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

DId you ever see the original LA FEMME NIKITA? Check that one out. The remake was fine, but the original snaaaaaaps.

jeb wrote: DId you ever see the original LA FEMME NIKITA? Check that one out. The remake was fine, but the original snaaaaaaps.

Oh hell yes. That was one hell of a film right there.


So the family planned to go to see Godzilla last night, but it's only playing twice a day, in a complex with 20 theaters, and each now only has about 50 seats. So it was sold out. Even the crap-ass seats right up against the screen were gone. So these guys are pumping out 80 seatings a day between 3pm and 11pm and a movie that is selling out only gets two (one of which is at 3:15 on a weekday by the way). This in an age where the "films" are on a hard drive and pumped to the appropriate projectors from a laptop. They can adjust hour by hour if they want to, but God almighty would it kill you to just put another showing in now and again?

So my oldest boy and I drove to the theater and bought the big tub of popcorn, dumped it into a plastic bag and asked for our free refill immediately. The woman behind the counter laughed and refilled it and out the door we went, to watch something at home with our movie theater popcorn for five bucks. The manager in the lobby asked what we were doing walking out with the popcorn (which isn't allowed). Normally I would have gotten all middle-aged-white-guy on his ass but I just didn't give a damn at this point. "Yeah yeah" and kept walking. Sure am glad they made the theater experience better!

Checked today -- gone. Godzilla sold out last night, gone from the theater today.

I saw the original La Femme Nikita way back when, and it was great.

Love the story about the popcorn. I actually went to a mall movie theater once to buy movie popcorn and then go elsewhere to eat it. The concession area was next to the ticket area, so I didn't need to buy a ticket to get to the concession counter.

I love watching movies, but the modern movie-going experience is unreliable and often disappointing. It's all the sociopaths in the audience. When I recently saw Avengers; Endgame in the theater, there were multiple incidents of bad phone etiquette within my immediate reach. I could have reached out and snatched the offending phones in each case. One person got and responded to a text (loud DING). A woman failed to silence her phone until after it started ringing mid-movie. Another got a call and took it, only to tell the other person that she would call back after the movie. JFC turn your damn phone off or stay out of the theater, it's really that simple. If you are expecting an extremely important phone call, maybe do something other than go see a movie.

Overall, roughly 50% of the movies that I have seen in the theater in recent years have been disrupted by audience misbehavior. The worst was during The VVitch, when the guy sitting behind me kept nervously kicking the back of my seat during the scary scenes until I threatened him. Nearly all of these experiences have happened in theaters in safe suburbs. I don't think these theaters even have ushers anymore. If I ever completely stop going to movie theaters, the only thing I will probably miss is the popcorn.

Wondering if I should start a popcorn thread....

We love popcorn at our house. We get the seeds and cook them in these microwave popcorn bowls and then spray them with butter and add seasonings (or sometimes we just use oil if we're not in the mood for seasonings). Twice as good as movie theater popcorn.

Walking out with popcorn is NOT ALLOWED? What the hell does that even mean?

"Sir, SIR, I need you to eat that Jujube here in front of me. Sir: ingest the jujube. I cannot let you leave until all Jujubes are consumed."

Fuck those guys. I went to a movie with a friend one time, and she had the best way of getting food INTO a theatre, which I can understand having some rules about. We're walking up to the ticket-taker and she has this huge Starbucks coffee in her hand. I say:

Jeb: "Jenn, no way are you getting that in there."
Jenn: "Sure I am."
Pimply kid: "Uh, you, uh, you can't ta--"
Jenn: "I need this. For my medication."

...and she just walked right by him. He sort of turned a little and that was it. No more questions. She needed it. For her medication.

I strive for this kind of chutzpah.

My daughter is working at a local AMC this summer. If she's working the box office or the concession stand, and someone asks her if they can bring food in, she tells them, "You're not supposed to. I'm not going to tell you that you can do it, but I'm not going to be the one to throw you out. However, some of the folks who work here just love throwing customers out. So, your call." As for them stopping popcorn from leaving, she says that as far as she knows, it's fine.

Into the Spider-Verse is on Netflix now, so if you haven't seen it...

I have seen it, and I will be seeing it again.

Into the spider verse is the only movie I've bought on Blu Ray in recent memory, but I'll still watch it again on Netflix. Great movie.

Cool, looking forward to watching this again! Possibly the best Marvel movie? Loved it.

Ip Man is Chinese The Patriot. And I think Australians dubbed the English characters in the sequel.

I watched Lords of Chaos on Hulu last night, a film that came out last year about the early Norwegian Black Metal scene and specifically the ill-fated relationship between Øystein Aserth and Varg Vikernes. It’s directed by Jonas Ackerlund, who was actually the drummer for Bathory before he became a big-time video director (Madonna, Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga, etc.).

It was actually quite good, and a very different sort of rock bio- hard to fall into the tropes when in the first act you’ve got a singer that slashes both his wrists and his throat before blowing his brains out and having his best friend photograph the body. The church burnings, the corpse paint, the sociopathic behavior, it’s all here. There is no descent into drugs, there is no meteoric rise to fame, no scene where the producer and engineer look at each other and know that this is The Single.

