What's the latest movie you've seen?

[Leo656]

Finally got around to watching "Creed". Really good! Definitely feels like an organic part of the franchise and that's probably what I was most concerned about. It's always fun when I go into a movie kinda figuring I'm gonna like it, and come away liking it more than I expected to. I still gotta get around to picking up the second one.

Also re-watched "Hollywoodland" for the first time in a long time. Another one I just kept forgetting to grab off the shelf, but it's been talked about a bit lately because there's a Blu-ray coming out so I finally got around to it. I saw it in theaters when it was out but I'm not sure when the last time I saw it was. A few parts were fictionalized but on the whole it sticks pretty close to the facts of the George Reeves case. I always enjoy movies based on real life events, so long as they're mostly accurate. I have my own theory about what happened, as does everyone, but while the movie sort of nudges towards one conclusion I like that it leaves things open-ended without trying to put a bow on something that'll never be all wrapped up.

As is the case with absolutely everything, Adrien Brody's nose is incredibly distracting, and I can't help that.

[Hamato Yoshi]

Hadnt watched Brainstorm in 20 yrs , pretty good movie......some think Wagner killed Wood cuz she and Walken were too close and Wagner became furious. Its possible she was knocked unconscious and thrown overboard (her bladder was full , she prolly wouldve emptied it in fear had she drowned , thats my theory anyway)

[Leo656]

"Falling Down". Somehow I missed this one. Great flick!

[ranger_scout]

I watched Fatima today. It honestly could've been my favorite movie of 2020.

[Leo656]

Not a "movie" (We need a "What are you watching now?" thread like the "What are you reading now?" thread, but anyways), but I did watch the first six episodes of the 2003 "Masters of the Universe" cartoon for the first time in a very long time.

It still holds up incredibly well, and I remain very, very angry at Mattel for botching up the toyline so bad back then, to the point where the show was abruptly cancelled without any resolution.

Cam Clarke needed some more "oomph" in his He-Man voice. Otherwise, show is amazing. What a great Skeletor. Everybody's great, really. It was so, so good and unfortunately didn't get the run it deserved.

[Leo656]

I finally got around to watching Donnie Darko. Really upset at myself for not checking it out sooner. Really good!

Although geez, how much blow was Maggie Gyllenhaal doing between this movie and "The Dark Knight"? It was only seven years and she aged like 20. Brrrrr.

Anyway, the Blu-ray has both Theatrical and Director's Cuts on it so we'll probably watch the Director's Cut tomorrow. Some people really dislike it and say it over-explains things but I'm curious to see it for the sake of compare and contrast.

[Leo656]

Watched the Director's Cut of "Donnie Darko". I liked it more than the theatrical cut, I preferred the music choices and the scenes that were cut from the theatrical version really added a lot to it, I felt. The on-screen text definitely helps define certain things about the plot but I definitely don't think that it in any way "over-explains" anything, as there are still MANY things left unanswered and unexplained when all is said and done. With the aid of the text we know more about the What is going on but still little to nothing about the How or Why. Which still leaves the viewer with very much to think about and discuss after the fact, which is nice.

Personally, I feel like the "It over-explains things" argument against the Director's Cut, was simply sour grapes from people who had their own theories about what the movie may have been about and were annoyed that they were proven wrong. Like I've seen people argue against the time travel/tangent universe explanation despite the fact that the movie all but hands you that. It seems to me like the only reason to really fight that is if you personally don't like that explanation and prefer your own to be the "correct" one, which is a little bit arrogant. But no, I don't think it over-explains things, it just makes things about the plot a bit more clear for people who might have been a little slow on the uptake.

There were a few bits of dialog removed from the theatrical cut that I would have kept, but otherwise I feel that the Director's Cut is the superior version of the film by far. The music, additional scenes, and connective tissue for anyone who may have otherwise been confused altogether makes me feel much more satisfied. Which is good, because I already liked the movie to begin with.

[Hamato Yoshi]

John Liu in Paris 2/6 , zzzzzz boring , his gf gets kidnapped or something , only plus was city of Paris.

John Liu in Mexico 3/6......more like JL on Tenerife , lol. Hes on mex-US border , baddies are after dragon gold broche , they also burn his eyes. The fight scenes are nothing special.

Liu tried to become the next Lee or Chan but it didnt work out........

[Hamato Yoshi]

Originally Posted by Leo656

All that is fair, but I maintain his performance in that movie was underrated because it's not like he just stood there. It's obvious he wasn't the one carrying the picture but he wasn't a block of wood, either. He definitely sold a few of the bigger moments where he had to actually emote and project. "Underrated" doesn't mean he stole the show - he didn't, and he never could, not with who he was playing against - but rather, it means it was altogether better than he's ever gotten credit for.

