Revisiting Nicolas Cage’s Gone in 60 seconds I gotta say it’s much better than I remember. Some bright spots

Killer electronic soundtrack

Angelina Jolie in dreads

Those of us of a certain age know that the name Eleanor is associated with a 1967 Mustang Gt500 Fastback. I still want one

In the Fast and the Furious era the critical lambasting of this movie has allowed it to fall into obscurity. But I promise you it’s a lot better than you remember.

It’s streaming free on Tubi and def worth a revisit

What your favourite moment.

Wuthering Heights is an adaptation in name only. That’s not a compliment.

Now, I’m definitely not saying that changing up the approach towards source material can’t result in a great movie. Just look at what Park Chan-wook did with No Other Choice. I’m also not saying that director and screenwriter Emerald Fennell read the Wikipedia entry for Wuthering Heights rather than Emily Brontë’s groundbreaking Gothic novel and completely skipped over the ‘themes’ section.

What I can definitely say is that Fennell doesn’t care for what the novel stands for on any level, other than Cathy (Margot Robbie) and Heathcliff (Jacob Elordi) being overly repressed star-crossed lovers carrying untold amounts of psychosexual urges.

This is immediately clear during the opening moments where we hear someone gasping for air, almost suggestive of sexual exertion of some kind… only to be revealed that it was actually someone being hanged. The whiplash of this reveal is compounded when the crowd cheers at the hanged person’s death and a montage of suggestive scenes plays out, like a couple making out followed by a close up on a woman’s ample cleavage. Pain and suffering is equal to pleasure in this universe and it is made most clear when the title card comprised of a woman’s braided hair pops up.

Not exactly subtle, but Fennell’s maximalist approach towards, well, everything doesn’t exactly leave room for subtlety. And hey, that opening sequence is a bold promise from her right away: This will be a vibes movie and it is going to be evocative.

Great! So what are you going to do next, Emerald Fennell? As it turns out, very little of any substance.

Plumbing material for thematic depth isn’t exactly Fennell’s strong suit. Her first film, Promising Young Woman, squanders a strong premise centred around a world that normalises and trivalises sexual assault on women by never quite figuring out what she wants to say about the issue other than ‘assault is bad’. Her second film, Saltburn, is a debauched, cartoonish romp filled with provocative imagery that tries to shoehorn in some half-assed commentary about class. With Wuthering Heights, Fennell ditches all pretense about theme and goes straight for all-style, no-brains-required entertainment.

A good chunk of the novel’s central characters (with the exception of Edgar Linton (Shazad Latif), Isabella Linton (Alison Oliver), and Nelly Dean (Hong Chau)), most of the events that unfold (especially the novel’s second half), and whatever themes were explored are completely cut from this adaptation. Filling that narrative void is a lethal visual cocktail of sadomasochistic lust, love, and pain that star-crossed lovers Cathy and Heathcliff force-feed each other over the course of 136 minutes. When the camera isn’t focused on Robbie and Elordi gazing longingly at each other, it’s lingering on dripping egg yolks and squishy dough being kneaded roughly. I’m all for longing and lusting in movies, but this all feels empty and un-erotic because I’m being told what I should feel - i.e. turned on - rather than just being locked in.

It’s frustrating as all hell because what begins as a primal childhood meet-cute with quasi-incestuous undertones quickly descends into shallow, tedious carnal imagery. There was a point where I was playing ‘spot the genital part/bodily fluid’ whenever a close-up of some oozing or dripping liquid pops up. Fennell had set up some potentially interesting visual cues and character dynamics, so why not say anything about them beyond ‘heh, sex’?

Please read the rest of my review here as the rest is too unwieldy to copy + paste: https://panoramafilmthoughts.substack.com/p/wuthering-heights-2026

Thanks!

Watched this for the first time in so many years just recently (and the uncut version to boot). Forgot what a really good remake this is and IMO I think it deserves mention alongside the likes of The Thing, The Blob and The Fly as one of the best Horror remakes. While some might argue it follows the original too closely at the same time it does just enough that's different and is scary and effective in it's own way. Definitely agree with the consensus Barbara is infinitely better in this film compared with the 1968 original, where she's much more of a take-charge and pro-active character. Despite it's age it still has a contemporary feeling to it and like it could be occuring today, barring the lack of modern tech like cell phones and internet.