It’s all handled in an interesting way that sort of peels back the mythology and imagery- we see Varg (well, Kristian) before Burzum as a fairly well-off Metal dweeb in a bright white, modernist flat. Mayhem records their record in a plain old brightly lit studio, not a crypt. We see these people living really kind of normal lives outside of the insanity and murder. I really liked how it de-sensationalized the image of BM. They have parents. They drive cars. They rent Die Hard 2.

There is a clear line drawn between Euronynmous’ role as an impresario/promoter linking BM to the more party/good times Metal culture and Varg’s deeply serious, isolated, and depressed worldview. Varg is most definitely presented as the villain, corruptor, and paradoxically the most “kvlt” and the biggest poser on the scene. For all of the aire of darkness and mystique about Varg, seeing him say that his mom will pay the studio fees for his first record is pretty deflating- and it is grounded in truth. There’s also a pivotal scene where he talks to reporters about the Fantoft church arson and we see him before the interview practicing lines, posing, and arranging the scene, including a Nazi flag. He goes to great lengths to be the most evil, most hateful, and most authentic...but it’s all a pose, an act...and he is presented as ultimately just another damaged, overprivileged white boy.

I also really liked the way Dead, the original singer of Mayhem, was depicted. He is the kind of seriously damaged kid you come across in any scene or subculture that retreats into their own world. He’s the guy that does the craziest shit, the most over the top stuff...and really the only possible conclusion is his brutal suicide. It’s not even really much of a tragedy as much as it is a foregone conclusion.

Although Euronymous is shown in a more sympathetic light (played by Rory Culkin), he is not excused. He poses Dead’s body and takes pictures. He maybe/maybe not eats a piece of his brain and gives out necklaces that may be bits of Dead’s skull or may be chicken bones. Under Varg’s influence, he burns a church. But he is also shown to be a smart hype man, able to engage with family and have relationships, and he is interested in succeeding beyond the BM scene. In the end, he doesn’t take the satanism and violence seriously. There is a suggestion that by the end is maturing and maybe growing out of the scene he created, but he is of course (spoiler) murdered.

One thing I didn’t like was how Faust’s 1993 murder of a gay man in Lillehammer Park was handled. It’s not even stated that Faust was in Emperor, and there’s really not much development of him as a character. So when it happens, it’s like “oh, that background character killed a dude”. And it sort of trails off. It is true that he wasn’t caught until after Varg was, but it’s almost like the murder goes unpunished. The whole scene is awkward and kind of weirdly handled.

Gosh, I just realized I wrote a lot about this relatively minor film...but it invites the same complicated and conflicting reactions that Black Metal often does. I did feel like some of the more genuinely sinister elements of the genre were glossed over, such as the proximity of many of these bands and personalities to far-right politics. It’s true that at the time the whole NSBM (National Socialist Black Metal) thing was not really happening, but the roots were sewn in the genre’s use of Nazi/fascist imagery and promotion of a pro-European, occult-tinged nationalism.

I was into metal and in fact early black metal when all of this was going on and it remains just a crazy, weird moment in rock history. I remember reading about all of this in Kerrang, Metal Hammer, and other mags at the time and just being like WTF is going on over there...all this talk about Satanic Black Circles, some kind of black metal terrorist groups, and so forth...I can’t imagine anything like all of this ever happening again. I like that this film presents the story as “lies, truth, and what really happened”, and anyone interested in Metal should take a look at it. But be warned, it is actually pretty grisly in a couple of scenes. Appropriately so.

Barnes - you haven't read the book have you? Wondering if it's worth my time if I've already read it.

I have, and in fact a lot of the anecdotes and events described in the book are shown. But the scope is much smaller, really, as it pretty strictly the Mayhem/Burzum story. I think that was a pretty smart decision in terms of writing, although like with the Faust story there isn’t really much about the peripheral. The outcomes are spoiled but I definitely think it’s worth seeing.

Interestingly, the book goes far more into the ties between neo-fascism and modern European paganism (like Asatru). The book was written by Michael Moynihan, a industrial/Neofolk musician (chiefly Blood Axis) with connections to Extreme right ideology and the kind of coy “are they Nazis are not” game that many artists in this are play.

Further viewing- there was a documentary a couple of years ago called Before The Light Takes Us that was a pretty good and broader take on BM.

I watched Bohemian Rhapsody, which is currently on HBO. I really enjoyed it, even though I am not much of a Queen fan. I'd say I'm more of a fan after having seen this. Freddy Mercury definitely lived the rock and roll lifestyle.

I have seen both this and Rocketman. Both are worth watching, and your enjoyment of either may come down to how much you like Queen or Elton John. I personally like Elton much more than I like Queen, but the Queen film is the better movie, in my opinion.

There are parallels, of course. Both feature tortured rock stars giving into excess, and they even both feature supporting cast from Game of Thrones.

Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood.
I generally like Tarantino's movies, though I did not enjoy The Hateful Eight. I feel like this movie falls into that same category for me.

An hour and a half into the movie, my wife leans over and asks, "What is this movie about?" My response: "Quentin Tarantino wallowing in self-indulgence."