r/Ijustwatched

Move over John Cena, there's a new guy who we can't see! Stupid joke aside, where do I even start?! This is my pre game for The Invisible agent on Svengoolie and it was so good! Seeing Griffin just fucking terrorizing everyone was so entertaining. My favorite was in the beginning when he beat the shit out of the country bumpkins in the Lion Head Inn. Also since his clothes are still visible, when he's out terrorizing everyone, that means he's out there butt ass naked. And in the snow?! Honestly, he's a king for that. He's confidence makes me think I can run out in the snow butt ass naked lol. One thing to note is that after Griffin killed Kemp I thought it would get boring afterwards, but no! When the police finally took him down I was honestly a little sad. But that's thing, this was really just a one man show, Kemp and Flora are cool too. But while Griffin is an asshole and only realizes he was in the wrong after he's close to dying. It was fun to his high, I love that asshole! This was great!

Beverly Hills Cop (1984)

Rating: 10/10 (PERSONAL FAVORITE)

Watched: July 4, 2026

"What's With All The Hostility, Phil?!"

For me, Beverly Hills Cops is one of those flicks I put on when I'm feeling like it's time to treat myself to one of Murphy's best movies.

All I have to do is think about Beverly Hills Cop and 'The Heat Is On' starts playing in my head, promptly followed by Axel's unique laugh. And Foley's absolutely iconic synth theme song? Anyone who doesn't like that really doesn't get the 80s. After that it's Bronson Pinchot's entire performance as Serge. All that lives rent free in my head and I ain't mad about it.

I'll admit it. Movies where the protagonist risks everything for a friend are a personal favorite genre of mine, and the bar scene between Mikey and Axel was so well done it still gets me in the heart. When Mikey says 'Because I love you, man'? That's some real shit right there. A few minutes later and Mikey's dead.

Axel takes off to Beverly Hills to get down to solving Mikey's murder and from here, the movie takes OFF.

By the time Rosewood and Taggart join Foley to help rescue Jenny from Maitland, the stakes are super real. Seeing Axel shoot the hell out of Zack will always be awesome because I'm down for vengeance any day of the week. For the 80s, that final shootout was pretty badass, but today I reckon there would've been a lot more blood and possibly some guts all over the place.

This time, though, I gotta say my favorite part is the very ending, when super-stoic Bogomil lies his ass off to Chief Hubbard. There was just something about watching a man used to being so by the book telling a total lie that was a little bit extra today.

If it's been a minute, revisit this classic!

I watched kickass for the first time last night. i was under the impression that this was a funny superhero movie about a teenager who wanted to fight crime. i thought he’d save cats out of trees and break up petty arguments. Even the intro, showing us that he’s really not that good at fighting and this is just a kid who lost his mom (slightly autistic) and this is his interest to not think about loosing his mother. then you get into his first “superhero moment” where i thought when the one guy hit him in the gut, it was just a really hard punch, come to find out he gets stabbed, it’s gory and violent, he gets hit by a car and the person after seeing he’s hit someone drives away. this isn’t the world where superhero’s exist, it’s about a dumb kid who shouldn’t be messing around with dangerous people on the street. the scene where he gets taken to the hospital was so heartbreaking. it honestly shifted the tone of the entire move for me. i was soooo shocked that after his recovery he went back to it and kept getting himself in very dangerous situations. he could have ended up dead . does no one think about that. it was in no way a comedy movie for me. down to big daddy being just a complete sociopath.

when he eventually got the girl and changed his mind about wanting to fight crime i thought that was rlly sad !! this is a kid who lost his mom and felt like he didn’t have anything to fight for, now that he had a special person in his life, he realized that he didn’t want to throw his life away.

Did anyone else just not find the movie funny at all or is it just me. i also watched it in the clouds so maybe that’s why? the violence was extra gruesome to me

The “Supergirl is shallow” take is a failure of reading, not a failure of the film

The complaint keeps taking the same shape: Kara doesn't seem to care enough… the horror around her doesn't land… the whole thing feels weightless. Blah blah blah. But every version of that complaint depends on the same move treating the absence of narration as the absence of meaning.

