/tv/ - Movies and Television

what the fuck

>>366755
Rent-free.

>posts nigger porn again
now THAT'S seething

Fire Over England is a great companion to piece to The Sea Hawk. It was made around the same time, it has the same setting, and it even has the same actress, Flora Robson playing Queen Elizabeth. The plot is kind of similar too; Elizabeth sends a dashing young swordsman on a secret mission to save England from Spain.
The writing and the acting are better than The Sea Hawk. Flora Robson's performance is incredible. Her take on Elizabeth I is the best queen character in any movie I've ever seen, and I will be nominating her for next year's queen awards if there even is one. Laurence Oliveir is very good too. The guy they got to play the King of Spain isn't as good Basil Rathbone's take on him in The Sea Hawk, but he isn't bad. Vivian Leigh gives the worst performance in my opinion. It's not that she's bad, it's just that everyone else is so much better that it makes her (relatively) mediocre acting stand out.
The cinematography is above average for its era, but nowhere near as good as The Sea Hawk. The final defeat of the Spanish Armada at the end feels like a bit of a let down, which is a shame because that should be the climax of the film. I guess it was the best a British film studio could do in the 30s.
Overall, I'd recommend the movie if you like old costume dramas.

The other day I watched "Master and Commander". After letting it percolate in my mind, I'm bumping it up to 10/10. And now for something completely different. Today I watched "Requiem for a Dream". This is a 1/10. I threw this movie in the trash after finishing it. I'm amazed I even finished it. Its just overwhelmingly brutally depressing. I'm sure I've seen something more depressing and more fucked up than this, but am struggling to find contenders. What a meaningless pile of nihilistic shit. I normally have an iron stomach, but this movie just made me nauseous and disoriented and again, brutally, BRUTALLY, depressed.

>>366999
I knew it had a bad reputation so I didn't watch, just skimmed through it and trashed it.

>>367003
the jews think they are so hardcore and edgy with their Loxism-fueled hate, but really its just cringe and gay. I'm gonna palate-cleanse with some oldies and re-watch a few movies I like before watching a new one

I know it's not a proper movie, but The Will Stancil Show Christmas Special was better than I was expecting it to be.

>>367620
This was the most coherent episode yet.
It's still a disjointed, skitzo mess. But it's at least getting better, this episode at least has an arc
Youcis obviously want to suck Sancil's dick so hard the white drains from his eyeballs

>>367628
>Youcis obviously want to suck Sancil's dick
She's married.

>>367644
Good for her.
Married people still have fantasies about people they interact with. Especially if the policy wonk in question looks like the dad that molested her.

>>367665
I don't think it's that deep, he's just some jerk who attacked her, so she decided to become a thorn in his side.

>>367620
it was kino

Today I watched "Dead Ringers". I give this movie a 7.5/10. Jeremy Irons acting in it is superb. This movie was bizarre, perverted, and demented but I still enjoyed it because Irons acting was just that good. I don't want to spoil the plot, its so bizarre you just need to see it for yourself. A gynecologist makes tools for alien vaginas and does a lot of drugs. He has an identical twin brother. Lots of drugs, sex, dream symbolism, psychology. Its very weird. Jeremy Irons is a good actor, I don't think I could have finished this movie without him, its so perverse. I am the same anon who watched "Requiem for a Dream" earlier ITT and decided, screw it, I will just lean in and keep watching gross-out hardcore jewish smut until my body and soul taps out and I need a reprieve, lol.

Saw this Japanese movie called Kokuho. A 3 hr long drama about Kabuki which released in June 2025 and went on to become the highest grossing live action japanese film ever.

Everything from story, acting, cinematography etc was perfection.

It's about a boy and his journey to become a great kabuki artist that specializes in "onnagata" (female roles played by men inb4 >trainime). I didn't know much about kabuki but I still immensely enjoyed it. The kabuki scenes themselves were a highlight of the film.

>>368693
shameless rip off of The Jazz Singer

>>368717
Not really. Kabuki with men dressing up as women has existed for over 400 years, long before blackface. Also in the movie no one is against the characters from being kabuki artists.

