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Post by Carl LaFong on Oct 17, 2022 20:28:56 GMT
That's why I liked it, it was so dumb. It's a total throwback to the days where a one man army takes on an entire organization by himself, and has no accountability to any authority whatsoever. I was laughing the entire time. I'm convinced Besson wrote it as a spoof of an American action movie, and nobody got the joke. There must have been 20 threads on the board for that movie about how his daughter behaved like she was mentally challenged. Of course she looked that way, because Maggie Grace was what 25, playing a character clearly written as a 14 year old. It's like a bad remake of Commando. I can't believe the movie exists, but I'm glad it does because it gave us a decade plus of Liam Neeson doing his best late-era Clint Eastwood impression. None of those other movies have been particularly good (I've never even seen the Taken sequels), but they all have at least a couple of classic 'bad ass' moments. It is like Commando.. It just felt so dull to me in comparison. Except that popstar subplot. But it says a lot to me that that's what I remember about it, more than all of the actions sequences combined. When I think of Commando I remember more of Arnold's action antics than just he and his daughter hand feeding a deer in the woods in the opening credits. I remember that too, but the rest of it was just as fun. I felt like Taken was just so bland. Commando is right up there with the best 80s action movies. The camp factor just adds to its brilliance.
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Post by masterofallgoons on Oct 17, 2022 21:04:30 GMT
It is like Commando.. It just felt so dull to me in comparison. Except that popstar subplot. But it says a lot to me that that's what I remember about it, more than all of the actions sequences combined. When I think of Commando I remember more of Arnold's action antics than just he and his daughter hand feeding a deer in the woods in the opening credits. I remember that too, but the rest of it was just as fun. I felt like Taken was just so bland. Commando is right up there with the best 80s action movies. The camp factor just adds to its brilliance. I think the camp factor is like 98% of it's brilliance. It's impossible to take it seriously.
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Post by Rey Kahuka on Oct 17, 2022 21:10:11 GMT
Commando is right up there with the best 80s action movies. The camp factor just adds to its brilliance. I think the camp factor is like 98% of it's brilliance. It's impossible to take it seriously. It's in my all time top five action movies. It's literally impossible to discern what was intentional and unintentional comedy in that movie.
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Post by masterofallgoons on Oct 18, 2022 14:47:45 GMT
I think the camp factor is like 98% of it's brilliance. It's impossible to take it seriously. It's in my all time top five action movies. It's literally impossible to discern what was intentional and unintentional comedy in that movie. Quite true. And many of the things that I legitimately thought was really cool in it when I was a little kid is now the stuff I laugh it. I laugh at it fondly, but it's still a different reaction all these years later.
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Post by masterofallgoons on Oct 18, 2022 15:27:07 GMT
klawrencio79 masterofallgoonsHalloween Ends (Full spoilers, everyone.)
So this movie was lousy, but not nearly as terrible as everyone made it out to be. I didn't know any specific spoilers, but I'd heard it was really going to piss off longtime fans of the franchise. As a casual fan of the franchise, I thought it hit rock bottom with Halloween Kills. What could they possibly do to make it worse than that shit show? Aliens? Robots? Michael is actually Laurie's alter ego and they're all in purgatory? I just knew whatever they did couldn't be as terrible as Kills. That movie ruined its predecessor completely, which to me would've been the best sendoff this series could've had.
Sure the story in Ends makes no sense; sure the characters make baffling decisions and have completely nonsensical reactions to any given situation, but isn't that par for the course in horror? Did people hate Michael taking on a disciple for no particular reason? It's idiotic, but no more than Laurie continuing to celebrate Halloween every year, despite the fact that a madman stalked her all her life, killed her daughter on Halloween a few years ago, and is still out there! In fact I'd say Michael training Mini-Mike actually makes sense, insomuch as Michael never needed a motivation to do anything. Carpenter's whole point with Halloween was that Michael was just evil incarnate, no motivation or explanation required. So if he throws a curve, who are we to question it? I'm not defending it so much as saying to me, it felt like the least of the story's problems.
Anyone else get a kick out of the high school marching band members as bullies?! Or the fact that they were bullying a guy in his twenties? How about the nurse having a hot date with the doctor and repeatedly calling him 'Dr. Mathis' out of the office? Does your boss that you're fucking have a first name, or did the writers completely give up by then? I think I know the answer.
Why does Allyson like Corey? I get that they're both damaged, but she's relatively well-adjusted (or at least keeping her shit together for the most part) while this guy is a total flake, a dipshit, and really kind of a dick even before the accident. He wigs out on her several times and she still sides with him over her grandmother, who's she's essentially survived a war with. If anything Allyson should have MAJOR trust issues; instead she's just along for the ride with the guy who keeps disapearing, showing up the next morning covered in cuts and bruises and telling her, "I killed someone." A serial killer/force of nature killed her mother, and she's hooking up with this guy?
This leads to my next point. The writing and characterization was so terrible in this movie that there were zero stakes for me. I was invested in these folks after Halloween (2018), but that all went out the window with Halloween Kills. The people in this movie were so obnoxious, ignorant, rude, or straight up hostile for no apparent reason that I wanted them to die. The only guy who didn't deserve it was Ronald, and he was killed by accident by the kid who arguably had the most enjoyable death in the movie. Even Allyson's stupidity had me not caring whether she got her head cut off by the end.
