet as it's sweet without making you throw up. I also approve of their use of candy cane metaphor.

Merry Little Batman, adorably cute Calvin & Hobbs style movie when Batman's kid does stuff at xmas. It makes a nice change where so many superheroes movies are bloated and unfinished (looking at you Spider Man, Flash, Guardians Of The Galaxy, actually all of them) where this knows its role as a movie and does it.

Favorite Christmas movies:

1. Christmas Vacation
2. ELF
3. Home Alone

Planes, Trains, & Automobiles is great too, but that one is actually a Thanksgiving movie (a pretty rare breed), so that's when we watch that one.