>>368693
Kabuki was the original tranime.

City on Fire is a good movie, but not a great one. It's most well known in the west for being the "inspiration" for Reservoir Dogs. Tarantino just took the last 15 minutes and stretched it out into a full movie. And it's easy to see why he only used that one part as "inspiration," it's the only part that stands out. Everything leading up to it is kind of generic as far as 80s action crime movies go, even it is well done. I would take almost any John Woo movie over City on Fire.

Watched Pickup on South Street last night. Pretty good noir with good cinematography. The romance is ridiculous, but the two main characters are so trashy you can kind of believe it (their first kiss happens two minutes after the man finds the woman robbing him and punches her out). Jean Peters plays a very believably stupid heroine. Before she says a word, you can already tell she's not too bright by her expressions. The highlight of the movie Thelma Ritter as the old police informant. This is probably the best performance of her career, which is saying a lot.
The movie is also interesting because of how explicitly it talks about communist infiltration in America. Even in the 50s, you didn't see that very often. Supposedly, it had to be censored in France for that reason.
Overall, I'd give it a 7 or 8 out of 10. It's not a masterpiece, but it does make me want to check out more Sam Fuller's work.

Scott of the Antarctic
Visuals and acting are amazing. The last act is pure depressing frozen hellscape kino. But when the characters start dying, it doesn't hit you as hard as it probably should because they barely flesh them out at all. The most memorable character is a guy who's biggest personality trait is that he likes to drink. Also, the first 30 minutes before they get to Antarctica are kind of boring.

Goldeneye
About as good as a Bond movie made in the 90s could be, though it feels like the movie doesn't really get going until the second half. The action scenes are great and the villain might be my favorite in the franchise.
I wonder if certain youtubers have gone back and accused Goldeneye of being woke or proto-woke. It has elements that could make one think that: the new female M literally calling Bond a sexist misogynist, the muscle for the bad guys being a woman who kills men while dominating them sexually, and the Bond girl being a woman who is Bond's equal in most, if not all respects; she has nerves of steel, can hold her own in a gun fight, and can even quip as well as Bond. Maybe I'm being naive, but I don't think it's "woke" or feminist or anything like that. It seems more like the writers just wanted to explore how Bond would do in the modern world where women are, for better or worse, more powerful than they used to be. Bond himself isn't any weaker or more subservient. When he says, "Yes sir" to the Bond girl, he's obviously being tongue-in-cheek.
All that being said, something about the Bond girl hits me wrong. She's not annoying or anything, but something about the way she's written feels too self-conscious. And the way she's able to keep up with Bond is a hard to believe when she's just some random programmer who sits at a computer all day, working with sweaty nerds like Boris (maybe there was some line I missed about her working out a lot or something). The romance ends up feeling forced and shallow even by Bond standards.

This was my lastest watch and my God, this has to be the most insipid thing I've ever seen. A dystopia for children and manchildren. The "fascism" of the regime is barely shown or elaborated after the introduction scene for V, and the entire fascist faction is cartoonishly villainous with absolutely no subtlety. For fuck's sake, the fascist leader is deliberately casted and acted to be a lot like Hitler, and fucking talks on a large screen with a close up of his face like Big Brother from 1984. Not to mention the villains are literally nazis in everything but name. And that's the central theme of the film.
This film is tasteless garbage, and I'm not even a right-wing extremist who's offended at fascism being portrayed negatively, mind you.

>>369541
This was the movie of the millennial generation of anons. What is the movie of zoomer anons?

>>369452
Goldeneye is one of the best Bond films precisely because it's an attack on the whole stupid idea of Bond. Alec did nothing wrong. James reveals in the final act that he's just a merciless scumbag in it for himself, instrumentalized by MI6 to manage the vanishing British Empire that English aristocrats still have delusions of grandeur over.

>>369543
Probably Joker

>>369570
True, I forgot about it.

>>369541
You just know Alan Moore shills for Keir Starmer too.
You just plain old fashioned know.

