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Pet Sematary (2019)
I read a lot of King books as a kid. Thought this was a pretty bad adaption. It's basically more of a random horror flick with all the typical cliched ways to make you scared or sad, King lore is only rudimentary. Part of why King's books are interesting is the lore and all the thoughts of the characters surrounding various things. All his books more or less play in the same universe with the same mythology so to speak, although this is only seldom explicitly mentioned inside the books, unlike stuff like the MCU where they use it for marketing. In general the film seems more like it took the synopsis of the book and made everything else up or just left it out, focusing more on long boring shots of people walking around to make you feel scared and some weird backstory of his wife and her crippled sister (was this even in the book? I don't remember it). Zero soul in this film. Which is a shame, because the male actors seem like a really good fit imo, that is Louis and Jud. Oh well.
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On my watch list:
ROMOLUS & REMUS – THE FIRST KING (IL PRIMO RE)
(Italy/Belgium 2019 – mythological drama – 127 min - Language: Latin)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7278824/
Italian BD - Rai Cinema - 01 Distribution:
Audio..............: Latin (DTS-HD MA Audio 7.1); Latin (DTS-HD MA Audio 5.1); Latin (DTS-HD MA Audio 2.0)
Subtitles..........: English, Italian SDH, Italian, Latin
Matteo Rovere reconstructs the legend of Romulus and Remus and the founding of Rome
Il Primo Re is an epic pearl of Italian cinema: an intense, original work that follows the legendary founders of the eternal city, Romulus and Remus. Director-screenwriter-producer Matteo Rovere brings us a powerful and philologically accurate film that offers us a glimpse of archaic societies far from the myths and legends that tradition has narrated about Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome. The film begins with a quote by British playwright William Somerset Maugham: "A God who can be understood is not a God". Here is a minimal but fundamental phrase that appears on the screen, and foreshadows a crude religious paganism and the inner strength of a man who will be king. The would-be King, played by a superb Alessandro Borghi goes on unwittingly, with the vigor of fire as a God to meet his destiny, and tells us a story that nobody knows.
In addition to the film’s set design, with its attempt at historical reconstruction (the film is set in 800 B.C.) based on valid scientific sources, the director and production team have attempted to engage in a philological operation very similar to Mel Gibson’s successful attemptin Passion of Christ –which is in Aramaic, Hebrew and Latin – and Apocalypto, which is in the Yucatec Maya language.
In fact, the cast of The First King speaks a proto-Italic language, reconstructed by a group of semiologists thanks to epigraphs, tombs and objects that were contemporary to the time period in which Romulus and Remus were imagined to have lived. A courageous and exciting decision that will be put to the test at the cinema, but which doesn’t seem to compromise narration and makes for an immersive experience. The action scenes are very elaborate, and the fight scenes, in particular, are raw, animalistic and somewhat reminiscent of Vikings or even Valhalla Rising.
Trivia:
- Actors speak their roles in preroman Latin.
- The film was shot entirely with natural light by photography director Daniele Ciprì.
- The director Matteo Rovere used minimum CGI, prefering prosthetic makeup and stuntmen works.
IL PRIMO RE (the first king) gave me chills! A mix between Valhalla Rising and Revenant hehe! Great atmosphere, much realism...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bs_AonIW6PU
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A Quiet Place (2018)
After The Silence, another movie about... well, silence, and monsters. I quite liked The Silence, but I liked even more A Quiet Place; they share many similarities - apart silence and monsters, also a family with a deaf girl, and their struggle to survive. This time monsters were showed just briefly at the beginning (and wow, it was scary!) but the CGI, albeit good, lacks something that I dunno, but took me a bit out of the movie... a small defect in an overall great movie, with almost no music and very few actors. To watch if you like monsters and post apocalyptic movies.
7.5/10
Overlord (2018)
Stumbled upon this while looking for a possible Cloverfield sequel (I mean, a "real" one), it was a very pleasant surprise! I do not like so much war movies, and this was quite crude, but it was just a part of the story - albeit not very original, I have seen something similar in the Frankenstein's Army before; yet, acting was top notch, very good SFX, everything was perfectly spot on. WWII + crazy experiments = a strange mix that works - at least for me.
8/10
Happy Death Day (2017) + Happy Death Day 2U (2019)
I strongly reccomend to watch both movies one after the other (hoping for a third part!); first one was a strange mix between Scream and Groundhog Day, while the second added The Butterfly Effect. Two very funny black comedies - sure, not masterpieces, but a great mix between the usual teen horror, comedy, with a bit of science fiction here and there. If you have watched the movies I mentioned, and you liked them, I'm pretty sure you will like these, too!
