What Was The Last Movie/Anime You Watched?

[kamikazekeeg]

One of the quietest movies I've ever watched.  For much of it, there's no dialogue and very minimal music.  It's all very clever with the monsters being attracted to sound and the family knowing sign language due to having a daughter who was born deaf.  It's what I love with good scifi/horror films that try to have unique premise beyond jump scares and lots of gore.  The creatures have a pretty cool design also.  I do have one slight issue with the plot that seems kinda obvious, but I won't spoil it.  It's overall an interesting film.

[Cartagia]

[...] The first season had a few good things, but really just ended up being kind of a middling crime drama.  Second season is even worse because it's even less dealing with the superhero part and the crime drama aspect is so half-assed.  Any time it felt like it could go up a notch, it just didn't.  The lack of anything else superhero related, I don't even see the point.

It also doesn't help that everyone else is more interesting than Luke Cage.  He's so boring and one note feeling.

I'm working my way through Season 2 right now, and I think that as a whole it is better than season 1 - it is WAY more consistent at least.  Where season 1 capitulated wildly between A+ and D-, with an average of maybe a C+ / B-, Season 2 has remained far more steady - even if it still has some issues.  It doesn't help that the most interested and best performed character in both seasons was out at the halfway point of Season 1, and the show has been struggling to live up that since.

[Cartagia]

I finally watched Justice League yesterday, and it was fine I guess?  The plot was painfully generic, and it was genuinely one of the worst looking blockbusters I think I've ever seen.  The special effects and greenscreen were terrible.  Some of the character design was kind of meh as well.  But, the cast seemed to be having fun at least.

After watching the drab feature I decided to rest my comic book movie color palette with one of the more interesting looking films of the 90s - Dick Tracy.  A few bits here and there haven't held up well, but overall it is a still a pretty fun flick, and it bugs me that it has been so forgotten.  Because what other comic films have been as eye popping as this?

[kamikazekeeg]

I was never really excited for this movie as while I'm very much engrossed in pop culture from toys, to games, to movies, to anime, I felt like this movie could go real wrong and it could just become "Hey, I know that: The Movie"...and at points it does, but it's not as bad as I expected and overall it's a fun time.  I got Mechagodzilla vs Gundam vs Iron Giant, so I'd watch the movie for that alone lol

Almost forgot to put this down, but the VR setup in The Oasis kinda bugs me in its design.  It's my only major gripe, as at points, it stretches believability of the hardware that  people are playing this game out in public that requires them to move around and that people just aren't killing themselves all over the place.  People struggle to focus with a phone, let alone invested in a game that would take over most of your view and relies on your body movement.  The main crew all use harnesses or those multi-directional track machines, but there's a lot of people that don't and I don't know how the game even functions at that point...And the bad guy can sit down and not move his body in some big scifi chair, so now it's like...Sword Art Online level? No one really brings it up as like "Oh, did you hear, soon you won't even have to move your body to play!" or anything like that.

[kamikazekeeg]

Was slightly dreading finishing up the final four Gamera movies, as I sorta saw how bad they get beforehand reading about them, but I still didn't want to pass them up.  Thankfully Gamera vs Guiron is mildly better than the last one, which was downright awful with all the re-used footage.  They still used a couple minutes of re-used footage from the first, third, and fourth film here, which is such obvious padding as they movies are being pumped out every year.  There's no need to keep doing this. 

I put this a level above the last one only because it felt like they tried a little bit more.  There's an alien planet location, Guiron is a dumb, but at least tolerable monster after how bad Viras was.  There's even a short appearance by a Gyaos that gets sliced up which is great.  I hate these kids actors, they are just so one note and they do a lot of reaction shots with them, but aren't reacting.  I know this is a kids movie, but you can tell the writing and such as is fairly poor.  People seem to act like aliens don't really exist, but they literally had Viras, aliens, show up before and it's canon, because the kid brings up Viras in the re-used footage moment.  Not completely terrible, but it's still like a 4/10.

