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Merry Little Batman

OK I’ll admit this is gonna be a hard sell for me. I’m very oddly picky about animation, and can be entirely turned off by character design.

And this looks to be in the vein of Thundercats Ho which sucked.

But hey, it’s a freebie on Prime, so the only thing I have to lose is time. And if you’ve read my previous TV and movie related wibbling? I’m more than willing to spend/waste watching utter dreck.

And as ever, I am entirely open to this actually being good.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Yeah OK. An hour in and I’m absolutely loving this. To the point was I unfortunate enough to have had kids, I’d make this a Chrimbo staple.

But as I don’t? It’s still gonna be a Chrimbo staple.

Godzilla Minus One.

O. M. G. what a movie. Now, it's not so much a Kaiju movie as it is a human movie, and an excellent anti-war piece. Like, if you somehow miss those tones in the movie, are you even watching it?

And, I don't mean they have actors with signs saying "down with war" or anything so in your face as that. The basic thematic elements in play, the scenes and acting, the story all convey what the creators are wanting.

I can't say I left the theater wanting to go straight back in and watch it again. . . but it's definitely gonna get purchased as soon as its available on other media

The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec (2010)

Luc Besson-directed action-adventure comedy film starring Louise Bourgoin as the titular character, sat in 1912.

It's a rare thing, this film. A family-friendly adventure film with loads of comedy. And it doesn't even suck. In fact it's incredibly charming. Quite over the top (based on a comicbook), featuring a ton of cartoonish side characters and a really strong and endearing lead. Yes, the film is too long and it's sort of meandering, but it's alright because there's not a ton of exhausting action to look at all the time and it's a really good looking film in any sense. That Luc Besson knows how to shoot a film. It can get quite silly, but it's entertaining to watch the heroine trying to get stuff done.

Watch It. Perfect Sunday afternoon film for all the family, although it is long.

The Archies (2023)

You have not experienced the Archies until you have seen them in the original Klingon. Or Hindi. Whichever.

So the classic Archie characters are transplanted to the Indian Hill Station founded by Sir John Riverdale and other than ~half the movie being in Hindi it could totally be a 60s Hollywood musical.

I loved it, the kids loved it, we all loved it, it's good clean fun.

Leave the world behind (Netflix 2023)

I got talked into watching this by my housemate and was pleasantly surprised (although it's a tad over-long and could have lost about 30 minutes).

Couple with 2 kids decide last minute to book a getaway out of the city and rent a house near the beach. Whilst staying at the house external factors mean the house's owners (or are they...?) turn up late at night with a request to spend the night as their own travel arrangements have been affected.

What ensues is a tense encounter with neither family trusting the other, all the while something is going on outside that nobody understands.....

The external factors, although resolved to a fair conclusion, are not the main part of the story here, It's about how the best and worst elements of humanity show up in a crisis and how distrustful we are as human beings and how reliant we are on our electronic devices.

I went into this with low expectations but it actually kept me engaged, the drip feed of what's going on "outside" was well done and there are some great performances and some great camera work. There's one bit I thought daft but overall this exceeded my expectations (which admittedly were low to begin with). Definitely worth a watch if you have a couple of hours spare.

Nightmare Alley

Del Torro does a film noir. I think, but am not 100% sure; that this is a remake of something made a long, long time ago. No idea how it matchs up.

A man with a checkered past runs away and joins the circus. There he learns some skills at Mentalism. This leads to film noir shenanigans as he is soon in way over his head, but is too stubborn to know it.

Cate Blanchette absolutely kills in this one. Bradley Cooper puts on an acting show too. There are a lot of "That-Person" moments in it. However, the story is a bit too drawn out, predictable, and slow moving.


Danger Close
The Australian We Were Soldiers, as it recounts the battle of Long Tan. A pretty typical war movie, with a lot of bad things happening.

Galaxy Quest

Like the Orville. But actually, y’know, fairly original.