Start with why Kara is like this at all. She isn't just a sad character for mood's sake. Her parents and her entire remaining home died slowly of Kryptonite poisoning, which is the actual reason she was sent to Earth as a kid, and it's the wound this whole movie is built on top of. The film chose to show it in flashback and trusts you to carry it forward into the present, where she's drinking her way across the galaxy instead of living. That's a character whose interior life the film refuses to caption for you.

That refusal is exactly where people get lost. Kara picks a fight with Ruthye over nothing, and it looks arbitrary if you're waiting for the film to explain it…but it's not arbitrary at all, it's guilt with no legitimate target landing on the nearest person instead. Right after, she flies off alone and screams and cries briefly in the vacuum of space, where nothing can hear her, before pulling herself back together and going back down. That's literally a full emotional beat, cause and effect and recovery, without a single line of dialogue explaining it. It's legible if you're willing to infer feeling from behavior. It reads as empty if you're waiting to be told what to feel.

The Vran family death gets the same treatment, and it's the clearest case of people mistaking restraint for laziness. They aren't victims dropped in to manufacture stakes, they literally sold their own daughter into marriage, then tried to buy her back by selling out Kara and Ruthye, and Krem kills all three of them anyway. That's a complete moral arc: desperation curdling into complicity, and complicity getting punished. Calling this shallow requires either missing the betrayal or deciding it doesn't count because nobody stopped to underline it for you.

Even the "no bright colors" complaints fit the pattern. People are asking a film about grief and numbness to look and feel like Superman, and treating the mismatch as a flaw instead of the actual subject. Superman told Lex Luthor that being human means screwing up constantly and trying again anyway…that's a story about someone who never stopped trying. Supergirl is the story of someone who did stop, for a while, and the tone is doing exactly what it should while she's in that state.

None of this is a hard read. It just requires accepting that a film can tell you something without spelling it out for you. The people calling that shallow are the ones who needed subtitles for the emotion.

Okay, so I just watched AGAIN.

One of my favorite parts of this movie, that I don't think I fully recognized, is the humor.

I think it's why I come back to it so often. I work in a very difficult life or death field. Humor gets me through. People who are not in that environment just don't understand. Comedic release or comic relief has been talked about for centuries.

Matt Damon is fighting for his life, literally, and so many communications are flavored with humor.

When you can't cry, laugh.

Grunt! The Wrestling Movie follows the bizarre aftermath of wrestling legend Mad Dog Joe DeCurso being decapitated in a match, setting off a chain of increasingly absurd series of events involving rival wrestlers, promoters, and fans. Presented as a mock documentary, the film blends staged interviews, backstage footage, and in-ring action, treating its outrageous wrestling universe with complete deadpan seriousness.

Wow. This was a trip down memory lane. I watched this back in the day a as a kid and it went waaaaaay over my head. Surprisingly Grunt! The Wrestling Movie has aged into something far more interesting than a forgotten wrestling comedy. Released in 1985, it anticipated the meta turn in both comedy and professional wrestling by decades. Much like This Is Spinal Tap did for rock music, Grunt! blurs the line between parody and documentary, creating a world where the absurdity of wrestling is funny precisely because it’s so close to the truth.

Long before fans routinely discussed kayfabe, backstage politics, or the performative nature of wrestling on the Internet, Grunt! treated the entire industry as a self-contained mythology populated by larger-than-life characters who seem incapable of stepping out of their gimmicks. What once looked like broad satire now plays as an uncannily perceptive commentary on wrestling’s unique blend of fiction, athleticism, and identity. In many ways, the culture had to catch up with the movie before its smartest jokes could be fully appreciated. It kinda also foreshadows Aranofski‘s The Wrestler which came out almost 25 years later. This, ladies and gents, is essential viewing. 9/10 V-Triggers.

Poltergeist (1982)

Rating: 9.5/10 (EXCEPTIONAL)

Watched: July 1, 2026

"This House Is Clean"

When I was a kid, I had my own TV and access to HBO and Showtime. You know what else I wound up having after seeing Poltergeist at 11 years old?

