Lurker > Camden

I think I said earlier this year I needed to watch The Expanse so I was caught up when the new season eventually comes out. That plan was a failure. I don't know what it is with The Expanse, it's pretty much everything I want in a sci-fi show and I've loved every season of it, but my inability to just... start watching it, is tenfold what it is for pretty much anything else.

As far as movies go, I think the only one I've watched recently is Green Knight, which I liked quite a bit. Still need to get around to watching Dune.

---

Huh? Finger!?
What the hell?

I've started and not finished quite a few shows, but rather than listing them as on hold or dropped I just remove them from my list entirely. Just prefer having an overall simpler list so I don't use those categories.

I'd like to watch the Ghibli movies in release order, though that's not a hard line stance by any means since I already watched Marnie first for this topic. Also helps that the ones I'm most interested in watching all seem to come from the earlier years anyway.

---

Huh? Finger!?
What the hell?

https://myanimelist.net/profile/Camden409

---

Huh? Finger!?
What the hell?

The Tribe - 6/10

This movie did a great job of telling me something I already knew; dialogue in a movie is critical for me. Even though I *think* I followed the story, it was impossible for it to ever suck me in in any kind of meaningful way. Didn't really feel any particular way about any of the characters. I've also learned that, lacking voices, I get people confused very easily. Half of the male characters could've changed actors during the movie and I don't think I would've even noticed.

Movie does a good job of having nudity that's not really sexual. Feels like half of the movie someone is either naked, taking their clothes off or getting dressed, and not a damn bit of it was something I could describe as hot. That seems like it's something hard for movies to accomplish, as even when a nude scene isn't supposed to be sexual at all it's always shot in a way that makes it so. Random woman scared when masked killer breaks into her house to kill her, catching her in the middle of changing because it's a horror movie so of course? You best make sure that they spent an abundance of time making sure her boobs looked 10/10.

Honestly, the biggest let down in this movie where no voices exist is that the sound doesn't stand out to me. Definitely don't want things to sound like old Wham Bam Batman sound effects have come to life, but even something like footsteps are just so muted here.

---

Huh? Finger!?
What the hell?

kateee posted...

i randomly remembered this post because i am trying to finish off anime

tbh when i look over the list of stuff i've finished i could have done without watching most of them

Speaking of which, mal recently added an option to display lists in English, so at least I now have a much better idea of what exactly my plan to watch list consists of.

My list has a lot of shows I could've done without watching, but I'm not sure my tv/movie/game lists are all that different.

---

Huh? Finger!?
What the hell?

Seen Before:
Power Rangers
Melancholia

Top 3:
Big Fish
M
Barry Lyndon?

---

Huh? Finger!?
What the hell?

I'm trying to figure out what movie seven hours is a connection to.

---

Huh? Finger!?
What the hell?

The Guilty - 7/10

So I guess they don't build him up as sympathetic because he's kind of a shithead. Obviously he has his 'redemption' at the end, but that only takes place a few minutes after he essentially told another caller with an injured knee to go fuck himself so I don't really know how much he's changed.

I like the idea of all of the actors outside of the main character being off-screen. I assume this was done mostly because of covid and it was a lot easier to get everyone together if they didn't actually have to get everyone together, but it's unique nonetheless.

The twist would've been better if Henry wasn't acting completely clueless when Joe initially called him. You abduct your ex-wife, and then while driving down the road a cop calls you out of the blue and starts asking questions, and there's no anger or yelling? Way too much of a tip that something else was going on.

Feels like Joe would've worked better as a character, with the twist at the end that he killed someone, if he wasn't a dick to everyone around him for the entire rest of the movie.

---

Huh? Finger!?
What the hell?

The beginning of The Guilty sure doesn't build the hero up as sympathetic.

---

Huh? Finger!?
What the hell?

Sports have been taking up a lot of my screen time recently, along with an uptick of translated Gaki content all of a sudden. Also watched Squid Game and I'm halfway through the last season of Castlevania. Still, I hope to finish my last two films pretty soon here.

---

Huh? Finger!?
What the hell?

Looking through a list of movies I've rated, which is nowhere near complete, I'm noticing a lot of movies tagged as horror that I wouldn't consider horror. Horror/Mystery/Thriller all seem to be kind of mixed together. Rather than pick which ones I consider horror and which I don't, here's my top ten from that list that have a horror tag attached to them.

