I see your Frogs, and raise you the spanish classic Slugs!. Which gets immediate additional points for its original subtitle Muerte Viscosa.
It's got everything you'd expect from a spanish almost-no-budget production. From 1988. Which explains where the budget went: cocaine. Cocaine and special effects.
Gratuitous nudity. Senseless gore. Literally award-winning special effects for said gore. A plot so thin and inept you could write it down on the flimsy string tangas that are on display for no reason, but a lot of screen time. To say it with the words of a German film magazine: 'Death lurks in the lettuce - lovable nonsense that shows its remaining qualitiy mostly by dealing with its inadequacies in a bold and demented fashion. Not good, but a rarity'.
I’ve seen Slugs. And at least the Slugs, however inconceivably, done some bad murders.
In Frogs, their worst crime is doing nothing to save lives. They don’t actually kill anyone! It was other lizards and amphibians. I should know, I’m a witness 🤣🤣
I'm not exactly a 'fan' of the Little Nemo in Slumberland comics from the early 1900s but I'm aware of them and read some in my brief 'I'll be pop culture historian' phase. Basically they're 1 page newspaper strips where a kid goes to sleep, his bed becomes this long legged spider thing and takes him on a surreal adventure, and then he wakes up. Weird trippy stuff, especially for the era.
So this Netflix film, with noted Baywatch star Jason Momoa has a girl who, after the death of her father goes on surreal dream adventures searching for him. It is... almost good? Maybe almost almost good. I really wanted to like it.
Great, inventive special effects and dream worlds. But halfway through they just stop making new ones, she just revisits the same dreams again and again. So instead of the kid driving the monster garbage truck being a cool one off he pops up several times.
Worse the real world characters are just as odd and surreal as the dream characters so there's no feeling of contrast. A lighthouse keeper? A doorknob salesman? A private school with a demographically perfect mix of children of color and children with disabilities? these are our grounded characters?
There could have been a message about facing reality rather than burying grief in dreams (or streaming services) but it ain't there.
When my main question while watching a film is why did you make this? Who did you think would want to see it? You have a problem.
I mean why base it on a 100 years+ old comic and then ignore the source material? Did they think there were some 120 year old fans who'd been waiting for this film?
Onibaba -1964
It's from the same studio that made the Shinobi no mono movies and I thought I saw a face or two I recognized whe nI saw the triler but I can't sa for sure now.
It's a slow burn. The men are gone conscripted and taken to war leaving the woman behind to tend the fields and fend for themselves. The have taken to ambushing wounded soldiers who wonder into the area, a grass sea. they loot the dead and trade that for food. They're experiencing a different aspect of the horror of war and they don't like it. Their life changes when one of the men returns with out the husbands, his friend.
And there's a curse.
I had expected something a little different but it was an interesting setting for horror thriller. Isolation and starvation and a dash of paranoia. It's a slow burn which while tedious at times does add to the ambiance they were going for.
Fun with Dick and Jane A 2005 Jim Carey vehicle that also has Tea Leoni. I will pretty much watch anything Tea Leoni is in. I am 100% sure I have seen this before.
Honestly, this movie is still relevant 18 years later as it is a fairy tale. The crazy idea that the victims of our Capitalist masters can somehow "get even" with them when they feth us over. Pure fantasy in the days after Enron, Worldcom, Adelpho and other company scandals that have long been buried in time.
The universe of this movie is a bit dystopian. Where the victims of the system are tricked to "buy into" the system. They try really hard to be what the system needs, but when they can't it just grinds them up and leaves them as paste. Hard to believe that it has gotten worse since this movie was made.
It was great to see that they "Name and Shame" the suits that inspired the film and the companies that they worked for. Perhaps that will be useful to historians some day?
However, as entertainment it fails. It hangs together but aside from the anti-Capitalism spin the movie is a non-entity with no real staying power. Not funny. Characters aren't likeable enough. It just doesn't quite fit the pieces together in an entertaining way. Too bad as I feel like the movie had a lot of relevant things to say, but never could get it out in an entertaining enough way.
Puss in Boots Pretty sure I have seen this before too.
Harmless Shrek spin-off that is completely forgettable. I forgot I had seen it before, and even now I can't tell you much about it.
Entertaining and serviceable, just no great shakes.
A Tollywood (Telagu language but also available in Hindi and dubbed to English) action film about 2 Indians fighting the British in the early 1900s. One is jungle-dwelling tribal, the other an Anglicized officer in the British army who is secretly working his way up the ranks to get guns to the resistance.
Physics do not exist in this film. At one point a hero is dual wielding motorcycles as his hand to hand weapons. The British in this are EVIL, evil, evil, very bad, evil. Evil. Dr. Doom called and said tone it down a tad. If you don't like the English this is the film for you.
Based on 2 real life revolutionaries (very, very loosely based) with a feel good song at the end that honors various Indian heroes and notably omits Ghandi and Nehru. Which sets off my Hindu Nationalist alarm since the current BJP government has been trying to obscure the role of tolerant-diversity promoting founders.
An interesting spectacle. Needed more song and dance numbers. But so does every film.
The fight scenes in RRR are top notch. But against two superhumans of their magnitude, you almost feel sorry for all the British mooks sent out to get them.
Watched Black Adam last night. It’s not good. I’m glad I waited for it to arrive on tv and didn’t pay to see it.
I generally enjoy super hero films and don’t mind the Rock, but this was a mess from start to finish. Tonally all over the place, lurching from dark and brooding to quipping and puns that never quite landed. The CG was generally pretty but really suffered from a sense of weightlessness, even more than most CG of late.
It felt like it was maybe 3 films mushed together. The justice society stuff dragged out and had me wondering if those sections were originally in a stand alone justice society film, during those parts it didn’t feel like I was watching a Black Adam film.
And the 3rd act, a villain that came out of nowhere and the villains from the first half of the film have inexplicably disappeared.
I’d say I enjoyed it less than Morbius, that was at least funny albeit unintentionally, and it did have the always excellent Matt Smith in its favour.
German comedy about a group of construction workers and their sleazy boss. It's a pretty surprising film at times and charming. The main characters are funny and fit their roles perfectly, which of course makes or breaks a comedy. Some bits are very silly or absurdist, other stuff feels surprisingly authentic, overall it's good fun and doesn't bore. And the young people in that film look and talk rather late 90s, and thus acceptable.
No idea if this works in English. For some reason there's an English title, but only subtitles, no audio. Based on this, Take it or Leave it. But if you're in for a light comedy with a rough-around-the-edges-but-likeable cast of characters you could do much worse I think.
So after the trippy madness of GI Joe 1-Cobra-La, the origin story of GI Joe 2-Live Action, and the occasionally adequate GI Joe 3-The Rock, we get an origin story for Snake Eyes.
You know Snake Eyes right the ninja commando, Vietnam vet who is disfigured and mute?
Well in this film he's a handsome dude who talks a lot and was never in the military. He does go to Ninja School though. In Ninja School graduation relies on 3 tests of your Ninja skills. One that's pretty cool. One that involves a flashback to the beginning of the movie and the last that involves fighting 3 giant anacondas. Typical Ninja stuff.
There is one good scene, the first test
Spoiler:
Snake Eyes has to take a bowl of water from a Ninja Master without spilling a drop. After 2 or 3 karate fights and remembering advice to put aside ego, Snake Eyes goes up to the dude, bows and asks if he might have a bowl of water.
That was fairly clever. Not worth watching the movie though. The chick who plays Scarlet is easy on eyes at least but I won't recommend the film for that either. Plus she brings a crossbow to a machine gun fight.
Whilst the plot is pretty straight forward, it’s just so well put together. The cast a universally solid, with convincing performances from everyone. It does have a clear influence from Stranger Things, but isn’t trying to be Stranger Things. Just done in a style with clear inspiration. This approach lends it a kind of timeless feel. Like it could be potentially set anywhere from the 1950’s to the early 2000’s, fashions aside.
There are also kind of hints of Saw (the good early ones, not the later increasingly ropey ones), and like the good early Saw films, relies more on tension than just buckets of gore and inventive (if increasingly implausible) kills.
This is a horror where you do need to be paying attention. And for that, I salute it. Because our attention is rewarded with some solid payoffs. As ever with horror, if you’re not a fan of the genre this is unlikely to convert you into a seasoned Gore Hound. But I think you’ll still enjoy it as a solid thriller.
Definitely definitely definitely give this one a watch.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Scream VI
Ghost face is back. Again. For the cunningly titled sixth instalment in a now 27 year old franchise. Lawks-a-mercy I now feel old.
The series overall benefit is never having truly outstayed its welcome. Whilst as with any long time franchise the quality does vary, I don’t think any have truly stunk. And certainly 4, 5 and 6 seem to have been made when the series had something new (if not necessarily interesting) to say about the wider horror genre.
And so it stays fairly fresh, especially given the central premise entirely relies on tired tropes really shouldn’t bear repeat outings all that well.
It does keep you guessing as to Whodunnit, and the reveal doesn’t feel daft or overly preposterous.
However, the middle of the film does plod a bit, with some to-ing and fro-ing I’m not entirely convinced was all that necessary. I mean it is set in New York and so showing off some of the sights is needed to remind. But man. They just could’ve got more tension in.
The finale is grand though. And pretty brutal as the series goes. So if you’ve found previous movies OK for younger folks, I’d recommend watching this one yourself first then making the judgement call, because it is a notable jump in the regular violence.
Apparently this bombed at the box office. Which is a shame, because I loved it. Yes the influence of What We Do In The Shadows weighs heavily, but as I love that series I can’t begrudge it.
This is a fun, silly and pretty gory movie. The gore is ludicrous though, but amusingly so. Nic Cage is absolutely amazing as Dracula. Yes there are bits where his accent takes a wee road trip here and there, but the rest of his performance is amazing. His love for the character comes across, channeling bits and bobs from various incarnations whilst giving his own take on the whole. Nicolas Hoult is his usual good value self. Awkwafina remains charming.
Apparently this bombed at the box office. Which is a shame, because I loved it. Yes the influence of What We Do In The Shadows weighs heavily, but as I love that series I can’t begrudge it.
This is a fun, silly and pretty gory movie. The gore is ludicrous though, but amusingly so. Nic Cage is absolutely amazing as Dracula. Yes there are bits where his accent takes a wee road trip here and there, but the rest of his performance is amazing. His love for the character comes across, channeling bits and bobs from various incarnations whilst giving his own take on the whole. Nicolas Hoult is his usual good value self. Awkwafina remains charming.
Oh John Rhys Davis. As the only instantly recognisable name attached, who did you owe money to?
Because this is a travesty. Plot is two idiot children are in the woods being idiots and like idiots open a WW2 bunker. Releasing some kind of relentless killer soldier zombie ghost thing.
This is going for slasher territory, but cheaped out completely using bad CGI in place of Practical Splatter.
John Rhys Davies is barely in it, mostly being confined to a Nursing Home, but he clearly knows something about something because he shows distress.
I’m half an hour in to it’s blissfully short 1h 7m runtime. And it’s cardinal sin? I. Just. Don’t. Care. At all. I’m not exactly rooting for the baddie. I just….don’t care at all.
Seriously. John Rhys Davis must’ve really needed some new bath towels or conservatory or something.
This is not the worst superhero movie ever. In fact it's not even terrible, merely bad. Oh but it makes every effort to be awful.
Johnson is simply not good. Since becoming a bonafide actor (ignoring his Mummy work) he has delivered consistent performances. He's good in the Jumanji movies and Central Intelligence, his voice work in Moana is even acceptable. But what the hell is he going for in this? The Rock doesn't brood: the Rock smoulders.
The music selections throughout the movie are misplaced and attention sapping. It is completely out of kilter with everything around it.
The script is kitsch in a way that not even 2008's Ironman was. There's an English voiced bad guy who gets pasted early on who sounds awful. I shouldn't jump on the guy because he may have just been following direction, but he sounds totally out of his depth.
And the seemingly endless scenes of a weightless CGI blob weightlessly smacking another weightless CGI blob for no impact mind crushingly boring
And slow-mo! I chuffing hate unnecessary slow-mo and here we have every time a certain character is on screen we get unnecessary slow-mo.
This is before pointing out how thoroughly uninteresting the camera work is. Every piece of this film feels like it was put together by committee without any singular vision, with the plot and script suffering the worst from this imbalance.
There is some good stuff to talk about. Both Hawkman and Dr Fate are excellent. From casting and acting to the wardrobe and their (albeit predictable) plotline, they are both head and shoulders above everything else in the movie.
There are two little snippets that made me wonder what the film would have been like if it had some vision. In one there's a young boy trying to teach the out of place Black Adam how to be a superhero. This had slight shades of Terminator 2 and I wouldn't have minded if this film had wholesale ripped off that aspect to a greater extent.
Then there's the Good Bad Ugly reference which comes out of nowhere (I mean who it is implemented, I'm aware there's a short bit of it on the TV before hand). It is so out of reference with everything else that it does not belong. Yet this brief moment works by itself, it's just a shame it works with nothing around it.
A bit of a long review this one but I can't help but thin if someone with some grown up directing chops had got hold of this it may have turned out good.
In which some Colombian bad lads take over a Prep School in an attempt to get their boss man out of US Custody following extradition.
Unfortunately for them, spunky young chaps Samwise Gamgee and Wesley Crusher attend that school, and seem quite well skilled to be pains in the neck. Denholm Elliot also stars as the Headmaster.
This is really quite decent, so far. Kind of like a Posh Street Kids do Red Dawn. Our heroes are all distinct characters, and of course we get some Chekhov’s Gun in terms of their skills quite early on, especially young Mr Gamgee. Well I assume they’re Chekhov’s Guns, I’m not done watching it yet.
For a movie I’ve somehow never heard of before, I’m genuinely impressed! It’s even got the speccy bad guy from Total Recall in it!
It was okay, main problem was I can't remember a thing about the second film (Apart from it being extremely disappointing), so I didn't really know what was going on most of the time (Or who most of the characters were).
Did like the latest Grindlewald though, a definite step up from the Depp version.
In which some Colombian bad lads take over a Prep School in an attempt to get their boss man out of US Custody following extradition.
Unfortunately for them, spunky young chaps Samwise Gamgee and Wesley Crusher attend that school, and seem quite well skilled to be pains in the neck. Denholm Elliot also stars as the Headmaster.
This is really quite decent, so far. Kind of like a Posh Street Kids do Red Dawn. Our heroes are all distinct characters, and of course we get some Chekhov’s Gun in terms of their skills quite early on, especially young Mr Gamgee. Well I assume they’re Chekhov’s Guns, I’m not done watching it yet.
For a movie I’ve somehow never heard of before, I’m genuinely impressed! It’s even got the speccy bad guy from Total Recall in it!
Is that the movie where the Apache helicopter rises up on the dudes in the bell tower and lights them up? 10 year old me forever fell in love with that helicopter ever since.
Also, just dawned on me that this movie probably wasn't something a 10 year old should've been watching.
Weird Al comedy vehicle from 1989. This is so incredibly late 80’s early 90’s, I’m surprised Pauly Shore didn’t show up!
Of course. Being that, this is gonna be Marmite. But I bloody love it so far, and have had genuine laugh out loud moments. If like me you’re a fan of screwball nonsense, there’s a lot here to enjoy.
If you really want to gauge the comedy era it has a pre-Seinfeld Michael Richards, a pre-Nanny Fran Drescher, SNL-era Victoria Jackson, Emo Phillips at the height(?) of his career, and Billy Barty. A real blast from the past.
Flinty wrote: Thanks Voss. I was trying to get my daughter to watch that yesterday and she declined. I’ll probably just watch it myself
Its definitely worth watching. Its probably worth watching before showing it to kids, as it veers from kid-friendly to I-can-see-parents-freaking-out at times. I'm not a good judge of that, as my only frame of reference is rural parents freaking out about what's in the library and demanding things-they-don't-like be banned.
Just to be clear,
Spoiler:
Amongst other things (the normal stuff people-don't-like), when it does go heavy, suicidal ideation and murder-the-Other jump to the front of the story
Managed to talk Flinty the younger into taking this on, and we both loved it. Some real emotional peaks and troughs, but i really like the art style and the voice cast nailed it. Some really awesome set pieces, fight scenes and viginettes scattered throughout.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Ah fair! I didn’t get the chance to watch much US fare in those days.
The main villain in UHF is amazing.
He's been playing the same villain character forever Just love to hate him. years before that he was in Ace High as more or less an evil banker type character. Haven't seen that one in a while but it's very enjoyable.
A college hockey player gets injured and goes to the Swedish Minor Leagues to try and make his was to the NHL. While there, he meets a nice Swedish girl.
The end is ambiguous as all get-out and you, as the audience; get to decide what happens. I don't mind this in movies, as it forces you to look back at the movie and try to build a case on which way it played out.
That said, the movie is heavy on the "Minor league lifestyle", which seems really hollow. Light on the Romance, and a dry form of comedy.
Not for most people but I found it an acceptable way to spend 90 minutes or so. Not going to change your life but a competently done film. In this day and age, a competent film is pretty high praise.
I had a brief moment as I sat down to watch this where I asked myself why I keep doing this to myself?
I mean, let's be honest, the first Bay film wasn't exactly stellar, and it's largely been a trajectory of confusingly edited, much-too-close-to-the-action-to-tell-what's-happening™ diminishing returns since.
So I guess an attitude of "how much worse could it be?" with a small dash of goodwill from Bumblebee I forged on.
So having made it through to the end I can report that ROTB is...
Not bad.
Probably the best move it makes is to set itself in 1994, neatly sidestepping most of the movies that came before, and therefore establishing a relatively blank canvas.
Sadly, what it does with this canvas is very much the same formula of "humans discover existence of giant transforming robots, they come together to face some existential threat, the end."
I guess the thing that places it above many of the other entries to the franchise is that I found the humans more likeable than in most others, and that won't apply to everyone. Otherwise, the CGI consistently felt 5% off what it needed to be, never quite convincing me that the Transformers were really in the environment with the rest of the on screen action. The action was fairly by the numbers, but entertaining enough, probably exactly what the core audience is expecting.
Ultimately this feels like a movie made by the studio to appeal to an already well understood core base, with zero effort to broaden its appeal. If you've seen any other film in the franchise it's almost certain it'll be exactly what you expect, good or bad, with the one caveat that its perhaps not as bad as the worst.
There's something about Robert Redford that just oozes class. He feels like the kind of old school Hollywood actor who you'd stand up for if he entered the room, and naturally call him sir until he told you otherwise.
There's something about Nick Nolte that just oozes creepy uncle vibes. He feels like someone you've known forever (but not by choice), and every time you see him you're both surprised he's alive, and amazed that he keeps finding work.
Together they make an interesting pair of grumpy old men who decide to walk the Appalachian Trail, Redford's character because he wants to get out there and experience the world he feels he's missing in his old age, Nolte's character because he's the only one of Redford's friends/acquaintances who actually wanted to go (and he wasn't asked, it found out about the trek through a mutual friend).
This is actually a comedy, and it's a damned funny one at that. Several very laugh-out-loud moments, and some great characters playing small roles (Kristen Schaal, Mary Steenburgen, Emma Tompson). Definitely worth the hour and a half it takes to watch. It was on Amazon Prime. Great performances from both Redford and Nolte, and some wonderful scenery as well.
One nice touch was the use of voiceover for Redford's character reading notes. The note would always be read by the character who wrote it, and if Redford stopped reading it the voiceover would just cut mid-sentence. This happened when he was reading lots of ghoulish stories about deaths on the trail that his wife found for him, so they're all Emma Tompson explaining things only to be suddenly cut off as he tosses the paper aside and moves onto the next one.
The 7th entry in the M:I franchise sees the return of numerous characters, including one not seen since the very first film. It also introduces a few new characters, one of whom is Esai Morales as Gabriel, described as a "dark messiah" for the film's main villain, a literal AI gone rogue called "The Entity". I like Morales, and he makes for a calm and steely bad guy who doesn't grandstand or monologue. His words are backed up by lethal actions, and he's a True Believer™ in his cause, which makes him very dangerous.
It also introduces Hayley Atwell, as an in-over-her-head thief named Grace. I don't need to say much about her beyond: It's Hayley Atwell! She's basically perfect in every way.
Also Shea Whigham as this hapless cop who spends the entire movie trying to hunt down Cruise' character (but not like the cop from M:I4; this is very different). He was a lot of fun.
M:I7 is an expertly filmed, tightly plotted piece of extravagant blockbuster cinema that feels gritty and raw and harsh and real. Yes, it uses a lot of FX, but they try to do as much practically as possible, and for sequences like the extensive and amazing chase through Rome you just feel how dangerous it is (compare it to the chase in Fast X, which I love, but M:I7 is just a cut above... several cuts above!). And they really save the big stunt for right at the end, during the big climax on the Orient Express (literally!). The fight on the train is also very cool.