I can appreciate its borderline experimental nature. While the TV show was a bit more stylistically unusual for its time than you'd expect, Head essentially takes a wrecking ball to The Monkees' artificial TV image. There's a lot of out-of-the-box thinking for a movie that involves characters repeatedly getting trapped in a box. On the other hand, I don't think I've smoked enough banana peels to really understand it. There are also a few scenes of blatant anti-white poz in the movie that really drag it down for me, most notably Frank Zappa trying to insult Davy Jones after a musical number by calling his act "white." It's not the first time for Frank Zappa to make anti-white statements like that. See the lyrics to "Trouble Every Day" by the Mothers of Invention. As a curator of film, I feel responsible to let you know that, as much as I can appreciate Head's creativity, there's some conspicuous anti-white "jokes" that are not funny whatsoever. And they were wrong back then, they're wrong now, and that's just something as a word of precaution. It kind of makes me wonder who was responsible for those parts of the movie. Could it have been Jack Nicholson? Maybe, but I don't care enough to try and find out.

>Star Trek: The Motion Picture
For as much criticism as it gets, I didn't think it was bad besides the plot basically just being a retread of "The Changeling." The glacial pacing and lack of action weren't a problem for me, although maybe I was just in the right mood for it. I liked some of the character work, like Kirk having to accept he's not at the top of his game anymore and Spock realizing the limitations of pure logic.
>Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
This one felt like it was going over old ground again in a similar way to the first movie, although more directly being an outright followup to an episode of the show. There's more action in comparison to the first movie, but I preferred the style of that one than The Wrath of Khan. Some of the plot elements of Star Trek II just feel uncreative and a bit desperate, like the ending and the stuff with yet another one of Kirk's old flames. I thought the Project Genesis concept was neat though. I'd still rather just watch "Space Seed" again.

Maybe part of my problem is how my expectations were too high given how much praise the movie gets. It could be that I need to give it some time and see it again.
>Star Trek III: The Search for Spock
The third movie felt more focused in scope to me than Star Trek II. Honestly, I thought it was more enjoyable than The Wrath of Khan. It seems to have less action than The Wrath of Khan but more than The Motion Picture. I just got done watching it and feel like I'd have more thoughts after it's been in my head a while, but that's about all I can think of regarding my current thoughts.

I plan on continuing with the next three Star Trek flicks, but so far I prefer TOS and TAS to anything the movies have to offer. I don't expect that's going to change much.

>Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
Aside from the over-the-top "save the whales" messaging, this one is a lot of fun. Star Trek had already been done time travel several times by this point, but it was really enjoyable to see the Enterprise crew trying to blend in with locals in '80s San Francisco and I found the more humorous approach to be a welcome one. I liked the way the secondary crew members split up to focus on tasks away from the rest of the ship. It gave it kind of an ensemble feel. Sulu didn't have much screen time, but I'm not going to complain about seeing less George Takei. Speaking of him, I felt like it was both appropriate and unintentionally funny that Sulu mentions that he was born in San Francisco.

What's the difference between an astronaut and a residence of San Francisco? An astro's not likely to catch AIDS.

Anyway, The Voyage Home is my favorite movie in the series.
>Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
I don't understand the hatred this one gets. The special effects are bad and it's definitely silly, but Star Trek in general is pretty silly. I enjoyed the character-focused parts especially. The Spock-Sybok connection is more of the typical soap-opera-tier stuff that the series had already done with Kirk and David in The Wrath of Khan, but Sybok is my favorite of all the villains the movies had. The idea of a Vulcan going rogue and becoming a desert messiah is one I find interesting. I find him more compelling than Khan, who benefits from Ricardo Montalban's scenery chewing but didn't feel like the genius he was supposed to be. Sybok's motivations make his character feel less flat than a eugenically created superman who's driven by rage toward Kirk.