Tremors
The Thing
10 Cloverfield Lane
28 Days Later
Cube
It
Alien
Misery
It Follows
Stir of Echoes

---

Huh? Finger!?
What the hell?

Aguirre, the Wrath of God - 6/10

Just want to start off by saying, the movie looks like every movie I watched in middle school and high school. Stories might all be different but you could tell me they were all using the same set of costumes and I wouldn't have trouble believing you.

Not really knowing any of the history of the characters the cast is based off of, I find it difficult to understand why Aguirre holds so much sway over everyone. When he overthrows Ursua, the promise of the possibility of riches really shouldn't be enough to pull everyone to him so fast, and nothing he's done on screen should instill the level of fear needed to do so.

Even if you didn't know from the start that everyone was completely fucked, the tone of the movie doesn't exactly hide anything. At no point in the film do you ever have a feeling that anyone is going to do anything except die. Technically, Aguirre doesn't die... but dude is dead. If nothing else he's going to trip over a monkey and break his neck on a log.

There's also a couple of scenes that, I'm honestly not even sure if they were meant to be comedy or not. A group of people sitting around counting, and after one gets his head swiftly removed it continues counting and says 'ten'. Or another person, exclaiming that 'The long arrows are getting fashionable' shortly after he finds himself with one protruding from his body. It's like a Python sketch tried breaking out during the movie.


---

Huh? Finger!?
What the hell?

Camden posted...

To the audience: This is NOT a 3D film, but please join our protagonist in putting the glasses on at the right moment.

Strange message to see at the start of a movie.

Okay, so this makes more sense now that I've watched the thing.

Long Day's Journey Into Night - 6/10

Found this movie to be a great example of style over substance. Maybe there's more to be found on a rewatch, but I don't see myself finding out on my own.

The gimmick of the second half of the movie being 3D seems like a neat idea, but as someone who doesn't watch movies in 3D I'm not sure if there's any payoff to it. It definitely has an entirely different atmosphere to it in the second half.

The other gimmick, that being the entire second half of the movie is a single, long take, feels a bit unnecessary to me. I googled it after watching to see if it was or not, I saw a couple spots that looked like they were good spots for cuts, and found out that the director used another, nearly as long take in a previous movie. Honestly I feel like these extra long takes in most movies exist so the director can say they did it rather than as anything to actually make the movie itself better.

Movie still gets an above average rating because it looks phenomenal. The long take, even if I feel it was unnecessary and didn't really add anything to the movie that a series of normal scenes couldn't have accomplished just as well, was still pretty cool. Maybe pretty cool is reason enough?

---

Huh? Finger!?
What the hell?

To the audience: This is NOT a 3D film, but please join our protagonist in putting the glasses on at the right moment.

Strange message to see at the start of a movie.

---

Huh? Finger!?
What the hell?

The Tribe

Can't go into this one without looking up more, because I've already seen the trailer from the last time it was nominated.

---

Huh? Finger!?
What the hell?

kateee posted...

i was honestly hoping i'd be more caught up

I'm behind on everything, and the idea of catching up on any of it is a dream. It's getting to the point where, like I seem to do every once in a while, I'm going to have to go through my lists and start the culling.

Four movies back here, I'd like to finish the full slate but I'm not making a lot of progress lately. Still triple digits on the overall movie watchlist.

Backloggery puts me at 98 games, which doesn't count Steam.

TV I'm only behind on five shows so not as bad as the rest. Unless you count anime, in which case the backlog is just as bad but also immune to culling because I don't know what 90% of the things on my watch list even are without looking them up, which all of a sudden becomes a lot more work.

---

Huh? Finger!?
What the hell?

Twilight Samurai - 10/10

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yan4CaKs5X4

My favorite samurai film. Fell in love with it right away and have since watched everything adapted from Shuhei Fujisawas work, and while I love almost all of it Twilight Samurai is still my favorite. I'd love to read his books instead of only watching adaptations, but whomever is in charge of his estate refuses to sign off on translations so the single collection of stories from over a decade ago is all there is. Glad I bought it years ago as it now routinely sells for 20-30 times what I paid for it.

