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 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
So it’s pretty alright. I enjoyed it, but have no particular reverance for it. Perhaps it’s a “you had to be there” thing.

Can definitely see why it’s so well thought of though.

Yeah, it really speaks more about a particular time and place and outside of that time and place..... well, it doesn't stick as well.

I couldn't tell you the plot of the film. But it is enjoyable. The funny thing about TBL is that it's one of the very few films I enjoy more the more often I watch them. It's not horribly impactful (that's reserved for The Man Who Wasn't There and - for me at least - An Honest Man, simply for the weird, foreboding atmosphere), but it's fun and a modern classic due to the casting and what these actors made of those crazy characters.


I'm sure it's WAY more impactful if you were there though. The early 90s must have been a magical time in the US. Well, in California and New York. If you're a white person with a certain amount of money, but that's a given.

The only comparable thing I can think of for the 2010s depicting life in California is the Netflix show Love. Which really kinda made me think less of Californians. Which I feel bad for, because I don't even know any personally. But these characters and their lives in that show are mostly annoying.

California is a huge state with a lot of people. Someone growing up in the Bay Area Will have a very different experience to someone growing up in OC, which is different from growing up in LA, which is different from growing up in San Diego, which is different from dying slowly in Rialto.

Is that where Realtors come from?

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
California is a huge state with a lot of people. Someone growing up in the Bay Area Will have a very different experience to someone growing up in OC, which is different from growing up in LA, which is different from growing up in San Diego, which is different from dying slowly in Rialto.

Yes, as I was typing I thought I may have to clarify what I meant. Oh well

Last night I watched “The Kid Detective”.

It was very good, don’t let the name put you off, it’s not a saccharine family film about Nancy Drew. It’s a darkly comic modern film noir. It’s similar to Brick by Rian Johnson.

Adam Brody plays Abe, a former child detective who now in his thirties is haunted by failing to solve a missing person case when he was 12 and is a washed up disappointment barely making ends meet as a Private Investigator taking cases like find the missing cat and if somebody is gay, when he gets asked to investigate a murder…

It’s very well done, Adam Brody is great and the supporting cast are spot on too. I’d highly recommend it, it’s a little slow at the start, but is one of the better detective films in a long time. Shame about the name though, I almost didn’t bother based on the title, expecting something quite different. I’ll re-iterate though it is pretty dark, definitely not suitable for children.

Watching my way through the Puppet Master movies.

They’re B-Movies through and through, very much silly rather than scary. Probably worth a watch if that sounds your bag.

Political BS removed

Both Topgun movies.

The first is one of the most iconic movies of the 1980s but an awful film in most respects. Saying that there was room for improvement is an understatement, and no amount of fancy F-14 footage nor catchy music videos are going to make up for it...

...although it did inspire Afterburner and Hot Shots!. So we shall let it off the hook...

Topgun: Maverick is basically this generation's top gun and thankfully its not only a far better film in every respect, but possibly the best film about planes ever. My only regret is not having watched it in 4DX or at least IMAX. I was so happy with Topgun: Maverick I played F-29 Retaliator for the rest of the day.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Watching my way through the Puppet Master movies.

They’re B-Movies through and through, very much silly rather than scary. Probably worth a watch if that sounds your bag.

That is one weird and weirdly long film series, isn't it? With some very recent additions even. There's something about the guy who made the puppets having been killed by nazis during ww2, right?

It goes all over the shop! Got Puppet Master 5 and onwards to enjoy. But that’s a job for the Jubilee Weekend!

Becky

Paul Blart breaks bad, and leads a gang of neo Nazis in what in many ways is a film that has strong echoes of Die Hard and Rambo, only with the least likely protagonist of all time in the shape of Becky, a 13 year old schoolgirl.

I'd been interested in seeing this for a while, if only to see if Kevin James, an actor I'd only ever seen do comedy, and light comedy at that, managed to make a successful transition into not only a dramatic role, but a role that leans really hard against type.

Does he pull it off? Mostly. I didn't find his tattooed, ultra violent gang leader all that intimidating if I'm honest, but I did at least find him credible and never felt like he was about to crack a joke to relieve moments of tension.

