Last movie watched...

[Greg M.]

Bafflingly structured, weirdly (almost charmingly) reliant on stop-motion effects

As opposed to...?

Larger-scale physical props for the cast to interact with directly? I'm not criticising the idea of stop-motion - I love Ray Harryhausen as much as the next man - but it seems oddly anachronistic in a 1990 movie, and occasionally a bit cheap (see the section with Johnson and the failed attempts at a new cyborg.) It also creates a weird distancing effect: you're keenly aware that Cain's not really there, as he's not half as well integrated with the action as, say, the monsters in Sinbad movies. (Obviously ED-209 is animated in that manner too in the previous film, but there's also a big ED prop, he only appears three times, and his design is much less intricate, so it works better.)

[Professor Bear]

CGI wouldn't be anywhere near ready for motion pictures until the late 1990s, with Starship Troopers likely being the watershed moment.
You can see how a practical robot prop would have worked out visually by watching Judge Dredd: nice visuals when it isn't moving, but when it was in motion and/or interacting with the actors, the clunky movements made it look like a fairground exhibit.

[von Boom]

Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey. While not as good as Excellent Adventure it's still wonderfully uplifting viewing. Be excellent to each other is a disarmingly apt idea these days.

[broodblik]

I watched Bloodshot and the unfortunate think is that it feels just like any of the latest generic action movies. Nothing really stands-out but still I enjoyed it for what it tried to do.

[MacabreMagpie]

Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey. While not as good as Excellent Adventure it's still wonderfully uplifting viewing. Be excellent to each other is a disarmingly apt idea these days.

I've always preferred Bogus Journey, then that was the one I saw first which is often the case when it comes to favourites

[von Boom]

I watched Bloodshot and the unfortunate think is that it feels just like any of the latest generic action movies. Nothing really stands-out but still I enjoyed it for what it tried to do.

Save Vin Diesel's career?

[broodblik]

I watched Bloodshot and the unfortunate think is that it feels just like any of the latest generic action movies. Nothing really stands-out but still I enjoyed it for what it tried to do.

Save Vin Diesel's career?

He still has the FF franchise going.

[Keef Monkey]

Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey. While not as good as Excellent Adventure it's still wonderfully uplifting viewing. Be excellent to each other is a disarmingly apt idea these days.

I've always preferred Bogus Journey, then that was the one I saw first which is often the case when it comes to favourites

I saw them in the right order and while I loved them both it's Bogus Journey that I love bestest. It just has so many memorably barmy ideas in it and had a great soundtrack album (that Faith No More track!) so it just feels way more of an iconic film of my youth I guess.

Watched Drive Angry for the first time, and while I went in expecting some trashy madness it was considerably more trashy and more mad than I was really prepared for. It's mental, and the effects in places are really awful and there's that mad sex scene that's basically the same as Shoot 'Em Up (not sure what came first!) and I guess it was quite fun. Amazingly for all the energy in it it was still a bit dull, and my wife fell asleep so I had to tell her what happened in the last third. I don't think she believed me.

Also finally gave Sin City 2 a go, and found it really boring. I do like the first film, but here the stories are arranged and paced in a much less cohesive way and there's a big center-piece story (A Dame To Kill For) that just highlights that the stories in Sin City really aren't interesting enough to work in more than bitesize chunks, and I guess the novelty of how the whole thing looks has worn off a bit because a handful of really stylish moments aside it all looks a bit cheap and hokey. I think the style of the first film went a long way to papering over the cracks in the whole thing, and here there are cracks a plenty and I just found it all a bit dull and cringe-inducingly juvenile in places unfortunately.

I needed to watch some sure things after that so put on a couple of old favourites and watched the first two Infernal Affairs films. Love them and have seen them loads but for some reason only ever saw the 3rd one on release and never revisited it, so the rewatch is mainly for a refresher so I can give 3 another shake soon. Hopefully it just came along at the wrong time for me so didn't hit as hard. Anyway, 1&2 are still fantastic, and as much as people love The Departed (and it is a good movie as far as remakes go) I've always found these way, way better. So good, had been a few years and loved going back to them.