This one is almost like a real kaiju film! City destruction, people getting killed, multiple fights between monsters, and it's not just focusing on kids dorking around and sorta saving the day!  Kids are still a factor, as they are just driving home at all times that he's a protector of children.  I hate this because so many of these movies are just kids yelling Gamera the entire time.  I still saw them sneaking in some re-used footage for a moment, though they kept most of that to just the opening credits.  This movie felt like they really tried to make a proper giant monster movie.   This movie was totally fine.  The average for the era basically.

Kinda funny how with it being a kids show, Gamera ends the battle by literally stabbing the monster to death with a giant stone statue through the eye.  This series gets weirdly brutal lol

Only one more proper movie left before the company went bankrupt.  The last one of this era is supposed to be almost entirely stock footage as it was a contractual obligation film and only has a few new scenes with Gamera.

I had more written here at first for Gamera vs Zigra, but honestly at this point, I'm just bored by this movie.  The writing is awful, the story drags, Zigra doesn't even show up till halfway through the film and does so little until the end.  It's not the worst Gamera film, but you can tell this is their last real movie before bankruptcy.  Even for a kids film, it's just nonsensical...

And ending this era of Gamera, we have "Gamera vs Contractual Obligations", or it's alternate title "Gamera: The Super Monster".  You know you are in for quality when there's an outright Star Wars ripoff shot at the very beginning with music ALMOST kinda sounding like the Star Wars theme lol Can clearly tell Shonen Jump helped pay for some of this with the very blatant promotion too lol

Basically the idea is that some space women hiding out on Earth, who can transform into what is kinda like super heroes with crazy alien tech, are found out by an evil race from the stars, who decided to send monsters to Earth, who just all happen to be from previous Gamera movies.  This space women stuff and some space shots with the totally original, not-star destroyer, space ship, take up all the new footage in the movie, and try to poorly piece together a plot using re-used footage.  All super low budget and cheap feeling.  I mostly just skipped the re-used footage.  There are these odd shots of Gamera in space used for some animated dream sequences, at one point, and despite being new Gamera footage I believe, it looks super low quality, because again, shoestring budget.

Just sad that this is what they go out on till the 90's reboot.

[kamikazekeeg]

I've given movies second chances every so often, like with the Star Wars Prequels, re-watching them to see if my opinions have changed (Episode 1 and 2 are still shit) and Jurassic Park (Jurassic Park 3 is not very good), so with my completionist needs, I thought I'd grab a cheap blu-ray for Godzilla to have in the Kaiju collection, the American 1998 version, to see what I think about it.  I know I haven't watched this movie in over a decade, maybe 15 years, because I didn't like it as a kid too much.  I grew up on classic, man in suit, Godzilla, so getting a Godzilla that basically wasn't Godzilla didn't work for me.

Years later, what do I think? It's still a miserable Godzilla film.  Not that I'm saying Godzilla has always been on top of its game, but this just feels like they were less interested in making a Godzilla film and more interested in making like...Jurassic Park crossed with Independence Day.  This Godzilla is relatively small, it doesn't breath fire (They pretend he does, by having his roar blow the fire of exploding cars, but it's not the same), it spends most of the movie just wandering around and running from the military, the military do most of the damage a lot of the time (comically destroying countless buildings and their own men, which they don't acknowledge for more than a few seconds) and a big portion of the effects have not held up.  There's still a lot of good sets and practical effects/destruction, which helps, but Godzilla looks pretty poor most of the time and so do the babies.  I can go back and watch Jurassic Park and see how good that still manages to look and that was early 90's.  This was late 90's and feels more like Star Wars Prequel quality.

So looking at it as just a big dumb monster movie...I still don't like it alot.  I talked about the effects, but I think the writing and characters are poor.  Broderick is fine in other movies, but I think him and the other female lead just kinda suck any energy and drama out of the movie.  They just exist here and the rest are just cartoonish wise cracking characters meant to make jokes and it doesn't work.  Not a single character made me like them...Jean Reno is fine, because he's Jean Reno.  It's not the worst thing, but it's just underwhelming I feel.

