Amph What was the last movie you saw? (Ver. 2)

I haven't seen it yet but that description reminds me of how amazing Jennifer Carpenter was in The Exorcism of Emily Rose.

 

It didn't even come up in my Netflix page. i had to search for it prove to myself it actually came out. And then I went about my day.

 

I didn't see it on my homepage either. I had assumed I already gave it a thumbs down to hide it.

 

I’m not even seeing it in their definitely real, not fake, please don’t look at the published figures trending item rows so they may not be giving it the nuclear push they tried giving the first part.

 

It's a movie you can sink your teeth into.

 

Rebel Moon Part II

I gave it 5 minutes of my time. I only got about 45 minutes through the first one before bailing.

Anthony Hopkins was given words. He said them.
The Scargiver is revealed in the first 2 minutes. I guess that means something important.
So far everything looks like puke. Desaturated wheat color processing tones. It's quite amazing how ugly the movie looks.

And done. Did I miss anything?
Zero stars.

 

Anyone who’s gluten-intolerant should definitely stay away.

 

SCAR-GIVER (2024)

I'll say it again - I simply don't understand the level of vitriol aimed at Zack Snyder. And I know a bunch of you will answer "It's because he deserves it", but, sorry, I simply don't see it. Hollywood puts out TONS of @#$@#. Hollywood puts out tons of middling at best, mailed-in efforts. But if Snyder's name is on it, boy the knives come out. SCARGIVER is at 14% on ROTTEN TOMATOES. Ridiculous - or, if not, then a heck of a lot of other movies/series, including some of the recent Marvel content, deserve to be treated the same way. (SECRET INVASION is at 52%. Think on that for a while)

I thought that REBEL MOON was a middling, predictable homage to/rip-off of SEVEN SAMURAI, which has, of course, been homaged (???) and/or ripped off, sometimes well and sometimes badly, many times. SCAR-GIVER, unfortunately, was a major step down from that, in at least three ways.

(1) BACKSTORIES - In commenting on MOON, I mentioned that if you are going to do a "Seven Samurai" type movie, it is incumbent on you to do a good job of quickly sketching out the players. I felt MOON didn't do a good job with that, and that's a fairly low bar. I mean, in MOON, we do get very simple sketchy stories for some of the primary characters, and you can argue that even in a GOOD adaptation (say, the 1960's Western version) the backstories for some are VERY simple (EX: An elite speed-drawing gunfighter who has lost his nerve, a hotheaded kid who is desperate to prove himself, a cool customer so fast with a knife he can out-duel a man with a gun, an affable cynic who is SURE there has to be a hidden major payoff motivating the protection of the town...) but, for whatever reason, there are times that works and times...not so much. And I felt with MOON, it was ...not so much. Here, in SCAR-GIVER, we get a LOT of background "dumped" in the first half, and to me it felt heavy-handed. The backstories were "fine" but the scenes really came right out of the "Basil Exposition" school.
(2) EMOTIONAL RESONANCE - There is a LOT of effort expended at trying to generate emotion, connection, in the first half of SCAR-GIVER and for me, it was really really cringe. It was too much, it went on too long, at times it was embarrassing, and for me it didn't land.
(3) SEQUEL OR SECOND HALF?: This felt like the literal second half of MOON. As in, it didn't feel like a sequel, it felt like they cut one long movie into two and this is part two.

The second half of SCAR-GIVER was, for me, entertaining in a purely mindless action sense. Again, I get it, some hate Snyder's muted color palette and use of slow-motion, but I thought the overall battle scenes and one on one fight scenes were well done and visually exciting. Was it somewhat silly in terms of tactics and plot armor and such? Sure. Like 90% of Hollywood "big action" movies.

So a big "meh" for me. Some fun visuals, some fun design choices, some fun fight and battle sequences, but overall didn't deliver on making us care enough, so that was ALL it had going for it. Disappointing.

 

You forgot to mention that it's one of the worst movies ever made.

 

Death in Venice (1971) starring Dirk Bogarde and Björn Andrésen; directed by Luchino Visconti. This was a long, leisurely movie with grand views of Venice - it brought back memories of the steamy heat with possibilities of ghastly pestilence, which thankfully we did not encounter. Sad, sad tale of Godmother Death approaching Dirk, stripping vanity, health, and worldly accomplishments. Glorious music throughout, except for the "comic" Italian songs. I guess they were meant to be jarring, to bring viewers down to earth after lofty discussions on beauty. Exquisite costumes from about 1900.

