2021 Movie Watching Thread

Started the year by watching Jaws last night. The 4k restoration is excellent! It's only my second time seeing it because I only ever saw the sequels on TV as a kid.

Rating: Great Movie

The Passion of Joan of Arc

Can a silent b&w film made almost entirely out of close up shots still be good over 90 years after it was made? If it's got a heart wrenchingly captivating performance by lead Renée Jeanne Falconetti then absolutely yes!

Rating: Great Movie

The Adventures of Robin Hood

Been wanting to see this for a long time since it was the key influence on my favourite film (Disney's Robin Hood). Loads of swashbuckling fun in beautiful technicolor!

Rating: Good Movie

Citizen Kane

From the way it's been presented and parodied over the years I had always thought this film would be stuffy and austere. Instead I quickly found I was really enjoying it and can see why it's so long been hailed a masterpiece.

Rating: Amazing Movie

Kiki's Delivery Service

Simply one of the most charming movies ever made. Beautiful, heartwarming, and fun.

Rating: Amazing Movie

Of all the cinema incarnations of Batman, this has the sharpest script, the best cinematography and the deepest understanding of it's particular version of the caped crusader. All the while perfectly integrating LEGO both aesthetically and philosophically.

Rating: Great Movie

I love this ridiculous film.

A brilliant cast delivering a terrible script with fun over the top action sequences and stunts. It's painfully shallow, ridiculously contrived, and totally cliché.

And yet, if I had the time I'd watch it again tomorrow.

Rating: Not Shit

DESTRUCTION TERROR MAYHEM

It's the debut of my fav movie monster, Godzilla! Poignant, introspective, and oh so bleak; it's a far cry from the fun camp action of what the series would later become.

And it has my favourite 'main theme' music of all time!

Rating: Great Movie

Godzilla Raids Again isn't the masterpiece that the first film was but given it was conceived, produced and released in just five months - it's damn impressive!

Bonus points for choosing an ankylosaurus (best dinosaur) as the basis for Anguirus!

Rating: Good Movie

Is it east vs west, or man against man? It's neither, it's time for King Kong vs. Godzilla.

This is a stupid dumb movie that I would have mostly enjoyed were it not for the horrendously racist Faro Island scenes. Inexcusable, even in 1962.

Rating: Not A Good Movie

I enjoyed parts of Skyscraper simply because it was the specific kind of movie I was in the mood for last night, and because I enjoy seeing The Rock in pretty much anything. That said, this movie is insultingly derivative and ridiculously plotted.

Rating: Not A Good Movie

I watched FotR (my fav) in November when the 4K boxset arrived and cried like a bajillion times. Middle Earth has been part of my life since I was a toddler, but queer LotR twitter rekindled my love of the world and characters last year and taught me new ways to love it!

So last weekend I watched Two Towers (only cried a handful of times during this one) and hot damn the 4K edition is good! Helms Deep remains one of the best directed movie battles of all time and looks better than ever.

Rating: Great Movie

Back on the kaiju kick I watched Mothra yesterday. Enjoyed the 10 mins of Mothra knocking cars through windows at the end but it took too long to get there and was no drama to any of it. Blackface used for the "natives" drags it down even further.

Rating: Not A Good Movie

Mothra vs. Godzilla is better than Mothra's debut outing but still falls short of a thumbs up due to a lack of effective tension. The songs are damn catchy but they are more frequent and way longer than they need to be.

Rating: Not Shit

I'd been wanting to re-watch this for a while, motivated by the frustration of seeing it consistently in the bottom 5 of nearly all "ranking the pixar films" articles I found online. Simply put, there is no other Pixar film that I enjoy as much as Brave.

Rating: Great Movie

Love Buffy, loathe Whedon.

Abi encouraged me to watch the TV series a few years ago (she was right, I loved it) so I recently subjected her to the original. It's not good but it's got charm and a mix of entertainingly good and enjoyably bad performances.

Rating: Not Shit

The first kaiju flick to get a thumbs up from me since Godzilla Raids Again! Ghidorah is a great monster, the prophet character brings the sorely needed tension and mystery back to the series and the fights are very fun.

Rating: Good Movie

Strangers On A Train is a good thriller made great thanks to Robert Walker's unforgettable performance as Bruno Antony.

Rating: Great Movie

Monsters University is simple fun prequel-fare beautifully presented. Some of the foreshadowing for Monsters Inc is eye-rollingly forced and totally unnecessary but it doesn't get in the way of the plot at least.

Rating: Good Movie

Nausicaä is a cornucopia of incredible design, breathtaking animation, and brilliant story-telling that is only surpassed by Ghibli's later releases.

Rating: Great Movie

Fell off the movie watching train and jumped on the pro wrestling watching train for most of March and then kept putting off updating this thread with the handful of flicks I did watch. Let's get back to it!

Rush Hour is probably Brett Ratner's best movie by far and that's a very very low bar. It would be difficult to make a bad movie with two performers who exude charm like Chan and Tucker though so most of it is fun.

Rating: Not Shit

I wanted to watch this on the day the ring was destroyed (March 24th - @onthisdayinLotR) but I started too late and had to continue the next day. A rousing emotional end to my slow marathon of the trilogy in 4K.

Rating: Great Movie

Even with low to middling expectations, Chaos Walking was a frustrating watch. @Abi_Staniforth and I were eagerly awaiting this constantly delayed adaption of one of her favourite books and it was certainly not worth the wait.

Rating: Total Disappointment

With this watch WWDitS is my most watched film since I started logging my movie watching. It's up there with Spinal Tap as the best comedy of its kind and probably one of my favourite films of any kind.

Rating: Great Movie

I enjoyed parts of the new GvK but not as a whole. Not well constructed enough to be dramatic, not ridiculous enough for me to enjoy it as pure spectacle.

Rating: Not Shit