What MOVIE(s) have you been....seeing? watching?

Yeah. I definitely kind of prefer scumbag manga Hugo. Alita's existence barely registers with him because of his obsession with Zalem, and he's fully bought into stealing spines, no regrets whatsoever. I get why they didn't go that route, padding out the run time to explain all that and people are already complaining about Alita's acts of romance even when he kind of is into her, but manga Hugo was a more compelling and memorable character.

It's so nice to discuss this with someone else who's read the manga. I've been scouring online for every article I can find, and none of them have.

Just rewatched V for Vendetta. It has lost none of its power and is more relevant today than ever.

My absolute favourite movie of all time with sterling performances and an amazing adaptation of the original Alan Moore graphic novel.

Highly recommended, especially if you are British and have never seen this before.

I have never met anyone who called V for Vendetta their favorite movie of all time. That is interesting. I thought it was alright, but would have liked it more had I not already read the book.

I thought they did some things well from Moore's work and on some things they just completely missed the point. Most prominently among the latter was giving V emotions. The point of the concept of V is that he/she/it could be the "everyperson". It has no attachments because it's a concept. It's an outgrowth of the public mind and body. Showing humanity to Evey in the original work isn't the same as V going into conniptions over not being able to consummate a relationship. There IS no external relationship to consummate. V is Evey as Evey is V. The story isn't supposed to be about V in the first place. It's about Evey, so giving V the "Hollywood human" treatment ("love interest", audience can supposedly identify with the character, blah blah blah) utterly departs from the point of the story. It basically means that the Wachowskis either fundamentally misunderstood the story or changed it in order to fit studio expectations on how to sell tickets.

It's been years since I re-read V for Vendetta (and decades since the first time I read it), but I was struck once again by how there is an obvious and probably unintended shift in the writing style. It reads like Moore got stuck or otherwise turned away to work on another project for a while, and then returned to V for Vendetta with a different style. I can't remember the exact turning point, just that it was something that really stood out both times I read it.

I really did not see any love interest as a part of the story.

There was one point, in the entire film, where V said he loved her and I saw nothing about not consummating a relationship or even implying this. If anything, Evey became emotionally attached to V but I simply see this as Evey moving closer to the concept that V represents.

I also did not see much evidence of V having emotions (unless you want to assume that liking The Count of Monte Christo counts as an emotion). I suppose I saw rage but not much else.

Atomic Blonde is supposed to be a period piece spy movie set right at the time the Berlin Wall got knocked down. But I correctly deduced the true nature of this movie while watching a lengthy trailer in the theater. Tonight's viewing confirmed my suspicion, or perhaps my confirmation bias.

The story is thin and centers around a maguffin and numerous double-crosses. Atomic Blonde is really more like a medley of stylish and incomplete music videos, punctuated by escalating scenes of brutal violence. Charlize Theron is wonderfully overqualified for the lead, and a relatively thin John Goodman also plays a key role. The real star is the soundtrack, all chronologically appropriate for 1987 and leaning towards goth and krautrock influences. Consider this movie a gender-swapped James Bond movie with less humor and extra intense violence.

I went into Atomic Blonde expecting a gender-swapped John Wick. It wasn't that, but it was fine. Visually impressive, stylish, two great fight scenes, but nothing really stuck after I left the theater except that nonsense final final twist and James McAvoy's performance. Wish he had been in more of it.

I loved Atomic Blonde. Pure fun throughout, like Kingsmen.

And it opens with New Order, so come on!

My daughter was running the Plex server, and the double feature was:

Pacific Rim: Uprising - The first one was a pretty good big dumb Kaiju movie. Take out 'pretty good' and you have the second one. Unless you love Kaiju and completeness is your thing, skip it. Acting sucked, from actors that I know have done better, and action was mediocre.

Then she wanted to watch a horror movie, and picked Hereditary. She had seen it in the theater, and after watching it last night, I really wish I had. Right now, I think it might be my #1 horror movie, and The Exorcist is on that list. I think it's on Amazon Prime.