The movie telegraphed everything. You don't have to be a genius (even though clearly, we're all geniuses here) to see the junkyard crusher playing a role later in the film when they linger on it early on. When Michael does...whatever he does to Corey (and I'll come back to this), you just know that's coming back in the climactic battle with Laurie.
As bad as it was, there are a few bright spots. I like the scene where Laurie confronts Corey at the house, leaning back in the chair, talking shit. Then he tries to give it back, but she pulls a Michael herself and just ghosts him. I actually didn't mind the evil transfer or whatever Michael did with Corey and later to Laurie, simply because it wasn't explained. Did he transfer his evil, or unlock their own? It also begs the question, is that what happened to him? I guess that would be an origin Carpenter never wanted, so I could see fans not liking that; but again, since it's open to interpretation, it's just a layer of nuance to a story desperately in need of any thought whatsoever.
Laurie's fake suicide was a fun twist, though I also think it would've been great if she was really going to do it and he jumped into the room at the last second. She's been the hunted, running for her life; she's been hunter, fighting for her family. What happens when a killer happens upon a crazy MF with literally nothing to lose? There's a fight I want to see. As the internet might say, Cowabunga it is! And either way I appreciate the open-ended nature of it with Laurie at the end. Is she destined to become a killer, or is she, with her 40 years of PTSD and head to head battles with this monster, uniquely adapted to live with and control this evil once and for all? We don't know, and that's the way it should be.
Also, it should be noted the movie gets bonus points for featuring scenes from two of my all-time favorites, The Thing and Hard Target. For a town filled with assholes, they have good taste in movies.
So there you have it. It's a bad movie, but to me, somehow an improvement over the last one. Ultimately, I think I liked it only because I didn't hate it as much as I expected to. And I didn't hate it only because I hated the previous film with a passion. In a way I suppose I was like Laurie, having already phoned in the suicide to the police. I was prepared to let the chips fall where they may.
A lot to respond to here because this movie was so crazy and so full of bizarre choices and wild swings that it's hard to even get to them all... almost to the point where I respect them for making such insane choices, but the thing is I don't think they really any of them are successful. The marching bad bullies picking on a 20-something guy and, the guy's mom having a deep New England accent despite having lived her whole life in Illinois, the nurse referring to the guy as 'Doctor,' the whole taking a protégé thing, Allison's decisions and personality making no sense, the horrible dialogue, etc... To some degree I respect them mot going the easy road and really doing the unexpected. I didn't see that opening scene coming.. at all. And that opening scene is actually really well made (although didn't you have an issue with the mom coming to the hospital in tears looking for her son kn Halloween Kills? This was waaaaay more harrowing in at least as trashy and dumb a movie)... and David Gordon Green is actually a really talented director, particularly in other movies/genres. He made some really beautiful films early in his career, but his through arthouse sensibility this is what he thinks of this type of genre movie I gues: crazy and ultra graphic violence will make even the weirdest and least thoughtful narrative and character choices palatable to the horror fan audience. And some of these ideas might have been interesting in a better movie. The town pariah turning bad and skewing towards really becoming evil isn't inherently a terrible story idea, but why is it in here? And why does Michael live in a tunnel? And why does he grab some random kid and apparently form some mystical psychic connection with him where they see each other's pasts? Why does he becomes pals with him and then literally take him as a trainee? Why does Corey want to kill the doctor? Because Allison was up for the promotion that the other nurse got? Fucking seriously? Why is Corey able to just walk up to Michael and shove him over and take his mask? Why does this small Midwest town have a giant 4 story mansion amongst these modest homes? Why does this small Midwest town have it's own popular radio station in, apparently, a converted Bodega? Why was none of this stuff visible before? Why set up Mark Patton in the last two movies as a major character and only show him grocery shopping in this one? Why... pretty much everything else that happened? And why, for fuck's sake, do you make this whole movie about Corey, the next inline to apparently be the new Michael Myers/Boogeyman, and then just have him suddenly and unceremoniously die off, not by anything that makes any sense, but by him clearly killing himself, somehow surviving, and then just suddenly getting killed by Michael. That whoooooole fucking storyline doesn't go anywhere at all. It just sorta ends, and then the movie moves on to what it should have always been: Michael vs Laurie, the final round. If they were gonna do the whole 'new version of evil beyond Michael Myers' thing, then at least just do it. Instead, they wussed out at the end and thought they'd get away with giving the audience what they thought we wanted in the last half hour or so after wasting all that time on nonsense up until then. Again, on some level I do respect David Gordon Green's approach here. He was subverting expectations in so many ways all the way through in small details and major plot elements. The problem is just that none of them were handled well, and then it ends up going with the easy, satsifying ending (as he and they see it), and it serves nobody... and then it also goes on to make the final dispatching if Myers so over the top and silly so as to never be satisfying to anyone ever... also I just found it amusing that the black sheriff guy pulls up in a car and responds to a question that he couldn't possibly have heard about an event he couldn't possibly be aware of at that point. It would have been so easy to make this a satisfying conclusion. If they just essentially repeated the beats form the 2018 movie (which I do enjoy, but I think is far from great, and didn’t feel of a pice with the original to me) and made the ending more definitive. But they took some swings. It's somewhat commendable, but it's ultimately a terrible movie. I guess I could see it being fun if you didn't have any interest in seeing this done well and you just went with the appreciation of the disbelief of seeing the weirdest writing choices imaginable, but I can't think of many nice things to say here other than an arms length admiration for going with the unexpected for 85% of the script.
