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

It was a similar story with Rocky as well. Stallone clearly found a niche and did very well from it but when you take those two movies alongside Copland I wonder at all the great performances we missed from him while he was grunting one-liners for big payouts.

It would be interesting to know if there is a cut of First Blood where Rambo dies in the end like he did in the book.

I can't really blame Stallone for pivoting Rambo into an 80's testosterone fueled action icon, Rambo II was such a damn fun film and while I don't think it started the "American POWs are still being held in Vietnam" obsession it certainly did the most to benefit from it.

Watched Gremlins this weekend. I've been trying to get my kids to watch it for a while now and the wife and I eventually just gave up and watched it ourselves. WOW, I had forgotten how violent and gory that film is! The kitchen battle, the science teacher (who even remembers that guy?), the fantastic puppet effects. Turns out that film would have been nightmare fuel for my kids so I guess them being freaked out just by Gizmo was a good thing.

And damn if that film didn't have some heavyweight talent behind it. It's no indy schlocky horror film despite how it looks compared to films of today. And it reaffirms my opinion that Kevin Kline is the luckiest guy in Hollywood

Copland was an okay movie, and Stallone's restrained performance was one of the best things in the movie.

I re-watched The Suicide Squad on Sunday, as it was the last day that HBO would have it available, and enjoyed it just as much the second time around. Yes, it is a very violent movie laced with profanity. But the cast includes some good actors, and the script is good enough to allow them some occasional great character moments. There is a playful sense of humor throughout the movie, but that humor often goes dark as night, and this is still more of an action movie than a comedy. And there is a surprising amount of creativity in the direction. Idris Elba anchors the movie with his steady, cynical presence. John Cena exceeded my expectations by miles, revealing a surprise knack for comedy. Margot Robbie steals every scene as Harley Quinn, bringing an often inappropriate joy to even the bleakest moments. A variety of less famous actors all bring something worthwhile to the table. The Suicide Squad is definitely not going to be fun for the whole family, but it does deliver a rich experience covering a surprising range of emotion.

I watched one of the more recent DC animated flicks, Justice League Dark:War on Apokalips or whatever it was and it is VERY similar in tone to the new SS. So there is more of that kinda thing if you want it. Quite a lot of SS stuff in that movie as well, including Harley Quinn. I still can't figure out why they can write characters that feel authentic to the source material for these cartoon films but then fall flat on their face for the live action stuff. I think DC tends to hunt for bigger name actors that don't quite embody the character as well, while Marvel goes for lesser known actors with the right personality and then anchors them with veteran actors in supporting roles.

I also saw one of the more recent DC animated flicks, Deathstroke: Knights & Dragons. Like many DC cartoons and movies, it doesn't match up with the continuity of any other DC cartoons or movies. Which makes sense, because DC comics has repeatedly rebooted its comic book continuity since 1985. Deathstroke is an odd choice for his own movie, as he is primarily known as a villain, aside from a short-lived monthly comic where he was more of an anti-hero. Sure, he has a sense of honor and decency, but he is a mercenary assassin. He was definitely a bad guy in both Arrow and Titans, though those are separate continuities from this movie.

This seems to be a world where there are no superheroes at all. Just Deathstroke, 75% of his immediate family, one supervillain, and one villainous organization. It's an okay movie. Decent voice acting, adequate animation, a reasonable story with a reasonable pace that occasionally aspires to actual character development. I never quite cared about the characters, but I respected the effort. There is a fair amount of action, and the gore is fairly restrained, but I wouldn't recommend this movie for young kids at all. Deathstroke: Knights & Dragons is an okay movie, but don't go out of your way to see it unless you are a big fan of DC comics.

jason10mm wrote: I can't really blame Stallone for pivoting Rambo into an 80's testosterone fueled action icon

The difference between the era prior to Reagan, and the era after. America was deep in a mode of introspection in the late 70s and early 80s. By the time you get to Rambo the whole country is waving the flag and thinking it can do no wrong. Both films reflect the times they were produced.

I need a family tree map thing for all of these films since there are some that seem to be related and others that are elseworlds or whatever DC calls their one shots. I usually just try to use voice actors as connective tissue but even then they are all over the place. I do like the more gritty tone in animation as they still slip in a lot of jokes.

I watched part of some Mortal Kombat:Scorpions legacy or somesuch thing and good god was it violent as hell. Seeing ninjas get turned into animated sushi complete with bone and organ cross sections was like dialing it back to 80's anime with Legend of Ninja Scroll and others that had ultragraphic scenes that must have taken WEEKS to animate. Looked a lot like the same studio that did Invincible.

Heck, I fired up Princess Mononoke for the kids, phshawed at the PG-13 rating ("It's Studio Ghibi, how bad could it be??"), and then had to turn it off because I had forgotten how much nightmare fuel that worm coated boar was and then all the decapitations and dismemberments that guy could do with his cursed arm archery. I'm scared to try Spirited Away, Ponyo or Castle of Cagliostro because I'm worried I've forgotten all the bits my kids won't like.


