Midweek Movie Free Talk

I have been rewatching some old favorites the last week.

Goldeneye was my first Bond movie and Brosnan will always be the Bond I grew up with, and I played the heck out of the Nintendo 64 game, so the whole vibe of this film is pure nostalgia. It is very 90s cheesy and Brosnan hasn't quite settled into the character yet, that came with the next film, but it is still a classic.

Also revisited The Fifth Element and that is still wildly entertaining. I love the whole comicbook look and feel of everything. There is tactile sense to the set designs, the costumes, the world building. Bruce Willis is okay as the straight man here, but the real highlight was in the over the top colorful cast of Gary Oldman, Ian Holm, Chris Tucker and Brion James.

Death Wish 3 was sort of a guilty pleasure, though I tend to hate that term. The views on vigilantism and solving gang problems with a big handgun is deeply problematic in every imaginable way. It is just also ridiculous entertaining with how over the top everything is, and the whole shootout scene at the end plays out like a shooting gallery video game.

The first time I watched Friday the 13th Part 2 I wasn't properly in tune with that style of slasher yet, but I have improved my education and mindset, so it was much better this time around. RIP Alice, long live Ginny! That I have since fallen in love with Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, also made this much more enjoyable with many more references falling into place. Like with Death Wish 3, I can respect and appreciate how committed the film is to its trashiness so to speak. There is no shame in its commitment to T&A, male gaze and overall hornyness.

Spiderman 4 came out on streaming recently so I got around to watching it. I thought it was pretty good but not impressively so. 7/10.

No in depth analysis or review here, just continuously wondering what makes Spiderman so succesful compared to everything else in the genre. I like the MCU franchise but I really don't understand what makes this particular character so much more interesting or appealing than all the others, especially to the point of selling that much better?

You Can See Everything
We saw everything friday night. Sold out local indie theater.
Everyone one the edge of their seat. Entire audience completely captivated for the entire run time. Loudest gasps were for:

spoiler?

a penis.

What an experience. Still can't stop thinking about it, talking about it. Walked out understanding less about everything than when I walked in, but in the best possible way. Abso-lutely fantastic.

I was going to wait until the end of the month to post in these threads, but I want to strike while the iron is hot on:

Wildwood (2026): ★★★ (of 3)

I had watched Coraline (2009) recently and thought it was just a rung or two above "meh", which was disappointing compared to its reputation. Wildwood is significantly better. The movie has a lot of minor characters who don't end up being that interesting or important, but that doesn't drag the movie down too much. The story is good, although I was expecting a twist that never happened and would have been better (but no details b/c spoilers). It doesn't pull its punches like you might expect in an animated movie and earns its PG-13 rating in the first 90 seconds.

The main character is named Prue. Is that a common name in the Pacific Northwest that I'm just too midwestern to understand? I kept mishearing it as Pearl or Ruth because I'd never heard that name before. It threw me for a loop for a bit in the same way as the princess in Princess Mononoke (1997) not being named Mononoke.