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Post by screamingtreefrogs on Oct 18, 2022 15:47:03 GMT
klawrencio79 masterofallgoons Halloween Ends (Full spoilers, everyone.)
So this movie was lousy, but not nearly as terrible as everyone made it out to be. I didn't know any specific spoilers, but I'd heard it was really going to piss off longtime fans of the franchise. As a casual fan of the franchise, I thought it hit rock bottom with Halloween Kills. What could they possibly do to make it worse than that shit show? Aliens? Robots? Michael is actually Laurie's alter ego and they're all in purgatory? I just knew whatever they did couldn't be as terrible as Kills. That movie ruined its predecessor completely, which to me would've been the best sendoff this series could've had.
Sure the story in Ends makes no sense; sure the characters make baffling decisions and have completely nonsensical reactions to any given situation, but isn't that par for the course in horror? Did people hate Michael taking on a disciple for no particular reason? It's idiotic, but no more than Laurie continuing to celebrate Halloween every year, despite the fact that a madman stalked her all her life, killed her daughter on Halloween a few years ago, and is still out there! In fact I'd say Michael training Mini-Mike actually makes sense, insomuch as Michael never needed a motivation to do anything. Carpenter's whole point with Halloween was that Michael was just evil incarnate, no motivation or explanation required. So if he throws a curve, who are we to question it? I'm not defending it so much as saying to me, it felt like the least of the story's problems.
Anyone else get a kick out of the high school marching band members as bullies?! Or the fact that they were bullying a guy in his twenties? How about the nurse having a hot date with the doctor and repeatedly calling him 'Dr. Mathis' out of the office? Does your boss that you're fucking have a first name, or did the writers completely give up by then? I think I know the answer.
Why does Allyson like Corey? I get that they're both damaged, but she's relatively well-adjusted (or at least keeping her shit together for the most part) while this guy is a total flake, a dipshit, and really kind of a dick even before the accident. He wigs out on her several times and she still sides with him over her grandmother, who's she's essentially survived a war with. If anything Allyson should have MAJOR trust issues; instead she's just along for the ride with the guy who keeps disapearing, showing up the next morning covered in cuts and bruises and telling her, "I killed someone." A serial killer/force of nature killed her mother, and she's hooking up with this guy?
This leads to my next point. The writing and characterization was so terrible in this movie that there were zero stakes for me. I was invested in these folks after Halloween (2018), but that all went out the window with Halloween Kills. The people in this movie were so obnoxious, ignorant, rude, or straight up hostile for no apparent reason that I wanted them to die. The only guy who didn't deserve it was Ronald, and he was killed by accident by the kid who arguably had the most enjoyable death in the movie. Even Allyson's stupidity had me not caring whether she got her head cut off by the end.
The movie telegraphed everything. You don't have to be a genius (even though clearly, we're all geniuses here) to see the junkyard crusher playing a role later in the film when they linger on it early on. When Michael does...whatever he does to Corey (and I'll come back to this), you just know that's coming back in the climactic battle with Laurie.
As bad as it was, there are a few bright spots. I like the scene where Laurie confronts Corey at the house, leaning back in the chair, talking shit. Then he tries to give it back, but she pulls a Michael herself and just ghosts him. I actually didn't mind the evil transfer or whatever Michael did with Corey and later to Laurie, simply because it wasn't explained. Did he transfer his evil, or unlock their own? It also begs the question, is that what happened to him? I guess that would be an origin Carpenter never wanted, so I could see fans not liking that; but again, since it's open to interpretation, it's just a layer of nuance to a story desperately in need of any thought whatsoever.
Laurie's fake suicide was a fun twist, though I also think it would've been great if she was really going to do it and he jumped into the room at the last second. She's been the hunted, running for her life; she's been hunter, fighting for her family. What happens when a killer happens upon a crazy MF with literally nothing to lose? There's a fight I want to see. As the internet might say, Cowabunga it is! And either way I appreciate the open-ended nature of it with Laurie at the end. Is she destined to become a killer, or is she, with her 40 years of PTSD and head to head battles with this monster, uniquely adapted to live with and control this evil once and for all? We don't know, and that's the way it should be.
Also, it should be noted the movie gets bonus points for featuring scenes from two of my all-time favorites, The Thing and Hard Target. For a town filled with assholes, they have good taste in movies.
So there you have it. It's a bad movie, but to me, somehow an improvement over the last one. Ultimately, I think I liked it only because I didn't hate it as much as I expected to. And I didn't hate it only because I hated the previous film with a passion. In a way I suppose I was like Laurie, having already phoned in the suicide to the police. I was prepared to let the chips fall where they may.