One quick duck into spoiler territory:
Spoiler:
I've never liked Rebecca Ferguson - she just rubs me the wrong way - and I never much cared for her in the M:I franchise. She also kind of annoyed me in Dune. Anyway, despite not liking her, I was very surprised to see them kill her character off in this film. Even more surprised given that we get a fake-out death for Ilsa early on in the film, and then her actual death about half-way through, during the big night-time Venice sequence (which is beautiful!). If it turns out to be a double-double fake out, I'll be annoyed, but it's interesting to see the series taking a risk with killing off a character who has been a major player for two films now. And before anyone thinks that they're just replacing Furguson with a "hotter younger" Atwell, Atwell is actually older than Furguson (though she is hotter! ).
Not everything is perfect. The film's Dragon, 'Paris', played by Pom Klementieff, is criminally underused, and whilst I like arc she has, she is one of those henchman who says very little (and never gets to use her sword, as Ilsa steals it!). The start of the film is also very heavy on exposition, so much so that there is a scene where the characters do spend a while talking about stuff that they all already know and, if you'd been paying attention to the scene before, you should already know as well.
The Entity, whilst total sci-fi land, is a terrifying unseen main villain, and as mentioned before, Gabriel as his acolyte/enforcer makes for quite the spooky and effective team. And speaking of teams, outside of Ilsa we have Benji and Luther back. I'm a bit worried about Luther, or really Ving Rhames, as he spends every scene he's in sitting down and exits about 2/3rds of the way through. I hope there's no health concerns that have limited his screentime, because Luther has been one of the only constants in this series outside of Cruise, and it would suck to have less of him. Benji is tons of fun, as usual. Also lots more Vanessa Kirby in this one, which certainly isn't a bad thing. I love how she keeps calling Cruise's character "John", because she really doesn't know who he is outside of who he was pretending to be in the last film.
Interestingly, despite being a film that has "Part 1" in the title, this film doesn't short-change you with a cliffhanger ending (much as I love Fast X, that ending is so abrupt and has so many unresolved issues and questions!). It has a very clear and distinct ending, with objectives met and lives saved. But it sets up the next film, and what the objectives of the heroes and villains will be. No idea when we'll see this film, what with the Hollywood strikes crippling the industry, but I can't want to see what insane nonsense Cruise and Mcquarrie have planned next.
I haven’t yet seen M:I7, but I just saw a film that is everything it isn’t.
Sharknado 6: It’s About Time aka The Last Sharknado
This movie has no class, terrible choreography, laughably bad special effects, and a stupidity so sharp it’s almost brilliant—almost as in it comes back around into hyperstupid. The stunt casting and hokey homages continue, but there’s an added schmaltz for that Hallmark Channel tugging effect. The final action scene is ambitiously bonkers, but with the worst, cheapest effects in the whole series. It’s…borderline experimental. And like all the insane parts, I’m half-sure they did it that way on purpose.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Would you recommend it to someone, like me, who has no grasp of (I presume) Ice Hockey and it’s league structure?
It really doesn't matter at all. The movie tells you the key things you need to know.
Compared to other Hockey Rom-Coms there is a reason you have not heard of this one, but you have heard of "The Cutting Edge". This one has a much more "modern" look and feel to it, and it does not choreograph a happy-ending. There is even 4th wall breaking at key parts of the story.
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
The movie looks great, and is ridiculous. The fighting is way to jump-cut for my liking. Many of the fight scenes lack any real sense of danger or even interest. However, I could not help but smile and laugh at the ridiculous way they tried to tie it to real history, real people, and real places. Just.... WOW.... what an effort to make something so over-the-top silliness; and ultimately makes the movie make not a lot of sense if you think about it for more than 1 second. However, you are really here to see Ol' Abe kill confederate vampires with an axe.
A latter day Blaxploitation flick where our three African American anti-heroes, on the lam, find their safe house is in fact home to canibal Klansmen.
The action is uneven with some distinctly flaccid kills, but also some amusingly inventive ones. And I’m pretty sure the filmmakers made good use of the silly sheets, as we only see three or four Klansmen with their hoods off, with the others I’d swear being the same actors coming back from kills as different characters.
As enjoyable as seeing Klansmen getting dead, this is….average at best? As with many such obviously low budget efforts, the heart is there, and with that the makings of something really enjoyable. It just didn’t quite come together for me.
That being said, the gun play may feel subdued because it’s more realistic? Like folk being hit by a shotgun and not going flying, the pistols going pop rather than bang, and it not being one-shot, one kill on the torso.
Automatically Appended Next Post: And now?
White Settlers
A horror in the vein of Straw Dogs, set in the Scottish Borders. Confusingly, Pollyanna McIntosh (Scottish) plays half of an English couple, and Joanne Mitchell (English) plays a Scottish woman.
Plot seems to be Londoners buy a farmhouse in The Borders, are horrific jerks about the locals, and the locals take umbrage because You’re Not Local.
Which is weird. Because my Dad lives in the Borders, an area where many folk live in one part of the country and work in the other, so the tensions they’re gonna be playing on are entirely invented outside of the most Nationalistic Idiots.
I’m gonna go ahead and not expect a great deal from this. Kind of expecting to deliver that in abundance.
I gave up. There’s nothing particularly wrong with the movie and acting like. But the whole “every Scot am hate the English” is just too tenuous for anyone who’s spent time in the Borders.
Complete change of pace now, as I have a couple of days off work to settle my mental health a bit.
Stepford Wives (2004)
Much more of a horror comedy than its very well regarded predecessor. And what a cast and crew.
Frank Oz directs, with Nicole Kidman, Better Midler, Matthew Broderick, Christopher Walken and Glenn Close starring.
19 years later, amidst artificial culture wars, this movie gains an interesting new perspective.
Nicole Kidman’s character isn’t a pleasant individual. At all. TV Network Exec who seems to risen to fame off exploitative TV. When it goes too far, and a man humiliated on one of her shows gets trigger happy, she loses her job. This is why she and husband Matthew Broderick move to Stepford.
She’s not a good person, wife or mother. Too caught up in her own career progression.
But, Stepford is basically an Incel’s wet dream. Women with literally pneumatic chests which can be changed at (husband’s) will. All forced to be obsessed with homemaking and making Good Little Wives etc.
But, being played so heavily tongue in cheek it really dances around quite serious issues fairly neatly, with a dollop of Fembots from Austin Powers. And so much of it is in the dialogue, with a couple whose marriage is in jeopardy trying to find the right compromise between themselves to get things back on track. Indeed all the protagonists are presented as flawed persons who want to change and improve themselves.
I suspect those on the extremes are going to loathe this for their own peculiar reasons. But the core is a warm hearted critique of selfishness, and an encouragement of finding your own happy medium. Which frankly the word could do with an awful lot more of.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Walking Tall
The Rock and Johnny Knoxville star in this oddly flaccid revenge/justice movie. A remake of the original, which itself was based on a true story.
Basically bloke returns from serving in the army, to find his hometown changed. Cedar Mill has shutdown, replaced as the main employer by a crooked Casino run by a childhood friend, who essentially runs the town. The Rock cleans up, bad guys go boom, Mill reopens. Hurrah and huzzah, FIN.
Despite getting a cinematic release, this really does feel like a TV Movie. It’s OK I guess. Not something I think I’d ever pay to see, but entertaining enough to stay your channel hopping finger whether it’s being broadcast or one you stick on streaming.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Trading Places
Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd classic. And classic for good reason.
Has some signs of the times, such as language and some blackface, but this serves to remind against Eddie Murphy’s later career he was genuinely talented before he turned annoying.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Humanoids Of The Deep
Hi kids, I’m Doug McClure.
When I was watching this movie I was devouring three pots of Olives, as Sainsbury’s (a UK supermarket chain) has them on special for Nectar Card holders. £2 a pot for these delicious little veggies.
Sadly two of the pots weren’t pitted, which will learn me to read the label. But they were tasty all the same. My favourites however were the Garlic and Jalapeño stuffed Halkidiki Olives. Those were amazing.
No I’m not going to discuss the film because it is indeed that bloody awful.
Trading Places is a lot of fun. The gorilla suit thing at the end inspired a bunch of similar jokes that have aged poorly, but thematically leads into Humanoids From the Deep.
HFTD is a great movie for a teenager to find on cable. Nudity and gore, and the whole boardwalk massacre at the end, just what a young horror hound wants to see. Older, more modern audiences will likely find the exploitation of sexual violence for titillation off-putting. It’s the Revenge of the Nerds phenomenon in a horror setting.
And how dare you! Bette Middler is divine. Unlike the inexplicable Streisand
That was a reference to Superior Spider-Man, where Doc Ock (a villain) takes over Spider-Man’s body and decides he can Spider-Man better than Spider-Man.
I just couldn’t with that film. Which is oddly sad, as I was exactly that kid you described.
I guess I’ve just seen it all before, and done much better. But, had I first seen this in isolation? I can see my opinion of it being better. Perhaps even fond.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Bloodsport
Keeeeeeeeyiiiiiiiii! It’s the Jean-Claude Van Damme martial arts movie. No not that one. That one. Yeah. The one with Bolo Yeung.
This is such a snapshot of cinema history. And thanks to some really well choreographed fisticuffs, far better than it has any right to be. Because what could, should, have been a middling action flick becomes something a wee bit special.
Plucky teen versus giant evil brain!
It's your typical low budget 80's fare, with bad acting and shoddy FX, but entertaining if that's your kind of thing.
Keeeeeeeeyiiiiiiiii! It’s the Jean-Claude Van Damme martial arts movie. No not that one. That one. Yeah. The one with Bolo Yeung.
This is such a snapshot of cinema history. And thanks to some really well choreographed fisticuffs, far better than it has any right to be. Because what could, should, have been a middling action flick becomes something a wee bit special.
Never really seen it before, but I can see why it was a big success. For a movie about whatever-the-heck-a-Cenobite-is, the movie is surprisingly focused on human reactions and human emotions. I liked it.
Which should be MAC, as that’s an acronym within the movie.
Ever wanted to know what happens if you’re a lazy studio with a couple of lucrative sponsorship, and absolutely no originality so you just rip off E.T.?
This. This is what happens. This movie is so bad it has to be seen to be believed. Which is kind of handy, because if you haven’t seen it, you can happily ignore/deny its existence and live a richer life for it.
The effects are Bloody Awful. Practical effects yes. For the most part. But really awful, sub Dr Who ones.
However, there are a couple of curious redeeming qualities. For whichever reason, the script had our lead Hooman be in a wheelchair. And to their credit, they actually cast a kid who genuinely uses a wheelchair. Despite having apparently never acted before? He’s honestly pretty good. He was never gonna bother the Oscars here, but if you didn’t know he wasn’t previously a professional or trained actor, you probably wouldn’t know.
There’s also a fairly throwaway line when said kid and his Mum move into their new house, where she points out the house is wheelchair friendly. No steps, wider doors, lower counters, and he’ll be able to see out of every window.
That’s…..that’s touching. Like. Genuinely.
Sadly it’s about the only heart and compassion this movie allows before clobbering its audience senseless with unsubtle “brick through your window” product placement for Coke and McDonalds. Which in the modern day, is like promoting Booze and Ciggies to kids.
The creature effects are particularly crap. See, MAC and his family can’t speak, only whistle. And frankly I’m convinced this is solely because they were too cheap to get decent animatronics, with MAC consistently looking like Not Trustworthy Conservative MP for Surrey Heath Michael Gove if he’d just been goosed.
Don’t believe me?
MAC
Michael Gove
Michael Gove shown slightly more trustworthy than actual level of trustworthy of not very trustworthy.
Also also I think it pinched musical phrases from Predator of all places.
Trading Places - cool. Jamie Lee Curtis, Christmas.
Bloodsport - rocks. Just seen it last year again. Good. Inspired loooods of stuff, including its own sequels and the most fun of the bunch - the excellent The Quest, starring JCVD.
Right, I just watched Tango&Cash for the first time in a long time. What a fun film. Watched it over the internet with a friend who said she'd never watched it. Weird. But she found it sufficiently good. What always bothered me about Tango&Cash is the car stuff in the end. I mean the whole film is more of a "romp" than a story, but the car stuff and always made me feel the ending is bumpy.
I also watche the American Gladiators "docu"-series on Netflix (Muscles and Mayhem). As far as Netflix productions go, it's Okay for what it is. Some weird editing though, in that they used a few lines the interviewed gladiators say several times at different points. That looked a bit sloppy.
There also was a let-down in that the one guy who comes across really well (Nitro) turns out to having become a
Spoiler:
motivational speaker. meh.
But all of that aside, it's very watchable.
I watched all of The Persuaders, because it's brilliant (for the German dub), and I watched 2 episodes of Thunder in Paradise. Which is a bad show.
And then I watched something bad of epic proportions: Iron Mask (2019). Starring Jackie Chan, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rutger Hauer, very famous Chinese actresses, many surely very famous Russian actors and Jason Flemying. Now he seems to have carved out an interesting niche for himself during the 2010s. Formerly known as "the interesting looking side character from Guy Richies films and the Santa from Chucky's Baby, he then somehow became "the foreign hero guy" in Russian/Chinese historic fantasy films.
So this film is your typical "awesomelol" films into which they throw some famous actors for bit parts and then animate dragons and airships and water ships and monsters and tesla soldiers and robots and magic and trolls around them and hope for a.) Mass audiences and b.) memes. Both of which is an instant failure. Jackie Chan is a bit in it and wears a wig, Arnold is a bit in it and wears a huge fake moustache. And everybody fights all the time, and in between there is nonsense dialogue about prophecies and intrigue and fighting.
The most damning factor about this film though is the look. It's got this insanely sharp, digital look, which makes everything look ultra fake (along with TONS of CGI and greenscreen), but the way this is shot makes it look way faker than it would have to be. It looks like a video game. Yes, video games can look pretty. No, video games never look like a film. They're different things.
Anyway, it's a disgusting-looking and otherwise boring film. Avoid at all Cost.
It's about a large group of Australian pick-pockets and shop-lifters who fell upon 1960's London and raked in millions of dollars worth of thefts, most of the time without the victims even knowing they were being robbed. They stole stuff from stores in broad daylight, right in front of the noses of shopkeepers and assistants, using multiple people running a number of distraction techniques whilst others pilfered jewellery and money drawers and all sorts of things.
Tells about their rise and fall, the big figures, the police investigation that got most of them caught, and interviews people on both sides. It's amazing what they got away with. Mini-Ocean's 11 type stuff, all before security cameras and stuff became more common.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: And to their credit, they actually cast a kid who genuinely uses a wheelchair.
Why is this something that should be "credited"?
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Which in the modern day, is like promoting Booze and Ciggies to kids.
Mac and Me was pitched as a charity fundraiser first, and movie second. The Ronald McDonald Foundation was involved, which is why McDonald’s features so heavily. That’s also why they wanted the lead to be a child who was “differently abled”. The film’s genesis was less cynical than 99% of films.
And the end result was a nightmare-fuel box office bomb best remembered for Paul Rudd’s running gag.
Automatically Appended Next Post: My brother and I watched the film whenever it was on—it’s hilariously bad. The MST3K of Mac and Me is one of my favorites.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
And to their credit, they actually cast a kid who genuinely uses a wheelchair.
Why is this something that should be "credited"?
Because it was the 80’s, a decade not really noted for worrying about authentic casting?
HBMC wrote:
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Which in the modern day, is like promoting Booze and Ciggies to kids.
It really isn't.
Dunno if you noticed, but my reviews are usually intended to be satirical
A decent, if fairly typical, anime series tie-in movie.
Would've enjoyed it more, but it sticks to the modern One Piece movie formula of being a big cameo showcase that has to come up with increasingly convoluted reasons for why the main characters aren't simply steamrolling everything in sight (Much like the series these days).
I prefer the older movies where the crew would simply go on random, wacky adventures that didn't drag in the rest of the world (Again, much like the series used to be).
People with disabilities are almost completely shut out of the performing arts, so it is nice when a movie remembers they exist and don’t just hire Fisher Stevens and stick him in a wheelchair.
But I get it. You really want to have a go at “diverse city” and don’t find representation for minorities as any way admirable. No one will convince you otherwise, so let’s just agree to disagree that every film should be cast like it’s the 1950’s.
It's tricky. I think I'm sat a bit in the middle about this whole stuff. Of course casting a white person to play an Asian person or stuff like that is silly and race/creed/whatevber shouldn't be a factor in what role an actor/actress plays. We're past that sort of stuff. On the other hand I find Amazons diversity quota and rules absurd and stifling to any sort of creativity and artistry. The first is common sense, the latter is corporate BS. I think that it's perfectly okay for a cis-woman to play a trans woman, or somebody without a lisp playing somebody who has a lisp because it's acting. It's playing pretend and it's exactly the opposite of putting one's own person on the screen or representing oneself.
A role which is written to be a person with a disability can be played by a person with that disability (I assume it's very handy if they do that), but a non-disabled person possibly can play that role as well. It shouldn't be a reason to outrule the latter person right away. We've seen countless convincing and endearing performances like that in the past. I find mixing up on-screen persons with off-sceen persons problematic. It's mixing up the work and the artist and that leads to the whole thing of caring about what actors have to say about day-to-day politics or putting rock singers on a pedestal concerning things which aren't about rock singing, and then we're all really, really surprised that people who are being told that they were "not like everybody else" and get paid absurd moneys for "not being like everybody else" having silly opinions or silly ways of spending their time or treating regular human beings.
Right, but this was a 1980’s movie (brown face was still common) made at least partially to raise funds and awareness for the Ronald McDonald charities, and presumably for real kids with disabilities. It failed at both, but “to its credit” it made room for one of those kids to participate, rather than lean into pure hypocrisy. A low bar, but this is an awful, awful movie.
While I agree that actors can and should play people they are not, I would find it awkward if a movie made to raise awareness for the Trevor Project cast only hetero actors, for example.
To me there are 2 important things. Casting someone with the same disability as the character enables the actor’s lived experience to the role enhancing authenticity. Secondly, people with disabilities, by definition, are limited in their opportunities and casting actors in such a role when they are not similarly limited reduces the opportunity further. The same arguments apply to any subset of humanity.
It’s not about whether the non-disabled actor can play the part, it’s an ethical question as to whether the opportunity should be offered to them.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: Right, but this was a 1980’s movie (brown face was still common) made at least partially to raise funds and awareness for the Ronald McDonald charities, and presumably for real kids with disabilities. It failed at both, but “to its credit” it made room for one of those kids to participate, rather than lean into pure hypocrisy. A low bar, but this is an awful, awful movie.
While I agree that actors can and should play people they are not, I would find it awkward if a movie made to raise awareness for the Trevor Project cast only hetero actors, for example.
Speaking of sensibilities and changes thereof - the other night I watched some Siskel and Ebert on youtube (as you do). Andrew Dice Clay came up, and I realized that this was yet another white spot on my mind map of US pop culture. So I watched one and 2/3rds of his stand-up programmes (from 1989 and another one that must have been later). I can see how this man would have been a 'hot property' for a while 35 years back. I'm not huge on stand-up comedy in general, but I'm sure that was a phase with several people with similar schticks. I have to admit that there's something hypnotic to the performance and the guy can talk. As always: never read youtube comments, they are all idiotic.
On the same subject of US comedians, I recently watched
Man on the Moon
Biopic of Andy Kaufman portrayed by Jim Carrey. Saturday Night Live and Taxi seem to have been his big things. As someone who knows nothing about this person I have to say that this movie does a terrible job of wanting you to care about him. I don't have any idea what he was like in real life, but this film makes him out to be utterly obnoxious and arrogantly rude in an "it's all for the LOLs" manner, long before internet jerk culture became a thing. By the time we get to the big sentimental climax it is difficult to give a crap about how bad things are for him because, according to the movie, he's spent his entire life winding people up and exploiting their emotions for his personal kicks and giggles. His ethos is "lighten up, don't be so serious", and then wants sympathy when his own life turns serious. Nah, screw that; I'm not suddenly going to be on his side when the film takes every opportunity to make this person deeply unpleasant.
I'm sure plenty who know his work, or are aware of what he was like in real life, would rush to his defence with a long list of good attributes. But I don't care as I'm not reviewing the person, I'm reviewing the film that portrays him as a contemptible git.
I think only a small subset of comedy fans every really liked him. A lot of comedians, however, idolized him. In the early 200’s I knew 5 or 6 comedians who all took his approach to heart, fetching with the audience and laughing at their expense rather than trying to be funny. It’s as obnoxious in real life as it is in the film.
