Posts from Recently viewed movies.

Today, STS channel was showing anime all day. I was helping my mother and watching it at the same time. It was a very touching story about a girl who is a witch. Then I watched a bit of "Spirited Away." I hadn't really watched anything like that before, but my mother said she used to watch anime even back in school. That surprised me a little.

Yes, both are wonderful and very touching, both "Delivery Service" and Spirited Away. I'm glad you enjoyed them.

Miyazaki is overrated.

Overall, he's not bad; I appreciate atmospheric works and respect them, even if the atmosphere doesn't resonate with me. Miyazaki is just that case. His magic and "coziness" simply don't affect me. Yes, they're good cartoons, with good messages, but there's no "wow" effect, and there never has been. And with the never-ending hype everywhere and the nauseating AI-generated remakes of everything "in the style of Studio Ghibli," I'm already getting sick of him. For myself, I can only mention "Nausicaä," I should rewatch it sometime.

A Fistful of Dynamite (1971)

The revolution!? Don’t try to tell me about the revolution! I know all about the revolutions and how they start! The people that read the books, they go to people that don’t read the books -the poor people- and say: “Hoho! the time has come to have a change eh!” […] I know what I’m talking about when I’m talking about the revolutions. […] So the poor people make the change, eh… And then the people that read the books, they all sit around the big polished table and they talk and talk and talk and eat and eat and eat eh… But what has happened to the poor people? THEY’RE DEAD!!! That’s your revolution… So please, don’t tell me about revolutions. And what happens afterwards? The same fucking thing starts all over again!

The beginning was good – it reminded me of an expansion pack. Later, it was 50/50: there were cool moments, but also some chaotic/slightly tedious ones, which is probably not surprising considering the film's two-and-a-half-hour length.

Brad Pitt reminded me a little of this actor.

Hmm, salmonella.

Mm, salmonella.

This is a perfectly white, clean egg, clearly from a store, so don't worry.

The scariest thing is actually in the shop.

back then, there were no stores yet.

In 1971?

High Plains Drifter [1973]

A power fantasy from the seventies. Not as good as the previous one – there were some interesting moments, but overall, it's nothing special.

Kingsman: The Secret Service

I expected more, especially after all the hype it received back then. In the end, I couldn't even finish it while having a beer; I dropped it halfway through. The setting is a nauseatingly British one, with ridiculous, over-the-top fight scenes involving dismemberment. There are rare, unfunny attempts at lowbrow humor, and I felt embarrassed by the forced attempts to add a touch of sophistication – apparently, that's what the average Brit considers stylish (suits and ties, prim faces behind glasses, and cringe-worthy codenames for the agents). The lisping black guy in a rapper's cap and his legless waitress felt like a bad Tarantino rip-off or a children's spy movie. The plot, which already seemed absurd, didn't progress at all in the first hour – everyone just runs around, jumps through hoops in a Mary Sue fashion, while listening to pompous music from The Avengers and receiving moral lectures that were poorly disguised as wise words, like something out of a Game of Thrones scene with Tyrion Lannister. Some say that Asian cinema makes people uncomfortable with its intense emotions, and I felt something similar here. Maybe it's some kind of global island-civilization theme. Overall, it felt like this movie was made to be watched while stoned with a group of friends. I watched the third installment, about World War II; it's a mediocre movie, but at least the setting was more interesting, and it wasn't as stuffy. Yet, its rating is much lower, but I wouldn't say it's worse. In conclusion, after ten years, I finally closed this chapter, but it was all for nothing.

Overall, it seems like this movie was made to be watched while stoned, in the company of low-class friends.

I watched it while drunk on vodka, in the company of low-class colleagues, and I liked it, so it's quite possible that you are objectively right.

I watched it at home, alone, without any annoying friends or alt accounts, because I'm not a hardcore player. I don't remember my impressions anymore, maybe you can find them in the forum.

