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 Easy E wrote:
Nice, I want to track that one down.

You won't regret it.

I watched a few films this weekend....

Killing Hasslehoff

A cheap, comedy starring Ken Jeoung and the Hoff. Some sketchy acting, and a few good lines. However, it is nothing to write home about, so I will move on......


Agatha Christie and the Truth of Murder

A fictional account of what Ms. Christie was doing when she disappeared for 11 days.

According to this, she was trying to help solve a murder! This time of a nurse from the Great War who gets clubbed to death on a train. All the potential suspects are gathered together with a fake inheritance, and then it all starts to revealed.



A nice Detective Inspector character is in this as well. Rather blunt, straight forward, and smart fellow.

The Polka King

A Polish Polka musician in Philly starts to sell unauthorized investments. This is a slow burn comedy. The main character is a try hard do-gooder who ends up being a villain.

JB Smoove is a SEC officer that delivers the best line of the movie, which I am paraphrasing.

All they do is complain about taxes being too high, regulations being too odious, and the government being inefficient. Then, one guy steals their money and who do they come crying to? The government.

AVA

Jessica Chastain plays a killer for some nameless organization. She has 40+ kills, each one netting her about $75K. (Aside: That actually sounds somewhat accurate, if a little on the high side!) Anyway, the Company wants to "end her contract". Things escalate from there.

John Malkovich does a good job playing her mentor and handler. Colin Farrel looks terrible in a moustache. There are a lot of side plots and family business to tie-off so we can get to the resolution.

Ends in a cryptic way so you as the audience can interpret it how you like. I prefer to think it is an ode to the cycle of violence, and we now know what Ava really cared about and was willing to sacrifice for. It ended with where it should have.

A Whisker Away

This is a cute little anime film they put up on netflix late last year. It's fine. The premise is that the main girl can turn into a cat and the boy she likes finds her when she is a cat and takes her in thinking she is a stray. prompting an identity crisis after the boy refuses her advances as a human and she begins to consider being a cat forever because at least he loves the stray cat version of her.

It honestly comes together in a pretty OK way but the set up is just awful. The main girl is basically a stalker and any reasonable person would take on a restraining order. Early on its revealed, she became a cat specifically to see him and the fact he took her in was a happy accident. Which then kinda forces a creepy vibe to the entire relationship for a good portion of the movie.

I personally don't think I would recommend it. but if you really are curious, it's not a bad way to spend an hour and forty-five minutes.

Alexander

Oliver Stone's bio-pic of Alexander the Great. This movie is three hours long, and it does a lot of telling and not showing to cover the subject matter at hand by using Anthony Hopkins as a narrator as Ptolemy. Wow, if they tried to film it all..... how long would it be?

I was actually pretty impressed with the film being relatively accurate (Often choosing one version of events over another, but still a version that exists!) with the story line, the props, and the sets. Really top notch work.

It gets to be a bit much and long, and the narration does it no favors; even from Hopkins level acting skill! However, I enjoyed it overall and it got my family to ask me a bit about Ancient History and warfare so that is a plus!

"Titus".

A surrealistic take on Shakespeare's 'titus andronicus", this movie is....surreal.

Using the exact dialog old Willie wrote, but in a world with modern technology like guns, cars, video games, radio, etc.

It is sexist, as was a lot of shakespeare's stuff, as in when tamara begs titus to space her son from a terrible death titus refuses and kills him horribly in accordance with roman custom. When tamara goes after his family in revenge she's the queen of the universe.

There's some racism in it to, as the most evil (And damn proud of it!) person in it is a black man named Aaron, who is pure evil simply for the sake of being evil. His own line was "Let other men dream of good deeds and heaven's grace. Aaron would have his soul black as is his face." While evil just for the sake of being evil and reveling in it characters are usually boring and tiresome, Aaron manages to somehow be interesting in a horrible sort of way.

But it was made faithful to the bard's writing and deserves credit for that, and Anthony Hopkins plays titus as arguably more insane than hannibal lecter.

Based on classic literature well acted and intense, if you like surreal you'll love this.