A lot to respond to here because this movie was so crazy and so full of bizarre choices and wild swings that it's hard to even get to them all... almost to the point where I respect them for making such insane choices, but the thing is I don't think they really any of them are successful. The marching bad bullies picking on a 20-something guy and, the guy's mom having a deep New England accent despite having lived her whole life in Illinois, the nurse referring to the guy as 'Doctor,' the whole taking a protégé thing, Allison's decisions and personality making no sense, the horrible dialogue, etc... To some degree I respect them mot going the easy road and really doing the unexpected. I didn't see that opening scene coming.. at all. And that opening scene is actually really well made (although didn't you have an issue with the mom coming to the hospital in tears looking for her son kn Halloween Kills? This was waaaaay more harrowing in at least as trashy and dumb a movie)... and David Gordon Green is actually a really talented director, particularly in other movies/genres. He made some really beautiful films early in his career, but his through arthouse sensibility this is what he thinks of this type of genre movie I gues: crazy and ultra graphic violence will make even the weirdest and least thoughtful narrative and character choices palatable to the horror fan audience. And some of these ideas might have been interesting in a better movie. The town pariah turning bad and skewing towards really becoming evil isn't inherently a terrible story idea, but why is it in here? And why does Michael live in a tunnel? And why does he grab some random kid and apparently form some mystical psychic connection with him where they see each other's pasts? Why does he becomes pals with him and then literally take him as a trainee? Why does Corey want to kill the doctor? Because Allison was up for the promotion that the other nurse got? Fucking seriously? Why is Corey able to just walk up to Michael and shove him over and take his mask? Why does this small Midwest town have a giant 4 story mansion amongst these modest homes? Why does this small Midwest town have it's own popular radio station in, apparently, a converted Bodega? Why was none of this stuff visible before? Why set up Mark Patton in the last two movies as a major character and only show him grocery shopping in this one? Why... pretty much everything else that happened? And why, for fuck's sake, do you make this whole movie about Corey, the next inline to apparently be the new Michael Myers/Boogeyman, and then just have him suddenly and unceremoniously die off, not by anything that makes any sense, but by him clearly killing himself, somehow surviving, and then just suddenly getting killed by Michael. That whoooooole fucking storyline doesn't go anywhere at all. It just sorta ends, and then the movie moves on to what it should have always been: Michael vs Laurie, the final round. If they were gonna do the whole 'new version of evil beyond Michael Myers' thing, then at least just do it. Instead, they wussed out at the end and thought they'd get away with giving the audience what they thought we wanted in the last half hour or so after wasting all that time on nonsense up until then. Again, on some level I do respect David Gordon Green's approach here. He was subverting expectations in so many ways all the way through in small details and major plot elements. The problem is just that none of them were handled well, and then it ends up going with the easy, satsifying ending (as he and they see it), and it serves nobody... and then it also goes on to make the final dispatching if Myers so over the top and silly so as to never be satisfying to anyone ever... also I just found it amusing that the black sheriff guy pulls up in a car and responds to a question that he couldn't possibly have heard about an event he couldn't possibly be aware of at that point. It would have been so easy to make this a satisfying conclusion. If they just essentially repeated the beats form the 2018 movie (which I do enjoy, but I think is far from great, and didn’t feel of a pice with the original to me) and made the ending more definitive. But they took some swings. It's somewhat commendable, but it's ultimately a terrible movie. I guess I could see it being fun if you didn't have any interest in seeing this done well and you just went with the appreciation of the disbelief of seeing the weirdest writing choices imaginable, but I can't think of many nice things to say here other than an arms length admiration for going with the unexpected for 85% of the script. All these days later - I'm still having an absolute howl and literally laughing out loud hysterically at times reading all of the fanboys outrage over the movie Michael & Corey - Michael & Corey -
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Post by masterofallgoons on Oct 18, 2022 16:02:40 GMT
A lot to respond to here because this movie was so crazy and so full of bizarre choices and wild swings that it's hard to even get to them all... almost to the point where I respect them for making such insane choices, but the thing is I don't think they really any of them are successful. The marching bad bullies picking on a 20-something guy and, the guy's mom having a deep New England accent despite having lived her whole life in Illinois, the nurse referring to the guy as 'Doctor,' the whole taking a protégé thing, Allison's decisions and personality making no sense, the horrible dialogue, etc... To some degree I respect them mot going the easy road and really doing the unexpected. I didn't see that opening scene coming.. at all. And that opening scene is actually really well made (although didn't you have an issue with the mom coming to the hospital in tears looking for her son kn Halloween Kills? This was waaaaay more harrowing in at least as trashy and dumb a movie)... and David Gordon Green is actually a really talented director, particularly in other movies/genres. He made some really beautiful films early in his career, but his through arthouse sensibility this is what he thinks of this type of genre movie I gues: crazy and ultra graphic violence will make even the weirdest and least thoughtful narrative and character choices palatable to the horror fan audience. And some of these ideas might have been interesting in a better movie. The town pariah turning bad and skewing towards really becoming evil isn't inherently a terrible story idea, but why is it in here? And why does Michael live in a tunnel? And why does he grab some random kid and apparently form some mystical psychic connection with him where they see each other's pasts? Why does he becomes pals with him and then literally take him as a trainee? Why does Corey want to kill the doctor? Because Allison was up for the promotion that the other nurse got? Fucking seriously? Why is Corey able to just walk up to Michael and shove him over and take his mask? Why does this small Midwest town have a giant 4 story mansion amongst these modest homes? Why does this small Midwest town have it's own popular radio station in, apparently, a converted Bodega? Why was none of this stuff visible before? Why set up Mark Patton in the last two movies as a major character and only show him grocery shopping in this one? Why... pretty much everything else that happened? And why, for fuck's sake, do you make this whole movie about Corey, the next inline to apparently be the new Michael Myers/Boogeyman, and then just have him suddenly and unceremoniously die off, not by anything that makes any sense, but by him clearly killing himself, somehow surviving, and then just suddenly getting killed by Michael. That whoooooole fucking storyline doesn't go anywhere at all. It just sorta ends, and then the movie moves on to what it should have always been: Michael vs Laurie, the final round. If they were gonna do the whole 'new version of evil beyond Michael Myers' thing, then at least just do it. Instead, they wussed out at the end and thought they'd get away with giving the audience what they thought we wanted in the last half hour or so after wasting all that time on nonsense up until then. Again, on some level I do respect David Gordon Green's approach here. He was subverting expectations in so many ways all the way through in small details and major plot elements. The problem is just that none of them were handled well, and then it ends up going with the easy, satsifying ending (as he and they see it), and it serves nobody... and then it also goes on to make the final dispatching if Myers so over the top and silly so as to never be satisfying to anyone ever... also I just found it amusing that the black sheriff guy pulls up in a car and responds to a question that he couldn't possibly have heard about an event he couldn't possibly be aware of at that point. It would have been so easy to make this a satisfying conclusion. If they just essentially repeated the beats form the 2018 movie (which I do enjoy, but I think is far from great, and didn’t feel of a pice with the original to me) and made the ending more definitive. But they took some swings. It's somewhat commendable, but it's ultimately a terrible movie. I guess I could see it being fun if you didn't have any interest in seeing this done well and you just went with the appreciation of the disbelief of seeing the weirdest writing choices imaginable, but I can't think of many nice things to say here other than an arms length admiration for going with the unexpected for 85% of the script. All these days later - I'm still having an absolute howl and literally laughing out loud hysterically at times reading all of the fanboys outrage over the movie Michael & Corey - Michael & Corey - I haven't read any of that fan outrage, but it did almost seem like they were going for that on purpose.
