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The Pusher trilogy is great. I've been wanting to revisit them — I only watched them once after my daughter was born. The second one is the standout for me: a stylish crime pic, populated with flawed criminals who lack the savvy to know better. A classic Mads performance (if memory serves, he got cast in Casino Royale based on it). The 3rd one is strong, too, and is one of the few movies that truly had me wrapped up in a stifling sense of dread.

Echo In The Canyon - not really a doc, not really a deep-dive into what was going on then, more of a 90-min infomercial for the ever-joyless jakob dylon's all-star karaoke fest. do not watch.

Caught up with some films I've for some reason missed out on the last few years:

Lady Bird: Excellent coming of age-drama/comedy. Like a less annoying Juno without the pop culture references etc. I would watch Saoirse Ronan in pretty much any film.

Annhiliation: Visually stunning, slow burn and great soundtrack. Some of the performances were lacking though, and I wish Garland could have explored the side characters a bit more.

Birdman: Yeah, I missed out on Birdman back in... 2014? Loved it.

Hagazussa - believe the hype on this one. seriously, go watch it immediately. fucking fantastic. moody, thought-provoking stylistic sister to the vvitch.

Hunters - al pacino amazon prime show. it's... interesting? seemed like it should be great on paper, and sometimes it is. but that's the problem - sometimes. the tone is all over the place. one minute it wants to be shindler's list. the next minute it wants to be a QT film. and the QT moments aren't scattered evenly throughout, they are infrequent enough that when they do pop up, it's jarring. and there are serious timeline problems - even in their own universe they created here, the timelines don't make sense half the time. it is also SOOOOO preachy at times that it's just irritating. still, i'd say it's worth a watch. i hope they get these problems solved, as a season 2

without al pacino

would probably be better.

TC wrote:Hunters - al pacino amazon prime show. it's... interesting? seemed like it should be great on paper, and sometimes it is. but that's the problem - sometimes. the tone is all over the place. one minute it wants to be shindler's list. the next minute it wants to be a QT film. and the QT moments aren't scattered evenly throughout, they are infrequent enough that when they do pop up, it's jarring. and there are serious timeline problems - even in their own universe they created here, the timelines don't make sense half the time. it is also SOOOOO preachy at times that it's just irritating. still, i'd say it's worth a watch. i hope they get these problems solved, as a season 2

without al pacino

would probably be better.

We barely made it through the pilot. A real mess.

O-dot wrote:We barely made it through the pilot. A real mess.

there are good and entertaining moments but yeah, it's all over the place. the ending promises next season will be bonkers, if picked up. but what's concerning is that the creator says he has five seasons mapped out. no idea how that is even possible.

TC wrote:the creator says he has five seasons mapped out.

Pass.

Yeah, Hunters was entertaining in pulpy sort of way, but also really shit and slightly offensive.

Knives Out - Well... With all that praise following the film, I was truly hoping for something more than this totally average, bland murder mystery. The script was not much better than the average Murder She Wrote and the execution was deeply flawed in a couple of ways. I mean, it's entertaining in a way but man did I think it would be so much better.

Yep, total yawn fest. But it ticks the boxes, you see.

Well yeah, sure it ticks the boxes. I expected as much. But I was led to believe this to be a smart, slick and modern whodunnit from the way people keps talking and raving about it. I just can't see anything that stood out at all. And Rian Johnson had a couple of really sloppy, lazy "outs" during the film that just made me mad.

The mistake was assuming films are still judged for their quality.

Tiger King - holy shit is this a bonkers story. layers upon layers upon layers of crazy. so much crazier than i knew. fantastic doc.

TC wrote:Tiger King - holy shit is this a bonkers story. layers upon layers upon layers of crazy. so much crazier than i knew. fantastic doc.

Watched the first two episodes last night. Craziest shit since Going Clear, the Scientology doc.

EVERYBODY is talking about Tiger King right now, so I guess it's a must see. Seems like all sorts of crazy.

But can I also recommend season two of the documentary series Dirty Money on Netflix? The first season was very good and this is no exception. Hey - fuck capitalism.

_Marcus_ wrote:But can I also recommend season two of the documentary series Dirty Money on Netflix? The first season was very good and this is no exception. Hey - fuck capitalism.

it's on my list.

I was tired of people talking about Tiger King, until I saw it. It's so good.

Parasite - finally watched this. i thought it was really good, i quite enjoyed it. then i read a bunch of reviews on letterboxd. man were people losing their shit about this film and how great it is. i didn't get all that. have to watch it again i guess. as i said, i thought it was really good. better than OUaTiH? not at all. but i enjoyed it.

Okja - wanted to check out another bong film i hadn't seen, so watched this. the description doesn't do it justice. i avoided it for this long based on the fact that i thought it was going to be some crazy, super-preachy vegetarian/anti-meat film. while there are some (abundantly) clear message about meat processing and sustainability, i didn't find it overly preachy. it was quite enjoyable, but had some long lulls for me. the first 20 min are fantastic - it was like watching a live-action totoro. i loved that part. was hoping the whole film would be more like that. but it got pretty crazy, bordering on surreal slapstick at times. again, some (abundantly) clear messages about greed and industry in general that started wearing me out by the end, but i did enjoy it. need to watch snowpiercer again.

It's a decent politically-edged thriller of the kind the French were making in their dozens in the nineties, nothing more, nothing less.