I always thought the entire cast did a great job, frankly. I don't know who could ever be a better Man-At-Arms than Jon Cypher. And Chelsea Field looked nothing like Teela but she made the role entirely her own. Billy Barty's just great at everything. Anthony De Longis as "Blade" really had the time of his life, and it shows. I was so not surprised to read around and find out that everybody (minus Dolph) had done a million things before and after because they're all really, really good.

It just always felt to me like there were two camps of people who went into the movie with their fists up and refused to ever take it on its own merits: Snobs who dismissed it as a toy commercial before it ever even came out and thus were never going to be objective, and fans of the cartoon who were never going to accept it because it wasn't the movie they wanted to see. It's not "Citizen Kane" by any stretch, but 17% on RT is a goddamn joke. For comparison, "Cyborg", the scrapped sequel to MotU that was refurbished into a sh*tty Van Damme vehicle, is rated 20%, which tells you everything about why that system of "grading" movies simply doesn't work. Good luck finding even one person nowadays who thinks THAT piece of sh*t is actually better than MotU.

Sometimes I just feel like the whole world judges things more on what they'd rather have than what's actually there, and thus they fail to see the good in things because they're too busy pining for something else. Happens with a lot of things. Makes me sad. With regard to that movie, at least, it feels like MOST people who watch it nowadays get a kick out of it. Sometimes it takes 30 years for people to smarten up.
----------------

Serendipitously, given our earlier discussion, there's a Rocky marathon on MTV2 today! Christ, Stallone must've been eating 'roids three meals a day between Rocky II and Rocky III. Whenever you watch them back-to-back it's really obvious what the deal was. Yeeesh!

Also, Christ Hogan was fast before his left knee went bad. That always blows my mind. He was legit about 320 when he did that movie, by all accounts, and he was still 6'8 way back before his spine got all J-curved. Guys that big usually can't move that fast. That's such a fun scene, it's no wonder he practically stole the whole movie.

Kinda makes you wonder what would've happened if "No Holds Barred" became a series. But only for a second.

+10 , i agree , those are some good points

[Andrew NDB]

Huh. I'm glad this reminded me. I've never seen the director's cut of Darko. I think I was afraid of it. I remember the general consensus initially was that maybe it... explained too much? Not much left to the imagination?

[Leo656]

That's what I read, but it's not the case at all.

In a few brief spots they flash a couple sentences from "The Philosophy of Time Travel" on the screen which sort of explains and/or foreshadows a few things - the "water tubes" he keeps seeing pop out of himself and other people, for example - but it's really not a big deal. It "tidies" things up a bit but still leaves tons of unanswered questions. Things like what specifically created the Tangent Universe and whether or not Donnie actually needs to die to complete his "mission" are still left totally ambiguous. It really doesn't change much, and the extra 20 minutes of scenes are quite welcome. People are 50/50 it seems on the music being rearranged but I like it better in the Director's Cut. They only moved like three songs around.

The only thing I've seen consistently coming from the audience who didn't care for the Director's Cut, was that a lot of them chose or preferred to take the movie as, "The entire thing was a dream or hallucination of a schizophrenic kid right before he died", and they were pissy that the Director made it clear that "No, it's actually about time travel and pocket universes and stuff." And I mean, you CAN still read it that way if you choose to - even the director has said that what we're seeing when we see the text passages on-screen is merely Donnie himself applying what he sees to his situation, and therefore MIGHT not specifically be what's happening, but probably is - but to me it was already pretty clear what it was about. The longer cut definitely doesn't "over-explain" anything, but it does solidify a few ideas that were a bit murky originally. It's still very much up to the viewer to make sense of it all, and like before, not everything is clear by the end anyway.

To be perfectly blunt, the "It explains too much!" insistence seems completely like sour grapes from people who were mad that their own interpretation of the story turned out to not be the one intended by the creator. Objectively, I think the Director's Cut is the correct version of the movie. But it doesn't change so much that a person couldn't go with either; I just think it's worth it for all the extra scenes, if nothing else.

Basically, the director specifically wanted people to understand that the movie was about time travel, and not everyone understood that, so he made it a bit more clear. The rest is just scenes that were SUPPOSED to be in the movie but were cut because the studio said it had to be under two hours. Therefore, to me, the Director's Cut is the "proper" version as intended to be seen.

[Leo656]

My "Nightmare On Elm Street" Blu-ray box set came today, so we picked up from where we left off earlier in the week.

- Part 3: Dream Warriors: Arguably the best in the series all-around. The acting is a step up from the original, and the nightmare scenes and special effects more elaborate. Having the first movie to build a richer mythology out of definitely helped the story. Out of all of them in the entire series, it aims the highest and has the overall best execution. You can tell they were trying to wrap things up here while still leaving the door open a crack "just in case". But if things had ended here, it ultimately would have been a very satisfying high note to end the series on.

The first one will always be my sentimental favorite, but objectively, this was most likely the very best of the bunch.

