What MOVIE(s) have you been....seeing? watching?

hotseatgames wrote: I think my breaking point with it was when

Warning: Spoiler!

Ben's character wins big on a ridiculous Roulette bet

. I kind of felt like they were glorifying this lifestyle, when the takeaway should absolutely be don't be like these losers. I did like that

Warning: Spoiler!

he didn't take all of the money

.

I can see that. I just don't think it was that kind of story, not least because I think both characters were fully conscious of the fact that their lifestyle was objectively stupid if they really wanted to get anywhere. You can see it in the way Gerry looks mildly miserable even when he's sitting down at another table. And the event you mention is part of the cycle, right? "I did this thing! It worked! Surely it will work again!" That's the rush. That's the temptation that keeps them grinding. I don't think it was intended to be an object lesson. It was just a spotlight for a short time on these two guys approaching the same situation from different angles.

We went and saw Marty Supreme a little while ago. Much like Uncut Gems it was a chaotic, stressful, violent movie about an unlikeable A-hole who hurts everyone around him. It was pretty good, and kind of surreal.

"I'm a vampire"

Watched Apex on Netflix. Charlize Theron is an adrenaline junky, and winds up in the Outback being chased by Teron Egerton. It's fairly predictable and average at best. Decent effects, and some cringe-inducing climbing scenes.

I gave up on APEX about halfway thru. Like so many outdoor oriented movies, the plots are beyond absurd. Like she's going to put into a whitewater river and paddle downstream from her vehicle and get back..... how ?

Like other Neftlix movies, it seems to offer the same formula - workmanlike, have a bit action sequence in the first 10 mins to get you hooked, etc .

Msample wrote: I gave up on APEX about halfway thru. Like so many outdoor oriented movies, the plots are beyond absurd. Like she's going to put into a whitewater river and paddle downstream from her vehicle and get back..... how ?

Like other Neftlix movies, it seems to offer the same formula - workmanlike, have a bit action sequence in the first 10 mins to get you hooked, etc .

My girlfriend and I said the same thing! Her trip back to her vehicle is going to be worse than what she is already doing!

I have now seen two excellent horror movies in recent weeks. One is still in theaters and the other is already on HBO.

Backrooms (2026) has been in theaters for two or three weeks, but a new version with additional footage dropped yesterday. I realize that is a cynical gimmick to try to lure dedicated horror fans back in theaters for a second screening, but it gave me an incentive to see it now instead of waiting for streaming.

Maybe a decade ago, I started seeing references to "liminal spaces" on Facebook, including pictures. A liminal space is an empty or even abandoned space that has a quality of being eerie, sad, and/or strange. One classic example is the spooky corridors from the Overlook Hotel in The Shining. Later, I saw the occasional reference to "backrooms," a specific type of liminal space that features an abandoned office space that is lacking in windows and has an odd layout. By this time, I was in a Facebook group dedicated to liminal spaces, and so I also saw sub-types like poolrooms and tilerooms.

Backrooms takes this idea and runs with it in the direction of The House of Leaves, an eerie experiemental novel from 2000. I'm not going to spoil anything about the movie because it was a rare movie where I generally had no idea what was going to happen next, and the anticipation made it even better. Like most good horror movies, it also digs into some flawed characters in interesting ways.

They Will Kill You (2026) exists at a disturbing intersection of horror, action, and comedy, and it thrives there. Wild and surprising things happen to an unconventional protagonist, and I don't want to spoil it. Just go see it before somebody does spoil it for you.

They Will Kill You does traffick in gore, but not gratuitously. Backrooms aims for more psychological horror.

I didn't see the original version of Backrooms that was released weeks ago, but I am guessing that the additional material in the version that I saw today was what happened after the credits rolled. It provides some additonal context which apparently everybody in the theater was seeking, because the few people who left during the credits were all back in their seats probably after a quick bathroom break. The additional section is worth viewing, and when it was over, the theatre was silent and everybody was stunned.

The theatre was only a half mile from my home in a pleasant suburb. Despite the blue sky and sunshine, driving home from the theatre after Backrooms was a completely surreal experience. Nothing felt normal until I got back inside my house.

Demons/Demoni (1985) - I hadn’t seen it before, not my normal type of horror, but I do love Evil Dead and this gets recommended a bunch to fans of that franchise. That was a wild ride, fun and so very eighties. I tend to prefer psychological, tense horror or action-horror. I guess this was action, but typically gore and zombie-esque stuff doesn’t grab me. Maybe I’m changing.