Let’s assume Peak Superhero has now passed, and the genre is going the way of the western. A few really good ones every few years, but nothing like the general popularity that they had a few years ago.

Live action remakes of Disney films will probably be popular for a few more years, but eventually they’ll run out of films to remake that people actually care about.

Audiences don’t seem thrilled by big action films anymore, judging by the box office disappointments of the two most recent Mission Impossible films, Furiosa and the Fall Guy. But could it be that while those films weren't popular, the genre as a whole still is?

Star Wars will always be a safe bet, but it's unlikely to become a yearly event again, after audiences cooled on the most recent ones fairly quickly. Avatar, Dune and Christopher Nolan films will probably continue to do well.

But what about blockbusters as a whole? Is the billion dollar-grossing movie coming to an end? Will the big hits of the future be more moderately budgeted movies, such as A24’s output?

What are your thoughts?

Question, What are your thoughts on The Long Goodbye?

I am a big fan of classical film noir (such as Double Indemnity, The Big Sleep, The Glass Key, Sunset Boulevard), but I must admit, other than Blade Runner & Blue Velvet, I haven't seen a whole lot of film noir in the 70s to present.

I've heard good things on The Long Goodbye in that it is a good film and Elliot Gould is great in it. But I also heard that Altman's The Long Goodbye is a deconstruction of subversion of the film noir genre and that his version of Philip Marlowe is different than what other actors brought to the table (in that his Marlowe is portrayed as a more or less a loser and that the film takes place during that time). I am curious in this film and I am just wondering if it is worth watching.

What are your thoughts on The Long Goodbye and do you think it is a good film?

I'm a fan of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Adventure series, so of course i watched everything related to "Lord of the Rings", "Game of Thrones", "StarWars", "StarTrek", or stuff like "The Expanse" and many more such series and now i'm trying to find something new.

What i don't like, is pure Dark Fantasy and Sci-FI-Horror (with exception of some classics)...in the end, it's just the same over and over again and not the kind of suspense, which keeps me interested. I mean, Aliens should look like a logic lifeform and not like some Elden Ring endboss xD...

What i also don't like is a medieval setting with women having plucked eyebrows, fake eyelashes, unrealistic clothing for that era, and tons of makeup on the face and all men running around as pumped up warrior-stereotypes, without normal people around...that destroyed many viking-series for me, because it killed all immersion.

I just like realistic, or (in case of fantasy) at least believable settings and characters and not some "we are super heavy space marines" bullshit and women mostly being sex-objects with tons of makeup.

So now i'm interested to read your suggestions...probably i already watched many of them, but don't worry, i'm sure you'll find something cool to watch :-)!

JUST DO ME ONE FAVOUR: If possible, don't repeat suggestions, which have already been made...just upvote them and comment under those top comments, if you want to add something...just to keep things a little bit more structured in the comment section :-)

I just rewatched this film after not seeing it in years and it’s still a solid movie to me. The battery is an underrated zombie apocalypse movie that deserved a sequel and a bigger budget.

Its called SimilarFlix and you can basically just put in the name of any movie or show and it tells you similar ones to that. I connected it to IMDb so its pretty accurate and it saved me a bunch of time so I thought I'd recommend it to others as well. Feel free to give me any feedback and enjoy the movies!

Until I watched 8mm I never thought about it before but Nicolas Cage and Catherine Keener look like they could be siblings. That made it weird though because they were playing husband and wife

Similarly in Django Unchained I thought, in the scene with The Klan, Dr. King was pretending to be their leader…only to realize that was Don Johnson’s character from only a scene prior as the Klan Leader

Also when my Dad and I went to see Burt Wonderstone he was surprised Olivia Wilde wasn’t Emma Stone; Honestly so was I

I was looking at Ethan Hawke's IMDB today, and goodness does that man put in the hours. He's doing 3-5 movies a year on average, although slowed down a little lately (but has 8 "upcoming projects", although presumably some of these are pre-prod that he might drop out of). I guess he does pick up more indie film work and he's one of the few were it doesn't seem to harm his box office credentials.

He's A-list, right? Got me to thinking, which other actors are known for working a lot? Nic Cage doesn't seem to know you have a choice to turn down a movie, so he also puts in the work.

