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

The Roses with Benedict Thundersnatch and Olivia Coleman. Sure, it's the upteenth remake of War of the Roses but this is such a great Black Comedy. Great dialogue and casting.

Honey Don't is new on Netflix. Directed by Ethan Coen, and has a lot of stars in it, including Aubrey Plaza and Chris Evans. Margaret Qualley plays Honey, a private detective who gets caught up in a case after a prospective client winds up dead.

It's an enjoyable film, and it's also a bit weird, but I liked it. Also, a LOT of nudity, just so you know.

Is a movie review compromised if the reviewer is out of synch with mainstream culture? I have noticed that I have recently given positive reviews to unpopular movies and negative reviews to more mainstream movies. I would like to think that I am evaluating the relative merits of these movies and not simply rejecting conformity, but maybe I lack the objectivity to be certain. Proceed with that in mind.

Corbin Nash (2018) never got on my radar, because the name doesn't say anything. Although I normally resent the auto-preview feature on Amazon Prime, it was useful in this case. The preview reminded me in good ways of one of my all-time favorite PC games, Vampire: the Masquerade - Bloodlines. And the cast included Malcom McDowell, Rutger Hauer, and uh, Corey Feldman. So I was intrigued.

The actual star of Corbin Nash is Dean Jagger, who apparently played a major role in the tv series Warrior. His brother Ben Jagger is the director, and the brothers wrote this movie with a Christopher P. Taylor. The story feels like a compromise between at least two competing visions. Action movie or horror movie? Cop drama or vigilante justice? Vampire movie or gladiator movie? The movie would have probably been better if it had committed strongly to just a couple of these concepts. The story is pretty simple, but the Jaggers get more mileage out it by jumping around a timeline before finally settling into the last reel.

And yet, this movie has some decent choreography and a few remarkable visuals. Jagger has some real presence, though not necessarily any charisma. Fernanda Romero is attractive and brings a bit of real acting ability. McDowell and Hauer seem like they are just cashing an easy paycheck, but Feldman is unforgettable as a monstrous drag queen. The pacing is decent and there is plenty of action. It's obvious that this movie was intended to be the first in a trilogy, but Corbin Nash 2 has been stuck in development hell for several years. If you really like vampire movies and/or UFC fighting, you may like Corbin Nash. Otherwise, you should probably skip it.

In answer to your question: No. I don't think it compromises anything. That's your opinion. I'm similar to you in a lot of ways, in that most of the films that are being lauded in the last few years are ones that I've been extremely "meh" on, if not astounded that anyone thought they were good films in the first place. But, then, I've been like that for most of my life (e.g. I still think Titanic is one of the most hackneyed pieces of trash ever given a major studio release and can't see the merit in a film that makes Kate Winslet and Leonard DiCaprio look like they couldn't act their way out of a paper bag.) But it has definitely ramped up in recent years. Just looking at the Best Picture nominees this year and I'm like "F1: racing movie that we know the end of before it starts. Yawn." "Marty Supreme: Sports movie that we know the end of before it starts. Yawn." "One Battle After Another: Setting, no actual plot worth talking about." "Sinners: Well done, but bog-standard vampire flick." And, certainly, I'm jaded because I've not only gotten older but I've also probably seen more movies than the average person, so it takes a bit more effort for me to appreciate something that isn't genuinely original and there's almost nothing genuinely original these days... (Why couldn't Sinners have done something rooted in the local culture, rather than Eastern European vampires that we've seen a thousand times?!)

As for Corbin Nash, I don't think your perspective is hindered by anything. Even if the writing were better than it sounds, you know that McDowell, Hauer, and Feldman were all pretty B-list already, so you should go in with that expectation.

I liked Sinners well enough when I saw it in the theatre (and posted it about it a few pages back in this thread), but I haven't felt like re-watching it yet now that it's showing up in streaming. In terms of story and acting, I agree that it's a normal vampire movie. But it is also a decent period piece movie that emphasizes a perspective that has often been overlooked by Hollywood. Aside from that, the production values are good, and the music elevates the entire proceedings. So I will definitely re-watch at some point, but not yet.

No, you're right. I don't mean to diminish it that much because it was good film for all of the reasons you cite. I was just so disappointed when it turned out that they were facing vampires- and not even a variation on the concept but straight garlic/sunlight/holy water vampire -that I internally kind of dismissed it while I was sitting in the theater. I went back and looked at my review at the time and those elements you mention did come through to me, but my discouragement with the central villain is obvious: dichotomouspurity.blogspot.com/2025/04/a...-standard-frame.html

After being barraged by clips for a year on YouTube I finally watched Margin Call with pre-cancellation Kevin Spacey and Zachary Quinto. It was better than I thought, but at times it felt like it was pretending to be a better movie than it was. I’m sick in bed with probable food poisoning so the movie fulfilled its purpose.

