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

I finally got to see the outlier Marvel film, Venom. Tom Hardy plays Eddie Brock, but relocated to San Francisco, away from that troublesome Peter Parker.

Most of the Venom lore from the comics is altered in this film, but that's not really the problem here. The problem is that the script itself is just stupid, and Tom Hardy is wasted on this role. I think Venom is a cool character and concept, but I don't think it works in a vacuum... you need Carnage, you need Spider-Man. Maybe if they got all three of those things together, they could get a good movie out of the idea.

Shellhead wrote: It seems like movies that are slightly shorter than 90 minutes are always bad. Is it just me? I don't have any recent examples, but I have noticed that when I sort through viewing options, I never see appealing movies of that length. The collective star ratings of Amazon prime viewers seem pretty reliable (most movies with at least 4 stars are good, most with less stars are bad), and they tend to rate these slightly short movies as worse than average.

I use a plug-in that shows the IMDb and meta critic scores superimposed on the movie icon.

I’ve seen tenet twice. It was a more emotionally resonant movie the second time, with Branagh’s whole gotterdammerung thing and the end of the world. I need to watch the YouTube stuff.

I rewatched North by Northwest. Pretty good but showing its age, maybe. Up next: the original Manchurian candidate.

Almost Famous, second viewing. Great movie about rock and roll bands, their fans, and the critics. The cast is amazing, both for level of talent and for appropriate casting. I normally dislike Kate Hudson and her smug face, but she is positively radiant in this movie. I am also not a great fan of Frances McDormand, but she takes a challenging role and delivers a very nuanced performance. Patrick Fugit is wonderful as a young Cameron Crowe proxy, managing to convey both keen intelligence and sweet innocence. Billy Crudup is warm and charismatic, and reminds me of my hippie uncle who joined a commune and now runs his own farm. The musical selections are slightly weighted towards Led Zeppelin, but are always just right for the moment. This movie affects me on a deep level, because it connects to my own teenage fantasy of becoming a rock critic while I was typing up news briefs, reviews, and human interest stories for the high school newspaper. My life took a very different path, and Almost Famous takes me back to that distant fork in the road.

WONDER WOMAN 84. Oy, what a slog that was. Clocking in at 2.5 hours, glad I didn't sit in the theater for that one, pandemic or not. While not terrible, just dull and strangely devoid of much of the 80s nostalgia feel that the first trailer promised.

I'd pretty much forgotten most of the emotionally darker elements of Purple Rain and mainly remembered the music. The movie is actually reasonably plotted, and there's a reasonably realized character arc for Prince's The Kid, but the treatment of domestic abuse is, if not incidental or entirely cavalier, is both pretty tough to watch and overly tidily resolved. Probably the most shocking moment is Morris Day's pal Jerome's treatment of a woman who's upset with Morris for not coming to see her the night before. So I definitely would not recommend it to a modern audience for anything but the music, which, thankfully, dominates the picture and is as electric as ever.

We saw The Thin Man for the first time on HBO Max the other day, and it was significantly entertaining still. It's clear why there were five sequels, although I think they taper off in quality toward the end, from looking at review aggregations. The film's been restored, so the picture is sharp and the sound is quite good except for a low-level hiss or thrum.

Been on something of a run lately.

BRICK: Rian Johnson's rookie effort. Basically a Dashiell Hammett story set at San Clemente HS. I liked it a lot back when I first saw it and have cooled somewhat since, but it's still pretty amazing. GREAT young cast.

ARCHIVE: Wonky SF film that probably didn't need to be made because EX MACHINA, SILENT RUNNING, BLADE RUNNER, 2001, &c &c all exist, going back to METROPOLIS. Did you know men are emotionally distant??? Did you know androids that are like people have moral implications??????

PROSPECT: Nice SF tale with Western vibes, dwells on the inevitable exploitation of other worlds as we venture to the staaaaaars.

GHOST IN THE SHELL: I think you needed to see this when it came out to be really wowed by it. It's -good-, but folks worship it like a god. My viewing was not helped by being dubbed (Amazon, can you not afford the Japanese version?)

UNDER THE SILVER LAKE: This looks like it should be great and just falls apart in like seven ways. Someone is trying to channel David Lynch and whiffing badly. The build up is so sloooooow, and the payoff is such a dud I laughed out loud. INHERENT VICE is much much better and that movie is not good. What a letdown.

I've already talked about Johnny Mnemonic here in the past, but I watched it again last night because it takes place in 2021. Surprisingly decent cast doing an okay B-movie. Dolph Lundgren will surprise you. Dina Meyer gets a better part later, playing Dizzy in Starship Troopers. This movie paved the way for Keanu Reeves starring in the Matrix Trilogy.

Speaking of Keanu, I watched Bill & Ted Face the Music. I liked it a lot. I mean, it's a Bill & Ted movie, but I thought it was pretty good if you are into that sort of thing.

Many years ago, I tried to watch Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. I mean, I sat there and gave the movie my full attention, but I had trouble telling all these British white guys apart. Part of the problem was that I struggled a bit with the accents. The story adds to the challenge, because a group of four guys steals from another group of four guys who stole from another group of four guys. And there is only one woman with a name in the whole movie, and she spends most of the movie passed out. Anyway, I tried again and this time I was able to follow everything and tell the characters apart. And the accent was no problem at all. It probably helped a lot that I have watched a fair amount of BBC shows in the last five years.

I love Lock Stock. Plus you get Sting!

LSTSB can be viewed as sort of a warm up/rough draft of what became SNATCH . The latter moves at a much better clip IMO and imports some American actors that make the movie more accessible IMO. I've watched SNATCH a bunch of times, but LSTSB only a couple I think.

Steven Soderbergh's Haywire, a thriller with a female protagonist, is lavishly praised by the New York Times but only has a 5.8 on IMDB. Who do I trust?

Just saw it on Friday. It’s worth your ninety minutes. Felt a lot like Three Days of the Condor in tone with modern action sensibilities. You have to be prepared to feel off balance and not really understand what’s going on for about seventy minutes. However, if you can deal with that, you’ll be treated to Gina Carano beating down a ridiculously overqualified supporting cast in a way that feels realistic and earned as opposed to Black Widow’s flippy, spinny neck breaks.

It’s not life changing or anything, but it’s a very well crafted film. I do wish there was another scene or two to develop one or two relationships and character beats, but that could have ruined the pace.

I'm not sure Haywire has been rated that low on IMDB until recently. Wondering if it was review bombed as a reaction to Gina Carano's pro-Trump/Election Fraud/COVID Tweeting the past few months.

charlest wrote: I'm not sure Haywire has been rated that low on IMDB until recently. Wondering if it was review bombed as a reaction to Gina Carano's pro-Trump/Election Fraud/COVID Tweeting the past few months.

Ah, I completely missed that little drama. Usually when IMDB scores seem out of alignment for me it is because the entire nation of India has upvoted something I am unfamiliar with.