 Easy E wrote:
Alexander

Oliver Stone's bio-pic of Alexander the Great. This movie is three hours long, and it does a lot of telling and not showing to cover the subject matter at hand by using Anthony Hopkins as a narrator as Ptolemy. Wow, if they tried to film it all..... how long would it be?

I was actually pretty impressed with the film being relatively accurate (Often choosing one version of events over another, but still a version that exists!) with the story line, the props, and the sets. Really top notch work.

It gets to be a bit much and long, and the narration does it no favors; even from Hopkins level acting skill! However, I enjoyed it overall and it got my family to ask me a bit about Ancient History and warfare so that is a plus!

Yeah, I also kinda enjoyed that Alexander film.


Detective Pikachu (2019)

It takes place in a city in which pokémon and people live alongside, much more like spouses than the usual trainer/pokémon dynamic. This way the film cleverly got around some of the problematic moral bits the whole pokémon thing comes with. Anyway, it's about a boy who basically inherits his father's Pikachu BUT can also understand what he's saying rather than just interpreting various variants of "pika pika". Together they have to solve the mystery of the boy's father's mysterious death.

I really like the approach they took to this whole thing. The concept requires viewers to suspend a LOT of disbelief, but these usually are the interesting films. The main achievement here is that they took the material seriously and put thought into making this a film for the fans. There are no painful amounts of exposition, the film doesn't talk down to the viewer. I'm by no means big into pokémon or know many of them beyond the original 150 ones. But what I saw was pretty impressive and at times just seeing these creatures interact with the rest of the world is just neat.

The story is forgettable. It simply lives by the fact that this is actors interacting with pokémon and seeing pokémon behave as they would. That's a lot of fun. Yes, yes, Deadpool makes a lot of jokes. A LOT. Thing is - and I think that's the big thing this guy is capable of - he never gets really annoying and he's able to let emotional scenes run as they should (yup Marvel films, it IS possible to have that).

It's a pure CG film, NOTHING looks real, but that's not a huge problem. The problem is that the film does that thing which every single hollywood film does: First half is alright and works with one or two fresh ideas. Second half it goes for exaxctly the same story, exactly the same hooks, exactly the same tropes as any other such film does. It's painful. The last third or so I Had to just skip through. I detest that "crapping out" point. It always feel like we're taken for idiots who can only deal with one story. I was alright with the new Ghostbusters film, I was mostly okay with Tucker&Dale vs. Evil, I was mostly on board with Detective Pikachu.... up until the point where they fall back into the same old, tired molds, and don't even work those well.

Either way, overall I'd suggest Watch It for the first half, if you like pokémon. At least this film somewhat tries to cater to a specific group of people, at least in the beginning. That's good.

Birds of prey

It's an enjoyable movie that plays up to the strength of Robbie's appealing character. The story is interesting enough and none of the characters feel flat. It ticks along at a satisfying pace and the quirks in editing give it an unusual format that keeps it interesting. It's OK.

But...

There's so much wrong with it. The music is damn annoying. At times it becomes as though the pictures are supporting the music instead of the other way around. They didn't know how to say enough.

There's plenty of action involving vehicles but it never feels fast. Every single sequence involving a car or motorcycle looks staged, looks slow, looks like it's a stuntman. The director doesn't know how to use the camera to reveal enough of the action to make it look frenetic while hiding enough that we don't have a point of reference to realise how mundane it is. Because we see so much we can't help but see it as slow.

The dialogue and stage production at times is arrowverse levels of bad - and I really have contempt for the low quality of that sort of serialised pyjama nonsense. I get the joke of Huntress being that bad, but that's deliberate. It's the stuff that's supposed to be seriously directed that comes over weak. Take the last scene on the pier after the last explosion. All the characters run together to get a group shot with some corny last lines. There's nothing wrong with the concept but the direction is appalling. It's just amateur.