The cast are great. The effects still hold up 24 years later, and it’s a really solid story. Not just as a comedy, but it’s sci-fi trope elements too.

If you’ve not seen it? Get it watched.

If you have seen it? Get it watched again.

 Easy E wrote:
...
Danger Close
The Australian We Were Soldiers, as it recounts the battle of Long Tan. A pretty typical war movie, with a lot of bad things happening.

I hope to see that some day. For a good while now I've been meaning to do New Zealanders in 15mm for Vietnam.

Cocaine Bear

I came in about halfway through, and that felt just about right. Some fun carnage. Some enjoyably silly character acting. A bit of heart. A decent B movie.


Violent Night

Die Hard with Santa. The film manages to fit in a lot of nods or homages to other Christmas classics and a few heartwarming moments in the midst of all the messily creative violence.

A new Christmas classic.

A Muppet Christmas Carol

We started this as a palate cleanser after the splatter fest of Violent Night, but we only made it 20 minutes in before we had to stop. My wife found the muppets too disturbing. More disturbing than Santa killing 5 guys with a sharpened candy cane.

I still think Rizzo is the best, so I’ll finish it with my son when she’s not home.

Bobtheinquisitor wrote: A Muppet Christmas Carol

We started this as a palate cleanser after the splatter fest of Violent Night, but we only made it 20 minutes in before we had to stop. My wife found the muppets too disturbing. More disturbing than Santa killing 5 guys with a sharpened candy cane.

I still think Rizzo is the best, so I’ll finish it with my son when she’s not home.

~

I’m not gonna spell it out for you. So I’ll let Dolly do the honours.




No not really of course.

"How would the bookkeepers like to be unemployed?"
"Heatwave! This is my island in the sun."

"Light the lamp, not the rat"

Christmas Carol is deliciously quotable and benefits from Caine playing it as straight as he can. In Treasure Island, Tim Curry is game but I don't think he nails that magic of the Muppets. In the Muppet Show we see Kermit always playing the straight act to the lunacy going on around him (and he continues this in Carol) but the gravitas oozing from Caine really makes this one.

Side note: want to hear something funny? Google Whiter Shade of Pale sung to the tune of the theme to the Muppets Show.

...Let Dolly do the honours.

Aw, that was my 3rd band's name back in 1994!



Muppets christmas is good.

I watched Predator 2 for for first time in a long while. Really good, innit. And the correct choice of setting, characters, themes, etc. for a sequel to one of the most over-the-top action films.

Blue Beetle

I have to agree with the general opinion I've seen.

It's not a bad movie, but it's 10-12 years too late to really stand out as a superhero film. It basically just shuffles all the greatest hits of all the other good superhero films (mostly Spiderman and Iron man and Antman) into one movie.

And I guess that's okay but only that.

I gotta say I don't get the praise for the family. I find basically all of them obnoxious walking cliches. Like the writers just collected all the supporting cast members from the past decade and threw them all together and let them just cringe from the cringe depths of the cringe ocean to the cringe peaks of the cringe mountains.

That’s pretty similar to our experience with Blue Beetle. Except the family at least had a couple actors with screen charisma compared to hero protagonist and love interest. And Susan Sarandon vamping it up was fun to watch.


@Mad Doc Grotsnik
I find her muppet phobia endearing. We can watch bloody mayhem and she’s fine, but try to throw on Labyrinth and look out! I had to show the boy that one when she wasn’t home.

Weirdly enough, he has developed a revulsion towards chibi proportioned cartoons and toys.

Oh the Chibi thing is acceptable. Such abject weeb fodder 🤣🤣

Excalibur

A long time favourite, even though it is entirely style over substance.

From Beijing With Love

A weird, Chinese comedy parody of the Bond movies. It was surprisingly not bad, although the comedy elements were extremely hit and miss.

@Bobtheinquisitor: Okay, the chibi stuff I understand. It's so weird. But it's a thing one gets accustomed to over time I think, which is probably the creepiest aspect about it.