Things were definitely different back in the day. I figure when my son is 10-11 I'll have him host a halloween sleep-over and spring Gremlins, Poltergeist, and maybe Bettlejuice on them to show those punks how tough we were back in the day

I forgot to mention that the Deathstroke movie was 100% serious, without even a single joke.

Shellhead wrote: I forgot to mention that the Deathstroke movie was 100% serious, without even a single joke.

Given how Deathstroke seemed to have changed at the snydercut JL final scene, I wonder if the Deathstroke cartoon was supposed to flesh out the character for the future JLA films. Joe Manganello certainly was psyched to play DS at the time and hinted at a lot of stuff with that character.

1973's The Baby, which Wikipedia describes as a psychological thriller, is arguably less a thriller, or even psychological, than a sociological critique of do-gooders and social welfare. I'm not sure it qualifies as incisive in its critique, but it works better on that level than on that of the individual characters. Maybe this film, also described as a cult classic, is familiar to people here, but, in case it isn't, the so-called baby in this movie is an infantalized 21-year-old man. That is not a spoiler, but rather the premise.

jason10mm wrote: I watched one of the more recent DC animated flicks, Justice League Dark:War on Apokalips or whatever it was and it is VERY similar in tone to the new SS. So there is more of that kinda thing if you want it. Quite a lot of SS stuff in that movie as well, including Harley Quinn. I still can't figure out why they can write characters that feel authentic to the source material for these cartoon films but then fall flat on their face for the live action stuff. I think DC tends to hunt for bigger name actors that don't quite embody the character as well, while Marvel goes for lesser known actors with the right personality and then anchors them with veteran actors in supporting roles.

Maybe DC is just better at animation? Or there's just more freedom in the lower-stakes environment of niche animation for DC, and thus the stories can emerge more organically? Fundamentally, Marvel has treated its characters as (mostly) ordinary folks with powers, which is easier to play into live action than paragons/archetypes who occasionally have outside lives. Painting with a broad brush here, of course.

jpat wrote:

jason10mm wrote: I watched one of the more recent DC animated flicks, Justice League Dark:War on Apokalips or whatever it was and it is VERY similar in tone to the new SS. So there is more of that kinda thing if you want it. Quite a lot of SS stuff in that movie as well, including Harley Quinn. I still can't figure out why they can write characters that feel authentic to the source material for these cartoon films but then fall flat on their face for the live action stuff. I think DC tends to hunt for bigger name actors that don't quite embody the character as well, while Marvel goes for lesser known actors with the right personality and then anchors them with veteran actors in supporting roles.

Maybe DC is just better at animation? Or there's just more freedom in the lower-stakes environment of niche animation for DC, and thus the stories can emerge more organically? Fundamentally, Marvel has treated its characters as (mostly) ordinary folks with powers, which is easier to play into live action than paragons/archetypes who occasionally have outside lives. Painting with a broad brush here, of course.

That's a good point. Before Marvel came along, the vast majority of superheroes in comics had generic do-gooder personalities. Marvel heroes had more distinctive personalities and those personalities often endured through many changes in creative teams. When these heroes get translated into different mediums like cartoons, tv shows, and movies, the Marvel heroes were more likely to retain their established personalities. For better or worse, DC heroes were more of a blank slate. That leaves a sociopath like Zack Snyder free to interpret Superman as a sociopath. But it also gives the writing team for Doom Patrol the freedom to craft interesting personalities for silver age characters like Elasti-Girl and Negative Man. I'm not sure why DC cartoons tend to be so much better than Marvel cartoons, except that Bruce Timm and Paul Dini set such a high bar with their work on the DC Animated Universe shows, at least from 1992 - 2006.

Yeah, I agree with you on this. For whatever reason in animation I'm totally cool with batman sitting at a table, in full costume, eating a bowl of cereal. But in live action this looks ridiculous. Even batman talking to police looks odd unless he is Ben Affleck big (well BvS big, not fatfleck big).

DC has such iconic costumes it is hard to transition them into uniforms like marvel has been able to do. This affects all their live action stuff in a detrimental way I think.

jpat wrote: Fundamentally, Marvel has treated its characters as (mostly) ordinary folks with powers, which is easier to play into live action than paragons/archetypes who occasionally have outside lives. Painting with a broad brush here, of course.

This is, in fact, the essential difference between the two companies and why Marvel began eating DC's lunch from the late 60s on, especially once they realized that their primary audience wasn't 8-year-olds, but college-aged males. Even then, many kids will relate better to a character who has actual human feelings other than blank smiles and angst over what Captain Boomerang might be up to today. Despite trying to "Marvel-ize" their output with Crisis on Infinite Earths after the success of things like The Dark Knight Returns, Watchmen, and the Vertigo imprint, DC has persisted in presenting its characters as superheroes first, occasionally humans second. John Byrne, who revamped Superman, post-Crisis was essentially fired because editors and higher-ups at DC/Warner Brothers couldn't stand the idea of the character with actual human interests, such as a relationship that didn't fall out of a Hallmark card. It's why almost all of their films other than stuff involving The Batman fail, too. They're still stuck in the 1950s. (Witness the "Batman won't eat pussy" meme that was running around Twitter a couple months back.)

Watched The Vault on Netflix. Standard heist film, very definition of average.