Burial- Hulu described it as a group of Russian soldiers try to escort Hitler's remains back to Stalin while being attacked by Nazi Werewolves. I went in expecting something similarly over the top as Overlord, but with werewolves. Sadly.... the werewolves were just the Nazis calling themselves that. No supernatural elements at all. Just a squad vs squad running engagement, near Draco Malfoy's family home. It was ok, but very disappointing if you are expecting a werewolf movie.
It’s a modern day slasher, but with a twist, for our Final Girl is caught in a loop, where every time she’s killed, she goes back to the start.
The cause of the loop isn’t really touched on. But seeing her learn bits and pieces and get to the point of saving her life is really quite satisfying. Not as cynical or satirical as Scream or similar, this film still doesn’t take itself entirely seriously. It clearly knows it’s a somewhat silly premise and embraces that without descending into a self ridiculing farce.
Very enjoyable.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Happy Death Day 2 U
And on to the sequel!
Remarkably, this isn’t a simple retread of the first. What could’ve been repetitive (heh) is an interesting expansion of the premise.
Here we find out what causes the loop, but with a few curve balls thrown in for good measure. Not rugpulls as such, just interesting new considerations.
This has a few more intentional laughs thrown in and it’s clear the cast and crew were having some fun. Importantly, the fun again stops comfortably short of self parody or being silly for the sake of being silly.
It packs quite a lot into a fairly short 99 minute run time, and here and there I did think “get on with it”. But, it’s kind of part of the plot, as it lets us share our hero’s overall frustration at her situation.
If you enjoyed the first, this should be on your watchlist too.
Gitzbitah wrote: Sadly.... the werewolves were just the Nazis calling themselves that. No supernatural elements at all.
Werewolf was the codename given to the German guerilla resistance units set up when it became obvious to the Nazi high command that they were losing and that Germany would be invaded. I can see that it could be frustrating if you were expecting actual werewolves.
I look forward to the hatred from the usual suspects as this movie is very "woke". A Barbie movie with a women empowerment and feminist message! Why I never would have expected that! However, contrary to what you may think, it really is not a "man-hating" movie at all.
That said, it is pretty well done and reminded me a bit of the Lego Movie in that a relatively light hearted movie that brought a lot of subtext and a lot to say about modern society.
In our showing there was a mix of film goers, but almost everyone came dressed for the occasion. That made it even more fun.
My theatre seemed to (correctly) assume that there would be a large cross-over appeal of Barbie fans and Jason Statham fans. They gave us a preview for The Meg 2, which looks good-awful terrible.
My rewatching of this was inspired by memes about the Barbie movie. But not in a negative way.
Well. What to says about this movie. It’s cheesy. It had some odd musical cues. But? It’s so much fun.
I’ve read a significant portion of the comics, if not all of them (I’ll err on the side of the former though), and those are “early 40K” level genius.
The movie doesn’t quite rise to meet its source material. Yet for its era it is amazingly good fun.
Tongue firmly in cheek. Charismatic and suitable lead and supporting cast.
I’d even go so far as to consider it a prototype for the MCU. A big screen interpretation of comics which whilst by no means faithful, managed to capture the energy, anarchy and everything good about the source without being limited by it.
Ford vs. Ferrari I have seen more exciting race car movies. For some reason, despite Bale trying super hard; this movie did not land with me as much as other race car flicks.
Perhaps because much of the story revolved around corporate egos instead of racer egos?
The Women in Black Starring Harry Potter in an old Gothic Horror style story. I won't go into the details, but it gets a bit over-the-top with showing the titular Women in Black which actually kills some of the horror. Also, this movie features the worst drive-way I have ever seen!
That being said, as throwback period piece it was effective enough to watch it.
A 70's Italian horror movie featuring surprisingly clever zombies.
It's... not good. From the non-existent plot to the hilariously bad acting, all aspects are pretty poorly done, but it's also quite funny to watch people flail about and be fairly useless at dealing with a zombie outbreak.
An 80's movie from a Stephen King book about machine's rising up to "kill all humans"!
Not good at all.
I am also really unclear why some machines attack, some don't, and what qualifies as a machine? Sometimes it seems like devices with electronics, sometimes mechanical parts, and sometimes things connected to electricity but sometimes not.
Also, the ending scrawl..... makes it seem like UFOs/aliens were involved. The rest of the movies focuses on issues from a comet's tail. Just a strange and tacked on epilogue scrawl.
I am probably thinking about it more than the film makers did.
It’s a bad movie few people ever saw, yet somehow everyone knows the truck with the Green Goblin face on it. I struggle to think of any other vehicular villains so iconic, besides Christine. Maybe someone should make another Duel or The Wraith film.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Went to check out the trailer. I had forgotten how coked out of his skull King was. Explains a lot.
I can remember watching it as a kid during the summer on like USA when it wasn't close enough to a holiday for them to be spamming star wars or reruns of Wings and all i can remember is the goblin truck and the alien thing, nothing else
Easy E wrote: Ford vs. Ferrari I have seen more exciting race car movies. For some reason, despite Bale trying super hard; this movie did not land with me as much as other race car flicks.
Perhaps because much of the story revolved around corporate egos instead of racer egos?
Because it's not a film about race cars. It's a film about Ford attempting to win, and the people who were involved in that win. Designing the car is more important to the film than zoom zoom zooming around the track.
It's like how Moneyball isn't really a "baseball movie" in the traditional sense, in that it doesn't show lots of baseball games. Instead, it's about the guy in charge, and his statistical approach to building a team.
Easy E wrote: Ford vs. Ferrari I have seen more exciting race car movies. For some reason, despite Bale trying super hard; this movie did not land with me as much as other race car flicks.
Perhaps because much of the story revolved around corporate egos instead of racer egos?
Because it's not a film about race cars. It's a film about Ford attempting to win, and the people who were involved in that win. Designing the car is more important to the film than zoom zoom zooming around the track.
It's like how Moneyball isn't really a "baseball movie" in the traditional sense, in that it doesn't show lots of baseball games. Instead, it's about the guy in charge, and his statistical approach to building a team.
I love the scene where Henry Ford II gets driven by Shelby and breaks out crying, with Shelby concerned for his welfare...
Spoiler:
...only for the twist to be that they are tears of joy, recognition and respect.
An 80's movie from a Stephen King book about machine's rising up to "kill all humans"!
Not good at all.
I am also really unclear why some machines attack, some don't, and what qualifies as a machine? Sometimes it seems like devices with electronics, sometimes mechanical parts, and sometimes things connected to electricity but sometimes not.
Also, the ending scrawl..... makes it seem like UFOs/aliens were involved. The rest of the movies focuses on issues from a comet's tail. Just a strange and tacked on epilogue scrawl.
I am probably thinking about it more than the film makers did.
It's righfully panned as one of the worst films of all time, actually
Easy E wrote: Ford vs. Ferrari I have seen more exciting race car movies. For some reason, despite Bale trying super hard; this movie did not land with me as much as other race car flicks.
Perhaps because much of the story revolved around corporate egos instead of racer egos?
Because it's not a film about race cars. It's a film about Ford attempting to win, and the people who were involved in that win. Designing the car is more important to the film than zoom zoom zooming around the track.
It's like how Moneyball isn't really a "baseball movie" in the traditional sense, in that it doesn't show lots of baseball games. Instead, it's about the guy in charge, and his statistical approach to building a team.
Nah, it was about corporate egos. That is not interesting to me.
Max Payne
The first half of this movie has solid Neo-noir vibes and great cinematography laced with supernatural overtones. However, as what is going on is slowly revealed the "truth" is a lot less interesting than the set-up. That said, it is one of the better video game-to-movie films I have seen.
Pretty lit cast too. Beau Bridges, Mark Walhberg, Mila Kunis, Ludicris, and Olga Kurlylenko (sp) round it out. Pretty impressive for a video game movie. However, the movie probably has a few too many characters.
A whole lot of tedious, but with interesting rotoscoping and actors involved. I waited most of the movie for something to happen, but it never real does. There is a bit of a pay-off in the last 15 minutes or so. However, it is too little, too late. Take-away the novelty of roto-scoping and this movie does not have that much to offer.
However, there is a ton of ideas about the nature of addiction, law-enforcement and its relationship to Capitalism. Interesting ideas, wrapped up in a boring delivery.
A whole lot of tedious, but with interesting rotoscoping and actors involved. I waited most of the movie for something to happen, but it never real does. There is a bit of a pay-off in the last 15 minutes or so. However, it is too little, too late. Take-away the novelty of roto-scoping and this movie does not have that much to offer.
However, there is a ton of ideas about the nature of addiction, law-enforcement and its relationship to Capitalism. Interesting ideas, wrapped up in a boring delivery.
Yeah, it's an interesting oddity, this one. I think it actually works better on the second watch, when you know that not all that much is happening and when the novelty of the rotoscope has worn off, and you can focus on the dialogue and delivery. But still, it won't entirely stop being a bit boring. But at least it's different,
@MDG: I really like Tank Girl. I like it better up to the point where Kangaroo Ice T appears, but it's good fun nonetheless. The casting is pretty ingenious actually. Not of Ice T. I or John Candy could have done that part just as well. But Lori Patty makes Tank Girl surprisingly un-annoying, despite the fact that the character pretty much is all about being annoying. Interesting film.
A 'Day of the Triffids' style movie done in China.
The CGI is a bit obvious in places, but the main letdown was just how silly and cliche-heavy the whole thing was, with heroic sacrifices and inspiring speeches everywhere (Plus killer plants that had been genetically engineered to be weak against sunlight ).
Had they lent harder into the whole post-apocalypse angle, I think it would've been a better movie.
A group of friends, all World War 2 Vets meet for a seance. And things take off.
All filmed in a single room, and playing out in real time, it feels like it could work as a stage show, albeit with a change in how the scenes are arranged to remove that fourth wall.
I’m a little over an hour in, and it’s so engrossing it feels like maybe 20 minutes have passed. And it’s one of those where other than “it’s a supernatural thriller” I don’t want to say more about it, for fear of spoilers.
Thus far Border is my favourite. It’s just a superbly concise bit of film making. Incredibly short, and just gets it story told in a way I think only film can. It’s creepy, atmospheric and just good.
Definitely worth popping on your watch list.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Etheria Film Night 2023
No it’s nowt to do with She-Ra. Rather this is a collection of short movies in a compilation. Not a portmanteau as there’s no linking narrative. All selected as they’re all directed by women.
I’m four of such short films in, and I’ve enjoyed them all so far. However such is the nature of such compilations I wouldn’t be surprised if a stinker or two is included.
Importantly whilst none have much in the way of budget, none thus far in have felt cheap.
Automatically Appended Next Post: The Stuff
A superb bit of 80’s satire on consumerism and advertising of unhealthy foodstuff and indeed food fads.
The effects are pretty great, even if the acting is a bit ropey in places.
It’s a classic of its era for a reason, and should definitely be on your watch list.
A visually stunning, exceptionally well-acted and at times far too loud film that manages to take the story of an aloof scientist and spin it into a 3-hour epic that remains riveting from start to finish.
I've seen complaints that the hour after the Trinity test is where the movie loses itself, but I found that part to be fascinating, with the machinations of RDJ's character and the kangaroo court they through Oppenheimer in, the bogus accusations, the petty rivalries, the naivete of the main character in the face of men who desire power regardless of the danger. It was all great stuff.
And the movie has a cast that most people would kill for. There are so many "Oh it's him from the thing!" moments throughout this film, with minor roles going to actors you recognise as they play people who were titans in their field, but not the focus of the film.
The flips between black and white and colour are very effective, and the visuals - especially of the Trinity test - are just amazing. Not sure how Nolan managed to put such a big explosion on screen without CGI, but I'm sure the behind-the-scenes tuff will bey very interesting.
Only real criticisms are that Florence Pugh's character is a bit pointless, and it is really unpleasantly and overly loud in some places. Not seen a film that loud since the second 300 film.
Definitely worth the time invested.
Easy E wrote: Nah, it was about corporate egos. That is not interesting to me.
Easy E wrote: Nah, it was about corporate egos. That is not interesting to me.
I mean, it wasn't, but you do you...
I thought it was one long metaphor for the inherent conflict between individual ego and the desire fo achievement versus the realities of cooperative environments.
But I have no idea how anyone could watch that movie and thing it was about corporate egos.
The rivalry is nothing more than a vehicle (hahahahahahahaha!) for the actual drama, which is never really about the race. If anything the movie is a metaphor about making movies.
Why does Henry Ford II build a race car in the first place? Why does Lee Iaccoca go to Italy? Why does Ferrari not take their buy out offer? Why does the VP always meddle with the race team? Why does Shelby go to the boss man directly? Why does Shelby even want to win?
This is a workplace drama that happens to have Race Cars in it. Sure. Ken Miles acts and thinks he is "apart" from all of the corporate stuff but his fate is ultimately tied to it as well, no matter how he tries to stays apart from the Corporation, he is still controlled by Ford.
This is highlighted in the ending of the Le Mans race. The filmmakers try and make you think "Look he is learning to be a team player?" That is what they serve up. However, the subtext it different. Miles is learning to bend his knee to corporate power despite what it costs him personally. The Corporation takes, but does not give back; the true relationship of the corporation to the employee.
Think how this book ends with the opening scene of Henry Ford II threatening to fire his entire workforce because sales are down. Then, at the end he wants the top 3 cars to be Fords. Due to this decision, Miles is denied his Triple Crown of racing win and the Le Mans win despite setting new lap and speed records.
To say this movie is not about Capitalism and how it is shaped by Corporate egos..... I am not sure we watched the same movie. Ford vs. Ferrari. Hell, even the title tells you this is about corps, the people in the tiles are the CEOs, and their egos about "winning".
Now, enough about that.....
Wolf
Have you seen predator? Now imagine it is in Roman Britain with Werewolves instead.
Not bad really, but you can tell it was made on the cheap.
Cell Where John Cusak, Sam Jackson, and Stephen King probably collect big paychecks at the expense of the production value of the rest of the film. They called thsi movie Cell because everyone was phoning it in.
Plant Terror I think Robert Rodriquez may have some issues with women?
Otherwise, it captures tht ugly 70's drive-in style too well. Skeavily well.
To be clear, I can almost see how you came away from it with this perspective, but I don't think it holds under scrutiny. The opening 30 minutes answer most of your questions.
Easy E wrote: Why does Henry Ford II build a race car in the first place?
Because he's a lifelong racing competitor, but due to his heart failing, he can only participate vicariously through running a racing program.
I will say the movie did a disservice to some of the racing personalities of the era, notably Bruce Mclaren who is in the background, but gives him no noteworthy recognition.
Yes, all those are answers, but it is like looking at the tree and declaring it the forest!
The why behind each of those answers was because each of those characters were all jockey for corporate position because of their own egos! I.e. it is about Corporate egos, not anything more than that.
Ford II wants to boost lagging sales, because he wants to be better than his daddy and be the best Ford CEO ever! Ego!
Lee goes to Italy to buy the Ferrari racing team to win. Because winning means his strategy to boost sales was successful and his division gains power and prestige within Ford. Ego!
Ferrari does not take Ford's offer, because he uses it to leverage Fiat into a merger. Better deal for him and he maintains control over HIS racing team. Ego!
Why does the VP meddle with the team? He wants to sabotage Lee so he maintains his power and remove a corporate rival from the room. The beginning shows VP guy in control and threatening to remove Lee, but Lee manages to get the upper hand with Ford. That makes Lee and his racing team a threat to VP guy. Ego!
Shelby goes to the bossman directly to outmaneuver Lee and VP guy so he can control the team AND help his own company. Ego!
Shelby wants to win because, yes he is a life-long competitor; but now his competitive streak is no longer JUST on the race track. He is a corporate entity in his own right now. He owns Shelby American and their name keeps getting attached to winning, just like Fords. Ego!
The only character that is not driven by corporate ego is Ken Miles, our protagonist. However, it is clearly demonstrated that he becomes willing tool of all these other egos as a price for doing what he loves. In return, he gets ripped off by other Corporate egos and ends up losing everything. He ultimately was also ground down into dust by Corporate egos.
I also agree that they did a disservice to the big race car driving names in the movie. However, it is also interesting to note that McLaren himself goes on to own his own racing team and car racing business too.
Now, all that being said; Ford vs. Ferrari maybe the biggest anti-capitalist movie I have seen in a long time! Labor is ultimately destroyed by Management for the sake of Ego.
I never thought I would say so much about a movie I didn't even like that much, but there you go. I may not have liked it, but it is rife with sub-text and meaning, as all good movies should be. I may not have liked it, but there is no doubt in my mind that it is a "good" and possibly "great" movie.
Cracking open my Hammer Boxed Set for something a little different, and this was my first pick, as I think I’ve only seen it the once.
This is a pretty solid slice of 60’s horror, involving a young woman cursed by a Snake Cult in punishment for her father’s crimes.
Its cautious underuse of the creature is reminiscent of Alien, in that for the most part it’s kept off-screen in favour of mystery and suspense. Also notable for not a Lee nor Cushing in sight, quite unusual for a Hammer film from this era.
When we do the creature, it is in some glory. The makeup effects are of course somewhat dated, but in-context they’re convincing enough, and we rarely linger on them too long for us to start finding them daft.
If you come across it on your travels, or have the Hammer Box Set I do, definitely interesting enough fare to be worth your while.
Of of the good DC superhero movies. It’s quippy and fun and it has heart. Okay, it’s a Marvel movie.
Shazam 2: Fury of the Gods
This film has a lot of good elements and ideas, but the execution is lacking. The budget-fueled spectacle crowds out the humor and character moments that actually work in service of mediocre action scenes. It’s not bad, but it’s not that good, either. Okay, it’s a phase 4/5 Marvel movie.
Like a lot of these DC animated movies it really didn't have the runtime to tell the story it wanted, had it been able to flesh out the various Warworlds a bit more (I would've liked to see more of the War of the Worlds/Red Scare mash-up one), I think it would've been a much better movie.
As it is, it's still a good film with an interesting premise.
Another video game movie with Olga Kurylenko? I sense the invisible hand of the market at work.
It's.... fine. I know nothing about the source material but it really doesn't do anything you can't see in the international man of mystery genre of films.
Max Payne may have been a terrible adaption from the game, but it also had some interesting ideas/cinematography. Hitman does not. However, Timothy Oliphant does a good job humanizing a rather inhuman character via his performance. Might be worth watching for that alone.... if you don't mind a rather generic flick surrounding it.
"yay, State of the Union can be streamed on a tv channel's website!"
So I watched it again. Very enjoyable. Then I saw they made a second season, also free to watch on that tv channel's website. Once more, hooray for public broadcasting. I watched about 8 minutes of the second season, and I don't want to put up with all of that sorta stuff yet again. First season: really cool. Light, a bit funny, but grown-up stuff. Second season I may give another go some time, but not any time soon. I've seen the exact same caricatures out of US television for the past 2 decades. I assume they'll be subverted to some degree, but I'm just tired of the equally tired little cultural pseudo-skirmishes.
Yes, this is based on the first 8 minutes or so and maybe highly unfair, but it feels like a let-down.
When I was very little, I, like many boys of that era, was obsessed with the Ninja Turtles. I would get home from school in 1989/1990 just in time to see that day's new episode, and I ate it up. I had a ton of the toys, including the Turtle Wagon, Sewer Hideout and the Technodrome!
I remember the first time I saw anything related to the live action Turtles on a news report. It showed maybe 8 seconds of footage - a Foot Clan ninja swinging at Mikey with an axe, and Mikey ducking his head into his shell before screaming "I love being a turtle!!!". I ran around the house screaming that for the next 20 minutes until my Mum and grandmother had had enough. Can you blame me though? I was, like, 7!
Anyway, with the new Turtle movie just about to come out, Paramount Plus has decided to add the 1990 live action Turtles movie to their service. I noticed it as I was about to quit the program, but decided it had been years since I'd seen it so what the hell? And you know what? It still holds up. Really well. It's very well made, the costumes/puppeteering is excellent almost across the board (Leonardo's mouth doesn't always work that well), and they absolutely nailed the eyes on the Turtles. I'm amazed how many lines I still remember!
The fight scenes are mostly good - very slapstick, but it was a kids film - but there are some good parts, like the nunchuck show-down (completely cut from the UK release, because England is weird), the Turtles retaking their hideout, and of course when Shredder just takes the turtles apart one by one at the end of the film. There are also some really unusual lines that I never understood as a kid:
Donatello: You're a claustrophobic. Casey Jones: You want a fist in the mouth? I've never even looked at another guy!
Never caught that line as a kid.
Also, Casey very casually murders Shredder at the end of the film, and no one says anything. It's so weird!