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Post by screamingtreefrogs on Oct 18, 2022 16:07:24 GMT
I haven't read any of that fan outrage, but it did almost seem like they were going for that on purpose. There's another poster like the one below that says - 'And a Cameo from Michael Myers!'
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Post by Rey Kahuka on Oct 18, 2022 16:08:11 GMT
klawrencio79 masterofallgoons Halloween Ends (Full spoilers, everyone.)
So this movie was lousy, but not nearly as terrible as everyone made it out to be. I didn't know any specific spoilers, but I'd heard it was really going to piss off longtime fans of the franchise. As a casual fan of the franchise, I thought it hit rock bottom with Halloween Kills. What could they possibly do to make it worse than that shit show? Aliens? Robots? Michael is actually Laurie's alter ego and they're all in purgatory? I just knew whatever they did couldn't be as terrible as Kills. That movie ruined its predecessor completely, which to me would've been the best sendoff this series could've had.
Sure the story in Ends makes no sense; sure the characters make baffling decisions and have completely nonsensical reactions to any given situation, but isn't that par for the course in horror? Did people hate Michael taking on a disciple for no particular reason? It's idiotic, but no more than Laurie continuing to celebrate Halloween every year, despite the fact that a madman stalked her all her life, killed her daughter on Halloween a few years ago, and is still out there! In fact I'd say Michael training Mini-Mike actually makes sense, insomuch as Michael never needed a motivation to do anything. Carpenter's whole point with Halloween was that Michael was just evil incarnate, no motivation or explanation required. So if he throws a curve, who are we to question it? I'm not defending it so much as saying to me, it felt like the least of the story's problems.
Anyone else get a kick out of the high school marching band members as bullies?! Or the fact that they were bullying a guy in his twenties? How about the nurse having a hot date with the doctor and repeatedly calling him 'Dr. Mathis' out of the office? Does your boss that you're fucking have a first name, or did the writers completely give up by then? I think I know the answer.
Why does Allyson like Corey? I get that they're both damaged, but she's relatively well-adjusted (or at least keeping her shit together for the most part) while this guy is a total flake, a dipshit, and really kind of a dick even before the accident. He wigs out on her several times and she still sides with him over her grandmother, who's she's essentially survived a war with. If anything Allyson should have MAJOR trust issues; instead she's just along for the ride with the guy who keeps disapearing, showing up the next morning covered in cuts and bruises and telling her, "I killed someone." A serial killer/force of nature killed her mother, and she's hooking up with this guy?
This leads to my next point. The writing and characterization was so terrible in this movie that there were zero stakes for me. I was invested in these folks after Halloween (2018), but that all went out the window with Halloween Kills. The people in this movie were so obnoxious, ignorant, rude, or straight up hostile for no apparent reason that I wanted them to die. The only guy who didn't deserve it was Ronald, and he was killed by accident by the kid who arguably had the most enjoyable death in the movie. Even Allyson's stupidity had me not caring whether she got her head cut off by the end.
The movie telegraphed everything. You don't have to be a genius (even though clearly, we're all geniuses here) to see the junkyard crusher playing a role later in the film when they linger on it early on. When Michael does...whatever he does to Corey (and I'll come back to this), you just know that's coming back in the climactic battle with Laurie.
As bad as it was, there are a few bright spots. I like the scene where Laurie confronts Corey at the house, leaning back in the chair, talking shit. Then he tries to give it back, but she pulls a Michael herself and just ghosts him. I actually didn't mind the evil transfer or whatever Michael did with Corey and later to Laurie, simply because it wasn't explained. Did he transfer his evil, or unlock their own? It also begs the question, is that what happened to him? I guess that would be an origin Carpenter never wanted, so I could see fans not liking that; but again, since it's open to interpretation, it's just a layer of nuance to a story desperately in need of any thought whatsoever.
