# Movies you've seen recently (Part 1) **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** movies\ **Created:** [September 29, 2014, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-youve-seen-recently-part-1/699906 "2014-09-29T21:53:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 251
**Author:** ![Larry\_Borgia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/larry_borgia/32/156_2.png) [@Larry\_Borgia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Borgia)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2022, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-youve-seen-recently-part-1/699906/5015 "2022-09-28T22:57:42Z")
I dunno, just spitballing here, but have you ever considered watching movies you like? Or maybe finding another way to entertain yourself, since you seem to hate every movie ever made. ---
**Author:** ![rippingtons\_fan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rippingtons_fan/32/11767_2.png) [@rippingtons\_fan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rippingtons_fan)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2022, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-youve-seen-recently-part-1/699906/5016 "2022-09-28T23:05:42Z")
I recently watched on DVD **Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow** , starring Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow and Angelina Jolie. Pretty good movie but with a lot of improbable stuff like giant, flying robots and jet aircraft with flapping wings and a flying aircraft carrier. ---
**Author:** ![Gatopescado](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gatopescado/32/5711_2.png) [@Gatopescado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gatopescado)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2022, 11:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-youve-seen-recently-part-1/699906/5017 "2022-09-28T23:09:25Z")
I have to admit, Larry, I’m a little flattered that you’re paying attention. It’s almost like I have a friend! And I liked Sky Captain. It was supposed to be improbable. And it was in Spades! ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Borgia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/larry_borgia/32/156_2.png) [@Larry\_Borgia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Borgia)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2022, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-youve-seen-recently-part-1/699906/5018 "2022-09-28T23:45:27Z")
I spend too much time on this board and I notice things. I’m not really dissing you, it just seems odd, that’s all. ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2022, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-youve-seen-recently-part-1/699906/5019 "2022-09-29T00:14:40Z")
**The Munsters** (2022) on Netflix. It makes the original series look like _Citizen Kane_. For some reason Rob Zombie thought the characters needed an origin story. It has just about enough plot to fill a 1960s TV pilot, but not a full movie. ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2022, 9:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-youve-seen-recently-part-1/699906/5020 "2022-09-29T09:23:20Z")
> [@Mahaloth](#): > > If you want to see a movie similar to this that is much, much better, see **Wanted** starring James McAvoy. Wowzers. I’m sorry, but if _Wanted_ is “much, much better” than _Bullet Train_ then I’m never watching _Bullet Train_ because _Wanted_ is **awful** IMHO. ---
**Author:** ![iamatractorboy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iamatractorboy/32/21261_2.png) [@iamatractorboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamatractorboy)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2022, 11:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-youve-seen-recently-part-1/699906/5021 "2022-09-29T11:01:51Z")
If it helps, I preferred Bullet Train and would recommend it. Although Wanted is a very hazy memory! I seem to remember all style and no substance. ---
**Author:** ![Mahaloth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mahaloth/32/1079_2.png) [@Mahaloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahaloth)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2022, 11:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-youve-seen-recently-part-1/699906/5022 "2022-09-29T11:13:44Z")
> [@Gyrate](#): > > I’m sorry, but if _Wanted_ is “much, much better” than _Bullet Train_ then I’m never watching _Bullet Train_ because _Wanted_ is **awful** IMHO. Well, then I guess we massively disagree. But that’s OK. Maybe checkout Bullet Train. You might like it a lot more. ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2022, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-youve-seen-recently-part-1/699906/5023 "2022-09-29T22:19:19Z")
I tried to watch the 2014 version of **Robocop** , but I just couldn’t take another minute of Samuel Jackson. ---
**Author:** ![Mahaloth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mahaloth/32/1079_2.png) [@Mahaloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahaloth)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2022, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-youve-seen-recently-part-1/699906/5024 "2022-10-01T00:54:09Z")
**Studio 666** Cute horror movie from the Foo Fighters. Nothing hugely special here, but it is nice to see the Foo Fighters having fun making a scary movie. It’s hardly scary, but is well enough made and Dave Grohl really gives it his all. I’m not a Foo Fighters fan, but it is haunting a bit to see Taylor Hawkins in the movie. He died a few months ago, just after the movie came out. ---
**Author:** ![carrps](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carrps/32/2957_2.png) [@carrps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carrps)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2022, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-youve-seen-recently-part-1/699906/5025 "2022-10-01T01:08:38Z")
I hadn’t seen _Things to Come_ since I was a little kid, so I re-watched it the other day. Dang, most British film actors in the 1930s were so over the top, theatrical, and bombastic. A little underplaying would have helped a lot. Not bad overall. And one of the costume designers was the Marchioness of Queensbury! Oh, and it’s waaaaay preachy. Show don’t tell, folks. I enjoyed Margaretta Scott as “the Chief’s” wife, and Raymond Massey was at his most Massey-ish. I’m always struck by how much Anna looks like him. Even down to their mannerisms. ---
**Author:** ![Love\_Rhombus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/love_rhombus/32/10694_2.png) [@Love\_Rhombus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Love_Rhombus)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2022, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-youve-seen-recently-part-1/699906/5026 "2022-10-02T01:22:45Z")
_Astro-Zombies_! Watch it if you dare (because it’s not great)! Has some nice older cars in it though, John Carradine, and a very memorable dance sequence. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2022, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-youve-seen-recently-part-1/699906/5027 "2022-10-02T21:47:17Z")
