Sound of the Police, an ABC documentary on Hulu. It addresses the history of police violence in America vis-a-vis minority groups, particularly Black Americans. Well done, IMO.
That’s too bad. I thought the last third of the movie was the most riveting.
That always seemed a smart thing to do. Plus, if you’re living on the third floor and things get hinky (too many Zeds piling up on top of each other, like in that lousy WWZ movie), you go up another 3 floors.
Two caveats: #1, you have to be deep enough that the Zs can’t just grab onto the underside, pull themselves up and over (they don’t swim, but they do walk on the sea floor); #2, no anchor (see #1).
It would be a good idea to have a motorized dinghy for quick in-and-outs to the shore. At the end of the Dawn of the Dead re-make, our intrepid survivors run out of fuel (it’s a sailboat that no one knows how to sail) and put the whole honkin’ boat into the dock (where they are promptly massacred by ISLAND ZOMBIES – roll credits). Bad move.
Barbie Saw it this afternoon. I thought it was entertaining and beautiful to look at but if I’m being honest, I feel like I must have missed something. Maybe knowing Greta Gerwig is at the helm had me expecting more depth(?) Kind of like my take on The Haunted Mansion, it feels like the site gags / jokes were all laid out and then a story was written around them afterward.
I hadn’t realized Will Ferrell is in it. I’m a fan of his but that storyline contributed nothing, IMO. As soon as I saw a white haired Rhea Perlman, I knew she was supposed to be Ruth Handler. My dad was big in the toy industry and Ruth and Chet Handler were household names ; I think they may have attended my brother’s bar mitzvah. Anyway, that was a nice bit to me, but I wondered if it landed with anyone else.
I didn’t understand the Kens’ obsession with horses nor why they were singing Matchbox 20 (though to be fair, Push is one of my favorite tunes from the 90s so I didn’t mind at all). Hell, I didn’t even understand what the Barbies’ big plot was. Something about getting the Kens to fight amongst themselves while the ladies reprogrammed each other?
I can’t say I didn’t enjoy it but to me it’s pretty forgettable.
The Song Remains the Same - a 1976 Led Zeppelin documentary. Oh lord, what can I say? I am a fan of Led Zeppelin but watching this show made me feel like I am a bad fan. I have seen bits and pieces of this movie but never watched the whole thing. And guess what? I still haven’t watched the whole thing. It has a bunch of head-trippy, wacky mini stories in amongst footage of their 1973 Madison Square Garden concert(s).
Things of note:
*John Paul Jones is wearing the most odd-ball outfit/costume. It has what looks something like rabbit foot key chains hanging off of it here and there.
*Jones is sporting the most awful Dutch boy hairdo I have ever seen. At one point during one of the mini stories he stars in, I thought it was someone in a really bad wig.
*Jimmy Page’s costume, especially his pants looks like his grandma quilted them for him.
*Robert Plant has really bad teeth and is even missing at least one side tooth.
*Plant’s “shirt” looks like he borrowed it from a 13 year old girl.
*Plant’s usually amazing voice sounds pretty weak in the beginning.
*Enough has been said about Plant’s jeans and what lies beneath!
*This movie shows exactly why I don’t like to attend concerts. The extended versions of the songs are so dragged out that I want to scream “that’s enough!” Instead I FFd through a lot of it.
I stuck around for Stairway to Heaven which will always be one of my favorites and then I was done.
After 26 minutes, you will be dazed and confused.
I suspect watching that sober isn’t how it was intended to be viewed. It was in the next auditorium over from Monty Python and the Holy Grail for midnight screenings circa 1980. You could smell the weed just walking past the entrance. I always wondered how they covered the smell for the morning matinees.
The soundtrack LP is much better, IMO, especially Dazed and Confused (the song) and No Quarter (beats the hell out of the studio version). I listened to that LP a lot in my youth, and 40 years later I’m still a Zeppelinhead. I agree with your observations except the parts about fast-forwarding and Stairway to Heaven. I posted here a ways back about an excellent version of The Ocean not appearing in the original film but in a later version (not sure which). Really tasty guitar toward the end and exciting stage dynamics in that tune.
No, it’s not typical. I haven’t seen Oppenheimer but I did see Interstellar in IMAX and it was fine.
Saw it yesterday, yes it was pretty silly but had some LOL moments. For me the stand out was the mother’s rousing speech to the Barbies when she was getting them to deprogramme themselves.
I recently had some long flights so I caught up on movies I had heard of or had a vague interest in.
Baby Driver (2017). I liked this movie even though it has some well known tropes. The main characters quirks, as well as that of the others was interesting and the driving scenes were quite spectacular. A well put together fairly straightforward action movie that I would likely watch again.
Shazam! Fury of the Gods (2023). I was quite surprised to see Helen Mirren was in this movie. I know she can do comedy, but this movie really seemed outside of what she would normally do. It was a quite uneven comedy film, and even though there are some good character portrayals as well as themes, it really missed more than it hit. The goofiness of Shazam! is present in this movie but it makes less sense since it has been 4 years (in movie time) from the last time we see the character and he should be less childish. Not exactly a bad movie, but certainly not one that adults would likely enjoy.