The Final Frontier isn't some great classic of cinema, but I don't think any of these movies are.
>Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
It's basically a political thriller in space. It really didn't do much for me, and the heavy-handed anti-"prejudice" agenda (a Klingon woman even complains about the Federations "racism" when the phrase "human rights" is used) lowers the movie in my estimation. I also didn't like the way Kirk "corrects" himself to "no one" in the politically correct TNG style when repeating the famous "where no man has gone before" line. I found Chang constantly quoting Shakespeare to be annoying too, although I guess that was even acknowledged in the movie. And I can't say I'm big on the special effects either. It's also an obvious allegory for the end of the Cold War. I think it would have been better to put the TOS crew out to pasture on a more low-key note.

My take on the Star Trek movie series is that they feel like glorified TV movies in a lot of ways. As far as Star Trek goes I'm basically a TOS and TAS guy, but I feel like the movies have their moments. Where I think they shine is their more lighthearted moments and how they flesh out the characters in a way that adds some depth. You get to see Kirk having a midlife crisis, Scotty getting defensive over the reputation of the aging Enterprise, the main trio going camping together as old friends, and even Spock realizing that pure logic has its limits. Spock as a character comes across to me in the shows as mostly cold and unsympathetic, but I found him to be much more likable in the movies. While I definitely prefer the older shows (especially aesthetically), the characters were like cardboard in comparison.

Also, I learned just before I started writing all this that yesterday was the Shatman's 95th birthday.

>>370397
>The Voyage Home is my favorite movie in the series.
Most dogshit movie in the franchise until the Abramstrek abortions. In fact in many ways, their model is all the moronic, offensively anti-Star-Trek shit in IV.

>>370397
*resident
>>370398
>Most dogshit movie in the franchise until the Abramstrek abortions.
What I should have said was the one I found the most entertaining. This is also my first time watching the movies. So as much I had a good time with it, I might not feel that way after seeing them again. I liked the levity of The Voyage Home, but after a couple more viewings it might not hold up very well with me. Maybe the ones I didn't like as much will connect with me better eventually too.
>In fact in many ways, their model is all the moronic, offensively anti-Star-Trek shit in IV.
I think the movies started going off course from a pure Star Trek experience after The Motion Picture. It might not be packed with action, but action was only one part of what made Star Trek what it was. When Star Trek moves too far in the action direction it just feels like it's imitating Star Wars to me.

I just wrapped up the series less than a day ago, but I feel like Star Trek: The Motion Picture might end up being my favorite on a long enough timescale.

>>370095
>>370397
>>370398
>>370400
I only saw each of these films once about 10 years ago. 3, 4, and 5 stand out to me the most so I think on that metric they are the best. Dead Spock, whales, God. Overall, none of the films are very memorable but those three in particular are the ones that left any impression on me.

>>370403
II and III blend into each other in my memory now after watching IV, V, and VI, but other than that I agree. I was disappointed with II because of how people speak of it like it's some classic of cinema and had a better time with III. I think The Motion Picture has been more memorable for me than III and feel like it gets dumped on too much.

>White Heat (1949)
Great movie. It doesn't feel like noir so much as it feels like a 30s-era gangster movie with a psychological edge. Cagney's character is unlikeable and unrelatable, yet you can't help but want to know more about him. You can probably count on one hand the movies that have been able to pull that off. That being said, all of the other characters are forgettable.

>Zatoichi (1960)
Zatoichi is a much more interesting character than I thought he would be. The others, if not quite as strong, are at least good enough for the story. It also has beautiful b&w cinematography. There's not really anything wrong with the movie. I still wouldn't put on the level of Mizoguchi or Kurosawa's samurai films, though.

American Graffiti (1973)
Not very deep, but it is a lot of fun. The characters are all likeable, and some sequences are downright inspired. Probably the best teenage slice of life movie ever made (and also probably the only one in that genre that I like). I really wish George Lucas would have continued directing little movies like this now and then.

>>371224
>It doesn't feel like noir so much as it feels like a 30s-era gangster movie with a psychological edge
I think that's always what I've appreciated about it.

>Bullitt (1968)
Decent crime thriller and the originator the "loose cannon cop" genre. It's one of those movies where most of what it does right has been copied so many times that when you finally see the original, it's hard to be impressed by it. Also, the parts with Steven McQueen's girlfriend and the question of what his violent line of work does to his mind feels tacked on and half baked.

