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

For me Godzilla: Minus One was the second best film of the year (first is Past Lives.)

Puts the Legendary series to shame.

There was some seriously cool tech stuff in it, cool navy stuff, and an airplane I now want. I so want to make a Wings of Glory scenario out of this.

Plot is tight, and not just about trashing buildings. Historic, emotional, some well-defined characters.

And let's face it, when 'zilla breathes in deep, some serious shit goes down!

I have been watching the Mission Impossible movies lately, and just finished the fifth one the other night. The first one was cool-looking gibberish, and even Tom Cruise has publicly admitted that he can't explain the plot. The second one was also cool-looking with a rubbish story. The third installment is a definite improvement, especially by introducing more humor via supporting actor Simon Pegg. The fourth and fifth movies are high-quality action movies. None of these movies are a good representation of the old Mission Impossible tv show, which relied on good writing, good acting, and clever misdirection to deliver suspense. The only consistent references in the movies to the old show are the excellent theme song, the self-destructing mission instructions, and the occasional rubber mask reveal. Otherwise, these movies are just high-end Tom Cruise movies, with Tom playing his usual role. He's a rebel and the best at everything he does. He has a terrific smile and he can't be stopped. So basically, Tom Cruise with plot armor. That said, there have been a very respectable number of other fine actors in these movies, like Thandie Newton, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Maggie Q, Ving Rahmes, and Rebecca Ferguson.

Agreed, they are not great films but usually have a few moments that make them decent.

A big part of the appeal now is going with practical effects and legitimate stunts over CGI. Compare the action in Dead Reckoning with that of Dial of Destiny. Night and day.

I believe the first scene they filmed in Dead Reckoning was the motorcycle jump stunt, because they weren't sure if they would be able to pull it off.

Fallout is the best MI film in my opinion. Just phenomenal action sequences, including a top notch chase sequence.

Saw The Boy and the Heron last night. I am generally a Miyazaki/Studio Ghibli fan, but this one left me non-plussed. It feels very long and quite repetitive compared to his other works. About an hour into it, I was ready for it to be over but it kept going for another hour. I feel like the personal elements that he added in from his own childhood may have gotten him too close to it, such that he may have been more reluctant to cut what needed cutting.

I grew up watching Godzilla on channel 44 in Sunnyvale, California in the1970s. We would go to school and argue about the relative merits of the different monsters. Unrelated, but I'm getting tested for autism this week. So I was excited but unsurprised to see that I'm the last person on this site to see Godzilla minus one, but let me add that I saw it in iMax.

They made me really care about everything in the movie, which (and I know this is blasphemy) has a pretty ridiculous premise. I felt like on many levels this was a really good horror movie. My son and I were discussing whether Godzilla represents Nature or Dumb Americans with Nukes. Also, Japan has to have the most toxic honor culture in the world. That guy couldn't marry this amazing woman sleeping three feet away because of some stupid honor culture thing? What's the American equivalent of being a failed Kamikaze pilota failed Kamikaze pilot --not going to see the Mountain Goats when they were playing just one city away, and your wife was out of town and you had the night free? I still feel regret and shame about that.



I also wanted to mention that I lived for two years in the Marshall Islands, home of the Bikini atoll, and an American peace corps worker who married a local girl and was out there to help them get some compensation was nicknamed "La Bako" or the shark , because he was out fishing with his Marshallese buds on outriggers and they lost their wind and while swimming back all got eaten by sharks except for him. The link goes to the actual story, with accurate details.

I watched the scene from Atomic Cafe where the military says to the residents of Bikini, "We just want to use your island and give it back" There was a definitely something lost in the translation, based on my terrible Marshallese.

I brought my thrift store Godzilla with me. He was unimpressed with the Aquaman trailer.

Cranberries wrote: I grew up watching Godzilla on channel 44 in Sunnyvale, California in the1970s. We would go to school and argue about the relative merits of the different monsters.

Me too! I miss KBHK channel 44 and those low-budget movies. For some ridiculous reason I was a fan of Gamera, Friend of Children, even though I wasn’t a kid at the time.

We used to have a couple local stations here in Detroit that ran all of the syndicated stuff during its first boom. That's how we saw the entire runs of things like Star Trek, I Love Lucy, Gilligan's Island, etc. But one of them also had a feature known as The Four O'Clock Movie during weekdays. Usually, we'd be out playing at 4 PM, but not on Giant Monster week (or Planet of the Apes week.) About every six months, we'd be treated to five straight days of Godzilla vs Random Opponent or things like Destroy All Monsters or, very occasionally, a non-Godzilla-centered film like Mothra. This happened for most of the 70s and early 80s until local stations began to be swallowed by larger conglomerates like Fox and then cable surged past broadcast TV.