7/10
Burying the Ex (2014)
Another black comedy, directed by Joe Dante, that flew under my radar... nice, not extremely funny, OK, and not a so completely new story, but still nice with few very hilarious moments. When romance meet zombies!
6/10
Io (2019)
Another very limited cast put in a post apocalyptic world. This time story is quite original, acting great, and, albeit slow, it is interesting from the beginning to the end. A sci-fi movie with very few CGI that works well!
7/10
Mad Max (1979)
Can't add a review about the movie I'm working on since few weeks... I must admit I do love MM2 and MM3, while MM1 was left behind - watched it just once before lately. I undervalued it in the last decades; yes, to me it's still not on par with sequels, and I do not think it was set in the usual post apocalyptic world as them, so it is like (to me) before (this)/after (them). But I appreciated the style of the director - the out-of-the-orbits eyes in two distinct moments, the birds, the perfect choice of the cast (but not so great acting); a gritty first episode of the once trilogy, now a franchise. Again, even if the weaker of the three (four), nevertheless a must-see if you want to know who "Mad" Max was before.
6/10
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2019-05-28, 10:31 AM
(This post was last modified: 2019-05-28, 10:32 AM by vunjak.
Edit Reason: Small Word Mistake
)
Recently I watched Drunken Master, 5 Deadly Venoms, and halfway through Opium and the Kung Fu Master. Seen DM so many times it's a classic, and I just adore the final fight. 5 Deadly Venoms is interesting, maybe not a classic but worth it through once for a Kung Fu fan. Opium and the Kung Fu Master is, so far, pretty cool. There is a neat scene with dueling teams of lion dancers competing against one another for a prize that was very well done imo.
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Men in Black: International
Having not Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones in a MIB movie takes few minutes to swallow - and what is doing Thor here? But, after a while, you can understand the MIB "spirit" is almost intact in this new movie - the usual strange aliens, powerful weapons, bad enemies, with a final twist that is not the most unexpected, but still interesting. A nice addition to the saga - and I bet the first of a new wave.
7/10
The Wolverine (2013)
This movie, strangely, missed from my X-Men list, so, as it was on TV few nights ago, I decided to watch it.
Nice story, quite good acting - Hugh Jackman was the main star of the whole saga - but the "anime-like" end was a bit over the top IMHO... all in all not the best movie of the saga, but neither the worst one...
6/10
Dark Phoenix (2019)
...speaking of which... well, as I watched all the other X-Men movies, I can't miss it. Sadly, it was like a lazy excercise just to conclude the X-Men saga under the Fox control - and they made the worst film of them all! Not only the actors were bored (and to me "wrong", after the first movies), but the dialogs were weak, the whole story was messy, CGI less than convincing, and few good performances can't save it. Sad but true, a chapter to forget for anyone but (maybe) the most fanatic... fan! P.S. This should be Jean Grey? Oh, really?
4/10
Spider-Man: Far from Home (2019)
Last of the third MCU phase, I did like it, and didn't like it, at the same time... yep, strange, I know, but I can't say it was great, nor it was awful... just another "homework" from Marvel - A LOT better than Dark Phoenix - but I wanted something... "more"? "better"? I still think that Raimi's trilogy is still the best attempt to take Spider-Man from the comics and place it in the big screen - told by someone that actully did not read a comic since, what? thirty years?
Yet, it had its good moments, and I laugh sometimes, but the whole Mysterio plot was quite messy - don't want to spoiler, but I wonder, how those Elementals could "work" before, well, the twist? Just watch and please tell me!
6/10
Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse (2015)
Hey, I missed a movie about Zombies... how could it happened? Well, thanks to a cinema reviews site in Italian, I discovered this title (and the following two). A nice - albeit not original (seriously? CAN be a zombie movie original, nowadays?) story, a comedy with the right amount of splatter, and with some unexpected gags... sure, comedy level was quite low, still funny on average, and better than other similar ones.
6/10
Dead Shack (2017)
The second in a mini-marathon, this time we got a low budget movie - and it shows - but with more original ideas. Sure, acting was quite terrible, cast was nothing special - apart Lauren Holly, locations were poor, SFX almost non-existent...
Much more splatter than the previous one, and where in the former the characters were "cute" (in a way), here they were dumb, ugly, and use a lot of bad words in every sentence, even when they were useless, maybe just a way to capture attention (of the viewer, at least). Yet, it was... funny, in a way!
