Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

So the discussion at https://tildes.net/~movies/1ar2/martin_scorsese_says_fight_back_against_comic_book_movie_culture_by_supporting_directors_like made me think about mainstream Hollywood way of movies versus - well everyone else? I am not even sure I like the term "arthouse" movies, because movies are movies regardless of the boxes we put them in, but for the sake of the argument movies that don't fall in the category of traditional mainstream storytelling. Is it just French artsy fartsy pretentious weirdness or is (quote) real cinema (unquote)?

I think my movie habits have been pretty average. I am not American, but most of what I have watched during my lifetime have been Hollywood productions. By a huge margin. In recent years I found myself going more and more bored with both movies and tv series from whatever the algorithms at the streaming services were pushing to me. Not that it was bad, just felt more and more like a product designed after a specific set of criteria aimed at my taste demographic. So I forced myself to break out of the bubble and watched movies totally outside my comfort zone with something I am sure the algorithms would never have recommended me. Started with movies by Kieslowski and Wong Kar-wai. And since then I feel like a whole new world of movies has opened up for me. Not that everything is magically great. There are still pretentious French movies that make me roll my eyes, but most of all it is something different. Story telling rules I thought couldn't be broken are thrown in the air and something completely unexpected appears on screen instead.

It takes some getting used to. I really struggled with a good deal of self-doubt whether I could actually understand these movies, because I have studied film theory or went to art school. At the end of the day it is really just about watching things intuitively and trying not to analyze everything or thinking about what things are supposed to mean, and be curious to why the movie does things that maybe the complete opposite of the film techniques I was used to from more mainstream movies.

This is not to bash at the Hollywood blockbuster way of filmmaking, because when that formula works - it really damn well works. But so can something completely different like Hlynur Pálmason's Godland, Haneke's Funny Games or Bujalski's Computer Chess - just to name a few of my recent very compelling movie experiences.

Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

Good morning, afternoon, and evening everyone! I hope everyone's doing well, or at least hanging in there this weekend. Now let's talk about horror movies that feature monsters or animals killing people in various fashions!

Are you a fan of monsters from outer space, or a more grounded flick about an alligator terrorizing the sewers of 1980s NYC? What about man-made horrors beyond our comprehension? A dog that was having a bad day after being bitten by a rabid bat? Let your voice be heard in the comments below!

I'll start with a movie the Sci-fi channel used to show every now and then (though it originally aired as a mini-series on ABC): The Beast, based off of Peter Benchley's novel of the same name. If the author sounds familiar, he wrote a book you may have heard of: Jaws.

Featuring a giant squid terrorizing yet another idyllic New England town, The Beast isn't a very good movie when you get down to it, but it's an enjoyable watch nonetheless. It's essentially a 90s remake of Jaws with a giant squid instead of a shark, but it has a certain coziness and warmth to it that I enjoy. It's not even close to my favorite creature feature, but it was on my mind so I figured I'd let someone else talk about how awesome Lake Placid is. And this movie has Gil Grissom from CSI going up against a giant squid, so that's pretty neat.

Anyway, it's the weekend, let's watch some horror movies!