As a side note, those same stations used to do regular horror film presentations every weekend with characters like Sir Graves Ghastly and The Ghoul as hosts after commercial breaks. I was at a Fishbone concert in Detroit a few weeks back and saw someone walk by with a Ghoul shirt and then someone with Sir Graves Ghastly an hour later. I immediately found them online and ordered them. The draw of childhood nostalgia is strong.

Jackwraith wrote: We used to have a couple local stations here in Detroit that ran all of the syndicated stuff during its first boom. That's how we saw the entire runs of things like Star Trek, I Love Lucy, Gilligan's Island, etc. But one of them also had a feature known as The Four O'Clock Movie during weekdays. Usually, we'd be out playing at 4 PM, but not on Giant Monster week (or Planet of the Apes week.) About every six months, we'd be treated to five straight days of Godzilla vs Random Opponent or things like Destroy All Monsters or, very occasionally, a non-Godzilla-centered film like Mothra. This happened for most of the 70s and early 80s until local stations began to be swallowed by larger conglomerates like Fox and then cable surged past broadcast TV.

As a side note, those same stations used to do regular horror film presentations every weekend with characters like Sir Graves Ghastly and The Ghoul as hosts after commercial breaks. I was at a Fishbone concert in Detroit a few weeks back and saw someone walk by with a Ghoul shirt and then someone with Sir Graves Ghastly an hour later. I immediately found them online and ordered them. The draw of childhood nostalgia is strong.

I think most places I liked had WGN and TBS(?) for that sort of stuff, basically a local station from a large market piped out to us hicks in the boonies. I remember visiting relatives in New York where I could get more local channels. Kung-fu theater, horror film blocks, and monster films were definitely late night and weekend staples, along with endless re-runs of old shows and day time game shows.

Little Forest: Summer/Autumn & Winter/Spring - Japanese film in four parts spread across two movies. Based on a slice-of-life manga that I've not read. Had to track down English subtitles just to watch the movies. There's not much plot other than main character left the city and moved back to her little country village. Mostly its just a series of chapters that she narrates as she self-sufficiently grows/gathers/cooks/enjoys food through the seasons. With the occasional flashback to the city or her childhood in that same house with her mother cooking. Very tranquil pacing and beautifully shot. I didn't recognize a single dish that she made, but they all looked terrific.

There's also a Korean remake which I checked out a few minutes of from curiosity, but didn't watch. Seemed fine enough and highly rated. They cut quite a bit of her narrating what she's doing, at least in the few minutes I watched.

Asteroid City was a crushing disappointment. Wes Anderson has disappeared completely up his own ass. I'm done with his movies. Asteroid City stumbles out of the gate with several minutes of exposition, which always feels tedious, even in the hands of an auteur like Anderson. The talent of a dozen fine actors is completely squandered on this layered mextfiction of nothingness. A gorgeous palette of colors serve as a backdrop to a sequence of scenes of actors delivering tropes in near-monotone voices. When an actual alien appears, it is almost a relief because at least it doesn't present as a caricature of humanity.

There was a time when I loved Anderson's movies, specifically up until 2007 and The Darjeeling Limited. He told actual stories featuring characters with personalities and emotions. I also liked The Grand Budapest Hotel, and there were some fine moments in The French Dispatch. But I have no hope for his future movies. Based on Asteroid City, I expect that his next movie will feature 20 famous actors, but they will be represented on screen by life-size cardboard cutouts and the actors will dub in their monotone lines. Everything will be quite symmetrical and the critics will rave, but I won't see it.

Two Netflix non-recommendations: I already wrote on my blog (for those of you who read it) about Maestro. It's pretentious and tedious and self-absorbed (the first half, at least; I didn't finish and probably won't.) Similarly, Leave the World Behind is somewhere between a ripoff of a thousand other post-apoc films and a complete misinterpretation of most of them. It's boilerplate dialogue combined with conspiracy theories and heavy-handed moralizing about human relations in the modern era. I genuinely regret the two hours of my life I wasted on this thing. I will, likewise, have more detail about this one on the blog, but for those of you who don't have the patience to read the couple thousand words (and couple more hours) I'm committing to it, the two words I will give you here are: Don't bother.

Just watched Time Bandits with my sons, 27 and 24, about 42 years after I watched it with my father and brother in 1981, when I was just 15, a freshman in high school. Over the years my brother and I have been fond of saying, "Don't touch it, it's evil" and Ralph Richardson's line "Oh I don't know, something about free will" has remained with me. The movie felt a little off, rhythmically, and it is so weird for a kid's movie, but I'm glad I was able to share that with my sons. My daughter is upstairs right now watching Dune after having completed the book about two hours ago. I watched the first 45 minutes or so with her, and it is such a bleak film, but feels richer the second time around.