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

After a busy morning, I was feeling lazy and randomly chose to watch Mystic Pizza, because Amazon Prime viewers rated it 4.5 stars. I could tell it wasn't my kind of movie when it debuted in 1988, and now I know I was right. Mystic Pizza is the story of three young women at the beginning of adulthood, making entirely predictable mistakes with their relationships. Still, the movie is notable for breaththrough performances by Julia Roberts, Vincent D'Onofrio, and Lili Taylor, as well as the brief screen debut of Matt Damon.

I feel like older stuff is highly suspect in ratings. No large group of people are discovering Mystic Pizza fresh, only folks who want to reminisce are watching it and thus will rate it higher.

But for Julia Roberts, its Pretty Woman or Flatliners by a landslide.

I shouldn't have watched Mystic Pizza. It wasn't a bad movie, but it had nothing to say to me. Last night, I watched Most Likely to Succeed, and that was the movie I needed instead of Mystic Pizza. Most Likely to Succeed is a documentary that starts with four high school seniors who were each considered "most likely to succeed" by their classmates at their respective schools, and then follows them for a decade, covering a span from 2007 to 2017. Sarah is a white female who wants to become a diplomat. Charles is a black male who wants to become a personal trainer. Peter is a white male who wants to become a teacher. Quay is a black female who wants to become a nurse who works with kids. The white kids come from upper middle class families. Quay comes from a poor family. Charles was raised by adoptive parents who left him behind when they moved during his senior year of high school. All four of them racked up numerous achievements in high school.

Honestly, no single one of these kids is interesting enough to carry a full movie. But each one of them is more than worth the 25 minutes of screen time they get to cover 10 years of living. All four of them pursue their goals, and yet all four of them find themselves doing something different by the end of the 10 years. There are some genuine surprises, some triumphs and tragedies, and all of them show considerable growth as human beings. Along the way, each one of them had at least a couple of insights into life that felt both personal and universal in scope. I often seek fictional entertainment because it can be more lively and memorable than mundane daily life. And yet sometimes the most interesting stories are the true ones, because real life can deliver surprises that wouldn't work in fiction. I highly recommend Most Likely to Succeed.

Last night I showed my two teenage boys Akira. I probably watch this movie once a year, and have seen it many, many times.

I knew it was a bit of a gamble since the movie itself is pretty slow; short bursts of action with a lot of talking in-between. One said it was confusing but cool, and the other said it was slow and actually fell asleep towards the end. He woke up to witness giant Tetsuo.

They don't make movies like this anymore. The detail is stunning, and the attention given to things like smoke and ice breaking is really something.

hotseatgames wrote: I knew it was a bit of a gamble since the movie itself is pretty slow; short bursts of action with a lot of talking in-between. One said it was confusing but cool, and the other said it was slow and actually fell asleep towards the end. He woke up to witness giant Tetsuo.

My girlfriend is a big anime fan, but I am not. I've seen some of the classics and some random other stuff that she was watching. I saw Akira a long time ago and don't remember much about it, except that I realized something important while watching it. Certain genres of Hollywood movies tend to step up the pace near the end. The action is quick and often explosive, and the storytelling accelerates towards a climax. Japanese movies of comparable genres often do the opposite: they slow down as they approach the climax of the story, with lengthy dramatic pauses in the action that can convey great tension or step over the line and induce boredom. Akira went a little to far and I had to struggle to stay awake near the end.

Last night I watched "Aliens" with my two daughters, aged 10 and 14.
They seem to be at the right age, as they are really into the tension-filled stuff, and not easily scared anymore.
I always had a bit of a mixed feeling about this movie. At one end it is pretty much a shallow rollercoaster ride without too much weight on the characters...on the other end, and this is what last nights showing proved for me is that the direction, script and careful build up of scenes is masterfully skilled. Cameron knows how to keep an incredible flow to the action, and (especially in the special edition) painstakingly creates scene after scene of thrilling moments pushing the sotry forward. Sure, the movie feels sometimes like a millitaristic promo video, but in it's core I felt it was better than I remembered, and turned out to be one of those magical movies (blade runner is also in this category) that despite it's age feels timeless and hasn't lost any of it's visual impact.

Aliens is one of my favorite films. It is a masterful combination of peak Cameron direction and storytelling paired with high budget model work and practical effects so it will last forever.

