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

There was a stretch of time there when you couldn't swing a stick without hitting a teen dystopian movie, and that time was also when my daughter was a teen. So I got to see all of those - The Hunger Games, The Maze Runner, Divergent*, The 5th Wave, etc. The Hunger Games was the best of those by far IMO.

*My daughter gave me no peace until I read Divergent. It wasn't horrible, wasn't great, and I was definitely not its target audience.

Saw Rebecca last night; the Netflix one, not the Hitchcock one. Gothic Romances aren't normally my thing, but my wife beat me to the remote and I was bored. Perfectly cromulent. Hitchcock's won the Academy Award. This one will not. Everything in it was fine, not great.

A little research afterwards showed that the new one was closer to the book because Hitchcock didn't want to run too far afoul of the Hayes code.

Two years in (ahem) limbo did not help The New Mutants. I'm sure all the costs were sunk, so getting anything back by releasing it was better than not releasing it, but it does nothing to retroactively burnish Fox's reputation for producing solid mutant/Marvel movies. The interpersonal elements are the best part, but even those are bogged down by confessional exposition (and a literal truth-or-dare contest) and drag well into the second and maybe even the third act. The whole movie hews closely to the vastly superior X-men: First Class while also borrowing heavily from movies that if not horror classics, are at least well known. (Nightmare on Elm Street 3 seems to be a particular influence.) There was potential here in blending horror and superpowers, but it's completely lost.

I haven't heard anything great about The New Mutants, but I saw a trailer featuring Anya Taylor-Joy, who seems perfectly cast as Magik. That plus Maisie Williams as Wolfsbane is enough reason for me to eventually watch it. I agree that the X-men movie franchise has been generally disappointing. First Class and Days of Future Past were decent, Logan was amazing, and the Deadpool movies were fun. Everything else has been a misuse of big budgets and quality actors.

MANK (Netflix) is really good so far. Shot so beautifully and written incredibly well, especially if coming off back-to-back JUMANJI movies.

I was feeling really nostalgic yesterday, so I pulled up Beastmaster on Amazon. So great. I mean, it's bad, I know that, but it's also good. I remember watching this all the time back in high school/college. Back when you didn't get to pick what was playing, and you just left whatever on.

Amazon listed it as PG-13, but IMDb says PG (I don't think PG-13 existed yet). There's violence, but with zero blood or gore, and there were boobies! Wow, how far we've come since the 80s; now it would be the opposite.

Who would have thought Beastmaster would have like 3 film sequels and a TV spin off?

It is a fun film with such weird elements like those helmeted beserker guys and the butterface witches. The acid wing bat dudes alone will cement the film as a cult fav.

It would be nice to see more adaptations of the 50s-70s fantasy stuff out there, they were so trippy and I think the technology to do them right is pretty accessible these days.

Non sexual nudity was pretty common in PG stuff back then. Though I think BM predates PG-13 by a year or 2, I'm sure that is a more appropriate rating. It's odd how America has become significantly more prudish on nudity in recent years while the violence/gore tolerance has skyrocketed.

I watched a few action flicks off Netflix. Peppermint and Ava. Both are thematically pretty similar, though Peppermint is more TAKEN with a woman and Ava is the tired trope of hitman done wrong for no discernable reason by their shadowy employer.

Anyhoo, the action in both is pretty good, Ava leans into cgi muzzle flashes a bit much. It's nice to see female fight choreography has realized that even fairly dense and fit women can't stand toe to toe with 250 pound men and trade punches (the River Tam bar fight in Serenity is the WORSE example of this) instead they have to lean into jujitsu and oblique attacks. Jennifer Gardner (Peppermint) is no stranger to this type of action and I gotta think that messy divorce from Ben Affleck fueled her characters rage. Jessica Chastain (Ava) is too detached and clinical to really sell the regretful assassin role but she is surrounded by lots of actors just having fun so she makes it through till the lackluster ending. I think they just ran out of money.