>The Flame and the Arrow (1950)
Basically a remake of Errol Flynn's Robin Hood, but set in Northern Italy instead of England. What original ideas it does have are interesting, and the setting gives it enough of an identity that it doesn't feel like just another Robin Hood knock off. The problem is that none of the action scenes are very good. For some reason, they really didn't want to show the good guys killing the bad guy's soldiers. This makes every fight feel really lame, like something from a children's tv show. Not even a children's movie, a children's tv show. The worst example is when the good guys get on horseback and charge the enemy, but instead of lances, they all use tree branches, and all they do is awkwardly poke the bad guys, who just stand there and take it. Scenes like that make it very hard to take the rest of the movie seriously.

>>371589
Weird that you mention Bullitt, since that movie popped into my head probably not even 10 minutes ago.

I tried to watch Fast and Furious, and it always leaves me in a fuming rage to think about it.

The white librarian filmed the movie so the gas chamber gets excluded from the frame. The white librarian frames the gas chamber as the hero.

We never see the exhaust. The sky is framed as solid blue. The white men are draped on the gas chamber like a divine painting - God pointing his finger down at humanity.

The Christian cross around Vin Diesel's neck acts as a humanity shield. It sanctifies the 5,000-pound concentration camp oven. Hitler's Blondi protocol makes white women do the same thing, but with a dog instead of a cross. They jump in the gas chamber, and the dog - the gas chamber state's emotional support animal - operates the 5,000-pound oven to the dog park while the white woman sits as passenger. The dog is the humanity shield, just like Vin Diesel's cross. Jesus Christ was executed on that cross, and now it's treated like merchandise. Like memorabilia. Why do you have Jesus getting exterminated on a cross hanging from your chest? Why does that make the gas chamber look like just a car?

Fast and Furious is traumatizing because those movies get projected onto the rest of the world. Then non-Americans catch the same mental disease. They forget about the 55 pounds of carbon atoms in the gas chamber's fuel tank. Those carbon atoms install themselves on the brain and make people forget that those are gas chambers. And then the Americans forget that they're conducting a 3.6 million gallon gas chamber exhaust chemical attack on their own neighborhood.

That's about 20 million pounds of carbon atoms for every 25-mile stretch of Hitler's old highway per year - assuming 10,000 gas chambers roll through every day. The forest in that 25-mile region absorbs a tiny, microscopic amount of that exhaust. The rest has been going into the sky since 1945.

The white librarian wants you to believe that the trees are the gas chambers' vacuum cleaners. This is not true. The trees are not vacuum cleaners. the trees are accumulators. 5.5 pounds of carbon burns up from 1 gallon in a few minutes but it would take a tree months to break down the 20 pound ghost from 1 burned gallon of gas.

The atmosphere is very big, so it takes a long time to notice the white American Nazi gas chambering operation. But when you do the math, thinking about the Fast and Furious should leave you enraged too.


A 55-pound tree only has about 15 pounds of carbon atoms in it. Half the tree's weight is water. The rest is carbon and there is lots of oxygen trapped inside the wood.

>>371675
it's about family

>>371677
You are totally correct.

None of their family uses a wheel chair for the future.

https://voca.ro/12B4nRSR9l22

>It Came from Outer Space
I thought it was pretty decent, but I think I prefer the more paranoid style of '50s alien movies like Invasion of the Body Snatchers or I Married a Monster from Outer Space. The aliens in It Came from Outer Space are much more benign, although they've still got the capacity to be a threat to people who cause problems for them. I didn't like what felt to me to be overly simplistic condemnation of the fearful response toward the aliens instead of trying to understand where they're coming from. In a scenario like this, it would pay to be cautious and ready to defend yourself if you have to. That doesn't mean that it pays to have a mindset of killing any ayy lmaos on sight and asking questions later, but it would entail not ruling out the possibility that they could be hostile. The movie feels a bit too moralistic and high on its own farts in that regard, whereas I would have liked it to have acknowledged the complexities involved in a scenario like this and to be more empathetic to both sides. Instead you have the ignorant yokel sheriff champing at the bit to take out the aliums and locking horns with the peaceful, enlightened science man who doesn't want anything to do with the crowd, man. I'm as anti-normalfag as the next guy on here, but it just feels like a bit much to me.