A need to sleep with my closet door all the way open until my mid-20s and an unreasonable fear of dolls and clowns and clown-dolls that persists to this day. The only thing I didn't become afraid of were evil-looking trees because that's sensible.

On a more practical note, it is genuinely wild what the PG rating got away with in the 80s. Evil murderous clown-dolls, nightmare trees, little girls being eaten by closets, a man clawing his face off in front of a mirror, a swimming pool full of actual dead corpses ...

Oh yes. That's right. Towards the end of the movie, when Jo Beth Williams is trapped in the pool and surrounded by bodies, those are real. It was cheaper to get real bones. Yes, Jo Beth knew about it but still. I would've sued so damn hard. SO HARD. Because knowing a thing and then going into that pool are two different things!

All that reminiscing out of the way, Poltergeist set the framework (and the bar) for haunted house/poltergeist movies pretty much for all time. The escalation starts small. Carol-Anne starts off saying a few weird things, there's the Magical Kitchen Slide, there's the Closet Swallowing.

And then shit gets real weird. By the time The Freelings have to call for help, they're so jaded by the experience that they're completely unfazed by what's going on in that bedroom. The reaction of those parapsychologists as that lunacy is revealed is chef's kiss.

The escalation is handled so well that by the time the final reel comes around, I still get stressed out. Maybe part of that's emotional memory. I don't know.

All I know is that Poltergeist stands up today, even if some think the effects are dated.

I went on $7 Tuesday just because I kept hearing bad reviews, but the movie was actually very good. I would rate it a solid B+

>!It was an A, but the Jimmy Eat World-cover fight scene really took me out. Worst part of the movie, unfortunately. Definitely not the right song choice!<

Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

Rating: 10/10 (PERSONAL FAVORITE)

Watched: July 1, 2026

"Oh That's Just My Pet Snake, Reggie!"

I was nine when I saw this in multiple times in theaters. We lived within walking distance of a small movie theater and my mom was trusting enough to let me go with my pals. There's no way to know how many times I've seen Raiders, but it's a lot and I'll never regret it.

This is Spielberg at his finest. Raiders has daring action, crazy exciting set pieces, heroic action and arguably one of the best expository scenes in History. You know the scene. The Feds roll in and have a full on discussion with Indy about what's going on with Hitler and supernatural acquisitions.

The best thing about it is it's a discussion. It's not actual exposition. It doesn't spoon-feed the info to us, but it also makes damn sure we know what's going on.

But the most amazing scene is, of course, the ending, where the Nazis (especially that crumb-bum Major Arnold Ernst Toht) gets theirs! Thank GOD there was more latitude for what went into a PG movie back in the 80s, because that was some for-real-deal Wrath of God type stuff! Melting faces for days.

This is also the first real globetrotting movie I think I ever saw. Indy journeys everywhere in pursuit of The Ark. While none of the places in the movie were actually the places, a young me thrilled at Indy's journey to Peru and Egypt. Imagination and expert film-making took us to all those places and made us a part of something grand.

It was also the first time I fell in love with Karen Allen. Feisty as hell, she was superb as Marian Ravenwood. The scenes with her and Indy of them in Egypt, hanging out with Sallah are excellent, even if that damned monkey was a traitor.

Raiders was ahead of it's time. All of the actors gave us a lifelong masterpiece of excitement, adventure and love. They couldn't really have known then what a lasting impact their work would have on film and pop culture, but I'm grateful it exists.

At the end of the day, you can't go wrong with Raiders. I'll throw this one on when I'm feeling nostalgic and it never fails to perk me up.

It’s obvious, this is where the cracks started to show around the franchise. From here is a no go zone. But honestly? Sure it’s goofy and unrealistic but it’s hella entertaining. The whole plot point beyond Dominic Toretto going rogue and betraying his team was creative and not something I genuinely thought I would enjoy. 

As always, the cars are amazing the choices honestly just fucking crazy good. I Love how every car complements the driver like Roman getting a Lamborghini even  though that doesn’t fit a ice Russia sort of landscape haha. 