And the action! Why the hell couldn't they employ someone who knew how to compose and cut action? It's terrible. There's a great move that lasts less than 3 seconds. I had to rewatch it because it's the sort of move that captures Quinn's character but is so poorly framed that it's nothing but a let down. She somersaults twice, bounces in the air and belts someone between her legs with a hammer. Written like that it sounds amazing but the lighting is awful, the framing is bad and the sound doesn't do it justice. Rather than being a standout moment there's clumping and bumping background noise and more of that unnecessary music, all very poorly lit. With that sort of fabulous set piece I'd have wanted to see bright colour, great sound effects and a Quinn cackle to show that in the middle of the action she's a fruit loop. Instead it doesn't stand out at all. And that's one of the highlights of the action, the rest is just forgettable.

Another example. Quinn's fighting on top of a roofless car with four men. In between punching and kicking the other three she repeatedly belts the driver's head against the steering wheel making the horn sound. Written down this works, it should be funny. But the camera stays stuck to the side of the car. We see it happening but there's no pay off with the poor sap this was happening to. We should have had some quick cuts breaking up the oh so obvious (and yet again arrowverse lack lustre levels) staged fighting with Dead Pool style slapstick that focuses the camera on the object of the joke.

There's another wonderful Quinn style move where she clobbers someone by throwing a baseball bat at them and it lands back in her hand. This should be great but they balls it up by running it in slow motion. Let me watch it in real time, let me feel the force of the hit and the satisfying catch in one fluid motion. But no, they use bloody stupid slow motion which removes the whole impact of the sequence.

There's a lot to like with this movie but there's also a lot to be frustrated with. So close yet so far away.

 Sigur wrote:

 Easy E wrote:
Alexander

Oliver Stone's bio-pic of Alexander the Great. This movie is three hours long, and it does a lot of telling and not showing to cover the subject matter at hand by using Anthony Hopkins as a narrator as Ptolemy. Wow, if they tried to film it all..... how long would it be?

I was actually pretty impressed with the film being relatively accurate (Often choosing one version of events over another, but still a version that exists!) with the story line, the props, and the sets. Really top notch work.

It gets to be a bit much and long, and the narration does it no favors; even from Hopkins level acting skill! However, I enjoyed it overall and it got my family to ask me a bit about Ancient History and warfare so that is a plus!

Yeah, I also kinda enjoyed that Alexander film.


Detective Pikachu (2019)

It takes place in a city in which pokémon and people live alongside, much more like spouses than the usual trainer/pokémon dynamic. This way the film cleverly got around some of the problematic moral bits the whole pokémon thing comes with.

Um? I'm... not sure how _spouse_ is less problematic morally than trained animal. It honestly seems worse in every possible way. Imagine getting your spouse(s) into underground or even sanctioned fight clubs, as a sidekick to a fire department to be the fire hose, bomb/drug sniffing dogs, and then you get into the super creepy aspects of a theoretical spouse relationship with a questionably intelligent animal and everything implied by that. How is this possibly better?

Birds of Prey

Yeah, it feels like there's no one at WB who can direct an action sequence. The final battle where the bad guys send in the karate mooks is really bad. You have a whole army of dudes with guns outside? So, OK, you want them alive so no guns. But no. Next scene everyone is using the guns. So basically the karate mooks were so the heroes could have a big karate fight.

Very considerate villains!

Just painful.

 Henry wrote:
There's a lot to like with this movie but there's also a lot to be frustrated with. So close yet so far away.

I think you've found the perfect phrase for the DC cinematic universe as whole.

 LordofHats wrote:

 Henry wrote:
There's a lot to like with this movie but there's also a lot to be frustrated with. So close yet so far away.

I think you've found the perfect phrase for the DC cinematic universe as whole.

well, at least the animated stuff is still mostly awesome

True.

I watched the recent Constantine: Sin City. It wasn't the best but it was what you'd expect from the title. A good Constantine film about a man of many vices and subtle virtues, battling demons and such.

Remember Me

A movie with Robert Pattinson, Pierce Brosnan, and famous character actor Chris Cooper. There is also a leading lady who I think was Emilie di Ravin or something? I am less familiar with her.

This is run of the mill, Young Adult fiction as film.... until you get to the ending. The ending is a bit of a gut punch and elevates the rest of the YA level writing and plotting to a much higher level.

There is a certain point where the movie fades out to black that should be the end, but in classic studio fashion they have to spell it all out for you with an "epilogue" of sorts. Bleh.

