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The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind 2019, 1h 53m
Chiwetel Ejiofor
Maxwell Simba
Felix Lemburo
Wonderful, wonderful movie which is based on a true story. Chiwetel has done an outstanding job as writer, director and supporting actor, Maxwell is brilliant in his first acting role, and the rest of the cast are uniformly great.

Set in Malawi—SE Africa—in 2001, it's the story of a family and community facing famine, and how a brilliant 13-year-old was able to design and build a windmill to save the day. If that's your thing, watch this—nearly 2 hours just flew by.

10/10

Here are TED talks by the boy, now grown.
 
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I had some time to kill yesterday so i watched a movie. This time its The red turtle.

Part produced by studio ghibli, its a tale of a man who washes onto a remote island and his relationship with a red turtle that turned into a red haired woman. it chronicles the relationship from the start to the predictable conclusion where the man dies of old age.

There's very little spoken dialogue and the story itself is simple. But the simplicity of it makes it quite an emotional and in many ways beautiful as you can feel the love/relationship of the family. The happiness, the love, concern and sadness of each character. The ending whilst predictable, is every bit heart wrenching as you feel for the poor woman's loss for her husband. The other part was when the man initially attacks the red turtle in a fit of rage. i mean, sure it destroyed his attempts to sail off the island ,but yeah, smashing a stick over the turtles head and flipping it over so that it slowly died of dehydration was kinda horrible. The man does live to regret it and finds it hard to forgive himself when the turtle changes into the red hair woman.

its not the longest movie, being only an 75 minutes long but it got a fair few awards and was rated quite highly. I would give it a 7 or an 8/10.
 
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The Pale Blue Eye 2022, 2h 8m
Christian Bale
Harry Melling
Simon McBurney
A somewhat macabre murder mystery at West Point in 1830—as befits Edgar Allan Poe being a central character. Atmospheric, interesting, different, good writing and quite a cast—Christian and Harry are great, and well supported.

A bit slow to start , but captivates once it gets going. May be best watched on a winter's night, with some weather outside your window ;)

8/10
 
True Lies 1994, 2h 21m
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Jamie Lee Curtis
Tom Arnold
My fav action movie, third time watching it. Maybe Arnie's best performance, Jamie is brilliant, and Tom is the ideal sidekick.

James Cameron knows how to do action, and this has a number of standout set pieces—the hotel chase is truly memorable. This is basically a bigger louder funnier early Bond movie

Full of stock gunfights, chases and explosions, what saves this from being a long yawn? Main thing is the comedy, it's very good between the top 3 characters. Secondary is the inclusion of Jamie's role as Arnie's unsuspecting wife, a role you usually don't see in action movies.

9/10
 
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True Lies is insane! They don't make movies like that anymore, unfortunately. Now we get https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7380366/?ref_=nm_flmg_t_1_wr instead.

Watched Evil Dead Rise (2023) by Lee Cronin. Alyssa Sutherland stars as Ellie and I think she is the one that takes the show and she looks creepy as hell!. The rest of the actors are not memorable and some of their costumes are really bad as deadites (demons). I watched it at the cinema and one thing is for sure, it was LOUD! So loud that I'm not sure I want to go to the cinemas anymore because this is not the first time it has happened.

That aside, the movie is a bit creepier than Evil Dead (2013) but not as gory. Evil Dead was a work of art in making gore, this one only has one really memorable scene which I am not going to spoil. The story is not as good as Evil Dead but I think the location was better than the first one. There are some decent tributes to Ashy Slashy which put a smile on my face.

The first 45 minutes of the movie were the best and the buildup to the whole “Kanda, estrata, kandos. Turus, indoctus. Skarindus, kanda, amantos, kanda" demonic summoning was really good. Then the movie kind of goes bland for a while and picks up a little at the end. Overall, the movie is good but not as good as Evil Dead.

6/10
 
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The Last Kingdom: Seven Kings Must Die 2023, 1h 51m
Alexander Dreymon
Elaine Cassidy
Pekka Strang
Harry Gilby
I often say ~2-hour movies should be 20-30 minutes shorter. This one should have been maybe 500 minutes longer. I gave the series this presumably concludes 10/10, whereas 6/10 is a stretch for this.

Alexander reprises his series role as Uthred of Bebbanburg, and continues his top performance—and the rest of the cast are fine too. That the background story is the historical creation of England is the other aspect which keeps the rating respectable.

The big problem is the length. The book series has 13 volumes, with the first 10 covered in the 5 TV seasons. This movie crams in the last 3 books, which is ridiculous. Events and characters fly past with barely any emphasis or development, and I frankly had no idea who was doing what where half the time.

55/100
 
i had some time to spare since i'm house sitting and Rocky 4 was on tv.

Takes place after rocky 3 (surprisingly) fresh from beating clubber lang. America's adversary, Russia, wishes to pit Ivan Drago against the italien stallion in an exhibition match. Rocky's one time adversary now close friend Apollo creed ,itching to get back into fighting, decides to fight ivan Drago instead in a highly publicized exhibition match. Apollo is not only defeated, but dies of his injuries incurred during the match. Rocky is out for revenge and decides to face ivan drago himself on russia's home turf.