I'm not going to bother with the sequel, as I saw that again a number of years back and unlike this one it 100% does not hold up. At all. It's a very bad film. But this one was great fun. Very glad I rewatched it.
An 80's movie from a Stephen King book about machine's rising up to "kill all humans"!
Not good at all.
I am also really unclear why some machines attack, some don't, and what qualifies as a machine? Sometimes it seems like devices with electronics, sometimes mechanical parts, and sometimes things connected to electricity but sometimes not.
Also, the ending scrawl..... makes it seem like UFOs/aliens were involved. The rest of the movies focuses on issues from a comet's tail. Just a strange and tacked on epilogue scrawl.
I am probably thinking about it more than the film makers did.
It's righfully panned as one of the worst films of all time, actually
It can't possibly be one of the worst. I mean have you seen the amount of dreck that's on Amazon? As bad as it is, there's sadly a lot worse out there than Maximum Overdrive.
When I was very little, I, like many boys of that era, was obsessed with the Ninja Turtles. I would get home from school in 1989/1990 just in time to see that day's new episode, and I ate it up. I had a ton of the toys, including the Turtle Wagon, Sewer Hideout and the Technodrome!
I remember the first time I saw anything related to the live action Turtles on a news report. It showed maybe 8 seconds of footage - a Foot Clan ninja swinging at Mikey with an axe, and Mikey ducking his head into his shell before screaming "I love being a turtle!!!". I ran around the house screaming that for the next 20 minutes until my Mum and grandmother had had enough. Can you blame me though? I was, like, 7!
Anyway, with the new Turtle movie just about to come out, Paramount Plus has decided to add the 1990 live action Turtles movie to their service. I noticed it as I was about to quit the program, but decided it had been years since I'd seen it so what the hell? And you know what? It still holds up. Really well. It's very well made, the costumes/puppeteering is excellent almost across the board (Leonardo's mouth doesn't always work that well), and they absolutely nailed the eyes on the Turtles. I'm amazed how many lines I still remember!
The fight scenes are mostly good - very slapstick, but it was a kids film - but there are some good parts, like the nunchuck show-down (completely cut from the UK release, because England is weird), the Turtles retaking their hideout, and of course when Shredder just takes the turtles apart one by one at the end of the film. There are also some really unusual lines that I never understood as a kid:
Donatello: You're a claustrophobic.
Casey Jones: You want a fist in the mouth? I've never even looked at another guy!
Never caught that line as a kid.
Also, Casey very casually murders Shredder at the end of the film, and no one says anything. It's so weird!
I'm not going to bother with the sequel, as I saw that again a number of years back and unlike this one it 100% does not hold up. At all. It's a very bad film. But this one was great fun. Very glad I rewatched it.
That? That Good Sir? Is one of those movies With No Godly Right To Actually Be Objectively Good.
As I said on the same film to a friend just last evening? I’m of the Turtles Vintage. I was the original target audience. At that stage in my media literacy? You could’ve found Dog Dirt and shoved a Turtle’s sticker upon said foulness, and chances are I’d have watched it for a couple of hours.
The film makers had a genuinely captive and idiot audience. Minimum effort would only maximise the profits. Because as a kid of the 80’s, I could pester with the best of them.
Yet…..yet….we got an actually pretty solid Kung Fu film into the bargain. Complete with moody lighting.
Seriously folks, they could’ve smoke signalled, let alone called, this one in, and us happy 80’s idiots would’ve turned up to see it. But they went so much further. It’s almost baffling just how hard they went.
I loved the first Turtles movie and agree it still holds up, but I’m going to be a contrarian here: Turtles 2 is not so bad. Definitely not as good as the first, but still fun. And Ninja Rap is an earworm.
Also, Casey very casually murders Shredder at the end of the film, and no one says anything. It's so weird!
Didn’t Shredders bald headed second in command kill a kid (a Foot Ninja) as well? Like beat his ass during a tantrum and the one Foot ninja who went to his aid looked up at baldy and just shook his head, like “He’s dead Jim”.
I remember that being a dark part too.
This movie was my first “date”. I was 9 and my sisters best friend (massive cannons on her) took me to see it, drove me and we watched it. We still joke about it all these years later.
I watched the first Turtles film several years after it was in cinemas. Must have been 1993-ish? Did not like TMNT, but this film I liked and I'll watch it to this day. It's got a good mix of fun and grittiness and the suits (BIG part of the film holding up, I think) were pretty darned good (they used the technology for the excellent TV show Dinosaurs soon thereafter). Turtles 2 was alright, yeah. Vanilla Ice rapping on stage while Kevin Nash fought the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Can't think of anything more 90s than that scenario.
If you like period-piece superhero movies, then don’t miss this one. The score, production design and action are in a similar vein to Tim Burton’s Batman, yet notably less ambitious. The movie is full of great actors you recognize, including James Hong and Al Leong in the first two minutes! Memorable elements from the film include the Phurba knife, Tim Curry going nuts, and the villain’s comeuppance. Warning: Alec Baldwin shoots a lot of firearms in this film.
A welcome return to top form for the MCU, with a film full of fun and genuine feels.
I’m genuinely torn on this being the last entry. I’m going to miss the excellent cast chemistry, but there can of course be too much of a good thing, so letting it end on a high is probably the right call.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Starship Troopers
Would you like to know more?
Mr Verhoven entertains us once again with a wonderfully compelling, super violent but incredibly satirical film.
Now I’ve never read the books, and if I’m honest I have no particular desire or intention to do so.
But this movie has it all. Part high school drama, part sci-fi war daftness. As well as its subject matter, it sends up the wider cinema of its era, without simply becoming a joke itself.
Shame about the sequels though. I mean they’re enjoyable enough, but just pale reflections of this slice of greatness.
One could almost call this a legacy sequel, as we return to the original characters some 9 years after we last saw them, with the same amount of time passing in-universe. Subsequent films have explored other parts of the mythos and followed other characters, but we haven't seen Patrick Wilson's Josh or Rose Byrne's Renai since Insidious: Chapter 2 in 2013.
Unsurprisingly, things have changed in the meantime, the Lambert's marriage hasn't survived the stresses of the first 2 films. Josh's mum has recently passed (off camera, with little or no explanation and to serve no purpose to the story) and it's at her funeral we're reintroduced to the characters.
What follows is one of the worst drops in quality from a sequel to a successful franchise I've seen in some time. I'm not just limiting that to horror either.
Red Door commits the twin sins of being both boring and unnecessary. Boring because we spend the first hour watching Josh and eldest son Dalton rediscovering all the stuff we as the audience already know. Thanks to some degrading hypnotic suggestion, the two men, who are unaware of what they went through in the first two movies, start to rediscover their connection to the afterlife.
So while the characters are embarking on what would no doubt be a terrifying and fascinating voyage of self discovery, I was just sat there waiting for them to catch up to what I already knew.
Sure, there's a few creepy moments (shout out to my guy Vomit Ghost) but my reckoning it's around 70 minutes into a 100 minute movie before anything of real narrative import happens, at least within the context of the franchise as a whole.
We're then subject to a rushed and very familiar climax, before returning to an end point where the events of the film need never have happened.
I can't see how anyone but hardcore fans will get anything from this movie, and even then the pickings are slim.
Mr Verhoven entertains us once again with a wonderfully compelling, super violent but incredibly satirical film.
Now I’ve never read the books, and if I’m honest I have no particular desire or intention to do so.
But this movie has it all. Part high school drama, part sci-fi war daftness. As well as its subject matter, it sends up the wider cinema of its era, without simply becoming a joke itself.
Shame about the sequels though. I mean they’re enjoyable enough, but just pale reflections of this slice of greatness.
As i understand it, there are no colours any more.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Just watched Maverick. The aerial scenes were truly gorgeous, nothing really makes much sense, good spectacle though.
So much has been said about this, and it’s all true,
This is the Predator sequel we deserved. And yes I’m watching it again because it’s just that good.
It presents the winning formula in a new way, without diluting or adulterating said formula. Indeed it takes certain lore conventions and plays us like a fiddle, without doing any BS rug pulls.
We have a very likeable and charismatic cast. We have a Predator acting honourably. Our protagonists are smart, observant and properly learn.
It’s pretty much perfect. Take the original premise, and gives us the audience a new, interesting and valid experience.
My only complaint with Prey is the fight choreography. Too many spins and slips and overdone stuff where a simpler and more straightforward fight would have looked cooler imo.
But I recognize that is a very paltry complaint when the film that shall not be named was the last entry in the franchise.
Of course that film would have to exist for me to hate it so much.
And as we all know, no Predator film was released between Predators and Prey. We just went ten years without a Predator movie, so Prey is pretty great for how great it is.
I think a sign of a terrible film is if you sit down to watch it and 20-ish minutes in you suddenly go "Hang on... I've seen this already!".
That happened to me with Taken 3. It was so bad and my mind did such a good job of scrubbing it from my memory that I actually sat down to watch it thinking that I'd never seen it.
I think a sign of a terrible film is if you sit down to watch it and 20-ish minutes in you suddenly go "Hang on... I've seen this already!".
That happened to me with Taken 3. It was so bad and my mind did such a good job of scrubbing it from my memory that I actually sat down to watch it thinking that I'd never seen it.
The one that sticks in my mind is Underworld 2.
I’ve seen it, I know I’ve seen it. More than once. But I couldn’t tell you a damned thing about the plot, because I have no particular memory of it. Given I have vivid and confirmed by my Dad memories of stuff from the age of 3? That’s…..quite an achievement. Or indictment.
I think a sign of a terrible film is if you sit down to watch it and 20-ish minutes in you suddenly go "Hang on... I've seen this already!".
That happened to me with Taken 3. It was so bad and my mind did such a good job of scrubbing it from my memory that I actually sat down to watch it thinking that I'd never seen it.
The one that sticks in my mind is Underworld 2.
I’ve seen it, I know I’ve seen it. More than once. But I couldn’t tell you a damned thing about the plot, because I have no particular memory of it. Given I have vivid and confirmed by my Dad memories of stuff from the age of 3? That’s…..quite an achievement. Or indictment.
Wasn't there a werewolf guy locked in a cage in a lab or something in that one? Otherwise I'm right there with you on drawing a blank. I'm sure I saw it, but....
I think there’s a vampire werewolf hybrid. And of course Kate Beckinsale’s bum in that latex.
But…..that’s about it. Genuinely.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Collateral Damage
An Arnie film I’ve somehow never seen before.
Made in 2002, it’s a later entry, but it checks out fine. If anything it’s more restrained than we’re used to, as we don’t have One Man Arnie doing it all for himself.
It’s perfectly enjoyable, with a pretty solid cast.
Jennifer Lawrence tries to bounce back with an espionage film where she is a Russian. It was interesting premise of an espionage film from a Russian prospective. It also is a proper espionage film, no super heroics. Despite this being a strong film, the pace was a bit challenging.
That said, in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal and how it relates to Lawrence; many of the scenes of sexual exploitation were even more uncomfortable than normal. I couldn't help but wonder how much of her performance was channeled from that experience. That made me sad.
Easy E wrote: That said, in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal and how it relates to Lawrence; many of the scenes of sexual exploitation were even more uncomfortable than normal. I couldn't help but wonder how much of her performance was channeled from that experience. That made me sad.
Right after work today, an episode of EFAP (EFAP Movies #43, for reference) popped up and it was focusing on this pretty excellent British horror flick. Along for the ride on the watch along/discussion was the actual writer/director of the movie, Neil Marshall*!
The discussion talked about how much movie making magic/trickery is involved in this film. From using paintings, miniature sets, and just different angles of the set pieces to give the appearance of being in different parts of the cave system. I had always liked this movie, but now I think I love it.
Just a solid, well written horror flick that did sooo much with so little.
*Also found out that he directed “Blackwater” and “Watchers on the Wall”, two of my favorite Game of Thrones episodes. He’s got some decent other hits in his CV, with a notable black mark being 2019’s Hellboy, but I’m a fan of his now for sure.
I saw a trailer for this and it reminded me of Twin Peaks from the uniform patch and the Sheriff ( Robert Foster ) who was in Twin Peaks the return.
Grizzly murders in a small town just ahead of ski season. Aside from the investigation into the murders it's about a sheriffs deputy who's extremely stressed out.
My wife didn't like this movie and pointed out a few plot wholes and inconsistencies and ya, they're there. The movie is more about the sheriffs deputy and him trying to deal with everything than the investigation and solving the murders. It's worth at least one viewing, you may or may not like it.
I saw a trailer for this and it reminded me of Twin Peaks from the uniform patch and the Sheriff ( Robert Foster ) who was in Twin Peaks the return.
Grizzly murders in a small town just ahead of ski season. Aside from the investigation into the murders it's about a sheriffs deputy who's extremely stressed out.
My wife didn't like this movie and pointed out a few plot wholes and inconsistencies and ya, they're there. The movie is more about the sheriffs deputy and him trying to deal with everything than the investigation and solving the murders. It's worth at least one viewing, you may or may not like it.
Jim Cummings, who wrote and starred in the above movie was also the writer/director in a film called Thunder Road, which was pretty good. A black comedy that deals with heavier subjects, but it was something that I didn't regret watching. The dude is pretty good at portraying characters that you're supposed to root for, but they're also a pretty big donkey-cave.
I saw a trailer for this and it reminded me of Twin Peaks from the uniform patch and the Sheriff ( Robert Foster ) who was in Twin Peaks the return.
Grizzly murders in a small town just ahead of ski season. Aside from the investigation into the murders it's about a sheriffs deputy who's extremely stressed out.
My wife didn't like this movie and pointed out a few plot wholes and inconsistencies and ya, they're there. The movie is more about the sheriffs deputy and him trying to deal with everything than the investigation and solving the murders. It's worth at least one viewing, you may or may not like it.
Jim Cummings, who wrote and starred in the above movie was also the writer/director in a film called Thunder Road, which was pretty good. A black comedy that deals with heavier subjects, but it was something that I didn't regret watching. The dude is pretty good at portraying characters that you're supposed to root for, but they're also a pretty big donkey-cave.
Thanks!
I'll have a look for Thunder Road trailer and maybe check it out but I don't think we'll watch it together based on her reactions to this one.
I can't say I'd heard of Jim Cummings before this movie.
My wife really disliked his character based on the dialog. She was asking, do people really talk like that. I tried to impart that he was stressed out to the extreme but I don't think she cared. I think it reminder her too much of asshats we both knew during our time in the army.
Easy E wrote: That said, in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal and how it relates to Lawrence; many of the scenes of sexual exploitation were even more uncomfortable than normal. I couldn't help but wonder how much of her performance was channeled from that experience. That made me sad.
How does it relate to Lawrence?
There are allegations and rumors that Harvey Weinstein targeted her for his attention. The actress flatly denies these rumors last I saw. Harvey apparently claimed otherwise at some point. I have not followed it super closely to be honest.
Here is a pair of many, many article if you are interested:
This movie is just so much fun. Yeah, it feels like a Star Wars knock-off, but it does it well. And Skeletor is just perfect. If you like campy 80’s Sci Fi, you have to check out the movie. It’s free with ads on Tubi.
It does take certain cues from Aliens and similar “big ‘ard soldiers meet the supernatural”, but inverts it. Where our Brave Boys aren’t seen to just go to pieces, but just give it their all.
I think my Favorite Bit is when the guy gets the Landrover going, and notices the breath steam. Rather than simply accepting the inevitable, jumps in the back with his knife, seizing Slim over No chance.
At the time I was a bit “hurr durr Britian am ‘arder than ‘Murica”. But I’ve matured since then. And I’m now fairly certain it’s overall a more realistic reaction of any decently trained, squad bonded Solider. Because even if you don’t survive? The other level of hope is mutual deth, or at least crippling the foe so your brothers have one less to worry about, improving their odds, however incrementally.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Robocop
Yes. Again. Because it’s genuinely that good.
Come and be satisfied by the late 80’s action movie. Stay to learn more and more and more about media literacy, subtext and satire.
This is one of those films where it feels like a bottomless well of film making brilliance. Especially because as alluded to? If you just want to watch it as a Par For The Course Big Dumb Action film? You’ll get one of the era’s best.
But once you start scratching below the surface? There’s so much more to know. And not in a “oh actually this line in Shakespeare was actually a joke but you first need to know Middle English and then Latin to get it oh god can you tell my parents paid for my education and possibly boarding school because even as an infant I was that tedious” way.
Marvellous bit of silliness with more Ham than a Danish pig farm.
It’s not often we get such farce comedies these days, which is a shame. But this film is exactly what I needed on this dreech summer’s day while my sausage rolls are in the oven.
Solid cast, excellent word play (two bodies, everything’s fine) and even a decent underlying mystery.
Yup. Just so much going on, and all of it brilliant.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Mousehunt
Slapstick comedy from 1997, starring Lee Evans and Nathan Lane.
Our protagonists are kind of Laurel and Hardy type bunglers. When their father dies, he leaves them a mansion, which turns out to be worth a huge amount of money.
Deciding to auction it, they decide the resident House Mouse had to go, and hijinks ensue.
This is quite a sweet natured film. Our boys are idiots, and their quarry far smarter that they. We’ve a mix of live action, puppets and CGI. Importantly, for a near 30 year old film? The CGI is actually pretty good, and used sparingly.
I’d say this is quality family entertainment, but be warned there is mild language. Not often, but it does stand out when it’s used.
In Blade: TrinityDeadpoolThe Hitman's BodyguardDeadpool 2Detective PikachuHobbs & ShawFree Guy6 UndergroundThe Adam Project Red Notice, Ryan Reynolds plays Ryan Reynolds, a quick witted (and even quicker mouthed) international art thief who laughs in the face of danger, always has a jab or quip to make, and generally never takes any situation seriously nor ever looks like he's trying to do anything.
The Rock plays an FBI profiler (LOL!) who is trying to capture Reynolds. Gal Gadot is gorgeous plays 'The Bishop', a rival art thief with near-supernatural levels of skills, to whom everything seems to come even easier than it does to Ryan Reynolds. On the bright side, at least Gal does appear to be having a little fun with this one. The scene where she tortures The Rock is a standout. Feels like she's really cutting loose.
They all go on a globe-trotting adventure to discover 3 golden eggs that Mark Antony gave to Cleopatra, two of which are in the hands of other people, and one that has been missing for 2000 years.
The action set pieces are fun if largely free of stakes, and the banter between Ryan Reynolds and The Rock certainly is fun, but boy I'm getting sick of Ryan Reynolds just playing himself in every single film he's in. I want the guy to demonstrate a little range, and whilst perhaps an over-budgeted Netflix isn't the best place to show that range, his flippant endlessly-quipping style really begins to drag by the end of the film.
So not great, not terrible, and a reasonably entertaining way to spend a few hours. And it does explain why Gal's character can full on Judo shoulder throw someone like The Rock, which I appreciated.
In conclusion: Ryan Reynolds Ryan Reynolds Ryan Reynolds!
I don't know, have to watch it again.
My reaction to trying to recall the name Norman Rockwell for the majority of the movie. I spent more time looking at the "Pictures" this movie is made from than enjoying or thinking about the story. I know I didn't dislike it I just think I missed most of everything that was going on.
I don't have anything bad to say.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: I think there’s a vampire werewolf hybrid. And of course Kate Beckinsale’s bum in that latex.
But…..that’s about it. Genuinely.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Collateral Damage
An Arnie film I’ve somehow never seen before.
Made in 2002, it’s a later entry, but it checks out fine. If anything it’s more restrained than we’re used to, as we don’t have One Man Arnie doing it all for himself.
It’s perfectly enjoyable, with a pretty solid cast.
Big thing about this one was that it was the first post-9/11 film dealing with a quite 9/11ish topic. I remember seeing the trailer for that one when I watched Vanilla Sky at the cinema.
I love Robocop. An exemplar film when it comes to getting stuff done efficiently. From characterization to points to plot, etc. And along with that we get a ton of memorable "world building" (eurch), and all in like 90 minutes! Compare to this the remake. Which got nothing across in (as far as I recall) longer time.
About Masters of the Universe - i don't know, it seems like something I would enjoy, but somehow I never managed to.
Words cannot adequately express how much I despise the ending of that film. Unnecessary, Edgelordy with a side of slide trombone. It diminishes everything which led up to it.
I think it really makes it, adding a level of tragedy beyond everything else that happened. Spesh when we see Carol From Walking Dead survived, because she took her chances early doors.
But now I’m on….
The Faculty
Robert Rodriguez, 1998. And starring so many names of the era and the future it’s almost mind boggling. Also a banging soundtrack of 90’s classic bands.
I’m not gonna lie me being from exactly that era, having only just left education and really being into horror? I’m heavily biased in favour of this film.
