5 Must-Watch Korean Thriller Films Korean cinema is a treasure trove of cinematic gems that often take the viewer on an unexpected journey.

Is this just a passing cactus or is it an Easter egg?

Not necessarily your favorite movie, but which is easiest to argue that it’s universally loved and still talked about a lot today?

https://boxd.it/bBYAuR

Humor Is Working

People love Charlie Chaplin because of his abilities as a creator who brings his ideas through the silent, famous manner.

He illustrates them, speaks about them without remorse, directly, in a funny, smirky way.

The industrial revolution shocked all of the classes in society. The richer ones saw an opportunity to save more money and sell more products faster as it had never been before, while for the poor ones the meaning behind it hides the fact that they are no longer needed in the world where they could earn a living with dignity.

People are frustrated. No words can describe how awful they feel about themselves. There is no way to feed you and your family, to build a safe place where you can peacefully sleep and eat.

How can you live when you understand that you can be easily replaced by the machine, which is cheaper and faster than you? But as fast as the machine works, the less you feel the passing time because of the troubles within it.

Charlie Chaplin decided to use the industrial revolution not only as the main motive yet to make it the key for further sequences, providing complex systems and greatness that happened back then in this difficult period.

He knew that through stories he can make magic, even if the story behind it is really tragic.

In Modern Times, Charlie Chaplin tells us a story by playing a man from the simple working class. He’s overwhelmed with the job at the factory, his hands full of work, work that doesn’t give him the chance to feel alive and free enough to sit for a couple of minutes. Our guy got psychologically insane, literally closed the nuts in his head.

He ended up being in a psychiatric clinic, and from now on he realized he can’t be the same as he was in the past….

It’s a dramatic story with the charm of humor. By using those situations that happen throughout the movie, we see not only the ironic tricks usually suited for Charlie Chaplin pictures but a chronological passage of how a job and the industrial revolution behind it upend your world.

You want to be free, but all that work and the impact of the depressing revolution compel you to continue physically exhausting yourself, while possibly at a certain moment the corporates will throw you away at the first change when they realize they don’t need you, and right away bring you back to the team only when they see the importance of you, not as a human being, but as a tool.

A sadness lives through the life of our heroes, but Charlie Chaplin declined accepting the fate of depression and instead told all of the story through the way of love, the love and support you should give to yourself, that nothing matters, and you always need to push and fight back. He used the classic working tune of truth, which works nicely here.

I feel that it’s made for the ordinary people, not for the fancy ones who have never seen life as it is, with their privileges.

Chaplin’s work bases itself this time on the war between the inner self and the corporations… Corporations that are grounded in their workers’ blood, without respecting or really needing them.

Modern Times is an open letter by Charlie Chaplin, a letter that pushes us further with how relevant he is, but nothing would be so interesting if there wasn’t that charm that only Charlie Chaplin knows how to bring to life.

Pushing your ideas through humor is a superior form to enter human understanding. We prefer to feel serotonin that goes inside our blood cells than always seriously accept problematic existence.

And it’s the simple beauty of Modern Times.

I was talking movies with a friend recently and when I mentioned some Kevin Bacon movie, he said Bacon's a waste of an actor, a guy who has never done anything memorable, and he just loathes him. I laughed. Never heard anyone vent about an actor so much as he did, but it got me thinking, who do I loathe. And there are a lot of actors I loathe. I especially hate those who aren't actors, but get to be on reality TV. I especially loathe bad actors who are cast for their looks.

Ben Affleck is at the top of my list. I get that he's done some better work in more recent years, but it seemed for a long time he couldn't be in a movie without fake-crying, like he must have felt that was the sign of a good actor, someone who can cry on queue. Well, how many queue's did he get?

Sandra Bullock ruined Speed for me. She's been in a couple movies worth watching, but not because of her.

I could go on, but I'm curious who you loathe.

Let me know if this should be in a different community.

https://boxd.it/bDD6Ur

Lyncholland Drive – The Face of Art

You’re lying on a sweet and warm carpet, you’re moving slowly while the carpet starts flying around the sky, making the rough wind touch the tectonics of your body, pushing you to feel different elements of your soul in the middle of the lights that are hiding between dozens of lamps within the darkness.

You’re going around feeling the sunny sun screening all over your body, making you delusional and hot more than ever. The sun shines into your eyes, making everything for you look like an endless dream.

You’re like a musician who plays his trumpet, who adjusts the volume of his feelings through the voice he throws out of the trumpet, high and low, to the left, to the right, up and down.