The movie still has its merits though. One thing I appreciate is the emphasis put on the Mojave Desert setting. It's almost like a character in its own right. It feels similar to its fellow Universal desert sci-fi movies Tarantula and The Monolith Monsters, but those were more subtle. It Came from Outer Space's dialogue makes more of the environment. If you're familiar with "92 Degrees" by Siouxsie and the Banshees, then you'll recognize the sample the band took for the intro from a scene set at the sheriff's office. Even if it wasn't for the Southwestern deserts' place in UFO lore going back to the '40s, these types of movies feel right at home there. Such otherworldly, almost non-terrestrial-looking, environments prone to conjuring up mirages seem like an appropriate place to set a story dealing with such an elusive topic that's awash in deception from all angles. Looking back, the movie itself is pretty typical as far as the storyline goes. I think it's a fine watch overall but not anything mind-blowing.
>Ladyhawke
I went into this expecting to get really annoyed with Matthew Broderick's wisecracks, but surprisingly I found it to be less irritating than expected. I had a bigger problem with his inconsistent accent than anything. My biggest bone to pick with the movie ended up being the musical score. I'm not at all against the presence of electronic music in a fantasy or medieval-style setting, but they could have gone for something that sounds a bit more classy and timeless, for lack of a better word. There are times when the soundtrack sounds like it's taken from an action-adventure show about a bemulleted rebel with a heart of gold foiling the plans of commie agents and Libyan terrorists an outrunning them in his Ferarri. There's a time and place for tacky, but as far as the synthesized parts of the music go I think something a bit more organic, classy, and maybe even mystical was in order. Synthesizers excel at making strange and ethereal timbres, and I feel like using DX7 presets and other standard pop production practices of the time ended up selling the sound short and worked against creating a more appropriate mood.

With that out of the way, I definitely enjoyed the movie otherwise. Rutger Hauer was perfectly cast. Giving Kurt Russell the role of the leading man as originally planned would have been to its detriment. I liked Leo McKern as the monk Imperius too. The writer who came up with the idea of lovers cursed to separation from each other no matter how close they are in physical proximity must have had one of the Muses whispering directly into his ear. like exactly the kind of thing that would be the basis of an old folktale. While Ladyhawke isn't going to knock The Princess Bride off the center slot of my '80s fantasy podium, it's one I definitely plan on revisiting.
>Krull
There's not much to it in terms of story, the characters are flat (particularly the leads; the secondary characters kind of grew on me due to their camaraderie), the glaive was underutilized, the final confrontation with the oddly-aspect-ratio'd villain felt anticlimactic, and yet I still found this to be a fun watch. I like the mix of traditional fantasy and science fiction tropes. Some of the production design is pretty neat, like the look of the Slayers or the strange room the princess is imprisoned in. It felt like there was actual thought put into the look of the film. It might not be on par with Star Wars, but it also doesn't feel like you're watching Outlaw of Gor. There were some cool concepts, like the Dark Fortress being a spacefaring stronghold that lands on Krull and teleports itself to a different location every day. With its bare-bones "defeat the final boss, save the princess" storyline, the Krull experience reminds me of a silver-screen adaptation of an old fantasy video game made a bit after the film came out. It's like watching a movie version of Rygar or something. The casting is kind of interesting too. As wooden as the leads are, you've got Freddie Jones and Francesca Annis acting together in a movie a year before Dune came out and early appearances by Liam Neeson and Robbie Coltrane. What really threw me for a loop was David Battley's role as a comic relief character. I wasn't expecting to see the guy who played Mr. Turkentine in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory in Krull and ended up stopping the movie just to look up the acting credits. If you're in the mood for a silly '80s fantasy movie, I think you could do worse than giving Krull a chance.

