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Just watched Midsommar (with my 15-year old). Dogshit might smell bad, and look bad, and be riddled with disease causing bacteria but at least it's not this movie. It's not good. It's not average. It was terrible. I don't know why anyone thought that praising the acting was an appropriate reaction. Rewarding bad behavior is how you get more bad behavior. The characters are all terrible and exceptionally unlikable. My favorite fiction involves pirates and space wizards, but the characters in this movie were unrealistic.
 
TheSameIdiot said:
I love Weapons and Midsommar. I gotta be careful about swapping horror movie recs with you guys.
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LOL!!! I know! I went to see Black Phone 2 today and I loved it. But do I dare say it?

Well, let me put it like this. If you liked the first one, you'll probably like the sequel.
 
Still haven't gotten around to seeing Midsommar, but I've heard it's divisive. Some friends of mine have their whole bathroom decorated as a little Midsommar display, so I'm expecting it to be at least decent. I loved Hereditary, and I've heard it's similar-ish in tone to that, but I've also heard it's a little too artsy for its own good. My boyfriend recently showed me Mother!, which he's been wanting to for years, and I kinda felt the same- it's a little too artsy for its own good. He explained to me what it was after, and like, I get it, and it's certainly an interesting premise, I just don't know if that was the way to present it. And I kinda feel like Midsommar might strike me a similar way at this point, with all the hype I've heard around it.

I saw Black Phone 2 yesterday as well, and I quite liked it. Definitely not your traditional horror movie, but I loved the themes and metaphors and that it was character-driven above just mindless kills and gore. Like SD said, it certainly strikes a different tone than the first, but certainly feels in the same family. Maybe it's just because I'm a sucker for a well-made movie about trauma, whereas my boyfriend, who's had a much, well, happier/simpler life than I, was a little lukewarm on it and preferred the first. But I'm loving the Grabber as a horror icon, and would love a figure of him (beyond the Toony Terror that's coming).
 
I have clicked play on Midsommar twice now and thought to myself "this movie's runtime is way too long" and just stopped and watched something else. My attention span makes it hard for me to get through a 90 minute movie unless it is super engrossing. I really want to watch it but I just can't make myself start it.
 
I loved Hereditary so I keep meaning to watch Midsommar, but I've seen both Wickerman movies and while they might be a laugh with friends, they aren't actually good movies so I guess that's why I still haven't gotten around to watching Midsommar yet. Weapons was fun once it got past the teacher's story. I've loved every Aronofsky film I've seen except Noah, but Mother! and The Whale are the two I haven't seen yet. I'm glad you included the exclamation point in the title because I get it confused with Bong Joon Ho's Mother, which is great.

More horror movies for spooky season:
Return of the Living Dead - The perfect blend of horror and camp. It has some of the best zombie makeup, prosthetics, and puppets of 80s and the hindsight about Dan O'Bannon's Crohn's disease adds new weight to the scenes of men writhing and screaming in pain as they turn. Tarman might be the single most iconic zombie (yes, more than Bub) and RotLD is easily one of the top five zombie movies ever made.

Dracula AD 1972 - Hammer Horror tries to get funky with humorously stiff, English results. Watching 59 year old Peter Cushing literally run across London to a wah-wah guitar soundtrack made me lol. It opens with a rock band placement that probably funded a good portion of the movie's made-for-TV-level budget. It's a funny, kitschy product of its time.

Curse of Frankenstein - I watched this as a Hammer double-header with Dracula AD 1972. Where Peter Cushing's Van Helsing is a benevolent grandpa, his Frankenstein is a real dick. Christopher Lee gives a strong performance as the monster, but without any lines, it's hard to feel like he wasn't underutilized.

Blood for Dracula - This one was tough to make it all the way through. Better known as Andy Warhol's Blood for Dracula, apparently Warhol had next to nothing to do with this production except for licensing his name to the producers and hanging out on set, much like John Carpenter does now. It's a paper-thin skin flick full of ridiculous dialog delivered by green actors, few of whom spoke English as a first or even second language. Udo Kier is the lone bright spot in the movie. It felt like a soft porn parody of the already tepid Fearless Vampire Killers, and in fact Roman Polanski actually makes a small cameo doing his usual aggressive little guy routine.

