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  • The Vault (2021): Freddie Highmore and a well back crew of specialists are breaking into the worlds most secure vault, the infamous Bank of Spain. A vault that not only has a drawbridge and 3 13 ton doors to keep you from it's treasure but a vault that will also lock you in and drown should you manage to break in at all.

    The reason this movies is odd, and why I'm watching it in the first place, is that this was released right in the midst of the final season of Money Heist- the Money Heist crew spending the last 3 seasons of their 5 season run breaking into the Bank Of Spain and stealing the entirety of Spains gold reserves. All 90 tons of it. Two major releases, at the same time, about breaking into the same vault. It's just weird!

    Anyway The Vault crew have only 120 minutes to tell their story rather than 30 hours so they're leaving the gold where it is and focusing instead on a few gold coins from Privateer Drakes bounty. And you know what? It's not bad. Pretty good heist movie. I like seeing Highmore playing a character who doesn't seem to be austistic and doing it well. He's damned near charismatic. The bizarre nature of the vault leads to plenty of thrills. It has a slight identity crisis, a couple times it wants to go full Oceans 11, and someone needed to reign them back to taut and tough, but these days I'd say this qualifies as a good movie.

    What it does though, more than any other movie at the moment, is really underline why cinema is a dying artform and why television has supplanted it for AV supremacy. Compared to Money Heist it just feels so small! You get to know and love the money heist characters over weeks. The Vault only has time to sketch in a few stereotypes and move on. The heist itself has a couple nice setpieces but there's no time to make this feel epic. This is the worlds most secure vault and they are in an out in an afternoon? Eh....

    If you'd told me in the 90s that by 2020 movies had been overthrown by television for quality, quantity and scale I wouldn't have known what language you were speaking. With the theatrical window being removed by the studios I start to wonder if there's any future to cinema at all. Horror movies I guess. Television still doesn't do good horror... But then horror movies were always best on the small screen on VHS rather than the cinema anyway.
    "Never let the fact that they are doing it wrong stop you from doing it right." Hyman Mandell.

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    • Originally posted by Dom D View Post
      Television still doesn't do good horror... But then horror movies were always best on the small screen on VHS rather than the cinema anyway.
      Between the compromised framing and lousy picture quality, NOTHING was better on VHS, and only things that never came out on anything other than VHS were tolerable on VHS.

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      • Watched Woo's The Killer last night with two first time viewers (kids). It went over really, really well. Was worried some of the melodrama might not fly with the 20 somethings but they were into it.
        Rock! Shock! Pop!

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        • Don't Look Up (2021): I was really pulling for this movie to be good. Synopsis wise it feels like the movie of our age and, actually, it still feels that way after a watch. The execution makes it hard not to feel a little ambivalent of it as entertainment though.

          It immediately puts you in mind of two films Network and Dr Strangelove. Both furious movies that take very different approaches to their rage. Network screams into the abyss and Strangelove shrugs it's shoulders with an ironic chuckle. This one takes both approaches. It's a weird mix. It wants to shout and rage (and why not?) but it also wants to be a slapstick spoof. The two approaches hang together uncomfortably. I wish they'd gone full slapstick. Streep and Jonah Hill as president and offspring are so much fun I wish the rest of the movie had taken that tack.

          It's hard not to buy into it's sheer fucking doomed outlook though. If you've had a discussion recently with a climate denier or an antivaxxer it should hit on some level.

          Critical response on the film is grim thoguh. There's a fair bit of condescension from reviewers who clearly feel they've been condescended to. I don't know where I sit but what I do know is that the current reviews won't have much say in its spot in the pantheon. This film will be reevaluated in time. Maybe it will be reevaluated as complete trash or maybe as a missed masterpiece. Hard to say from this deep in this cursed year of our Lord 2021. Nice to see a film that's not just throwaway though. You don't get many of those these days.
          "Never let the fact that they are doing it wrong stop you from doing it right." Hyman Mandell.

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          • The Matrix Ressurections: it doesn't really feel like a real movie. For a movie like this to work the audience needs to understand the rules. The rules of the Matrix were really simple. The Matrix was a construct our heroes could jack into from the real world using telephones. If they die in the Matrix they die in real life. Because they know the world is just a program they are capable of superhuman feats but are no match for the agents who move like quicksilver and so if they come across an agent they need to run to a phone to get out. Simple setup, clearly explained. There's no rules at all in this new film. Things just happen. Now Trinity can fly. Why? Because. Now there's a guy who can move a thousand times faster than Neo. Why? Because. Agent Smith can beat the shit out of that guy. No reason for that. It's just a sequence of events with no rhyme or reason and no reason to follow it.