Drive in theaters are doing Christmas movies now. I've dropped many hints that me and the wife had better be seeing Die Hard

I'm extremely late to the party, but I just watched The Handmaiden on Amazon Prime. This film is by the director of Old Boy, and I don't think I've seen a film this good since Shape of Water.

A den of thieves basically plans to steal a wealthy woman's fortune through deception. Things don't go as planned...

I can't recommend this one enough; but don't watch with the children around.

I could have sworn I posted something here about Paterson, but I can't find it. So I watched Paterson with Adam Driver, about a bus driver who works in Paterson, New Jersey, and loves William Carlos Williams' book Paterson. And the bus driver's name is Paterson. The movie shows him going to work, scribbling down some poetry during free moments, and interacting with his wife, who is played by Iranian actor Golshifteh Farahani, who is the opposite of Driver's careful, introverted, quiet character, constantly turning the world around her into visual art. They remind me of some young couple in Portland in the nineties, working at crappy jobs and trying to fill their lives with art and meaning. Watching it, I felt like I was back in college watching free art films at BYU's International Cinema, where, like Iran, they took out the naughty words and naked times. Let me tell you, Delicatessen was a very different movie. Anyone who would like this movie pretty much knows they will like this movie and has probably already seen it, because movies like this are hard to come by.

In an interview Jim Jarmusch said:

[William Carlos Williams’] book Paterson, by the way, is not one of my favorite poems—in fact, it goes over my head, I don’t understand a lot of it. But at the beginning of it, a man is a metaphor for the city of Paterson, and vice-versa. And I thought that’s just a beautiful idea. I thought I’d like to write a little treatment about a poet, a working-class guy in Paterson who’s actually a very good poet but not a known one. So I had that little one-page treatment in a drawer for years. I kept remembering it, but I never really got to it until now.

Most of the poems in the movie are by Ron Padgett. Here is one that I randomly chose:

How to Be Perfect
BY RON PADGETT
Everything is perfect, dear friend.
—KEROUAC

Get some sleep.

Don't give advice.

Take care of your teeth and gums.

Don't be afraid of anything beyond your control. Don't be afraid, for
instance, that the building will collapse as you sleep, or that someone
you love will suddenly drop dead.

Eat an orange every morning.

Be friendly. It will help make you happy.

Raise your pulse rate to 120 beats per minute for 20 straight minutes
four or five times a week doing anything you enjoy.

Hope for everything. Expect nothing.

Take care of things close to home first. Straighten up your room
before you save the world. Then save the world.

Know that the desire to be perfect is probably the veiled expression
of another desire—to be loved, perhaps, or not to die.

Make eye contact with a tree.

Be skeptical about all opinions, but try to see some value in each of
them.

Dress in a way that pleases both you and those around you.

Do not speak quickly.

Learn something every day. (Dzien dobre!)

Be nice to people before they have a chance to behave badly.

Don't stay angry about anything for more than a week, but don't
forget what made you angry. Hold your anger out at arm's length
and look at it, as if it were a glass ball. Then add it to your glass ball
collection.

Be loyal.

Wear comfortable shoes.

Design your activities so that they show a pleasing balance
and variety.

Be kind to old people, even when they are obnoxious. When you
become old, be kind to young people. Do not throw your cane at
them when they call you Grandpa. They are your grandchildren!

Live with an animal.

Do not spend too much time with large groups of people.

If you need help, ask for it.

Cultivate good posture until it becomes natural.

If someone murders your child, get a shotgun and blow his head off.

Plan your day so you never have to rush.

Show your appreciation to people who do things for you, even if you
have paid them, even if they do favors you don't want.

Do not waste money you could be giving to those who need it.

Expect society to be defective. Then weep when you find that it is far
more defective than you imagined.

When you borrow something, return it in an even better condition.

As much as possible, use wooden objects instead of plastic or metal
ones.

Look at that bird over there.

After dinner, wash the dishes.

Calm down.

Visit foreign countries, except those whose inhabitants have
expressed a desire to kill you.

Don't expect your children to love you, so they can, if they want to.

Meditate on the spiritual. Then go a little further, if you feel like it.
What is out (in) there?