It is kinda hard to act like the Japanese ones are automatically better, but it's also a difference in scope.  Those Japanese Godzilla films were made with a few million bucks in general (One of the early 2000's Godzilla films was only 8.5 million).  This was a massive 125 million dollar movie and I never enjoyed it as much as I did watching a guy in a suit, beat up another guy in a suit, while stomping around a miniature city.  They are charming to me, even with their flaws, but this is just not something I enjoyed.  Kind of a good modern take on this same type of movie, would be Rampage.  It's a big dumb action movie with lots of death and destruction, but I had a great time with that movie.  The monsters are great, it clips along at a good pace, I'm fine with the characters and the finale is a great time. 

Still don't like Godzilla '98.  Love this part from Godzilla: Final Wars...

[Cartagia]

Orange is the New Black - Season 6

After the storytelling experiment that was Season 5, OitNB decided to go back to telling stories in a more similar fashion to the first four seasons, but tried to shake things up with a new location and new characters.

While the overarching stories of the season generally seemed to work, and the new setting was fine, the new characters was generally kind of a wash and the smaller stories just felt like retreads of previous plot points, just with the characters shuffled around.  The setting and cast shake-ups meant that a few fan favorite characters got left behind, and some others got the short end with their own stories.

Still pretty entertaining, but  definitely running out of steam.

[kamikazekeeg]

Think I figured out my next series rewatch after going through Star Wars and Jurassic Park, but we got a new Terminator coming out next year and it's been years since I watched the first 4 of them.  In my head, I remember the first one being good, T2 being great, T3 being goofy and dumb, but entertaining for certain parts, Salvation being a great idea that wasn't executed the best, and Genisys, the newest one, being pretty bad. 

I'm going through the Godzilla 1998 cartoon show right now (It's honestly been a more entertaining watch than the movie lol), so after this, I think I'll go and check out the Terminator series again to see how it all held up.

[bikingjahuty]

Think I figured out my next series rewatch after going through Star Wars and Jurassic Park, but we got a new Terminator coming out next year and it's been years since I watched the first 4 of them.  In my head, I remember the first one being good, T2 being great, T3 being goofy and dumb, but entertaining for certain parts, Salvation being a great idea that wasn't executed the best, and Genisys, the newest one, being pretty bad. 

I'm going through the Godzilla 1998 cartoon show right now (It's honestly been a more entertaining watch than the movie lol), so after this, I think I'll go and check out the Terminator series again to see how it all held up.

It's pretty fun to do this when I new entry in a series is on the horizon. I'm going to be rewatching the Predator movies since the new one comes out in a month. It's been a really long time since I watched the first Predator, but only about a year since I watched the other two. I'm tempted to watch the AvP movies too, but they are so bad (especially the 2nd one) that I'm tempted to pass on those.


I'll probably rewatch the first two Terminator movies only since the new one retcons 3, Salvation and Genysis, but it could be fun to just rewatch all of them anyways.

[kamikazekeeg]

Think I figured out my next series rewatch after going through Star Wars and Jurassic Park, but we got a new Terminator coming out next year and it's been years since I watched the first 4 of them.  In my head, I remember the first one being good, T2 being great, T3 being goofy and dumb, but entertaining for certain parts, Salvation being a great idea that wasn't executed the best, and Genisys, the newest one, being pretty bad. 

I'm going through the Godzilla 1998 cartoon show right now (It's honestly been a more entertaining watch than the movie lol), so after this, I think I'll go and check out the Terminator series again to see how it all held up.

It's pretty fun to do this when I new entry in a series is on the horizon. I'm going to be rewatching the Predator movies since the new one comes out in a month. It's been a really long time since I watched the first Predator, but only about a year since I watched the other two. I'm tempted to watch the AvP movies too, but they are so bad (especially the 2nd one) that I'm tempted to pass on those.