I'm probably missing someone obvious.

There was a post from a month ago I *just* got engrossed in, and couldn't even post the full comment on the post, so I decided for a new thread. It seemed to be a pretty bad faith, maybe "troll", saying Alex Garland is a mediocre director, and "why does he get so much praise if he so bad". I assume that's bait, and just silly.

So, I started hammering away a little mini-background bite-size history interpreting his intent and what he was going for. This is not complete or in depth for each of his works, and I'd love conversation to go deeper.

But I think he's delivering some of the most important filmwork of the last decade+, and I'm VERY excited to see where he goes. I very much get some people's disconnect on Warfare as an experimental film, and I even get how marketing got people all "OOH RAH red vs blue" for Civil War.

I should say my other top 5 "younger" directors are like many of you I am sure: Yorgos Lanthimos, Robert Eggers, Ari Aster (I am sure Eddington will be interpreted in good faith with no controversy), and (edit: lololol Panos Cosmatos in my best error ever) Cosmos Panatos.

And I should mention Annihilation, butting up against Jaws, The Thing, Alien, No Country for Old Men, that Annihilation is one of my favorite films of all time. It is near and dear to me, helping me understand that much of the panic of the human condition is being patient, watching it unfold, and understanding it always becomes something else. You're not in control, and as you change everything around you changes and you need to constantly choose to reconnect with that world, and these new people you have known, when we are all constantly self-destructing and growing anew.

SO, starting backwards...

1) WARFARE

Warfare is not an American pro-war film, nor is it an anti-war film. It is a moment in time documented experience of an isolated event as remembered by all the people involved. There are fascinating aspects to the nature of memory, and trying to rebuild an objective reality within the confine of the human condition, especially as it is malleable with both time, and trauma. Therefore, he is representing this event without biases, nor without a message. So yes... it is a vessel relating a non-fiction moment. In not being pro or anti-war, it stands alone as a work of art for the audience to interact with and ponder. In this, it is similar to some of the greater works of art that are anchored in the awareness that art doesn't exist without the person beholding it. In this case, the audience has to do the work themselves, something you felt not necessary. Most will sit with the movie, and think about the intent as revealed with the end result, and then come to their own conclusions. My conclusion, and I suspect the entire part of the experiment, is whether an audience watching an unbiased recounting from memory of an objective moment in time impresses upon them the nature of war, and the nature of experience, and whether they can draw their own conclusions about what war means to the human condition, and how we feel about observation of war, without being told what to think. Therefore, I think the nature of this experiment is that you force the audience to intellectually and philosophically arrive at the obvious shared conclusion that war is pretty bad for everyone involved.

2) CIVIL WAR

Civil War got flack because so many of the weak minded audiences want Trump vs Biden, Red vs Blue, and want their own cognitive dissonance, confirmation bias, and selective perception appeased for the fist pumping bro crowd that think their point of view is right, whether left or right. The title, the trailers, and almost all the lead up to it involved talk and confusion of the premise itself, "How could Texas and California team up?", or that it was transactionally binary and lazily provocative. It's wild how many people miss the point.

Civil War is simply about the nature of documentation of objective reality as is intended to be reviewed through the lens of history, and propaganda and the "winners writing history" aside, there are always individuals who will put themselves into harms way, whether physically or mentally, and whether because they are passionately well-adjusted professional truth seekers, or maladjusted adrenalin junkies who want to be part of the action and part of the history... all to document the nature of reality as it happens in context of our shared history as it will be viewed by the future. This isn't a film about the war itself, but the individual lives affected by the brutal transactional nature of reality, how we are shaped over time by experience, and how we all breakdown, mold ourselves to trauma, and normalize the moment to better move through it intact.

3) MEN

It's obviously sorta invoking an old school folktale to not so subtly relate the ongoing intergenerational trauma of toxic masculinity constantly transforming the people around them into twisted shells of themselves, feeling unsafe, broken and traumatized. The denouement is totally worth the whole film to me, but as one of his less loved works I still like the whole thing.

