# 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:** 435
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2024, 5:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-youve-seen-recently-part-1/699906/8700 "2024-02-19T05:41:13Z")
Terminator Judgement Day it’s on Paramount+ I’ve seen it multiple times. I waited about 7 years before viewing again tonight. Great movie. I still prefer the first movie. I’ve always felt the liquid Terminator is too indestructible. Arnold is at such a huge disadvantage. I have trouble accepting that Sarah and John aren’t immediately killed. I bet the writers had to struggle to find a convincing way to end the movie. I keep rewatching and yelling snark at the tv. I know every scene by heart. The death of the liquid Terminator is one of the best Fx ever filmed. Arnold’s sacrificial death really tugs at our emotions. ---
**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:** [February 19, 2024, 12:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-youve-seen-recently-part-1/699906/8701 "2024-02-19T12:12:46Z")
> [@aceplace57](#): > > I’ve always felt the liquid Terminator is too indestructible. Arnold is at such a huge disadvantage. I have trouble accepting that Sarah and John aren’t immediately killed. I bet the writers had to struggle to find a convincing way to end the movie. What I’ve never understood is why Arnie shoots the T-1000 after it’s been frozen in liquid nitrogen. Given what we know about him, the smartest move would have been to throw the bulk of the frozen thing into a container (keeping it in one solid block means its thermal inertia keeps it from thawing faster, then either douse it with more LN2 or – once you know there’s a great big open container of molten metal nearby – dump it in there while it can’t stop you. Shooting it and shattering it into a million shards might be visually interesting and satisfying, but it makes it hard to gather all the pieces and makes it thaw faster. Incidentally, that quick-freezing impaired its circuitry. They cut some scenes from the film that demonstrated this, but a couple were invariably left in. So keeping the thing frozen not only made it inert, it also contributed to its decline. ---
**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:** [February 19, 2024, 1:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-youve-seen-recently-part-1/699906/8702 "2024-02-19T13:13:16Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > Shooting it and shattering it into a million shards might be visually interesting and satisfying… There’s your answer. Plus Arnie got to say ‘Hasta la vista, Baby’ ---
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2024, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-youve-seen-recently-part-1/699906/8703 "2024-02-19T15:26:04Z")
It was fascinating to see the Terminator reform into all the people it copied as it died. It seemed to prefer the Cop form throughout the movie. I’ve wondered what they’d find when the blast furnace is shut down? There’s no way the liquid terminator could survive several weeks or months at that temperature. The liquid Terminator was only frozen for a few minutes and that damaged some circuitry. Hasta la vista, Baby ---
**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:** [February 19, 2024, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-youve-seen-recently-part-1/699906/8704 "2024-02-19T19:54:51Z")
I finally saw _Croupier._ I’d been meaning to see it since it came out, but there are a lot of movies I want to see and if they don’t drift back to my attention I forget about them _Croupier_ was made in 1998! IIRC, it was Clive Owens’ first major role. It was definitely a star-maker. I loved the whole story even though he was set up by his dad. wah wah I even liked him as a blond! I was with his girlfriend Marion that I wanted him to dye it again. ---
**Author:** ![Jack\_Batty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jack_batty/32/3201_2.png) [@Jack\_Batty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jack_Batty)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2024, 9:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-youve-seen-recently-part-1/699906/8705 "2024-02-19T21:22:30Z")
[_The Triplets of Belleville_ (2003)](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0286244/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_5_nm_3_q_triplets) was on TCM this morning. I remember bring my kids to see that when they were like 8 or 9 and they loved it. So did I. ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2024, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-youve-seen-recently-part-1/699906/8706 "2024-02-19T21:23:02Z")
> [@Gyrate](#): > > I think _Blazing Saddles_ continues to stand because it is actively lampshading and lampooning the very behavior it engages in (see also: RDJ in _Tropic Thunder_). > > Where it falls down, alas, is at the end with the gratuitous gay stereotyping in the dance number. So gays and musicals are immune to satire? ---
**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:** [February 19, 2024, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-youve-seen-recently-part-1/699906/8707 "2024-02-19T23:10:46Z")
> [@aceplace57](#): > > Terminator Judgement Day it’s on Paramount+ > > I’ve seen it multiple times. I waited about 7 years before viewing again tonight. > > Great movie. I still prefer the first movie. For some reason I never saw the first Terminator before I saw the second movie (when it was released in the theater). Boy, was that confusing! ---
**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:** [February 19, 2024, 11:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-youve-seen-recently-part-1/699906/8708 "2024-02-19T23:16:03Z")
> [@terentii](#): > > So gays and musicals are immune to satire? I’m curious to hear discussion on this part. I thought the whole segment at the end was funny, including the gay stuff. It’s just too zany to be mean spirited or punching down in any way. ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2024, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-youve-seen-recently-part-1/699906/8709 "2024-02-19T23:18:41Z")