But even trying to push past my bias and nostalgia? I’d still argue this is a Good Movie, and a superior example of its wider genre from that time. Trope laden, sure. But where would be without tropes? Eh? Eh?
In a town above the Arctic Circle, Vampires close in and lay siege to a town when 30 days of perpetual night set in.
30 Days of Night: Darkest Days
The first one was so close, the second one.... so, so far away. It is so far away, I would rather watch Blade: Trinity rather than this. Some points because the survivor final girl is the star and it opens with a somewhat logical premise from where the last one left off.
Then, it goes into super cheap Vampire hunter rip-off mode and never gets any better at all. Just.... not good. Not good at all.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: The short story for the Mist has a different ending. It’s an ambiguous ending though, so not for everyone.
The Faculty is a must watch for horror fans or fans of that era. And for Dropzone Commander players.
The film has the privelege of King thinking the movie ending was better and wishing he'd thought of it.
Which, I get why someone would hate the ending.
But given the film's message and theme of the unknown and the thin line between rationality and irrationality (how the line is blurrier, especially when you can't see gak) it's the perfect ending.
If you're new to horror, or only watch the occasional movie because it's not your favourite genre, Smile would be a decent prospect. It's scattered with a few genuinely creepy moments, but is neither too intense or too explicit.
For fans of horror, it's a well made, but ultimately uninspired hybrid of The Ring and It Follows which spoils pretty much every one of its best moments in the trailer.
I doubt anyone will feel too cheated after watching this, but Smile is just another high profile but ultimately unsatisfactory horror to add to the pile.
In a town above the Arctic Circle, Vampires close in and lay siege to a town when 30 days of perpetual night set in.
30 Days of Night: Darkest Days
The first one was so close, the second one.... so, so far away. It is so far away, I would rather watch Blade: Trinity rather than this. Some points because the survivor final girl is the star and it opens with a somewhat logical premise from where the last one left off.
Then, it goes into super cheap Vampire hunter rip-off mode and never gets any better at all. Just.... not good. Not good at all.
I really liked 30 Days of Night. I didn't enjoy it due to it being so ....dark and scary. But I really liked it as a vampire film. The vampires design is great.
Spoiler:
it also features my favourite sucker punch i ever saw. Loved that.
30 Days of Night: Darkest Day: Yeah, I watched the first 15-20 minutes, and had a suspicion it would suck badly.
So I looked up old tv shows again. Saw the two intros of Rags to Riches. That's one show I saw in my somewhat early childhood, but impressed me somehow. Pretty sure the concept wouldn't get realized today. Two show intros on youtubve, the first one is the proper one.
I also watched 2 episodes of Riptide. That show was goofier than I remembered.
edit: In an odd double feature I just watched an episode of Rags to Riches and the fight scene from 30 Days of Night. Both for the first time in a long time.
Well now. Now then now then then now then then now then.
What to say about this? First, it’s from Asylum pictures. So far we’ve 3 deths in 20 minutes, 2 by Zombie Octopus, 1 by Zombie Dolphin. But some Zombie Seals have just shattered their tank, so I’m expecting more silliness any second.
However…this film is wussing out. All deths off-screen, probably due to heavy use of Really Bad CGI.
Lawks this is a poor, poor effort. But I’m gonna stick it out. The budget might well have been 2 ha’penny’s, a still wrapped spangle and some bellybutton fluff, but they must’ve spent it somewhere.
And remember folks. The “so bad it’s good” horror trope only works when, however incompetently, the makers genuinely tried to get it right, the camp and silly brilliance being a by-product.
I don’t know. The Sharknado movies were pretty funny, and they were doing it “on purpose” from the second film on. The third is the best in the series, and that’s also when they most embraced the cartoonish ridiculousness.
The answe to: what if Snow White was a Lord of the Rings designed by Guillermo Del Toro?
This film has a bad reputation the same way Krull and Willow have bad reputations. But to me it worked in the same way those worked. There was no weapon as cool as the glaive, and the cast didn’t have the same charisma as Willow’s cast, but the film still featured scores of well-costumed fantasy types battling across beautiful locations and physical sets to decently exciting music. The story was pretty basic: an “epic fantasy” built on the bones of a fairy tale, with equal parts success and kludgyness. There were some dazzling fantasy encounters, monsters and magic, and a wardrobe department doing a lot of heavy lifting. You can see the budget on the screen. Unfortunately the only above average performance was by Charlize Theron, clearly having a blast as the villain.
If you long to see a throw-back fantasy movie full of real people on real sets with some inventive fantasy elements, give this a watch. If you want a sharp script and top notch acting, maybe give it a pass.
There’s just no soul to them. The gag is always “hurr hurr cheap and nasty, we am the clevurs”.
They forget to insert any charm whatsoever. Even when a genuine effort becomes a bad film, there’s usually something of the original effort emerging from the muck. But Asylum are just making crap films with no effort.
Yeah, Asylum films cogver a quite wide range. But the times of Transmorphers or Sherlock Holmes are long past and what i saw thereafter was bascially "people in unniforms walking through forests until the CGI dinosaur walks by". It's just not entertaining.
Also, I think several other companies emerged which tried the same stuff (not necessarily mockbusters, but mainly D-grade action creature features).
Then there are the streaming services, which I think cost these smaller trash studios a lot of money by making huge-budget trash films.
So I watched a Netflix film!
You People (2023)
Jonah Hill works in finance, but dreams of running a podcast (about "the culture"), which makes him a complete git. He falls in love with Lauren London, who works in fashion. The thing is though - he's white and Jewish, she's black and from a Muslim family! Whoopsie-daisy! They decide to marry, they Meet the Parents. Julia Lewis-Dreyfus (pretty bad writing at times, but of course executed very well) and David Duchovny (very funny) on the one side, Nia Long (there, keeps up) and Eddie Murphy (excellent) on the other.
This is a romantic comedy. The comedy is mostly very predictable and sitcom-like at times. The romance part is dealt with pretty swiftly, so we can get to the meat of the matter: calling up buzzwords, showing people unwittingly say racist things, "awkward" and "cringey". This film reduces what should be people to roles, based on their clearly labelled 'identities'. They snap at certain buzzwords, they are oblivious to other buzzwords the other people are supposed to react to and so on.
The cast is pretty impressive, the dialogue is grating at times, sometimes there's an amusing line, there are NO realizations, NO actual debates or ideas, in the end the parents apologize to their kids and they marry and live happily for ever after. Could have been interesting, but came out as the usual Netflix ware: a bit uneven, a bit too long, cast too good for the material, probably too expensive, yelling all the "current affair buzzwords" at us whilst having nothing to say. But hey, we got the subscription, so the film is kinda free, right? Can't expect anything for that but a very lukewarm experience. And in the end - that's what we actually want, right.
I'm not mad at the film; it's kinda endearing at times and there are a few funny lines, but the system behind it and the meaninglessness of it whilst trying to appear to touch on issues is annoying. This is about as deep as A Catherine Heigl/Gerard Butler film from 15 years ago, but people wear worse shoes.
Smellyvision and Tasteovision don’t do an exist, though that’s not to say it’s not been tried for certain screenings of mostly horror films to my knowledge.
But here I am, 43 years old, listening to The Imperial March on YouTube. And in its own way, my mind as well as recalling the scenes it’s pertinent to, has cast itself back to family Christmases in the early to mid 80’s, when UK TV channels would air Star Wars movies, and all the sensations associated, from the main meal to grandad’s attempt at stuffing (sadly not so good) and his trifles (amazing and unbeaten), to Gran and Grandad’s Labrador choosing to settle down with us kids for cuddles as we watched the movies and other offerings.
Easy E wrote: Yeah, but some people who were cool, but aren't that cool right now got some work so...... it all works out in the end.... somehow?
I'm all for good actors getting work and getting paid and all of that, but the films that come out of that very often seem to be so incredibly meh whilst pretending to be topical and "now".
One of those movies that I return to every few years.
Absolutely stacked cast (George Clooney, Matt Damon and Jeffrey Wright as mains and a ton notables in minor roles) and a compelling, complex yet easy to piece together and follow along story (technically like 5 concurrent linked stories) make this movie one of my favorites. Its got family drama, espionage, terrorism, political and corporate greed all wrapped up in a tight hour and a half.
Superior to Academy Award winning Traffic by the same screenwriter in my opinion.
nels1031 wrote: ... Superior to Academy Award winning Traffic by the same screenwriter in my opinion.
Wow. Maybe I should give this one another try then. Pretty sure i've never fully seen it.
I'm watching Magical Mystery right now. The film about wacky Berlinnian Techno people go for a tour during the mid-90s "to recharge their souls" because they feel like their genre has lost its soul and got too commercial. They can afford it because they run an EDM record label and make money hand over fist, and also wanna use the tour through Germany to promote their label and new releases. Their driver and "handler" is Karl Schmidt, who used to be with their clique, but suffered from psychosis due to drugs or something else. Based on a book by Sven Regener of course, and it's just a nice, light, fun ride with melancholic undertones and Germans. I wrote about it before.
I'm half-way through the new Netflix film "Heart of Stone". I don't usually stop half-way through, but I started pretty late and had to get up for work in the morning, so I'll watch the rest later.
So far, it's flashy, highlights why Gal Gadot might be easy on the eyes but is not a good actor (her line delivery is either flat or awkward), and the overreliance on nonsense hologram technology makes some of the scenes really silly (especially when you realise it's just a German guy in a room waving his arms around and they added all the stuff afterwards).
Easy E wrote: I love me some bad movies, but even I can not stomach things made by The Asylum.
I've only seen one. Death Racers. It was... something else.
You have to watch it with a group of friends who know what they're getting into.
Sigur wrote: ... and they marry and live happily for ever after.
After having a very awkward CGI kiss at their wedding.
Just watched Avatar the wet one. My god it’s loooooooong. It’s kinda like a mixture between a hallmark film of self discovery and a natural history documentary about space whales.
The set pieces were definitely cool, but the teenage angst in between was a bit cringey.
We started Tremors: the Series. So far it’s a monster of the week show with some continuity, similar to Stargate SG1. It’s pretty fun, but we’re watching on Tubi and the image quality gets funky sometimes.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Whoops, that was a mini TV review. For movies:
Legend (Director’s Cut)
A classic from a time when fantasy movies were weird and gross and uncomfortable. I never really felt connected to any of the characters, except maybe Tim Curry’s Darkness, but the weirdness was compelling. The music was weird and uncomfortable. Even the casting—the ones who aren’t covered with slimy prosthetics are the ones with the creepiest faces. Great special effects and set design. If you liked Labyrinth but didn’t find the goblin king sexually disturbing enough, this is your movie.
Black Angel
This was a short film made to play before Empire Strikes Back in UK theaters. It inspired the look of Excalibur. It’s…really slow.
You can find it here on YouTube with an introduction by the director. I recommend it for that early 80’s adult-oriented fantasy mood.
So I finished watching this uber-expensive globetrotting new Netflix film, starring wooden-as-a-post-and-lacking-range-but-damned-easy-on-the-eyes-Gal Gadot.
And it was... predictable as feth.
So there's a super-duper secret spy organisation ("The Charter") that answers to no one and damn-near worship "The Heart", which is this AI/statistical engine that can calculate probability in perfect real time and project vision of anything everywhere all-over the world like the every air molecule is a spy-camera. And these are the good guys - basically like Rogue Nation, except not evil but good - basically doing all the gak that the real intelligence agencies can't.
So our main character, Rachel Stone (Gadot) is undercover as a tech-geek (LOL!) in an MI6 team, who I quite liked, but she has to rescue them and maintain her cover. She has special augmented reality contact lenses that give her wall-hacks and other bs.
And someone is out to steal the Heart for themselves to make some rich guy pay and there are double crosses and betrayals and, for some reason, Glenn Close. I guess she lost a bet or something.
Anyway, of you start watching this film and immediately think "That character is going to betray her!", you'll be right!
Everything about this film - the super secure "heart" of their operation getting attacked, the leader standing Gal's character down for her being a loose cannon, the realisation that the main bad guy's motives may not be in line with the other bad guy's goals - is super predictable. I'm convinced this was written by AI based on rejected Mission Impossible scripts.
The action is fine, and far more realistic than a lot of movies (when tiny women take on big hulking men, they get thrown the feth around, and have to fight smarter, not harder) but the big stunts are silly and too fake looking. It's like someone trying to imitate a M:I film with none of the skill, quality or authenticity.
And my God the holograms. This film has a major hardon for interactive mass-scale holograms. Like they watched the first two Iron Man films and went "Let's just do more of that!". I feel sorry for the poor German guy who acts as Gal's "man in the chair", because more often than not he doesn't have a chair, but a big empty room where he waves his arms around and animators then go and add endlessly complicated holograms to make it look like he's doing something.
That character is also also saddled with all the worst dialogue, over explaining everything we see, and when the Heart goes down, he tells us that it's gone down in the most obvious way. At one point he even says "Don't worry, the heart is over Africa! It's completely secure!" which is a terrible example of really obvious foreshadowing. Poor guy. What a thankless role.
Ahh. Red Notice was better than this.
If you've gone nothing to do, and don't want to watch something you've already seen, then maybe... go outside instead. This one isn't worth the time.
A very solid entry in normally rubbish film series. Clear fight scenes and dialogue, very cool character design. Unicron looks amazing.
Perfectly enjoyable movie and I look forward to more.
Dungeons and Dragons, Honour Among Thieves
Only just put this on, but as a PSA this film, or rather Prime, came super, super close to getting up my nose.
See, it’s been available to purchase for £13.99 for a while, but I’d resisted. Tonight however couple of the boys came over for a movie night. And it was a choice between this, and Rise of the Beasts.
Thankfully, i went with Rise of the Beasts. Because, whilst there’s not a hint of it on the Prime front page, or Paramount+ “newly added” section? About halfway through Rise of the Beasts, FB threw up a post….”Dungeons and Dragons, Honour Among Thieves now on Paramount+”.
I came so, so close to objectively wasting £13.99.
Can't help feeling it would have been a more enjoyable movie without Black Adam in it. Loved the Justice Society. The story overall was ok, if more than a little formulaic. But it has the same problem as the Justice League, in that the plot revolves around everyone else largely just waiting for the least interesting character to arrive and save the day.
I would pay cash money for more Hawkman and Doctor Fate, however.
Started watching this last night. Abandoned after 20 minutes when I realised I could be doing something interesting instead. I'll give it another attempt tonight.
Started watching this last night. Abandoned after 20 minutes when I realised I could be doing something interesting instead. I'll give it another attempt tonight.
Enough “nod and wink” to the little I know about the game system to tickle my pickle, but other than that? You don’t need any knowledge other than “it’s a fantasy setting” to enjoy.
Solid cast, decent comedy, good chemistry. Some of the effects (Halfling effects) are a bit dodgy, but fleeting enough to be of little overall concern.
I found time to have D&D on in the background and I found the second half was more impressive than the first and overall agree with what MDG says above.
Hugh Grant has played excellent bad guys before (Paddington) and I feel he may have over hammed it a bit on this one. I also don't understand how anyone in the stadium was supposed to see any of the games with those big walls going up and down.
Michelle Rodriguez is excellent, pulling off the powerful woman part very convincingly. The choreographer for her character's two individual fight scenes did terrific work showing off the physique of the stunt actors and exploiting the scenery. My only laugh out loud moment of the film was in one of these fights and it was at that point I had to grudgingly admit I was enjoying myself. Plus Michelle keeps her reputation for...
Asteroid City.
I missed this at the theatre & got a chance to see it on Amazon last night.
I love it's visual style.
Other than that? It's somewhat entertaining, features a lot of well known people, & is just.... odd. Not really good, not really bad, just kinda odd.
So a typical Wes Anderson movie. If you've seen other stuff he's done then you know exactly what I'm talking about.
Dune (1984) I went back to rewatch this as I don't really remember it from the first time and man, it's just not good. Like, the soundtrack is neat but what a mess.
Also, the Harkonnen's unifying trait is they're all gingers. Why?
A very QT-esque flick, in an era where QT-esque flicks aren't the norm anymore. 5 strangers; a vacuum salesperson, a Black singer, an aged Priest, and a Hippie woman a show up at an; isolated motel on the CA/Nevada line in the mid-60's. They all have their own stories and motivations, and it all eventually intertwines in a big set-piece at the end.
Interesting movie.... but you kind of know how it is going to end. The joy is letting it all unfold to see how it all weaves together. Like looking at a good quilt. There are some really strong moments and scenes, and Jeff Bridges kills it.
Guns Akimbo
A post-Potter Radcliffe enjoys starring in some low-rent action movie fare. This movie has Music Video editing vibes at the beginning, but it mellows out a bit as it goes on.
The premise is this guy is an online troll, who eventually pisses off the wrong people. They bolt pistols to his hands and then is placed in a city-wide death match with a psycho woman. Hijinks and antics ensue. They really like to play up the fact that it is really hard to do things with guns for hands.
Taken 3 was abysmal. I've mentioned how it was so bad my brain made me forget it, to the point where it took me sitting down to watch it to remember that I'd seen it already.
But the whole "Umm... let's make the stepfather evil, I guess?" angle was so awful. And replacing Xander Berkerley with Dougray Scott didn't help.
Another period piece superhero movie. This one has more action and humor than the Shadow, but feels cartoonier and messier as a story.
The movie is full of great actors making great choices, from Billy Zane’s kind-of-a-dork Phantom to Treat Williams’ scene-stealing hammy villain. It has more location shots and elaborate stunt work than any 5 modern superhero movies. It’s a visual treat of a movie.
I’m not sure what else should follow after The Rocketeer. Sky Captain? Dick Tracy? That old Doc Savage film from the 70’s?
Another period piece superhero movie. This one has more action and humor than the Shadow, but feels cartoonier and messier as a story.
The movie is full of great actors making great choices, from Billy Zane’s kind-of-a-dork Phantom to Treat Williams’ scene-stealing hammy villain. It has more location shots and elaborate stunt work than any 5 modern superhero movies. It’s a visual treat of a movie.
I’m not sure what else should follow after The Rocketeer. Sky Captain? Dick Tracy? That old Doc Savage film from the 70’s?
In keeping the flow of early/mid 90s comic book movies going, definitely Dick Tracy.
Benicio del Toro and Ryan Phillipe star as two desperate/impulsive criminals who bite off more than they can chew.
Some fun/witty dialogue (Veteran bagman played by James Caan: "Are you the brains of this operations" Del Toro: "Yeah, this is not really a 'brains' operation" is one that I quote all the time), good shootouts and Sarah Silverman getting punched in the face in the opening minutes(her character really deserved it, nothing against the actual person) make this one of my favorites.
I also think my affection for this movie comes from when I bought the dvd years ago and me and my army buds watched it together in the barracks. Don't think it moved the needle critically or financially when it came out.
This movie is free here on YouTube. I clicked for Al Leong, but I stayed for Randall Park.
It’s a little homage video put together by a couple YouTube comedians and starring some of the most recognizable bad guys of 80’s action cinema. It’s got YouTube movie level production, action and editing, but it’s still kind of fun. I was invested in Al Leong’s quest to find a suitably badass catchphrase.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: I only have vague memories of Duck Tracy, and they aren’t positive. Maybe it will hold up better on a second viewing.
...
I think it will. I think we'd appreciate how all-out they went on the comicbook look and the colours. But I haven't seen it in aaaaages. Yup, marketing was huge on that one.
I just watched Master and Commander for the first time. Yeah, everybody loves it, and they are indeed correct. What a film! The enter fight had my eyes glued to the screen, mouth agape. And all these vignettes in betweetn are also great. LOved the scenes on the Galapagos islands and whatnot. Great film.
I'm honestly surprised no one has tried to "go back to the well" on Master and Commander. I mean, there is a huge series of novels it is based on, and IIRC this one was sort of in the middle of the series.
Easy E wrote: I'm honestly surprised no one has tried to "go back to the well" on Master and Commander. I mean, there is a huge series of novels it is based on, and IIRC this one was sort of in the middle of the series.
Yeah, probably not broad enough for the budget. Let's have Netflix make another superfunny and awesome actiony thing starring [somebody funny relateable], [a Rock equivalent], [the tough lady] and [the quirky lady who is tough too], with a hilarious cameo by [Bill Murray or who ever is available at the moment] instead.
Master and Commander also did a few things differently than lesser hollywood films would have: Takes its time, did NOT have a big helicopter drone shot during the amazing enter scene with lots of "cgi pirates", had no annoying characters, but rather HAD characters. Overall, this looks remarkably untouched by marketing/studio goons. I really enjoyed that film.