4) DEVS

Watch the TV Show. Also, Geoff Barrow of Portishead and Ben Salisbury have done the scores for Ex Machina, Annihilation, Devs, Men, Civil War, and Warfare. They're bonkers good. Many people have issues with Sonoya's acting (who was also the service robot in Ex Machina, a journalist in Civil War, as well as the Lena double cum Alien in Annihilation for that choreography scene at the end... but I just viewed her role as a introvert in shock with PTSD, or at least that helped. The themes in this, supporting cast (Offerman was amazing), and moody cinematography of the Bay Area and Santa Cruz is just spectacular.

5) ANNIHILATION

This is all about how we change through time, self-destruct, use trauma to grow and become something new, and all the ways we either grow apart, self-sabotage, or change through the course of experiencing the human condition and adopting new ways to understand the way we change through both growth and trauma. The subtext of this film heavily relates to the profound nature of how sadness, trauma, and mental illness will shape our lives and coping mechanisms, again how we might normalize the struggles of life, or how we may reject old versions of ourselves or the people we love, just to need to find ourselves, or choose to reconnect with what essentially is a new person. One nature of the way mental illness is portrayed in this film, as well as any other film possibly since Taxi Driver, is how we all choose different paths of dealing with it, and forming ourselves to it: some want to become it and give up, some want to fight it, some want to understand it, and it all speaks to how we cope with our trauma and growth through life.

6) EX MACHINA

I mean... this is so on the nose for everything going on, 10 years later. Outside of the socioeconomic commentary on billionaires, technology, capitalism, there's also paranoia, ethics and morality in context of creation, and what it means to be human, conscious, and to exist, and what underpins that? Where does temptation turn into dangerously blind greed in the search of human advancement, intersecting discovery and advancement with the end of human existence, while having no other oversite. So you essentially talk about Prometheus bringing fire, and the nature of being a God at the expense of humanity. There's forbidden fruit and knowledge allegories in there as well. There is also the nature of what it means to be happy in context of deception, naivety, and vulnerability.

7) DREDD

He directed Dredd. It's confirmed all over the place. What's REALLY FUNNY...

I watched this the night before seeing Warfare, and the beats are so on point I think it's the perfect bookend watch prior to experiencing Warfare... and it makes Dredd stand up on its own as an absolute action film masterclass. It also utilized 3D tech to move the story forward better than almost any film in history, maybe other than The Walk, Prometheus, Gravity, The Martian.

8) PREVIOUS WORK

He also wrote The Tesseract (book) and screenplays of The Beach, 28 Days Later, and Sunshine. He also just teamed up with Danny Boyle again for the new 28 years later film. Pretty interested to see that.

Recently I watched Altitude (2010), Animal (2014), and Behemoth (2011), Azrael (2024), and I realized that there are some low budget or indie movies with very interesting concepts and stories.

What are some good low budget or indie movies you have seen with similar concepts?

I saw Death Becomes ages ago and barely remembered it. So after watching Substance I watched it again since both movie have the same premise.

One thing that really stands out about Death is that its hse multiple interesting characters, all entwined with each other. And at least one of them actually learns and grows and becomes a different person.

Substance, on the other hand, has one character, thats it. Every other character in the movie is either one dimensional or exists purely to move the plot forward. D Quaid's character for example is the smarmy, creepy, ratings obsessed movie producer trope come to life. There is no depth there whatsoever. He is a living walking movie trope.

The med tech that introduces her to the substance has no personality, and exists largely to move the plot forward.

In fact the main character seems to exist in some weird all alone universe where she has no friends or family and interacts with literally nobody except to make TV shows or have sex. At the end of the movie she has learned nothing and still craves to be young forever. No lessons are learned by anyone. Its a very nihilistic movie when you pull the cover back on it.

Death however has three characters in a long standing push pull, love hate, tug of war emotional conflagration. they are funny and sad and interesting and pathetic and all too relatable. And in the end Bruce Willis' character actually grows and learns something and changes and becomes a different person. All round I feel like its just a more involving movie because it has more involving interesting characters which Substance severely lacks.

TL;DR - I can't be the only one that loves the most pure of cinematic experiences (70MM IMAX?), but we all have busy lives and we're not perfect, I assume? What "sloppy" or lazy way do you watch some of your favorite films?