>>371719
>While Ladyhawke isn't going to knock The Princess Bride off the center slot of my '80s fantasy podium
What I should have said was something like "'80s romantic fantasy" podium, but whatever. I was tired.

>Invaders from Mars (1953)
As short as this movie is, it still feels too long. Maybe part of it is because I watched the British version, which includes an extra scene with the astronomer character going over Hollywood's interpretation of the state of astronomy and ufology circa 1953. It even mentions "mu-tants," a pronunciation I never remember hearing in a movie outside of This Island Earth. Anyway, that scene apparently isn't in the original American release. By that point, I feel like the movie had lost momentum. It started off as an enjoyably suspicious story about a young boy seeing a UFO land not far from his house and some ensuing alien body snatching, but I thought the astronomer's lecturing of the audience dragged the film to a screeching halt. I should mention that I have a tendency to stop and start movies, so maybe it's partially my own fault. Later on the military shows up, but it doesn't feel exciting the way you'd expect. I think it would come off badly if you compared it to the original Godzilla (the Japanese one, since I've never seen the King of the Monsters cut with Raymond Burr). That had some rousing march music from Akira Ifukube, and, if memory serves correctly, more interesting editing. Here it just feels a bit underwhelming. I also think the movie also possibly feels a bit too kiddie-centric for its own good. I don't think it's a bad movie if you're not expecting much though. It was rushed out to compete with The War of the Worlds, but it's not a production on par with that. There were still definitely aspects of the movie I liked, like the scene with the saucer landing, a long protagonist uncovering a seemingly far-fetched conspiracy, alien brainwashing, and the odd design of the Martian leader. I also think things pick up again once the story moves underground. I took a bit of a peek at the ending of the original American cut, and I also think I like it better than the British one. It might sound like I was a bit hard on the movie, but I wouldn't be opposed to giving it another shot at some point with the American version. I think it's a flawed movie, but I didn't dislike it.
>This Island Earth
I watched Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie a long time ago, but I figured I ought to watch This Island Earth as a standalone movie. Outside of Exeter's white hair and the "mu-tant," there wasn't much about the movie itself I remembered.

Watching the original release for the first time, I liked the look of the movie, like the saturated Technicolor palette (other than the distractingly violet-hued scene with the Monitor). The blue star fields are very aesthetically pleasing, as are the bright, colorful lines shown waving across the interocitor display. And of course the Metaluna mutants have one of the all-time-classic movie alien designs. As far as the writing goes, I liked the characterization of Exeter. He's neither a black-hearted villain nor a benign saint. He just does what he feels like he has to do for the well being of his people. I thought the weaponized meteor situation on Metaluna was pretty cool too, although I don't know how effective they'd really be compared to asteroids. In a movie like this, I don't really care either.

With that said, I don't think it's among my favorite of these kinds of movies. I can't put my finger on why exactly that is, but for me I feel like it's better on paper than in practice. It might be a grower though.
>The Creation of the Humanoids
While I appreciate the money-stretching low-budget presentation (the way it makes use of articles of Civil War costuming to save money inadvertently makes for a distinctive visual touch for a futuristic science fiction flick, for example), the pleasant style of color photography, and the fact that the makeup effects were done by Jack Pierce, the movie does itself no favors by drawing ham-fisted parallels between the film's story of future tensions between robots and humans with early '60s race-relations issues. Androids? More like angroids. There's also a good dose of self-righteous misanthropy to boot. The robits are mistreated by a minority of ignorant, violent, knuckle-dragging humans who loathe the humanoid "clickers" and can't handle how superior they are. As tenuous a comparison as comparing blacks to peaceful, superhuman androids is, it's a blatant one on the part of the movie. It also reminds me of the habit of many racial egalitarians to insist that we're all equal while simultaneously trying to put non-whites above whites, whether in terms of policy or just praising their alleged superiority in certain respects. There's a violently anti-clicker organization known as The Order of Flesh and Blood that serves as a stand-in for an organization like the KKK and insists on human superiority to the robots, and one of their leaders serves as both the main character and the dup the movie btfos. He's humiliated when he finds out his enlightened, up-to-date sister is dating a humanoid herself and then confronts her, loses his temper, and receives a lecture from her about how he's not a real man compared to the robot and how prejudiced and against progress their father was. And then to rub salt in the wound, the robot tells him that he pities him. If the "thoughtful" and "important" messaging wasn't enough to mar the film with its sanctimonious fart huffing, the movie still isn't exactly exciting to watch aside from that. I've seen it described as Blade Runner with no action. If it was just one of those two problems it would have been easier to take, but molasses pacing combined with pretty brazen leftist equality propaganda I find hard to watch in a movie. I decided to increase the playback speed just to get through it. Normally I'm a bit of a stickler for watching movies as intended, but for this I decided to make an exception. The plot did become more interesting toward the end, but the barely concealed poz is ultimately the turd in the proverbial punch bowl. I hate to say it, but this movie's kind of a stinker.

