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

The 1st half of Black Adam is awful.

The 2nd half is worse.

Your best two posts this week

Over the course of the long holiday weekend, I re-watched the Lord of the Rings trilogy. We have all probably seen it by now and there isn't much to say at this point. However, I was very amused that Amazon felt the need to post warnings at the start of each movie regarding SMOKING.

Growing up, smoking was so normal in society. Now it’s so unusual to see anyone smoke in movies or real life. That’s a genuinely good thing.

Shellhead wrote: Over the course of the long holiday weekend, I re-watched the Lord of the Rings trilogy. We have all probably seen it by now and there isn't much to say at this point. However, I was very amused that Amazon felt the need to post warnings at the start of each movie regarding SMOKING.

Regular or Extended ?

n815e wrote: Growing up, smoking was so normal in society. Now it’s so unusual to see anyone smoke in movies or real life. That’s a genuinely good thing.

I wish I could say the same. Here I feel society has given up on the issue and no longer cares. Every day, people smoke in the train station, even if it's banned and the guards won't say anything. Hell, most of the time I have to move because they will sit down on your bench and light up a cigarette.

It's awful. It's one thing that is done much better in the US than here.

Msample wrote:

Shellhead wrote: Over the course of the long holiday weekend, I re-watched the Lord of the Rings trilogy. We have all probably seen it by now and there isn't much to say at this point. However, I was very amused that Amazon felt the need to post warnings at the start of each movie regarding SMOKING.

Regular or Extended ?

Regular this time. Last time I watched the trilogy, I went Extended, and I wish I had that time back.

Erik Twice wrote:

n815e wrote: Growing up, smoking was so normal in society. Now it’s so unusual to see anyone smoke in movies or real life. That’s a genuinely good thing.

I wish I could say the same. Here I feel society has given up on the issue and no longer cares. Every day, people smoke in the train station, even if it's banned and the guards won't say anything. Hell, most of the time I have to move because they will sit down on your bench and light up a cigarette.

It's awful. It's one thing that is done much better in the US than here.

It seems like everybody else in the world smokes more than Americans now. That might just be a single positive thing about our terrible healthcare system, that Americans pay more directly for their own health problems and therefore have more incentive to quit smoking.

When they banned smoking in my town, I was shocked that smokers actually complied. Smokers hated it, but they honored the law. I was convinced they'd just ignore it.

These days you still can't smoke, but you can vape. Marginally better for you? Maybe.

I remember when the trailer for Bullet Train came out. The movie looked fun and exciting.

Yesterday I watched it since it's on Netflix. It's too long, and while a couple of characters are mildly interesting, including Brad Pitt's, the writing is mostly hacky and the movie physics surrounding the bullet train itself are REALLY too much. Like imagine the most ridiculous things they might have happen with a bullet train, and then make them more ridiculous.

If it was 30+ minutes shorter, I'd give it a half-hearted recommendation, but.... nah

Saturday night, I watched one of my all-time favorite movies with the woman I started dating last month. Donnie Darko (2001) is definitely a flawed movie, and yet this is like the 10th time that I have seen it. The alternate timeline is crucial to the movie, but it is also the only weak element of the movie. Good actors, good dialogue, interesting ideas, and multiple subplots that would function well as the main storyline in a lesser movie. All of this other stuff is great, and bears an authenticity that suggests the director is drawing directly on his own experiences circa 1988. The use of music in the movie is excellent, and the song selections are appropriate and effective, especially the final song with Gary Jules covering Tears for Fears. And all of these things are tightly woven in with the unfortunate alternate timeline concept, and yet the quality sustains the movie. Great cast, featuring Jake and Maggie Gyllenhaal, Drew Barrymore, Patrick Swayzne, Noah Wyle, Mary McDonnell (of Battlestar Galactica), and Seth Rogen. The movie was filmed with a paltry budget of $5 million and still looks great. Drew Barrymore reportedly read the original script and fought to get this movie made.

Sunday night, I saw that HBO now has the Hellraiser movie collection. It didn't include the first two movies, but that's fine with me because I have seen both of them twice, and none of the rest. So I watched Hellraiser 3: Hell on Earth (1992). Despite coming out in 1992, Hellraiser 3 is culturally rooted in the late '80s, with hair bands and mall hair. The dialogue is not bad, but the acting is barely tolerable. There are several very attractive people in the movie, and the sets look good. The FX is not good, even by pre-CGI standards. The story moves along at a reasonable pace, but the endgame features an overwhelming quantity of corpses and a series of gratuitous explosions. Even so, I am looking forward to Hellraiser 4: Bloodlines, which is supposedly one of the better movies in the franchise, but might bail on the rest.

I forget where I stopped watching hellraisers but they get REALLY bad not very long after 3. Fun fact, a lot of 3 was filmed downtown in my town. I remember going and watching them film some stuff in my youth. It makes me like that one a lot more than is probably warranted, but it's a masterpiece compared to what came after.

Edit: I watched Slap Shot last night, my wife checked it out of the library since she's real into hockey these days. It's a Paul Newman led comedy about hockey goonery from the 70s... There were spots of really funny stuff scattered throughout but a lot of the "comedy" was calling someone a faggot or saying snatch or whatever, which didn't really hold up so well. I did spot a My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult sample, which amused be. On the whole it wasn't great.

If you want to try another hockey comedy, give Goon a shot. It’s from 2011 so it might have some of the same jokes as Slapshot somehow, but I remember really enjoying it. Like Mr. 3000, it’s a sports movie that isn’t about winning at all.

Ah_Pook wrote: I forget where I stopped watching hellraisers but they get REALLY bad not very long after 3. Fun fact, a lot of 3 was filmed downtown in my town. I remember going and watching them film some stuff in my youth. It makes me like that one a lot more than is probably warranted, but it's a masterpiece compared to what came after.

Hah, me too!

I recall being very miffed that I missed Terry Farrell though I suppose at the time of filming Hellraiser 3 she had not yet been on Star Trek. Those where the days when filming info was hard to get and you had to go through magazines or Leonard Maltins books, or crawl through a very skeezy early internet.

Same thing happened with Dawsons Creek actually.

When I lived in Atlanta I made sure to celeb spot more aggressively