Jungle Cruise - Disney+
Watched this with my wife and son(age 11) and it was a really cute and fun family movie. Not a great movie, nothing much to recommend for adults, but we enjoyed it quite well and the interactions between the cast were pretty funny.
If you need a family movie, this one is not a miserable experience for adults, but it quite nice.
My son was laughing quite regularly.
“That’s NOT a Bee! That’s a Bear in a Bee costume. You idiot!”
Just finished watching it. Wow. 
Probably the most moving portrayal of war I’ve ever seen. My eyes were glued to the screen the entire time.
It wasn’t really a war movie, though. More like an “atrocity” movie. And very non-Hollywood. Just an incredible production.
Though the execution is cheesy and laughable, old movies are not short of decent story ideas that ought to be tapped into for remakes more often.
My wife is one of the three people on the planet who has never seen any of the Indiana Jones films, so we watched Raiders this evening and she loved it. I’ve seen it so many times that I was picking out plot flaws, but it was still fun.
Challenge accepted! (Not sure when I’ll get to it though. Be patient.)
Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008) Well, it’s a Hellboy film. Lots of action, mayhem, weird creatures, callbacks to ancient literature. Fight scenes galore, the whole misunderstood mutant theme. And a love story for Abraham the amphibian and Hellboy with flaming Liz. Good fun.
I’ve seen Runaway Train several times and it’s among my favorites, although it’s far from perfect: 1) The sound is thin and trebley and makes it look like the film is dubbed, as I recall, although that might be the result of re-recording the dialogue, which I understand is common practice. 2) The music sounds like it was made with a single synthesizer and evokes the worst of the early 1980s. 3) It’s not Rebecca De Mornay’s best performance. Some of her reactions are downright hammy, although that might be on the director/editor for not getting/using a better take. Also, I’m not sure if it has any bearing on this, but IMDB says Kurosawa’s script had no female character on the train. I think she was doing the best she could with what she was given, but her character doesn’t fit well with the other elements, IMO.
And it’s completely obvious. She just ‘appears’ suddenly, then adds nothing further than an explanation about who sounded the whistle.
Other problems: The Cartoonishly Sadistic Prison Warden. The utterly ridiculous prison escape (laundry cart? Really? Is that the best you could come up with??). The switchyard office people who were almost included for comedy relief. The implausability of the whole Runaway Train thing (Remember the movie is called Runaway Train?) The massive inconsistancy of the scenery/terrain. And that over-the-top hammy acting from everybody.
I’m sorry. That was a stinker. Like Homebrew and cabbage-roll stinker.
One of three science fiction films from the 1950s written by Jerome Bixby. He also wrote the story the memorable Twilight Zone episode It’s a Good Life was based on, three episodes of the original Star Trek, and the script for the movie Fantastic Voyage, among a great many other thingfs.
His other 1950s movies were the better-left-forgotten movie The Curse of the Faceless Man (In which what is essentially one of those plaster casts of one of the Pompeii victims comes to life seeking the reincarnation of his Lost Love, a la The Mummy movies) and The Lost Missile. I haven’t seen that, but I think it’s worth another look. As I recall, it’s about a Runaway Missile (Hmmm – Runaway Missile…) launched by a un-named country (Russia, take my word for it) that goes astray, putting out huge amounts of heat and threatening massive destruction around the globe unless it’s stopped.
I watched The Collingswood Story with friends on Thanksgiving. I picked it out.
They are reconsidering their friendship.
It is supposed to be horror. It’s just dumb. And worse, it’s boring dumb.
We watched Pig tonight, starring Nicholas Cage. Now, ol’ Nic has gotten himself a rather poor reputation in recent years because of his willingness to take any role offered to him, and the movies he’s been in as a result have been pretty uniformly bad. This one is an exception. His acting is understated and the supporting cast is excellent. It’s on Prime for anyone interested.
I think it’s a product of Soviet cinema. Filmed in Belarus where a lot of the atrocities took place.
I’m not sure I’ve seen other Soviet films.
I am currently watching the RiffTrax version of “The Star Wars Holiday Special”. It is much better than the original…but then again, so is yodeling with a mouthful of rusty thumbtacks.
Army of Thieves. A very thin film, plot-wise. Nathalie Emmanuel is always good., and Matthias Schweighöfer does a workman job of acting and (presumably) directing, but there isn’t much there there.
Besides The Green Knight (already written about), I saw The Eternals over the weekend.
It occurs to me that Jack Kirby is now responsible for an awful lot of not only the MCU, but also the DCU and other comic book franchises. Much of the ideas an imagery can be directly traced back to things he himself invented. (I realize that a lot of these are co-created, and that Joe Simon and Stan Lee might deserve some credit, but the “Marvel Style” of comics creation seemed to originate with Kirby’s drawing board, with Lee filling in the dialogue later, so I’m giving Kirby the credit)
MCU
Black Panther
Wakanda
Him/Adam Warlock/Cocoon
Thor and all of the accompanying Asgardian world and detail
Loki
The Hulk
The Watcher
Captain America
Bucky Barnes
Nick Fury
Groot
Ego
Fandral
Volstagg
Hogun
All the Eternals
Agatha Harkness
Hela
Ronan the Accuser
Red Skull
Sif
Baron Zemo
Magneto
DCU
Darkseid
Desaad
Steppenwolf
Mother Boxes
20th Century Fox
X-Men
Magneto
Prof. X
Fantastic Four, supporting characters, and their setting
Silver Surfer
Doctor Doom
Latveria
Destroyer
Mjolnir
Skrulls
Kree
Kree Supremne Intelligence
I’m sure there’s a lot I overlooked. A lot of things Mr. Fantastic used or came up with seems to be made by Tony Stark in the MCU, since they didn’t have the rights to the Fantastic Four stuff.
Besides all this, the use of the idea of filming a superhero fantasy movie in Iran used as cover to evacuate the diplomats hiding in the Canadian embassy really was based on Jack Kirby’s sketches for an imagined amusement park complex based on Roger Zelazny’s “Amber” series. I suspect that the real-life hatchers of the scheme were seduced by Kirby’s “Oriental” domes and the like. They used, I think, some of Kirby’s sketches in the movie Argo. And an actor is actually portraying Jack Kirby. He’s listed in the end credits, but no one refers to him by name in the movie, that I can recall.
So the movies owe a huge debt to Kirby. Which he or his heirs don’t get paid.
Agreed. I went into this without expectations and thought it was very enjoyable. The whole cast is charming, it’s multi-layered but not overly complex, brings the feels, and that diner scene with all the Broadway legends was incredible.
ETA: On Netflix.
The Mrs. and I recently watched unstuck in time, the new Kurt Vonnegut documentary. We both enjoyed it though we both thought the producer put waaay to much of himself in the movie. So it goes.
We also watched Black Widow. Slow (for an action movie) intriguing start, then it just turned into a special effects extravaganza with pathos.
We’re both looking forward to Joel Coen’s Tragedy of Macbeth
Wow, Denzel Washington and Brendan Gleeson? Gotta see it! Thanks.
YouTube, is case there is anyone else like me going to watch it tonight.