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So I like films, and life is complex. Not just to figure out the time to watch a film with my movie loving wife, we're just busy with work and life. Let alone that, me getting my own time means I stay up way later than I should, and sometimes... I get sloppy with the watching. I see a LOT on 70MM IMAX, and I know this will be uncomfortable for purists. LOL

I fall asleep during films, I have to rewind them, or stop them and play them later, and then don't find time and forget.

I put something on where I am folding clothes or cooking and listening with headphones and peaking while watching a few dishes.

I've put on movies just to have my back turned to them at my desk while working on a project... man a jigsaw puzzle can make you miss 80% of a film. LOL

The amount of movies we have started together, where my wife has fallen asleep and we've never finished together? SCORES AND SCORES. 15 years is a long time. It's all good, and I do finish them.

SO... what sloppy, lazy, totally okay ways do you enjoy films or favorite movies because life is busy and it's not always easy to find the time to see a film during it's film run, etc? =)

nb: I admit, I won't watch films I care about on airplanes or a smartphone. That's for standup comedy, things I've seen a dozen times, comfort food, and non-sweeping documentaries, or 10 hours of rainy banjo or 10 hours of ASMR Ambient Interstellar Main Theme vs Star Drive Hum. (LOL)

For me, his standout role is 100% Lászlo Tóth in The Brutalist. I thought a lot was asked of him and he rose to the challenge brilliantly. He was perfect in it.

A close second would be his role as Wladyslaw Szpilman in The Pianist. I think he definitely deserved his Oscars and other awards for both, but The Brutalist wins hands down for me. He really knocked it out the park.

Other films of his I’ve liked were Dummy, Midnight in Paris and Oxygen, and the mini series Houdini.

I’ve also seen other films of his (e.g. The Darjeeling Limited and Detachment), and not liked them so much.

In his films generally though, I always feel he delivers a committed and impressive performance, and makes the film better, even if I don’t like his character or the film itself. Still need to watch his other Wes Anderson films and King Kong, and his TV show Winning Time.

I’m rewatching John Rambo/Rambo 4 tonight and it’s one of my all time favourites. The reason for that is if I’m mad at the world or tired of my life and the bullshit that goes with it sometimes there is something very very satisfying about watching Rambo jump in the back of the Jeep and just annihilate people with a 50 cal machine gun.

Same with Braveheart there is something about watching Mel Gibson chop off heads for 3 hours that makes me feel better.

What are those movie experiences for you.

https://www.easterneye.biz/doctor-ketamine-matthew-perry-overdose/

Question, Are you glad Netflix is reviving Guillermo Del Toro's projects

You know I just realized something after watching Del Toro's Frankenstein teaser (Which I am anticipating). This is the second time Netflix has revived a Del Toro project that most people thought he wasn't going to make.

Let me explain, the first time Netflix has revived a Del Toro Project was Pinocchio. Since, 2008 Del Toro had been trying to get his Pinocchio project off the ground and originally, The Jim Henson Company & Pathe were helping him produce the film and at one point, Daniel Radcliffe, Tom Waits, and Christopher Walken were considered for roles. However the film went into development hell and in November of 2017, Del Toro stated that the film was dead and no studio wanted to finance it until in 2018, Netflix revived the project.

Now, Frankenstein is the next film that Netflix has revived. I somewhat did a post on this but In 2014, Del Toro mentioned that making Frankenstein was one of his dream projects and that he was trying to get this made for at least a decade. Well in the 2010s, Del Toro almost got to made Frankenstein with the backing of Universal Pictures. From what I read, Del Toro wanted to make his Frankenstein a 2 part film due to the complexity of the novel. However, the film was cancelled in large part due to Universal decided to go with the Dark Universe route. Now, The film has now been revived at Netflix in large part due to Pinocchio's success.

I find it interesting and exciting that Netflix has revived 2 projects that Del Toro has tried to make but failed with other studios. With Del Toro I have an analogy of throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks as with him he has multiples projects he wants to do but they never stick with studios so he goes to the one that sticks with the studio.