On a side note, this is the third movie I've seen in a row that mentioned "mu-tants."
>The Brain from Planet Arous
I was expecting more physical activity from the brain aliens. When portrayed outside of human bodies, they spend most of the film superimposed over the movie. It's not a top-tier midcentury B movie or anything, but I'm glad to have seen it. It's a flick that I've seen other media drawing from since I was a kid, and so once I learned about the movie it was one '50s sci-fi film that I always wanted to get around to watching. It's fine if you're in the mood for something cheesy and aren't in a particularly discerning mood.

Coincidentally, the movie also employed Jack Pierce as a makeup artist. I suspect he had something to do with the eye effects, which look similar to the ones later used in The Creation of the Humanoids.

>>372170
Your feeling of helplessness is your best friend savage.

This thread would be excellent if each movie had a x/10 rating so people looking for new stuff to watch can grab the good ones. I do appreciate the work that goes into this though

Please tell me I'm not the only one who struggles trying to sit through this cast-iron bitch's shrill, holier-than-thou hectoring.
>>372183
I understand what you mean, but I have problems ascribing an exact numerical value to media like that. My own thoughts can be kind of muddled, and it's really common for me to come away from something thinking "it was alright, I guess" or maybe even being unsure of exactly how I feel beyond some pretty vague sentiments. I also try to keep in mind that just because I liked or disliked a movie after having seen it for the for the first time doesn't mean I'd feel the same way after watching it again. Sometimes memories of something I've seen will have to knock around inside my head for a while that'll make me want to see a particular movie again and maybe reevaluate it. It's also hard enough for me to precisely rate conventionally "good" movies, but I also do a lot of schlocky genre flicks and exploitation-type stuff that's even more difficult to pin down. I like Miami Connection and Troll 2, but what would you rate something like those even if you enjoy them for what they are? They don't actually do action or horror well, and it would feel sort of strange giving them a high rating comparable to well-executed movies in their intended genres.

Hopefully my descriptions at least provide some kind of value even if it's not always clear where exactly I stand on a given movie.

I watched As Tears Go By the other night. On one hand, the characters are interesting, and there's some cool cinematography. But on the other hand, something about it doesn't quite gel right, and the ending feels off. The MC and his slacker friend are goons for some triad. Throughout the movie, the slacker is getting into trouble and the MC has to bail him out, always at a great cost to himself. People warn the MC that the slacker friend will get him killed some day. Towards the end, the slacker friend finally gets the chance to be the bigshot he's always wanted to be: he agrees to kill a former triad member who squealed to the cops and then go to prison for a few years. In exchange, he'll become a made man when he gets out. In the last scene, the stool pigeon is being escorted somewhere by the cops when the slacker friend shows up and shoots him. Despite shooting him a million times, he only hits him the arms and legs before the cops take him out. The MC, who was standing there watching the whole thing, then picks up the gun and finishes the stool pigeon off, before getting shot by a cop. The story couldn't have ended any other way, but the specific way it achieves that ending feels contrived to me.
Also, the MC falls in love with his cousin, which is weird. Is that normal in Hong Kong or is the point that the MC is messed up in the head?