- Part 4: The Dream Master: Not bad, but definitely a step down from Part 3 in quality. Tuesday Knight wasn't bad as Kristen but she was no Patricia Arquette. They started the trend of going for a bit too much humor here, and everything is a bit too brightly-staged. The nightmare scenes are ambitious and well-executed but the overall atmosphere is much "brighter" than the first three, and it's very noticeable. The director has openly admitted that by this point there was an understanding that Freddy was the real "hero" of the series and so they built everything accordingly, but I feel like on the whole it hurt the series by moving in that direction. It still wasn't bad, but it felt like a dip after Part 3. The way they dispatched Freddy for the ending in this one felt very weak. It totally felt like they had no idea how to end it.

Still good, but definitely middle of the pack.

- Part 5: The Dream Child: It's fine, but they were really out of gas by this point and you could tell it was time to take a break. The nightmares and death scenes hold it together, but again, way too much "ha-ha" and the characters don't feel as "real" as they did in the previous two films, for the most part. Although I like that there's a strong thread of continuity between 3, 4 and 5 and a sort of "baton pass" between main characters along the way. The Amanda Krueger stuff was welcome, but the whole premise of this one felt very gimmicky. As always, though, some good and creative visual choices do a lot to elevate it. But it's definitely the weakest of the first 5.

Supposedly, the director hates it because it was originally more violent and bloody, and the studio chopped up the final cut because they knew by this point that these movies were for kids as much as adults (no matter what they said publicly). I can see his point; potential was there, and sometimes it comes close, but it's definitely the "tamest" of the series up to that point.

It's no surprise that it under-performed, and that they jumped to "Let's just kill him" for the next one. Diminishing returns were starting to set in, but it hadn't yet become a joke series, so it was good that they let it cool off.

Even though "Freddy's Dead" was its own special blend of junk, but we'll get to that.

[IndigoErth]

Adam Sandler's new Netflix Halloween movie "Hubie Halloween" was pretty decent, and includes a number of recognizable faces.


10/12 -- Finally had the chance to see that "CATS" movie. Um...yeah, that was weird.

Have never watched the stage show and didn't know the plot was really as simple as it is, or that it is basically a bunch of cats who gather each year to choose someone to die because they believe in some cat reincarnation myth. What.

[Leo656]

I'd never seen John Carpenter's "Prince of Darkness" and it sounded intriguing, so I decided to check it out on Blu-ray. It came yesterday so we watched it last night. That was really good! I really enjoyed the juxtaposition of advanced science like theoretical physics alongside the supernatural and religious aspects. I thought it made for a very interesting mix. Great music, really unsettling imagery. Great overall atmosphere.

The discussion of a "dark" universe complete with its own "Anti-God" trying to cross over sounded frankly very similar to the Anti-Matter Universe and "Dark Multiverse" concepts popularized by DC Comics over the years and particularly more recently. I'd be shocked if that were a coincidence. Based on what I've read, it seems like it played better and was more appreciated by people who are into comics and I doubt that's any coincidence, either.

I really liked this one a lot.

[Last Ronin]

Damn, I truly don't know. I'll have to get back to this one.

I'm really not a movie kind of guy.

[newfan]

Home Alone 4, seen as I hadn't come across it before, I thought the 5th movie was the 4th and that was all of them. Anyway, might as well have seen them all so watched it, might be my least favourite, don't feel that bringing back Kevin and his family with new actors worked, nor did I like where they went. Had they wanted to bring back original characters I would have preferred something years later with the original actors, guess the kid would have had to be a grandchild.

[Shark_Blade]

Ghostbusters 2 in 4K on Apple TV.

Never really watched it, it looks great so far. Going into the purple ooze sewer now. Not as witty and funny as the first movie but it’s okay.

Hey the court scene looks pretty fun. I think the movie is starting to pick up it’s pace albeit a bit slow at the start.

[Shark_Blade]

Child’s Play (1999)

Some funny comedy and witty sassy dialogue particularly by Maggie (the mom’s best friend). Goodness me the idiot cops and the annoying kid really gets on my nerve. The mom delivered a solid 10/10 though.

The reboot Chucky (2019) is better overall.

[Storm Eagle]

Originally Posted by Shark_Blade

Child’s Play (1999)

Some funny comedy and witty sassy dialogue particularly by Maggie (the mom’s best friend). Goodness me the idiot cops and the annoying kid really gets on my nerve. The mom delivered a solid 10/10 though.

The reboot Chucky (2019) is better overall.

Child's Play came out in 1988. I'm sure it's just a typo though.

[Shark_Blade]

Huh that’s weird. iTunes got it wrong then cause I got it from the description lol.

“Released in 1999” https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/ch...ay/id220251867
Child's Play by Tom Holland


Anyway I got the whole Chucky series off iTunes Halloween sale so I’m probably gonna go through the sequels soon.