Blacula - While I love a good Blaxploitation movie, I went in with low expectations knowing this was made by a green director with a small budget even by grindhouse standards, but I still enjoyed it. William Marshall and Thalmus Rasulala really carried the movie as Blacula and the take-no-shit Dr. Thomas. Some of you might remember William Marshall as Richard Daystrom in Star Trek or The King of Cartoons in Pee-wee.
 
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joshsquash729 said:
I loved Hereditary, and I've heard it's similar-ish in tone to that, but I've also heard it's a little too artsy for its own good. My boyfriend recently showed me Mother!, which he's been wanting to for years, and I kinda felt the same- it's a little too artsy for its own good.
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If you like Hereditary, you'll probably like Midsommar. It's artsy in the same ways. Ari Aster (the writer/director) manages to get scares in a movie set in broad daylight. It's impressive. I'll admit it's a bit long.

Mother! is bad. I'm not an Aronofsky fan, though.
 
I love Midsommar and Hereditary. Horror is my favorite genre and indie/arthouse is my favored “style”, so they are basically “for me”.
I also loved Mother!, but I do love Aronofsky, although most of his movies I only want to watch once.
 
I watched Reservoir Dogs with my older boy over the weekend. I did warn him it's a lot of talk, with some action. Man, do they talk. I get it was Tarantino's first, but I'm glad he's balanced some of the dialogue in his films. He liked it, and I plan on doing Pulp Fiction next. He's seen Inglorious Basterds, and really liked that.
 
Caught a showing of Guillermo Del Toro's Frankenstein yesterday at the Paris Theater (even managed to get my 4K of Pan's Labyrinth signed- what an awesome dude he is), and it was pretty stunning. Looked beautiful on 35mm, and while I can see a lot of Frankie purists having some gripes with the liberties GDT took with the story, I thought it was very effective and beautifully done. Certainly bloated, and doesn't necessarily take the direction you'd expect it to, but I liked it. It was as romantic and gothic as Del Toro is known to be. Think I need another rewatch or two before I can say where it slots on his filmography, but it was beautifully made, and Oscar Isaac and Jacob Elordi both did a phenomenal job. I can see a fair amount of nominations for it- for all the art direction and costuming alone, if not for some of the performances.

Would love it if NECA tackled at least the Creature himself, but I doubt they will. I'll always be bummed they didn't continue their GDT line- a Crimson Peak ghost or two would've been great.
 
Seen a couple of new (to me) movies this week.

Barton Fink: It's an oldie, but one of the Coen Bros. films I had yet to make my way to. It feels very much like a prototypical Coen film. It's got a blend of genres, very stylized dialog, a not entirely likeable main character, and a weird sense of humor all the way through. It even dips a little into pseudo horror for a bit which I was not at all expecting. Overall I liked it. I recently rewatched Miller's Crossing for the first time in a while and it seemed I should finally get to this one and I'm glad I did.

Talk to Me: This is I think my first newer horror film watched this spooky season and I think it lands pretty well. It's Flatliners by way of the Exorcist but as a metaphor for teenage drug addiction. Decent performances and writing, and best of all it's just a hair over 90 minutes so it doesn't overstay its welcome.
 
I can count on two fingers the number of times in my life I've hated a movie enough to turn it off unfinished in anger.

One was Joker.

The other was mother!.

I absolutely *loathe* that movie.

I didn't really like Midsommar or Hereditary, but I didn't really *dislike* them, either. I watched them, didn't get the hype, never bothered again.

Last movie I watched, though, was Trick R Treat. Husband, daughter and I got to watch it on the big screen locally last week as a family outing. One of my favorite movies of all time, so it was really cool getting to experience it with the family like that.
 
I'll go on record and admit I am one of the few who really loves Poltergeist 2. Possibly more than the original. Also, a top 5 Goldsmith score for me.
 
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