Talk About Movies: Part 4

*Unsettling* can be such a perfect word. I need to start working it into more conversations.

Last 2 Popes had softened me a bit on the Catholic Church lately.
Then, catching up on past Oscar candidates, got around to Spotlight.
May they burn in hell.

Conclave might soften you again...

No need for softening. What NhlNut wrote.

I wouldn't put Obsession and Backrooms in the same sentence. Backrooms is rather disappointing - visually very good but the story is lacking.

As far as low budgets recent movies goes, Backrooms was an absolute waste of time, Obsession fine/very good and Exit 8 was simply excellent and quite the shame that no one ITT has mentioned thus far, tbh...

I can't believe how bad Backrooms was. This was one of the most pointless films I've ever seen. No character or plot development, not scary, nothing to say about anything. Everything about it is derivative. Aesthetically, it reminded me of the video game Control, except Control's Oldest House is much better designed.

I understand there have been comments marvelling that a 20 year old could have directed this, when in fact it would embarrassing if the director was from an older generation. This is the sort of recycled garbage one would expect from the atrophied imaginations of the Tiktok generation. Honestly, a film this bad receiving so much praise makes me worry for the future of art.

saw tuner last night, was really good

Over the weekend I watched the original Backrooms short and it blew my mind. I'm going to wait to watch the rest of the shorts and lore stuff, at least until I can watch the movie. I watched a breakdown video from a guy who analyzed the short, he was well versed in the technical side of making it as well as the lore of glitching into liminal space. I'm excited to see where it goes and whether it leads to more movies made from creepypasta origins.

Pacifiction (Albert Serra, 2022)

This was great. Sort of a political thriller, but without any thrills in the conventional sense at least. But many thrilling scenes, still. Really beautifully shot and the movie has a particular mood to it. Was pleasantly surprised that it didn’t really feel slow, at least compared to similar festival-type movies, but it is a 3h long action-free movie in French so ymmv.

LOL you're either into weird, liminal spaces, not much narrative kind of stuff, or you're not. I love it. Haven't seen the movie yet.

jfc what a terrible out of touch review. I'm 55 and I think Kane Parsons (also known as Kane Pixels...if you know you know) is a great talent.

You clearly are an expert on what cinema needs these days going forward...please enthrall us with your acumen.

lol

I think there’s enough (back)room for both opinions to exist.

I heard there was some rumour that as Parsons was so young and inexperienced being his directorial feature length debut that Osgood Perkins ended up being like a shadow director throughout and it shows.

Just saw the new Spielberg movie Disclosure Day - I really don't know how Spielberg keeps working with Koepp. It felt like it should have been a movie done in the 90s and not now - so much of it was just simply comical with that script. The 7/10 rating it had before the movie was grossly exaggerated - it will end up in the high 5s on IMDB which will be generous - deserves to be in the low 5s. Blunt's performance was good though - only highlight (and the last 20 mins but boy it took awhile to get there and get through this with the film's running time).

seems that Disclosure Day is getting fairly bad user reviews. Honest question...does it have any connection to Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)?

As a ute, I saw Close Encounters with my family over Christmas back when it came out. We all thought this movie was great. But...there was one scene that scared the s**t out of me as a ute viewer (I would have been around Barry's age):

Is this scene better than any scene in Disclosure Day?

I learned this weekend that the code name for Francis Gary Powers' mission was Operation Grand Slam.

Well, when I'm president, there's a mission name that's going off the books. 0 for 2.

Disclosure Day was oddly old fashioned, right down to the design of the aliens. It reminded me of a 90s sci-fi "alien of the week" TV show (not X-Files) that I'm struggling to name.

Enjoyed it, although preferred Emily Blunt's story to Josh O'Connor's, largely because of the acting. I've always liked O'Connor before, but thought he was a bit one-note and dull in this. Blunt was a lot more versatile and fun. To be fair, I think hers was a better written role.

I thought in the first hour the O'Connor story was pretty boring - Blunt was far more interesting especially with her now acquired skill. But to me it felt like an X files episode - right down to Blunt's character being what Mulder's great search for the truth was about. In the end the movie should have been a tv show premise created by Koepp and executive produced by Spielberg with another showrunner as execution of the ideas was lacking.

Citizen Vigilante (2026)
Mediocre exploitation hack Uwe Boll pokes the bear on the issue of mass migration by having unlikable rich psycho Armie Hammer kill lots of migrant criminals, as well as innocent passers by to prove some point he's making at the time and a boatload of cops for good measure, in this disjointed af and laughably bad exploitation flick that thankfully strays into so-bad-it's-good territory at times and doesn't make much sense in parts.

Less hilarious is Hammer's character urging the viewer to take control and do what he's doing, which arguably has it engaging in actual incitement. Also has cringe dialogue such as classing mass migration as"an unfriendly takeover by Islamist extremists and the blindsided woke left" and what suspiciously looks like an AI news channel and reporter.
About the best think I can say about it is that it reasonably delivers in the tacky exploitation stakes, but other than that it's just another typical Uwe Boll flick, which hammers home its message with all the subtlety of a brick thrown thrrough your window with a nasty note attached.

Damn! I got excited when I saw that thumbnail and thought it was a trailer for the live action Metal Gear Solid movie.

Supergirl looks dumb, Leviticus sounds awful.