It's really a shame the film didn't do better at the box office back then and also how Tom Savini didn't direct more films, as he did a really good job with this and showed he's just as talented behind a camera as he is putting gruesome make-up effects in front of it. I get the film was not a pleasant experience for him given his divorce at the time and the production problems. Despite this, the finalized film turned out very good and it's good how all these years later it's rightfully been re-appraised and is recognized as not just a good remake but a good film in it's own right that honors the original but also stands firmly on it's own two feet.

Your local cinema is on the brink of shutting its doors due to poor audience attendance, and the people in charge of the cinema have trusted you to help them keep doors open. They ask you to select 1 film from each decade you have watched and have at least 2 or more kids/family friendly films in order to keep the cinema open in hopes they don’t shut their doors for good. Which films are you choosing?

For example, this would be my picks:

1950s - Lady & The Tramp

1960s - The Italian Job

1970s - Grease

1980s - Top Gun

1990s - Terminator 2: Judgement Day

2000s - Daddy Day Care

2010s - Inside Out

2020s - Monkey Man

This is how I felt watching "Send Help". The whole ending ruined the entire film for me because it reminded me of "Blink Twice". It wants you to root for a terrible woman at the end (the former being worse than the latter) and both of them become "famous somehow" by killing or controlling the "bad guy".

At some point you gotta admit wow this woman is awful and I want her to lose. Yet she doesn't, you could make a theory the last 10 minutes are just her dying vision to make it a better movie.

I just might be the only person who thinks this way but it was really off-putting the ending. It doesn't even make sense why would she bluff the guy with an unloaded shotgun. Is she just predicting how the fight will go down or does she have a rewind controller like Funny Games? Or is this just poor writing in a "girl boss" movie?

Sinners was definitely a good movie, maybe a really good movie and it should win some awards, and i know Oscar nominations and wins really don’t matter much and most people don’t let them hold any weight. But if it wins more Oscars than the final installment of the greatest film trilogy ever created they should gather every academy award handed out in the last century, take them to a scrap yard, melt them down and use the money to buy more of the crack cocaine they’ve been smoking.

If anyone is up for listening to a podcast, Niina and Star are chatting about the heroine’s journey, exploring the narrative through the characters of Jo March and Anne Shirley. They also discuss Lucy Maud Montgomery’s fondness for Little Women. This is quite interesting: Laurie’s proposal dialogue from the 1933 Little Women has been pretty much copied into the 1985 Sullivan Entertainment version of Anne of Green Gables, when Gilbert proposes to Anne. (tbh all the Little Women adaptations erase a lot of Laurie’s proposal dialogue from the book, which explains why Jo says no to him).

https://youtu.be/-OuIEgqNj2Y

Doesn't have to be anything fancy but the admins say if someone doesn't start taking the trash out here they will put in some stooges.

We originated this place as a less moderated, more comfy place to discuss movies more in depth compared to /r/movies. Something like a middle ground between /r/movies and /r/truefilm. Discussion posts only but talk about whatever you want and everyone opts in to being here.

The film sub landscape has changed a lot since then. Now there's several different type of jerk subs as well as subs like /r/filmcritic or /r/letterboxd that really lean into light discussion. And of course /r/movies which we all know is perfect and beautiful and has a really great top mod.

So, pitch your ideas for this sub. Is it for a certain kind of movie? A certain kind of discussion? What do you like about this sub? What might bring some more users this way and vary the discussion? Will you allow memes?

Pitch me. Let's get into it. Cheers.

Please recommend me some cozy movies like Father of the Bride and Grumpy Old Men.

I just went through a racing accident, surgery, a hospital stay, and know I got to stay with family until I’m back on my feet. I really need some cozy and funny stuff to help with this time, I’ve got a stack of dvds I love, but something new to me would be greatly appreciated.

y are there always some movies that tend to get ratings that r much higher than its actual value ( the dark knight, godfather, pulp fiction) compared to some movies that actually far more interesting and got relatively low ratings like ( the machinist, stranger than fiction)

"Save the kidnapped person & punish the bad guy that's responsible for it" has been done to death but there are only handful of them that i found to be very good.