Charlize Theron really sells the Cipher character. Truly can’t think of anyone else who could have played her character off so well. Every scene she had just made my hatred for her character grow even more and more. Fantastic performance. She is definitely one of the good things from this. Just a shame her performance was somewhat wasted in this objectively terrible script and story. Though as much as it feels weird to say it works and is good? 

In terms of the bad stuff for sure the "zombie cars scene” because what the fuck? Yea let’s just hack all the computer chips in the cars and make them chase the Russian minister 🤣😭. Just insanity. Really stupid but because it’s The new Fast and Furious it’s somewhat excused I guess. 

I really enjoy the scene where the team harpooon Dom’s car you can see his reaction. And it says everything "holy shit I might be cooked” Dom didn’t expect his team to do the unthinkable stop him. 

There is quite a lot of dark and emotional energy in this. Dom’s life is switched upside down after finding out That Cipher kidnapped his ex girlfriend and his baby. Obviously Dom being Dom he does anything for FAMILY so he is forced to help her with her missions. But eventually he fucks up which honestly wasn’t kind of his fault. Cipher got what she wanted but was  jealous bitch  I guess? Yeah His ex is killed Makes Dom go crazy and lock tf in. Long story short Deckard helps him retrieve his son. Cipher gets away until later on in the franchise. And that’s it. 

Overall yea it’s not the best but it also isn’t the worst thing ever. Some people think this the worst one or one of the worst ones in the franchise. To me it’s not that bad I can name ones that suck even harder. AHEM 9 and 10. 

Probably fast forever soon too 😭. 

But yea in my humble opinion it ain’t that bad. In fact a guilty pleasure of mine. Maybe it’s  because I grew up with these films and this one in particular. So it felt like reliving childhood watching 8. But who knows.

Just watched citizen vigilante…

What a disgusting fucking display of racist hate. I saw a couple things saying it had some migrant crime themes but holy fuck was i not prepared for the level of utter sadism and disregard for the value of human life. Just a neo nazi fever dream. I heard it was banned in germany and thought huh that seems over the top but no not one tiny bit. What an absolute embarrassment to anyone involved in that movie. Rant over.

My rating: 4.5/5 (arbitrarily taking off half a star because it wrecked me)

Country: Austria (watched with English subtitles)

Director: Gerald Kargl (doesn’t seem to have directed any other feature length films)

Does anything bad happen to the dog: >!no!<

This has been sitting on my Letterboxd watchlist for ages, and I probably originally found it on someone else’s horror list. “Fear” and “Schizophrenia” are alternative titles, though it doesn’t seem to touch on schizophrenia.

This is one of the best movies I’ve ever seen, and I never want to ever watch it again. Despite having about as much gore and violence as any typical horror movie - and horror being one of my favorite genres - Angst has been sitting heavily and uneasily in my stomach for the last couple of hours. I’ve taken Tums, a hot shower, and a nap since finishing it.

The tagline says “Based on a True Story”. And the story is fairly simply. A man is released from prison after stabbing a random woman, and then immediately breaks into a house to kill again. This should be a fairly standard entry in the home invasion genre, even with its heavy heaping of European bleakness. But there are two (spoiler-free) things that really elevate Angst and set it apart, along with making it so effective.

One: the camera. The camera is completely dynamic, and smoothly twists and turns to stay with the action and focus. It’s like a living thing and another character, and doesn’t give you any real breathing room. The audience is only allowed a few moments of distance throughout the whole movie.

Two: the narration. The main character narrates through the entire runtime (as a voiceover). You get his thoughts, his reasoning, his past, his motivations delivered cooly and almost dispassionately in nearly every moment. There’s incredibly little dialogue in the movie otherwise. But being in his head doesn’t make you feel remotely sympathetic to him, and there’s a distinct disconnect in how he perceives himself and reality. He sees himself as cool, collected, cunning, clear-headed and mostly in control - and we get to see the full picture. Sitting with his perspective for about eighty minutes is deeply uncomfortable and probably where most of this grimy afterfeel comes from. Usually in media, if you have someone’s point of view it means that you’re supposed to sympathize with them on some level - but that’s impossible here and the tension of that expectation being upended is almost unbearable.

