I'm interested to find out who you think is making good films? I'm also interested in what your favourite film from them is, and why you like it.

Feel free to interpret it how you like -- I'm interested in distribution as well as production companies, as well as producers, directors, writers, and actors.

This is what you get when you search VUDU for free science fiction movies. The plot is banal enough. A spacecraft is discovered in Colorado that is 14,000 years old. A linguist and her lover are hired to read an inscription and then summarily paid and told to go home by the mysterious and unlikeable head of the project, Richard Kontral.

This description in no way does justice to how bad the script is. My first theory was that a rich father gave his fourteen year old son a chance to create a movie for his birthday present. But it's really just a low budget sequel to an obscure cult film called Moontrap.

The lead character, Scout, is played by Sarah Butler who evidently rose to wordly fame in I Spit on Your Grave. Every line that Scout says to the villain includes adolescent sexual insults. The villain is I believe a washed up actor from an old sitcom called The Nanny. This guy is really hard to watch, the acting is as bad as the script.

There's a scene of robots fighting that looks like it was choreographed with Rockem Sockem Robots, a toy from my childhood. If you're a collector of bad movies, this is a true gem.

It was tough to watch, but our free streaming was slim pickings that night. I wanted to watch Day of the Triffids a classic bad movie from the '60's , but got outvoted. At least that movie was based on an interesting SF novel by John Wyndham. Maybe tomorrow night.

I just found out about this and it's something I guess I should have known about before.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Smithee

Alan Smithee (also Allen Smithee) is an official pseudonym used by film directors who wish to disown a project. Coined in 1968 and used until it was formally discontinued in 2000,[1] it was the sole pseudonym used by members of the Directors Guild of America (DGA) when a director, dissatisfied with the final product, proved to the satisfaction of a guild panel that he or she had not been able to exercise creative control over a film. The director was also required by guild rules not to discuss the circumstances leading to the movie or even to acknowledge being the project's director.

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000647/

We have about a million films showing vampires, zombies, werewolves, and ghosts.

But despite rich folklore traditions we see very few films about other creatures. There is a handful of films dealing with leprechauns, pixies, trolls, fairies, witches, goblins, gnomes, etc. And that's just the western traditions. We have huge range of unexplored creatures from around the world. If I had to sit through yet another vampire film I'd rather it was based on adze traditions than Bram Stoker reinventions.

Why are there so many films that tread the same ground about vampires, zombies, and ghosts, and so few films about everything else?

Here's the IMDB page for The Souvenir (distributed by A24). https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6920356/

IMDB users give the score as 6.6, and the user reviews are stuffed full of people who hate it. The critic reviews are almost entirely positive though.

Here's the Cherry Picks page for The Souvenir. https://www.thecherrypicks.com/films/souvenir

They use reviews from "female-identifying and non-binary film critics", and as a result the film gets good reviews.

I find the reviews surfaced by Cherry Picks to be more thoughtful, more considered, and more useful to me than those surfaced by IMDB or MetaCritic (even though they all pull critic reviews from many of the same sources).

I've found some great films via Cherry Picks.

Used to love reading the IMDB boards after checking out a flick. Up until, of course, Amazon's takeover and purging. Now I feel dirty using the site to check out info about films, and am trying to break the habit of using it as my 'go-to' site.

Letterboxd and TheMovieDatabase seem to be the 2 most credible alternatives. Any other suggestions on the Web3.0 (or 2.5) solution to a great community to kick back, contribute and learn with others about film?

Some of the works of Peckinpah had been on my watch list for months, sitting there in a subfolder of a subfolder. From the choice of Straw Dogs and Cross of Iron, I chose the aforetitled, liking the idea of embarking on a bit of a journey through Mexico with a gritty protagonist as we experience splatterings of violence and negotiate the thoughts of a down and out vagabond making a ran for his riches.

The film left me with mixed feelings. I enjoyed the path of Benny, experiencing how his character is unwavering in his desire to take that last lucky ticket out of debauchery street, but didn't care much for his journey's partner. While I appreciated the dynamic of the relationship, the understanding they both had that they weren't in love with each other, but all they both had, the chemistry and dialogue didn't really resonate with me at parts. I actually was rather glad when this relationship came to its abrupt end as the film entered its final 3rd.

On top of that, there was major issues with the sound which made it difficult to fully immerse myself in the journey at times. I found myself feeling I was watching a caricature of a 70s movie now and again, as opposed to be engrossed in a gritty noir-esque adventure.

But all in all, an enjoyable film which has left an impression. I always appreciate watching unpolished characters navigating circumstances plotted outside their usual courses, then watching how they deal with the inevitable implosion. From what I've read since, the film was one which perhaps accurately portrayed the director's life at the time of filming; dealing with various booze-infused demons. That rawness definitely shows, as does the inevitable imperfections in this movie's execution.

7.5/10