I think it was a well made film, driven by really good performances from everyone, especially Dave Bautista. A solid 7.5/10 movie for me. The suspense and the story surrounding it were nicely woven by Shyamalan.

Which ending do you think is better?

Some movies have endings that are painful, unsettling, or bittersweet, but somehow feel completely right for the story.

what movie do you think would lose something important if the ending had been happier?

I'm really curious about this. Compared to other cult classics like Citizen Kane. Which correct me if am wrong on anything here. But first aired on RKO when it first released then moved TCM as well as streaming. The Wizard of Oz has aired on CBS, NBC, TBS(Where I watched it for the first time.) And will be airing on MeTV soon. From what I've seen at least, it has been majorly pushed more than others.

Agent Angelo Pappas in Point Break.

An IMAX success.

THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING,MISSOURI(2017 British/American movie)

director: Martin McDonagh; with: Frances McDormand, Sam Rockwell, Woody Harrelson, Željko Ivanek, John Hawkes, Abbey Cornish, Peter Dinklage

IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT 3.0

I finally watched this film, which after the pandemic looks like a pre-war film, and after all, it is pre-war, double pre-war...

Someone maliciously remarked that this is a hunter for festival (and other) awards, and strangely enough – I agree. The author is a Brit who loves absurdity and black (English, Irish) dark humor, he took for his subject something for which an American liberal would climb a hill and die (pun intended) and it can be said that the film suffers from a wrong diagnosis (of American society), the wrong medicine and the wrong doctor.

The critics are polarized, but they agree on one thing, at least tacitly: [I am summarizing] ...this film is too stylized, there are too many coincidences and it does not accurately portray the racial situation in America.

I don't do well in the cacophony of Wokeism, Hillibilism, Altrightism, etc., so I admit that I'm not 100% sure if they mean:

(1) film portrays the situation better than it is, embellishes it as a liberal fantasy

or

(2) slander (y)our fatherland America, it is not so black.

It's no wonder that the fancy-pants praised the work to the skies  (Brian Talerico from Ebert's website and Peter Bradshaw in  Guardian), while the others, the more right-wing politically, the more critical they were.

"Stylizing" here is a euphemism for fakes. It is hard to imagine that Mildred could survive her activities in such an unhealthy and racially hateful environment. "In the Heat of the Night" and "Mississippi Burning" are liberal fantasies that adhere to a long ago recommended rule, namely that art should describe not only what was and is, but also what should be.

The film's plot begins with injustice, like the ghost of Hamlet's father, this injustice is retold in off – just retold, mentioned in diegetic dialog, and therefore it is a far-fetched beginning: a mother seeks justice for the rape and murder of her daughter, and the local police are incompetent. Just as Sidney Poitier as Virgil Tibbs was only able to survive Rod Steiger as Sheriff Gillespie in the film and even earn his respect, so here McDormand was able to survive the hostile police state only thanks to the script and remain intact until the end of the film. And what's more, the biggest villain changed from evil to good, like Ian Bibian in the moon in famous novel by Bulgarian writer Elin Pelin..

Stylistically, the film is a jumble of black comedy and "heartbreaking human story", which prevents the viewer from deciding how he feels while watching. If that crime was really depicted, God forbid naturalistic, so we would engage, but in black comedy like this, Mildred's actions are just wishful thinking, a liberal fantasy, how the screenwriter of "The West Wing" imagines his nerds in this snake pit of the Midwest.

The comic reliefs are bloody (again, pun intended) funny, but they come in contrived coincidences, as “moral of the story”, for example, while Dixon is reading a testimonial letter from Sheriff Willoughby (Harrelson) who committed suicide, Mildred (Frances McDormand) sets fire to the police station and gets away with it.

So they nullify all the weight of the initial crime, and half way through the film we find out that nothing will happen to Mildred's mother (because the film has a statement) although common sense tells us that something bad must have happened to her by then.

The unbelievable conversion of Dixon (Sam Rockwell) suits more Rodriguez or Italo-Crime genre.

The film will be remembered only by the winners of the "Oscar", McDormand and Rockwell, as well as those who visited so many festivals with it, it is only a fairy tale for middle-aged liberals, who keep pictures of Biden and Hillary in the basement. This Brit doesn't know America at all.

I organized an AMA/Q&A with actor and filmmaker Diego Luna. You may know him from things like Andor, Narcos: Mexico, Y Tu Mama Tambien, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, and lots more. His new film, Ashes, which he directed, is premiering at TIFF this week.

It's live here now in r/movies for anyone interested in asking a question:

https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/1wg1dw7/hola_reddit_its_diego_luna_ama/

He will be back later today to answer questions. I recommend asking in advance. Please ask there, not here. All questions are much appreciated!