I was bored, and based on your suggestion, I just watched Hereditary. It's well done. Ghost stuff generally does not frighten me, so I would personally call this movie more "weird" than "horror." But if you are the type to be put off by ghosts, then this movie will probably fuck you up.

One minor plot point bugging me about this movie...

Having picked up the Mad Max collection that we were talking about a couple weeks ago, I took the time to rewatch all of them (I haven't gotten to the black-and-chrome version of Fury Road yet.) Beyond Thunderdome still sticks out as not just the worst of the lot, but several steps in quality below the others. There was an atmosphere and a tone that the first two films set and which Fury Road sustained that is utterly absent from the third. It went from grimdark survival and the basest of instincts to Carnival-esque. Tack on all the other horrible elements of 80s films (requisite saxophone solo, bad lighting, scenes obviously set for video game exploitation, "stars" inserted for marketing rather than talent, etc.) and it just becomes that much worse. I've seen the first two films a dozen times and I will probably end up watching Fury Road almost as many. I've seen Thunderdome twice and I never want to see it again. It was also the only one of the four that didn't have any kind of "making of" featurette attached, which would be telling even if I didn't already know it was poor.

Great points regarding Thunderdome. My own rant on that topic usually gets stuck on those wacky kids, but as you pointed out, it sucked in various other ways as well. Also, WTF saxophones in the '80s? The sax is a fine instrument, but the cultural fixation on the sax in the '80s was out of control.

Checked out a couple of animated Batman movies from the library.

The Batman vs. Dracula was so bad that I turned it off after 20 minutes. It was created by the same post-Timm/Dini animated team that did The Batman animated series in the early 2000s. That run is often derisively known as The Crapman. It's also the reason why the excellent Justice League cartoon was unable to use any of the Batman villains after the first season or so. Dracula looked ridiculous. Penguin had red hair, just because. Joker was basically an insanely muscular Juggalo who could just as well as Batman in HTH. The story was bad, too.

Batman: Bad Blood was surprisingly good. It combined some ideas from the early Morrison run on Batman and Robin with the Batwoman storyline from the fantastic 52 weekly comic from more than a decade ago, and also her early issues of her solo title. Decent story and some good character insights.

Wow, Bohemian Rhapsody was no good. It’s hard to hate on a movie about Freddie Mercury because he was so awesome and Queen is great and all but...that movie was just not good. I really don’t understand the accolades.

I think Queen being involved with the production hurt it a lot...I don’t necessarily want some kind of gritty tell-all, but it felt like cherry picked and carefully measured facts were blended with complete fabrications. It’s true that all bios do that, but it was kind of silly in this movie...how about that part where Bob Geldof frets around the Live Aid call center, apparently realizing that it is all a failure...until Queen comes on and the phones light up!

Nothing about him not growing up in England at all, which is a pity. He had bands in India playing Western rock. That would have been interesting to highlight.

And Mike Meyers’ completely fictional character (and the most on-the-nose joke in film history)...jeez.

It was also incredibly lame how his sexuality was handled. He has a girlfriend! He proposes! Cishet dudes, it’s all good! But then he gets vaguely gets curious at a truck stop and then a 70s moustache dude kisses him and it kind of comes across that he’s somehow turned into a “tragic queer”. I did like how it showed his relationship with Jim Hutton- tender, sweet, and much more authentic than I expected by that point in the film.

Rami Malek...I don’t know. I didn’t think the performance was all that great. The giant fake teeth were way over done. Still think Sascha Baron Cohen would have been a better fit.

The Live Aid re-enactment was kind of silly...yeah, it’s one of the all time great rock performances, but do I need an almost complete recreation of it? It just felt like fan service, like a sort of end of show good vibes ploy.

I will say this. The guy that played Brian May looked JUST LIKE Brian May. It was uncanny.

I dunno, pretty much a standard rock movie. Down the line.