The confrontation between Pierce and Robert in the board room full of lawyers is very good and the movie goes up from there through the ending. I know Mr. Pattinson gets a lot of "Twilight" flak, but he can really act.

I am Mother

Kept getting Moon deju vu but a decent if predictable post-apoc vault hijinx

The Perfection

An early front runner for forked up movie of the year, totally reinforced my bias against classical music sorts, worth a go but I can see it would be easy to give up on but stick with its twisty turny twisting

Voss wrote:

 Sigur wrote:

 Easy E wrote:
Alexander

Oliver Stone's bio-pic of Alexander the Great. This movie is three hours long, and it does a lot of telling and not showing to cover the subject matter at hand by using Anthony Hopkins as a narrator as Ptolemy. Wow, if they tried to film it all..... how long would it be?

I was actually pretty impressed with the film being relatively accurate (Often choosing one version of events over another, but still a version that exists!) with the story line, the props, and the sets. Really top notch work.

It gets to be a bit much and long, and the narration does it no favors; even from Hopkins level acting skill! However, I enjoyed it overall and it got my family to ask me a bit about Ancient History and warfare so that is a plus!

Yeah, I also kinda enjoyed that Alexander film.


Detective Pikachu (2019)

It takes place in a city in which pokémon and people live alongside, much more like spouses than the usual trainer/pokémon dynamic. This way the film cleverly got around some of the problematic moral bits the whole pokémon thing comes with.

Um? I'm... not sure how _spouse_ is less problematic morally than trained animal. It honestly seems worse in every possible way. Imagine getting your spouse(s) into underground or even sanctioned fight clubs, as a sidekick to a fire department to be the fire hose, bomb/drug sniffing dogs, and then you get into the super creepy aspects of a theoretical spouse relationship with a questionably intelligent animal and everything implied by that. How is this possibly better?

Equality.


I get what you're saying. The way the film depicts this partnership is how they try to get around the master/slave dynamic, without having to sacrifice the kinda superfluous underground fight club scene. It's slightly questionable.



Here's something that is entirely unquestionable: Blade totally rocks. Caught the second half on tv last night and was pretty impressed with the camera and how the action scenes are done. Haven't seen Blade in a while, obviously. If you haven't either - watch it. It's so good. It's the cool Marvel film (along with Punisher:Warzone).

 Sigur wrote:

Voss wrote:

 Sigur wrote:

 Easy E wrote:
Alexander

Oliver Stone's bio-pic of Alexander the Great. This movie is three hours long, and it does a lot of telling and not showing to cover the subject matter at hand by using Anthony Hopkins as a narrator as Ptolemy. Wow, if they tried to film it all..... how long would it be?

I was actually pretty impressed with the film being relatively accurate (Often choosing one version of events over another, but still a version that exists!) with the story line, the props, and the sets. Really top notch work.

It gets to be a bit much and long, and the narration does it no favors; even from Hopkins level acting skill! However, I enjoyed it overall and it got my family to ask me a bit about Ancient History and warfare so that is a plus!

Yeah, I also kinda enjoyed that Alexander film.


Detective Pikachu (2019)

It takes place in a city in which pokémon and people live alongside, much more like spouses than the usual trainer/pokémon dynamic. This way the film cleverly got around some of the problematic moral bits the whole pokémon thing comes with.

Um? I'm... not sure how _spouse_ is less problematic morally than trained animal. It honestly seems worse in every possible way. Imagine getting your spouse(s) into underground or even sanctioned fight clubs, as a sidekick to a fire department to be the fire hose, bomb/drug sniffing dogs, and then you get into the super creepy aspects of a theoretical spouse relationship with a questionably intelligent animal and everything implied by that. How is this possibly better?

Equality.


I get what you're saying. The way the film depicts this partnership is how they try to get around the master/slave dynamic, without having to sacrifice the kinda superfluous underground fight club scene. It's slightly questionable.



Here's something that is entirely unquestionable: Blade totally rocks. Caught the second half on tv last night and was pretty impressed with the camera and how the action scenes are done. Haven't seen Blade in a while, obviously. If you haven't either - watch it. It's so good. It's the cool Marvel film (along with Punisher:Warzone).