Easy E wrote: I'm honestly surprised no one has tried to "go back to the well" on Master and Commander. I mean, there is a huge series of novels it is based on, and IIRC this one was sort of in the middle of the series.
Yeah, probably not broad enough for the budget. Let's have Netflix make another superfunny and awesome actiony thing starring [somebody funny relateable], [a Rock equivalent], [the tough lady] and [the quirky lady who is tough too], with a hilarious cameo by [Bill Murray or who ever is available at the moment] instead.
Master and Commander also did a few things differently than lesser hollywood films would have: Takes its time, did NOT have a big helicopter drone shot during the amazing enter scene with lots of "cgi pirates", had no annoying characters, but rather HAD characters. Overall, this looks remarkably untouched by marketing/studio goons. I really enjoyed that film.
I would suggest Black Sails for any fans of Master and Commander. It's a really outstanding pirate series, with quite a few close quarters boarding scenes and ship duels.
Flinty wrote: Probably because it cost $150m to make and “only” made $200m in return. It was a glorious production though.
I feel like it's a movie that made way more money on DVD? Not sure. It's one of those movies that came out and no one much went to see it but it's done really well in post-release.
But historical films also just aren't the fad now, especially not with movies like The Last Duel and The Northman underperforming. Maybe if Napoleon does well, but Scott's track record with historical epics includes everything from Gladiator to Kingdom of Heaven to 1492 so who knows.
EDIT: Though I did google the film and found this. I further googled but IDK. There's nothing since 2021 I can find. Still. If Crowe wants to do it maybe it could happen. We could always hope and dream.
There's also Greyhound if anyone has AppleTV. Think it's still only on AppleTV which is a shame cause it's not great but it's good enough for what it is. Similar high seas sort of film as Master and Commander, but the characters aren't as good.
Watched a 1983 in film retrospective and it mentioned Sudden Impact and I didn't think I had ever seen that Dirty Harry movie so I tracked it down and watched it. Oh boy, that lead to having to go back and watch the original Dirty Harry (1971) and Magnum Force (1973) because of all the issues and questions raised. I will be watching The Enforcer (1975) later this evening. There is a reason why Judge Dredd comics satirized them, as the lengths the films goes to to justify the protagonist constantly killing people, well no not people, cartoonist grotesques pretending to be criminals, is kind of disturbing. Saturday morning cartoons are more nuanced portrayals of crime and criminals. If it was portraying an unlikable character that we weren't supposed cheer on but be engaged by it would be less problematic but it seems to want to make him a a hero we cheer for. He often comes across as a man who wants to kill people and found a position that put him into situations that would allow. Not even starting in on the racial and sexual politics.
They are also interesting crime stories with a good core plot. Sudden Impact more than Dirty Harry has unnecessary divergences to show how much of a righteous killer Harry is. To often they set up situations where he can kill bad people and the crowd can cheer that has little to nothing to do with what is actually happening. Within the first twenty five minutes Harry has killed eleven people unrelated to the main story (4 mafia, 4 diner robbers, and 3 generic) and they all could have been cut out and you would still have the same story.
Magnum Force is interesting as it seems to be a direct response to criticism of the first film. Basically it is Batman, after torturing, beating, paralyzing, and wreaking havoc says he is actually the hero because he waits instead of being proactive. It helps that the criminals are written to be caricature than anything always going after our gallant hero for no really good reason other than to keep the body count rising. One of the criticisms of Dirty Harry was that it appeared to be attacking the youth movements, this was filmed late in the 60s, and the villain is a long haired (for the time) young guy with a peace symbol belt buckle. Well now Harry is hooking up with a hippy chick out of nowhere that lives downstairs for casual sex, woohoo!
The attitudes and glorification extra judicial killing and vigilantism are still hanging us today, and it is a bit disturbing. Dirty Harry is Darth Vader in that he wants order and will enforce it and the end of a lightsaber and begrudgingly tolerates the Emperor because it allows him to do so while feeling good about his actions.
All that being said I still recommend them as they are entertaining they just open up a lot of questions and if watching with younger viewers probably should be ready to answer a lot of questions. It is an entertaining way to get some really mixed messages. The endings are really old school with him killing the bad guy and it just abruptly coming to a stop and saying THE END. In the first he throws away his shield, in the second he blows up his lieutenant, and in SI he lets a vigilante off the hook.
Edit: I also realized that in two of the three films people Harry catches are released because he didn't get a search warrant then the criminal comes after him later. They didn't even try to think of another pattern or reason just the same thing twice.
Rarely does a movie go to such lengths to disguise itself. HITHD is a found footage horror, that tries so hard to not let on that it's even listed as a Documentary on Prime Video.
If you were to embark on viewing it as such then I'm not sure if it would enhance the experience, or just generate extra irritation when it becomes apparent that this is very much not a documentary.
HITHD exists primarily as a 60 minute vehicle to sell around 20 minutes of vaguely creepy footage. Footage with such poor FX that even falling back on to the old gimmick of infrared black and white vision doesn't fully mask the joins. Still, aspects of the last sequence are atmospheric enough, just not really worth the price of sitting through an hour of mockumentary to get to.
Probably the most interesting aspect of the film is that it's loosely based on the real life disappearance of Kenny Veach, who also vanished under mysterious circumstances in the mountains. Honestly, you'd be better spent spending time researching that, or some of the many other "vanished under really bizarre circumstances" missing persons cases that the vast wildernesses that still exist on the planet still throw up from time to time.
Well I suppose we were bound to run into a bad one at some point and here it is. For all their issues the other three Dirty Harry films listed before were still good films. The Enforcer is, at best, a made for TV movie of its time. I barely feels like a Dirty Harry film. I would think perhaps it was rushed being only two years after Magnum Force but MF was just two years after the original. That might explain why there was an eight year gap between The Enforcer and Sudden Impact.
It was interesting to find out that originally Harry was supposed to be older, like mid 50s, and his years on the force that had made him indifferent, and even antagonistic, to the system as he was tired and worn out explains his extreme measures. John Wayne and Burt Lancaster were considered and at one point Sinatra was going to play the part. In the original Scorpio has zero motivation or backstory but there were multiple drafts with varying reasons (he killed his grandparents as a kid and was raised in psychiatric, he just wanted money, was a Vietnam vet with PTSD) and in the end they just left it out. Originally it was a Marine Sniper that got Scorpio at the end but they wanted to give Harry another moment.
Let’s face it. This is damned near perfect. Arnie has not only the perfect physique for the role, but his admittedly limited acting skills were exactly what the role needed. Not bad acting by any stretch, as he certainly gets the beats across. But limited all the same.
The supporting cast a great, our villains are menacing. The effects are pretty damned decent for the time. And the fight choreography just does it for me. All neatly capped off with a damned near, if not outright, perfect, soundtrack.
Absolutely fantastic bit of film making, sadly never really bettered within it own genre - though its direct sequel isn’t entirely devoid of its charms. And Red Sonja was very very almost, but crucially not quite, there.
Like Star Wars, Conan also hit the right level of grimy to help with the suspension of disbelief. The cast is neither spotlessly clean or utterly filth encrusted (except where that is appropriate). The costuming tells distinct visual stories for the factions.
Its endearingly acted I would say. There is a general lack of super detailed expression, by which I mean limited close-ups catching every arch of the eyebrows and slight pull of the cheek in amusement. For me it comes across as an authentic characterisation of how people actually react and communicate.
And when people are killed, you know they are dead, with an appropriate, but not excessive, amount of gore.
Flinty wrote: Probably because it cost $150m to make and “only” made $200m in return. It was a glorious production though.
....
There's also Greyhound if anyone has AppleTV. Think it's still only on AppleTV which is a shame cause it's not great but it's good enough for what it is. Similar high seas sort of film as Master and Commander, but the characters aren't as good.
Yeah, I guess I'll stick to the Hornblower films on youtube for my high seas kicks.
It’s a tween coming-of-age drama/comedy about girls tearing apart their friendship over a boy. Some of the jokes are funny, but there’s a lot more embarrassment humor than I enjoy. I’m not sure how relatable the situations are for any normal person since the characters are all rich, throwing $20,000ish parties and attending a synagogue the size of a middle school. I’d only recommend this to someone looking for a bat mitzvah themed Mean Girls type of movie.
An 80’s classic. Eddie Murphy, Charles Dance, no less than four actors from Big Trouble in Little China, and a really cool dagger star in this fantasy-adventure-comedy. If you like fantasy concepts and Eddie Murphy, watch it.
An 80’s classic. Eddie Murphy, Charles Dance, no less than four actors from Big Trouble in Little China, and a really cool dagger star in this fantasy-adventure-comedy. If you like fantasy concepts and Eddie Murphy, watch it.
An 80’s classic. Eddie Murphy, Charles Dance, no less than four actors from Big Trouble in Little China, and a really cool dagger star in this fantasy-adventure-comedy. If you like fantasy concepts and Eddie Murphy, watch it.
As the name suggests, based off the Tim Burton movie, with considerable reimagining for the stage.
Saw this on Broadway during my New York trip last year and thoroughly enjoyed it. The other audience members got an extra special scary treat when yours truly, a 6’2” gothic horror blubbed his way through Lydia’s solely number “Dead Mom”.
Clips along at a good pace with typically Broadway Songs. The staging and that are amazing, and I understand it’s won awards.
It’s currently on a U.S. tour, and I’m hoping it comes to London’s West End, as it’s one of those rare musicals I’m happy to see more than once.
You know, as a kid I read a lot about the Bermuda Triangle.... because it was fun! We all know strange things happen to those who go into it! Except.... not really.
In this movie, a group of people on a sailboat get trapped in the Triangle, and they board an old liner called the Aeolus. Bermuda Triangle hijinks ensue.
The movie is better than my short synopsis makes it sound. It is hard to not give out spoilers to this one, but if you have read about some of the theories about the Bermuda Triangle and what happens there, you might have an inkling to what you are about to see.
Old Boy (2003 Korean original)
Considering that the entire film hangs off a single nugget of information it is impressive that the rest of the movie does not feel like filler and the whole stands up to multiple revisits. If you like the sort of film where the reveal changes the whole outlook of the film (Memento, Sixth Sense, Knives Out, etc.) then this one is up there with the best of them.
Carry On Cleo With only a small mention to where yesteryear's comedy is exposed (they don't so much do Blackface as they do Blackbody!), this is one of the ok carry on films. There's a good mix of slapstick, visual gags and word play. A couple of highlights are Sid honing his sword with chef's sharpening steel and Caesar rowing his own boat. And the writers must have lived the rest of their lives in glorious contentment after writing the magnificent line: "Infamy! Infamy! They've all got it in for me!"
Funny Face Musical with Audrey Hepburn and Fred Astaire.
The content creators I pay attention to who discuss music in movies often say something along the lines of when a character feels something they talk about it. When talking isn't enough they sing. When singing isn't enough they dance. And we, the audience, are supposed to get a sense of how powerful their emotions are by their singing and dancing. Sadly I didn't feel much at all from this. Mostly the songs didn't add much to procedures and the dancing wasn't particularly interesting. There are a couple of stand out moments: Hepburn's singing of "How long has this been going on" being one of the few occasions where the singing tells us something about the character, and it's very well performed too. Also when Hepburn performs some freeform dancing in a Parisian café it's excellent, highlighting her ballet skills and Astaire's use of environment in his choreography.
For me Astaire's use of environment for dancing is on par with Buster Keaton's comedy and Jackie Chan's action. These people can see a landscape and unlock opportunities to exploit.
Edit: I must also mention the delightful toying with phonetics for " 'S wonderful", even if the delivery is a bit so-so.
My son wanted to watch this, and since he is a little older than I was when it came out, we watched it. The production values, directing, acting and effects are all limited by 1990’s TV budget and practices, yet it was still effective. He was very engaged. When we took a break between part 1 and part 2 he said he would rather wait to watch part 2 because part 1 was scary enough. So it holds up.
Dark City (Director’s Cut)
This highly atmospheric murder mystery is best seen with as little fore knowledge as possible. Watch the director’s cut if you can. Highly recommended.
Short Circuit 2
Something lighter to follow up Dark City. One of the rare sequels better than the original, Short Circuit 2 is a comedy with a lot of heart. The writing is surprisingly tight, with excellent use of set up and payoff, character progression meshing organically with the plot, creative laugh scenes, and a lot of emotional range. The soundtrack is effective, and not only because it boasts the best (or second best if you’re young) use of “Holding Out for a Hero” in movie history.
Warning, if watching with children: there is a disturbingly intense scene leading into the climax. (My son wanted to watch everything from after Johnny goes to Radio Shack twice because the first time he was too uncomfortable to watch for a while.)
Even if you like movies in the style of a crummy Syfy original, this movie still isn't very fun. It's got a corny environmentalism message that's ironically got some good pieces to it. The film just never really manages to be entertaining.
I want to give credit to the writers, the actors, and the camera work though. It's not... IDK. It's like all the pieces for a decent film were here but they never came together. The movie is an odd case of the whole being less than the sum of its parts.
I watched 12 Angry Men again. That film rocks hard. It shows citizenship, courage, and a universalist view of things, beyond petty little individual experiences, identities or other private little stories. A film that can be watched over and over and over.
I was also sick, so I watched a whole lot of X-Files , a little bit of M*A*S*H (the show, never liked the film. German dub version because a.) back then they did funny things with translations and b.) no laugh track.) and quite a chunk of What We Do in the Shadows (the tv show). Pretty funny.
Yes it’s Sunday. I’ve done me shopping. The laundry is on. Washing up can wait, until I realise I need something for cooking me dinner. So naturally, it’s on with a bit of Hammer, from that big boxed set they did. And it’s one I’ve not seen before.
Being Hammer it is of its age with, actually not that bad representation of African tribal rituals. I mean, I doubt it’s terribly accurate, but it’s not outright racist. Just…cack handed.
Anyways. Main lead is arseing around in Africa, as you do, and offends the locals so naturally he has to be sacrificed. But then he almost touches their idol, time freezes, a solid rock wall opens up, and he buggers off. Only to run into…..the titular Prehistoric Women. Presumably a (very, very lost, given their skin tone) Amazonian type tribe.
I must say, for Prehistoric Women? They’re remarkably well groomed. But so far not very talkative. However I did enjoy who I presume to be the boss sticking a tenpenny one up the Hero’s bracket, knocking him out cold. Fortunately they do of course speak English. Handy, eh?
So, the blondes are slaves to the brunettes, and only one brunette can speak. And apparently, the blonde’s men are no longer men. Maybe they turned into PlayStations, who knows. I expect we’ll find out.
Suffice to say it seems The Hero may well be getting some death by Snu-snu.
This really isn’t terribly good. But I’ll see it through.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Blimey. Queen Brunette must be on a helluva dry spell. 0-100 on “oh go on, I’ll let you share my throne and co-rule”
It was awful. Truly awful. Hammer you need to take with a pinch of salt with your tongue in your cheek, but this was just crap.
Now on to Fear In The Night, a Hammer take on psychological thrillers.
Our lead is attacked by someone that appears to have a prosthetic arm - or at least she knocked off a prosthetic arm during the struggle.
It’s then revealed she’s recovering from a nervous breakdown of some six months prior. This of course sets up whether she was hallucinating etc.
Her husband (who I though was Roy Cropper out of Corrie at first, but definitely looks like he reeks of stale cigarette smoke) picks her up, to take her to the cottage that comes with his new job at a boarding school. A boarding school run by Peter Cushing - who has a prosthetic arm.
Various odd things have happened so far, including our lead overhearing a Latin lesson, only to find no pupils in the room.
And we’ve just met Joan Collins, who I think is Peter Cushing’s wife.
I have my suspicions as to what’s going on, but to the film’s credit, I wouldn’t say anything is exactly telegraphed.
I’m rather enjoying this!
Automatically Appended Next Post: So I was…..mostly right. But rather than the film being obviously written, it’s more a general familiarity with the wider genre.
First of all, this is a classic for a reason. Watch it.
We just watched it after spending a day at Hearst Castle, the real life Xanadu, soaking up the real story. This movie hit really hard because of that. It’s a masterpiece made to take down a living legend. No wonder Hearst was pissed. If the rumor about the origin of the nickname “Rosebud” is true, this was one of the ballsiest movies ever made.
My young adult room mate was taking a class on drugs and behavior, and this movie got a call-out. Knowing that I am prone to the occasional bad film, they asked me about it. Not only had I seen, I knew where we could watch it. So we did.
As for the movie. Hey, it was 1936! What did you expect?
One refreshing bit, the conservative stance on the topic was to.... wait for it.... it is so refreshing..... educate people on the danger!
First, know that I’ve not read the book. I only know this movie, it’s sequels and the animated series.
But what a great slice of satire. Not quite the level of Robocop (which has many, many levels I’ve praised before) but good enough.
I think my favourite scene is when Johnny has taken over command of the Roughnecks, and is addressing the Noobies.
See, throughout this film, we’ve once again been asked to accept 20 or 30 somethings as high school kids. That was the fashion at the time, and to be expected.
But in that scene? The noobs are noticeably younger. Actual teenagers. Fresh faced and ready to die for citizenship. And I think it can be taken a couple of ways.
First, it’s a way to show how Johnny and the vets have matured over their adventures. They’re adults now, grown and experienced.
Second? It’s a sign of just how badly the war against the bugs is going, because these are literally child soldiers. All we have left to throw into to the meat grinder.
A Hong Kong action/comedy flick about two Policewomen kicking a lot of butt.
The plot is basically only there to string together some fight sequences, and the ending is fairly abrupt and unusual (Although that just seems to be a quirk of the genre), but the fights are rather good.
First, know that I’ve not read the book. I only know this movie, it’s sequels and the animated series.
But what a great slice of satire. Not quite the level of Robocop (which has many, many levels I’ve praised before) but good enough.
I think my favourite scene is when Johnny has taken over command of the Roughnecks, and is addressing the Noobies.
See, throughout this film, we’ve once again been asked to accept 20 or 30 somethings as high school kids. That was the fashion at the time, and to be expected.
But in that scene? The noobs are noticeably younger. Actual teenagers. Fresh faced and ready to die for citizenship. And I think it can be taken a couple of ways.
First, it’s a way to show how Johnny and the vets have matured over their adventures. They’re adults now, grown and experienced.
Second? It’s a sign of just how badly the war against the bugs is going, because these are literally child soldiers. All we have left to throw into to the meat grinder.
Lovely slice of sci-fi nonsense. Also….Dizz….
Starship Troopers is a brilliant film. Satirizing the book is the only rational approach to it's unrelenting 'guns are great, soldiers are great' message where Rico can only have a relationship with his dad once he outranks him. Showing the ludicrous nature of the book is what elevates the film, showing a hideous race that has bred warriors to exterminate those it perceives to be lesser beings. And some bugs.
I wholeheartedly agree with everything that's been said about Starship Troopers. I also read the book, which is just an entirely different beast altogether. The book has some interesting bits, but is rather clearly Vietnam In Space, plus some hard sci-fi. All well and fine, but it was a very good call to make the film entirely different.
I watched Police Academy. It's bad. No further news. Well. I finished the third season of What We Do In the Shadows, and it's rather fun. Also watched Garth Marenghi's Darkplace for the 500th time, because it has to be done every few months.
Can't Stop the Music (1980) is quite the mess. And weirdly long. I mean I guess musical films often can be longer if you approach it in a way that you take a regular film and add musical numbers. I have to say though... the YMCA scenes are impressive. I alo now know that the biker surely was the best singer out of the group, followed by the policeman (either the one in the film, or the actual one, doesn't matter.).
In a weird coincidence, this, just like Police Academy, stars Steve Guttenberg!
I have a soft spot for ‘Police Academy’ even if only a few jokes are really funny (the id parade is a favourite).
Can’t Stop the Music has some good tracks but the plot is wafer thin, even for a light musical. And nowadays you can wonder at the future of one of the non-singing stars.
Or: Dracula has his cruise ruined when his packed lunch escapes and he has to go self catering.
Based on a section of Bram Stoker's book, Demeter details the fate of the crew carrying Dracula from Transylvania to England.
Given the "crew trapped on board with a creature" nature of the story, Demeter will perhaps inevitably draw comparisons with the first Alien movie. Sadly, this isn't a comparison that does it any favours.
Overall, it's a solid film, but I think it suffers from the fatalistic nature of the events. Unlike Alien, the outcome is already certain, the book is over a century old at this point. Unlike something like, say, Titanic it doesn't really succeed in making the story entertaining enough to make the journey to an inevitable conclusion feel worthwhile.
It's not all bad though, performances are decent throughout, the creature design is pretty good, and mostly well realised and there are moments that really illustrate how genuinely evil Dracula is, mostly thanks to the dispensing of any element of the "Victorian Gentlemen" trope and total focus on the beastial side.