I love the setting. It always feels strange to me that my least favorite part of a samurai film is the fighting, seeing as it plays such an integral part of most of them. It's hard to blame Koei for utilizing the 'One Man Kills Thousands' style of combat in the Warriors series when most samurai movies eventually have a scene where one man is constantly surrounded by swords on every side and yet he wades through them all, while they take turns meeting their end. Nothing of the sort here, outside of the short duel, if you can call it that, in the middle of the movie there's just the one battle at the end between two men, neither of whom truly wants to be there.

I wish there were more movies where the samurai are the focus rather than the swords.

---

Huh? Finger!?
What the hell?

The Guilty (2021)
Errementari (2018)


---

Huh? Finger!?
What the hell?

Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972)
Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop (2021)
Hard Eight (1997)
The Player (1992)

---

Huh? Finger!?
What the hell?

Because after getting completely caught up I decide to immediately fall three movies behind again.

Nobody - 8/10

Really liked the movie, though I do have a few gripes with it. First, Bob... who will be called Bob during this because it's either that or Saul as I don't actually remember what his name was in this movie, is presented as a badass, secret government type pretty early on, someone who knows how to do just about everything and is completely cool and collected under pressure, but absolutely loses it on some randos on a bus. Sure, a regular guy getting emotional and going rambo makes sense, but with everything we know about this character from the movie not so much. It's not even like he tried escorting the girl off the bus, they got in his way and then, well, gotta do what you gotta do. My man starts everything.

On the other hand, the bus fight was my favorite part of the film. Came off very much like a fight from a Jackie Chan film, where even though Jackie (Bob) is the winner of the fight, he takes his lumps during it. Makes an unrealistic fight seem somewhat more realistic when the hero gets his ass kicked too. Also, the Stop Requested sign going off for some humor is also straight out of a Jackie Chan fight scene. Which is why the rest of the action scenes didn't hold up as well for me, as ol' Bob immediately transitions into the nearly perfect hero who can do no wrong. The five randos on the bus gave him more trouble than a gross of russians with an equal amount of firepower.

Second fight, the goons are told to bring him in alive so of course they're armed to the teeth and firing to kill. Not sure how they planned to take him alive when they were going over their plans before the attack but that seemed like a poor way to go about it.

Also, I know Bob ain't exactly a spring chicken so anyone playing his dad has to be even older, but Christopher Lloyd seems really out of place here.

---

Huh? Finger!?
What the hell?

Grizzly Man (Werner Herzog - 2005)
Long Day's Journey Into Night (Bi Gan - 2018)
Bamboozled (Spike Lee - 2000)

---

Huh? Finger!?
What the hell?

Not sure what time zone you're in, but this is a brave time of the day to start watching that one.

---

Huh? Finger!?
What the hell?

Instead of picking movies on my watchlist like I normally do, I'll go with movies that are amongst my favorites this time.

Rear Window (1954)
Harakiri (1962)
High and Low (1963)
Gattaca (1997)
Twilight Samurai (2002)

---

Huh? Finger!?
What the hell?

I just kind of hit the 'Don't want to play this every day' wall for the moment.

Cabaret clubs were the main culprit. I completely finished the real estate business the second the game allowed me to, and in the process also finished, I believe, every single part of the completion list for Kiryu available at the moment. But the cabaret clubs not being mostly hands off like real estate doesn't allow me to go around and finish other sidequests at the same time, which is a bit of a downer. Doesn't help that after leaving Kiryu and his 70,000,000,000 or whatever I had, Majima started off close to broke.

I'll still finish it. I didn't complete that terrible catfight mini-game for nothing. Just need a break.

---

Huh? Finger!?
What the hell?

In addition to catching up on my backlog of movies in here, I watched about a dozen other movies over the last week. I hit a Yakuza 0 wall of fatigue and replaced it with movies for the time being.

TV backlog is still sitting in the corner wondering why I don't love it any longer.

---

Huh? Finger!?
What the hell?

Nobody (2021)

A couple of others on there I wouldn't mind watching, but I forgot there was a Bob Odenkirk movie where he plays more of an action star.

---

Huh? Finger!?
What the hell?

