In the “golden oldies” category, I re-watched all three of the Naked Gun movies. Earlier I had happened to come across my old collection of the Police Squad series with Leslie Nielsen. Only six episodes were ever made, but I thoroughly enjoyed them, and it inspired me to re-watch the subsequent films.
I’ve always enjoyed the wacky humour of Abrahams and the Zuckers, but I have to say that I think the comedy of the original TV series was somehow fresher and sharper than the big-budget over-the-top movies. I really love the shoeshine guy who knows everything – “what’s the word on the street, Johnny?” – who did not reappear in the movies. Still, the three Naked Gun movies remain Hollywood classics. Now I think I’m going to have to re-watch Leslie Nielsen in another classic, Dracula: Dead, and Loving It – although that one has the genius of Mel Brooks behind it.
I watched The Polar Express last night, the first in my Christmas watch list for this year. It’s not awful, but it still makes me wince. The Uncanny Valley thing is less of a problem as it was when it came out, now that we’re used to it a bit more, but it is very dated, as the faces are very stiff, very pallid and lifeless, and the cloth simulation is primitive.
But looking past those superficial issues, the story itself is… fine, I guess. It’s a bit ridiculously over the top, doesn’t make a lot of sense, and the cute white kid from the affluent family gets to be the hero throughout, reaping all the benefits while the other kids get the scraps. But I suppose it’s an entertaining enough bit of nonsense.
Looking at it again, someone could now remake it, it’s been 20 years, I think that’s enough time. But the need for it being CGI animated is minimal to achieve the same effect, so they could do it in live action, and then they could make the cast a bit more diverse and less annoying, with actual facial expressions to convey emotion.
^ Also too much movie made from too little a book (like the Hobbit trilogy, come to think of it).
Agreed. Love the shoeshine guy, separately consulted IIRC by a heart surgeon, a particle physicist and a jockey. And don’t forget Rex Hamilton as Abraham Lincoln, returning fire at John Wilkes Booth!
LOL.
Hellhole - Netflix? I think - English Overdubbed - A law-enforcer goes undercover in a monastery to investigate the disappearance of several local women. This was pretty dark and moody. The monastery just seems like an awful place from the start. Of course there’s something really sinister going on. Overall, I thought this worked pretty good. It was mostly pretty predictable but well-done with a very dark ending. I like the darker endings.
Watched Bullet Train yesterday on Netflix. I’d give it “C.” It was okay. The action was fine, but it seemed like it thought it was much more clever than it actually was. The writer and/or director was clearly doing their best Quentin Tarantino impression and failed.
My second Christmas watch list movie was The Muppet Christmas Carol. I haven’t watched it in quite a few years, as it’s never been my favourite Muppet film, but it is, I think, worthy of being many people’s favourite version of A Christmas Carol, because Michael Caine elevates it to a very affecting level.
If you ignore the muppety silliness, and Gonzo and Rizzo interrupting with annoying unfunny bits, everything else - the visuals, the performances, the pacing - are captivating, and you can really believe that Scrooge might change after experiencing the events he witnessed. Many other versions, especially modernised adaptations, play Scrooge to be so unscrupulously evil that he’s essentially an empathy-free narcissist. People like that never change, as we have seen for ourselves in recent times. But people who are just grumpy or miserable, and have gotten in so deep they don’t really notice what they’ve lost, they can be redeemed. Or at least, it seems more likely it can happen, to me. And this version does that very believably.
Anyway, it’s a good film even if you extract the Muppets, which isn’t true of any other Muppet movie, even Treasure Island.
We watched Good Night Oppy on prime.
I liked it, it gave some insights to some of the developments , the history of the missions and the people who were behind it all and the degree of hard science and planning ( and occasional helping of luck). Loved the wake up songs, the footage from inside Mission Control during the major events etc but don’t expect a hard science documentary. It has the feels, although I may just be getting soft in my old age .
That said I could put on my cynical hat, the over anthropomorphism of the rovers was a but much , I think they were blending in Wall-E sounds a little too much. Not 100% sure about some of the details were quite right (they had quite a few selfies of Opportunity which showed the mirrors being cleaned up not just the one at the end of the mission ) and sometimes the people they had talking seemed to be a bit over the top on some of the analogies they were drawing , but then they were very close to the project so I can’t fault them.