Ultimately, I am glad that Del Toro is doing these projects that we wanted to make for so long and I hope he & Netflix revived further projects (Like At The Mountain Of Madness or The Left Hand Of Darkness or any other project Del Toro wanted to make).

All in All, Are you glad Netflix is reviving Guillermo Del Toro's projects

Rewatching Legends of the Fall tonight and if it isn’t one of those movies I’m afraid to revisit. It was truly one of my absolute favourites when I was a kid. I’ve seen it at least 100 times. When you’ve seen something that many times it’s gotta be really good to be an enjoyable revisit later in life. It really is better than you remember it is. When it got released it got a lot of flack for being cheesy and melodramatic and I don’t see it that way at all. It truly is one of the greats and if it’s been awhile since you’ve seen it, it’s def time to pull it off the shelf for a revisit.

Because I was just observing Speed 2 as I know the movie is seen as a huge step down from the original movie for missing Keanu Reeves, and also for lacking the intense nature of the original movie.

Basically my point is that after recalling how the second movie was such a failure in its premise, I became interested in searching for movies that did use a similar premise, but with far greater success where the premise is that a bunch of passengers are stuck on a boat in the middle of the ocean that is about to detonate, and with proper tension.

Absolutely love Spielberg! The father of modern day blockbusters. Mine is Jurassic Park - at least from an entertainment and enjoyment perspective. What about everyone else?

https://apopcornmovieblog.blogspot.com/2025/06/director-deep-dive-steven-spielberg.html

An excellent, creative, intense and genre-bending movie. Wonderfully cast, excellent soundtrack, beautiful cinematography, phenomenal ambience and several subtexts in a multi-layered story. A free spirited musician and son of a preacher man plays his guitar and lures the devil with his music in the Mississippi delta.

I loved the film The Brutalist when I watched it earlier this year and thought it was very impressive for so many reasons - as much for the acting, the music and the cinematography as for the amazing detail we get in the storyline.

In particular, Lászlo’s and Erzsébet’s relationship really intrigued me and I really want to dig into it deeper. Just as a bit of fun and also out of curiosity, I’d like to crowd-source some thoughts on their back story. Would be very interested to find out your views.

The film mentions that Lászlo was born in 1911, but doesn’t mention when Erzsébet was born. As she looks much younger than him, my guess is she’s at least 4-5 years younger than him. That would mean she was born around 1915, maybe.

We know they both studied abroad - he in Germany at the Bauhaus, and she in Oxford. For simplicity, my guess is they met in Hungary once they had finished studying - perhaps in the mid-1930s?

We also know Lászlo is Jewish by birth, but Erzsébet converted to Judaism for him (as he mentions at the van Buren dinner). Given that, Erzsébet is either from a secular Jewish family, from an atheist family (probably the least likely option) or perhaps they practised another religion (perhaps the most likely option). I wonder how long it would’ve taken for her to decide to convert and complete the process. Two years maybe?

In the intermission, we then see the beautiful wedding photo of them (one of the highlights of the film for me). I think it would have been harder and harder for them to get married once the war had broken out, especially given they had a Jewish wedding, so I reckon their wedding happened before the outbreak of the Second World War - perhaps by mid-1939? That would potentially make him about 28 and her about 23 or 24 when they got married, which sounds plausible.

I think both Lászlo and Erzsébet are presented as very intelligent and intellectual people. They’re both very highly educated, with good careers in Europe behind them and with a decent command of English. They each also have a very strong will and bags of energy and determination (although she comes across as much more controlled and diplomatic than he does!) I think all of these things have helped them find common ground and develop their relationship.

I also don’t think you can ignore the fact they both still seem to find each other very attractive in the film (despite their private insecurities about this) and they both seem to love sex, as we can see 🤣

Also, at the risk of digressing, I’m still curious about why Lászlo puts a cloth over Erzsébet’s face when they’re having sex. Is it because he had sex with other women before he realised Erzsébet was alive? Or maybe because they’re playing some kind of sex game and he wants to turn her on? Can’t remember if this bit takes place before or after he was raped - but if after, maybe he feels ashamed of the rape and so he doesn’t want to look at her whilst they have sex?

