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

I have fond memories of the movie Real Genius, which I saw in the theater in 1985. It didn't age well. A teenage prodigy who looks like Joel Osteen goes off to college and is immediately put in charge of a team of grad school researchers working on a powerful laser. A young Val Kilmer co-stars as a wacky burnout on the team. Hijinx ensue, but the delivery of the jokes and gags is consistently a little off, so they tend to fall flat. The results are mediocre, so watching Real Genius is an adequate way to pass some time.

Yeah, RG is a mostly forgotten 80's college romp. I liked the popcorn bit.

It, like Revenge of the Nerds and a dozen other films, set up expectations for college that were so high the real thing could only fall flat

I watched OLD GUARD and thought it was fine for a breezy popcorn movie. No need to watch it again, but it entertained me just fine.

Slow West on Netflix. Really good western, in the slightly surreal but gritty and violent style. Not a very fun film, but full of sweeping vistas, long shots on characters ruminating about poor life choices, random bursts of intense violence, quirky characters, heartache, and Michael Fassbender really filling out a pair of long johns.

It isn't a wetern I'll watch over and over like Silverado or Tombstone, but I'm glad I did watch it. Certainly better than Legend of 5 mile cave with Adam Baldwin which is little better than a hallmark film. I do like to see Jill Wagner still working though.

jason10mm wrote: ...I do like to see Jill Wagner still working though.

Wipeout took a serious step backwards when Jill Wagner left.

Just watched Dragged across concrete with Mel Gibson and Vince Vaughn. Except it isn't actually a film about those guys, not really. It was enjoyable because it is very poetic in parts and savage in others, but I'm not sure it really gels as a satisfying film for me. It could have been HEAT for 2020 but it falls short. Still very much worth watching because it goes places you just can't see coming.

30 Days of Night - When the weather gets really hot then I like to watch cold movies. Hearing the sound effect of boots walking on packed snow and seeing peoples breath coming out is comforting when its 90F+ outside. I had mixed feelings on this movie when it came out but I've come to really like it over the years. I love that the vampires are straight-up monsters with very little dialog. No sipping blood from wine glasses or having romances or talking about other clans or whatever else might imply they have some interest other than getting food. Not sure if there is a board game for this, but I kept thinking it would make a good one. Have to hide in buildings, can only move during whiteouts, etc.

The first time that I saw 30 Days of Night was amazing because of when and where I saw it. Early winter in Minnesota, in a second-run theater that went out of business a week later. Because the theater was about to go out of business, they were cutting costs to the bone, so it was chilly enough that we could see our exhalations. The seats were also in various stages of disrepair, so we were nearly sitting on the floor and could recline pretty far. Aside from our group of four, there were less than a dozen people present.

I watched Death Becomes Her last night, and though Amazon Prime called it a horror movie, it is really a comedy with body horror. Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn had a grand time chewing the scenery, while Bruce Willis is sporting the greatest make-under of his career as nebbish plastic surgeon turned mortuary makeup artist. Though the movie covers a time span from 1978 - 1992, somehow the overall style is more evocative of classic noir of the '40s and '50s. Good pacing, lovely sets, and plenty of fun. Death Becomes Her falters a bit in the final stretch, but is overall well worth the viewing.

The best part of Birds of Prey was the egg sandwich.

Bringing Out the Dead is an interesting movie that falls short of greatness. It hit the theaters in 1999, and occupies an adjacent space to another 1999 movie, Fight Club. On paper, Bringing Out the Dead should have been the bigger movie, with director Martin Scorese and a cast that includes Nicholas Cage, John Goodman, Patricia Arquette, Ving Rhames, and Tom Sizemore. Fans of The Wire will also spot early performances by Michael Williams (Omar) and Sonja Sohn (Kima). Based on a book of the same name, this is the story of a burnout ambulance driver in New York City, staggering through his nightly shifts and haunted by the lives he couldn't save. The role of the ambulance driver becomes like that of the Grim Reaper, usually showing up for the end of a life, but occasionally able to save one instead. Like rival Fight Club, the main character occasionally sounds like he is reading a passage from a book to the viewer, but it works well as a fleeting impression that leaves troubling thoughts. Cage and Arquette have a surprising degree of chemistry, but this is not a love story. Most of the movie is delivered in a broad, exaggerated, manic style, drifting on the edge of madness but never reaching the brilliance of Fight Club. Still, the movies share enough common ground that Fight Club fans will probably like Bringing Out the Dead.

I tried to watch Ad Astra, but nothing much was really happening and I dozed off. I think that Ad Astra wants very badly to be a realistic science-fiction movie, but real life is not often entertaining enough to become a movie.

The Charlie's Angels movies of the early '00s are playful and energetic excursions featuring a talented ensemble. Lucy Liu, Dru Barrymore, and Cameron Diaz are fine action heroes, and give the impression that they had a lot of fun making both movies. Bill Murray was disappointing in the first one, turning in a muted performance, and he reportedly clashed on the set with Liu. Tom Green is just awkward, and is only in the first movie because he was dating Barrymore at the time. Other big names like Tim Curry, Luke Wilson, and Demi Moore are fine, but Crispin Glover steals his every scene with silence. Glover hated his dialogue and successfully lobbied director McG to let him play a really intense guy who happens to be mute. The music is great, but neither movie has time to let a song play to completion.

I watched Jojo Rabbit on HBO. While I appreciate what it attempted to do, I did not enjoy the film. I could not personally come to terms with the tone of the film being at odds with the subject of the film.

I will say that Taika did a good job of being a "silly" Hitler. But overall... no thank you.

On Ad Astra: Similarly underwhelmed - dichotomouspurity.blogspot.com/2019/10/lead-astray.html

On JoJo Rabbit, I was much more impressed: dichotomouspurity.blogspot.com/2019/11/r...out-conclusions.html

dysjunct wrote: I watched OLD GUARD and thought it was fine for a breezy popcorn movie. No need to watch it again, but it entertained me just fine.

Watched it this weekend. Evidently Netflix thinks it'll be the first of many. I'm with you - was entertained. But if I want to see lots of people get shot, I'll watch John Wick.

Watched an interesting pair of low budget sci-fi flicks off Netflix Alone (with Frida Pinto about a toxic ashfall) and Elizabeth Harvest (with Ceasar from Rome about a dude with a young wife he baits by saying "you can go into any room but THAT one). While not related in any way that I can tell, they are thematically very similar with women being controlled by men (nominally for their own good) and they lash out against it to establish their own agency, even to their personal detriment. Not sure if I would have made these connections in a pre-#metoo era (the female being the one in danger is a pretty universal trope) but the films make it pretty obvious.

I don't want to give any hard details since both films use extensive flashbacks to tell what could have been the opening exposition, revealing the backstory is 80% of the first 2 acts). Neither is particularly great sci-fi either. I guess I'm more willing to pass on obvious logic holes when it's the Gremlins (would Gizmo reproduce in a heavy fog, what about a late snack the night after daylight savings??) because that film has a bit of winking at itself while Alone and EH are both quite serious.

So they are watchable for the character moments. Alone is much more subdued but has some really tragic moments of real emotion. EH is just bananas with a hundred twists and more scenery chewing than a hot dog eating contest, but it is fun because it is impossible to guess WTF is going on half the time. Neither completely stick the landing, EH in particular, but mostly because these are not films about solving problems, more about dealing with the hand you've been dealt.