James' performance aside, the success of this movie all revolves around how willing the viewer is to entertain the plausibility of a young girl taking on an, admittedly small, armed group of adult men. Lulu Wilson as Becky does a respectable job of acting a role I'd find it highly unlikely she was able to bring any real life experience to, and mostly successfully conveys the fear and anger necessary to give the film even a chance of working.

This is a small scale film, with a cast and range of locations so sparse it could probably be easily adapted to the stage, and by keeping the running time short the pace is kept high. There's little exposition (they never waste time explaining why the maguffin the bad guys are after is important or what it does, for instance, they just let you know it's something they are prepared to kill for) and therefore little time to get bored.

Effects are mostly physical, and generally pretty well done, and in fact everything speaks to a film that has done much with a relatively small budget.

It's not an amazing movie, the basic premise just doesn't stand up to close scrutiny, but what it does with what it has is worthy of note. While "it could be worse" may sound like damning with faint praise, in this case, it means a perfectly watchable and entertaining movie had been crafted from something that by rights should have been a howling disaster.

Jaws and the imaginatively named Jaws 2 down.

Both enjoyable movies. Both pretty stand up in the modern day.

Now it’s time to lower my normally laughable standards with a bit of Jaws 3

This is the one I saw the most as a kid. I’m not sure why, maybe Ena had it on VHS? Though why she then showed it to 4 and 5 year olds I’ll never know!

Whether or not you decide to watch Jaws 4, you deserve to watch Richard Geni’s Jaws 4 routine.

Ah yes, Jaws 4, in which Michael Caine realises his dream of a new conservatory.

Definitely seen it a few times, including one bizarre instance on terrestrial TV where I swear is had a massive jump in the ending.

That is definitely on the cards too!

Jaws The Revenge.

Fabulous movie where the shark roars, explodes upon being impaled, and Mario Van Peebles miraculously survives being eat alive...

Significant change of gear in Grotsnik Grotto.

Bothering Netflix for a bunch of Studio Ghibelline movies. As you may have read before in my posts, I’ve never really got on with anime in the past, but I do like sporadic attempts to challenge that status quo.

Kicking off with My Neighbour Totoro. So far, so good.

Spirited away is awesome and Princess Mononoke is actually epic. Kikis delivery service is also suitably lovely.

Good choice there Doc, I'd recommend Porco Russo, Spirited Away and Monoke rightly get hailed as the big hitters but there's something about Porco that wibbles me grey matter

Quite enjoyed MNT, now most of the way through Howl’s Moving Castle.

I’ve seen Mononoke before, but maybe 20 or so years ago?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
And now, Akira

The first anime/manga I ever saw (well, first one not made for western audiences). But I’ve not seen it for at least 30 years.

It's not one of the better known ones, but I was always fond of The Cat Returns.
It's a simple, little adventure story, plus, if you watch it dubbed, you get Tim Curry as a sleazy Cat King.

You know you're in for a treat when a Tim Curry dub is only the 2nd best bit of voice work in a film

 aku-chan wrote:
It's not one of the better known ones, but I was always fond of The Cat Returns.
It's a simple, little adventure story, plus, if you watch it dubbed, you get Tim Curry as a sleazy Cat King.

I think I spotted that on Netflix. Might be one I need to build up to over this experiment!

Just finishing off Jaws 3

You know…whilst the execution is poor (especially the shark and SFX), it’s a shame because there are the makings of a decent story here. The central premise is certainly interesting, and at least an attempt to change up the story. And I always award points for trying.

But, when your great big killer shark looks naff and singularly unconvincing? You just can’t come back from that. Had they not insisted on 3D and it’s limitations, perhaps we’d have a more favourable outcome.

Also, maybe don’t have a Great White somehow battering a metal gate with its tail so hard it bends the metal (which I presume to be a steel bolt?). And especially don’t have it reverse out of its hidey hole.

Dashcam

Rarely has approximately an hour and a quarter felt as long as it did while watching Dashcam.

