Thanks.
Just finished watching it, and you’re right. It’s a terrible film. Especially terrible since it’s Hitchcock. The timing was terrible, and he stuffed it full of silly little bits that didn’t pay off. Disjointed and boring. Too bad because there’s a germ of a good movie hidden in there.
War of the Worlds 2005 Tom Cruise and Dakota Fanning
I enjoyed the narrow viewpoint. We’re experiencing the alien invasion completely through the experiences of a dock worker and his kids.
There’s no take me to you leader or let’s just reason with the aliens. We don’t see the President dramatically leading the country. The aliens swoop in, shut off technology, and start killing people. It’s a very methodical and ruthless approach.
People respond in panic and absolute confusion. It’s every man for himself. Tom Cruise is just one face in a mass of people trying to stay alive.
Good movie with great special effects. The ferry scene is especially good.
I can’t recall seeing Tom Cruise play a character so vulnerable and shocked. He is absolutely overwhelmed and stunned after the first alien encounter. Which is how everyone else reacts too.
At Arisia 2024 the weekend of Jan 12-15 we ran movies all four days – most of them mine. But I got a hance to see a couple I’d missed, including
Blue Beetle – I hadn’t seen this in the theaters. In fact, I have never seen an actual Blue Beetle comic book, despite the fact that it was a Charlton comic when I was a kid and was later revived by DC. So they could have written any screenplay and I would have been oblivious of any changes they made.
Which is pretty much what they did. They turned the WASPy adult hero of the older comic books into a Hispanic kid. I liked it. Considering that the theme was the importance of family, it was cute how they involved every family member in the plot. I didn’t particularly care for the Bad Guy heavy being named “Carapax”. That’s like naming his “Fist”. Or “Jaws”. (And, yeah, I know they’ve done both of those).
Shaun the Sheep in Farmageddon – This Aardman Studios film came out two years ago, but I hadn’t heard about it until now. Why? Didn’t Wallace and Gromet and the curse of the Were-Rabbit do well enough? Aardman’s lead character Shaun the Sheep (from a long-running series of shorts) encounters a lost extraterrestrial. Lots of great science fiction in-jokes.
Unfortunately, events made me miss Cecil B. deMille’s Madame Satan. That one looked off-the-wall enough that I think I’d have liked it.
It wasn’t as good as the first Shaun the Sheep film but you’re right - the endless stream of sci-fi in-jokes makes it a lot more fun.
True that’s who we’re shown on-screen. But when he runs into the couple with the baby outside his apartment building, he says as if he’s telling the baby that he slept with both her (I think) parents.
Not in every color/later scene but in some – most particularly the Thanksgiving argument with Snoopy surreally floating past their windows – Cooper seemed to be doing the same voice as Tobias Menzies playing Prince Philip in The Crown. 
I should note that this actually matches the current incarnation of blue beetle in the DC Comics. Jaime Reyes as the blue beetle started appearing in comics back in 2006. This was not a change specific for the film, and some of the background in the film matches to a certain extent what was presented in the comics (which I have read) when he debuted.
//i\\
While doing some repetitive work, I put on a DVD with a collection of “Monster” films this weekend. Something I could keep on in the background and not have to pay close attention to.
20 Million Miles to Earth and It Came from Beneath the Sea- – two Harryhausen flicks that I rarely, if ever, saw on TV. I knew 20MMtE mainly from pictures in Famous Monster of Filmland I never saw it all the way through until I owned a copy. Great stop-motion animation in both, with suitably atmospheric shots. I loved the way Harryhausen did a lot of scenes in the former with only shadows visible.
Mothra – I remember watching this 1961 film when it first came out. Nothing sums up the weirdness of early Japanese kaiju films as well as this one does, with its heroic.threatening caterpillar that pupates on Tokyo Tower and become a giant silkworm moth, along with the two sort-of identical “peanut” fairies who speak in unison and sing in Indonesian.
The Giant Claw – unbelievably stupid-looking monster in this 1957 film starring Jeff Morrow, who deserved better. The story is that he didn’t get to see the creature he was reacting to until the film was released. He reportedly slunk out of the theater. It’s stated in several places that they ran out of budget at the end and had to settle for this grotesquely awful effect dreamed up by a Mexico City effects company. Stories that it cost $50 are unconfirmed, but the price looks right. (The same story of a stupid-looking monster due to budgetary constraints at the end of production is told about the mutated Bear monster in Prophecy (1979))
It really is the dumbest-looking monster in any “serious” monster movie I’ve ever seen:
The Razzies are announced - be sure to see them all!
Expendables 4 was my pick for worst movie of the year. It was astonishingly bad.
To be fair, I didn’t see the reset as I don’t put on movies I know I won’t like.
And Dial of Destiny was actually quite good.
This is a fantastic, and under-rated, movie. The scene where they are fleeing in the stolen minivan (the dead cars implausibly leaving a path for them) is a fantastic, one-shot tracking shot… which isn’t. It just looks that way.
Streamed several movies in the last few days.
Gangster Story. Starring and directed by a young Walter Matthau
So bad, so very bad. Completely amateurish. Horrific acting, even by Walter.
Reptile on Netflix. We enjoyed it. Well paced murder mystery and corruption film. Starring Benicio Del Toro and a nice surprise of Alicia Silverstone plating a strong character.
And No Sudden Move on HBO/MAX. Also with Benicio Del Toro and with Don Cheadle, Brendan Fraser, Ray Liotta and Matt Damon.
Lots of Star Power, trying for twists and turns. Mildly enjoyable but plots turns into a befuddled mess of question marks. I see what they WANTED to do with it, but it never got there.
I Know Where I’m Going! from 1945 starring Wendy Hiller and Roger Livesey. A woman is trying to go to a remote island to marry her rich fiance, but bad weather keeps her from getting there for about a week, so she falls in love with one of the locals instead, although they have no chemistry and he’d have to be nuts to marry her since she acts like an entitled stupid bitch the whole time.
Recommended. Nah, just kidding!
But that whirlpool thingie was awesome!
Yeah, I got chills when he said, “Corryvreckan.” 
The other day we saw The Black Marble based on a Joseph Wambaugh book that he produced himself with his own money. It showed. Robert Foxworth and Paula Prentiss starred, but the most memorable character was Harry Dean Stanton (as usual). It looked cheap, especially since all the smaller parts were played by inept, amateurish actors. There was some lame humor and a surprising amount of blood. Prentiss and Foxworth had no chemistry, and Prentiss just didn’t fit the movie at all. It had possibilities, but they didn’t pan out. Barbara Babcock (a busy actor in the 80s) was one of the better actors.
Do not watch if you are at all sensitive to animals being killed (even if accidentally).
James Woods had a small part as a classical violinist who busked at the DWP building downtown.
Dial of Destiny was at least better than Crystal Skull.
Shazam! FOTG was not bad, just mediocre.
They could have picked better in a year which saw the release of:
Gray Matter
65
The Machine
Fool’s Paradise
Strays
Outlaw Johnny Black
It’s not like they had a small pool of candidates.
Streamed Role Play on Netflix.
It wasn’t bad…but just not satisfying. Like it could not decide what it wanted to be. Drama? Comedy? Acton/ Thriller? Felt like if it decided to be one of them, it would have worked better.
Plus, I am little tired of the ‘hitman wants to quit but they won’t lt him’ trope.
Here were the worst movies I saw:
Blade of the Immortal
I quit this movie after 1 hour and I do NOT quite movies often. Takashi Miike is a director I like and this was massively dull. Just one of the most boring movies I’ve come upon lately.