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Die, Monster, Die! (1965)
Die, Monster, Die! (1965)
1965 | Horror, Sci-Fi
Rather annoyingly not-quite-there horror movie based on an H.P. Lovecraft short story ('based on' in the sense of 'almost entirely different from'). Guy goes to see his girl in the remote English countryside, discovers surly locals, finds her father has been up to experiments into Things Which Man Was Not Meant To Know. Includes the obligatory badly-done Lovecraftian squid-monsters.

Interesting cast, and you can tell Karloff in particular is doing his best with the material, but there's an awful lot of wandering about with not much happening, especially for a film only about an hour and a quarter long. Obviously done on the cheap, and too invested in its standard Gothic tropes - creepy old mansion, spooky domestics, cursed family heritage, etc - to make the most of the potential in the short story it's supposed to be based on. All in all, less interesting than it has any right to be in the circumstances.
  
Jonah Hex (2010)
Jonah Hex (2010)
2010 | Action, Drama, Horror
2
5.1 (13 Ratings)
Movie Rating
A recent re-watch of Jonah Hex went something like this:

- a lot of stuff happened before that title card that it's already incoherent
- wait, Michael Fassbender is in this?
- I can't see what's happening
- ah sweet, it's the dude from Mastodon.
- wait, Will Arnett is in this?
- Megan Fox really drew the short straw on a lot of her movie projects
- is that Michael Shannon!?
- ah sweet, it's the dude from John Wick.
- wait, Jeffrey Dean Morgan is in this!?
- once again, couldn't see what the fuck was happening because of the piss poor lighting, but Jonah Hex is nearly dead again, apparently.
- Ah cool, here's a mid-runtime action heavy sequence, still can't tell what's happening.
- wait....nope, it's over.

Christ, this movie is a blurry mess that's impressively hard to follow considering its short runtime. I love the Jonah Hex comics, I tend to enjoy Josh Brolin and John Malkovich, how is this such a trainwreck?

That Mastodon soundtrack is badass though.
  
Sound of Metal (2019)
Sound of Metal (2019)
2019 | Drama, Music
There's not a lot I can add that hasn't already been said about Sound of Metal so I'll keep this one short.

Riz Ahmed rightly deserves his Oscar nomination for his performance. It sucks that Olivia Cooke was overlooked by The Academy for hers. The two of them together carve out a painfully real relationship and are nothing short of excellent.
The sound editing is absolutely top tier. It's method of forcing the viewer to experience a fair portion of the movie as if they were hearing impaired is hugely effective. It goes a long way in illustrating how terrifying Ruben's experience is. On the flip side, in characters such as Joe (Paul Raci), we are given another perspective, about how life still goes on, and paints a wonderfully positive picture of the deaf community. It results in a film that is both truly uplifting and absolutely devastating.

Sound of Metal is definitely a triumph that deserves all the praise it's getting.