Sing, every once in a while.

Be on time, but if you are late do not give a detailed and lengthy
excuse.

Don't be too self-critical or too self-congratulatory.

Don't think that progress exists. It doesn't.

Walk upstairs.

Do not practice cannibalism.

Imagine what you would like to see happen, and then don't do
anything to make it impossible.

Take your phone off the hook at least twice a week.

Keep your windows clean.

Extirpate all traces of personal ambitiousness.

Don't use the word extirpate too often.

Forgive your country every once in a while. If that is not possible, go
to another one.

If you feel tired, rest.

Grow something.

Do not wander through train stations muttering, "We're all going to
die!"

Count among your true friends people of various stations of life.

Appreciate simple pleasures, such as the pleasure of chewing, the
pleasure of warm water running down your back, the pleasure of a
cool breeze, the pleasure of falling asleep.

Do not exclaim, "Isn't technology wonderful!"

Learn how to stretch your muscles. Stretch them every day.

Don't be depressed about growing older. It will make you feel even
older. Which is depressing.

Do one thing at a time.

If you burn your finger, put it in cold water immediately. If you bang
your finger with a hammer, hold your hand in the air for twenty
minutes. You will be surprised by the curative powers of coldness and
gravity.

Learn how to whistle at earsplitting volume.

Be calm in a crisis. The more critical the situation, the calmer you
should be.

Enjoy sex, but don't become obsessed with it. Except for brief periods
in your adolescence, youth, middle age, and old age.

Contemplate everything's opposite.

If you're struck with the fear that you've swum out too far in the
ocean, turn around and go back to the lifeboat.

Keep your childish self alive.

Answer letters promptly. Use attractive stamps, like the one with a
tornado on it.

Cry every once in a while, but only when alone. Then appreciate
how much better you feel. Don't be embarrassed about feeling better.

Do not inhale smoke.

Take a deep breath.

Do not smart off to a policeman.

Do not step off the curb until you can walk all the way across the
street. From the curb you can study the pedestrians who are trapped
in the middle of the crazed and roaring traffic.

Be good.

Walk down different streets.

Backwards.

Remember beauty, which exists, and truth, which does not. Notice
that the idea of truth is just as powerful as the idea of beauty.

Stay out of jail.

In later life, become a mystic.

Use Colgate toothpaste in the new Tartar Control formula.

Visit friends and acquaintances in the hospital. When you feel it is
time to leave, do so.

Be honest with yourself, diplomatic with others.

Do not go crazy a lot. It's a waste of time.

Read and reread great books.

Dig a hole with a shovel.

In winter, before you go to bed, humidify your bedroom.

Know that the only perfect things are a 300 game in bowling and a
27-batter, 27-out game in baseball.

Drink plenty of water. When asked what you would like to drink,
say, "Water, please."

Ask "Where is the loo?" but not "Where can I urinate?"

Be kind to physical objects.

Beginning at age forty, get a complete "physical" every few years
from a doctor you trust and feel comfortable with.

Don't read the newspaper more than once a year.

Learn how to say "hello," "thank you," and "chopsticks"
in Mandarin.

Belch and fart, but quietly.

Be especially cordial to foreigners.

See shadow puppet plays and imagine that you are one of the
characters. Or all of them.

Take out the trash.

Love life.

Use exact change.

When there's shooting in the street, don't go near the window.

Paterson is excellent. A while back I bought a game from a friend and he gave me a copy of Paterson along with it by way of apology that he knew the game wasn't great and I'd soon be selling it on myself. The game was indeed very mediocre and Paterson was indeed very very good.

I watched Sound of Metal on Amazon Prime last night. It is excellent.

The cover story is about a rock drummer who loses his hearing (not a spoiler, happens in the first 5 minutes), but the real story is much deeper than that. It uses sound design in a fantastic way to put you inside the character, and it addresses the ideas of addiction recovery and self-realization in a very positive way. Highly recommended.

I’m two hours into Avengers Endgame and IT JUST WON’T END.

The final battle is an hour long.

It just started. This is awful. Y’all paid money for this?