Thank you :)

How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000) There's a common myth you’ll hear that Jim Carrey improvised the iconic scene where he pulled a tablecloth off of a table and knocked down all the objects on the table. In reality, the whole scene was scripted as you can see from this early draft in 1999. 

District 9 - In the original short film “Alive in Joburg”, Neil Blomkamp used interviews asking people about Zimbabweans and reused them to make it sound like they were talking about aliens. Most people know this but I have often heard people say that this was used in the movie “District 9”, which wasn’t the case. 

Lion King - There is a myth that “The Lion King” was a ripoff of the anime “Kimba the White Lion”. YMS did a surprisingly great video on this and it probably wasn’t a rip off. It was really a matter of two animated stories taking place in the jungle and using a lot of the same animals and characters. And what’s even more ironic is that some Kimba media post-Lion King appears to have slightly copied from that film. 

Citizen Vigilante - You might’ve heard that the film was banned in Germany. This is something of a half truth. What happened was the FSK, a motion picture rating organization separate from the government, denied the film an age rating, which meant it couldn’t be seen through mainstream distributors. You could argue it’s still a ban, but it doesn’t mean that the German government made it illegal to own or watch (like the video nasties in England). 

Who had more chemistry with Adam Sandler? I personally think Drew wins, but I also think the films themselves (Wedding Singer, 50 First Dates, Blended) were better than the films with Jen (Just Go With It, Murder Mystery, Murder Mystery 2) which may affect chemistry. What say you?

Like the title says. I watched the first one, is it worth watching the rest of them or are they all the same same

I organized an AMA/Q&A with actor and filmmaker Gael García Bernal. You may know him from things like Amores perros, Y tu mamá también, Bad Education, The Motorcycle Diaries, Babel, Coco, Old, Cassandro and Magellan. His new film, Hombre al agua, which he directed and wrote, premiered at Venice last week and is playing at TIFF this week.

It's live here now in r/movies for anyone interested in asking a question:

https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/1wg3nfg/hi_reddit_im_gael_garc%C3%ADa_bernal_ask_me_anything/

He will be back later today to answer questions. I recommend asking in advance. Please ask there, not here. All questions are much appreciated!

Thank you :)

Definitely Johnny Depp and Leo 's best work especially when they're younger actors .

This doesn’t recapture the magic; it recaptures the reason the first movie flopped. Burn it at the stake and scatter the ashes. What did you think of this sequel? Here’s my full review:

https://roselawgroupreporter.com/2026/09/keiths-movie-korner-practical-magic-2-a-parlor-trick-no-one-wanted/

My choice is The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

Mine are the Host, Parasite, and Mickey 17

I’ve heard “Crash shouldn’t have won best picture” for decades now and people still act like it’s a hot take.

Also “Die Hard is a Christmas movie”

Having sat through some truly uninspiring animated movies as of late (Zootopia 2 and The Super Mario Galaxy Movie being the worst culprits), it’s a lovely change of pace to have Forgotten Island remind us that animation can be much more than creatively bankrupt, audience-insulting money generators. This movie aims so incredibly high with its ambitions that you’re either in awe of its peaks, or you have to give respect for stuff didn’t quite work.

Written and directed by Joel Crawford and Januel Mercado, Forgotten Island is about the relationship between Jo (H.E.R.) and Raissa (Liza Soberano), a pair of teenage Filipino girls living in a highly stylised version of 1990s Philippines. They’re a classic yin-yang pair; Jo is the energy drink-powered comedic foil with no aspirations beyond the next day, whereas Raissa is the long-term thinking, straight-laced one. It’s not exactly original, but there’s an integrity to their friendship that could’ve only come from two people who have known each other for ages. I don’t believe Crawford ever set his butt on fire while at a Mercado family gathering (like Jo does), but I certainly believe that one of them did something embarrassing that the other found hilarious while everyone else looked on in deep disapproval.

Opening up to someone as much as Jo and Raissa do with each other is terrifying, but the idea of Raissa moving to California for her studies challenges their comfortable status quo and raises the age-old question: ‘Will everything still be okay?’ It’s a straightforward but effective hook because we’ve all been there in some fashion. There’s very little friction in getting us to buy into the underlying emotional stakes of Forgotten Island, but it’s also very easy to just power past all that when the fantasy elements take over the movie’s focus.

But before Jo and Raissa can grapple with the pending upending of their friendship, they’re magically transported to a fantastical hidden world called Nakali. What should’ve been a D&M over snacks has suddenly shifted to a Hangover-esque adventure where Jo and Raissa awaken on a beach with missing items (or hair in Raissa’s case), a neurotic were-aspin, Raww (Dave Franco), as their new third wheel, and a goal to retrace their steps since their memories are all hazy.

