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I'm finally getting to watch the second season of Occupied! I'm pumped. Loved the first season of that show.

My Little Pony the New Generation

At last! The grim and gritty MLP reboot we've been waiting for! No magic! No friendship! See the rise of the Emperor and his cybernetic legion! Racism! In the grim darkness of MLP there is only war!

Saw it with Kyoto Secunda, it was OK. The music was better in MLP FIM, but the animation was quite good.

Fury

What an excellent film. I’ve no idea if it’s even vaguely historically accurate, but it’s a compelling watch.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Fury

What an excellent film. I’ve no idea if it’s even vaguely historically accurate, but it’s a compelling watch.

On the scale of Hollywood to History, it's still Hollywood but it puts a lot more effort into trying than a lot of films. At the very least, they didn't get costumes wrong and they used authentic vehicles and equipment for most of the film which is probably the thing history nerds would focus on before any errors.

Fury is awesome right up to the final set piece. Then it gets sufficiently stupid to drop me out of the suspension.

 Flinty wrote:
Fury is awesome right up to the final set piece. Then it gets sufficiently stupid to drop me out of the suspension.

I've pointed this out before, but while the ending of the film seems based on a famous anecdote from Tank Traps (a book historians of WWII have raked back and forth as creating more problems than it tries to solve), the scenario presented isn't as unreal as you'd think.

It's fairly analogous to the events that earned Audie Murphy a Medal of Honor, which happened in Italy during the Anzio campaign in 1943. It's fantastical, but not as unrealistic as many seem to think. If anything, Murphy's feat was far more absurd and I'll bet that if I made a movie about it people would be skeptical he really did it.

I just looked up Mr Murphy’s exploits… yikes. There are clear similarities, and I’m aware of other examples of small units or individuals holding up larger forces. However my understanding is that it tends to be attackers thinking there are more powerful forces ahead of them and therefore leading to an overabundance of caution, or stuff like KV1 just being generally invulnerable to most return fire and therefore being able to just dish it out. However, the final bit in Fury shows that the attacking force knows what is there and just attacking in what looks like really stupid waves. I am just a Wargames so I can’t really speak to the accuracy, but the final scenes to me just descended into random explodey Hollywood fare.

There is a definite question of “why didn’t the Germans just sort of walk away?”

The opening bit? Fine and groovy for me. Cut them down like wheat, but surely they’d notice that the tank hadn’t physically moved, so just make good your losses and leave?

Mind you. We also know they were capable of repairing the tank, they just didn’t have the time needed. So I guess one could argue the Germans wouldn’t want a fully mobile tank coming after them once it was repaired?

Still a bloody good scene though. Nicely gets across how nasty tanks can be.

The film itself is a bit weird, because there’s not really a plot as such, and we learn relatively little about the protagonists. It almost feels like a drama based documentary. Yet, for all that, as I said earlier it’s a very compelling watch.

There's something to be said that war is no more immune to the sunk cost fallacy than any other venture.

There are numerous examples of forces committing to a questionable objective far past the point it made any sense to pursue it. In a very short engagement like we see in the movie (it's a couple minutes) it's very easy to think an objective is easily surmountable only for that to become untrue and for anyone in charge to be very slow to realize they're losing more than there is to gain.

Really, the most questionable part of the movie IMO is the encounter with the Tiger. Dramatically its fan-fething-tastic! Logically, it's not clear why the Tiger left a hulled-down position to confront the Shermans except that it was more cinematic. Especially in the late war, this was basically what tank crews were being trained to do because they could barely operate their vehicles. Tanks were increasingly used as armored movable bunkers.

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service

One of the oddest Bond films. It’s rather faithful to the novel, and of course is Lazanby’s sole outing.

But…it’s really pretty cool, and is one of the better Bond films (I’d say easily superior to any Roger Moore ones, excepting A View To A Kill, which is superb, and does dial back the camp somewhat).

The King’s Man

Very enjoyable, if you liked the first two. Decent origin/founding story.

