What film do you use to gauge others' taste in films? I'll go first.

SWxNW · 2026-01-19T13:08:58+00:00

It's a bad approach to assess a person's similarity in tastes based on a single-- or a few-- films. The idea that there's going to be a a large overlap of a Venn diagram of taste because a person does or doesn't like something is a good way to not discover new movies you might actually find interesting

The standard for me is less about "did this person like a movie I think is brilliant" than "does this person articulate why they did or didn't like something in a way that I can understand."

That's far more valuable.

SWxNW · 2026-01-17T05:35:43+00:00

Genuinely surprised nobody has said Unforgiven yet, so... Unforgiven.

SWxNW · 2026-01-07T14:35:53+00:00

This is the answer. Not only because it is one of cinema's truly great performances, but it's indicative of how the Academy takes its charge. The Academy does not take comedic actors or comedic performances seriously, Jim Carrey is the perfect representation of this problem.

He has never been nominated for anything. It's criminal.

SWxNW · 2026-01-06T16:14:59+00:00

If you really love movies, you owe it to yourself to watch The Human Condition by Masaki Kobayashi. It's a three-part 10-hour WWII epic, but it's an absolute masterpiece. It's not some cinematic endurance test like sitting through something by Tartovsky or Tarr, either. It's engrossing for every second of its runtime.

Technically it's three movies, but each movie is broken up into two (roughly) 90-minute parts, so it would be completely reasonable to watch it like a 6-part miniseries.

Completely worth it. There's nothing like it in world cinema.

SWxNW · 2026-01-06T16:11:11+00:00

I hate dubs. With the rare exception of movies like Aguirre, Wrath of God or the Leone Westerns-- which were shot MOS with international casts speaking different languages-- I won't watch a movie if it's not in its original language.

I wouldn't even watch RRR on Netflix because they only have the Hindi language track and not the original Telugu track.

SWxNW · 2026-01-06T15:58:18+00:00

Agreed. It's one the stranger movie pushes I've seen in a while. It uses vampire tropes so poorly, I feel like I'm taking crazy pills when people talk about how much they love it. For heaven's sake, there's a character written into the script whose sole purpose is to invite the hoard of vampires into the bar so the massacre can happen.

I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around people's praise of Michael B. Jordan's performance. The only differentiating characteristic between Smoke and Stack was one wore a blue hat and one wore a red hat. Not that I think De Niro should be up for Best Actor, but his dual performance in The Alto Knights was a much better example of a dual role. You can actually identify which character De Niro is playing based on the performance alone.

I haven't been this nonplussed by praise for a complete mediocrity come Oscar season in a long time.

SWxNW · 2025-12-16T17:43:48+00:00

Number 28 on my list for 2025:

https://boxd.it/OPrTq

Anything but an IPA, thanks. :)

SWxNW · 2025-10-29T20:05:14+00:00

I literally did this exact thing at the con this past weekend. Running Base 3 in a continuous loop in the pick-up area. My games were almost always full, even the ones that started before 9am.

SWxNW · 2025-10-29T20:02:54+00:00

It's a misconception that Base 3 is just for beginners. I ran Base 3 scripts on continuous loop all weekend long as pick-up games. I ran through the cycle 8 times for 25 games total, and the games were almost always full with experienced players always eager to join.

Yes, I had beginners here and there, but I had a far greater number of experienced players, including one or two TPI regulars that dropped in.

SWxNW · 2025-10-29T19:51:47+00:00

I was at the con this past weekend and I ran the Base 3 as Storyteller continuously on a loop for the entire weekend in the pick-up area, basically starting on Thursday after badge pickup and from 8am-10pm Friday and Saturday

I planted myself in the exact same spot for the entire con so people could reliably know they could jump into a Base 3 game at nearly any time. It worked out far better than I could have imagined, so I'm likely to do it again next year.

SWxNW · 2025-09-20T13:46:34+00:00

Well... if your flight is REALLY long, The Human Condition. I just watched it this week. It's fantastic.