@aku-chan: Oh, but Excalibur's style hits hard. I only saw it for the first time this year, and it rather rocks. From Beijing with Love I think I saw a long time ago, but what I recall from it very much is in line with your assessment conerning the humour.


Well, last night I watched Stille Reserven (2016). Austrian/Swiss/German co-produced sci-fi film. I heard about it when it came out, winning jury prices at festivals, I tried to watch it once, but found the premise too creepy to carry on. Sadly there is no English version that I know of, but the DVD has English subtitles. And in this case I could absolutely see this work with subtitles, because this film makes next to no use of dialects. It's all very correct, talk-as-written, 'artificial' German.

Anyway, it takes place at some point in the near future in Vienna. The premise is that one all-encompassing insurace company offers (on top of the usual stuff) 'death insurance'. It works like that (if I got it right) 82% of people are dirt poor and in debt; the insurance company basically takes away their right to die. If they die and have debt to pay off they get reanimated and put in a vegetative state to 'work off' their debt as data storage, being harvested for replacement parts, as surrogate mothers for rich people or being milked for their experience/brain activity/etc. if they were smart/successful people. It's rarely spelled out directly, and nobody really knows, but the general notion is that it's not a nice state to be in. Rich people are offered 'death insurance' by the insurance company to make sure they don't befall this fate.

We follow the top insurance broker who struggles a bit with his standing in the company, then there's things with a lady who's an activist against the whole thing, and they plan something to stop it all, and it goes on from there.

The film looks amazing and at no point there's a crack in that fassade. It's very stylish throughout and got some cool shots. It reminded me of Equilibrium in that regard, or maybe Dark City. The whole thing looks rather noir as well, come to think of it. There even is smoking in a bar and so on. Pretty cool.

The story itself maybe takes a bend or two too many and plays out not especially surprising at that (which always is a bit of a bad combination), but it's exciting enough to keep you invested, if only for the grimness of the situation looming over everyone and how much is at stake.


I'm aware that this is somehting one outside the DACH region would probably never see unless they seeked it out, but either way - Watch It, if you wanna see a stylish, grim, sci-fi noir film with a scary premise.

Sounds similar to a David J Schow story where poor people are reanimated to pay off their debts with labor, and suicide is no escape: each reanimation geometrically increases their debt.

Really sounds like it.

Had to look the guy up - he wrote a good bunch of genre/horror screenplays too!

I saw Godzilla Minus One. I put some random nonsensical thoughts in the dedicated thread.

I will say, go see it.

I am glad my wife did not go, as she would have been bawling her eyes out the entire film.

Masters of the Universe

As a nerd of a certain undisclosed vintage? This was probably my first brush with a kinda fun film that was a travesty of its source material. And as a kid, I was largely ambivalent toward it.

As an adult? It’s not entirely devoid of charm. The villains are pretty great, even if a lot of the time it feels lime our heroes really cannot be arsed with the whole thing. And given its budget, the costumes and effects are still pretty decent to this day.

Overall retrospect? If shown to a kid otherwise unknowing of its source material, I reckon it’s got a lot to offer. For those of us more jaded, at least Courteney Cox gets a manky leg off Skeletor, which someone makes up for the travesty that was Friends, a 10 season crap-com based off a single joke which wasn’t funny in the first place. Also, Teela was a fox.

Neither my wife nor my son were familiar with the cartoon, but they both enjoyed the movie. It’s silly in an enjoyable way. Now I really want to show them the live action Super Mario Brothers movie.


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As for Friends, it’s the kind of show that isn’t funny until you get to know the characters, and even then is more of a comforting parasocial presence than laugh out loud funny.

Friends. Where the funny man (the dear departed Matthew Perry) is never seen to make his friends laugh.

Ever.

The live studio audience? Yes. His in-universe audience? Not. Once.