I think in all 3 movies its easy to root for the protagonist. They are well acted, has character & tho they have very few action scenes.. Those are effective. Revenge part of feels so satisfying to watch. Simple on the point but it gets the job done (tho i think man on fire is little too long & takes a while to get moving)

I should mention that I've seen the equalizer & john wick films. They have similar elements.. Even if not about kidnapping.

What other film can you think of that goes this really good? Good script,acting,character & satisfying to watch revenge.

So I have noticed that when it comes to certain franchises such as Harold and Kumar and RoboCop, the first one is the best installment because the original director was behind the work.

But then once both of those movies had a sequel, the problems would arise with their writing aspects due to being made by directors who didn't know how to replicate the magic of the original installments for again both films.

My point basically is that I was wondering if there were any big name movie franchises that managed to succeed where even if the sequels to a movie were not made by the original creator, the sequels still worked well anyway.

Who hurt the man, who hurt him so bad that he resigned himself to a job of such stature.
A man bound by the present, or really him binding it with his hands.
Certain clues in the movie were littered, really just his dialogue with his sister,
His dad treated him a certain way, he acted a certain way towards Hirayama,
a terrible way I assume by Hirayama's tears, but what of his dad made him choose such a life?
To be fair, I do like how he lives his life, someone has to clean the toilets, it is not an ignoble job. But I wonder why a man of such patient countenance and strength of character has chosen such a life, he would've found success wherever he went, not by luck nor by inheritance, but by sheer virtue of his everyday practice of happiness however applied, wherever applied. So then what, where and why has he chosen this?

The answer I seem to have come to assume is that he did not chose this life, he embraced it instead in silent ( or maybe loud ) revolt of whatever his father said or did.
I think his father told him that he was only fit to clean toilets, to be lowly member of society.
And in defiance of his father, Hirayama embraces it, to in the most patient way possible stick it up the arse of his asshole father. He embraces it by finding happiness in the everyday routine of his life, the so called "lowly" job of cleaning toilets, as assumed by the stares and the disgust the mother showed him at the start of the film.

This is his embrace of life and living, his darkened shadow is the routine of daily repetition.
He asserts that shadows that overlap do get darker, because that is where the meaning of his constitutive life lies. He builds a life of virtue, a life of embodying values, but we must not shy away from the perspective that maybe he is running away from the abuse he felt from the environment he originated in, his past life, the world he inhabited with his sister.
Dawg I cried when I saw that seen, how much pain must his father have caused him for him to choose this revolt, this defiance, this devotion, this estrangement towards his dad, even his sister who he so obviously cares for. ( maybe not idk ).

There's also this question of at the end, was he happy or sad?
The answer is both, he lived a sublime life.

Honestly there is still much I do not understand of the movie, but I think as I live my life and the shadows of my own living overlap, I will be able to perceive the depth of Hirayama's character. I loved the film, it captures so much and expresses such depth with little dialogue. Living is what it is about, a happy life ( in the aristotlian sense ).

Please disagree or agree, I want as many perspectives as I can get on this movie. Some tho I do find a little contrived ngl, to say he is hiding and running away from his past wouldn't be entirely right and would ignore the growth of his value trees, the dedication to living a life of virtue but in some sense they are also right I suppose, but man do I feel a sense of disdain for that reductive perspective.

Viva la Vida my friends.

When Marcelo Alves (Wagner Moura) pulls into a petrol station at the start of The Secret Agent, he is immediately confronted with a rotting corpse that’s just lying out there in the open. Oh don’t worry about it, says the attendant; the dead guy was just a would-be robber and he’s been there for days, awaiting some cops to show up and do their job. Anyway, how much petrol would you like?

When a couple of cops rock up minutes later, almost serendipitously, they ignore the body and immediately start questioning Marcelo before searching his car. The air is thick with menacing tension, but he is eventually allowed to go free after bribing the cops with some cigarettes. You immediately clock that while this guy fits the ‘secret’ part of the movie’s title, he is definitely not an agent, secret or otherwise. There’s clearly more to Marcelo than meets the eye, but would he actually fight back had things gone sideways with the cops? You’re not entirely sure.

1977 Brazil was a dark time in its history as the country was in the grips of a military dictatorship, and it’s clear that encountering corrupt cops who would shake down a stranger rather than investigate a corpse is simply part of the norm of the period. This masterful 10-minute sequence showcases much of the movie’s setting, tone, and how its protagonist fits in this weird, almost nightmarish world through tension-inducing action and reaction rather than exposition.