Opal - NR

This thing didn't need the [adult swim] watermark, kind of went without saying. I don't think I even understood the entire thing outside of the happy family being fake and the evil house being her real family, I imagine there's deeper meaning to things but I didn't catch it, at least not on a single viewing. But I 100% believe the person who made this had an incredibly bad trip while watching Moral Orel, or maybe even something off of the old Kablam show, or some kind of fever dream, and Adult Swim showed up and gave them a box of cash to recreate it.

The Meaning of Life - NR

I remember when I was first looking into watching It's Such A Beautiful Day I noticed there was a feature length version and a short version, and when this started playing at first I thought it was just the same movie but the short version. Had to look the name back up to make sure, nope, just made by the same guy. Liked it more than It's Such A Beautiful Day I guess? This guys style definitely works better in short form to me, but still not my cup of tea.

Munchausen - 6/10?

Not sure how to review short films, really, so here's more just a few thoughts I had during the movie.

Thought the main kid was Drake Bell at first, had to look it up.

Thought the doctor was Wilford Brimley at first, had to look it up.

Feel Bad and Feel Good are made by the same company, great business strategy. Maybe make Feel Bad slightly weaker, though, or you won't have very many repeat customers.

Does anyone think ring-in-the-food is a good way to propose? Maybe because I've taken bad care of my teeth through my life and I'm paranoid about biting something like that and needing an expensive trip to the dentist, but please leave the jewelry outside of the baked goods.

Also, just like in this film I was digging around in the yard to fill some holes my dog left, and I dug up an old action figure of mine as well. Except mine was missing a leg. There was a lot of broken bricks and stone around here when I was a kid so when my friends and I would play, action figures would not only fall off stuff and get shot or stabbed, they would have said bricks and stone dropped on them, which resulted in a lot of broken limbs. With a lot of the smaller GI Joe types you could get a screwdriver and open them up and put custom guys together piecemeal from the leftover parts of all the broken ones, so you could have a Joe with a blue torso, green legs and red arms, but that was a no-go with the larger ones. I dug this dude up, minus a leg and all accessories.

https://live.staticflickr.com/4144/5019324980_278ed2a550_b.jpg

---

Huh? Finger!?
What the hell?

Meh, went ahead and watched it now.

Luca - 7/10

I know that Vespa was in rough shape, but I hope they got something for it other than a single train ticket to Genova. Bad trade, that's how those guys start with a stick of gum and trade their way up to owning Amazon or however that works.

Movie is fantastic in most ways. Looks and sounds gorgeous, voice acting is great though not watching a lot of western animated movies it took me back when Jim Gaffigan all of a sudden started talking, not used to hearing voices of people I'm familiar with.

Plot... everything felt safe? Kind of reminds me of a lot of Marvel movies, where it feels like a non-comedic madlib where they just insert new names and places into the same madlib and pass it off as a new movie. Feels like I've seen this before without having seen it before.

And if you take the most accepting group of people in the world, on top of that make them super vegans who would as soon kill themselves before eating an egg, and all of a sudden you put a harpoon in their hands and magically a sea monster appears in front of them... that sea monster is getting 'pooned. I know that's not a story they're going to tell in a movie mostly geared towards children but everyone seemed way too okay way too fast about that.

---

Huh? Finger!?
What the hell?

Just like Marnie from earlier in this topic was my first Ghibli movie, I believe Luca is going to be my first Pixar movie. Which I imagine will strike most people as unbelievable, how could I have not at least seen Toy Story, but the vast majority of animated content I've seen in my life has been tv shows. Looney Tunes and Hanna Barbera, TMNT and Inspector Gadget, Doug and Rugrats, Beavis and Butthead and King of the Hill. Even now when I watch anything animated it's usually some anime from the 80's, or whatever you want to call the recent Castlevania show.

Hell, looking at the Wikipedia entry for Disney Theatrical Animated Feature Films, the last movie I've seen from Disney was Aladdin way back in '94. To be fair, I've seen about 80% of the films before Aladdin, but after that it's just nothing.

Probably watch Luca tomorrow, then I'm a set of short films away from being completely caught up.

---

Huh? Finger!?
What the hell?

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night - 7/10

I'm 100% that guy who loves a black and white film whether it's from 2020 or 1920, so stylistically I loved this movie. Music also played well, everything fit even if a couple of the scenes that were very still with just the music taking center stage seemed like they kind of dragged on a bit too long.