Watched a couple more Netflix horror films.

The Endless is a very low budget flick about two brothers who escaped a UFO death cult but go back because their lives on the outside are pretty bleak. They question things they remembered and what the cult actually is as shit gets weird. This is what I expected Midsommar to be. It is apparently a semi sequel to a 2012 film called Resolution (that I have not seen) so there is some wonkiness because of that but I don't think it hurts the film much. The little clip Netflix will show instead of a trailer will tell you everything you need to know going in. It is a pretty smart script and feels like it has rules to the madness, even if we the viewer don't fully understand them. A lot of untrustworthy narrator stuff as well which I like.

We summon the darkness is about a couple of womem going to a metal concert in the 80's in the background of a satanic murder spree. It is a decent film, headlined by the always interesting Alexandra Dadarrio, but it feels like a 7 when it really should have been cranked to 11. It has some twists and some gore but just not enough of either. It felt like it wanted to be a Richard Laymon story directed by Eli Roth but it reigns it in too much. Still, it is passable and avoids most of the dumb tropes of slasher type horror films.

I think Blade Runner is the better film, but it is slow, plodding, and off-putting. By contrast, Aliens is vastly more comfortable to watch with more modern pacing and action to my 2000s eye.

Resolution is a great film, and thankfully The Endless isn't really a sequel to it. They're very distantly related, and you can enjoy them both whichever way round you see them.

As I mentioned a while back, Doctor Sleep is a very worthy sequel to The Shining. In fact, I enjoyed it so much that I was a little dissatisfied afterwards that there was nothing else to watch in that same setting. And then I recently found that there is a director's cut of Doctor Sleep, adding another half hour to the movie, for a total of three hours. I normally get fidgety after the two-hour mark, and usually find that movies going over two hours would have been better if they were edited down to two hours or less. But this director's cut was fine, and the three hours still went by at a nice pace. In fact, I would have liked even more time spent at the Overlook Hotel. Ewan McGregor delivers a very understated performance and disappears nicely into his role. Rebecca Ferguson plays a delightful villain, and we will be seeing a lot more from her in the next couple of years. Ferguson is Swedish, but is completely convincing in an American role.

Watched Guns Akimbo with Harry Potter on Amazon. Really fun flick, sort of a blend of Crank, Deathrace2000, and Running Man. Totally ridiculous and hyperviolent. I wish they developed the bad guys a little more but they are basically bullet sponges so I guess it doesn't really matter. Amazing that Radcliffe has his "F you" money from HP and just shows up in bizarre projects like this. It has all the trappings of an 80s cult classic but is missing some ingredient to get there. Still a fun watch IMHO.

Blow the Man Down - A "comedy" that's not funny and more of a small-town drama but also has 98% on rottentomatoes. A pair of sisters gets caught up in a murder connected to the towns shady history. The accents seem more Boston than Maine but even then they were pretty good. In fact the whole movie pulled off a New England vibe much better than most others that have tried to. I liked that the town was basically a run by what seemed to be a few gossipy old ladies and that you have to piece some things together yourself.

I liked Blow the Man Down, but it fell short of the great dark comedy that it could have been.

We started a weekly movie night for the boys a month or so ago, taking advantage of our Disney+ subscription. Mostly Disney Renaissance and Pixar stuff, but I want to talk about How to Train Your Dragon. It was the first time I'd ever seen it, and it was a pretty solid entry for the non-Pixar, non-Aardman, non-Laika tier. Solid theme of looking for non-violent and compassionate solutions to problems, and Toothless is adorable. Jay Baruchel wasn't a great choice for the lead, somehow coming off as cocky, whining and self-pitying all in the same scene, a feat only matched in irritation by Anakin in Episodes 2 and 3.

But why are Vikings all Scottish now? Is it because Gerard Butler's chief is about ten pieces of flair short of offering quests in Dun Morogh in Warcraft, and popular culture has decided that dwarves are Scottish, even though they are largely products of Nordic and Germanic mythology? Is it because the director figured the audience wouldn't see these cartoon Vikings as fierce enough if they sounded like the Swedish Chef? What's going on?

You're right, as Scandinavians speaking English they should all sound like Minnesotans or Iowegians.