Moana

Watched this last night- definitely a weird one, even for modern Disney princess movies. (Except both her parents are alive and not utterly terrible, which should disqualify her entirely)

I have no idea what the messaging is supposed to be. I mean, she's obviously smart and a great climber (for some reason), but she faces no real challenges in her actual quest (sailing alone across the great ocean) because the Ocean Itself is sapient and is constantly rescuing her (God from the Sea-Machine style) and taking her to exactly where she is supposed to be. So.. yay, achievement?

But in the end she gets to be who she wants to be after... basically one real lesson where she falls asleep. The end.

Also Maui is... an obnoxious, attention seeking manchild, but its not his fault because bad parents, I guess? So a thousand years of darkness and everything dying or whatever is... also not his fault?

A couple of songs were amazing though. Love The Rock's eyebrow at the beginning of "You're Welcome" as well .

Moana's significance is similar to Black Panther's in that it is an ethnic milestone. ASFAIK, this is the first movie by a major studio to focus on Pacific Islanders. I enjoyed it, but I watched it shortly after Coco and Coco was much better as a film.

I watched King Richard when it came out and really liked that movie. Will Smith actually acted for a change.

Here's the thing I know about Moana: It's called Vaiana in Europe, due to a very popular porn lady (who sadly died of something in 1994) in Italy, an ice cream brand of the same name in Romania and so on.

Without tripping over any ehtnic milestones, new or old, here's things I've seen recently:

Camouflage (2001)

Heavily advertised as a Leslie Nielsen film, he actually plays more the sidekick, and Lochlyn Munro plays the protagonist. It's an inexpensive crime/film noir flick, and a comedy. And as we all know, comedy is hard, because if it fails there's nothing to save it really. No ironic levels or anything, as with other genres. This film isn't funny or very interesting at all.

Lochlyn Munro is an enigma to me. He doesn't look like a human being, does he. More like a caricature. I'm sure that's due to US film things, that he's a very pleasant looking and lovely person in real life, but never ever in my life I thought "oh, how nice" when he pops up in a film or a tv shows.

In the film's favour: it's got William Forsythe (as a small-town policeman. Interesting tidbit: Ponytail) and Patrick Warburton. Gotta love Warburton. Sadly I can't go much into the plot and thus babble on about actors, but the plot is pretty thin actually.


Don't Watch.

I also watched the second half of Double Jeopardy. I'm sure I watched that film at least five times before. Can't not like Double Jeopardy, right? It's probably not a very good film, but it works with/ due to Ashley Judd (and to a lesser extent Tommy Lee Jones.


Last but not least I watched the first two episodes of Occupied, season 2. So far, so good. Nerve-splitting stuff, as in season 1, just more heated up. Yes, yes, the few special effects are a bit inexpensive, some backgrounds make certain scenes look like a Command&Conquer video sequence. In general, the whole thing feels a bit Command&Conquer-y to be honest. But that's all beside the point, because this show is 99% about Norwegian people looking at screens and talking to each other. Most of the ladies in that show are absurdly thin, but also well dressed. Jesper Berg is a great character. You never know whether he's a bumbling fool or a thoroughly political animal. But to me the main appeal is just the central premise: A liberal democracy is tested by geopolitics (and due to some contrived reasons left alone by international partners). All these people try to do the right thing in the correct manner in an ever-escalating situation. Whereas Jack Bauer happily runs around, torturing people as he pleases, blowing stuff up, and so on, with Occupied's Hans Martin Djupvik the tiniest transgression of the moral and legislative norms and rules of his job are so much more impactful to the watcher.

Definitely agree that the music is Moana's big redeeming feature. The story, as pointed out, is actually kind of wtf when you look at it :/ But music-wise yeah. You're Welcome in particular is very fun and funny.

I never really complain about music in Disney films (except when they were over-using Phil Collins at his most creepy), even when its not to my taste, its pretty well honed to the audience or the film in question.
Even when some of it (*cough* Descendants *cough*) is absolute gibberish outside the context of the film, because the songs include scene dialogue. Or are scene dialogue. Some are still really good earworms regardless.