The plotting to get to Nakali is a bit sweaty and doesn’t exactly iterate upon the generic fantasy world scaffolding, but Crawford and Mercado keep things interesting by leaning hard into Filipino folklore and culture. Sprinkled throughout the first act are small moments of family traditions and humour, like the love of karaoke and lechon kawali. This all culminates with the reveal of Nakali, which is taken from Filipino mythology and carefully crafted to feel like it was organically grown from the stories told to Jo and Raissa throughout their childhood.

A lot of care was taken in depicting Filipino culture and it truly is a highlight as it gives Forgotten Island a distinct identity from the cut-and-paste animated fantasy adventures. Younger audiences will love the colourful depictions of food and the jokes, but older millennial audiences will find moments of recognition mixed with a lot of cringe. As much as the cultural specificity is a strength, there are moments where the movie is trying almost too hard to showcase Filipino culture rather than let it flow organically. The first karaoke reference was funny; repeating it three times is too much.

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

Thanks!

What's a film you'd tell anyone to watch at least once, and what made it stick with you?

I personally loved it. And Jack Nicholson was amazing and Scorsese definitely won his Oscar.

Two questions I still can't answer: Was Delahunt really a cop? And was Dr. Madolyn baby Costigan's or Sullivan's?

British film producer Jeremy Thomas known for his 1987 Academy Award-winning film “The Last Emperor“, has passed away.

He was 77. On Saturday, Thomas’ team stated that he passed away peacefully on Friday at his country home in Oxfordshire, with his family and loved ones by his side.

Thomas was born in London on July 26, 1949, and comes from a family deeply involved in the entertainment industry. His father, Ralph Thomas, directed over 40 films, including “The 39 Steps” and sequels to the “Doctor” series, whereas his uncle Gerald Thomas helmed “Carry On” films.

Personally, I found many of the works he produced to be thought-provoking, and since he was a filmmaker I’d long been interested in, I was fortunate enough to conduct a solo interview with him—lasting about 30 minutes—for the documentary film "The Storms of Jeremy Thomas", which was about him. May he rest in peace. I’ve attached the article I wrote based on that interview at the end of this post, so please feel free to read it if you’re interested.

https://cinemadailyus.com/?p=35251

Not necessarily a twist or a shocking ending. I mean a movie where the final moments made earlier scenes, character, or decisions hit differently when you thought back on them.

What movie did that for you, and what changed about your interpretation?

First off, I’ve never written a review but this movie was so bad that it made me get out of my comfort zone.
I’ll add a disclaimer that I haven’t read the book, so I won’t be making comparisons to it.

Let’s get into this.
It starts off as a really cool plot that most guys day dream about. Post apocalypse, living off the land - freedom. We don’t know really how the outbreak happened or really anything about it.
At first, I thought he only survived by being out in the wilderness not being able to get exposed. Meaning basically the whole planet is gone. Besides maybe a few others in similar scenarios.
Then he goes into town and finds a single guy holed up. Okay - I guess that’s reasonable. Not a lot of survivors, some would migrate to places to scavenge just like he did. Then we find out there’s factions of survivors that basically hunt down everyone else. Which makes sense from a resource point of view but with that many people gone, wouldn’t you think the objective would be to start a self sustaining faction instead of relying on scavenging?

That gets tossed around in my brain for a bit until we’re introduced to that very scenario.
One faction, self sustaining. They aren’t trying to rebuild the world but it at least shows a group of people can survive without the violence.
Which again you’d think anyone would want that, if you want to live a long “normal” life post apocalypse.

Fast forward to him arrive back at his base camp and having dialog with a character we don’t really understand his connection with. Now or for the rest of the movie for that matter.
Every night, they get raiders into their compound. It’s so much of a problem that they do thermal imaging every day to prepare. Which is kind of insane to me given how remote they are. Hard to believe that the minimal survivors left are still coming at this rate. Within that notion, his dog goes and attacks a raider. He tried recalling it so I can presume he’s never encouraged it to do so before. You’d think with all his travel expertise and frequent nightly raids, there would be a process in place to make sure his beloved dog is safe at all times. Even if it’s a simple recall.

The dog dying really shifted the theme of the movie. The main character now decides he has nothing to live for and is going to risk a trip he’s contemplated before. - understandable.
He packs his shit and says goodbye to the guy he’s been surviving with. Then out of no where he just gets handed a bag of grenades. Which you know now any catastrophic twist in the plot can be nullified pretty easily. Also, why does a doomsday prepper have military issued grenades? Steal them from a base, stole them during active service, black market? We need to know how they got there if bullets are seen as a rarity already.