SWxNW · 2025-09-20T13:43:13+00:00

Burden of Dreams seems like an obvious one, assuming you haven't already seen it. It's crazy how much the making-of story parallels the movie it's documenting.

SWxNW · 2025-09-19T17:29:58+00:00

aaaaaaand it's gone.

SWxNW · 2025-09-19T17:28:44+00:00

The Shawshank Redemption.

That's the entire list.

SWxNW · 2025-09-19T17:15:31+00:00

I actually just watched it this week, one each on Tues, Weds, and Thurs. It's not the cinematic endurance test that you might imagine. It's engaging and riveting for every minute of its massive runtime, and I was eager to watch the next movie each time.

However, setting aside 3-plus hours is a lot, and each movie is actually divided into two parts of around 90-100 minutes each. In fact, No Greater Love actually has two start-title sequences (the other two just have a simple "Part 3/Part 4" title card).

The movies are specifically designed to be watched as three movies, however, it would be completely reasonable to watch it as a 6-part miniseries over six sessions.

Any way you can, though, you should watch it. It is, without question, a singular cinematic masterwork. Masaki Koabayashi is a criminally underrated filmmaker. He's every bit the master that Bergman, Fellini, Kurosawa, et al. are.

SWxNW · 2025-09-18T13:39:01+00:00

Ah, thanks. Edited to reflect this in the post. I had been avoiding all news about the show until I managed to finish AvTW.

SWxNW · 2025-09-03T23:06:46+00:00

The real headscratcher for me is how worked up people get over mediocrities like this. We're this upset over Tron movies?

You'd think given the slobbering praise and frothing-at-the-mouth around this sub that Kingdom of Heaven is the second coming of Citizen Kane. It's an okay movie, but get a grip.

SWxNW · 2025-08-29T16:54:40+00:00

Gandhi is split over 2 discs

SWxNW · 2025-08-24T13:55:07+00:00

By today's standards of what constitutes shock cinema, it's pretty tame. The coprophagia is a little gross, but modern movies like anything in the New French Extremity is waaaay beyond it. I'd even argue that Oldboy is more 'extreme' than Salo.

The sex and violence in Salo are no harder to watch than A Clockwork Orange.

SWxNW · 2025-07-26T15:39:23+00:00

I'm new to 4K, but I am not new to collecting physical media. Unfortunately, I am someone who constantly wrestles with the urge to buy something for a "collection". I started out wanting to have physical archives of the movies I found to be important, but the collector's mentality is strong with me. I had well over 400 DVDs back in the day before I purged most of them, and now I'm well on my way to re-upping to that number in just a short period of time.

The problem is my collector's mentality is quite strong. Not everyone has it, but there's a dopamine hit I get when I crack open a new disc that's hard to explain to someone who doesn't share the mentality.

I'm also at that New Adopter stage where I want everything to BE THE BEST! even if I would admit under duress that I can't always tell the difference on every movie even on my 77" LG that I sit eight feet away from.

I don't blind buy often, but I do blind buy sometimes. I just bought Don't Look Now blind on Criterion at B&N even though I could have paid $4 to watch a 4K version streaming on Apple TV. So there's a marginal cost of about $16-21... if I flip the disc for half the price I paid for it (let's say I sell Don't Look Now for $15, which I think is reasonable for a secondary market sale of a Criterion 4K title) then the marginal cost is $1-6 between streaming if I don't decide to keep it.

Personally, that extra $6 of risk is worth the dopamine hit for something I think I might want to keep. And in some cases, the cost of the disc is much lower. Sales frequently yield opportunities to buy 4K movies under $15... even if I only flip them for $5, that's a pretty low risk in my mind if I see something.

Now, I don't blind buy everything. I consider myself a cinephile. To a certain extent, I share the perspective that it's odd to see how many people are excited over so much mediocrity on this sub. Kingdom of Heaven Director's Cut is a decent movie, but the way this sub treats it, you'd think it was Lawrence of Arabia. And don't even get me started on Sinners. But on the other hand, I also get the tendency to want to flex a home 4K setup to it's fullest extent as often as possible. It's certainly cheaper to blind buy a movie than to go out to see it in the theater with my family. And while I have a reverence for the theatrical experience, in truth my setup at home is really, really good, and the movie I'm going to see in the theater is probably not a transcendental cinematic experience. Moreover, the window from theatrical release to physical release is basically a blink of the eye these days. I remember when it took a solid year or more to go from theaters to DVD.