Honestly, after watching the first 3 movies its safe to say the whole thing is formulaic at this point and it treads similar ground from the last 3 with a training montage before a long epic boxing match that goes through 12 rounds before its all settled on the final round.

I think this one might be the most tacky though. Wasn't the generic USA vs Russia (everyone was doing that in the 80s), but its the plot armor were rocky training in the isolated Russian tundra with make shift exercise routine vs Russia's rigious exercise regime, science and doping kinda feels cliched. Rocky can absorb punches that killed Apollo (actually they're even more powerful from the extra training) which seems to be just ignored. But what really took the biscuit was perhaps rocky's final speech, it kinda felt like Rocky inspired or influenced the collapse of the soviet union in some way as it advocates change and inspires even the (Gorbachev?) to standing ovation.

But whatever, maybe i'm wrong as we eventually got more rocky movies.
 
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The Jesse Stone Movies
Got to see 8 of the 9 last month, didn't realize they were pulling the series July 31 :(
I'm not going to do the usual linking, just too much work—that's a Wiki link to the list above, and more info about the underlying books.

Tom Selleck does a fine job with the usual grumpy alcoholic detective trope, but the setting, characters and cases save it all from being 'just another'. Setting is a small town, a fishing village on the coast of Massachusetts.

Recommended all round 7/10

Regulars
Tom Selleck
Stephen McHattie
William Devane
Viola Davis > Kathy Baker
William Sadler
Saul Rubinek
John Beale
Gloria Reuben
Joe the Dog

IMDb links
Jesse Stone: Night Passage

Jesse Stone: Stone Cold
Mimi Rogers

Jesse Stone: Death in Paradise 6/10
lot of filler

Jesse Stone: Sea Change
Sean Young

Jesse Stone: Thin Ice

Jesse Stone: No Remorse

Jesse Stone: Innocents Lost

Jesse Stone: Benefit of the Doubt
Robert Carradine
 
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So i had the (mis)fortune of watching Last Knights (2015). Essentially a fantasy adaption of the 47 ronin, it wasn't particularly well received by critics. it does have a decent cast, but honestly it felt low budget movie and didn't have the shine /quality i wanted.

A humdrum movie, i would avoid as you're not missing out on anything tbh.
 
The Gray Man, 2022 2h 2m
Ryan Gosling
Chris Evans
Ana de Armas
Billy Bob Thornton
Pretty sad to see a fine actor like Billy Bob in this garbage. Bad guys in CIA v bad guys in CIA, with a young girl thrown in to signal which side were the less bad.

Non-stop action in non-stop cities around the world. Like watching a train pick up speed until the carriages start to blur. I saw no reason to stop it while on bathroom or coffee breaks.

Would be ideal to show on a loop in elevators, or in a fast food restaurant where you need to get rid of people asap.

3/10
 
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Aug 20, 2023
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Dumb Q time: does that mean you're watching movies all the time, or not watching them at all?

If latter, what genres have you liked?

If former, what other hobbies have you enjoyed?
Hmmm, English is not my first language, but from what I understand, being in a movie slump -or any sort of slump for that matter- usually means a feeling of disinterest or lack of enthusiasm for that particular activity. Which is strange because I know I LOVE movies.

I like action, thriller/mystery, drama, fantasy and sci-fi. Horror movies just don't do it for me for whatever reason...

Indoor type of hobbies? Videogames (ha!) and books. I'm unhinged when it comes to books.
 
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English is not my first language, but from what I understand
Clearly your English is better than mine!

strange because I know I LOVE movies.

I like action, thriller/mystery, drama, fantasy and sci-fi
Hmm, looks like suggesting a new genre won't help :)
A couple of possibilities:

♣ If you've mainly been on fairly recent movies, try some of the greats from say 40-50 years ago. Offhand:
Apocalypse Now
Chinatown
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Klute
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Sleuth
Taxi Driver
The China Syndrome
The French Connection
The Godfather trilogy

♦ Try shorts, 10-20 minute vignettes, many of which can be excellent—sort of like the relationship between novels and short stories.

I subscribe to a YT channel Omeleto which publishes a new short nearly every day. I watch maybe 1 in 3—not because the other 2/3 are bad, just not in my interest range.

books. I'm unhinged when it comes to books.

Do tell :)

 
Aug 20, 2023
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Clearly your English is better than mine!
Hahaha no way, it isn't!

Hmm, looks like suggesting a new genre won't help :)
Oh no, I'm open to new genres provided the movies are good :grin: Just not horror, like I said.
A couple of possibilities:

♣ If you've mainly been on fairly recent movies, try some of the greats from say 40-50 years ago. Offhand:
Apocalypse Now
Chinatown
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Klute
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Sleuth
Taxi Driver
The China Syndrome
The French Connection
The Godfather trilogy

♦ Try shorts, 10-20 minute vignettes, many of which can be excellent—sort of like the relationship between novels and short stories.

I subscribe to a YT channel Omeleto which publishes a new short nearly every day. I watch maybe 1 in 3—not because the other 2/3 are bad, just not in my interest range.

Thank you so much! I will start first with those vignettes before committing to that list of movies. Will definitely come back to this thread once I'm done. Yay!
 
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