Laurie's fake suicide was a fun twist, though I also think it would've been great if she was really going to do it and he jumped into the room at the last second. She's been the hunted, running for her life; she's been hunter, fighting for her family. What happens when a killer happens upon a crazy MF with literally nothing to lose? There's a fight I want to see. As the internet might say, Cowabunga it is! And either way I appreciate the open-ended nature of it with Laurie at the end. Is she destined to become a killer, or is she, with her 40 years of PTSD and head to head battles with this monster, uniquely adapted to live with and control this evil once and for all? We don't know, and that's the way it should be.
Also, it should be noted the movie gets bonus points for featuring scenes from two of my all-time favorites, The Thing and Hard Target. For a town filled with assholes, they have good taste in movies.
So there you have it. It's a bad movie, but to me, somehow an improvement over the last one. Ultimately, I think I liked it only because I didn't hate it as much as I expected to. And I didn't hate it only because I hated the previous film with a passion. In a way I suppose I was like Laurie, having already phoned in the suicide to the police. I was prepared to let the chips fall where they may.
It would have been so easy to make this a satisfying conclusion. If they just essentially repeated the beats form the 2018 movie (which I do enjoy, but I think is far from great, and didn’t feel of a pice with the original to me) and made the ending more definitive. But they took some swings. It's somewhat commendable, but it's ultimately a terrible movie. I guess I could see it being fun if you didn't have any interest in seeing this done well and you just went with the appreciation of the disbelief of seeing the weirdest writing choices imaginable, but I can't think of many nice things to say here other than an arms length admiration for going with the unexpected for 85% of the script. (Shortened this to make it easier to scroll through) Not surprisingly, I agree with pretty much everything you said. The movie is completely nonsensical from top to bottom, but more importantly, it really shits on the legacy of Myers himself. This was always going to piss off hardcore fans, but generally speaking, it's boring and frankly insane to close out your franchise by largely ignoring the central figure of it all. And yeah, trying to squeeze in other random storylines as if you're setting up an anthology like Halloween III, only to close it off with a happy ending, is so off brand it's ridiculous. Ultimately, I was able to enjoy it for precisely the quote I bolded from your post. My hatred of the previous film had me checked out permanently on this franchise. I was going to watch the final chapter no matter what, because hey it's October. But when I heard how terrible it was, I knew I was in for a treat because I just didn't give a shit anymore, so I was prepared to laugh at whatever happened. Again I'm no horror or even Halloween film aficionado, but if I were recommending this franchise to aliens who just landed, I'd tell them to watch Halloween (1978) and Halloween (2018), and be done with it. It's a complete story arc that actually makes sense. And you don't have to get into the nonsense of the sequel where suddenly they're related, or all of the total shit of the last two films; or the fact that Michael is some kind of psychic vampire now who unlocks your own evil and 'powers up' whenever he kills someone. Just bizarre how much crap they threw in, apparently for the hell of it. I don't blame people for hating it, I just can't hate it that much because I had lost interest in the narrative already.
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Post by nutsberryfarm 🏜 on Oct 18, 2022 17:48:10 GMT
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Post by klawrencio79 on Oct 18, 2022 19:41:41 GMT
(Shortened this to make it easier to scroll through) Not surprisingly, I agree with pretty much everything you said. The movie is completely nonsensical from top to bottom, but more importantly, it really shits on the legacy of Myers himself. This was always going to piss off hardcore fans, but generally speaking, it's boring and frankly insane to close out your franchise by largely ignoring the central figure of it all. And yeah, trying to squeeze in other random storylines as if you're setting up an anthology like Halloween III, only to close it off with a happy ending, is so off brand it's ridiculous. Ultimately, I was able to enjoy it for precisely the quote I bolded from your post. My hatred of the previous film had me checked out permanently on this franchise. I was going to watch the final chapter no matter what, because hey it's October. But when I heard how terrible it was, I knew I was in for a treat because I just didn't give a shit anymore, so I was prepared to laugh at whatever happened. Again I'm no horror or even Halloween film aficionado, but if I were recommending this franchise to aliens who just landed, I'd tell them to watch Halloween (1978) and Halloween (2018), and be done with it. It's a complete story arc that actually makes sense. And you don't have to get into the nonsense of the sequel where suddenly they're related, or all of the total shit of the last two films; or the fact that Michael is some kind of psychic vampire now who unlocks your own evil and 'powers up' whenever he kills someone. Just bizarre how much crap they threw in, apparently for the hell of it. I don't blame people for hating it, I just can't hate it that much because I had lost interest in the narrative already. I'm delinquent in my promise to talk about this one, apologies for that. It's really weird - in a lot of ways, Ends is a direct sequel to 2018 and nothing in Kills really matters at all (other than Karen getting killed . But then again, I think what ails Ends is identical to what ails Kills - there are a lot of great ideas introduced, but the execution and follow-through of those ideas is insanely shoddy. Which isn't to say I hated Kills, there's actually a lot in there that I like, but there's also a lot of off-the-wall crazy shit. I'll just throw up spoiler warnings for the sake of those who haven't watched it yet. So Kills uses an idea from one of the original sequels where the townsfolk are so fed up with Michael Myers that they take it upon themselves to stop him. Sure, solid idea. But the cops basically disappear from the movie after showing up at Laurie's house after the firefighter massacre, and the angry townsfolk break into easily dispatchable groups, chanting MMA slogans at each other for the entire movie. Some of the dialogue that falls out of Anthony Michael Hall's pie hole is truly wretched and the stupidity of every character is baffling.