Rebel Moon Part One : A Child of Fire Netflix 2023

I thought it was decent overall. Not top tier cinema, but an enjoyable enough sci-fi/fantasy flick. As brainless as the current superhero and Star Wars/Trek offerings with some fun action and visuals. Music was pretty epic at times, too. I’ll probably watch again when I want some noise while painting.

Don’t regret watching it, nor do I understand the hate its getting from critics. Maybe now that I’ve watched it, I’ll read some of the criticism to see what they felt they saw in this movie and how they break it down. Always open to new thoughts and opinions, myself.

Needed less gunplay and more of their version of the lightsaber though. Just fully embrace that it was supposed to be some sort of Star Wars story and let the laser swords loose.



And now I feel like when/if the Amazon 40K stuff comes out we’ll be bombarded with “ThEy StOle iT FrOm ReBeL MOooon”.

Violent Night

A Christmas slice of semi-action nonsense starring David Harbour as Santa.

It’s kind of a silly take on Die Hard, and pretty bloody enjoyable! With its tongue so far in its cheek it can taste the wall paper, it’s something B-Movies have often tried, but never quite got right. Until now.

Planes, Trains and Automobiles

A classic comedy starring Steve Martin and John Candy. It’s a Thanksgiving movie, but works equally well as a Christmas movie. There’s a lot of swearing (in one scene especially), but it’s otherwise family friendly and heartwarming.


Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

While my age means I find Bueller more of a self-satisfied bully than a hero, it also means I better appreciate the writing and the craft of the film. And the soundtrack is perfection.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Violent Night

A Christmas slice of semi-action nonsense starring David Harbour as Santa.

It’s kind of a silly take on Die Hard, and pretty bloody enjoyable! With its tongue so far in its cheek it can taste the wall paper, it’s something B-Movies have often tried, but never quite got right. Until now.

I wouldn’t call it semi-action. The film has a gratifying number of creative kills, and an Elm Street’s volume of blood.

The terrorists were also Die Hard levels of memorable hench. Well done all around.

It’s more a good balance of purely comedic scenes, and some amusingly violent scenes.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
It’s more a good balance of purely comedic scenes, and some amusingly violent scenes.

Watched it last year. Loved it. Bought it. Will watch it again on Christmas Eve with my kids so they can properly appreciate Santa!

Also, it instantly gets +5 points for John Leguizamo.

And + infinite points for correctly using Slade’s “Merry Xmas Everybody” over the credits. Because it’s the greatest Christmas song that has or ever will be written.

Slade's christmas song is indeed supergood. I also liked how they sang it in the Office christmas special. Wholesome.

Now as for Masters of the Universe - it's something I should like, but don't. It feels dark, lacking humour or action and feels 'small'. The super mario film is just a sad mess, and not a fun one. Also, I'm not overly fond on license cash-in hollywood films. Not much point to them, is there.

Friends on the other hand (and all of this may make me sound like the broadest, most boring person in the world for not liking the early 90s genre b-film stinkers, but the hit sitcom ) is really good. Might be a low bar, but watching friends on stream a few years ago made me realize how unnecessary and uninteresting How I Met Your Mother was. Anyway, Friends, along with Frasier and Seinfeld, is the trinity of 90s tv sitcoms. I re-watch those endlessly.



Last night I watched Hard Ticket to Hawaii on TV. Which is a great sentence to be able to say, but also I watched the German dubbed version for the first time, which is something off the bucket list, I suppose?

That reminds me that last week I watched Space Truckers, starring Dennis Hopper, Stephen Dorff, "Norm!" and the lady with the interesting face. Debi Mazar. This film and the way it looks probably could only have been made in 1996. It's rather bad. As far as Dennis-Hopper-at-his-low films go, i'd rather watch that than the Super Mario Brothers film though.


And to round off my ramblings, I dreamt of Dennis Franz tonight. Just for a very short moment we were sitting across a table, I told him how much of a fan I was of his work in NYPD Blue. He seemed genuinely pleased, and that was it. Merry christmas, everyone.