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Oh, I appreciate it’s place in history and the achievement it represents. That’s why we watched it. But as a piece of entertainment I wasn’t able to get over the pace of it.

It’s why we decided just to youtube the best parts* of Dumbo instead of watching that whole movie.


*The crow song and Pink Elephants on Parade.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Snow White

The original animated version.

It was very slow. Even the dated stuff wasn’t rousing enough to get me to pay full attention. I forget which millennial reviewer I’m paraphrasing but: this was dynamite entertainment back when your only other option was watching your mule die. There were some interesting bits in terms of animation, but they were all overshadowed by Fantasia.

The best part of Snow White is, as is common in Disney films, the villain. She's just living her best life and loving it.



Just look at this, she's having the time of her life.

Snow White has always held up fairly well for me, in no small part because of how short it is. It's simple, but there's not really much in the way of wasted time beyond the opening credits.

Heart Eyes (2024)

Slasher comedy. Turn off your brain, enjoy the inane dialogue and a decent helping of blood and guts.

A serial killer has been terrorizing communities for a few years, only killing couples and folks who get in the way of killing couples on Valentines Day. This time the killer sets their sights on a “we’re totally not a couple” couple. Hijinx and kills ensue.

Never really takes itself seriously, and that’s fine.

MST3K

Tried watching some of these, and I find it very frustrating.

Whilst the format of the show isn’t one for me (I’m quite capable of making my own snide comments, thank you), I’m not entirely sure my grump is against the show, or its makers.

Rather, it stems from the fact that for certain movies they review? MST3K is the only way to see them, as they’ve not had a separate home media release. And so I can’t watch it shorn of scripted comedy and by extension, another person’s opinion.

And I don’t think it’s the programme maker’s duty to provide that to me. That falls solely with the rights holder. After all, it’s one thing to pay for the rights for MST3K episodes, and quite another to pay for distribution rights, and the underlying expense of getting it out on physical or digital media.

Finally got around to Tom Cruise's Oblivion.

Not nearly as bad as I was lead to believe. Reminded me of 1970's sci-fi (pre-Alien).

Enjoyed the fact that the movie was daytime bright. So many modern films like to film in the black, that I need NVGs to figure out what the heck is going on.

Movie was worth watching. 3rd act plot twist is drawn out a little too much, and our military buddy Major Exposition rolls in near the end and isn't in a hurry to leave.

All in all, fun to watch, but I'll probably forget most of it by tomorrow evening.

Agree with all of that, but by god the score is epic! I could listen to the M83 stuff absolutely all week. I really like Oblivion.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
MST3K

Often times, being on MST3k helps a film get wider distribution sans the Bots.

 Easy E wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
MST3K

Often times, being on MST3k helps a film get wider distribution sans the Bots.

I would never have seen Space Mutiny or "Manos," The Hands of Fate without the MST3K TV show....

(Yes, you can buy them sans MST3K, but I cannot imagine watching them without assistance.

Now, MST3K: The Movie, is a different beast all together. Since This Island Earth has been in circulation forever.

Edit: Rifftrax and Cinematic Titanic have continued the traditions of MST3K. I highly recommend taking in a live performance if you can.

I saw MST3K live once, and it was amazing.

Even with the crew of the SOL it still took multiple attempts to sit all the way through Manos: The Hands of Fate.

Same, we did a showing when we lived in Minnesota at a dine in theatre for the OG Haunting or House on Haunted Hill (not sure which) and it was glorious.

It definitely has its place. Not everyone has my knack for finding, let alone just sitting and watching absolute crap. Fewer still find something to enjoy, even if it is the abject crapness.

I just wish all of the fare it presents could be found elsewhere, without someone else’s opinion all over it first.

Again, not a problem I have with the show itself. Just a general disappointment.

 Easy E wrote:
I saw MST3K live once, and it was amazing.

MST3k is not a thing here in Austria or any German-speaking areas. You can't really translate it.

HOWEVER, a German comedian named Oliver Kalkofe, who is very much involved in genre and B-film stuff ( he used to run a slightly mst3k-like thing on German tv in the 2010s), helped making a dubbed version of the film, and by chance I caught it on late night tv some 15-20 years ago. I was mesmerized by the concept and very vividly remember thinking that this was either the most stupid thing in the world of the best thing in the world.

In the following 1-2 years i watched every single episode on youtube (including watching several episodes a LOT of times). I love mst3k. It's right up my alley.