Probably worth a watch this one, but wait for streaming.
Azreal13 wrote: Overall, it's a solid film, but I think it suffers from the fatalistic nature of the events. Unlike Alien, the outcome is already certain, the book is over a century old at this point. Unlike something like, say, Titanic it doesn't really succeed in making the story entertaining enough to make the journey to an inevitable conclusion feel worthwhile.
IMO this movie missed its golden ticket by not leaning hard into anti-nihilism.
Why fight the inevitable? Why resist fate? feth you that's why!
A similar movie to this, that is better imo, is Blood Vessel. Fun film for anyone who hasn't seen it yet. A bit goofy but in the fun sort of way.
@MarkNorfolk: The plot of Can't Stop the Music was pretty incomprehensible to me. But the whole thing had a rather positive vibe and looked colourful, which always makes things more watchable. But the length of that film..
@Azreal13: I saw a preview of that film and it kinda intrigued me. Funnily enough, I read up on it on wikipedia and the fatalism was very much pointed on there as well.The film sounds kinda interesting though.
I guess it suffers a lot from the same kind of issues as Rogue One, you know the end state and you know that in any way changing the end state is beyond the scope of the film.
It's additionally further handicapped by a significantly more limiting premise.
What's there is fine, it just never really overcomes the fact that it's literally lifted from a few pages in the middle of a much longer story.
The store manager for a Italian Restaurant Chain is rewarded by being sent on a special training session in Italy with the company's billionaire founder and a few other top managers.
Things are not what they seem, and this retreat is much darker than it seems. Hijinks ensue.
Pretty sure this movie is intending to skewer the whole idea of romantic movies where a lowly serf gets to fall in love with a member of the royalty. However, it is not really played for laughs. I did find the culmination of the typical end of a Romance movie to be a nice little turn.
The moral of the story is Active Listening is pretty important.
I would not recommend anyone go out of their way to find this one.
Watched this last night while grinding Starfield things. It seemed on theme, but wasn't (which... was sort of fitting after all).
This wasn't, despite my expectation, Space Family Robinson. It isn't set in space at all.
It's just weird. It didn't really hold my attention well, as it turned from its nominal topic to the difficulties between fathers and sons and the inability to just have a fething conversation.
Also, something something environmentalism and living in harmony with your world or whatever. Which seems hard when your world seems actively invested in people not exploring and also hands you unlimited power generation for no apparent reason.
So its kind of mediocre, overall. The only thing it does well is being shockingly diverse for a Disney film and not commenting on it, just treating it as absolutely normal and not worth exposition.
A young man is mentally and emotionally abused by his teacher in the circle of abuse on screen. There is also some jazz drumming.
Imagine if a movie was written where a wife is abused for not cooking a meal right, over and over and over again. She escapes, but purposely comes back to the abusive husband. The movie ends with her making a 5-star Michelin rated meal for her abusive husband who is finally satisfied with her efforts.
That is this movie, but with drumming. It is apologetics of the highest order for abusive treatment and Social Darwinism. From the themes and message this movie is crap. The film is justifying an out-moded approach to social hierarchy and power dominance in the guise of performance. It is total and utter tosh brimming with Alpha-Male fantasy and self-justification. Repulsive.
However, some really good acting from the Farmer's insurance guy.
Pretty decent movie with a distractingly dated CGI dragon. For good or bad, Sean Connery gets a lot of dialogue that could easily fall into “You’re the man now, dog” territory.
Krull
One of the great 80’s fantasy movies. I can’t be objective—I love it.
Imagine creating a seminal bit of cinema. Then two very dodgy sequels.
Then returning to the scene of your crime a couple of decades later only to poop out, and I do mean poop out, a bloody awful movie so bad, you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s a fan fiction. And not the good, thought provoking fan fiction.
Follow up to The Shining, both book and film. I enjoyed it and, at the very least, it doesn't harm the originals. The True Knot are certainly a terrible group that deserve the audience's ire. Looking a bit on the differences between the book and film really show how well the filmmakers were able to honor both the Kubrick film and the King book. As a film it is very well made and shot but not quite on the level of Kubrick's original but I don't think that was ever really an expectation. Being about something thematically, in this case addiction, helps make it an above average horror film.
Saw someone say it wasn't a horror movie but a thriller and I don't agree. Horror doesn't mean "jump scare" or slasher film, or torture porn. Like the original it is much more about atmosphere and the implications of these kinds of people and things going on in the background of the world. Sure you might not jump as much because of startling noise but you'll probably think about it more long after the movie is over.
OK. So this is a favourite of mine. But I accept it’s sadly not quite the full shilling.
I wouldn’t even call it a “guilty pleasure” because there is plenty to enjoy here. We have some solid actors chewing the scenery. The monster makeup is good, with even the CGI still holding up. Even the plot is surprisingly coherent given how much they jammed in there.
In a sense, this is almost an Avengers movie before the Avenger. A bold if ultimately flawed attempt to have lots of characters in one film, without taking a run up first.
It’s a shame it didn’t work. Because if it had, it could easily have linked up with the Brendan Fraser Mummy movies, and spared us the God Awful Tom Cruise Mummy Film, a film so utterly awful it strangled a whole franchise in its crib.
Van Helsing was a film so joyfully stupid I’m surprised it wasn’t a mega hit. Everything from the over-the-too Dracula to “I want to liiiiiiiiive” Frankenstein to the horse carriage making the Speed bridge jump was so bad it’s good gold. My favorite part of the movie is: every scene in Dracula’s lab has this one minion ugnaut thing on a wheel contraption suspended from a cable pedaling around the ceiling. That’s all he does! He pedals around and around!
Every year there seems like there is a much hyped horror flick that dominates critically/commercially and proves why the horror genre is so lucrative ($4.5 mil budget, $67 mil theater take) and why its a genre that has no end in sight.
Once I heard how hyped this movie was, I forced myself into a media blackout regarding this movie and went in blind as could be, aside from a few trailers.
For me, it deserved the hype. Its part haunting, part possession and pulls off both pretty damn well. Won’t get into plot spoilers, but I felt it did a better job of sticking to its mythology then some previous breakout horror hits. Did a great deal with very little and it worked. Didn’t go heavy with jump scares either, which I’m finding to be a cheap, overused tactic. Its also pretty dense and didn’t waste a lot of time, another thing that I appreciate.
Also, Eowyn has aged well. Or I’m just old. Loved her no nonsense mom character in this movie.
A prequel has been filmed apparently, and a sequel is in development.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: Van Helsing was a film so joyfully stupid I’m surprised it wasn’t a mega hit. Everything from the over-the-too Dracula to “I want to liiiiiiiiive” Frankenstein to the horse carriage making the Speed bridge jump was so bad it’s good gold. My favorite part of the movie is: every scene in Dracula’s lab has this one minion ugnaut thing on a wheel contraption suspended from a cable pedaling around the ceiling. That’s all he does! He pedals around and around!
I do wonder if it suffered from the snootiness of its time, and daring to be Fun over Award Worthy.
There’s a definite ambition to the whole thing, and it draws nicely from its forebears for the scenery chewing and cheese. We even get moments of Tragic Villain, with Dracula just wanting children.
Granted him getting that is bad news for everyone, but he and his hotties definitely sell their grief with the failed attempts.
Every year there seems like there is a much hyped horror flick that dominates critically/commercially and proves why the horror genre is so lucrative ($4.5 mil budget, $67 mil theater take) and why its a genre that has no end in sight.
Once I heard how hyped this movie was, I forced myself into a media blackout regarding this movie and went in blind as could be, aside from a few trailers.
For me, it deserved the hype. Its part haunting, part possession and pulls off both pretty damn well. Won’t get into plot spoilers, but I felt it did a better job of sticking to its mythology then some previous breakout horror hits. Did a great deal with very little and it worked. Didn’t go heavy with jump scares either, which I’m finding to be a cheap, overused tactic. Its also pretty dense and didn’t waste a lot of time, another thing that I appreciate.
Also, Eowyn has aged well. Or I’m just old. Loved her no nonsense mom character in this movie.
A prequel has been filmed apparently, and a sequel is in development.
I also watched this due to the hype and was also not disappointed. A24 are usually pretty consistent (apart from X which I really wasn't a fan of) but I was also hesitant. But agree with all you have said, also a great cast of (for me) unknowns (apart from Eowyn obviously) who did a really great job.
I also think it's a great allegory for teenage drug use but that might be me overthinking it.
Caught this on D+ last night. Thought it might be fun.
Well, there was some fun, but it was a bit odd. It starts out with an seemly quick start with simple dialogue and a simple love set up as our protagonist meets a cute boy. Maybe he's a bit bad (wears black, rides a motorbike) but is fresh-faced and clean, so he's clearly just "Disney bad". (But turns out to be a little badder than that). But then the world has a largish population of cyborgs, a fair few reduced to a brain and a face sitting on top of a robot body. and then before long people are being sliced in half or dragged into crushers. The mooks in the movie are straight out of a second rate 80's action movie: all scowls and bad attitude. It's a real clash of halves. The pacing is also a little off for a 2 hour movie, going slow when it should be building up to the climax. It also ends as if they were expecting to make a sequel. It's also a movie where the actor playing the 'big bad' isn't actually credited, because he doesn't talk.
I supposed I'm glad I saw it. Don't need to see it again.
Easy E wrote: Van Helsing is the G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra of Gothic Horror!
Is this praise for GI Joe TROC or condemnation for Van Helsing? I never saw any of the GI Joe movies.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Alita was a weird movie. Based on an old manga, stuck in production hell for a decade, it felt dated and incomplete when it came out. But it struck a chord with some anime fans…and with some culture war types, which gave it a sort of uncomfortable hype. Everything in the whole film up until that last shot of Ed Norton felt slightly misjudged.
StraightSilver wrote: I also think it's a great allegory for teenage drug use but that might be me overthinking it.
Yeah, I definitely had the same thought really early in the movie.
I also got a bit of commentary on social media and how youth tend to think they are invincible. Playing with incredibly dangerous things like it is a game because "nothing bad will happen to me".
Only saw the initial one but it is an odd sort. It has all the things that you think of with GI Joe: secret bases, individuals instead of units, COBRA, vehicles, and relatively bloodless action but while mildly entertaining it just feels off. It is missing something keeping it from standing out. Perhaps it is a bit to restrained when it needed to be even more ridiculous? Like it wants to balance being a military film and a crazy Saturday morning cartoon instead of picking one or the other.
I think if you took away its heritage, and it was just a random tween targeted action flick, it would either be hailed as a revelation, or reviled as brainless nonsense. Because it is absolutely both of those things at the same time.
But importantly? It Is Fun. And unlike Transformers, the best iteration of GI Joe to ever grace/disgrace the Big Screen.
Certainly it’s one of those films I’d love to just show a kid, a kid who knows nothing of the legacy it’s part of, and get their thinks on it.
StraightSilver wrote: I also think it's a great allegory for teenage drug use but that might be me overthinking it.
Yeah, I definitely had the same thought really early in the movie.
I also got a bit of commentary on social media and how youth tend to think they are invincible. Playing with incredibly dangerous things like it is a game because "nothing bad will happen to me".
Indeed, I was going to convey the same thought about social media and kids recording while something unnatural and horrifying is happening but I couldn’t break it down with brevity like you did.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 - The Secret of the Ooze
Not quite as cool as it’s illustrious “why is it this good?” predecessor, but still a decent amount of fun.
Not as violent overall, and considerably more cartoonish in feel. But still a perfectly serviceable slice of nostalgic silliness.
Automatically Appended Next Post: The Last Stand
Surprisingly above par, slightly tongue in cheek, Arnie Action Vehicle.
Small Town Sheriff and Deputies have to stop an escaped gang boss escaping south of the border in his souped up sports car.
Rather than a chase movie, this is more about the Sheriff’s preparations.
And honestly? I’d say this is above par. Arnie isn’t pretending to be in the prime of his life, and the gun play isn’t ridiculous. Silly yes, I mean there’s a Vickers in the mix. But not ridiculous.
Decent way to spend a couple of hours on a lazy Saturday evening. Though needless to say if action flicks aren’t your jam, this won’t change that.
Do you like scary movies? Did you like the Game of Thrones episode 3, season 8 “The Long Night” where you couldn’t see gak because it was so dark? How about a good amount of blurry and out of focus shots in addition to the darkness, as well? Well, this is the movie for you!
Spoiler:
Literally the first thing that pops up : “Contains Tobacco Depictions”. 30ish seconds of studio logos, and then the next 1-2 minutes is a small, frightened child being taunted, snuck up on and bloodily killed off screen… Glad that Tobacco warning was there to prepare me for something hard core!
Not an entirely unserviceable movie, but its very, very much by the book and forgettable. Could’ve been decent if it was a bit more of a slow burn with the titular monster stalking its prey. There is a fine line between rushing into things and setting a good pace. ‘Talk to Me” being the most recent example of sucessfully telling a story on that line. This movie jumped right in with jump scares and “whats that in the dark?” moments and never really let up until the Family v. Monster bossfight that felt like it went on for way too long.
Its based off a Stephen King short story so of course there is deus ex machina and a gak ending.
Deserves the 6/10 IMDB rating, but only because the 3 main leads clearly didn’t phone it in. I’d rate it much less if not for them.
I should’ve watched Last Voyage of the Demeter instead, but that’s for tomorrow. I heard mixed things about that, but I feel it’ll be an improvement over this flick.
The ending is almost certainly not from the short story then. There’s no dues Ex machina, although there is a cornball Tales from the Darkside kind of twist. It’s a really short story.
Must be like Lawnmower Man, a very short story transformed into almost a completely different story through adaptation.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: The ending is almost certainly not from the short story then. There’s no dues Ex machina, although there is a cornball Tales from the Darkside kind of twist. It’s a really short story.
Must be like Lawnmower Man, a very short story transformed into almost a completely different story through adaptation.
To be fair, it pretty subtle as far as deus ex machina’s go. I had to confirm it twice on what I was viewing and confirmed it when reading another spoiler review on another website.
The Boogeyman is a legit monster. It can mimic human voices, but not human forms. Movie does end in the therapists office though, with a closet door slightly ajar (the monsters modus operandi to let folks know its watching throughout the film). Is the monster still alive!? tension builds, and then… Therapist interrupts the eldest daughter as she approaches the closet and she closes the door. The end!
Another thing against this movie, they wasted David Dastmalchian (Peter De Vries in new Dune, Polka-Dot Man in Suicide Squad). I don’t think the dude is an A-list, must see actor, but he deserved more. He was a good part in his brief appearance. Conicidentally, he looks to be in The Last Voyage of the Demeter that I may watch tonight, or definitely watch tomorrow.
Stallone is not a very naughty boy. But a very good boy. His job is to be put in pris to figure out how to escape from Pris, to stop Very Naughty Boys escaping from said Pris.
He is very good at his job.
His team help, but really don’t do that much (mostly because as well as being a crap musician, 50 Cent is also a crap actor). But his business partner Vincent D’Onofrio decides to remove him by getting him locked away on a prison based on an oil tanker.
Arnie helps. Everyone escapes. Bad guys go boom. Vinnie Jones gets kicked down a staircase and goes splat.
Enjoyable enough. A film seemingly made from streaming.
Bones
No, not the TV series. The Snoop Dogg sort-of-Vampire-movie.
This? Is actually surprisingly good. Certain tones of The Crow in feel and cinematography. And a movie I discovered on one of those “3 for the price of 2” DVD deals we got in the olden days.
Snoop Dogg is Jimmy Bones, one-time crime lord of his neighbourhood, who kept the peace and looked after his folks.
But he’s betrayed, the neighbourhood becomes horrendous. So he comes back for some supernatural vengeance.
Whilst slated upon release, there is a lot to enjoy about this turn of the millennium horror blaxploitation homage. Indeed, I’m already getting some ideas for a Vampire chronicle from this.
In the words of Dyatlov from HBO’s 2019 Miniseries Chernobyl : “3.6, Not Great, Not terrible.”
Definitely longer then it needed to be. Also a ton of horror movie tropes, but I didn’t mind that as this movie tried to do something different with the Dracula mythos. Some cool scenes and imagery, but had I paid money for this, I’d have been a bit more down on this movie.
I do have serious questions of the plot :
Spoiler:
Dracula brought a snack so he could discretely feed while en route to England. I assume so he doesn’t risk discovery and a potentially fatal interruption in his travel. But even after killing multiple members of the crew, he’s still ravenous. If all those sailors don’t satiate him, how was the carry-on snack (a small woman) that he brought going to hold him over? If his plan was to kill the crew regardless, why bother bringing the snack?
A fix to that : If there were more pieces of cargo (more snacks) brought with him and they were lost/discarded by the ship during the journey or even during dock loading, his near self destructive appetite would’ve made more sense.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Not quite as cool as it’s illustrious “why is it this good?” predecessor, but still a decent amount of fun.
It's awful. It's absolutely awful. For years I remembered it being great until I finally watched it again as an adult and realised just how trash (and how compromised) that film was. And that's before you even get to Vanilla Ice.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Not as violent overall, and considerably more cartoonish in feel. But still a perfectly serviceable slice of nostalgic silliness.
Big thanks to the UK for that. Teenage Mutant "Hero" Turtles and their weird objection to nunchucks.
Stallone is not a very naughty boy. But a very good boy. His job is to be put in pris to figure out how to escape from Pris, to stop Very Naughty Boys escaping from said Pris.
Escale plan was another fun film. Jim Caviziel... however you spell it... as an evil warden!
Dracula brought a snack so he could discretely feed while en route to England. I assume so he doesn’t risk discovery and a potentially fatal interruption in his travel. But even after killing multiple members of the crew, he’s still ravenous. If all those sailors don’t satiate him, how was the carry-on snack (a small woman) that he brought going to hold him over? If his plan was to kill the crew regardless, why bother bringing the snack?
A fix to that : If there were more pieces of cargo (more snacks) brought with him and they were lost/discarded by the ship during the journey or even during dock loading, his near self destructive appetite would’ve made more sense.
Part of the issue IMO, is that they cut the very subtle sub-plot out of that part of the book.
Spoiler:
Which, in the book what little is told of the Demeter is told via the Captain's Log, but a careful reading of the log suggests that a member of the crew, not Dracula, killed everyone and sent Dracula's plan sideways. I think if this subplot had been kept, it might have provided some of the depth the movie needed. It's all just too straight forward. Lacks mystery or terror of the unknown because we all know how the plot is going to end. Even the characters act like they know how the plot is going to end. The plot treats 'everyone dies' like a forgone conclusion so absolute that it never bothers having any member of the cast try to save themselves until the end. Dracula is on there feasting on people for days but it's like those aboard do the absolute bare nothing to protect their own lives.
Dracula shouldn't be a faceless monster. He should be charismatically threatening, made all the more disturbing by the fact that however monstrous he is, he's only the most overt form of evil. Demeter needed its Bishop. The traitor in the ranks who is just as dangerous, if not more dangerous, than the monster.
Dracula shouldn't be a faceless monster. He should be charismatically threatening, made all the more disturbing by the fact that however monstrous he is, he's only the most overt form of evil. Demeter needed its Bishop. The traitor in the ranks who is just as dangerous, if not more dangerous, than the monster.
Spoiler:
I hope you meant Ash (Alien) and not Bishop (Aliens). I agree that would have created more tension and given Dr. Acula more of a reason to be running amok near the end.
Dracula shouldn't be a faceless monster. He should be charismatically threatening, made all the more disturbing by the fact that however monstrous he is, he's only the most overt form of evil. Demeter needed its Bishop. The traitor in the ranks who is just as dangerous, if not more dangerous, than the monster.
Spoiler:
I hope you meant Ash (Alien) and not Bishop (Aliens). I agree that would have created more tension and given Dr. Acula more of a reason to be running amok near the end.
Stallone is not a very naughty boy. But a very good boy. His job is to be put in pris to figure out how to escape from Pris, to stop Very Naughty Boys escaping from said Pris.
He is very good at his job.
His team help, but really don’t do that much (mostly because as well as being a crap musician, 50 Cent is also a crap actor). But his business partner Vincent D’Onofrio decides to remove him by getting him locked away on a prison based on an oil tanker.
Arnie helps. Everyone escapes. Bad guys go boom. Vinnie Jones gets kicked down a staircase and goes splat.
Enjoyable enough. A film seemingly made from streaming.
...
Here's a bit of useless trivia: Me, sitting here in a German-speaking part of the world, was quite interested to see how this would turn out when it was announced. For 40 years, Stallone's and Schwarzenegger's dub voice are the same guy. In the end they just used a different guy to speak Schwarzenegger, but the original voice artist was pretty displeased about it. He would have loved to speak both roles and in a radio interview then claimed that both actors had said they're OK with that.