I agree 100%. Nothing is so sacrosanct it cannot be parodied or satirized. ---
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2024, 3:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-youve-seen-recently-part-1/699906/8710 "2024-02-20T03:41:45Z")
> [@terentii](#): > > I agree 100%. Nothing is so sacrosanct it cannot be parodied or satirized. That includes the legal system. I watched _My Cousin Vinny_ on AMC tonight. Excellent movie. I’m always amazed how they kept the right balance of Comedy and Drama in a movie about a murder trial. The thing that makes it work is the accuracy of the court proceeding. Some leading judges have written about it as a case study. Wiki has more information under the Legal accuracy section. Link [My Cousin Vinny - Wikipedia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Cousin_Vinny) I appreciate the character development of Vinny. He comes in very brash and cocky. He’s quickly humbled by the judge and Vinny’s concern for the 2 men he’s defending. Watching Vinny grow and learn throughout the movie keeps me interested. The running gag of Vinny moving to different Motels and constantly getting woke by something outrageous at 5AM never grows old. I laugh every time I watch this movie. I wish they would have made a sequel. I’d enjoy watching Vinny and Lisa tackle his 2nd murder trial. He’s still pretty green and would make mistakes and fumble through it again. ---
**Author:** ![commasense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/commasense/32/3017_2.png) [@commasense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/commasense)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2024, 4:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-youve-seen-recently-part-1/699906/8711 "2024-02-20T04:17:15Z")
Legal Eagle has done two videos praising MCV: the first just outing how legally accurate the courtroom scene is, and the second interviewing the writer, Dale Launer, about how he wrote it. [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/a1I7QBCHqng/maxresdefault.jpg "Real Lawyer Reacts to My Cousin Vinny (The Most Accurate Legal Comedy?)") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1I7QBCHqng) ---
**Author:** ![commasense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/commasense/32/3017_2.png) [@commasense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/commasense)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2024, 4:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-youve-seen-recently-part-1/699906/8712 "2024-02-20T04:18:28Z")
[![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/9OB4oPgsvsk/maxresdefault.jpg "Why My Cousin Vinny Is Perfect (An Interview With The Writer Dale Launer)") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OB4oPgsvsk) ---
**Author:** ![commasense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/commasense/32/3017_2.png) [@commasense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/commasense)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2024, 4:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-youve-seen-recently-part-1/699906/8713 "2024-02-20T04:20:13Z")
In my first post above, “outing” should be “outlining.” (You can’t edit a post with a video link in it.) ---
**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:** [February 20, 2024, 4:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-youve-seen-recently-part-1/699906/8714 "2024-02-20T04:51:32Z")
It was My Cousin Vinny that taught me, when I was a kid, that the prosecutor shares what they have on the defendant with the defense. It seems obvious, but I love when Joe Pesci says he’d love to have their case on his defendant and the prosecutor has it all sent over for him to review. Edit: Also, aside from this, is Ralph Macchio famous for anything other than Karate Kid? ---
**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:** [February 20, 2024, 6:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-youve-seen-recently-part-1/699906/8715 "2024-02-20T06:32:32Z")
> [@Jack\_Batty](#): > > [_The Triplets of Belleville_ (2003)](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0286244/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_5_nm_3_q_triplets) was on TCM this morning. I remember bring my kids to see that when they were like 8 or 9 and they loved it. So did I. Oh wow, I have vague memories of watching what must have been the premiere of that on UK TV around Christmas 2003, but I am sure it was called _Belleville Rendez-vous_. Never seen it since but I remember enjoying it a lot, even if it was a bit odd. ---
**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:** [February 20, 2024, 10:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-youve-seen-recently-part-1/699906/8716 "2024-02-20T10:21:53Z")
> [@terentii](#): > > So gays and musicals are immune to satire? Not at all. And the musical satire is on point. “Look at how effeminate gay men are” isn’t satire IMO. But it was the 1970s. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2024, 10:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-youve-seen-recently-part-1/699906/8717 "2024-02-20T10:34:29Z")
All I can add to this is to say that anyone who hasn’t seen _My Cousin Vinny_ must see it **right now**! It’s on my list of one of the top comedies of all time! All the actors are fantastic in their roles, and in a supporting role you could hardly have a more perfect character than Fred Gwynne to play a no-nonsense short-tempered judge! 😆 ---
