I Care A Lot (Netflix) - An interesting deep dive turned thriller set around the world of adult care and guardianship, particularly the seedy, scammy side! This is a good movie, but after the first act gets a little comic book-y and in over its head with exciting plot twists when the premise was enough for a whole movie! This should have been
Nightcrawler for adult care scams, but instead more makes it less as it goes for some pretty unconvincing crime thriller stuff that overstays its welcome and challenges your suspension of disbelief. Still, some fine actors and performances and a tantalizing idea, even if the plot stretches it thin instead of exploring its richness.
Godzilla vs. Kong (the toilet) - I guess I'm still naive to think it should be pretty straightforward to have Godzilla and King Kong meet up and fight once you've already established they exist, but this was, guess what... unfathomably bad! I had no expectations except for some notable monster action, but this was another 15 minutes of underwhelming CGI monster rolling (half the time Godzilla looks like he's an asset out of a video game) and 100 minutes of the most irritatingly stupid characters and galaxy-brained plot you've ever seen... and for no reason (you didn't need any of it)!
It's like they were trying to present this in the most unnatural, worst way possible. Most of this movie has nothing to do with Godzilla and King Kong fighting. It's like if 90% of Jurassic Park was about the trip there. The story is akin to the moon being made out of cheese and we need to get Kong to eat for plot reasons. The monsters might as well be action figures or big as planets because the movie has no sense of scope or scale to give a sense of size or grandeur, and just looks like shit. There's also no weight, logistics or stakes in this movie, like they destroy Hong Kong and must kill millions of people, but you literally see no human beings present in the streets or any mention of it (it'd be the biggest tragic disaster in our lifetimes and everyone just smiles and nods after like it was an exhibition wrestling match =). They don't even establish why it'd be good or bad for any particular monster to win or lose, but they make sure to notify the audience which monster appeared to win each round (because if we're watching this, it's assumed we're fucking morons eating popcorn covered in our own rancid drool). The only drama or emotion is how bad I felt for Alexander Skarsgard for having to make the stupid faces of his non-charachter in this gadawful movie.
This makes the Snyder Cut look like Citizen Kane and WW84 like Casablanca. The director of this cheap looking VOD movie should be put in prison and the writer(s) should be stranded at sea without water. Like the rest of this "monsterverse" crap, watch the medicore fights on youtube and think, "this somehow looks worse than I thought" and save yourself a couple precious hours of life. Watching this I felt like Tim Heidecker during the Batman dream sequence in Snyder Cut, like the plot simulated a psychological break from reality; what is going on, what's happening? I can't believe this was made and put out into the world AS IS!
Perhaps you could have two lists, one according to your favorites and one according to which ones you think are best? I'd be very interested in looking at those lists or any list you may produce.
Well, I could definitely use a palette cleanser. So here goes...
Best/Most Significant:
Pulp Fiction
Inglorious Basterds
Jackie Brown
Reservoir Dogs
Once Upon a Time... In Hollywood
Kill Bill Vol. 1
Django Unchained (will probably age poorly)
The Hateful Eight
Kill Bill Vol. 2
Death Proof
Favorites/Watching Tonight:
Once Upon a Time... In Hollywood
Jackie Brown
Inglorious Basterds
Kill Bill Vol. 1
The Hateful Eight
Kill Bill Vol. 2
Pulp Fiction
Reservoir Dogs
Django Unchained
Death Proof
This is so close and/or fluid I'm not even sure I agree with my own favorite picks. For example, the only reason Pulp Fiction and Dogs is so low on my current favorites list is because I've owned those DVDs since DVDs existed and have played them to death; they were such unquestionable favorites at one point I can't even stand to look at them anymore.
Also, given my top two I guess I enjoy Tarantino's "hangout" movies most of all.
As for the "significant" picks, I think that top 3 will endure and the rest can be argued over forever.