Really feels like the story was kind of incomplete. Never get to know anyone that well, no one is really the hero of the story and outside of the dealer from the first act no one else is even really a villain. Stories between characters either seem like they're over right after they just got started, or just never see a climax.

Really don't care for endings that just say 'okay, you take it from here'. I don't know how to write a complete story worth experiencing, that's why I'm watching someone elses. Randomly driving off with a girl he's met just a couple of times who he has to know killed his father and then that's it. I just don't get enough from his character to buy him reacting in that way.

---

Huh? Finger!?
What the hell?

Cut Throat City - 5/10

Good but not great movie for most of the run, but boy do things fall apart at the end. They're all but told that they're free even after committing those extra robberies, and instead of thinking it would be a great time to pick up their chips from the table they decide to bet it all on Red 19.

Would a FEMA place like that even have all that money? Blink dies but then he's alive, magically not in jail and his graphic novel is a big hit? And then the mid-credits scene to top it off? Was a really strange and poor kind of wish fulfillment after-life bit that just feels entirely out of place with the rest of the movie, and him being alive isn't even close to believable but if they don't want you to draw your own conclusions from an ambiguous ending then I don't know what the point of all of that was, and if they did it was terribly executed.

---

Huh? Finger!?
What the hell?

The Meaning of Life
Opal
Munchausen

---

Huh? Finger!?
What the hell?

You can't nominate three short films and just expect me to not watch all three of them.

---

Huh? Finger!?
What the hell?

It's Such A Beautiful Day - 4/10

Visually I loved the stick figure style, but the scenes where it took a backseat to the rest of the imagery used kind of lost me. Whenever there was a shot focused on something like grass I wanted it to hurry up and get back to what it was doing before.

There were a couple of points where it started bothering my eyes, things are frequently frantic in this film and I was constantly wary about needing to pause the movie and kind of reset myself. Honestly a bit surprised that it didn't happen more often, glad it didn't though because my eyes seem to be aging fast enough lately and I'd prefer them not to continue the process any faster than necessary.

I guess after Barry Lyndon, where I liked everything about the movie except the story climaxes, had you told me the next movie would be entirely different I'd be happy, but it went in the opposite direction from the one I'd want. It was read in a way that made it feel like an old webcomic was adapted into a film, or as if tweets from a gimmick comedy account had been read aloud the way everything was short, blunt and then over and on to the next line. Also gave me Adult Swim vibes from a long time ago when I used to watch that every night, which seems like a lifetime ago and maybe a very different person as well.

There were some lines that just kind of came out of nowhere and I assume were supposed to get a chuckle out of me, but nothing was hitting at all for me. I've been accused of not liking to laugh in the past though so me sitting there stone-faced during comedy isn't much of an indictment.

I hate the narrators voice, tone, pacing. Not much to add to this. Hate it.

This can kind of be chalked up to a movie that was absolutely not made for someone like me. Just didn't click at all.

---

Huh? Finger!?
What the hell?

Luca (2021)
Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (2020)
Vivo (2021)

---

Huh? Finger!?
What the hell?

Barry Lyndon - 6/10

My biggest fears about the movie pretty much came true. There's no ultimate resolution to just about anything in the movie, it's like a terminal case of blue balls.

Barry wins a duel. Nope, that guy lived and got what he wanted, Barry never meets him again.

Barry leaves with the last of his widowed mothers money? Nope, robbed. Robbers never seen again.

He joins the army, a chance at making a second life for himself? Dude from earlier shows up and tells him about the duel being a setup, get completely emotionally wrecked Redmond Barry Lyndon. But hey, at least we see this guy again! And him and Barry seem to be good friends. Something has a happy endi oh wait he gets shot and killed in the war.

Barry runs away to some widow? Then he leaves her and we never see her again. And so on.

Maybe if ol' Barry had been more of a villain this wouldn't have bothered me as much, but I just kind of felt bad for him for most of the movie. Thing was gorgeous, sound was great, narrator was wonderful, acting was fine, but it was just too much of the same thing happening with no real climax. Was kind of like reading collections of those pulp fantasy stories collected from older magazines but each one of the stories has the last 10% of the word count just chopped off.

---

Huh? Finger!?
What the hell?

