It's Critter Time!

Quick! What was the last movie you watched? Give a little mini review (no longer than a paragraph) on how you liked it

The last one I watched was Dragon Inn (1967)


It...uh...existed?? Fight choreography on film definitely has improved since then but if you want to see a film of 2 hours of how you should never trust eunuchs. It is a film that exists.

I recently just watched Persepolis again just randomly. It's about a young girl as she comes of age against the backdrop of the Iranian Revolution. It's pretty good.

Ja'aran wrote: Fri Jul 11, 2025 1:31 pm I recently just watched Persepolis again just randomly. It's about a young girl as she comes of age against the backdrop of the Iranian Revolution. It's pretty good.

I have the graphic novel and really need to watch this one. It was a pretty good read so I'm not surprised the movie that sticks to the style is also very good.

Air Bud.

Mostly knew it for the "NOTHIN IN THE RULEBOOK!" line so was really surprised when it was a totally solid and well shot kids movie, lmao.

The last movie I watched as of this writing was Mad Max (1979), with the original Australian dub.



I have to preface this review by saying that owing to past life difficulties, it was the first time in a long while I properly sat down and watched a film, let alone an adult film of the kind I used to watch a lot (crime films and adjacent). So it was nice to once again see a film concerned with telling a story rather than selling itself to people who want formulaic blandness that says nothing.

As for the film itself, it's a post-apoc film successfully executed on a budget of "practically nothing" that nonetheless manages to pull some spectacular car and motorcycle stunts. I'll have to see the famous sequel The Road Warrior, but the story and dialog were engaging from start to finish and it's easy even here to see how the films became so influential.

The last movie I watched was Sinners, which was not only the best movie I've seen all year but also one of the best movies I've ever seen. Highly recommended!

I did a double feature the other night. Ended up watching two movies while I was painting my nails:

-Thunderbolts: The newest Marvel joint and continuation of the Avengers canon in the new universe. It was...alright. Florence Pugh stole the show with a standout performance and great delivery, and everyone else did a pretty standup job with their roles (David Harbour was pretty funny reprising his role as well.) Good fight choreography, and one of the later scenes had some genuinely cool and trippy cinematography that I was really into. As a whole though, it kinda just felt like another marvel movie...trying to capture the grandiosity of Avengers while injecting the sarcasm of Deadpool and kind of falling short with both. (Also doesn't help that I'm not a huge Marvel fan so all of the in-universe cameos and references kinda flew over my head.) Still, a good movie for shoving some popcorn into your face and kind of the distilled essence of the second-string summer blockbuster.

-KPop Demon Hunters: Animated feature by Sony Pictures featuring a largely up-and-coming cast about pop idols who, as you may have guessed, fight demons. I was actually surprised by how good this was, since it seemed to come entirely out of left field! The voice acting was on point (especially May Hong as Mira where she just entirely devours the role), the music was great and catchy (big, bombastic pop that I could totally see getting some radio play), and the story was genuinely simple yet impactful in a way that I could see teen girls absolutely loving. But the animation was *incredible*, some of the best 3D animation I've seen since Into The Spider-Verse. Expressions are influenced by manga and manhwa without going overboard, the action is fluid but flashy, and the way it all syncs to the music is electrifying. It's definitely a musical at its core, but enjoyable by a pretty wide audience all things considered. I was impressed, and if a pretty lighthearted 3D animated kpop musical with demon hunting action interspersed sounds like your thing, I have to recommend it.

Ja'aran wrote: Fri Jul 11, 2025 1:31 pm I recently just watched Persepolis again just randomly. It's about a young girl as she comes of age against the backdrop of the Iranian Revolution. It's pretty good.

Oh! This is a good one! I watched the film and also I have a copy of the graphic novel, which I also enjoyed very much.
The film did a good job emulating Satrapi's style I felt.

