A Quiet Place
Hilariously I saw A Quiet Place Day One and then A Quiet Place II before I watched A Quiet Place. This was a good monster movie. The set up was interesting and the movie had some incredible moments. It is rare that a movie has the balls to kill the little kid!
The Long Walk.
Stephen King Adaptations are such a roll of the dice. For every decent/good one there four or five shit ones. This movie was pretty good.
It is clearly an allegory for the draft, and it lays that on pretty thick. The actors were great and man the futility of the walk and the desperation of the characters really shined through. The actors collectively really pulled it off. Mark Hamill was great as The Major. The stand out for me was a guy named David Jonsson. He was phenomenal in this movie. I hope to see more of him.
I really liked The Long Walk, it did a good job of sticking with me and I’ve come back to it a few times. I think it was probably the best of the 4 movies King had last year, but I liked Life of Chuck more
What other King movies were released last year?
- The Monkey
- The Running Man
- The Long Walk
- The Life of Chuck
Additional fun fact, he has had 4 years where he had at least 4 movies he did the original story for: 2025, 2019, 2017, and 1990
Oh god… The Running Man. I made it about halfway through that.
I am going to check out the others.
That fun fact is incredible! I suspect only Agatha Chistie or Conan Doyle have more adaptions.
According to his website there are 56 movies based on his stories
Watched the new Masters of the Universe and was entirely let down.
As far as a movie about He-Man goes it was ok. I’d say 6/10 which isn’t bad.
Seven Samurai 3.5/5 - Look, I know that sounds crazy. The last hour of this really is incredible and I’m not opposed to a long or old movie. However before the intermission there’s a lot of retreading ground and hammering the premise into you. It doesn’t help I found several of the samurai annoying along with the constant whining of the villagers
There Will be Blood 4/5 - This is one of the most American movies I’ve ever seen. Daniel almost immediately identifies Eli as being just as ruthless and craven as he is. They are constantly trying to exploit the other at the expense of everyone around them while both ultimately end up miserable and alone
Tour de Pharmacy 4.5/5 - Short, hilarious, and everyone is totally fine taking the piss out of bicycling. The old/young versions being separate actors has some very funny payoffs
A Few Good Men 4/5 - Sorkin is at his best when he’s writing and not writing/directing which is admittedly a pretty lukewarm take. I like the build up to give the court case the punch it needs to close the movie. I would personally move the “code red” scene to the beginning of the movie, it feels out of place as an unlabeled flashback
M3GAN 3.5/5 - It’s good horror/comedy and does a better job at modernizing Child’s Play than Child’s Play does. I’m excited to see what SOULM8TE does in a few days
The Matrix Revolutions 4/5 - I would love to sit down and really talk about this with someone. Neo descending to hell to confront the Merovingian (who may be a previous iteration of The One), the dual filming of both movies, where the messiah allegory stops/ends, the INCREDIBLE highway fight scene. There’s so much that’s just so interesting going into this it’s just a shame Reloaded and later Resurrections don’t quite land
One Night Only 3/5 - Even ignoring the batshit premise of the film it still is held together by insane coincidences that it doesn’t really have the narrative strength to justify. It is funny for most of it, but it’s also surprisingly chaste for being an R rated movie about every single person in the country fucking for 12 hours. I think I saw a single woman’s nipple in the whole thing and neither of the main characters gets seriously nude in the entire thing
thanks for the concise thoughtful reviews!
Mad Max Fury Road. He’s seeing flashbacks, from the Mel Gibson movies I assume? It was a little confusing to keep seeing them.
The action is incredibly, of course.
Next Goal Wins (2023)
The story of the infamously terrible American Samoa soccer team
I wasn’t expecting much but It’s a really fun watch and all the characters are great.