As a horror fan who has many personal favourites in the found footage sub-genre, it's really disappointing when something this low quality comes along, and actually diminishes those films by doing such a poor job of disguising the limitations of the format that it highlights flaws in better films.

Let's start with Annie, the main character. She's hideous. Clearly something is being said by putting a character with this many traits and beliefs that will rub many people up the wrong way, but for the life of me I can't say what. Ultimately all it does is make it hard to care about her, and therefore hard to care about the movie. There's an attempt to try and suggest she's ok underneath it all really and all the pro-crystals, anti-vax, MAGA, conspiracy nut stuff is just some sort of affectation. But then, on a couple of occasions when the chips are really down she's just obnoxious, so that idea is undermined.

Once the novelty of an unlikeable protagonist is removed from the equation though, much of what's left is a sub standard Blair Witch wannabe that seems to unerringly pursue the lowest common denominator in terms of any sort of scares, and it says a lot that the only moment of the whole film that startled me even slightly was the delayed and unexpected deployment of an airbag.

Ultimately, all other criticism aside, the film lacks the courage to hold anything back, and by simply showing the audience pretty much everything, commits the irredeemable sin of horror, it's boring and predictable. That it does so in a found footage format which is tailor made for keeping the audience in the dark, figuratively speaking, only exacerbates the issue.

Chip and Dale

I really did not expect the not 1 but 2 references/screen time given to the famous male dancers of said name!

Very meta, and fun enough; but when you look beyond the plot is rather pedestrian.

Fun enough for a rental and my family did some actual LOLing.

Jaws 4 - This Time Michael Caine Needs A New House

Oh lawdy. Has to be seen to be believed. Lacking in tension, competence and plot.

About the only reason to watch it is to find out which of two endings your vision has. They’re both crap like.


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Skinner

Horror movie starring Ted Raimi (always good value), Riki Lake (who I think is about it to snuff it?)

Apparently also starring Traci Lords, so all the parts in position for this to be utterly awful in a fun way.

First fun fact? The serial killer is called Dennis Skinner- who skins people. Not to be confused with veteran Member of Parliament Dennis Skinner, an older gent so know for not giving a fig he’s called The Beast of Bolsover.

When Traci Lords isn’t your movie’s stunt casting, lookout.

Oh my word it’s a weird film.

Not as completely bloody awful as I expected….but a bit suspect.

Example? Dennis makes a skin suit from a black fellow. Which naturally leads to him living the character as a very racist caricature. Like, Black & White Minstrel, Al Jolson racist.

Granted the film is from 1993, but it made for awkward viewing. Within it is a pretty interesting movie, with glimmers of real promise. However, having been made by then well established director Ivan Nagy, I must judge it quite strongly as a poor effort because of those glimmers of promise.

Had this been an amateur made affair, or perhaps someone’s directorial debut I’d be more forgiving. Whilst the cast give it their all, it never rises above low tier B-Movie. Points most definitely deducted for the “blacked up” scenes, which for me tip over from poor taste for the sake poor taste to outright offensive.

The Asphyx

One that in my now 42 years of life (get off my lawn, damn kids!) remains a relatively new discovery to me.

I’m not going to say much about this, other than it’s a film I greatly enjoy and have watched more than a few times.

It’s kind of Hammeresque, but isn’t a Hammer film so far as I know.

It’s well made, well acted and pretty bloody compelling. Pretty much everything about it demands your attention and appreciation.

It’s also free on Amazon Prime in the U.K.

Even if it’s not free in your area, it’s well worth paying for. Though when I said it demands your attention? I meant it. One for a settled evening indoors.

Trust me on this.

Legend

I just finished rewatching this on Netflix.

There's a lot of things I like about this movie and a few things I don't.

Personally, I dislike the way it makes out the Krays as noble entrepreneurs and romanticises them and all that cockney east end crap really grinds me up

It also doesn't really follow real life with a fair few things missing or made up.

It's still a good film and I like Tom Hardy in it and the way he plays both of the brothers. He does a pretty good job of playing a nutcase.

Fun fact: my granny was a jazz singer and met the Krays when they made a few attempts at muscling into Newcastle in the 60s.