Solid idea, terrible execution.
The idea of Laurie Strode turning into a survivalist recluse after the events of the original is a great starting point for 2018, but at the beginning of Kills, as far as she knows Michael was killed. Then, and only then, can she buy the regular house on main street and try to re-assimilate into normal life. If anything, her making that turn AFTER Kills makes zero sense. You shot him and set him on fire, and instead of dying, he killed another 50 people including your daughter before just disappearing. So now that recluse lifestyle is gone? You're just choosing to accept that he's gone?
It makes no sense. That's why I think this is a better sequel to 2018 than to Kills. Just from a story perspective, Laurie's arc makes no sense here, but her returning to "normalcy" thinking Michael is dead just makes a lot more sense.
I think introducing Corey and having him be infected with evil, or whatever, is a decent idea in and of itself. It's kind of addressed in Kills ("now he's turning us into monsters"), albeit poorly, but here it's a main story point. And it would have worked if the character wasn't the main villain of the movie. Michael doesn't show up until the 45 minute mark and he only tallies a handful of kills, while Corey is out there slaughtering people left and right. But then he gets killed and Michael becomes the main bad guy anyway?
Solid idea, terrible execution.
You know what may have worked better - Corey isn't a killer at all, but Laurie is convinced of it because of what happens in the cold open (and honestly, fuck that stupid kid). He starts dating Allison, Laurie doesn't trust him, things escalate through happenstance, Laurie kills him. She's truly haunted by her past that she can't shake at all and she can't look past who a person really is, she only sees what she wants to see. That's a more compelling story.
I'll always give filmmakers credit for trying something different. David Gordon Green and Danny McBride could have just as easily churned out 3 movies of Michael Myers walking around killing people and I probably wouldn't have nitpicked it as much. It may have become tedious, but not for nothing, the oner in 2018 is incredible and the Myers stuff in Kills is hands down the best part of that movie (and is some of the best work in the entire series outside of the original). But you get credit for taking swings, even if you miss. And hey, we're here talking about it. If we just saw a 3rd straight movie of mindless death, we wouldn't have anything to talk about.
Alright, now that's out of the way, I have some things that really bothered me.
In Kills, I hated how they retconned Frank Hawkins back to life. He got stabbed in the neck and then run over by a car. And not like the funny Chevy Chase has his foot run over kinda run over. He legit got crushed by a car. But then he's alive and able to communicate, saying how it's now his life's mission to kill Michael....and then in Ends he's relegated to the sidelines with nothing to do. Why have him magically resurrected only to have him do nothing? Sure, it's a nice little moment he has with Laurie at the end, I guess, but it's too much of a zag and doesn't really do anything.
But similarly, Sondra lived? Sorry, fuck you, no she didn't. An elderly woman gets stabbed in the carotid artery with a lightbulb, and it's twisted around in her neck before being removed, we last see her when she's sitting on the floor, blood pouring out of her neck. No fucking way she lives. Maybe that was in direct response to people saying that there was no way Frank Hawkins lived. If that's the case, it's a stroke of genius. If it's just a way for them to cram in a resident castigating Laurie for provoking Michael, then it's stupid.
I don't get why Allison isn't more alarmed with Corey's repeatedly showing up bloodied and bruised, and openly admitting to having killed someone. Guess what, when your parents, boyfriend and all of your friends are murdered in one night, you're going to give sketchy people a wide berth, I don't care what sort of weird Florence Nightengale fetish you have.
The last issue I have is something that irks me in all of these legacy properties. The absolute reverence we're supposed to have for irrelevant shit. In Kills, they bring back Tommy, Lonnie, Lindsey and Marion; they make references to Ben Tramer; Frank Hawkins is now back and finally, after all these years, Laurie and Frank get to be together! Do we really care? I realize Star Wars made an entire spinoff movie about a single line from the opening crawl of the first movie, but I think these "expanded universe" properties need to be a little more cognizant of where they stand with that type of concept. Halloween isn't that type of movie, and it shouldn't be.
So there you have it. Kinda long-winded (sorry) and a bit all over the place.....kinda like this trilogy!
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Post by nutsberryfarm 🏜 on Oct 18, 2022 23:17:22 GMT
The trash man finally picking up the trash.
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Post by screamingtreefrogs on Oct 20, 2022 8:53:51 GMT
Free Horror via ScreenPix starring Lyle Alzado Destroyer (1989) - 'An electrocuted murderer stalks the writer, stuntwoman and cast on the set of 'Death House Dolls' 4.8 IMDB Score / 2.6 LetterboxD Score Let's Give It A Whirl! ** Edit - there's a face I didn't expect to see - Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) of Psycho fame is in this
A horror icon is taking 2nd billing to Lyle Alzado
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Post by Jep Gambardella on Oct 20, 2022 14:46:44 GMT
I watched a pretty good French thriller of sorts yesterday – “November”, by one Cédric Jimenez and starring Jean Dujardin, whom you might remember from the Oscar-winning silent movie “The Artist”. It takes place in the immediate aftermath of the November 2015 ISIS terror attacks in Paris that left 100+ dead. There isn’t a recreation of the attack themselves, which I think was a good choice. It’s all about the frantic police investigation to identify and find the surviving perpetrators and other possible terrorists before they can commit rumored further attacks. It’s very taut and clinical with no room for personal dramas of the cops or victims as might be expected if guidelines for “humanizing your protagonist” from screenwriting books had been followed. It’s certainly very well done, although I can’t imagine that it will be have much rewatch value.
