I love that the script actually makes one of those songs fit into the plot.
We watched Bulletproof Monk on some movie channel. Not recommended if you’re not a kungfu fan. And also not recommended if you are a kungfu fan. Plotting is terrible, acting is only moderately bad. The cinematography and editing are abysmal. It’s hard to follow what is happening and where.
Just watched twenty minutes of this.
Rewatching The Thing instead.
I tried it, too, and I think it was just one of those things you had to be into to get. I wasn’t, so I quit.
I really strongly recommend When Evil Lurks to everyone.
Holy shit, I’ve never seen this in 4K/UHD. It’s really something.
Do you still have the Que Sera, Sera earworm?
I finally saw The Martian and quite liked it. Not overy melodramatic, but moving and interesting. It’s one of those long movies that doesn’t feel as long as it is. I loved the space pirate line.
I love the humor of that story.
I don’t think this part made it to the film:
He’s stuck out there. He thinks he’s totally alone and that we all gave up on him. What kind of effect does that have on a man’s psychology?” He turned back to Venkat. “I wonder what he’s thinking right now.”
LOG ENTRY: SOL 61 How come Aquaman can control whales? They’re mammals! Makes no sense.
It’s funny but it also reads as 100% realistic to me. Astronauts, as far as I can tell, are the closest thing we have to superhumans. To be an astronaut you have to be an expert in multiple fields and have preternatural calmness in the face of crisis. You’re not going to get melodrama from an astronaut.
I also liked how JPL was portrayed. It looked “right” to me. But I haven’t been there in a very long time.
I saw Highlander in 4K recently and it kind of blew my mind. If you haven’t seen it in that quality, Amazon was streaming it in 4K about 6 months ago.
Prime is saying HD only right now when I load it up, but it still looks outstanding on my 4K TV. It was definitely 4K about 6 months ago. I hope it wasn’t an error and they took down or charge for their 4K stream.
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, 1966, starring Burton and Taylor. What an utterly unpleasant and stupid experience. I’m angry at whoever produced it and angry at myself for watching it.
Mark Watney’s summary that closes the film, puts it very nicely: When you think you’re going to die that’s when you get to work. You solve one problem. And then you move onto the next problem. And then the next. If you solve enough problems, you get to go home.
I had a laughing fit when I watched Ad Astra because of that line.
David Holmes: The Boy Who Lived - A documentary about one of Daniel Radcliffe’s stunt doubles on the Harry Potter series who broke his neck during filming. A rather sad story but strangely uplifting in some ways, in that he copes with his declining health by helping others and via his relationships with his close friends (including Radcliffe and other stuntmen). Also shows how the accident traumatized those around him. Recommended.
Tron / Tron: Legacy - The first film is still a delight to watch once you get past the dull real-world stuff at the beginning and ignore the one-dimensional role they wrote for the sole female character. The old-school graphics still retain their charm, and I love Carlos’ score.
The sequel, OTOH, seems to depend way too much on the CGI and not enough on the plot, of which there isn’t much. Neither version of Jeff Bridges is particularly interesting, the sole female character has very slightly more depth but still exists just to give the protagonist a prize to win, and the villain’s plans have some serious flaws (most notably around what happens when you materialize a couple thousand troops inside a small room).
There is apparently going to be a third film; one can only hope they don’t forget to give it a plot.
I haven’t seen the movie, but I’ve seen the play performed locally, and… yeah. I don’t have any desire to ever see it again.
Yeah. This wasn’t a “date movie.” An early example of a beautiful actress (Elizabeth Taylor) playing “mean and ugly.” And winning an Oscar for it, because who thought Liz Taylor could be mean and ugly? We’re still seeing that gimmick today. To her credit, she played mean and ugly very effectively. MAD did a great send-up of it in issue 109. It’s worth a few laughs if you can find it.
We watched The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes at a theater. Just bleh. There’s no character I could empathize with. Bad stuff happens to bad people.
But the acting was good and production quality good. Although the computer-generated stuff was obvious, especially the snakes. It’s like movie makers have never seen a snake move in real life. And I enjoyed the singing.
The boy says they followed the book fairly well. The story arc was well done, even if the story itself is lousy.
Wee Weasel was sick this morning, and I was supposed to be on vacation, so we had some family time: A Muppet Christmas Carol.
Oh, I really enjoyed this. I love the Christmas Carol story and its various adaptations. This worked so well because Michael Caine, who played Scrooge, took it utterly seriously. And somehow it kept the boy’s attention. I give it an A based on that performance alone.
Viola Davis absolutely radiated evil in that - it was fun to watch her.
Too bad she and Michael Caine never shared a scene. 
I watched The Marvels in an otherwise empty theater. I thought it was a middling entry in the MCU - not The Winter Soldier, but not Thor: Dark World either. Way ahead of Thor: Love and Thunder, which I couldn’t finish.