**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:** [February 20, 2024, 1:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-youve-seen-recently-part-1/699906/8718 "2024-02-20T13:20:15Z")
I watched **The Great Race** over the past couple of days. I’d seen bits and pieces of it, but never watched the whole things, for reasons I’ll get to below. The film is impressively made – Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon, Natalie Wood, Peter Falk, Keenan Wynn, Ross Martin, Larry Storch, Arthur O’Connell, Dorothy Provine, Denver Pyle Vivian Vance (!! How many movies have Vivian Vance in them?). An original son by Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer. Animated title cards. The disc had an Overture, an Intermezzo, and Exit music. Helluva long film, too. The film is apparently the favorite of a lot of peopled. MST3K got their catchphrase “Push the button, Frank!” from this film’s “Push the button, Max!” But I found it …disappointing. You really want to have a good time with something this much time and effort went into, but it feels like it’s straining awgfully hard to be good and failing. Jack Lemmon plsys the stereotyped Victorian-era villain Doctor Fate, in curled moustache and top hat and all dressed in black. A very pre-Columbo Peter Falk plays his sidekick, Max. Falk doesn’t look quite the way I remember him. He’s too young, and looks as if he hasn’t ripened yet. Lemmon’s Professor Fate is the dastardly, clever, but incompetent villain who paints all his evil devices black with red trim and with a skull and crossbones, and who plays Bach’s _Toccata and Fugue_ on his organ in his castle-like lair. You think that at some point he ought to be tying a Damsel in Distress to a log in a sawmill or to a set of railroad tracks, but he never does. Tony Curtis plays The Great Leslie, a daredevil and escape artist. The film opens with him escaping from a straitjacket suspended from a balloon, as if he’d never left the set of **Houdini**. He’s always dressed in white and later drives a spotless white car. His hair is never mussed. Natalie Wood plays Maggie Dubois, liberated female reporter a la Nellie Bly, but who loses her top layer of clothes more often. She’s Curtis’ love interest, although apparently she and Curtis hated each other. They’d been in two films together before this, one just the previous year – **Sex and the Single Girl** – in which their characters were romantically linked. She had to be persuaded to make this film, which she did in exchange for being allowed to star in **Inside Daisy Clover**. She made the film, which flopped, although it’s apparently gained a cult following (Weird trivia – Wood sang in both films. Or, rather, her character did. As in _West Side Story_ and _Gypsy_, her singing was dubbed.) The story is inspired by an actual New York to Paris road race (and probably by Bly’s own Round the World trip, i n which she sought to beat Phileas Fogg, and succeeded), but uses that only as an excuse for hanging location scenes on. The characters are diverted from the race by a brawl in a Western town, being trapped in the North by a storm and an iceberg, and by Ruritanian hijinks in a made-up Eastern European Ruritania where, for no really good reason (except to advance the plot), the ruler looks exactly like Professor Fate. Jack Lemmon overacts even more outrageously as Prince Hapnik than as Professor Fate, and is equally unfunny in both roles. He gets no screen credit for playing Hapnick. This lastter section gives an excuse for Tony Curtis to indulge in swordplay with Ross Martin with both epee and sabre. The sword choreography looks pretty good. Martin plays a character named “Baron Wolf von Stuppe” almost a decade before Madeline Kahn played “Lili Von Shtupp” in \*Blazing Saddles, proving that Mel Brooks had nothing on Blake Edwards. The Ruritanian segment also has what was billed as “the world’s greatest pie fight”. This might be the whole reason Edwards made the film. He was reportedly a big fan of silent slapstick comedy, and dedicated the film “To Mr. Laurel and Mr. Hardy”. The pie fight might be an homage to their 1927 film **The Battle of the Century** , which reportedly used 10,000 cream pies. There were other pie fight silent films, though. Edwards didn’t use cream pies, as Laurel and Hardy and the Three Stooges did – he used real fruit pies. By all accounts, real pies _hurt_ when they hit you. It took five days to film, and the pies started to go bad during this time, making the smell awful. Reportedly filming was fun, at first, but people started getting disgusted (and hurt). When, after it was over, the cast pelted Edwards with pies, it might have been in retaliation. I’m lad I finally saw it, but I didn’t find it really funny. One reason I never watched it before was that I found it overly “camp” and obvious and unfunny. “Camp” was becoming a big thing in popular entertainment in the mid 1960s, and Hollywood evidently thought people wanted more of it. But I loathed it. I hated TV series like _Lost in Space_ and _Batman_ that played up the campy elements. I wanted my science fiction “straight”, and preferred _Twilight Zone_ and _Outer Limits_ and _Star Trek_, when it finally came out. Batman, too, had been better in the comic books. The 1950s incarnation is remembered by many as the era of alien bad guys and Bat Mite, but it was also a period in which many stories depicted Batman as detective, and emphasized his deductive skills and his use of reasoning and arcane knowledge in ferreting out very real human foes. It was also the era of the New Look Batman, introduced by Carmine Infantino in 1964, when they modernized the character, giving him a sporty new faster Batmobile and getting rid of the fantastic elements, just in time for the TV version to jettison all that, giving us the Bat Phone and Aunt Harriet. It was a decade before the comic book Batman got serious again. I would’ve loved a modern superhero movie, a la the MCU, but, instead, we got the extremely campy 1966 Batman movie. The kind of movies I wanted wouldn’t come around until good CGI did. I might have gone for a light, good-humored but non-campy Great Race, too. Or at least one that was genuinely funny. But Blake Edwards’ film looked as if it was trying to hard and not coming close to succeeding. ---
**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:** [February 20, 2024, 1:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-youve-seen-recently-part-1/699906/8719 "2024-02-20T13:24:17Z")
The Great Race is one of those films that is better in hindsight, when you can remember all the funny bits and forget the rest. I’ve always loved watching Lemmon hamming it up to the max [sic] but you’re right that there’s a lot in it that doesn’t work. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-youve-seen-recently-part-1/699906.md?page=434) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-youve-seen-recently-part-1/699906.md?page=436)