I watched Angel on my Shoulder after a recommendation in the “who played the devil the best” thread. It was obviously not a big budget picture, but it also wasn’t exactly a B picture either. The strong point was the relationship between Paul Muni, as the dead gangster, and Claude Rains, as Mephipopolous (joke in the movie), and the way they played off each other. Great pacing – which is something movies of that era (1930s and 40s, especially the latter decade) had in spades. Ann Baxter was a bit soppy as the love interest, but fine. I enjoyed it more than I expected to.
Hellraiser
The 2022 remake they just released on Hulu.
It’s boring. Hot take: All the Hellraiser movies are boring. This one did not breathe any life into this series. Just another boring movie.
Speak No Evil
A very unsettling movie about…the consequences of being overly polite? Anyway, this movie goes from relatively calm to quite disturbing at the end and I would warn anyone with a sensitivity to intense trauma to avoid the movie. However, I found the movie to be pretty good. Nothing amazing, but fairly solid.
Holy christ, I just read the synopsis, I don’t think I would make it to the end of it. But mum’s the word, I won’t spoil anything.
I just watched this. It was EXTREMELY boring. It was almost an hour before any cenobites show up. Riley (main girl) was awful, her motivations for any of the decisions she was making were incomprehensible. Her random association of the puzzle box with her brothers death or whatever was super contrived. 1) Heres a box 2) push some pieces and it moves 3) brother dies 4) box must have done it so I’m going to find out who owns the box and go to his house. Meh…
Worst parts:
Main protagonists hair annoyed the hell out of me. I simply don’t believe any woman would leave their hair in their face for that long. And her upper lip looked chapped as hell throughout. I thought it would go away but it never did.
Waited way too long for any cenobite action and really only get one full blown “Hellraiser style” kill in the entire movie.
WAY WAY WAY too many slow walking scenes. Jesus christ.
Main bad guys affliction was represented in a stupid way. Looked really dumb. Won’t describe it here as to not spoil it.
Best parts:
The new girl as Pinhead did a fine job. Looked and sounded great. All the cenobites looked great actually. Final scene was exceptional, I won’t describe it and spoil it here though.
Just sat down at the IMAX to watch Top Gun: Maverick
As you can tell, I ordered from the “Heart Smart” menu…
Your good points are just about the same as mine.
I stand by my view that EVERY Hellraiser movie is lame. To be fair, I’ve not seen all the many DVD sequels that came out years ago, but the originals, including the Hellraiser 1 and 2…not good.
Not interesting, not scary, not thrilling. There are some neat special effects, but nothing else. Lame, all of them.
Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile is a lot of fun. Yeah, it’s a kid’s movie and has a totally fantastic premise. Still, I think it’s a very good film.
We just watched The Automat today.
Not the greatest documentary, but earnest and interesting. My wife and I both enjoyed it.
Over the weekend, I saw See How They Run, a comedy about a murder during the early run of the Agatha Christie play The Mousetrap in London 1952. I was lucky enough to have seen the actual play locally just 2 weeks ago, so I still had it fresh in my memory. I thought the movie was delightful. Had I not just seen the play, I still would have liked it a lot, but it would have lost a bit because of all the references to the play’s plot (thankfully without actually giving it away). Numerous sly theatre in-jokes to boot, one of which went right over my head, but my companion is a theatre buff and explained the one I didn’t pick up on.
I imagine it was a bigger hit in London, where the play has run continuously since it opened, so likely more Brits have seen it than people in the US.
Blonde (Netflix) Not unwatchable but very strange. I guess with there being so many other pics about Marilyn Monroe they wanted to make something “really different”. What they ended up with is softcore porn interspersed with in-utero shots of . . .all the babies she lost(?)
Ana de Armas does a great job as Marilyn but I fear she’s going to suffer from the script, which has entirely too many “daddies” in it. I happened to watch SNL shortly after and cracked up at the spoof.
Has anybody sat through Laal Singh Chaddha on Netflix? I don’t pay much attention to the Bollywood offerings on Netflix but while browsing my app, it auto-played the teaser for this and I instantly recognized it as a remake of Forest Gump! I’m intrigued but I’m trying to limit my saccharine intake.
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. I was on a plane and had a lot of time, and hadn’t actually seen it end-to-end in many a year.
The problems with this film are well known…but when has that ever stopped some one from spouting off online anyway? 
First: Willy and Short Round. We could not ask for 2 more annoying characters … Willy spends the entire film screaming, and Shortie spends it shouting.
The relationship between Indy and Willy is incredibly toxic. Within moments of meeting, Indy is holding her hostage, poking her with a carving fork. And it ends with him literally using his whip on her, to lasso her to prevent her from leaving. We’re supposing to be rooting for them, because … well, they’re the 2 good looking leads. The romantic equivalent of plot armor, I guess.
And then there are all the scenes of children being flogged.
But … the big set pieces are so spectacular – the compressing ceiling of death, the human sacrifice, and (especially) the mine cart chase…it’s not without its charms.
I like how Spielberg assigned himself a Busby Berkeley dance number in the opening.
Every Spielberg blockbuster has a scene that defies logic or geography just because it looks cool. In this one – if Lao Che wanted his plane pilots to get rid of Indy, why didn’t they just shoot him and dump the body out the door? Why bother flying all the way to India and parachute out?
How do we know the villain’s name is Mola Ram? He’s never introduced.
A question for another thread: is there really such a thing as a poison’s antidote? As in: if you swallow a poison you’ll die, but if you chase it with this thing, you’ll be fine?
I believe it’s Dan Aykroyd that shows Indy onto the plane. Wrong Ghostbuster!
Yeah, I realized my mistake and attempted to erase it before anyone saw it,
Ah yeh… now mine makes no sense haha.
The Woman King 2022 in theaters. A great movie about women warriors that is actually based on historical fact. Of course for the good of the narrative some things are emphasized and others invented, but it sttill did feel like a it was set in a particular time in history like The Mission. Having John Boyega as a lead did take me out of the film a bit, but overall the performances were great, and the actions sequences as well.
//i\\
Significant Other
A Paramount+ exclusive movie and I now have Paramount+ with my Walmart+ account. Anyway, this was actually a really fun movie and if you have Paramount+, you should totally watch it.
A couple goes out camping together and face some challenging experiences. That is all I’ll say since this movie is best experienced blind.
It was great and only 85 minutes, just right.
I just watched this and to me this was the best part of the movie. Turning the cenobites into generic slasher movie monsters is what ruined Hellraiser. They are interdimentional sadomasochistic pain worshippers. They actually MEAN the things they say about pain, they are not threats. We got exactly the right amount, maybe a bit much if anything.
I watched The Great Race on TCM a couple days ago. Did not like! I think I saw parts of it as a kid and thought it was the Bomb, but pretty much hated it now. I’m sure Blake Edwards was going for the Lemmon character to be annoying, but Jesus Christ! That was unwatchable. Never spoke a word, just SHOUTED EVERY LINE! Too long, stupid sub-plot about the Prince… Blah blah blah. Dumb ending.
Doesn’t hold up well, in my opinion. Not even Natalie Wood in a corset in the biggest pie fight in history could save this turd. But I could see people in 1965 enjoying it.