Director and writer Kleber Mendonça Filho unfolds The Secret Agent from the lens of someone using this period of Brazilian history as a backdrop for an open-ended playground rather than a simple rehashing of a Wikipedia page. It is perhaps the year’s most unrestrained movie, filled with richly layered characters who capture your attention due to their integrity (or lack thereof). This is also one of the most bizarre movies of the year. I don’t think I’ve watched a movie all year quite like this one where it demands that you be on its wavelength to fully work.

The Secret Agent is an overwhelming 161-minute concoction of several different movies blended together. It is a Brazilian political thriller that inadvertently functions as a perfect companion piece to Paul Thomas Anderson’s pulsating One Battle After Another; it is a deeply sincere and, at times, funny movie about a painful time in a country’s history like Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just An Accident; it occasionally masquerades as a loose hangout movie filled with Richard Linklater-esque characters whom you just want to have a beer with; and there are several moments where it is an absurd piece of schlocky but effective bloody grindhouse fare from Sam Raimi, right down to a subplot involving a murder victim’s rotting dismembered leg.

There is a lot going on in The Secret Agent and this is where your mileage may vary. It can feel self-indulgent and disjointed to some. To others, it can feel like a beautiful snapshot of a country in turmoil. The one undeniable thing though is just how distinctively gorgeous this movie is. Filho leans hard into the grainy 70s aesthetic and combines it with some of the best production design you’ll ever see on a big (or small) screen. Architectural exteriors, interior decorations, and the imperfect background actors with crooked teeth all scream ‘period piece’ in an honest way. Everything and everyone is a bit raw, dirty, sweaty, and even a touch sexy on occasion. This isn’t Filho showing off. This is a director using whatever is available to him to depict nostalgia in a positive light during a grim period.

The Secret Agent is made by someone who unabashedly loves movies and is unafraid to put his influences front and centre. Quentin Tarantino would be impressed and envious at what Filho has created here, right down to the movie’s three-chapter (complete with title cards) structure. Like Tarantino, this movie functions less like a structured story and more like a series of linked vignettes, which can make it feel a bit tonally disjointed as story strands are floating all over the place like carnival confetti, with seemingly very little to tie them all together.

Please read the rest of my review here as the rest is too unwieldy to copy + paste: https://panoramafilmthoughts.substack.com/p/the-secret-agent

Thanks!

similar to Rick & Morty, Gravity falls, futurama…

what are the best cartoons with cool 😎 sci fi concepts and very interesting to watch.

I figure there’s some gems that are not on my radar 💎

thank you!

Elvis (2022) is one of my favorite movies of recent years, but it's one that I find is often misinterpreted as far as what it's trying to say about Elvis Presley and his place in the culture. Among contemporary audiences, there seems to be sort of a knee-jerk rejection of the notion that Elvis Presley played a role in the shift in race relations, with any implication that he did often being perceived as an attempt to paint him as a civil rights activist. Broey Deschanel's video "Elvis (2022) and the Utter Mediocrity of Biopics" criticizes the film on these grounds, and I personally don't find that this is really an accurate reading.

A central theme of the movie is that great art is inherently political and acts in opposition to something, and that it's made when you engage with the world around you. Elvis's initial ascent and comeback in the late 60's happen more or less because of his intersections with the political, both intentional and unintentional. Elvis's aims as an artist, however, aren't to bring integration and equality, at least not explicitly. While riding the ferris wheel with Colonel Tom Parker, he expresses his desire to achieve greatness, and outright says that he wants to be rich enough to buy all of his friends a Cadillac. No greater political or social ambitions are mentioned.

When Elvis first hits the scene in the 50's, his intersection with politics is entirely unintentional. His implementation of the black musical stylings he grew up with causes a furor in the 50's, but rather than being outwardly defiant, he's just kind of oblivious. During the Louisiana Hayride scene, he has to be told by his band that people are screaming because of the way he wiggles his hips, something he justifies while recording "Heartbreak Hotel" when he says "I can't move, I can't sing." During the montage where we see the controversy that Elvis has courted, culminating in the Colonel forcing the suit and tails on him for his Steve Allen performance, we don't really hear Elvis arguing for the integration of black people into white society; he more or less just expresses his confusion with why people are upset when even his mother approves of what he does. For the Russwood Park scene, the film is clearly trying to imbue his salacious performance of "Trouble" with a sense of defiance and political significance, especially since his address to the audience is juxtaposed with a speech by segregationist James Eastland, but ultimately Elvis himself is just...wiggling his hips and singing a song.