6/10
Mayhem (2017)
Third of the marathon, strictly speaking not a real zombie movie, but almost there... a virus that let the infected be without moral barriers - a mix between The Crazies and The Purge, inside The Belko Experiment... and it works, very VERY well! Don't want to say more, because you HAVE to watch it, if you like those movies, or want something new after a bunch of copy&paste movies about zombies!
8/10
The Dead Don't Die (2019)
So, a Jim Jarmush zombie movie, with a lot of stars... what can go wrong? Well, actually, a lot of things! First half of the film was sooo boooring - almost nothing happened... then, it started to recover, but the story was the same of maybe 90% of zombie movies: the infection starts, the main characters kill as many zombies as they can, they try to run away, some die, some not... add to this a WTF? moment near the end, and I must lower the overall score to less than sufficient BUT... a Star Wars gag, the Smart car, Tom Waits, and dialogs towards the end could save it. Barely. IMHO of course - I guess many (if not all) Jim Jarmush fans will love it!
6/10
Rim of the World (2019)
Three "special" kids (plus another one) in a camp, during an alien attack, struggle to survive, and have the mission to take a key in a lab, in order to save the world... meh! Even if the alien shape was at least almost original, the CGI execution was terrible, as the acting, dialogs, and almost anything else... I still think "why I wasted my time with this ..." (fill the blanks). Dark Phoenix, a masterpiece in comparison, enuff said. Avoid this, better spend the running time watching the wall, or beating your head on it - should be more entertaining, I guess.
2/10
Boar (2017)
C'mon, we ALL love movies about REAL monsters - sharks, anacondas, bears etc. - so, a movie set in Australia about a boar with a size of a rhyno CAN'T be wrong... can it? Low budget, but you can understand it mostly by the less-than-great CGI that, luckily, is used scarcely, in favour of ol' times SFX. Again, many bad words to let the characters bad, without them being necessary (at least in all this quantity)... beware, I'm not against them, but it's like that, if you use them for the whole movie, they lose their "strenght" when really needed.
6/10
Looper (2012)
Does it ever happen to you that you think - no, you are SURE! - you have watched a movie, to just discovered that you THOUGHT you watched it, where maybe your mind have just build the idea upon a trailer, and maybe some reviews? Well, if I have not forgot everything, or someone canceled my memories of this film, it happened to me with Looper! And, what a loss! In my Mandela Effect, it was a nice movie about time-travel-something, but nothing more... and luckily it was just a false memory, as I loved it! Not only because Bruce Willis was great (as always, or almost always), but the story was great as well, and all the cast - even if I must admit I hated the small boy since the first minute... well, can't say more, but if you love time travel, Bruce, and the butterfly effect (or, better, all of them), you have to watch it!
8/10
The Host (2013)
Like Looper, another movie that I thought I watched at the time... but was not the case.
Andew Niccol is a very talented director IMHO, and I liked all his movies but the two I still have to watch (I promised myself to do that ASAP!); that aseptic, unnatural world seen here, in Gattaca and Anon (by the way, I'm sure he used the same office location here and in Anon) is peculiar, and let you feel good and bad at the same time (there should be a word in another language that describe this kind of feeling...)
A slow, yet never boring story, with good music, nice location, good characters and acting. Can you live without watching it? Sure. But if you loved Gattaca (and/or Anon), do yourself a favour and watch it, too!
7/10
Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019)
I must admit I did prefer Godzilla 1998 to Godzilla 2004, and decided to watch this one only because there were more than one big monster - I do love monsters, as much as pretty actresses! So, how good it was? It was not bad. Monsters, a lot. Fights, a lot. Destruction, a lot. Good acting, some. Story, well, there was a story indeed, but who cares, if you have big - and I mean BIG! - monsters fighting each other? I much preferred Pacific Rim, if I must say the truth, or even Pacific Rim: Uprising, maybe because there were monsters, big monsters, along big robots! But all in all, I did like it. Not very, but enough.
6/10
The Code (2009)
Another movie that I started to watch years ago, but never passed the first few minutes... so, it was on TV, nothing better to watch, give it a go... an heist movie, with three solid stars (and many good co-stars), and a nice story with an unexpected final twist (finally!) - I do love Rhada Mitchell!