A Bronx Tale ("A Bronx Tale", USA, 1993)



I wanted to learn more about Robert De Niro's directorial talent and whether it's limited to "The Godfather." As expected, it isn't. And again, it's a drama about people with Italian roots in America. The perspectives are diverse: some try to live by the laws of the mafia in their homeland, while others try to live an honest life. And our young protagonist finds himself in the middle of all this, as if between two fires, although more accurately, between two paths that will influence his upbringing and his entire future.
And then it turns out that there are more than two sources of conflict, and that's when "A Bronx Tale" truly reveals itself.
A very good and heartwarming film.

Guys! (USSR, 1981)

A very good and heartwarming film.

I seem to have seen it in fragments before, but it needs to be watched in its entirety from beginning to end. It seems like an ordinary slice-of-life story, with issues of former wives and children, but it keeps you on the edge of your seat more powerfully than many action movies... And every five minutes, you need a break to wipe your eyes, otherwise, the tears get in the way of watching. If I were rating movies, this would be a solid 10; it wrings you out to the core, and you empathize with each of the characters as if they were yourself.
I don't know how else to give objective information without spoilers about whether it's worth watching for those who are reading the review. Well, "Only Old Men Go to Battle" leaves a similar impression, although not quite. But I think if you've seen that and liked it, you'll enjoy this one too.

I watched the first season of Better Call Saul (2015).
I wanted to quickly watch an episode or two and then get back to other things, but I ended up watching the whole season until 4 AM. I liked it, what can I say. In general, I want to say right away that I didn't really like the original series, Breaking Bad, well, it's okay, but I never understood the hype and the title of "the best series ever." But the character of Saul seemed to me to be the brightest spot there, and, in fact, the episode where he is introduced is the only one that I even rewatched, it was so enjoyable to watch him. Therefore, watching this spin-off was always in my plans, and then I suddenly remembered the original series against the background of a video from a neural network, I downloaded Better Call Saul to watch it from time to time, one episode at a time, and then I ended up watching it all at once. I'm trying to remember the first season of the original series - it seems that there were more intense situations and a more interesting plot, but it felt much more boring. I'll venture to suggest that this is due to two things:
1) The fact that there are no boring characters in the series that I simply don't care about. In the original, there were a lot of them - Hank's wife, the protagonist's family, Hank himself for the most part, in short, there was a lot of boring and unnecessary stuff. But in this series, all the attention is focused only on two characters - Saul and Mike, I personally find it less interesting to follow Mike, but still, it's more interesting than following Hank's wife, and Mike is given much less time.
2) I found Loken's review, but it's about the second and third seasons, and he writes about a lot of drawn-out scenes where nothing happens. I don't remember the original very well, but it was probably the case.
The only thing I want to note separately is the maximum cringe moment with the obviously toy gun in the second episode. This is the USA, they could have borrowed a gun from someone on the set. I even thought that maybe it was some kind of twist, but it doesn't seem to be mentioned anywhere, so I think it's a gross blunder.

It's time for a binge-watching session of various popular series!

The day before yesterday, my husband and I finished watching Lost. For many years, I stubbornly ignored it because in the 2000s, the hype annoyed me, then I didn't care, and later everyone warned me about the very bad ending.
It turned out that we started watching the horror series From, which we actually enjoyed. And since we came across information that it was somewhat similar to Lost, and they even took one actor from there, we decided it was time to give it a try.
And in general, we ended up feeling a bit disappointed. At the beginning, we had an interesting survival story with a large number of people on a godforsaken island, where all sorts of monsters lived, including bears, horses, boars, and magical farting (at the beginning, because of the sounds, I thought it was some kind of velociraptor or something like that), and the mysterious "others." But in the end, it all turned into a boring confrontation between the magical farting and the chosen one, who, through a series of idiotic events, brought a bunch of people to the island to appoint a successor. And then it turned out that the new chosen one could easily pass on the responsibilities to someone else and instantly disappear. The storyline in the last season with the alternate reality was completely unnecessary and just stretched out the runtime. Remove it, and nothing will change.
The series left the impression of chewing gum, which had a very pleasant taste at the beginning, but then it suddenly became tasteless and even slightly unpleasant, and there was no trash can nearby, so I had to keep chewing it until the very end.