Agree, great film. I think it may have been your recommendation that turned me onto it. Now that you’ve reminded me of it I may rewatch it. I will say it’s not for everyone. Like, not for anyone I know IRL (but that’s a low bar).
Now that is a proper WTF film. I’m still not entirely sure if I like it or not. The end is completely batsh*t crazy. Definitely worth watching though!
Thank you for all of this.
There’s a reason this place is called The Straight Dope. 
And just to be clear(er)-- thousands of movies have the graphic at the end, " Filmed in Panavision".
This does not denote any particularly artsy process. Most use this graphic ( contractually, I suspect but cannot prove yet ) to remark that the normal spherical or normal anamorphic lenses, camera bodies, magazines and accessories made (s.i.c.) by Panavision were used to make the movie.
Things get muddy. I have, more than a few times, have “Panavised Arri’s” on my Steadicam. This would be typically an Arriflex camera, be it film or digital in media capture method, that was then purchased and modified by Panavision. Usually at their Woodland Hills, CA facility. ( The Mother Ship ).
Having stood in Panavision Rentals NYC in the last year or two and looked at Arri digital cinema camera bodies such as the Alexa and Alexa Mini, that were then “Panavised”, I can promise that what started out as an Arri camera became something hybrid.
All good. I’m a big fan of both main systems and designs. Just trying to add some nuance.
The new Roadhouse - do NOT waste your time.
And- most importantly IMHO, Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” was filmed in Ultra Panavision 70mm Cinerama.
And, to be VERY very nitpicky, the cameras shot a 65mm wide negative in the vertical transport alignment. ( Opposed to IMAX, which shoots a 65mm negative in the horizontal transport alignment. ) They are called 70mm movies because the release prints are printed onto 70mm wide film. The remaining 5mm of film width is taken up by the optical ( and now digital ) sound tracks.
I am fascinated by it. I’d say that Men is a combination of:
- Twin Peaks
- Xtro <–if you have seen this, you’ll know why
- A Kubrick movie of sorts
Even having seen it again, I don’t understand what it is saying. Men = Bad? Men = All-The-Same?
It’s very bizarre and even though I am not sure what to make of that ending, I love the movie.
Wicked Little Letters - Starring Jessie Buckley (who starred in Men!) and Olivia Colman, this is a comedic look at an actual historical set of events. The tone reminds of See How They Run, so if you didn’t like that, you probably won’t like this one. I liked it a lot. The side characters are well drawn and provide much of the funniest parts of the movie.
Monkey Man - Written, directed and starring Dev Patel, this is a mixture of John Wick and every martial arts movie Dev Patel eve saw as a child, filtered into an Indian context. Extremely bloody, but very few guns. Few slow parts though. It’s not going to displace the John Wick series, even though it leaves room for a sequel in much the same way. I had fun, though, which is the most you can expect from this movie, so I don’t feel cheated and would watch a sequel.
The Omen
Somewhat recommended.
Really a family drama about a very naughty little boy. 
Hardly scary, but I actually preferred this movie to The Exorcist. A very intense final 20 minutes and very well acted throughout, I think trimming it down a few minutes would have helped, but the movie is pretty good.
The Omen II
Somewhat recommended.
Just kind of a continuation, but the boy who plays Damian in this movie does quite well. If this series had continued forever, we would have grown extremely tired of them almost killing Damian and then failing near the point of doing so. This movie mostly works, though.
The Final Conflict - Omen III
Recommended.
Sam Neil plays Damian and does a really good job. This movie is edited to a slightly shorter length than the others and that is not a bad thing. The ending was 100% not what I expected and I credit it for having the guts to…actually have Jesus Christ make an appearance to face Damian for a brief moment near the end. These religious themed horror movies hardly ever go all in and have God/Jesus, etc. appear. This one did. I did NOT see that coming.
I see there is an Omen IV, but I don’t know that I can see the point. I’ll check it out at some point.
I’d like to strongly recommend Knox Goes Away.
Michael Keaton stars/directs/produces/caters/etc.
The titular character, John “Aristotle” Knox Does Very Bad Things for money. Quite smart and reads books on advanced topics. Due to a serious health issue he needs to “go away”. In the process reconnecting with his family, trying to avoid the consequences of Bad Things his condition has caused him to do, etc.
While it’s a dramatic movie about awful crimes, there’s a surprising amount of bits of humor thrown in.