Re-Animator (1985)

fuuucking awesome. i've been meaning to dive into old horror flicks for a while, and this was my first one since i checked out The Fly (1986) a year or so ago. perfect mix of goofy and cheesy as shit. great gore ofc (90% of the shots in this film have a bloodied button-up shirt in it), effects were pretty goofy but like i said i think that kicks ass, herbert west is like a weird little bug that i wanna hit with a flyswatter. love a good genius with zero sense of ethics

Pixels (2015)


It's... OK? It's honestly not terrible, but it wasn't particularly interesting beyond the "HEY! It's that video game character!" I enjoyed Wreck-It-Ralph more, since it was fanservice with a more interesting plot.

swampbutch wrote: Sun Jul 13, 2025 12:59 am Re-Animator (1985)

fuuucking awesome. i've been meaning to dive into old horror flicks for a while, and this was my first one since i checked out The Fly (1986) a year or so ago. perfect mix of goofy and cheesy as shit. great gore ofc (90% of the shots in this film have a bloodied button-up shirt in it), effects were pretty goofy but like i said i think that kicks ass, herbert west is like a weird little bug that i wanna hit with a flyswatter. love a good genius with zero sense of ethics

Oh I LOVE Re-Animator! There's another movie starring Jeffrey Combs called From Beyond that's not as gory but does manage to be even weirder. If you're a gorehound I highly recommend An American Werewolf in London... it's a pretty famous movie so you've probably seen it, but if you haven't you must!

F1® the Movie

Good bits: Definitely a popcorn flick but a pretty enjoyable one. Cinematography, acting, directing, and soundtrack are all gorgeous; and it's really quite cool how it was filmed at real Formula 1 races, with the real drivers, team principles, cars, commentators, et al.

Bad bits: The writing is pretty predictable and cliched throughout. There's a couple of plotlines that don't feel necessary and some character arcs that don't feel like they go anywhere. Can't really live up to the claim of being "the most realistic racing film ever" by virtue of the creative liberties it takes with depicting actual Formula 1 racing and procedure, but it'd probably be a worse story if it did keep rigidly to the sporting rules.

I'd personally probably give it a 7.5/10.

swampbutch wrote: Sun Jul 13, 2025 12:59 am Re-Animator (1985)

fuuucking awesome. i've been meaning to dive into old horror flicks for a while, and this was my first one since i checked out The Fly (1986) a year or so ago. perfect mix of goofy and cheesy as shit. great gore ofc (90% of the shots in this film have a bloodied button-up shirt in it), effects were pretty goofy but like i said i think that kicks ass, herbert west is like a weird little bug that i wanna hit with a flyswatter. love a good genius with zero sense of ethics

If you liked it maybe you can consider watching From Beyond next. Same director and some of the same actors. In many ways it's kind of a sister film for Re-Animator.

Serpentsaurus wrote: Sun Jul 13, 2025 7:00 pm Oh I LOVE Re-Animator! There's another movie starring Jeffrey Combs called From Beyond that's not as gory but does manage to be even weirder. If you're a gorehound I highly recommend An American Werewolf in London... it's a pretty famous movie so you've probably seen it, but if you haven't you must!

higadoyrinon wrote: Sun Jul 13, 2025 8:49 pm If you liked it maybe you can consider watching From Beyond next. Same director and some of the same actors. In many ways it's kind of a sister film for Re-Animator.

Ohhh shit thanks you two. American Werewolf has been on the shortlist for a while and I'll probably watch From Beyond right now. Will report back with my findings............

swampbutch wrote: Sun Jul 13, 2025 12:59 am Re-Animator (1985)

fuuucking awesome. i've been meaning to dive into old horror flicks for a while, and this was my first one since i checked out The Fly (1986) a year or so ago. perfect mix of goofy and cheesy as shit. great gore ofc (90% of the shots in this film have a bloodied button-up shirt in it), effects were pretty goofy but like i said i think that kicks ass, herbert west is like a weird little bug that i wanna hit with a flyswatter. love a good genius with zero sense of ethics

Re-Animator is so good. Such a perfect understanding of the right moment to cut scenes off in particular