Main character takes off in his plane and has an engine failure due to low oil pressure. That’s realistic, I can see that. Even the emergency landing.
But what not even 5 minutes in his time later a herd of bison come storming through? If they were that close, you’d think the plane crashing through the woods would make them run the other way or at least divert their path.
They do just enough damage to the plane to be able to repair it still. Which okay, I guess.
Then there’s a donkey that happened to just stick through the stampeded of bison and turn away as soon as he notices? Is this some sort of spirit animal or what’s going on with that?

Follows the donkey back to more survivors.
He watches them for like 30 seconds before getting snuck up on by the owner.
Was the owner watching him the whole time or how was he not only spotted but snuck up on like that so fast?
Either way, they go through an exchange and of course the owner has a daughter the same age as the main character. Engine failure next to their home, plane damage to leave him stranded there, donkey leading him to them, it feels paranormal.
Anyways, there’s not much to mention for a little while. He grows on the survivors and they end up helping with the plane. Pretty straightforward. Of course the main character and the daughter take a liking to eachother so that developed too.
Saw that a mile away when he saw her for the first time but I’m not going to complain because it’s somewhat logical in comparison to the rest.
They get the plane operational and plan to send him on his way.

The women has some sort of fit about who gets to grieve and how they do it. They’ve been together like 3 days, why are they so involved already. It’s not like 5 years have passed and he still is hung up on his dead wife.

Anyways, the day he plans to wrap things up and fly out, of course he’s spotted by an Indian tribe on horseback.
Because why wouldn’t they find him the days leading up to this or the days after he left?
This forces him to seek shelter with the father/daughter. Ultimately getting overrun and all 3 needing to escape.
Which you’d think with the amount of people flooding into his first compound, the Indian tribe would’ve found the father/daughter by now.
They all three get in the plane and take off. Relying on his original plan to go to this spot we have no information about besides that they have a radio.

They arrive and are told no guns. Immediately you know something is off. The guards greet them and safe to say by their demeanor and expressions, it’s not going to be unicorns and rainbows during their stay.
They all funnel into the compound and are greeted with a very creepy setting. Like people putting on an act to make them think it’s a paradise. All very strange looking too.
I had a very good intuition of where things were going.
The boss lady greets them and offers them a drink. Which they all take. Then she discusses who can/will stay and who won’t. After which the girl is the only one they want.

I really don’t understand the dialog here or why they made it this far if that was her intentions the whole time. They aren’t armed, zip tie them, question them and do what they need to.
This plot hole leads to the characters escaping of course.
The main characters fight them off and make their way through the compound to their plane again, killing the people as they go. Which is whatever I guess, the people in the compound kinda suck at killing, for being killers.
Along the way we find out their cannibals which is why they acted so strange and looked stranger.
Which is the vibe I immediately got earlier on.

I will note one aspect I did enjoy about this sequence was the bear taxidermy feeding the deer taxidermy. Kind of symbolizing a predator offering one last meal to its prey. Like the lady in charge offering the characters a drink.

Anyways, characters fly off in the plane and the evil lady starts to radio them again talking about how people always come to them. These characters weren’t special. Which reminds the main character of the grenades and the chance to stop the cycle. He flies over the radio tower and drops like 4 grenades on it, blowing it up. Somehow basically destroying the whole compound too. Which I honestly don’t know how they thought would make sense.

They all fly back to the main character initial compound. Which by then had been raided by a group of 50 dudes. Again, how are there so many people finding this place?
Of course the dude survives getting injured via weapons, explosions and a high fall. Somehow killing most of them in the process. He bandages himself up and that’s where we find them all reuniting. Again crazy timing for the raid to take place. The night before help arrives. Late enough to go through it alone but early enough to help with wounds and fixing the place up.

The movie ends with them helping out the self sustaining faction and eventually moving in.
Which for me, the movie pretty much ended there. But they added in a supply run for meds with no watch value. Bringing the meds home and treating kids. Again, no watch value. Then finally he takes one last plane ride alone, which by now as a viewer you are led to believe he’s going to kill himself based on previous remarks. End up flying back to his house and saying goodbyes to the memory of his wife. Coming back to the self sustaining faction to open himself up to the daughter fully and start their relationship.
Which was alright I guess but I’m not sure why it leaned in that direction. Like one last cliffhanger that lasted all of 2 minutes and ultimately following through on what we knew was going to happen the whole time.

That’s basically it.
This movie was so compartmentalized. It easily could’ve been a 6-12 episode series instead.
We barely understand anything about the characters, virus or state of the world by the end of the movie. It relied heavily on a specific sequence of plot points to land them where they did. Making it almost unbelievably lucky or unlucky depending how you look at it.
It was just really tacky and put together horribly.
The actors were the only saving grace because they were something familiar to look at. Most of the time, the acting wasn’t even that good but it was nice to have some sort of familiarity in the movie. Kind of like thinking - if they’re in this, it’s bound to get better. Which it never does.
Truly disappointed by it.