I’m not sure if I actually recommend this movie or not. It’s masterful, beautifully shot and acted, and engaging. It’s not not funny. There is a vein of pitch black humor running through it, and it’d be a much meaner movie without it. Generally speaking, if you like the original Funny Games or The Vanishing, you’d probably like Angst. Watch it if you like feeling bad or want to see probably the best home invasion film.

So I just re-watched 2008’s Indiana Jones and the kingdom of the Crystal skull for the first time in many years. I remember liking it on my first watch and on a rewatch, I still really enjoyed it.

Now it is ridiculous at times, but I also find it entertaining. Let’s just get the weakest part of the movie out of the way and that is the story. There are only to the story that are outlandish. And kind of don’t mix with Indiana Jones. Other than that, there’s some fun action scenes in here, including car, chases, and fight scenes. Along with that, I think the performances are pretty good including Shia LaBeouf. Finally, I liked the adventure.

This is a hot take, but I actually prefer this movie over last Crusade.

Rating-4/5

It’s not amazing. It’s not horrible. I’m glad I went. It reminded me that not all comic books have to be the best comic ever, not all movies have to “raise the bar.” It mostly did what it set out to do. I liked it as much as any recent superhero movies, but I’ve seen very few (nonanimated) superhero movies I’ve particularly liked in recent years; I didn’t love it but I can think of other superhero movies I’ve disliked more.

My family enjoyed it. That’s what I liked most.

Most interesting idea that occurred to me is that “Superman is a nerd” to his fellow god, Supergirl. She respects him, cares for him, but also sees him at times (perhaps unfairly) as being a little embarrassing… and I was ok with it given that this is her movie. (Sorta kinda like how Huck Finn does not particularly flatter Tom Sawyer in his own book, nor vice versa.)

I’m not someone who reads comics particularly, though I have some familiarity with certain stories. This movie did renew my interest in tracking down the original story to see if I would be more moved by it in print form.

Underwater (2020)

Rating: 9/10 (EXCEPTIONAL)

Watched: June 23, 2026

"You Want Your Bunny Heater?"

This movie is surprisingly good at delivering a lot of high intensity stress and discomfort very quickly. They waste almost no time getting to the disaster, and when it strikes, I really have to say it strikes hard.

It was impressive.

Everyone involved handled themselves in that action scene just like you'd hope real people in that situation would. No one messes around. At all. They respond to their danger instantly.

The disaster is a great ticking clock for everyone aboard the underwater rig and the sounds of bulkheads cracking and sections collapsing under thousands of tons of pressure is a hard reminder that death down that deep is instant. It's oppressive and claustrophobic and you can't help but feel like you're right there, on the bottom of the ocean, trying to survive

Kristen Stewart doesn't deserve the bad rap she still carries (does she?) from Twilight. She does an exceptional job in this movie, which definitely turned out way better than I could've anticipated. I'm a little guilty here and there of thinking she's not a great actress, but every time I see her in something else, she proves me wrong, time and again.

And I just plain old love Vincent Cassel. Have since Brotherhood of the Wolf, so seeing him in anything is always awesome.

This movie is very well paced. While it's nothing brand new under the sea, Underwater has a lot of tension and some really good scares/thrills as everyone tries to survive and make their way to someplace else. More than once I was on the edge of my seat and just honestly astonished that this movie was so good. I wonder how in the hell this movie was so off my radar for so long!

The last 15, 20 minutes? I want to spoil it because it was so damned surprising I was literally saying 'holy fuck, what the hell' a few times. What I can say is I went in not entirely sure if this one would meet my Kaijune criteria for this month's challenge.

It sure did. If you haven't seen it, trust me. It's worth the time in. If you have, watch it again!

Been hearing mixed things about the latest Steven Spielberg film. I thought it was good but nowhere near the level of his most famous alien encounter stories. Some good ideas and some classic Spielberg set pieces and shots but has too much going on and never quite harmonises. The amount of drafts David Koepp made of this and it still feels like it could have done with one more rewrite. John Williams had a lovely score and Josh O'Connor and Emily Blunt gave it 110 percent. Be interested to see whether it improves with time or falls behind because the 'War of the Worlds' remake was seen as a misfire back in 2005 and now it's found more of an appreciation as an attempt to reinvigorate a classic done-to-death text. Happy to have seen it though.