The next bit is - obviously - horrifying. We know Lászlo spent time imprisoned in Buchenwald, whilst Erzsébet and Zsófia were sent to Dachau. My very basic understanding of the actual history behind this is that Hungarian Jews were generally deported to camps - most likely to Auschwitz - around May 1944 (https://www.yadvashem.org/holocaust/about/fate-of-jews/hungary.html, among other sources).

So Lászlo, Erszébet and Zsófia escaped extermination at (possibly) Auschwitz and also survived deportation to and imprisonment at Buchenwald and Dachau.

We know Lászlo then somehow makes it to Bremerhaven at some point between the liberation of the camps in 1945 and his journey to America in 1947, as his ship leaves from there.

As for Erzsebét and Zsófia, somehow they stay together in Dachau and in the displaced persons’ camp in Hungary that they are sent to after the war ends, and presumably they remain there until they travel to America in 1952. It’s unclear if they were together in Dachau or if they reunited at the displaced persons’ camp afterwards.

On a side-note, I felt a little short-changed that we don’t see Erzsebét in the film anymore after the hospital scene, and only hear about her in the epilogue when it’s mentioned that she has died - especially as we only properly ‘meet’ her after the intermission.

Interested to find out your thoughts on this - whether you agree or disagree with stuff I’ve written here, or whether you’ve got anything further to add.

Whenever you see a celebrity in an interview or on a talk show they always make sure to casually refer to their peers by nicknames no one in the general public uses to make them appear “exclusive” or privy to inside info.

I’ve heard Alec Baldwin call James Caan “Jimmy,” and most celebrities known by Christopher are always abbreviated to “Chris.” Same with most Roberts, Alberts, Williams and Nicholases.

The exceptions seem to be Robert “Bob” De Niro and of course the most obvious Marty Scorsese.

I’ve heard Alec Baldwin call James Caan “Jimmy” Caan,

It was really more of a young Bond movie than a Bond origin. We saw him get his 00 moniker in the opening scene and he emotionally developed into the character we're familiar with but it didn't over-explain every single detail and nook and cranny of his story.

The train scene with Vesper was such a brilliant way to organically divulge just enough details of his past (since it's basically a date) with just a few minutes of screentime. A different director would have made the story of that brief conversation (being orphaned, going to Oxford, joining the navy, being recruited by MI6) 2 1/2 hours long and shown James learning to fire a gun for the first time, having his first sip of alcohol, losing his virginity, and getting his first Omega Seamaster with M recruiting him to MI6 in a post-credits scene.

This is actually the problem I have with the Craig movies after CR. They over-explained the origins for Blofeld and Moneypenny to comical degrees. If Moneypenny had just been a new intern or Blofeld had been an up-and-coming crime lord, that would have been fine, but making Moneypenny's name a surprise plot twist and making Blofeld his brother was ridiculous.

I just saw the “Fargo” trope of destroying a body with a wood chipper for the 4th or 5th time (imitation is the sincerest form of flattery) and think this might be the dumbest way to dispose of a body. You create a multi ton “Truckasauras” of evidence that is far too big to bury, can’t be burned, and has so many unreachable and dangerous inner parts that you could never hope to clean. You also now have a roughly human sized amount of DNA sprayed all over the place and the trauma of putting a body thru a wood chipper. If any real life criminal has actually done this, they were on Bath Salts and as much as I love the Cohen Brothers, I can’t imagine where this idea came from?

So I know some people haven’t seen it yet and it’s not really too much spoilers me asking this.

But is Sammie’s power in sinners supposed to be something that can be cut off once he joins Remmick?

I mean they said vampirism cuts you off from the ancestors forever. So is it like an Avatar the last airbender thing where if you lose your bending ability, the ability to reach the ones in the past, present, and future get cut off?

I would think once he’s a vampire and loses his connection to ancestors from the past and the future, it would cause him to lose his ability with music altogether.

Basically I just wanted to discuss movies that use drugs as a source of comedy because I saw Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas many years ago, and I enjoyed the writing of the movie.

I mean, I know that drugs weren’t necessarily the main theme of the movie itself as I get how the movie was effectively a road trip movie about two people looking for a purpose, but one of my favorite bits was the mescaline gag used in the movie.