Easy E wrote: Van Helsing is the G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra of Gothic Horror!
Is this praise for GI Joe TROC or condemnation for Van Helsing? I never saw any of the GI Joe movies.
It is more of a reference to both movies being directed by the same guy, who was supposed to be a new "Wunderkind" for the action genre. However, that never really panned out and he has sunk into obscurity.
However, I have been "watching" the G.I. Joe films a lot lately as they are constantly live streaming on Pluto TV. I put them on in the background when I do other stuff, and I do have a soft spot for both of them. They are not good, but they are entertaining to me.
The special effects were outdated even when the movie came out, and yet they’re still quite enjoyable. Harry Hamlin may not be the greatest actor, but he has far more presence in the role than what’s-his-face from the remake. There are a lot of great actors in supporting roles. And the music perfectly fits the movie.
Watch it! If for no other reason, then at least watch it for the Medusa sequence.
The special effects were outdated even when the movie came out, and yet they’re still quite enjoyable. Harry Hamlin may not be the greatest actor, but he has far more presence in the role than what’s-his-face from the remake. There are a lot of great actors in supporting roles. And the music perfectly fits the movie.
Watch it! If for no other reason, then at least watch it for the Medusa sequence.
...and for Calibos! And Pegasus. You're making a good point about the effects. They were outdated by the time the film rolled around, but I would say that this just helps this film having a timeless quality. The remake (being post-produced to run in dark, dark 3d) you can place EXACTLY at one point in time, forgettable and inconsequential as the thing is.
October is rolling around so I'm starting to watch stuff about spooky films and such. The Gatiss documentaries on horror films, that one Swiss documentary on that haunted house (I don't give a hoot about the paranormal, but this film I very much enjoy, because it's incredibly low-key, and much more about how to film a documentary on a supposedly haunted house rather than getting a youtuber with much make-up and colourful hair in front of the camera, being excited about a speck on a digital film from the US), stuff on Vincent Price's horror work, stuff like that.
This inevitably led to me watching Ed Wood, and that's always good. Oh, I also watched most of Excalibur. That film kinda rocks.
Hulu sci-fi horror flick. Pretty good imo, but might be a bit odd for others. There's nearly no (none really) dialogue in the film. It's all visual context and style, and it's all about the main character (who is really the only character). It's good. I enjoyed it.
A Southern Haunting
I like the premise, but it's pretty meh. The film just hinges too much on the eldest daughter who is far too unlikeable and he relationship with her father who is just a bit too out of focus. Really good premise for a horror film. Nice setting for a period piece.
Our main cast are solid, as one might expect. And at least a first are good replacements for the originals.
But it’s just not The A-Team. The overall DNA is there, but they’re not the heroic four man ass kicking cavalry coming to assist the underdog. They’re…a black ops military team on a top secret mission type stuffs.
Now, take away the monicker and rename it, and you end up with a largely serviceable action movie which with just a bit more editing and tactical reshoots could’ve been a more solid offering.
If we get another attempt? Go the Ghostbusters Route. With the team exonerated, they remain a mercenary outfit, but with new recruits. Think an underground vigilante organisation, founded wrangled and trained by the original heroes. That gives us a solid reason to revisit, and could even spin-off to a new TV series. Like Expendables 3, but ideally Not Gak.
Heck, even draw from Supernatural. Face is the Bobby equivalent, their “man in the chair” BA as the specialist trainer. Murdoch as well I’ll think of something, because that’s a failure of my imagination right here.
Another Harryhausen classic. It’s a bright, colorful movie with a great soundtrack and some of the best monster scenes ever done. The actors are pretty great, too, in a manner very of their time. (If you don’t believe me, check out the Sinbad from And The Eye of the Tiger.)
Our main cast are solid, as one might expect. And at least a first are good replacements for the originals.
But it’s just not The A-Team. The overall DNA is there, but they’re not the heroic four man ass kicking cavalry coming to assist the underdog. They’re…a black ops military team on a top secret mission type stuffs.
Now, take away the monicker and rename it, and you end up with a largely serviceable action movie which with just a bit more editing and tactical reshoots could’ve been a more solid offering.
If we get another attempt? Go the Ghostbusters Route. With the team exonerated, they remain a mercenary outfit, but with new recruits. Think an underground vigilante organisation, founded wrangled and trained by the original heroes. That gives us a solid reason to revisit, and could even spin-off to a new TV series. Like Expendables 3, but ideally Not Gak.
Heck, even draw from Supernatural. Face is the Bobby equivalent, their “man in the chair” BA as the specialist trainer. Murdoch as well I’ll think of something, because that’s a failure of my imagination right here.
Well, at least now I know who in the heck watches Supernatural. Just kiddin; by now I heard that it's got a pretty large and devout fan community. But up to pretty recently I was wondering who watched it.
Anyway, I agree with your assessment of the film. I was highly sceptical, but when I saw the film (well, the first hours or so), I found the casting to be pretty ingenious. The film itself is....yeah, and action film. Not bad, not really good.
greenskin lynn wrote: loved those movies when I was a kid and I'd catch them on cable
Me too. Now I get to share them with my son. We’ve still got the next two and Jason and the Argonauts to look forward to. And I have some of Harryhausen’s other films somewhere in storage if he’s still interested.
Automatically Appended Next Post: The only part of the A-Team I remember, besides the tank shooting down, is the Swahili joke.
Expend4bles…the fourth best film of the franchise by a very, very long way…🙁
Mrs Souleater and I love these movies, but this was very disappointing. Some poor SFX. Plot was very formulaic…okay…we weren’t expecting anything amazing in that regard. There’s nothing we didn’t see coming a mile off, coupled with a complete lack of anything remotely fresh.
It’s very much Statham’s movie. He’s good but his character gets such a big share of the action that the rest of the team feels under used.
Megan Fox just didn’t strike me as good casting for a veteran soldier. She doesn’t look the part, and her character just didn’t feel interesting.
On the other hand, on lean ring that 50 Cent was in this I was non-plussed as I didn’t even know he’d gone into acting. But he did a solid job- I would like to have seen more of his character.
Lastly, even though I went in with my brain set to Willing Disbelief mode, there are events that just…oh god.
Souleater wrote: On the other hand, on lean ring that 50 Cent was in this I was non-plussed as I didn’t even know he’d gone into acting.
If you want some more Fitty, he’s got a minor supporting role in Den of Thieves(2018) which is a decent film, but its really just tries to be Heat with less memorable dialogue. Decent gunfights throughout.
A fun PG-13 alien invasion/thriller. An isolated woman is beset by alien creatures in a town that seems that it would rather she didn't exist. A brisk ninety minutes with almost no dialogue and a great performance by the lead. I don't want to give away to much, not that it is honestly a big spoiler kind of film, but still best to go in fresh. If you like alien abduction type films, or want X-Files from a victims POV, then this is worth a look.
Sigur wrote: Anyway, I agree with your assessment of the film. I was highly sceptical, but when I saw the film (well, the first hours or so), I found the casting to be pretty ingenious. The film itself is....yeah, and action film. Not bad, not really good.
It is odd in that regard. The first hour? It is A-Team. Daring rescue, daring missions, build-a-fix and all.
Then? It seems to forget it’s source, and just becomes a not entirely bland action flick. The cast is game for a laugh, they’re just not given a whole lot to work with.
There is plenty mileage left in the tank of the concept, and I do hope we get another, more reverent attempt in the future.
greenskin lynn wrote: loved those movies when I was a kid and I'd catch them on cable
Me too. Now I get to share them with my son. We’ve still got the next two and Jason and the Argonauts to look forward to. And I have some of Harryhausen’s other films somewhere in storage if he’s still interested.
Automatically Appended Next Post: The only part of the A-Team I remember, besides the tank shooting down, is the Swahili joke.
Just bought three Sinbad films. Gonna have me a Sunday Matinee!
Or: the answer to what movie you get when you take a Spiderman movie, switch out the power set for something resembling Iron Man and give it a tone similar to Ant Man.
If more DC movies were like this I doubt that they'd have reached such a low ebb. Blue Beetle is a likeable film. It's mostly lightweight fun, but manages to incorporate enough likeability into its characters that you care when things get more serious. Susan Sarandon doesn't chew the scenery as the main villain, but definitely gives it a regular lick. The score is an intriguing choice for a movie of this sort, evoking the likes of Tron: Legacy or even Blade Runner, juxtaposed with a soundtrack that leans very heavily into 90s stadium rock, but somehow works.
It's not the prettiest movie you'll see, but it has it's moments. Most of the VFX are decent (and the Beetle flyer frequently surprised me at how such a ludicrous creation looked plausible on screen) although some of the practical costumes do have a whiff of "Power Ranger" from time to time.
Perhaps my biggest criticism is that it's a totally cookie cutter super hero origin film that doesn't even remotely try to do anything original relative to all the films that have gone before it. When it's done as well though, it's easy enough to forgive, and I hope Gunn sees the value in what is on offer here and takes some of it with him as the DCU undergoes it's restructuring.
If TSS is The Boys then BB is an Arrowverse show. It doesn't mean either is bad, but they're so different that any comparison is going to be entirely subjective.
I meant more in tone than overall quality. The Arrowverse skews much younger than The Boys and, especially if you fall outside of the demographic, that's going to skew your opinion of it in turn.
BB is aimed at that same YA market. I still found enough in it to find it entertaining, but trying to make a comparison to something aimed at an older audience is going to vary on the person.
So, the three Harryhausen ones are truly wonderful. Those would be The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, and Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger.
Bold storytelling, ambitious and occasionally impressive stop-motion.
But this? This is awful. The acting is dreadful. The creatures rubber crocodiles and that’s about it. Contemporaneous Doctor Who episodes had better effects and acting.
Clearly no research was done. Given our main cast would all be Muslim? There’s an awful lot of drinking, and the magician turns himself into a pig. Oh and we have random gladiatorial executions, which aren’t something associated with the Ottoman Empire. Like. At all.
Oh my god that is the worst Hydra I’ve ever seen. Behold how it…..just sort of flops about the place. And occasional shuffles a bit, in a completely unconvincing manner.
Avoid this one chaps. It’s too late for me, but you may yet be spared.
I'll never understand the dislike for Ayers' Squad.
The first film you mean? It had several flaws, but the biggest was they forget the squad should virtually all die. Think dirty dozen, not a couple of random people get offed. Indeed you suspect it's a bonus for the government if they do die.
creeping-deth87 wrote: Yeah I'm really hoping Kan is only defending the film to be a troll. It's got some pretty obvious, glaring flaws.
Nope. I genuinely enjoyed it more than I did the Gunn movie.
Gunn's Squad felt like "Guardians of the Galaxy rated R"/"We need something to introduce Peacekeeper for the series I want to do".
Ayers' Squad felt more like what the comics at the time were doing with them, without needing to be a 1:1 translation, and felt a bit more connected to the DCU at large.
The first film you mean? It had several flaws, but the biggest was they forget the squad should virtually all die. Think dirty dozen, not a couple of random people get offed. Indeed you suspect it's a bonus for the government if they do die.
It's worth noting that most of the deaths among the Gunn version are the "first wave" that we get virtually no connection to. There were a lot of big name actors in the first wave, but that's not really the same thing as ganking members of the Squad that we do get to know.
The real value for the government in Task Force X is that they can use them for whatever they want. They're expendable assets, but assets nonetheless.
I'll never understand the dislike for Ayers' Squad.
The first film you mean? It had several flaws, but the biggest was they forget the squad should virtually all die. Think dirty dozen, not a couple of random people get offed. Indeed you suspect it's a bonus for the government if they do die.
Virtually all of them dying isn't actually comic accurate though. In any version of the series. Sure, a couple of super minor/maybe even newly minted characters might be killed over any particular run of the series, but the core members survive.
So there's nothing terribly wrong with the Ayers film concerning thier survival.
Knowing what went on behind the scenes and the sheer amount of studio meddling and reshaping the film I don't think calling it Ayer's Suicide Squad is a fair description. Ayer has talked quite a bit about how this isn't remotely the film he made.
Just googled David Ayer and whilst I recognise the names of his films, I’ve either not seen them, or seen them aaaaages ago. So I can’t and won’t comment on his merits as a Director.
But. I think it is clear Suicide Squad was studio meddling. A flailing attempt to Guardians of the Galaxy. The worst thing is the multiple introductions we get.
Ok, so I went into this completely blind (I had never heard of the movie and didn't realise until after that it was a "thing" on YouTube). My housemate wanted to pick a movie for a change but all she could remember was the film about the "eyeball" so after much random searching we eventually found that it wasn't about an eyeball, or at least not strictly speaking, lol.
So this is an odd one, I would probably not have picked this myself but when I saw it was A24 I thought I was in safe(ish) hands.
This is part animated, part live action and is a "documentary" about a 1 inch tall mollusc called Marcel, who lives in an airbnb......
Marcel and his large family had been living in the airbnb for a while but when the couple staying there had a huge argument the rest of family get accidentally moved from the apartment leaving Marcel and his Grandma, Nana Connie (voiced by Isabella Rossellini) behind. The next guest just so happens to be a documentary film maker who helps Marcel track down his long lost family.
So yes, this does sound absolutely bonkers but weirdly it wasn't. This is such a sweet, endearing film, suitable (pretty much) for all ages but does cover things like loss, death, grief, abandonment in a mature but accessible way.
I have to say I really, really enjoyed this one, despite the premise which had I known beforehand might have put me off. But certainly a good watch if you are into that sort of thing.
Not so much a review, as a commentary on viewing habits.
These two are of course very well regarded action flicks. Ask pretty much anyone, and they’ll be able to tell you that, even if the movies aren’t their personal cup of tea.
Sitting down to watch them with a critical eye and understanding why they’re good is well worth it.
First, you can’t appreciate them as well in isolation, the way you can with a viewing history of their contemporary genre mates.
Yes they do veer into the unlikely, sometimes into the daft. But unlike the Arnie type films? They stop comfortably short of outright ridiculous. Like a man with seemingly infinite ammo standing in the open whilst the baddies form an orderly bullet catching queue.
Our main character is similarly fairly normal as action heroes go. Tough as old boots and ridiculously persistent, yes. But again unlike the Arnie Archetype, he’s not a warrior god, bullet proof and infallible.
So as well as being really well crafted movies, they were a breath of fresh air in a tired and hackneyed genre. You can absolutely pop your action movie cherry on them, but I feel true appreciation requires that historical context.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Die Hard With A Vegeance
You’re probably almost certainly not wondering why I didn’t include this in the first bit. Well, that’s because simply put, I’m just not as familiar with this one. But it’s on my tellybox right now.
And it’s really rather good! It’s increased the scope of the action, but for the most part not the scale, as it takes places across New York City, rather than the single location the first two dealt with.
To help with the plot, we get Samuel L Jackson as an equally reluctant hero who never asked for any of this.
And….it works! There are riddles, chases, treasure hunts, explosions, the odd shoot out, and once again an audacious heist.
In terms of its place in the movie timeline (1995) this was probably the last such heist movie to be made before mobile phones became common place. The baddies have them, but our heroes don’t. Which helps retain the “one against many, no guarantee of backup” feel which the series normally depends on.
You know? I’d say for trying something different, and so successfully? This is the second best one. My current ranking being 1, 3, 2, 4, every other film ever made including cack handed Die Hard clones, your boring relative’s dull holiday movies, Neil Breen movies, then Die Hard 5.
Ok, so I went into this completely blind (I had never heard of the movie and didn't realise until after that it was a "thing" on YouTube). My housemate wanted to pick a movie for a change but all she could remember was the film about the "eyeball" so after much random searching we eventually found that it wasn't about an eyeball, or at least not strictly speaking, lol.
So this is an odd one, I would probably not have picked this myself but when I saw it was A24 I thought I was in safe(ish) hands.
This is part animated, part live action and is a "documentary" about a 1 inch tall mollusc called Marcel, who lives in an airbnb......
Marcel and his large family had been living in the airbnb for a while but when the couple staying there had a huge argument the rest of family get accidentally moved from the apartment leaving Marcel and his Grandma, Nana Connie (voiced by Isabella Rossellini) behind. The next guest just so happens to be a documentary film maker who helps Marcel track down his long lost family.
So yes, this does sound absolutely bonkers but weirdly it wasn't. This is such a sweet, endearing film, suitable (pretty much) for all ages but does cover things like loss, death, grief, abandonment in a mature but accessible way.
I have to say I really, really enjoyed this one, despite the premise which had I known beforehand might have put me off. But certainly a good watch if you are into that sort of thing.
And yes, Marcel really does have shoes on......
I also recommend this movie. It’s charming and funny and hits the feels.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Die Hard is the Godfather of action movies. Not just because it’s a masterpiece, but because it also demonstrates the art of adaptation at its zenith. Die Hard is also based on a somewhat trashy thriller, one even more disposable than The Godfather, but darn if the film makers didn’t figure out exactly what worked, what needed to change, and then mercilessly cut the rest. The only adaptation I can think of that did an even more exemplary job of transforming chaff into diamonds was The Princess Bride.
Also, Die Hard with a Vengeance works so well because it wasn’t written to be a Die Hard.
WTF was this. Someone needed to reign this guy in a bit, this was just a huge music video and Id writ large all over the screen. Terrible, choppy editing, and shaky-cam nonsense. This looked super amateur hour, so I have no idea where this fits in the timeline of "his work".
Not good dude. We all know you can do better, now get some people on your team to say, "No, that's stupid!".
WTF was this. Someone needed to reign this guy in a bit, this was just a huge music video and Id writ large all over the screen. Terrible, choppy editing, and shaky-cam nonsense. This looked super amateur hour, so I have no idea where this fits in the timeline of "his work".
Not good dude. We all know you can do better, now get some people on your team to say, "No, that's stupid!".
Never understood the hype around any of Rob Zombie's movies, myself.
I love horror flicks, and I used to love queuing up "Dragula" twelve times in the juke box at the local bar before paying the bill and leaving, but none of his movies ever hit for me. It was different, for sure, but nothing really ground breaking imo.
31 is definitely an acquired taste, but it’s a taste I’ve acquired.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Dune
The new one. It’s up on Prime for free, and this is my second watch.
Overall, it is probably superior to the first movie version. But, not universally so.
Now as ever, and for clarity, I’ve never read the books, and don’t particularly intend to. So what follows may seem ignorant to some. And that is a fair cop. But it’s genuine and admitted ignorance for whatever that’s worth.
Where the original did it better?
1. Soundtrack. New Dune’s soundtrack is fine, but it’s really quite standard Hollywood.
2. Created a much stronger visual language between Atreides, Harkonnen and Sardukar forces. This was evident in the trailer, where I don’t think anyone knew who was who in the snippets we got. And for me, it’s not much better in the whole of the thing.
3. I know this is a huge departure from the books, but with the Wyrding Module, the original at least gave a pretty convincing reason why The Emperor setup House Atreides. I know enough about the books that it was Leto’s rising popularity that did for him. But this movie just….doesn’t really get that across as well.
4. The Sandworms looked better for me.
5. Dr Yueh’s betrayal is better explained. At least in my opinion.
But the new one is objectively the better film. There can be no honest denial of that. At first I missed the inner monologue whispered stuff, but this instead takes the time to have that sort of stuff spoken out loud. But hey, that’s what happens when you have twenty minutes longer to tell half the story.
Hmm. That sounded like a back handed compliment, which isn’t my intent. Indeed, for a two and half hour movie, it’s not dragging its heels at all. It’s all put to decent use and it moves along at pace, with no particular scene outstaying it’s welcome.
It definitely deals with the mysticism and prophetic visions much better.
In terms of Part Two? I have some concerns that our lead is just a bit too drippy to convince as the leader of a rebellion. But, and yes insert convoluted Sir Mixalot ref sized but, that’s only because I’ve not seen him in such a role.
His name irrationally irritates me, but there’s no denying he’s a talented lad. So I’m perfectly open to him absolutely nailing it.
Never understood the hype around any of Rob Zombie's movies, myself.
I love horror flicks, and I used to love queuing up "Dragula" twelve times in the juke box at the local bar before paying the bill and leaving, but none of his movies ever hit for me. It was different, for sure, but nothing really ground breaking imo.
Well, House of 1000 Corpses was .....entertaining enough and Devil's Rejects was pretty good (mostly due to the characters, which I assume aren't Zombie's strong suit to begin with. Just luck with the cast and keeping the characters around).
These are the two i watched, the rest have a pretty bad reputation I hear.
Now, as for Die Hard. The first one is great and infinitely re-watchable. The second one has Andy Sipovicz, and I'll watch things with angry policeman Andy Sipovicz in them.
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