Also in it is somebody called “Al Pacino” (who?), as well as James Marsden, Marcia Gay Hardin in a small role.
While the “witty banter” between detectives is an overused trope, here it is so well written that I enjoyed it.
A couple of quite interesting plot twists. (And I’m still trying to figure out a “Who is that and what are they doing here?” bit near the end.) There’s also the meaning of “Goes Away” in the title that I didn’t see coming, well, in this form.
Give it 5 stones. Pretty good with 16 people credited as “Executive Producer”.
Shin Godzilla
Definitely not recommended.
I have yet to see Godzilla Minus One, but I thought I’d check this one out. I did not like it at all. It’s boring. I’m not sure what to say. It was dull.
Sorceror (1977). Highly recommended.
Depending on whom you ask, it’s either a remake of Henri-Georges Clouzot’s 1953 masterpiece Le Salaire de la peur (The Wages of Fear) or another adaptation of the novel of the same title. Four men (including Roy Scheider) have ended up in a small, remote village in Colombia as a result of separate backstories that have resulted in the need to lie low and hide from people who are trying to find them. Terrorists blow up an oil well, it’s burning out of control, and the oil company puts out the word that they need to hire drivers to transport dynamite (that has been stored improperly and is leaking nitroglycerine) two hundred miles through the jungle to the oil well to extinguish the fire.
I remember seeing it in a Cinerama theater when it came out. The screen was definitely huge and, IIRC, it was curved, so the effect was pretty immersive. I don’t know how the screen size compares with IMAX, and the aspect ratio was very different, but it was a truly big screen.
According to IMDb, it was also distributed to many theaters in anamorphic 35mm format. In that format it was slightly cropped to create the conventional 2.35:1 aspect ratio instead of Ultra Panavision’s usual 2.20:1.
And then there’s The Shining, which Kubrick rather inexplicably chose to film in the ancient 1.33:1 aspect ratio. I’m not sure if he had an artistic reason for this, as I also think I read somewhere that this was what his camera equipment was showing him and that’s how he wanted to release it. However, most or many theatrical releases were cropped to 1.85:1. Early DVD releases were 1.33:1, but later ones were the theatrical aspect ratio.
As did I, at a new TransLux theater with a Cinerama screen that measured 70ft by 35ft on the curve and state-of-the-art sound. I sat in the middle of the theater as close as you could get with no distortion. It was truly mind-blowing.
Thanks for that info! So, similar to film IMAX in width, but not as tall. And probably quite a bit bigger than most digital IMAX screens. IMAX screens come in a bunch of different sizes. From what I’ve been able to gather, these are the common formats:
IMAX GT is the largest format with a size of 59 x 79 feet
IMAX SR format is 55 x 75
MPX is for screens up to 70 ft wide
IMAX Digital screens are typically much smaller.
Worth it for the bridge scene alone, which is truly insane. Up there with Fitzcaraldo and the hauling of the ship over the mountain.
I watched a fairly unknown and underrated comedy today, Real Men (1987) starring Jim Belushi and John Ritter. This is pretty much the only thing I’ve seen Jim Belushi in where I thought he was good.
It’s a bit of a farce where Belushi is a super spy guy and John Ritter is a milquetoast who looks just like Belushi’s dead partner so he has to rope him in to this weird plot with aliens and rogue CIA agents and clown gangs and non-dedicated Russian agents … it’s all irrelevant, the bits between Belushi and Ritter are the meat.
Ritter’s character is named Bob. My dog’s name is Bob. I frequently quote Belushi from this movie … “That … was … beautiful, Bob.” Eh, maybe you have to see the movie to get it.
“…used to have a pretty good pen, Bob.”
I watched that recently and really enjoyed it. Lots of little nods to the original in there, the hero called Dalton, his GF a doctor, bad guy named Brad plus many more.
I quite liked McGregor in it, he’ll never be a leading man like the Rock but he had humour and could get a career as bad guy like Danny Trejo
We watched The Little Things (2021) starring Denzel Washington, Rami Malek, and Jared Leto. It’s a cop drama. I can only say - Meh. I was hoping for a lot more with that cast.
Yesterday (Beatles disappear, 2019 w/ Himesh Patel). Fun first half, kinda dreary 2nd half. Never wanted to be a star, but a song-writer? Sure! The little twist at the end was kinda eye-rolley, tbf.