The Matrix Resurrections (2021). More of a nostalgia fest than anything else. Certainly an improvement on the sequels, in my opinion and it was nice to see the characters we liked in a bit of a new situation. It is a shame that both Laurence Fishburne and Hugo Weaving were not part of it, but Neil Patrick Harris was a good foil for the protagonists. As with the latest Indiana Jones movie, I enjoyed seeing the things I liked about the original appear in this film, so for that it was entertaining.
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Netflix recommended The Jerk a couple of nights ago, and we thought, yeah, that would hit the spot. Delightful, start to finish. (No less a film luminary than Stanley Kubrick cited it as one of his favorite movies.) For me, the humor doesn’t fade one single bit even after multiple rewatchings, and there’s some Truth in it without being heavy handed. Of course, Steve Martin’s little self-pitying “All I need” bit is on the short list of all-time great cinematic moments, and I simply won’t listen to anyone who says any different.
She has a recurring role in the Fast and Furious franchise. I don’t think there’s much outside what she’ll do!
Plowing through Interstellar. Very long, good cast, and I think I like it.
The Quiet Man (free on Amazon Prime). John Wayne, Maureen O’Hara, and the usual gang of John Ford supporting actors (ie, Ward Bond, Victor McLaglen).
I don’t think I’d ever sat through the whole thing end to end, so I gave it a shot, despite being unsure of how I feel about John Ford – IMHO he tends toward schmaltzy sentimentality.
But I liked it.
I just got back from seeing Barbie and… meh. I’m not in the target audience for this movie, but it just didn’t work for me (though I don’t know how much of that is my fault and how much is the movie’s). As others have said, it looks good—but it’s a look that didn’t really resonate with me, since I’ve had very little connection in my life with all things Barbie. I maybe laughed once, and smiled a couple of other times, but mostly, it left me cold. They were doing a lot that I hoped would pay off, but it didn’t, not enough really.
At least you tried something new!
I found this article a little hard to believe today:
The poll found 81 percent said they believe the patriarchy affects the workplace, including 84 percent of women and 77 percent of men. Among those men, 82 percent said the “Barbie” movie increased their awareness of the patriarchy in the work environment.
Sixty-four percent of moviegoers in the survey said the summer box office hit — which sees Barbie and Ken travel from Barbieland into the real world and encounter the patriarchy for the first time — made them more aware of the impacts of the male-dominated system in the workplace.
If that holds up, I’m impressed.
That is a fair point, but that was an established Franchise before she became a recurring character, the same is not true with this movie. Maybe she thought it would be more like Black Adam.
She is also the narrator in Barbie which I just saw. I enjoyed a lot of the humor, and was a bit surprised that it had more than superficial depth. It was mostly fun, and I really chuckled at the references they made both to cinema and popular culture, but there was also a human story in there too. Not necessarily very deep, but more than I was expecting.
I also thought it was nice that they included some of the history of the doll as well, which I knew about from watching The Toys That Made Us on Netflix which has an episode on Barbie.
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I’ve been travelling, so here’s the in-flight movies watched list:
Guardians of the Galaxy 3 - Not much to add from what has come before. Primarily focused on backstory and story arc closure, several good gags, a lot of pathos (everybody mentions the animals, nobody mentions the ENTIRE PLANET), etc etc. I’ve been a Will Poulter fan for years and he’s got excellent comedy chops, so nice to see them in action here.
Sing 2 - Definitely a “people liked the first movie so let’s make a sequel that basically rehashes the same plot” film. Warning: Contains Bono.
Puss In Boots: The Last Wish - A decent film with definitely better jokes than I expected from a sequel to a spinoff, but otherwise it’s just a mildly entertaining diversion.
Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves - A standard swords-and-sorcery flick elevated by a lot of excellent performances (although the main villain is pretty two-dimensional). Chris Pine looks pretty, Michelle Rodriguez properly kicks ass (love me some Holga), Hugh Grant is surprisingly fun to watch, and keep an eye out for the “World’s Tiniest Bradley Cooper”.
The Menu - Despite less glowing reviews earlier in this thread, I absolutely loved this (as did my teen daughter). Usually I find the progression of film plots fairly predictable but I loved the twists and turns of this one, and Fiennes is in great form. Would highly recommend.
I rewatched The Sting recently. It still holds up extremely well. I then read through the Wikipedia and IMDB pages on it, and saw what it might have been.
I admire David S, Ward’s writing and even his directing (Cannery Row and Major League were wriiten and directed by him), but apparently there were a lot of changes to that tightly-written screenplay. It was originally going to be much darker in tone. Gondorff was supposed to be a fat slob has-been.Ward himself was going to direct. Evidently it was George Roy Hill who made the tone lighter, made the thing a showpiece of 1930s style and fashion, and, with Paul Newman, changed Gondorff’s appearance and broadened his role. It’s hard to imagine the film without those elements, or to see it being a big hit.
If you watch the sequel, The Sting II , you see something of what could have been. Darker tone. The evocation of the 1930s is so slim that the film could have been set in the 1980s. Jackie Gleason is – apologies to Mr. Gleason – a fat has-been. Oliver Reed, the original choice for Doyle Lonegan for the first movie, plays Lonegan here. And David S, Ward, who was originally supposed to direct the first movie, does so here.
Nobody watches The Sting II.