I watched Captain Underpants yesterday with my brother and it’s pretty good! Some gross-out humor, yes, but it never got too bad and the whole thing was consistently funny and clever. As someone who read the books when I was younger, I was satisfied that it kept the soul of the original - as silly as that might sound to say about Captain Underpants of all things LOL

Blue Velvet

David Lynch's psychosexual horror film. Oh my god. Frank Booth is terrifying as an antagonist. Kyle McLaughlin's character feels like a prequel to Twin Peak's Dale Cooper. I keep trying to sing Ray Orbison's "In Dreams" to myself.

i caught Blade 2 last night after somehow missing out on this entire series for years and wow is that a wild ass film

its less put together than the first one and the plot is all over the place with asspull twists and things happening for seemingly no reason and lots of very dumb decisions from various characters but its still an easy recommend from me lmao. very good Turn Brain Off type film and you get to see Wesley Snipes pull off more cool fight scenes, and although i'm not a big Snipeshead by any means every movie fight i've seen him do has been fun, at the very least

the two things that took me out of it somewhat was being jumpscared by Cat from Red Dwarf, and the frankly incredible line from one of the bloodpack vampires . like i had to take a couple of minutes to calm down because it absolutely comes out of nowhere and I was NOT ready for it. also norman reedus gets taken out in a very funny way, which i also was not ready for

I haven't finished it yet because time needs to be unlimited, dangit, but I'm about halfway through The Phoenician Scheme.

Wes Anderson movies are just totally unhinged in a very strange and fascinating way. The characters are always so... stilted, and strange. The direction is always unhinged. The framing of the shots are always wacky. I can only take so much of one of his movies, and need to go on cooldown after watching one.

Asteroid City and Grand Budapest Hotel were both just as wild a watch tbh.

RueAzure wrote: Mon Jul 14, 2025 12:45 pm Asteroid City and Grand Budapest Hotel were both just as wild a watch tbh.

I watched the Grand Budapest Hotel for the first time a few weeks ago and loved every bit of it.

I went and saw the Janes Gunn Superman movie today.

Campy and fun, tbh! I wasn't expecting much and was pleasantly surprised.

This weekend some pals and I watched a bunch of movies together tbh! Take your pick:

-Anora
-Roger Rabbit
-Superman (2025)

Out of all three, I’m gonna be real with you: Roger Rabbit blows them all out of the water. Just an absolute technical masterpiece from a sheer production standpoint.

Honestly I don’t have much on the docket moving ahead other than seeing Together when it drops at the end of the month! I feel like after that it’s clearing out my Criterion backlog — anyone got any good recommendations from that general milieu?

The house by the cemetary!!!

Watched w it my friend, we’re doing a Fulci marathon leading up to Cat in the brain and it was next up the list.

It was rlly neat!! The child acting was nice, the effects were gross and fun ofc, the premise was interesting too. Solid 7/10 but like, in the besr way.

CATFISH (2010) --

Odd film -- very sluggish, very nostalgic, even though 2010 wasn't that long ago. I haven't decided how I feel about it: I suppose my thought is that it seems like another movie which couldn't have had its current form if people were normal about older women's sexuality. There's something very strange about the relationship between Nev (the main subject) and Henry (the director) who strikes me as a pretty unpleasant person.

I expected to finish it -- I've watched it before! -- I did not. It didn't grip me. Perhaps I'll come back to it.

on an absolute technicality my diary tells me it's either this Sabrina the Comic short from Eric Schwartz (pretty neat), or a movie-length watch of season 2 of Tim Heidecker's "Decker" (an unending nightmare).

but if we're talking feature films, today i watched Cleaners (2019) by Glenn Barit! a very fun, confident, sometimes grotesque and often relatable glimpse into a crowd of disconnected Filipino teens in the same high school, all on cleaning duty, and getting their hands dirty nonetheless. has an interesting visual identity that would be better served by checking it out than having me go over it. i would recommend it!