I have watched a lot of flicks recently....

Streets of Fire
I know this is a Sigur fave. However, I think the movie just misses the bulls-eye. However, the set design is awesome.

The Truth about Christmas
This is Liar, Liar only without Jim Carrey and with a Christmas theme. Harmless for what it is and it has a few moments.

Competent.

Ghosting: A Christmas Spirit Story
A Gen Z lady meets up with a Gen Z guy, but dies after the date thanks to texting and driving. She returns as a ghost and the gang must figure out how to help her ascend.

Pretty slick little, low budget movie. The rules of being a ghost are all over the place, but the dialogue is cracking and well delivered.

The Man in the Iron Mask (1977)
I was expecting a lot more swash and a lot more buckle. However, it is mostly just intrigue and .... kind of boring.

Shaun the Sheep: The Flight Before Christmas and The Farmer's Llamas
It is Shaun the Sheep so it is amusing and fun enough. It is amazing how much they get across with 0 dialogue. The Farmer's Llamas is a bit questionable though.

White Christmas
Watch it every year, and still awesome.

The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958)

Hans, a young doctor in Carlsbruck, discovers that the enigmatic surgeon Doctor Stein is actually the notorious fugitive Victor Frankenstein. The latter takes the former on as an apprentice and the two transplant the brain of willing volunteer Karl, a deformed but clever man, into a perfect, created body. The operation initially succeeds, but tragically typical human foibles begin to unravel not only Frankenstein’s latest attempt to validate his scientific theories but also the cover story that saved him from the guillotine. I loved this film! It is a direct sequel to the one that started it all, Curse of Frankenstein. Peter Cushing is once again magnetic as Dr Frankenstein and the movie is full of pathos balanced by scientific callousness. Highly recommend.

Santa Baby 2

The villain is really good, but the end of the movie is deeply unsatisfying.

Seeing Paul Sorvino play Santa is also a hoot. I kept expecting him to resolve the issue with some sort of Mob tactic. He did not.

 Easy E wrote:
I have watched a lot of flicks recently....

Streets of Fire
I know this is a Sigur fave. However, I think the movie just misses the bulls-eye. However, the set design is awesome.
...

Aye, I think that this is very accurate. Honestly, the acting isn't too great, one might say that there isn't that much chemistry between the leads (but who cares, they're both young and attractive. Or in the case of Diane Lane: FFOOOAAAARRRR), but I think that some films which just miss the bulls-eye are endearing. Of course the music makes the film as well, especially the first and last songs book-ending the film. RIP Jim Steinman.

Love the set design as well (the whole design of the film really). IIRC they actually put a HUGE tarpaulin over the set to have it look big while also keeping basically the whole film nighttimey looking.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
Marquise (1997)

The story of a dancer-turned-actress in the mid-17th century in France who worked her way up from the streets to Versailles.

...played by Sophie Marceau! She probably is the main reason this film is just so entertaining. That, and the lavish production value. The film opens with some estabishing of the setting, then Marceau gets on the tiny stage on that horrible marketplace and starts dancing. From the moment on, it's just great to watch her act.

The other characters are also entertaining and some are endearing (like her husband). And Louis XIV. is just great.

Okay, I have to admit that I got a thing for the 17th century. In films the court setting in that time is just great because it's so ambivalent, and this film expresses that gloriously. It very much reminded me of the line that goes something like "if nothing is allowed, everything is possible, but if everything is allowed, nothing is possible". Something like that.

Anyway, Watch It. It's funny, it's really well acted, it's got an amazing production value, and it's incredibly accessible, even if you don't know a thing about France during the 1660s. It's much more about an ambitious and clever lady doing her thing, and a bit about stage art. Oh, and the score kinda rocks.

