What MOVIE(s) have you been....seeing? watching?

Well thanks for that. I thought I had proven to myself that nothing could convince me to give the Batman a try and here you come along. This sounds perfect for a nice October watch.

Went to see a Swedish film called Hypnosis in the tiniest cinema. A young couple - Vera and Andre - have the lifetime chance to present their business idea to investors. Vera is unhappy that she doesn't stand up for herself enough. She decides to try to stop smoking by hypnosis right before the big weekend. After the therapy session, her behaviour changes. She becomes an agent of chaos. Andre on the other hand seems to be completely made of wood. Watching him try to control situations he has no way of understanding is pain-inducing. The film is stunningly well written and the constant barrage of cringey and awkward social situations almost gave me cramps. Great movie.

I really enjoyed The Batman and have watched it twice. Yes it is long as fuck. I think Pattinson makes a great Batman. A less great Bruce Wayne, but the movie isn't called The Billionaire.

I look forward to the next film. I'll catch The Penguin at some point in the future when I sign up for Max again.

I expect both Ferrell and Millioti to get Emmy nominations if not outright wins.

My problem with The Batman, shared by most, if not ALL Batman, probably even all superhero, films is that Batman does NOTHING to change the villain's plan. Batman just discovers clues and puzzles laid out for him but there is no sense that he is responding to or preventing the villain in any substantive way that causes the villain to have to change plans. The need to make the villain be smart (when the writers don't have the capability or the faith in the audience to follow an elaborate plan) by making the hero dumb or just reactive is a recurring issue I have with a lot of films and shows.

THAT scene in Bone Tomahawk is mirrored in Terrifier. Not sure which one did it first but seeing both is illuminating as a viewer because I responded differently to each one. Highlights my personal bias for sure. Though the Terrifier series has a particularly misogynistic cruelty streak (I've watched all of them this month) that goes above and beyond most slasher films, I think, though the genre in general is heavily weighted towards putting women in danger.

I watched Guy Ritchie's The Gentleman last night, after being shown clips for about three years on Youtube shorts. Kind of a fun, violent movie. The British gangsters reminded me of a lot of late William Gibson set in the UK.

Love that one.

Finally saw True Romance. I skipped it back in the day because critics dismissed it as too violent, which has got to be pretty bad considering the socially acceptable levels of violence in American entertainment. I would have seen it sooner if I had known that the cast included: Christian Slater, Patricia Arquette, Dennis Hopper, Val Kilmer, Gary Oldman, Brad Pitt, Christopher Walken, Bronson Pinchot, Samuel L. Jackson, James Gandolfini, and Tom Sizemore. That's a murderer's row of solid B-list stars, plus Pitt and Jackson. Pitt is barely even present, getting a half dozen easy lines as a stoner roommate. Oldman does his usual remarkable bit, disappearing completely into his part as a vicious pimp. The script by Quentin Tarantino allows this remarkable cast the opportunity to soar above the tawdry story about love and drugs and violence.

That six minutes of screen time by Oldman may have been his greatest performance in a lengthy career of them.

I watched The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent on Hulu, and that is one of the best movies I've seen in a long time. Largely a film about a bromance between Nicholas Cage and Pedro Pascal, it ends up punching way above its weight. Highly recommended.

Nodens wrote: the constant barrage of cringey and awkward social situations almost gave me cramps.

Such a great phrase, and could apply to so many contexts.

I went to see Gladiator II while the rest of my family saw Wicked.

I may have chosen poorly.

Remember when studios would make direct-to-video sequels of popular movies, and they were cheap, beat-for-beat remakes of the original, but with lesser actors because they couldn't get the original actors back? Yeah. That's pretty much Gladiator II.

Other than Denzel Washington, who easily steals the entire movie, the sequel tries to hit all the same notes as the original. Sad to say, Paul Mescal is no Russell Crowe. Everyone in the movie keeps telling us how ANGRY Mescal's character is, but he's not able to convincingly SHOW us that anger. Instead, he mostly just seems petulant. I love Pedro Pascal, but he is sorely underutilized, and is hardly even in the movie. And it took TWO actors to replace Joaquin Phoenix' role, and sadly, they both fall way short.

The action scenes are good. Ridley Scott still knows how to shoot an action scene. But everything else is rote and repetitive. All in all, I was disappointed. I guess I should have seen Wicked instead.

I finally watched Zoolander (2001) and Zoolander 2 (2016), and found them both disappointing. Both movies featured star-studded casts of comedians and attractive actors, but the jokes were not very funny. The first movie did make me smile at times, but the concept of a really dumb protagonist wore thin quickly. The second movie had a fun start, with Justin Bieber playing Justin Bieber getting shot about 20 times. It was all downhill after that, and I got restless during the final stretch and got up to tidy my living room. Ben Stiller has been occasionally amusing in the past, but I am struggling to recall even one time when Will Ferrell ever made me laugh.