That and THE BIG SHORT cover the same topic from very different viewpoints and styles but are both excellent IMO. MARGIN CALL is almost a stage play since it takes place largely in the office over the span of one long ass day.

"My loss is your gain". I could watch Paul Bettany sell shit for a lot longer than the 2 minutes he unloaded that toxic MBS at the end.

Roger Zelazny has always been one of my favorite writers. He combined lean prose with vivid imagination to make unforgettable stories. However, his occasional ventures into poetry were disappointing. One of his lesser works was Damnation Alley, a 1969 novella about a cross-country journey in a post-apocalyptic United States. The anti-hero protagonist "Hell" Tanner was the original "Snake" Plissken, an incarcerated Hell's Angel offered a full pardon in return for delivering a plague vaccine from the west coast to the east coast. Unstable weather systems made air traffic impossible, so the journey involved taking a a heavily-armed and armored vehicle across a hellish landscape of mutated insects and background radiation. The novella was eventually padded out into a lower-quality novel in order to attract a movie deal, which it did.

Damnation Alley (1977) is a very loose adaptation of the book. Jan-Michael Vincent plays Tanner (no "Hell"), and the vaccine angle is dropped in favor of a vague hope that they will find something better if they drive all the way across the country. The tone of the movie starts out strangely cheerful, but gradually turns more serious after some deaths. I was surprised and pleased to see a very young Jackie Earle Haley show up, as he has been one of my favorite character actors for decades. You probably don't remember him, but Haley was in The Bad News Bears, Breaking Away, Watchmen, Shutter Island, and Dark Shadows.

The special effects are not good, especially considering that Star Wars came out in the same year. The pacing is tolerable, there is some action, and also some drama. The acting is merely adequate. But if you squint, you can see the influence on the Mad Max movies, and also The Mist. Watching this movie is not a bad way to pass 90 minutes, but there are certainly better movies.

EDIT: currently available via Amazon Prime, which has a pretty interesting selection of B-movies right now.

Zelazny was always one of my favorites, too. Lord of Light, Jack of Shadows, Eye of Cat, Roadmarks; all favorites. A friend and I both designed RPGs based on his Amber Chronicles when we were at Michigan in the 80s. But, yeah, Damnation Alley is both a lesser one of his stories and not a great film, either. It's interesting that you note his efforts at poetry were subpar because what always delighted me about his prose was the poetic turns of phrase that he often used with his main characters. "There might be a pocket universe under my bed. I don't know. I'd never looked."

Damnation Alley was also "adapted" by 2000AD into the epic Judge Dredd story "The Cursed Earth" - the vehicles depicted in the story were available as Matchbox toys as one of the first product placement deals 2000AD made.

Sat down to watch a film with my girlfriend, and we decided to try The Wrecking Crew on Prime, starring Jason Mamoa and Dave Bautista. We made it about 15 minutes before declaring that it was awful and stopped. Nobody seemed like they wanted to be there, and Mamoa's poor acting was evident as the first lines came out of his mouth.

We switched to Mississippi Grind on Netflix. This stars Ryan Reynolds and Ben Mendolson (sp) as degenerate gamblers trying to win big. It just kind of lopes along, and you get angrier and angrier as these unwell people keep making terrible choices. And then it ends, rather unceremoniously.

A terrible night for cinema. 0/5 for the first "film", 1/5 for the second.

Huh. My perspective on Mississippi Grind was very different: dichotomouspurity.blogspot.com/2015/10/beautiful-losers.html

I felt like the whole point was to watch them make these horrible choices because that defines who they are and why they do what they do. It's a character-driven story, so you have to be interested in the characters. If you're not, I see how it might fall flat for you.

I think my breaking point with it was when
. I kind of felt like they were glorifying this lifestyle, when the takeaway should absolutely be don't be like these losers. I did like that .

Instead of the Winter Olympics, I watched Slap Shot (1977) tonight, for the first time in many years. I always remember it as a very good movie, but it is actually excellent. Probably Paul Newman's best movie ever. Everybody remembers the violent humor, but that moves into the background in the second half of the movie as the intrigue involving the ownership of the team takes center stage. Despite an amazing winning streak, the minor league Chiefs team is potentially facing its final season, triggered in part by the loss of 1,000 jobs at the local steel mill. And then there are the anti-romcon storylines involving coach Reggie Dunlop and his estranged wife, as well star player Ned Braden and his struggling marriage. The violence is played for laughs, but it has always been a crucial issue for hockey: the fans like the violence, but too much violence and you don't have a sport anymore.