Spider-Man- No Way Home

This leaned into the nostalgia for those who have been long time Spider-Man movie goers. Great to see Doc Ock and Green Gobbo back on the screen. I have not felt that geeked out by a flick since Thor hit Cap's Shield in Avengers.

That said, I am not convinced this is actually a "good" film.

Streets of Fire changed my life. It revolutionized my aesthetic, not just visually but also thematically. When i first saw it, I couldn’t believe I had never heard of it. The idea that the film had bombed seemed insane. The next movie that would have such an impact on me was Life Force.

Streets of Fire never really impressed me but another Walter Hill's movie was really revolutionary to me, both visually and thematically, I'm talking about The Warriors. Still a masterpiece, I hope no one ever gets the insane idea to remake it.

Hot Fuzz
Because sometimes there's nowt better than a bit of movie perfection. But now every time Doris speaks...

"Oh, I dunno. I quite like a little midnight gobble."
"I've been around the station a few times."
"Nothing like a bit of girl on girl!"

There's a future Oscar winner talking that smut.

Encanto

It was... fine? Love your family or everything is ruined forever is a bit heavy handed, but its a lesson, I guess.

There were a lot of Columbian culture notes to the film, but they were bizarrely and pretty much entirely irrelevant. I was basing gnoblars while watching it and had to keep looking up to remind myself that it wasn't just a bunch of Americans chatting, gossiping & having musical numbers in a local suburb.

So... watch it or not. But don't expect a lot. The best bit is when the film takes the time to dig into the heads of the protagonist's sisters. There was some depth and actual psychology in play there, but unfortunately it got cut short by the plot happening.

Voss wrote:
Encanto

It was... fine? Love your family or everything is ruined forever is a bit heavy handed, but its a lesson, I guess.

There were a lot of Columbian culture notes to the film, but they were bizarrely and pretty much entirely irrelevant. I was basing gnoblars while watching it and had to keep looking up to remind myself that it wasn't just a bunch of Americans chatting, gossiping & having musical numbers in a local suburb.

So... watch it or not. But don't expect a lot. The best bit is when the film takes the time to dig into the heads of the protagonist's sisters. There was some depth and actual psychology in play there, but unfortunately it got cut short by the plot happening.

Spoiler:

I was highly amused that in the flashback, the actual first 'miracle' was Abuela Madrigal fireballing the gak out of the vague bandit/soldiers/whatever, and then trapping everyone in the valley by raising mountains in the pass. I mean, what the actual feth. Its easy to miss, but its an entirely different tone, even knowing at the beginning that her husband was murdered.

Also, I'm still not convinced that Mirabel doesn't have a Gift. She's clearly a timebender, as she stops time during her songs, and can simply watch the past as if she's there.

I hated it

Plot was boring, songs didn't catch my attention and after Hamilton (hands down the best show of 2020) I had a lot of expectations from Lin-Manuel Miranda. The movie's message was grim and IMHO completely wrong for a disney movie. But I agree about one thing, songs from the strong and the flower girls' point of view were the highlights of the movie.

 Henry wrote:
Hot Fuzz
Because sometimes there's nowt better than a bit of movie perfection. But now every time Doris speaks...

"Oh, I dunno. I quite like a little midnight gobble."
"I've been around the station a few times."
"Nothing like a bit of girl on girl!"

There's a future Oscar winner talking that smut.

Yeah, clearly my least favourite from the Cornetto trilogy, but I've seen it quite a lot of times by now. It's good.

Hot Fuzz is my favourite of the 3 despite Worlds End being the better movie, then again living in a place only a few notchs up from Sanford might have something to do with that and Welsh Bond can bring the baddy like few others

Really? Hot Fuzz is the only one of the Cornetto Trilogy that I feel doesn’t fall apart in the second half. Shaun of the Dead and The World’s End both start out funny with likeable characters, and then halfway through just stop being funny or enjoyable. I’ve never felt the urge to rewatch Shaun, and I was angry by the end of World’s. Hot Fuzz stuck the landing, making it the only one worth rewatching for me.