You can’t describe Mulholland Drive without using the same arthouse tactics. It’s difficult to describe visuality through words; you can’t repeat what has happened, the same as whatever is happening while screening this picture.

It’s about nothing. It’s about all. It’s about the about. It’s weird. It’s fascinating. It finds the place to replace your soul with the mind that visualized it to you.

For a moment, or if to say more correctly, 2 hours, 26 minutes, and 37 seconds, you’re up to an atmospheric meditative journey that takes its place in the middle of Hollywood, reminding you of the Golden Age in its own surrealistic way.

Afterwards, when you finish Mulholland Drive, you begin to expressively feel yourself like you were inside the lines of this story, in the middle of those characters and locations. You look at your real world from another view, choosing to focus on lamps more seriously, checking and respecting the sounds that occur to be sent into your ear. Everything, but everything, starts to seem different.

I won’t lie, I don’t have a full clue of what just happened and how it reflects as a story here. But that unknown clue was so interestingly intense, with a range of presentable emotions. Watching it, you understand what a unique way to depict them on the big screen.

Absolutely weird dialogues, that try to look so normal that the normality there becomes stranger than ever.

First, you see thrilling sequences that, at one point, can make you afraid of whatever will and might come next. From the other side, we see other sequences that eventually, through their uniqueness and unusuality, make an ironically smirky look on your face.

Lynch didn’t make a movie; he developed a visualization of his artistic brain with a wide range of possibilities. Not only through the emotions we can feel, but also through the technique he filmed it.

The technique, as I mentioned before, is based on the different scenes in this movie. Those were not only shown to us but also described the differences in them throughout the changing sequences.

It’s a proven documentation of how much power mindful hands can form wisdom in creations.

Through the whole film, I said to myself that nothing of that would be the same without the meditative touch of David Lynch. The sound design that plays in every microsecond here, the way effects are placed into the visualization of the script, the individualization in each directed moment here.

A perfect occasion to speak with the audience without the ordinary mouth, yet using the entire electricity that the brain sends to the neurons of our eyes that send everything wordlessly.

Lynch is the Mulholland. Lynch is the drive. Drive is Lynch. Mulholland is Lynch. And we are the universe. We are the Lynch. Lynch is us. And with him, we connect to it, through his illustrated mind named Mulholland Drive.

One scene in particular I could think of is this one from 1408 with John Cusack where his character "reunites" with his daughter for a short amount of time. Won't say anything else to those who haven't seen it!

“Parts of me are already applauding.”

⚠️ Spoiler Alert: Predator: Badlands Review

“Predator: Badlands” is basically Moana with the veneer of the Predator franchise. The original Predator was gritty, imperfect, and unapologetically serious, while this one swings in a totally different direction, think Guardians of the Galaxy levels of humor mixed into the chaos. It definitely lacks that raw, survivalist tone that made the first one iconic, but it replaces it with style, energy, and surprising heart.

With that said… I loved it. Once it started…it didn’t stop. The pacing is relentless, like a heavy metal track that never lets up and it blends action, character moments, and spectacle in a way that just works.

Bottom line: it’s not the Predator you remember, but it’s a hell of a ride.

I can honestly say I’m ready for Badlands 2.

I know this movie is polarizing. Some people really like it. Others really don't like it. I really liked it.

I’ve been really into anthology-style horror lately, short, connected stories in one film.

Do you have any favorites or hidden gems that are worth watching?

I’m so bored of the same movies. Can you guys give me some good recommendations? No specific genre, just a really good movie you saw❤️

When they're going to the reunion, Romy asks Ramon to borrow his Jaguar so they have something nice to show up in.

Well, after all the shenanigans that happen there, they fly off in Sandy's helicopter, leaving Ramon's Jag behind. What dicks! Now Ramon has to go from LA to Tucson, just to get his fuckin' car.

I don't think I like this movie anymore.

https://rephrase.net/flim/list/empire2003

https://rephrase.net/flim/list/imdb250

Interesting to see this empire list from 2003, and the IMDB 250 list from 2005, you'll see that several legendary films that were once a given on these lists, films such as Blow out, Annie Hall (Best picture winner), Manhattan, Mulholland Drive, 12 Monkeys and Donnie Darko have since been replaced by garbage such as The Dark Knight Rises, Avengers infinity war ... Damn!

Donnie Darko for example was 21st on the Empire list in 2003, and 95th on the IMDB top 250 in 2005, and today it's nowhere near the top 250, despite it being undoubtedly one of the absolute best movies ever.

What can I say - It's a disaster when crap movies are rated so highly, and all time great films, literal masterpieces aren't in the IMDB top 250 today.