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

Gary Sax wrote: Can't wait to see it.

It’s great. Best entry in the series.

Saw Secret in their eyes on Netflix. Surprisingly great. Not sure how I slept on this when it was released.

Shellhead wrote: I watched the first hour of House and gave up. It was a cheesy horror movie from the mid-'80s that also wanted to be funny. The actor who played Norm on Cheers plays a supporting role. House fails as either a scary or funny movie and instead settles for annoying.

It’s been a while, but I think the character was Cliff on Cheers.

I experienced Bondarchuk's War and Peace yesterday at the IU cinema. Supposedly they had people from as far away as Michigan and Georgia. There was a food truck outside during the 45 minute intermission. The person that introduced the film quoted Roger Ebert, "You are never, ever, going to see anything to equal it." and I think Roger was probably right.

hotseatgames wrote:

Shellhead wrote: I watched the first hour of House and gave up. It was a cheesy horror movie from the mid-'80s that also wanted to be funny. The actor who played Norm on Cheers plays a supporting role. House fails as either a scary or funny movie and instead settles for annoying.

It’s been a while, but I think the character was Cliff on Cheers.

I wasn't a big fan of Cheers, so I stand corrected. Here's a pic from House, to show the actor that I meant:

I am still preparing to go see Avengers: Endgame. Wish I had done that before seeing Avengers: Infinity War, instead of just relying on my extensive knowledge of comics to know the characters. I missed many of the MCU movies in the theater, so I have been getting caught up. Finally saw Captain America: Civil War, and it's now one of my favorite superhero movies. It's amazing that the story works so well even with so many superheros competing for camera time, and the bigger chase and fight scenes were all great. And I always enjoy scenes where two interesting characters are arguing and both are making good points. Unlike the comic Civil War from years back, the movie version treated Iron Man's viewpoint with respect instead of making him the jerk.

My wife and I just rewatched Infinity War as a refresher. Well, I rewatched it and she fell asleep for most of it. I woke her up and made her watch it from the snap on, so she remembered who was still around. This was the immediate conversation:

Her: So what exactly is Thanos trying to do?
Me: He wants to kill half of all life in the universe.
Her: Why?
Me: To relieve overpopulation and the issues that come with it, like scarcity of resources.
Her: So he’s not trying to take over the universe or anything?
Me: No.
Her: Well I don’t have a problem with that. It makes sense.
Me: …

hotseatgames wrote:

Shellhead wrote: I watched the first hour of House and gave up. It was a cheesy horror movie from the mid-'80s that also wanted to be funny. The actor who played Norm on Cheers plays a supporting role. House fails as either a scary or funny movie and instead settles for annoying.

It’s been a while, but I think the character was Cliff on Cheers.

The guy who played Norm was in House. The guy who played Cliff was in House II: The Second Story. Both are cheesy garbage but I recall preferring the sequel as a kid.

I watched The Wandering Earth on Netflix. This is a Chinese sci-fi movie with a pretty interesting premise; the Sun is expanding and will engulf the Earth. In response, 10,000 "Earth Engines" are placed around the equator and on one side of the planet, and we literally push the planet out of orbit and take off through space to a new destination.

Things go awry.

The ending is more emotional than I was expecting; this is a pretty good movie.

Shellhead wrote: So instead of Game of Thrones, we watched the original Rollerball, courtesy of Amazon Prime. Everybody remembers the violence, but there was also various indications that it took place in a corporate-owned dystopia. The movie isn't merely about James Caan beating some dudes up in a violent sport, it's about a cynical corporate overclass using drugs and violent sports to distract and hold down the downtrodden masses. Rollerball is deliberately designed to be a violent sport so that injuries tend to prevent the emergence of influential sports stars that might upset the tight control of the corporate executives. Veteran player Jonathan E manages to beat the odds and rise to the top of the sport, then resists attempts by the league to force him into retirement. In the same way that the Starship Troopers movie trolled fascists, Rollerball manages to simultaneously entertain and troll fans of full-contact sports. The violence continues to escalate through the movie then staggers to a bitter and yet triumphant finish.

The overall look of Rollerball can best be described as a very '70s vision of the future, but it holds up well enough to the modern eye. I'm not sure if it was intentional, but many of the indoor sets had a circular layout that reminded me of the Rollerball track. The particular shade of orange in the Houston team's colors shows up in various places away from the track, especially in Jonathan's home. This kind of attention to detail helped sell the setting and the story, but James Caan closes the deal with his steady performance and casual machismo. I suspect that Rollerball was an influence on both Slapshot and The Road Warrior.

Having recently re-watched the original Rollerball, I finally succumbed to curiosity and watched the Rollerball re-make from 2002. As I suspected from watching the trailer back in the day, this Rollerball version is not a science-fiction movie. It takes place in a contemporary eastern European country that might be Russia. The basic story is the same: Jonathan is the best player in the league and the league is run by a corrupt group of owners who have decided to relax the rules in order to get more violent competition.

This time around, the motivation is not to directly suppress the masses but simply to get higher ratings. The track and rules are more complex in this version, with a convoluted pair of ramps that must be navigated to make a legitimate shot on the goal. The violence might be a little more extreme in this modern version, but lacks the shock value of the original because it is reasonably in line with normal movie violence for 2002. Unlike the original, this movie continues past the end of the final match, with a rioting crowd and direct violence targeted at the owners. Overall, this Rollerball is nowhere near as interesting or compelling as the original, but can serve as adequate entertainment for a fan of action movies.

John Wick: Parabellum. If you like 1 and 2, this one is worth the price of the ticket. Gun-fu, sword-fu, Kung-fu, Dog-fu!

Saw John Wick 3 last night. If you liked the first two, you’ll like this. It has everything you want it to have.

Today I watched The Meg on HBO. Jason Statham vs. a 75 foot long prehistoric shark.

My review: This movie is bad. Even the effects are all over the place. I wish they had spent less on effects and more on a script and some actors.

It occurs to me... Jaws is a masterpiece. Any time you want to make a shark movie, you go up against Jaws. Nothing has come even close, and it's amazing to think that the first (I assume) shark movie may always be the best one.

After seeing it mentioned on Twitter, with the ominous recommendation of "don't watch the trailer", I took a chance on The Perfection on Netflix. Wow. This is a psychological thriller that throws curve balls for the duration.

Well written, well acted, and unsettling. I don't want to say anything about it, really, but the setup is that a former cello prodigy meets a current cello prodigy from the same school, and the train quickly derails from there.

I am watching BLACKkKLANSMAN and it is solid as a rock.

I stumbled on my old movie articles here and reminisced. I stand by those picks . It was so awesome to see the follow-up comments on there. Ah nostalgia.*

*reminds me: NOSTALGHIA. Tarkovsky is a genius.