            They really needed Hugo Weaving back for this. The new casting on Agent Smith is bizarre. That guy could be playing a real estate agent and give the same performance.
            "Never let the fact that they are doing it wrong stop you from doing it right." Hyman Mandell.

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            • Old Boy remake

              Crap crap doo doo shit feces poo poo

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              • TOMATO RED (Juanita Wilson, 2017). Daniel Woodrell country noir, minimally released in 2017 and seems to've vanished. Watched it on itunes; DVDs were released in regions 1 and 2. Julia Garner, Anna Friel, Jake Weary. Woodrell's regionalism is always a strength, and it's under-served by the BC locations, but the trash is destiny fatalism and trapped rage is strong and universal as store-brand whiskey and beer with sweat on it. Lonesome trains, big sky, rails so close there's no right side of the tracks, bad decisions, and a tire iron to the face of an ending that hits as true and inevitable enough. Not perfect, but fine.

                Subtitled TOMATO RED: BLOOD MONEY for the US release. This made me angry. Don't do this again.

                Edit: an interview with Wilson.

                https://esource.dbs.ie/bitstream/han...=1&isAllowed=y
                Barry M
                Super Fiend
                Last edited by Barry M; 01-01-2022, 04:57 PM.

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                • SMALL TOWN CRIME (Eshom Nelms, Ian Nelms, 2017). John Hawkes is a drunken disgrace of an unemployed ex-cop. "Most mornings, I'm about as worthless as a park bench in hell," he says, really trying to nail the interview so he can get on and drink his next UI check. One roadkill hooker, though, and he's a man doing what a man ought to do. Not sure it's really the neo-noir a lot of reviews tag it as -- a little too much fun, more like a Lansdale Hap & Leonard joint. Good use of Robert Forster, and Clifton Collins Jr's a lowridin' pimp. They brought enough bullets for everyone, so A+.

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                  • Last night put on Short Circuit for the household 5 year old. This movie was huge in my youth. We watched the damned thing relentlessly. It went over well , I think, though the scene where Number 5 gets exploded at the end may have traumatised her for life. Lots of stuff you miss when you're a kid. Like 80s kids movie dialogue: "I originally designed these robots as a marital aid". Did you now Mr Guttenberg?

                    What I totally failed to pick up when I was watching it as a kid though is that the actor playing the very broad, very funny, Indian sidekick/stereotype is a white dude in brownface doing an Apu accent. In 1986 that was fine and dandy. The culture moves very fast...

                    That aside, the movie really holds up. I enjoyed it. Possibly, big statement I know, it could be said to be the best movie of Guttenbergs career.
                    "Never let the fact that they are doing it wrong stop you from doing it right." Hyman Mandell.

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                    • Binged on Shudder:

                      Boys of County Hell - Good modern Irish vampire horror with some humour and touchds of Irish folklore

                      Winterbeast - And to think people make fun of xxx features.

                      Blood of Dracula - Even better than I remember, the last scene is really intense, funny, gory and sad. Literally no one else could have made this film besides rhe very odd Morrissey.

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                      • WEREWOLVES WITHIN - I really, really hated this movie. Basically an alt-left remake of THE BEAST MUST DIE. It's obnoxiously cute and nobody is taking it seriously, yet we're supposed to love just how eccentric the characters are. It's one of those movies where everyone is clever and indifferent to what's happening. When one character is shot with an arrow, he falls down and say; "Ouch?" Yes, it's awful and even more annoying than the director's previous film, SCARE ME.
                        Why would anybody watch a scum show like Videodrome? Why did you watch it, Max?

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                        • Aww, I liked them for what they are, comedy in a horror space, not too far removed from SCTV. Nobody ever complains that Count Floyd was not really very scary. Ruben's a comedian: the label practically screams made from fresh Cornish ram's bladder, emptied, steamed, flavoured with sesame seeds whipped into a fondant and garnished with lark's vomit.

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                          • Sorry, I crossed some streams there. Ghostsbusters was not very scary, except for that librarian.

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                            • Originally posted by Barry M View Post
                              Aww, I liked them for what they are, comedy in a horror space, not too far removed from SCTV. Nobody ever complains that Count Floyd was not really very scary. Ruben's a comedian: the label practically screams made from fresh Cornish ram's bladder, emptied, steamed, flavoured with sesame seeds whipped into a fondant and garnished with lark's vomit.
                              Point taken. I suppose I was just not in a very neighbourly mood when I watched it.
                              Why would anybody watch a scum show like Videodrome? Why did you watch it, Max?

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                              • It's also true that it wasn't very funny. Tough gig, horror comedy.

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