The original starship troopers novel actually came pretty close to this issue when discussing 'uplifted' canines used on the battlefield by specially trained handlers that had a relationship with the canine calebs which was described as more intense than human marriage. If a dog's human were killed, the dog was immediately humanly euthanized. If the human's dog was killed the human was immediately placed under heavy sedation and spent months in therapy to recover.

https://starshiptroopers.fandom.com/wiki/K-9_Corps#:~:text=Troopers%20are%20trained%20with%20neodogs,any%20human%20marriage%20or%20relationship.

Oh dude. I tried to watch Alexander just the other day!

I forgot how awful that movie is (I did not enjoy it).

The actors are Greeks with Irish accents. And apparently, they have Irish accents on purpose! The action scenes are awful, bordering on incomprehensible. The movie just kind of pitters away the time on anything and everything when it really would have benefited from making cuts.

I found it sad to, because Stone did seem to do some research in preparation for the film, though some things were probably just unavoidable. I couldn't get through the first 40 minutes and just turned on Gladiator. It ain't accurate but it's a much better movie XD

I could overlook the Irish accents as that allowed them to portray the idea to the audience that the Macedonians were not like Olympia or the Persians at all in a quick, audio way. It would have been better if we could have seen it juxtaposed better against traditional Greek accents in the movie itself.

I also liked that after Ptolemy narrates the whole story to his scribe he says:

"Throw it all out. Just say he died of fever and be done with it."

Man, that really felt accurate to ancient sources to me!

Shadow in the Cloud, that cool-looking (from the trailers) WW2 film set aboard an allied bomber that may be infested with aliens, gremlins or whatever with Chloe Grace Moretz as a spy, pilot and/or other exotic occupation-holding adventurer, costs $20 to stream on amazon and other services. Not enough that the subscriptions are making them bazillions, they gotta sell tickets right in your own living room. But that's a story for another time.

Found it for $1.80 on disk at a local redbox. That was good, I thought, because I didn't wanna roll the dice on $20 for a movie that looked this good in the trailers. Been burned before. And, without too much spoilage, I was burned again.

The film starts out decent enough and keeps it up for about the first 15 minutes. After that, it's like they grabbed a group of middle schoolers and asked them to shout out what scene they would like to string on to the previous scene.

If we paid the full $20 I would have been really pissed. Wife and I were laughing by the time the credits rolled because they apparently gave the middle schoolers sour patch kids by the wheelbarrow full to stoke their shouting of random things for the characters to do next during the final 20 minutes or so. I'm a little disappointed that CGI Luke Skywalker didn't fly in on the batplane since that would have at least made more sense.

WW84 was something I looked forward to in 2020 but never saw it and apparently my life is better for not having seen it. Shadow in the Cloud was my other movie to look forward to. Let my sacrifice shield you from having to watch this plane wreck.

On a positive note, I didn't feel completely robbed when the wife paid the $20 for us to stream News of the World, the Tom Hanks old west film. It had an uplifting story, good pacing and solid acting. If you gotta make Bezos richer by streaming a movie on amazon prime, may as well do so with something like News of the World.

 Easy E wrote:
I could overlook the Irish accents as that allowed them to portray the idea to the audience that the Macedonians were not like Olympia or the Persians at all in a quick, audio way. It would have been better if we could have seen it juxtaposed better against traditional Greek accents in the movie itself.

I've been watching HBO's Rome and noticed they do English accents for the Romans, Irish for the slaves.

Which is certainly a thing which they did.

Great series by they way, easy to draw a line from it to GoT.

 privateer4hire wrote:
Shadow in the Cloud, that cool-looking (from the trailers) WW2 film set aboard an allied bomber that may be infested with aliens, gremlins or whatever with Chloe Grace Moretz as a spy, pilot and/or other exotic occupation-holding adventurer, costs $20 to stream on amazon and other services. Not enough that the subscriptions are making them bazillions, they gotta sell tickets right in your own living room. But that's a story for another time.