My daughter is in town so we went to see the _Avatar_ re-release on Imax. She was 8 when it came out and we were interested in how her opinion would (maybe) change seeing the film as an adult. 1. Absolutely lovely movie, the CGI still holds up, fantastic to look at. Well worth the IMAX premium, the theater also has ATMOS (spelling?) sound, so the sound was top-notch. 2. I enjoyed the story more this second time? Don’t know why, but I did. 3. Sophia’s attitude? “Damn, white savior much?” She liked it, as with me she thought it gorgeous, but as a politically active 20yo progressive, that was her major take away. Unless you hated it the first time, I recommend seeing it again if you have the (IMAX) chance to see it properly. ---
**Author:** ![JohnGalt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johngalt/32/184_2.png) [@JohnGalt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnGalt)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2022, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-youve-seen-recently-part-1/699906/5028 "2022-10-02T22:18:08Z")
When you saw it the first time, did you see it in 3D? How about this time? A big draw at the time was how good the 3D effects were, so is it just as good without 3D? Do you know if the new movie will have a 3D version; I haven’t heard any such details. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2022, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-youve-seen-recently-part-1/699906/5029 "2022-10-02T23:11:05Z")
I saw it in 3D the first time, but 3D doesn’t work well with my wonky eyes, so this was just Big, Loud, IMAX. Definitely worth it just for the spectacle. Btw, the theater was _packed_. Yes, it was a Saturday night, but still… ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2022, 1:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-youve-seen-recently-part-1/699906/5030 "2022-10-03T13:42:05Z")
> [@rippingtons\_fan](#): > > I recently watched on DVD **Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow** , starring Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow and Angelina Jolie. Pretty good movie but with a lot of improbable stuff like giant, flying robots and jet aircraft with flapping wings and a flying aircraft carrier. The movie was meant to evoke the spirit of 1930s adventure pulps (some of which were about flying aces) and their often super-scientific exploits, and succeeds beautifully. It was inspired by pulp cover artwork and things like a Superman cartoon .(It also steals some dialogue directly from Howard Koch’s script for Orson Welles’ _War of the World_ broadcast.) It’s improbable, but a.) it’s supposed to be; and b.) it’s improbable in exactly the way 1930s pulp fiction was. I still think the film is vastly underappreciated, especially since most of it was created in a computer. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2022, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-youve-seen-recently-part-1/699906/5031 "2022-10-03T13:59:38Z")
Last Night I watched **The Land of Oz** , which I have very vague memories of watching when it was first broadcast on September 18, 1960 (I had to look that up). I thought for a long time that it was TV special, but it was an episode of _The Shirley Temple Show_. (The show was erratically moved around in the schedule, so thinking it was a special was understandable). The show was an outgrowth of Shirley Temple’s Storybook, where she adapted fairy tales and the like. I stumbled across a copy on DVD and had to watch it. In many ways it was impressive. It was broadcast in color – a very rare thing in 1960 (Disney’s _Wonderful World of Color_ wouldn’t be broadcast for another year). We didn’t have a color TV, so we watched it in black and white. The cast was pretty star-heavy for a children’s TV one-shot – Jonathan Winters, Agnes Moorehead as Mombi the With (four years before she played Endora on _Bewitched_), Sterling Holloway, Arthur Treacher, Mel Blanc, and Shirley Temple herself. Temple looked great, but, then again, she was only 32 at the time. They tried to duplicate much of the look of the 1939 film on a low budget , and succeeded with the Scarecrow and the Tin Man’s appearances. Other characters (Treacher and character actor Norman Leavett as a Lightning Bug Repairman) had the typical pasted-down hair curls from the movie. On website complained about the “cheap special effects”, but these were pretty typical of TV effects at the time – I recall several of them being used still in the early seasons of _Saturday Night Live_ twenty years later. I finally got a copy of _The Marvelous Land of Oz_ (L. Frank Baum’s second Oz book) about twenty years later, and could see that, although they took many elements from the book, they changed an awful lot to give it dramatic tension and fit it into the one hour (less commercials) time slot. Disney, you could tell, always wanted to be the studio to make THe Wizard of Oz, and they’ve been trying to catch up ever since. When they made **Return to Oz** in 1985, they based it mostly on the same book, and you can see several of the characters in both that film and the TV show, but, again, the plot was very different. I actually think Return to Oz is an underappreciated masterpiece, managing to combine the look and feel of both Baum’s Oz books and the 1939 movie – an almost impossible task. The TV show is an interesting curiosity, worth watching as an historical artifact, but often cringeworthy seen today. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2022, 2:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-youve-seen-recently-part-1/699906/5032 "2022-10-03T14:01:09Z")
Cal, I just want to say… and I am sure I am not alone… that I truly enjoy your contributions to this discussion. Never, ever stop, please. ---
**Author:** ![WOOKINPANUBv.2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wookinpanubv.2/32/3260_2.png) [@WOOKINPANUBv.2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WOOKINPANUBv.2)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2022, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-youve-seen-recently-part-1/699906/5033 "2022-10-03T16:28:38Z")
**Where the Crawdads Sing** (Amazon Prime). Based on the best selling book, it’s the story of a young woman who grew up in the swamps of North Carolina, forced to live alone and fend for herself after the rest of the family flees from the violent father, who then himself leaves. If you read the book and enjoyed it even a little, I would recommend. It is much better than it’s source material. I _think_ I would still recommend to those who have not read it. It’s rather . . .YA, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, just saying. ---
**Author:** ![Mahaloth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mahaloth/32/1079_2.png) [@Mahaloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahaloth)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2022, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-youve-seen-recently-part-1/699906/5034 "2022-10-04T21:57:19Z")
**The Lair of the White Worm** This movie truly surprised me. The opening 30 or more minutes was kind of a snooze-fest, but the remaining 2/3 of the movie was pretty surprising and somewhat shocking. Hey, it stars Peter Capaldi and Hugh Grant, both making pretty early appearances in their career. I believe Hugh Grant might be in his first movie here. It’s trash, but fun and well made trash. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-youve-seen-recently-part-1/699906.md?page=250) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-youve-seen-recently-part-1/699906.md?page=252)