So I have owned the 1982 Robert De Niro movie the king of comedy for a couple years now and I finally got around to seeing it. I am definitely going to be in the minority, but I wasn’t a fan of it.

I wanna start saying that I don’t think it’s a bad movie, but it’s definitely not as good as some other Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese movies that I have seen. There are several issues that I have with the movie.
I don’t think there is a great flow to the movie. It seems kind of hectic and choppy

The other issue I have is the performances. The performances by De Niro and Jerry Lewis are good, they’re not outstanding. Also, the story is OK and I felt like there were some scenes that kind of dragged and worked a little too long.

Overall, I wanted to give this movie a chance and see if it was as good as people made it out to be. Unfortunately, it just didn’t work for me.

Rating-2/5

Hi, I just watched Obsession (literally like 4 hours ago), and my mind has been RACING. This movie was utterly fantastic, terrifying, and incredibly thought provoking.

While writing a little analysis of the movie for myself about the various themes Obsession had, I had a realization about the main character's name(s)---Bear, his nickname, and Baron, his real name.

Alright, here's the analysis (spoilers):

A large reason as to why Bear did what he did---using the Wishing Willow to force Nikki into loving him---was because he was lonely. Bear states himself that Nikki was the first person to talk to him and that she was there for him when his grandmother died.

Bear, in his loneliness, idolizes Nikki into a perfect person, and he becomes obsessed with her. So obsessed that he's was more than willing to keep Fake Nikki just so he could "be with her."

But Bear's loneliness is entirely his fault. He says so himself, that he's described by others as a closed book. Bear is toxically masculine in his repression of his emotions, and his fear of emotional vulnerability stops him from creating deep meaningful relationships.

Throughout the movie, Bear is presented with the opportunity to be vulnerable multiple times (when his cat dies, in the car ride with Nikki, during his conversation with Sarah both in the record store and in her car later), but he refuses to every time.

And despite the fact that Bear's loneliness is self-created, it damages those around him even though they had nothing to do with it. Ian and Sarah are killed, and Nikki is permanently scarred and violated.

But Bear isn't anything special, even in real life. Men like Bear are painfully mundane and widespread, trapped in their own self-created cycles of loneliness. It's why it's so easy to emphasize with Bear at the beginning of the film, why so many real men see nothing wrong with Bear himself, why these same individuals feel that Bear is a victim despite his horrendous actions.

And that mundanity is exactly what makes Bear exactly so dangerous. Because Bear isn't just a some random guy, he's a Baron.

Baron's are the lowest ranking, and most numerous, nobility withing the European peerage system, and so is Bear within our patriarchal society. He's not loud or commanding or any of the other traits we associate with "real" men, and so he isn't higher up on the ladder as a Viscount or Duke---but, he's still ON the ladder.

In our society men are allowed on the ladder no matter how numerous or plain they are. Men like Bear are everywhere, and are still given the power to strip away the autonomy and rights of women without any real consequence to themselves.

And that's exactly what happens. Bear steals Nikki's autonomy by doing something as easy as breaking a stick. And in the end, Bear kills himself, leaving Nikki to face the consequences of his actions.

Bear's character is a warning to both men and women. To women, Bear is a warning about how even the most innocuous men are capable of horrible harm, and how our society allows and permits such behavior.

And to men, Bear is a warning that any of us could be Bear, that it's incredibly easy to be Bear, and that the only way to not be Bear is to do what Bear could never do.

Be an open book.

TLDR: Bear's name being Baron in Obsession is a metaphor about our society gives numerous, ordinary men the power to harm women beyond measure without or with nearly no consequence.

You know the one. Nicolas Cage has long hair and says "put the bunny back in the box." It's one of many films that draws from the premise of Die Hard but it doesn't feel like a knock-off. Just a great time at the movies.