I aboslutely love Cop Land. Really, I consider it to be one of the most underrated great films ever. Stallone, who really is a very good actor, much better than his "big dumb action guy" image suggests, is fantastic in it. That scene where he's listening to Springsteen's "Stolen Car" is just magic. The climactic shootout, with the sound all skewed, is one of the all-time great shootouts in cinema history for me. And the whole film just has this great mood, a sort of ambiance I'd usually associate with 80s cinema, and the combination of the setting and the protagonist is great. It's like a modern western and a weird sort of small town crime noir rolled into one. I love it.

I watched Tenet recently, and I realized, that Nolan always makes the same mistakes: First, he is cutting the scenes too tight (well, I guess, he has the last word on the cut, or he always works with the same cutter). The movie is like 150 minutes long and mostly consists of key scenes. It´s like he condensed a four hour movie to 150 minutes. There is almost no room for character development and such,
Second, he always goes for the wider audience and a PG-13 rating. Because of that there is almost no dramatic effect in the action scenes. MEDIUM SPOILER: For example, there is a big war scene with hundreds of people, but you don´t even see the enemies. The good guys are shooting in all directions, everything explodes and people "die", but you don´t see any corpses or enemies hit by bullets. It´s like they are fighting thin air and abandoned buildings. SPOILER END.
The movie could have been a masterpiece, but no.

I also watched Joker. Now that´s a great movie. MILD SPOILER: It´s a mixture of Fight Club and Taxi Driver. SPOILER END.
Joaquin Phoenix got his Oscar rightly.

That's hardly something to blame Nolan for. That's just how all big budget "tentpole" movies are made, has been for a while. Studios just won't invest that kind of money in movies that don't target the widest possible audience. Sure, we can get something like Deadpool, but it only cost 58 million to make, and Tenet cost 200 million. To ensure Logan could be made R-rated Hugh Jackman agreed to take a substantial pay reduction. That's just how the industry works.

I disagree. There's lot's of PG-13 movies with very effective action scenes (if PG-13 rated Dunkirk was authentic enough for actual WWII vets, I'm not gonna argue). And Tenet just isn't a movie where the violence of action scenes is or should be a focus. Making the action more violent wouldn't contribute anything to that particular film.

I've a lot of issues with Tenet myself. While I mostly enjoyed it, I don't think it's a all that great a movie when all is said and done. But it not being explicit enough about the violence never even crossed my mind as one of its problems. In the end it's not really an action film as much as a sci-fi "idea" movie emulating the trappings of a James Bond film (and those are also mostly, if not all, PG-13 movies)

Kagemusha as I recently bought the Criterion from Amazon's B2G1. Being the first Kurosawa film I ever saw back when I was in high school it really captures the imagination of the feudal era of Japan. The costume design and battle scene at the end were also well orchestrated.

The Man Who Killed Hitler and then The Bigfoot

I like Sam Elliott, but I found it meh. It was metaphorical and romantic, not what I was expecting based upon the title.

I don't watch too many movies, but the last one I checked out was Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989). Really fun movie; I'm glad AVGN brought it to my attention a while back. A year or two ago, I finally saw The Terminator (1984), which was super cool.

If you like The Terminator, you'll love Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

One of my all time favorites. Not only is it very funny, and has a great soundtrack, but I just love how positive it is. There's just something contagiously joyfull about it and the two protagonists. And both sequels are also great, especially Bogus Journey. I also very recently picked up some of the Bill & Ted comics - Bill & Ted's Most Triumphant Return and Bill & Ted Go to Hell, and both are also very good. Most Triumphant Return is particularly hilarious. Really, despite some duds like the short-lived live action tv series, Bill &Ted is a wonderful franchise - joyfull, silly, clever about it's silliness and popular enough to endure but not big enough to get ruined by people who'd just want to milk it till it dies.

Haven't been watching movies much lately but put in the new Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade 4k disc last night and wow, what a looker!

He certainly is a phenomenal actor yes, and I think he made the film for me. How everyone walks all over him throughout the film, made that final shootout especially satisfying to watch. Still, I think the story could've been a bit more fleshed out, especially the mob connection. But that didn't affect my enjoyment of the film too much, as in addition to Stallone's performance, the mood was incredible - "modern western and a weird sort of small town crime noir rolled into one" is a perfect description for it.

I didn´t say anything about violence :)
I said, there is almost no dramatic effect, because there are almost no visible enemies in the one big scene.

In that regard, Dunkirk and even the "snow scene" in Inception are made way better. Mostly because Dunkirk does not have these extremely tight cuts irc. Inception has them, but to a lesser degree than Tenet.

You talked about the rating and how it should have been R. I'm not sure what else you might have meant by it. Swearing? Nudity?

Layer Cake (2004) via Netflix

I finally got the projection screen setup in my backyard on Thursday the exact way I want it. It's all good now. My wife and I watch this one last night and thoroughly enjoyed it. The writing and pacing was excellent. Tonight we are going to check out either Uncut Gems (2019) or King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017). We're using a Raspberry Pi 4 running Twister OS so that we can stream film and bop back into a game with ease.

I didn´t say anything about an R-rating :)
I´ll try again to clarify: In his attempt to make his movie as "child-friendly" as possible, he cut every scene, that could be considered unsuitable for minors, to the shortest possible extent. By doing so, most of the shooting scenes at the end of the movie lost any significant impact.
I do not say, that the movie should be more violent, brutal or should portrait the soldiers fighting naked. I´m only saying, that Nolan could have made the movie more thrilling and dramatic by actually showing the whole footage, instead of only hinting at an armed conflict.
He did this way better in Dunkirk, where you feel the imminence of war, without seeing any blood or gruesome images.
I hope this makes it clear :)

nvm, not worth the time