Granted, I never watched it with others and when I did, others didn't find it that great. No idea why. But I found the mix of the films, the puppets ("everything's better with puppets!"), the silly skits (which I even got into eventually, so much so that I still just look up some of the songs every now and then), the references (maaaaaaaaany of which I didn't even get due to cultural context, but I like that sort of stuff. I like not getting a joke, because it allows to look it up and learn new, useless stuff.). I love quoting mst3k and the films, even though nobody around me of course doesn't care. Forever cementing my status as sad, lonely neeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrddddd.

Anyway, to me MST3k is a central part of later media socialization.


Yes, the films are cut, in some cases unfairly so (I hear Squirm is a pretty solid, even splattery film, Mitchell was treated a bit unfairly [I prefer Final Justice anyway. "Goosio!"], and so on.), but it was to be aired in bascially daytime US tv. Anyway. MST3k is fun. I'm a big fan.

Some of my favourite episodes, if anyone's interested:
.) Girls Town (I think that was the first regular episode I ever watched, after Bride of the Monster)
.) Final Sacrifice
.) Space Mutiny
.) The Undead (this may be the one I watched the most? Not sure why, it's just so weird and like a stageplay)
.) Kitten With a Whip
.) Soultaker
.) all the others.


Favourite christmas episode:
.) Santa Claus


I have yet to watch any of the new seasons I have to admit. Never had them available, even though the things were on Netflix in the US, they were not on Netflix 'round here.

For me, and I’m really trying not to sound like a dick?

I don’t need someone else’s commentary to explain a movie to me.

Not in a “I’ve ever such a big brain” way. Just..I want the chance to form my own opinion of the film or tv show.

If I don’t enjoy it, I’ll go off down my weird little path of trying to understand why I didn’t enjoy it. And the same if I did enjoy something held in low regard.

MST3K doesn’t give me that chance.

And that’s absolutely fine. I’ve often and will again poke fun at those who continue to watch media they clearly don’t enjoy, and I try not to do the same myself - though it can take a while for me to realise I no longer enjoy a thing I once did.

But, I absolutely can see the appeal of MST3K. I enjoy Beavis & Butthead and their commentary on other shows and music videos.

Just when it comes to ropey B-Movies, I just prefer to see it as it comes. No commentary needed.

That's absolutely understandable. I made some friends watch the rifftrax version of Twilight, and one of them said the same thing.

You can watch the movie without the MST3k treatment and then watch its MST3k for the jokes. You don’t have to see it as MST3k telling you how you should feel about the movie.

I have witnessed every battle, every betrayal, every explosion of metal and heart that Michael Bay’s vision hurled across the silver screen. I have endured the chaos, the spectacle, the strange and savage poetry of war waged in chrome and fire. And now, I stand at the end of it all—not unscathed, but unbowed.

To those who fell along the way—heroes, villains, characters abandoned and arcs left unresolved—I remember you. Your sacrifice was not in vain. You gave everything, so the story could charge forward, gears grinding, engines roaring.

There will be those who mock what we watched, who ask why we bore witness to five films of thunder and excess. But we know the truth: it wasn’t about perfection. It was about courage. It was about watching a semi-truck become a knight and still somehow deliver a speech that made us believe in something greater.

This message is for those who stayed. Those who saw it through. You were not alone. We were forged in fire, tempered by CGI, and baptized in Linkin Park. And though the credits have long since rolled, we remain. Together. Unbroken.

I am one of you. And I send this message: We watched... so others wouldn’t have to. We have watched all the Michael Bay Transformers films in order.

Till all are one.

 Easy E wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
MST3K

Often times, being on MST3k helps a film get wider distribution sans the Bots.

It's like the RLM effect, where fun films they cover on Best of the Worst sell out wherever they are available to buy shortly after.

[quote=Lathe Biosas 767846 11747323 85b5e9d410e5aae9dd82096723c8c96b.jpg...
I am one of you. And I send this message: We watched... so others wouldn’t have to. We have watched all the Michael Bay Transformers films in order.
...

Fun Fact: Where I grew up was where MST3K was founded. I use to watch it on UHF Channel 23. They use to do a MST3K marathon on New Year's Eve that culminated in the annual watermelon drop off the top of the station.

That was back when glorious UHF channels still existed and the scourge of Cable TV had not destroyed everything, only to be itself decimated by the streaming; which has become worse than the horror days of Cable TV.

Then, one-day from this entertainment wasteland a warrior rose....... or something.


Hotel Artemis

This is a pretty stacked cast for essentially a Neo-Noir character study set in a Cyberpunk Dystopia.