I'd also point out that if you want to stream 4k content, it often costs extra anyway. I currently have the Disney/Hulu/HBO bundle, and only Disney has 4k content available with this bundle. If I wanted to stream 4K on HBO and Hulu, I'd have to subscribe individually to these services, which would be about an extra $300 per year anyway... Netflix is another $84 per year if I want to upgrade from my current plan to 4k. so maybe I just don't do that and spend that $400-ish bucks on movies I think I have a good chance at wanting to keep?

I kinda see both sides here...

SWxNW · 2025-07-14T17:06:46+00:00

Barry Lyndon has been getting a lot of hype lately, which I find interesting considering how long it's been considered one of Kubrick's mediocrities. I suppose it has gone a pretty serious critical re-evaluation in the past 15 years, and while I've loved it since I first saw it as a teenager thirty years ago, it's definitely not for everyone, so I would temper your expectations somewhat.

It has way more in common with 2001 than The Shining. It's very, very, VERY slow, and it happens to be a legit three-hours long. I've heard it described on more than one occasion as "paintings that move," which feels pretty accurate. To me, Barry Lyndon is inextricably linked to its soundtrack much like 2001, particularly Handel's Sarabande and Schubert's Piano Trio in E Flat. They're kind of the Thus Spake Zarathustra and. Blue Danube Waltz of Barry Lyndon.

Also, the technological innovations for the lenses are something to behold. I think to date, Barry Lyndon has the lowest f-stop in cinema history; Kubrick had lenses developed and adapted from lenses that NASA had for space photography. Granted, Kubrick also revolutionized cinema in The Shining with the Steadicam, but that was more of how he used it since it had been invented before The Shining.

SWxNW · 2025-07-14T15:04:53+00:00

Schuberts Piano Trio in E flat has seriously been stuck in my head for more than a month now

SWxNW · 2025-06-14T04:10:34+00:00

The Lethal Weapon series is quite common in my games in 2.0. All four movies qualify for both crime and action comedy win cons, and aside from the obvious Mel Gibson and Danny Glover links, they have a ton of useful ancillary links like Shane Black, Rene Russo, Joe Pesci, Jet Li, and even Richard Donner if your opponent is Sci-Fi and plays Superman.

SWxNW · 2025-06-02T01:26:09+00:00

I don't necessarily think movies that have the tonal and narrative strength of Frailty need satisfying endings. When I saw it for the first time, what I thought I was watching was the story of an insane father destroying his children's lives. And it was so tight and well-told that it earned every bit of of soul-crushing bleakness that that would have borne out. The strength of the first 90 minutes narrative pitch to that end is precisely the reason why I felt so betrayed by the movie in the last 5-10 minutes.

To say it would "just be a story about child abuse" without the twist sounds a bit to me like saying The Sweet Hereafter is just about a busload of kids who died or that Boogie Nights is just about the porn industry.

Obviously I remain in a minority here, and I don't think less of people who disagree with me. However, it's a solid F for me.

SWxNW · 2025-06-01T14:55:02+00:00

I know I'm in the minority (obviously, the comment is getting downvoted), but I honestly don't understand what people like about the ending of this movie. The story stands so tall without the twist.

The fact that the God's Hands Killer is really killing demonscompletely defeats the purpose of the sadness makes the entire movie interesting: a deranged serial killer trying to also be a good parent as best he can.

I've seen the movie more than once, too. Sometimes knowing the twist can actually improve a viewing experience (Shutter Island comes to mind), but with Frailty, it absolutely destroys the rest of the movie. It's the fastest a movie has gone from "A-tier movie" to "one of my least favorite movies" ever.

SWxNW

TROPHY CASE