I'll probably rewatch the first two Terminator movies only since the new one retcons 3, Salvation and Genysis, but it could be fun to just rewatch all of them anyways.

Right, I forgot about Predator, I might have to do that also since it's coming up here in less than 2 weeks.

[kamikazekeeg]

And the Predator train begins.  Probably not gonna do Alien vs Predator (That may change), so I'll just be sticking with the three main movies.

Kicking it off with the original Predator movie, which I haven't watched in a long time, but I saw enough back in the day to still remember a whole lot of it, I mean there's just so many memorable lines.  Honestly, everyone knows Predator, so I won't go to into it, as it mostly holds up after all this time.  The only exception are the effects.  Anything practical is great, but the CG camouflage struggles to look better than a blob most of the time.  Also, after all this time, seeing all the visions the Predator has, I don't have a clue how he supposed to actually see in any way lol  That and cheesy dialogue aside, it's still just a pure 80's action movie.

Figured I'd just binge through the first two, get the old ones out of the way first before I dive into possibly the AVP series and Predators.  I never watched this one as much as the first, so I didn't remember too much about it outside of some of the actors and the setting.  The change in setting is fun and while I feel like it's more inconsistent than the first movie and tonally is off at times, bordering on feeling like Robocop or Demolition Man in tone, it's still pretty solid.  CG is a slight step up, with most of the effects being fine, except for maybe the ending with the other Predators showing up.  They do not blend in at all as they appear lol

Danny Glover is pretty great in this as the take no shit cop.  Arnold works for what he had to do, but Glover is a step up in quality for sure in terms of acting.  Love that Bill Paxton was killed by both the Alien and the Predator lol The other characters are fine too.  I still like the first movie more, but this isn't bad at all.  Kind of a bummer it didn't do as well as the first as we didn't get another Predator film for 14 years, with AvP, and a pure Predator film doesn't come till Predators, which is 20 years later.

[Cartagia]

Love that Bill Paxton was killed by both the Alien and the Predator lol

And The Terminator!

[bikingjahuty]

I meant to comment on this, but totally forgot.


I also grew up with renting old Godzilla VHS tapes in the early 90s before this movie came out. Hell, I probably rented Godzilla 1985 a dozen times as a kid and watched over 20 times during my entire life. The originals certainly have a charm to them that has never been replicated again by anyone, but Toho. With that said, I do kind of like this movie.


Is Tristar's Godzilla a masterpiece, definitely not. Is it a objectively good movie, not really, but personally I like it for what it is. I feel like it's a different take on Godzilla and I'm actually happy that Toho decided to make this Godzilla into another character all together, Zilla, and encorperate it into their Godzilla universe. The movie is definitely entertaining for a giant monster movie whether it's looked at as Godzilla or the monster Zilla. Like other films I like, there is a fair amount of bias in that I have a lot of nostalgia for this movie and liked it a lot as a kid, again, even though I grew up with the old Toho films.


To be honest, I actually like this movie more than the 2014 Legendary Godzilla movie, which I felt was too much about crappy characters we didn't even care about and not enough about the monsters, including Godzilla who got very little screen time. And the screen time he was on was shot at night mostly so it was hard to see everything that was going on. I don't consider that a bad movie, but it's one of my least favorite Godzilla films; I'm simply saying that the 1998 Godzilla movie was better imo.


Now, hopefully we can agree that Shin Godzilla is better than either American Godzilla movie

[burningdoom]

Love the Predator and Terminator films. Those are what all action films should aspire to be like.

[kamikazekeeg]

Now, hopefully we can agree that Shin Godzilla is better than either American Godzilla movie

Yeah I'd agree with that lol

I like Godzilla 2014 more than Godzilla 1998 myself, even with it lacking Godzilla through most of it.  It's just all around better acted, and the finale is cool, even if it was a poor idea to tease Godzilla for so long.  It's not a great movie, but at least they are making up for it with Godzilla: King of the Monsters next year.