I felt like some Christmas horror over the weekend, so first I watched Advent Calendar streaming on Shudder. A Belgian horror about a woman who receives a creepy advent calendar and she has to do what it tells her each day or else a terrifying creature will kill her. It grows increasingly disturbing with each day and has a good overwhelming sense of unease though I think it doesn’t quite stick the landing. It was one of those movies where I am thinking “ok this is pretty cool, where is this going?” And then by the end I was “oh. That’s… it?”
Then I saw Violent Night in the theater. David Harbour plays an R-rated Santa Claus who gets stuck in a house while the family inside is taken hostage by thieves and decides to unleash all kinds of mayhem upon the criminals. It’s basically Home Alone meets Die Hard meets TheRef, with a lot of blood and guts. It’s exactly what you’d expect it to be from the trailer and it was a lot of fun!
Next on my Christmas watch list is A Boy Called Christmas, a new take on the origins of Santa. A boy, whose father goes out on a quest for hope, follows behind, and, along with his talking mouse, discovers flying reindeer and an elf village hidden in the mountains. Then shenanigans ensue, etc.
If it didn’t have such a stellar cast of stalwart British thespians as the adults (and even the supporting cast of kids is pretty impressive) and top shelf VFX work, it would be dismissed as schmaltzy bollocks, but it elevates itself above and becomes worth a watch. However, its plot doesn’t bear close scrutiny.
I watched Bullet Train last night on my flight. I was thinking the same thing about trying to channel Tarantino (as well as elements of Robert Rodriguez and Guy Richie who actually have succeeded as the Mexican and British Tarantinos) to create a sort of “Smoking Aces” knock off.
The Scary of Sixty-First (Shudder) This is a weird one. Starting with the title, which refers to an apartment on the upper east side of NYC that was owned by Jeffrey Epstein. Two young women rent it, and while one gets obsessed with investigating the whole JE / pedophilia thing, the other gets , , , freaky with herself. A LOT. Masturbating like a m_ _ _ _ _ f_ _ _ _ _ . Not pleasant to watch, yet I give credit to the actress for a pretty daring performance. All the characters are unlikable and I really felt like I needed a shower after. I can’t really recommend it as a whole, but the actors are compelling in a car accident you have to look at kind of way.
Over the weekend, I saw The Fabelmans, written and directed by Steven Spielberg. It’s a semi-autobiography about how he got interesting in making movies and his first attempts at doing so as a teenager. It was interesting.
L’Avventura. The first of Antonioni’s Trilogy of Ennui, and, man, was that truth in advertising. I mostly watched it because I’m catching up on old films I’ve never seen, and the series The White Lotus did a near identical remake of a particular scene in the town of Noto.
Essentially, a woman goes missing on one of the volcanic islands off Sicily while on a boating trip with friends. Monica Vitti gets involved with the missing woman’s fiance (they were all on the boating trip). Not much else happens.
For White Lotus fans the penultimate scene is in front of the entrance to the courtyard of the Palace San Domenico. Which is now the Four Seasons Palermo and playing the part of the White Lotus Hotel in the series.
Once. An arthouse film about a heartbroken busker and the immigrant woman who changes his life. I liked it until the end. Then I wanted to throw things at the screen.
How you feel about it depends entirely I think on how much you like angsty acoustic guitar music. It was quite a feat putting together a story entirely driven by the songwriting process. The characters are likeable and well-acted. The music is often beautiful. Apparently the songwriters/actors received awards and made a music career out of this film.
I just feel it was kind of set up to end a certain way, and it didn’t, and the diehard romantic in me rebelled.
Yeah, the end of Once is a bummer for a romantic, but I thought it was refreshing. Enough glimmering happy endings. And his and her destinies were poetic in themselves.
I love this movie. The lead is musician Glen Hansard who fronted the band, The Frames. You may have also enjoyed him as Outspan Foster, guitarist for/in The Commitments.
Isn’t it with Once, they were both in relationships already, so it would be cheating if they got together, so it was more about bad timing, falling in love with two people at the same time, and things not working out?