I'm at the intermission for Barry Lyndon at the moment, so far I like it but I've got a really bad feeling that the man Barry 'kills' in a duel early on in the movie isn't going to show up again and I'm going to be pretty disappointed that there's no further interaction between them.

---

Huh? Finger!?
What the hell?

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014)
Gaia (2021)
Censor (2021)

---

Huh? Finger!?
What the hell?

Watched two movies today, one of them for this topic. Was going to watch two for here but damn Barry Lyndon is a long movie.

M - 8/10

One thing I couldn't help but notice is the long chunks of silence, the first of which honestly made me think something was wrong with my copy of the film. With this apparently being Langs first sound film I thought there would be more unnecessary sound effects in there than not, but the movie is definitely better for it. Feels like this is the millionth time I've seen the 'I only did it because I can't help it' defense for the killer in movies and shows, but this would obviously have to be one of the earlier implementations of it. I wonder if there's a definitive answer out there for what movie did it first.

Also, definitely felt the difference between this and something a lot more modern through my own expectations. I'm so used to their being a twist that, right up until the confession and even a little bit during it, I was sold on this being a case of mistaken identity and him not actually being the killer. If the movie was 10-15 minutes longer I would've been even more sure.

---

Huh? Finger!?
What the hell?

Maybe.

---

Huh? Finger!?
What the hell?

Blue Jay (2016)
Cut Throat City (2020)
The King (2019)
Gunpowder Milkshake (2021)

lucifiere posted...

Things of varying interest on Netflix, yay! I plan on catching up.

Be careful. Every time I say this I end up a week further behind.

---

Huh? Finger!?
What the hell?

I can't see a movie with Ernest in the title without assuming it's Jim Varney

It's Such a Beautiful Day (2012)
Ernest & Celestine (2012)
Promare (2019)
Winnie the Pooh (2011)

Seen all of the Makoto Shinkai films.

---

Huh? Finger!?
What the hell?

I've got six movies sitting in front of me waiting to be watched and I'm going to be adding another two in a couple of days, and yet I've been spending all of my free time watching episodes of Pointless on Youtube.

Also, Oregon is currently cosplaying as Hell once again so that isn't helping things.

---

Huh? Finger!?
What the hell?

Mega Mana posted...

I wouldn't yet put it on this list, but I've done the same completely. I think I have about thirty hours and only on chapter 4.

At this point the main story would have to be a boring mess for the duration of the game for me to categorize it differently. That, or if I'm required to spend any serious amount of time on the karaoke mini-game. Not my favorite rhythm implementation...

---

Huh? Finger!?
What the hell?

I'm playing Yakuza 0 at the moment and so far it fits this. I bought it for $5 thinking even if I didn't like it I wasn't out much, and I've spent a good 15-20 hours so far in the first two chapters just going around doing random shit and barely progressing the actual story.

---

Huh? Finger!?
What the hell?

Still need this one 2.0?

---

Huh? Finger!?
What the hell?

Big Fish - 9/10

I think the best part of this movie is the pacing. It never lingers anywhere too long, always moves on to the next story within the story before it has time to overstay its welcome. Everything feels like it has its place within the story and nothing feels unnecessary.

I think the only real complaint I have about it is while the son comes around to how his father likes to tells stories while they're in the hospital, taking him along on one final journey because he knows it's what his father would love, I feel like his father could've also had a similar moment where he tells his son something, even if it's short and boring, that's straight and to the point.

And I thought the perfect situation was right there in the hospital when the doctor tells him the story of his birth in all its banality. His father begrudgingly telling him that same story, with a "There, happy now" attitude about it where he wasn't enjoying the telling of the story but was doing it because he recognizes how much it means to his son.

---

Huh? Finger!?
What the hell?

The Deer Hunter
Barry Lyndon

Deer Hunter would knock another off my watchlist if I could manage to get fully caught up again.

---

Huh? Finger!?
What the hell?

The only way to sneak in is through the alley on the side of the building, which I believe can only be opened from the inside.

I should add that it's a one screen theater.

---

Huh? Finger!?
What the hell?

I... don't think my theater even gives tickets out? I'm actually not quite sure, I can't ever remember getting a ticket after I paid.

---

Huh? Finger!?
What the hell?