The film centers around an exclusive "Hotel/Medical Clinic" for dues paying criminals. During the night of a huge riot we follow the story of the several criminals staying there and the staff.

This is a good film, that can't quite hold itself together the whole way. An ambitious near-miss, but I would watch this over a lot of stuff any day of the week.

The Wave

This is a reality-bending film about a not-so-well-off insurance lawyer who spends his days doing banal evil who tries to break from his stifling life and is rewarded with a psychedelic morality tale.

I don't think this is doing anything as ground-breaking as it thinks it is doing. However, it is a another audacious near-miss. It can't quite make it over the finish line. However, like Hotel Artemis I would rather watch this near miss than a lot of other derivative stuff out there at the moment.

Here’s a list of films that forever seemed to be on the telly when I was a nipper, and I should probably look up again.

Smokey and the Bandit (plus sequels)
Convoy
Cannonball Run
Every Which Way But Loose (and sequel)
Crocodile Dundee (and sequel)

I’m sure I’ll think of others, but that’s a list to start with.

 Easy E wrote:
Fun Fact: Where I grew up was where MST3K was founded. I use to watch it on UHF Channel 23. They use to do a MST3K marathon on New Year's Eve that culminated in the annual watermelon drop off the top of the station.

That was back when glorious UHF channels still existed and the scourge of Cable TV had not destroyed everything, only to be itself decimated by the streaming; which has become worse than the horror days of Cable TV.
...

Damn straight. So you grew up in Minnesota(?)? That's where MST3k used to be from, right?



@MDG: Funny, I watched Convoy for the first time just a few years ago, and it was ....alright. Then I watched the first two Smokey and the Bandit films for the first time since I was tiny (but I remember well driving my tricycle around the living room in a circle, pretending it was Reynold's car after seeing bits of that film for the first time. One of my earliest memories. Around that time I also watched the first episode of MacGyver and at age ...I don't know, 4, 5 at best, I was convinced that this was the most badass thing ever. Anyway, Smokey and the Bandit is fun. Ilike the interplay between Reynolds and Sally Field. And it's just SUCH a thing that wouldn't be made today. Everything about it is from another time. Very interesting.

Gladiator II

Now with 100% more roast human.

It's basically the first movie with more monkeys, more emperors and more family melodrama, that undoes everything the first movie did only to do it all over again but with a worse story and a worse protagonist.

Why does the general have to do everything himself? What exactly did the protagonist do to secure the loyalty and adoration of his fellow gladiators? Why do people keep conspiring in their own domicile when they know full well their employees are filthy snitches? We may never know.

What a weirdly pointless movie that would have been better off detaching itself from the first movie's story.

 Geifer wrote:
...

It's basically the first movie with more monkeys,....

The uninspired Hollywood sequel in a nutshell.

 Sigur wrote:

 Geifer wrote:
...

It's basically the first movie with more monkeys,....

The uninspired Hollywood sequel in a nutshell.

On the plus side, Hollywood has learned its lesson and... who am I kidding? Ridley Scott will probably make another unnecessary sequel to another beloved movie by the end of the decade.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:

 Sigur wrote:

 Geifer wrote:
...

It's basically the first movie with more monkeys,....

The uninspired Hollywood sequel in a nutshell.

On the plus side, Hollywood has learned its lesson and... who am I kidding? Ridley Scott will probably make another unnecessary sequel to another beloved movie by the end of the decade.

Look for 2Kingdom2Heavenly, when Balian's daughter becomes a knight, and saves Jerusalem from the Muslims- compassionately.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
And I send this message: We watched... so others wouldn’t have to. We have watched all the Michael Bay Transformers films in order.

Till all are one.

Good God. Are you alright after that?

See how he’s a bit of an odd’un?*

This is why. In moderation, Baysplosions and SUPERAWESOMEUPCLOSEBLUROVISION fights merely make one daft enough to enjoy that movie until it ends. Normality reasserts during the end credits.

But. To do this? It bends the mind and turns parts of it to Tod permanently. And does so through all points of time.

Rumour has it Terrance Howard is the way he is after a frankly near suicidal decision to do a 24 hour Bay Marathon.

*Not in a bad way. Indeed, Dakka could be said to be an asylum for odd’uns. We’re pretty much harmless.

Felidae

A gritty crime drama about cats.


Felidae feels like the next logical movie to see after Watership Down. There’s gore and death and sex and a surprising amount of talk about balls or lack thereof. It’s pretty hard hitting, especially the fantastic nightmare sequences.
Thanks for the recommendation!


We saw the German dub with English subtitles on YouTube.