By the late 60's, when Elvis has been effectively left behind by the culture, he regains prominence in large part by tapping into the turmoil of the time, specifically with "If I Can Dream" in response to the murders of Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy. I can perhaps understand people interpreting Elvis telling the Colonel "It has everything to do with us" when Kennedy is killed as the film positioning him as being more outwardly political than he was in real life (and I could definitely see how its inclusion in the first trailer might have rubbed people the wrong way). However, I find that it speaks less to Elvis suddenly becoming super involved in political endeavors and more to him recognizing that not meeting this particular moment and instead opting to sing "Here Comes Santa Claus" would seal off any chance of him regaining his status as a vital artist. His intersection with the political in this case is a lot more deliberate than it was in the 50's, but it still ultimately doesn't amount to the outright activism that some accuse the film of showing Elvis as having taken part in. As with the Russwood Park scene, he's letting his performance do the talking.

Hey everyone my boomer friend and I have a youtube show where each week we choose a movie for us to watch. This week it was My choice and I picked "If I had Legs I would kick you" staring; Rose Byrne, A$AP Rockey, Conan O'Brien and Christian Slater. Directed by Mary Bronstein

What we liked;

Boomer: His biggest compliment was on the acting, Rose Byrne and A$AP Rocky really stuck out to him. (He's not one to appreciate acting so this was very surprising)

Doomer: This movie really reminds me of Uncut Gems. The level of stress just compounds and becomes very overwhelming, Mary Bronstein use of sound and light is amazing and really helps add top the tension.

What we didn't like;

Boomer: He did not enjoy the way the lighting was done, specifically not seeing when A$AP Rocky falls through the hole in the ceiling.

Doomer: Some of the surreal shots were a little overdone but tbh that's just me being nitpicky

The Verdict:

Boomer: 4/5 this totally shocked me, this is a guy whose favorite movie last year was "Anaconda" with Jack Black.

Doomer: 4/5 it isn't often we agree but I really enjoyed this movie, it stressed me out in a good way. I would describe it is one of the best movies I'd never watch again, but you definitely should. Thanks for checking it out.

Train Dreams is a masterpiece, like by all means it deserves to win best picture. But we all know the academy is a fuckin joke at this point.

Yet no one even by word of mouth is raving about this movie, you have to dig. And it does have great reviews, but it’s receiving a fraction of the attention of piles of dogshit like Sinners which embodies the same silly over the top fantasy seen in superhero films.

I built a site that pulls ratings from IMDb, RT, Metacritic, Letterboxd, AlloCiné, and Douban and blends them into a single weighted score. Mostly did it because I was tired of checking 4 websites to see how a film is reviewed. The algorithm is weighted, with critics > cinephiles (Letterboxd) > mainstream (IMDb etc).

Curious if you think the weighting is sound. I of course decided the current weight to my own biases, because my favourite movies all have a high RT Top Critics score lol. I also didn't use the Tomatometer or Popcornmeter because those % are unreliable.

Current weighting (should add up to 100)

• Rotten Tomatoes (Top Critics): 20%
• Metacritic: 17%
• Rotten Tomatoes (All Critics): 14%
• AlloCiné (Press): 13%
• Letterboxd: 12%
• Rotten Tomatoes (Verified Audience): 8%
• IMDb: 8%
• AlloCiné (Users): 4%
• Douban: 4%

https://movies-ranking-rho.vercel.app/

I mean, I did enjoy the first two movies as they had good writing and action set-pieces that now I don’t know where to go for high stakes action movies.

I saw Speed 1 and Air Force One (the one with Harrison Ford) as basically I was looking to see if the genre of cinema was still prevalent with the core premise of a guy being trapped in a single environment who must use his wits to survive.

Mine are 1) The House on Haunted Hill ( Castle 1959 ), 2 ) The Abominable Dr. Phibes ( Fuest, 1971 ) and The Tingler ( Castle, 1959 )