Last movie you watched......

It's 84% on Rotten Tomatoes.

 

I mean from friends who have seen it. I haven’t read any reviews.

I know five people who have seen it and the general consensus has been that it’s 45 minutes too long and more on par with Quantum of Solace than Casino Royale or Skyfall.

 

I thought No Time to Die was fantastic. Have seen it three times. Normal screen, Imax, normal again as I needed something to do at 10:30 after a late dinner out. (Having the AMC pass plays a role in this too since it's 3 movies a week). But great sendoff for this era.

Saw Last Duel last night. Didn't know what to expect from the trailer. Historical drama? Eh, okay. But I thought it was really good. The tone is nothing like the trailer. It's at times quite odd, playful, deadly serious.

 

Watched Halloween Kills on Peacock last night.
It wasn't among the best of the Halloween sequels, but it's far from the worst like some people are trying to make it out to be. It was more different from your traditional Halloween movie, in that they took the focus well away from Laurie Strode and put it on how the town of Haddonfield has reacted to this madman rampaging through their town and living in their head for 40 years.
That seems to be where a lot of the bad reviews are coming from, but I rather liked that shift in focus. We often see these killers massacre their victims and then never think about them again, and in this one we see some of the chaos that would ensue from a maniac slaughtering 20 or 30 people in a small town in the span of hours -- bodies, victims and families rolling into the hospital in a steady stream, a parent seeing her son (killed in the last movie) on a slab, a vigilante mob forming and taking action, news reports of the carnage, etc. The execution probably wasn't as good as it could've been, but I liked the idea.

The gore, as reported, has been increased by a significant factor. Some of the kills are on the level of the Rob Zombie remakes, where the shock hits and then we linger on the scene a bit too long. Or there's a smidgen of overkill. But they're also well done and kind of realistic, in that there aren't a ton of "instant kills" from wounds that should be serious but not immediately fatal. Someone gets stabbed, for example, and they bleed out over a couple of minutes rather than immediately going down for the count. One of those uncomfortable Zombiesque scenes drives that point home as we see one victim incapacitated and slowly dying while Michael finishes off someone else in the background.
There are a couple of solid jump scares, too.

The movie makes clear that Halloween II (1981) never happened in this timeline, but there are references, callbacks and homages to every previous movie in the franchise. Some of them are deep dives that you'd have to have seen the movies several times each to pick up on, or are style choices more than plot elements (like the brutality of the kills rivaling the Rob Zombie remakes), but they're there.

This movie is definitely the middle act of a bigger story, which it is. Part 3 of the trilogy comes out next year, so keep that in mind while watching this one.
If they'd condensed it way down to 30-40 minutes of a 2 1/2 hour movie, it'd make a solid second act leading into the finale. It suffers a bit from that. As a standalone movie, it won't satisfy everybody -- especially those used to the normal formula of a slasher movie. Like I said, most of the bad reviews seem to stem from this movie breaking out of that mold and showing a different side of the traditional slasher story. Not sure if critics didn't like it, just didn't get that, or what. It's not the best movie, but it is worth watching. If you're a fan of the series and the mythology, it's definitely worth checking out.

 

Dune: Part One. Didn’t realize it was a part one until I started watching it.

It was visually spectacular, but the plot and characters were very thinly developed and, frankly, the film felt unfinished. Some of the speaking was so unintelligible, I had to repeatedly turn on closed captions to understand what they were saying.

Given that Warner Bros didn’t green light a sequel yet (or maybe they did in the past few hours), it would have been nice if they could have made this film stand on its own better. It’s two thirds of a story and it feels every inch of it.

Maybe the sequel, assuming it gets done, will make this a better film in two or three years, but for now, it was just some confusing stuff and half-thoughts that were presented in spectacular fashion.

 

Could have been copied & pasted from a viewing of Tenet.

 

The Hills Have Eyes, the new one. Meh. Plenty violent, but not really scary at all. And the dipshit kid who kept running after the dog should have been gutted. Two stars at best.

 

Listened to the Rewatchables podcast on The Color of Money, so I dialled it up last night. I do t think I’ve seen it since the 80s, it doesn’t seem to pop up much on TV.

Such a fun watch. Cruise before he really became Cruise, and Newman is sublime. I’m a sucker for any movie about cons/grifts and the seedy underbelly.

Are there still pool halls where people play for decent amounts of money?

Side notes - Newman is ridiculously good looking for 50-ish, and his white Caddy with red leather interior is glorious.

 

Yes, generally snooker at small-town places or in a place nobody cares about what goes on. I’ve not seen anything other than small bets on 8- or 9-ball.

 

Dune is beautiful, well acted, even better than I could imagine, and unfinished.

 

Really loved The Velvet Underground documentary on Apple.