 

The Eagle Has Landed.

this review will be in 2 parts.


so this is one of those movies I was familiar with. it's on Sunday afternoons all the time.

anyway (shut-up!) so it turns out I'd only seen the last half of this film a hundred times.

anyway - so I watched it in HD , very nice.
so there's a big long prologue about how the plot got going...


can we skip that .


so Donald Sutherland, playing an oddball Irish character, is parachuted into a lovely English village. He's there 5 minutes and he's already snogging Jenny Agutter who's looking as beautiful as ever (like omg - you know what I mean), but seriously - he aint James Bond, how has he managed this??
Then some local lad who's got the hots for Jenny figures out Donald is a wrong'un, and threatens to expose him, our Jenny announces she's in love with Donald and shoots the poor bastard dead.

and then... oh jesus christ ... come back tomorrow ...


...

 

The In-Laws

You know, I hadn't seen this movie since I was a kid..but it's actually very funny. Peter Falk especially.

 

Meshes of the Afternoon (dir. Maya Deren and Alexandr Hackenschmied, 1943). YouTube

Very short but very influential (e.g., Lynch) surreal film. Lots of nice imagery, the nicest one being a grim reaper-like figure with a mirror for a face. I love these early surrealist films so this gets 5 keys in your mouth out of 5.



Note: Deren and Hackenschmied (who were natively Ukranian and Austrian-Hungarian, respectively) were married. The original of the film was silent; in 1959, Deren asked her next husband Teiji Ito (who was natively Japanese) to add a score to it. I watched both versions, because I didn't found out about the one with the score until after I watched the silent one. I linked to the one with the score because I preferred that one.

 

Child's Play
1988

I heard Brad Dourif is retiring so it was time to revisit this one and he does an excellent job.
I find myself responding to this film more as a comedy and there are quite a few funny moments, my favorite being when Karen is able to kick the police out of her house when they are in the middle of investigating the death of her best friend in spite of ample evidence of foul play. And the movie really gets going once Chucky goes full psycho and starts saying his one liners. And it's got the classic trope of the villain coming back from certain death that creates a sense of exhaustion by the end as this doll is relentless. Child's Play is an entertaining flick.

 

I just watched Curse of Chucky and was surprised at how good it was. Brad Dourif's daughter is in it. Cult of Chucky is good too.
@solojones The In laws is one of my dad's favorite movies. He's an Alan Arkin fan.

 

The In-Laws is a great comedy! Arkin & Falk did commentary for the film which is also funny. With all the comedies of the 70s-80s this one gets overlooked. Considering when it came out there is a surprising lack of nudity (minus a flag) and profanity. Falk & Arkin teamed up again for Big Trouble, however the magic just wasn't there. There's only one good scene in the film, here it is...

 

Affair in Trinidad. An attempt to recapture the success of Gilda, Affair in Trinidad pairs Glenn Ford and Rita Hayworth in a tropical location once more, for tempestuous romance and intrigue. For a copycat effort, it’s fairly successful.

Hayworth plays a nightclub dancer in an unhappy marriage; when her husband dies, the police ask for her help in investigating Alexander Scourby, a rich local who’s infatuated with her and connected to the husband, and who’s suspected of having aided the Axis during the war. But the official story is that it’s a suicide, prompting Ford, Hayworth’s brother-in-law, to investigate on his own after his brother sent him a letter offering him a job the same day he supposedly killed himself. Ford and Hayworth begin to fall for each other, but as he’s not let in on the secret, he becomes suspicious of her relationship with Scourby, who it turns out is importing Nazi rocket scientists to do a job for what’s implied to be the Soviets.

It’s the kind of movie where the overall plot doesn’t necessarily hang together, but the individual scenes are great. There’s snappy dialogue, romantic sparks, clever scenarios, and some espionage thrills. Hayworth is seductive, and Ford is brash and commanding as a guy who can switch on a dime from kindly romance to bull in a china shop, on a mission for answers. The plot jumps around from idea to idea a bit too much to be great, but with the substance of the movie from scene to scene being as strong as it is, it’s never less than very good. It’s the kind of lesser-known tropical noir that’s well worth checking out.

 

I must apologize I know you're all waiting with great expectation for my my second part of my review of The Eagle Has Landed, I promise to deliver it tomorrow.

 

Stripes
1981

It's always entertaining to watch this classic.
There is terrific chemistry among the cast and the writing is on point. Harold Ramis is really great in this. I like when he bets Bill 3 bucks that he can't do 5 real push-ups. And the scene of him teaching his ESL class is cute. And John Candy is hilarious.
"Excuse me stewardess, is there a movie on this flight?"
And Warren Oates is great in this too.
The whole cast is a treat to watch.

 

The Deep End 2023
Great haunted swimming pool movie.
Really.