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

I don't usually post in this thread, but I thought you all might like to know that last night I watched John Carpenter's The Thing for the first time.

You can’t say something like that and not give us your assessment.

Oh, I loved it. Definitely deserves its reputation as one of, if not the best sci-fi horror movies ever. I have a weakness for really good 80s practical effects, so all of the puppets and blood-splattering was really fun to watch. I was really impressed by the creativity of those puppets especially. It kept on finding new ways to be disgusting and horrifying. There's no one way the Thing manifests, and it really conveyed that horrible mutating biological quality.

I was a little surprised at how sedate the movie can be in places. While I knew about the gross-out stuff, I don't think I realized how much of the movie is wrapped up in suspense. It takes a long time for anything really shocking to happen, and it just spends a lot of its time waiting, which is really effective. I also like how much of the movie is unexplained. There's the ending of course, but I like how you can't really work out what happened to everyone, or when people became infected. It leaves that kind of thing ambiguous, which I imagine drives some people crazy. That's the sort of thing that gets called "plot holes," when really it's just unexplained.

Anyway, it was great. I'll likely revisit it when October rolls around.

Courtesy of Amazon Prime, I watched a couple of movies recently.

Class of 1984 is one of those fake "based on a true story" movies. In this case, the focus is on a small gang of kids who are terrorizing their high school, and one brave teacher who stands up to them. I graduated from high school in 1983, and this movie was released in 1982, but I had no awareness of it back then. It does capture one true thing, which is that there was a time when normal people were afraid of punks and punk rock. This gang isn't very punk, and at times they look more New Wave to me (please don't ask me to define New Wave), but they definitely are in full rebellion against any and all authority in sight. The final reel is surprisingly action-packed and almost gruesomely violent. I liked Class of 1984, but I didn't love it, and I actively hated the opening track by Alice Cooper. It was like a John Carpenter song with vocals, only horrid.

I only gave Split Second a chance because it starred Rutger Hauer. It looked like a b-movie, and it definitely was a b-movie. Released in 1982 but set in the dystopian climate change hell of 2008, in a London that is constantly flooded with at least a foot of water. Rutger plays a ludicrously anti-social cop who is constantly swearing, drinking bad, shoving people, shouting, and smoking cigars. He looks like a slightly younger Rupert Giles, so I eventually amused myself by pretending that this was a prequel to Buffy. Kim Cattrall is also in the movie, but her hair makes her look like Michelle Forbes to an uncanny degree. The "plot" is about a serial killer who turns out to be an inhuman monster. But really there is no plot, just a series of setpiece action scenes strung together by the cop's gut instinct that verges on being an undefined psychic power. I toughed it out, but kind of want those 90 minutes back.

I also saw The Saint. I bought the soundtrack way back when, because it had some great music on it. But I never got around to seeing the movie until now. I was hoping for an action-packed music video kind of spy movie like Atomic Blonde, but instead The Saint was the gender-swapped prototype for the tv show Alias. Brief snippets of good music, lots of gratuitous disguises, some decent action and excitement, all in service of a flimsy plot. Elizabeth Shue's radiant face kept me watching, though I suppose Val Kilmer's peculiar charm carries the movie.

I showed The Invitation to my girlfriend yesterday. This was my second Time seeing it. It’s on Netflix and I highly recommend it if you want a slow burn tense drama. Is something going on? Is it all in the protagonist’s head? Who knows...

Sorry, I don't watch anything in particular, but would Errol Flynn's The Adventures of Robin Hood fine for kids?

I remember it being OK for kids. It's a great movie, but I haven't seen it in a few years.

Depending on what else they watch they might find it a bit slow but otherwise it'd be fine. In showed mine. It wasn't a huge hit or anything but they enjoyed it.

Godzilla: King of the Monsters was a disappointment. It felt less a movie and more a collection of trailer lines and shots. Every line is either shouted or delivered with Watanabe gravitas but mean nothing. Mothra and Godzilla have a symbiotic relationship. Okay. I know what all those words mean, but I don’t know what that means within the movie. Characters we recognize die, but it means nothing. And screw all those people who said there wasn’t enough Godzilla in 2014. Those distant glimpses and too-soon cuts were the point. They built anticipation. Here I was bored with Godzilla and Ghidora by their third tussle.

Not a disappointment? Booksmart. Every named character, no matter how slight, got my laughs, my sympathy and compassion. There were some beautifully conceived and shot scenes. Amy’s line reads. Just great from head-to-toe. It’s too bad it sounds like this kind of flopped. Booksmart feels like the sort of low-budget, low-risk film the studios should be making more of instead of the budget busters that destroy studios when they fail.

I watched It Friday, and It: Chapter 2 yesterday. It felt a lot like Stranger Things, with better effects, fewer adults, and less '80s nostalgia. It: Chapter 2 felt more to me like a Horror Action Comedy than a true horror movie. It 2 ran a little too long, at close to three hours, and dragged in the middle a little bit,

If you're the type of person who can't stand to see kids harmed, you might want to take a pass.

On the whole, I liked it more than I thought I would (was dragged into this by my daughter). If you're looking for straight-up horror you're going to be disappointed by the time you reach the ending of It 2. But I liked them both.

ETA: I never read the Stephen King novel, so don't have an opinion about the adaptation. For me, The Tommyknockers sucked so badly that I've never read another King novel.

Sevej wrote: Sorry, I don't watch anything in particular, but would Errol Flynn's The Adventures of Robin Hood fine for kids?

There's nothing explicit in the film. They do mention King John using torture. It's a great film, I actually watched it recently and liked it a lot so it might be worth introducing to kids.

RobertB wrote: ETA: I never read the Stephen King novel, so don't have an opinion about the adaptation. For me, The Tommyknockers sucked so badly that I've never read another King novel.

That's a bit like watching Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull and then never watching another Spielberg movie because it sucked so bad.

All I'm saying is you picked arguably King's worst novel to read first. He has gone on record as saying he has no memory of even writing "The Tommyknockers" because he was so wired on coke at the time.

Joebot wrote: He has gone on record as saying he has no memory of even writing "The Tommyknockers" because he was so wired on coke at the time.

And cough syrup, which he chugged by the bottle. I remember reading an anecdote where King's friends/family were fed up with his addictions and dumped his cigarette butt and empty cough syrup bottle-filled trashcan onto his desk. I don't really like Tommyknockers but for some reason I remember quite a few details from that book.

I watched the Child's Play reboot this weekend and I give it a mehven out of 10. There are several good ideas in the movie and nearly all of them are underdeveloped, and the movie can't decide if it's a horror comedy or just straight up horror. There are a couple clever twists in the plot that kept me engaged but the fact that the film couldn't settle on the tone really undercut the climax: it could have been a funny, over-the-top spectacle that really went for it, but what they ended up with was pretty flat.

This could have been a (more) subversive take on our emerging relationship with AI but it was dragged down by the need to include slasher beats and tropes. The best I can say about the movie is that they didn't completely screw it up but it's pretty much the poster child for bland, mediocre reboots.

Joebot wrote:

RobertB wrote: ETA: I never read the Stephen King novel, so don't have an opinion about the adaptation. For me, The Tommyknockers sucked so badly that I've never read another King novel.

That's a bit like watching Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull and then never watching another Spielberg movie because it sucked so bad.

All I'm saying is you picked arguably King's worst novel to read first. He has gone on record as saying he has no memory of even writing "The Tommyknockers" because he was so wired on coke at the time.

Wasn't the first one - I had read a lot of his novels before. After reading that, I thought, "This guy is no longer being edited." Reading the uncut version of The Stand about that time as well didn't exactly change my mind.