Found it for $1.80 on disk at a local redbox. That was good, I thought, because I didn't wanna roll the dice on $20 for a movie that looked this good in the trailers. Been burned before. And, without too much spoilage, I was burned again.

The film starts out decent enough and keeps it up for about the first 15 minutes. After that, it's like they grabbed a group of middle schoolers and asked them to shout out what scene they would like to string on to the previous scene.

If we paid the full $20 I would have been really pissed. Wife and I were laughing by the time the credits rolled because they apparently gave the middle schoolers sour patch kids by the wheelbarrow full to stoke their shouting of random things for the characters to do next during the final 20 minutes or so. I'm a little disappointed that CGI Luke Skywalker didn't fly in on the batplane since that would have at least made more sense.

WW84 was something I looked forward to in 2020 but never saw it and apparently my life is better for not having seen it. Shadow in the Cloud was my other movie to look forward to. Let my sacrifice shield you from having to watch this plane wreck.

On a positive note, I didn't feel completely robbed when the wife paid the $20 for us to stream News of the World, the Tom Hanks old west film. It had an uplifting story, good pacing and solid acting. If you gotta make Bezos richer by streaming a movie on amazon prime, may as well do so with something like News of the World.

I couldn;t believe how bad this movie sounded, then i looked up a full review with spoilers. Oh dear lord it was horrible, i think you were being kind to it.

I thought Shadow in the Cloud was okay. I don't think I was the intended audience though. A WWII horror film about a gremlin on a plane is a cool idea, but I guess they didn't have the budget for that so what the movie really was was a okayish I guess attempt girl power flick with an okay twist that doesn't really fit with the movie's original premise.

I really think the movie would have been better as either a movie about a gremlin or a movie about Chloe Moretz's character. As both it's just something of a groaner.

Girlfirend's Day

A neo-noir/dark comedy about the Greeting Card Industry.

Not as clever as it could be, but it had it's moments.

Phenomena

Dario Argento directs Jennifer Connelly and Donald Pleasance in this 1985 film.

Connelly plays a boarding school pupil that can communicate with insects, so solves a bunch of murders.

Also features at least one Iron Maiden song. And a random cave with a single glazed window. Not even properly installed, just wedged in there. No wonder that poor Lass went through it. I mean, you just don’t expect glazing in a cave, do you?

Sound track includes Iron Maiden and Motörhead so far. I’m happy as a pig in muck!

Map of Tiny Perfect Things

Sort of watched this by mistake as muddled it in my head with Palm Springs, it's heavily young adult and maybe spends too much time hammering home the groundhog day concept leaving character reveals and payoff feels crammed into the last quarter, harmless enough and references the awesome Time Bandits

Bliss

Owen Wilson and huggable hobbit Selma Hayek have a Vanilla Sky misadventure, or maybe take a fup to of drugs and go crazy, or both, interesting but not outstanding

American Gods s3

Was willing to roll with the wheel spinning of s2 due to production issues but s3 is more of the same and without Nancy or Sweeney it's a slog anytime dead wife isn't onscreen

The Monster Squad 1987

It’s pretty cool! Box office bomb on release, but I can’t see why.

Basically teens against Universal Monsters. Monster effects are pretty sweet given its age. And being free on Prime in the U.K. worth watching.

The Monster Squad is a classic. The best “Universal Monsters” movie made in 40 years.

I’d agree. Costumes are particularly solid!

Ice Cream Man 1995

Clive Howard is a mentalist that turns people ice cream because reasons.

Z-. Utter tripe. Avoid like a Tiger on fire that’s trying to pee on you with Covid infected weewee

Ice Cream Man is one of those movies like Trolls 2 or Silent Night Deadly Night 2 or even Cabin Fever, the kind we only know exist because of youtube memes.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Ice Cream Man is one of those movies like Trolls 2 or Silent Night Deadly Night 2 or even Cabin Fever, the kind we only know exist because of youtube memes.

Had to look this one up, than ghawd i missed it...

"Unlawful entry" 1992. A movie about a very bad cop who abuses his power, commits several murders, frames an innocent man and tries to take his wife. Given the attention focused on police abuse and crime in recent years this is a movie for people to watch today.