[Keef Monkey]

Got round to Infernal Affairs 3 on that rewatch and can definitely see why it didn't really hit as hard for me when it came out. I think it tries to do a bit too much maybe and ends up a bit messy and confusing. There are elements of it I think are great and story beats that I think are good to have but even then I'm a bit undecided about whether it's better to see the aftermath of the first film or to leave it be, I think I probably lean towards preferring the way the first film leaves things than having the extended resolution 3 gives us.

I still think it's good, just all feels a bit unnecessary (like it was perhaps only conceived to make it a trilogy) and I love the first two films so much that it's a shame it doesn't really reach those heights for me.

[Professor Bear]

The White Buffalo - mix of Western and creature feature from the 1970s about Wild Bill Hickock and Crazy Horse teaming up to kill the titular rampaging buff.  Crazy wants to kill it in revenge for his dead child, while Wild Bill wants to kill it because it's called him from across half the planet by haunting his dreams.
It all looks very stage-y, and the buffalo has been shot entirely as an animatronic effect, and while this clearly looks fake, it also gives the beast a solid and unearthly appearance.  Enjoyable despite/because of its obvious age and pacing, and bonus points for the General Custer cameo  in which he skedaddles the moment superior numbers fail to win a drunken saloon shootout.

Detective Pikachu - if you've seen the recent Watchmen tv show, you'll find the plot twists in this very familiar, which I thought was hilarious because this was made first.  Watchmen stole its plot from a Pokemon movie.  Amazing.
The film is standard stuff about a young man and his talking rat, though it has some decent effects sequences later, as well as a large number of callbacks to the original Pokemon animated movie from 1999, to which it serves as a direct sequel.  Perfectly adequate entertainment.

Sonic the Hedgehog - more enjoyable than it has any right to be, and some have made a meal of how it utilises incredibly dated pop culture references such as Speed and hipster jokes, but this misses a great deal of the meta commentary of a movie based on a 30 year old videogame and how it is a product with an audience that is composed of people who have inherited the culture of another generation because that generation is the one currently making media like this.  In the same way that Family Guy's audience of 12 year olds unironically goes on about how great the 1984 Transformers cartoon was, Sonic absorbs the pop culture of a 30-something couple and creates an "in" for the parents of the children likely to be watching this, so you will almost certainly find yourself relating to the sherrif's early midlife crisis just as much as kids will relate to the hyperactive blue asshole at the center of the world.
All of which is largely irrelevant to a forgettable but perfectly entertaining experience while it lasts, but the funniest meta-joke must surely be vocal anti-vaxxer Jim Carrey playing a character who has absolute faith in science.

[Keef Monkey]

I think I was too hard on the remake of The Evil Dead on release, just gave it another watch and it's actually pretty great. I remember coming out and complaining that it only really comes alive and captures the spirit of the Raimi trilogy in the last 10mins or so, and it's definitely by far the strongest stuff in the film (that shot with [spoiler]the cabin on fire and the lovely Jane Levy chainsawing a corpse while it rains torrential blood...that's fantastic and about as Evil Dead as you can get[/spoiler], but I appreciated the rest of it a lot more this time round.

It's still not a patch on my beloved original films but a good splattery horror movie in its own right, and if the whole thing had been infused with the humour and madcap energy of the last scenes it would stand alongside the others no bother.

[karlos]

The Yakuza (1974/5 - no-one can quite agree)

I just wanted to mention this one, really, as I think it's a beautiful film.

Robert Mitchum and Takakura-Ken meet up in ultra-cool early 70s Japan to save a young woman, leading to a truly incredible climax.

A pretty much perfect noir, spliced with elements of Japanese swordplay and Gangster flicks, but with a plot that really does surprise.

The older I get, the more it resonates with me.

Please check it out if you can.

[Hawkmumbler]

The Yakuza could and should be doubled up with The Friends of Eddie Coyle. Mitchum was one of the finest of a golden age and these two complement each other superbly.

[karlos]

Totally agree, Hawkmumbler - Eddie Coyle is another great piece of 70s noir, and Mitchum is superb in it.

[von Boom]

Go Karts. An absurdly entertaining film about a young teen trying to win a go-kart championship in Australia. Pure tripe, but in the best possible way.