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Post by sdm3 on Oct 20, 2022 18:27:17 GMT
Mike Florio referenced My Cousin Vinny when comparing the movie's diner menu to Kliff Kingsbury's playbook. Looks hysterical - I'll have to watch it.
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Post by screamingtreefrogs on Oct 20, 2022 18:35:16 GMT
Mike Florio referenced My Cousin Vinny when comparing the movie's diner menu to Kliff Kingsbury's playbook. Looks hysterical - I'll have to watch it. That movie is hysterical. And you get to see Ralph Macchio when he's young too.... He's only like 60 in that movie.......
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Post by sdm3 on Oct 21, 2022 19:51:02 GMT
My wife and I are getting through the newly released episodes of Netflix's Unsolved Mysteries. It's an enjoyable show (I never saw the originals with Robert Stack) but I don't like to binge it as true crime stuff isn't good for my mental state. When we're talking about works of fiction, I don't bat an eyelid - but real stories of murder, depravity, disappearances etc put me in a dark place. My wife, however, loves this stuff.
Three episodes released so far - the first struck me as irresponsible at best, and cynical at worst. Dealing with the sad tale of a teenage girl who was found after being hit by a train, some very basic research on the case showed that Netflix left a lot of details out that, if more widely known, would pretty much end any consideration of the case as a "mystery." It bugs me when they do that. Of course, some previous episodes have been fascinating (if macabre) and lingered long in the mind - I'm thinking of the one dealing with the DuPont murders in France, or the Alonzo Brooks killing.
When not dealing with unexplained deaths and grisly murders, other episodes cover UFOs and ghosts - neither of which, again, appeal to me in a "real life" context even if I'll happily watch horror/sci-fi movies on the subjects. I understand that the paranormal stuff was a big part of the original show so I don't object to their inclusion.
Any fans of this show or the original?
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Post by sdm3 on Oct 22, 2022 13:29:21 GMT
I didn't get around to it last night but I'm planning on taking this opportunity to remove Rings (2017) from my ever-growing list of movie recordings by watching it soon. The Japanese original and its 2002 American remake are among my favorite horror films of all time. How bad can this one be? "How bad can this one be?" Pretty fucking bad. You weren't wrong - it's awful. I'm glad I only have it on in the background while I do some work because I'd be pissed to have sat properly and given it my valuable time. The originals (both Japanese and remake) were built on an atmosphere of stifling dread - this one removes that and replaces it with... well, nothing. It's like something you'd watch on monitors while waiting in line for a Ring-themed "scary" rollercoaster at an amusement park.
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Post by masterofallgoons on Oct 22, 2022 13:47:58 GMT
"How bad can this one be?" Pretty fucking bad. You weren't wrong - it's awful. I'm glad I only have it on in the background while I do some work because I'd be pissed to have sat properly and given it my valuable time. The originals (both Japanese and remake) were built on an atmosphere of stifling dread - this one removes that and replaces it with... well, nothing. It's like something you'd watch on monitors while waiting in line for a Ring-themed "scary" rollercoaster at an amusement park. "It's like something you'd watch on monitors while waiting in line for a Ring-themed "scary" rollercoaster at an amusement park." What a perfect way to describe it. There's a little bit of the look of the original (at least of the American remake being the 'original' in this series), what with the washed out, high contrast, greenish tinge, trying to approximate David Fincher or something..and that's about it. And I haven't seen it in a while, but my memory is that an inordinate amount of the movie takes place over Skype or some such bullshit... which seems very much like waiting on line for a ride. It's probably my memory exaggerating things, but I feel like Vincent D'Onofrio's entire part was over a zoom call, like he never even made the trip to be in the movie and instead made a deal where he could shoot a scene from his hotel room when he was working on something better.
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Post by Rey Kahuka on Oct 22, 2022 15:52:26 GMT
My wife and I are getting through the newly released episodes of Netflix's Unsolved Mysteries. It's an enjoyable show (I never saw the originals with Robert Stack) but I don't like to binge it as true crime stuff isn't good for my mental state. When we're talking about works of fiction, I don't bat an eyelid - but real stories of murder, depravity, disappearances etc put me in a dark place. My wife, however, loves this stuff. Three episodes released so far - the first struck me as irresponsible at best, and cynical at worst. Dealing with the sad tale of a teenage girl who was found after being hit by a train, some very basic research on the case showed that Netflix left a lot of details out that, if more widely known, would pretty much end any consideration of the case as a "mystery." It bugs me when they do that. Of course, some previous episodes have been fascinating (if macabre) and lingered long in the mind - I'm thinking of the one dealing with the DuPont murders in France, or the Alonzo Brooks killing. When not dealing with unexplained deaths and grisly murders, other episodes cover UFOs and ghosts - neither of which, again, appeal to me in a "real life" context even if I'll happily watch horror/sci-fi movies on the subjects. I understand that the paranormal stuff was a big part of the original show so I don't object to their inclusion. Any fans of this show or the original? Loved the original as a kid, sometimes it would be fun when you'd watch a rerun and they'd suddenly have an update to one of the stories. Don't think I'd bother with it as an adult, and I definitely wouldn't watch anything pitching the supernatural in a real life context. True crime stories aren't as interesting to me now compared to when I was a kid, because there are a million other stories just as depressing, but apparently lacking the scintillating details worthy of a dramatized documentary.
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