7/10
Serendipity (2001)
What? Yes. Sometimes (not often) I also watch non-horror, non-sci-fi, non-action movies... it happens usually when I zap between TV channels, and nothing better is available... and often I think "OK, I am tired, probably I will sleep in few minutes, so who cares about the title?". Well, this time I was awake for the whole movie - thanks to the story, but also - mainly - because of Kate Beckinsale (yes, I do love her, too!). When mega SFX and a plethora of superstars are not needed to get a nice film.
6.5/10
Time Trap (2017)
Another film about time - not time machine, nor time travel, neither time loop, yet about time... quite low budget, and actors are just decent (almost); but at least story is quite original this time, and never boring. If you can live with cheap SFX and location, and love stories about time, could be a decent watch.
5.5/10
The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996)
OK, watched quite many years ago, and had no occasion to watch it again, until today, reading an interesting article about a documentary about the movie - yes, maybe a strange reason to rewatch a movie, but... Marlon Brando was the shadow of itself, Val Kilmer was slim, Fairouza Balk was pretty; it was the fourth remake IIRC, and, despite being far from a masterpiece, was one of those mid-90s action-something movie, a-la Congo - forgettable, but, after reading what happened behind the scene, it's a miracle how (relatively) good was the final result, even if it's clear there are missing scenes - at least near the end, before the attack at main camp. Reccomended to all Stan Winston fans and/or half-humans-half-beasts lovers. P.S. I don't know why, but some of the "beasts" reminded me Nightbreed...
6/10
No One Lives (2012)
Actually, I watched this movie for the last time many months ago, but I think I have not written anything about it, and it came to my mind thanks to Mahyem... not because the story are similar, but because they were both original, and with a lot of gratuitous violence and unusual killings... you know, I think some of my favourite movies are like those ones... you did not even know about them, never heard about their existence, until you stumbled upon them reading a review of another movie or something like that... you are curious, but without expectations, and then BUM! They hit you in the face, and they will be remembered for years...
8/10
P.S. I Love You (2007)
Also this one was not watched lately, but few months ago, and also I think I have not written about it. A very nice comedy-drama (?!?) about love, death, memories; an original story, good actors and acting, that makes you feel sad but happy, and happy but sad.
6.5/10
Singularity (2017)
Watched some months ago, what I remember is bad acting, a confusing story set in the future... can't say was the worst movie watched lately, but surely a quite bad one... you can spend your time doing better things, I'm sure!
3/10
Broken Darkness (2018)
Decided to give it a go after watching the trailer... a bad choice! According to trailer, it should be a very interesting movie, full of action... nothing more different from the truth: an almost two hours long film with so few action (all packed in the trailer), slow and boring pacing, uninteresting dialogs, story seen thousands time, except the zombies are people wearing stupid masks...
Trailer: 7/10
Movie: 4/10
The Darkest Dawn (2016)
At least, the previous one was a feature film - with its flaws, but still a film... this, I don't know... pretending to be a found footage a la Blair Witch Project... so stupid, so bad acted, so bad CGI that I quit after 10 minutes, and fast forward through the end, finding nothing interesting... the only good thing is that I wasted only ten minutes of my time, but even that was too much.
N.A./10
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Virus 1999 Open Matte 1080p
I have not seen this movie for a long time, but even now it looks quite impressive.
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2019-07-29, 08:43 PM
(This post was last modified: 2019-07-29, 08:44 PM by Beber.)
From last Thursday to Sunday, I had the chance to attend to four old-school 70mm presentations of :
- 2001: A Space Odyssey. The print Nolan presented last year in Cannes.
- The Hateful Eight, roadshow cut. Still great, still a magnificent print.
- The Abyss, theatrical cut. A near mint print from back then with awesome magnetic sound.
- Patton. A very good print. Had never seen the movie before. What a great way to discover it.
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Just got back from Once Upon a Time in... Hollywood. I've had the chance to see it in 35mm. Overall, I liked it. I laughed many times. However, to me, it's amongst my least favorites Tarantinos, down below with Death Proof. I felt the movie was pretty much pointless, with no real plot. It's like Tarantino made a movie about how random life and events can be. Maybe that was the point, I don't know.
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Just got back from a 4K screening of Inception. Still excellent and cool to see again in theater nearly 10 years later.
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Dave Chapelle: Sticks & Stones
Not really a movie but ... pretty decent. A few parts are admittedly a little crass, though I probably don't mean the ones the media is angry about. Had a good laugh, would recommend, refreshing especially in this day and age, the man has the courage to make jokes about stuff that most wouldn't. The critics on Rotten Tomatoes are already giving it low scores, but it's not because the comedy is bad. If anything, it's because it's good.
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