He’s in Beverley Hills Cop too. I swear he’s always looked old!
Just saw this. It was pretty good. Not going to win any awards for originality, but it’s not a waste of your time.
Watching Furiosa on Max. I’m watching it in tranches, as it’s pretty over the top. Not bad, though. There is enough comic relief to break up the violence.
The middle 12-minute or so action sequence is the highlight of the year. You will know if/when you see it.
Twisters
I should have waited for the RiffTrax edition. That’s going to be awesome!
Spoiler:
The hunky, handsome cowboy gets the girl. Who saw that coming?
Alien: Romulus
Recommended.
First, it is a shame that they spent so much time making references to the other Alien movies. I have no idea why they did that other than being directed to by the studio. This actually loses this movie almost a whole star rating from me. It was weird.
However, this is a great and very fun Alien movie when it isn’t busy making references and so forth. I like the director’s Evil Dead movie much more, but this movie was really great. Felt like a really solid Alien sequel.
If you like Alien and Aliens, this is pretty much a really excellent followup to those, though I believe this is a interquel, taking place between those two movies. Anyway, probably the best standard Alien sequel other than possibly Aliens.
I still liked Covenant and Prometheus more, which are really quite different, almost from another franchise. What can I say? I really like the Synth storylines and was actually quite happy this new movie did contain one.
I had heard from a few people there is a really bad CGI effect in this movie. You know what? There really is, one of the most unacceptably bad effects in a major, big-budget movie I’ve seen in awhile. I’ll spoiler-post it since it contains mild(ish) spoilers.
Ian Holm’s synth shows up and the digital re-creation of Ian Holm is worse than even Rogue One’s attempt at Peter Cushing, which looks downright amazing compared to this. And Rogue One was almost 8 years ago now. Why did Ian Holm look so bad? Did they run out of time?
Trap
Recommended.
M. Night Shyamalan’s latest movie and one of his better ones of late. I did not like Knock at the Cabin and found Old to be only OK.
This one was actually quite fun and I think it does the right thing by getting to the twist(if you can call it that) more or less right away and moving on with the movie. It’s quite silly and pushes quite a bit past most suspension of disbelief, but if you can sit back a bit with this one and just let it go, the movie is pretty fun.
Go in blind if you can. It really is a better movie if you have zero idea what it is about. I heard the trailers and commercials might have ruined some of it. Shame.
Fly Me to the Moon. You know the one with a semi-fake Apollo 11 moon landing attempt as a substory.
Mostly, but not completely, a fun film. Like the 60s vibe. Etc.
Scarlett Johansson really knows how to deliver her lines. Woody Harrelson is perfect as one of Nixon’s fixers. Channing Tatum is … well … um, hey, did I mention how great Johansson is? Jim Rash is too Jim Rash. And not in a funny Dean Pelton way.
There are so many historical and technical mistakes that there’s probably already a book in production listing them. That takes away some of the fun.
Some parts are tightly written. E.g., things that happen early are there because it’s important to the plot later. But still over 2 hours long. C’mon folks, just because you can make things longer due to streaming doesn’t mean you should.
One odd thing is that Ray Romano disappears from the film for a large chunk. What?
Give it 3.5 Jennys, mainly for the fun of watching SJ and WH.
(And I think some people will “remember” seeing the fake landing scenes and incorporate them as “real” memories and that’s not going to help. How someone can think that their memory of something so secret got into their head in the first place is beyond me but it does happen.)
What really impressed me about FMTTM was the spectacular shots of the rocket launches and the facilities at the cape. I couldn’t tell what was archival footage and what was newly minted CGI. The plethora of ads and product placements with the astronauts and NASA brought back lots of memories of advertisements in Life magazine from back then. I didn’t think the story really clicked though, and I’m racking my brain as how I would have written it better.
I saw Alien: Romulus and Rob Peace back-to-back, and came out of the theater EXTREMELY TENSE. 
I mostly don’t care for horror movies and would probably not have seen Romulus (to the extent that I even did see it; I’m not ashamed to admit that I spend a sizeable percentage of most horror movies with my eyes closed just trying to follow the action through the spooky soundtrack, and this one was no exception) if I hadn’t seen the first two or three Alien films and wanted to know more of the story.
Rob Peace, though, was fantastic. Best biopic I’ve seen at least since Oppenheimer, and for my money substantially better than Oppenheimer. Not as (literally) earthshaking in scope, of course, but better in its development of character and tragedy. Yes, the script goes a bit earnest or stereotypical or hagiographic in spots, but the stellar performances and the utter fascination of the story ease it over the bumps.
I had some jumpy jittery fun watching Alien: Romulus, but was never so invested in the story or characters that I wasn’t willing to close my eyes for a few minutes here and there to avoid getting too scared. And during Oppenheimer I outright dozed off for a quarter-hour or so somewhere in the middle. Watching Rob Peace, though, I’m not sure I even blinked.
People* complain all the time about Hollywood being taken over by endless franchises and sequels, and they wonder what happened to just making really good movies that are original rather than being cookie-cutter imitations of recent hits. Well, if that’s been bugging you too, go see Rob Peace.
(*) Personally, I’m probably part of the problem, as I often enjoy franchises and sequels and am doubtless one of the suckers they’re designed for in the first place, as my curiosity to find out “what else happened” keeps me buying tickets. When I get to see a truly original good movie, though, I understand what the kvetchers are complaining about.
Watched “The Union”
I swear it is what happens if you ask chat gpt to write a script for a spy movie with Mark Whalberg and Halle Berry
Beyond predictable, zero to be said for it other than it passed a slow Sunday afternoon.
I couldn’t sleep last night, and ended up turning on 1972 Skyjacked.
Every now and then, I think I’ve seen the worst fucking movie ever. Sometimes I’m right.
But James Brolin looked pretty good back then. Rosie Greer would have killed him pretty early on in real life, so…
Bad Movie
Edit: Hello Cherry! This post is in your Honor!
I remember that film. Greet let Brolin have a seat that Greer had reserved for his cello.
I’m sorry. Try drinking more.
In my defence I watched, and still do, anything with Charlton Heston. He played a pilot as well in a TV movie about the airliner that crashed in a cornfield. That was a real story, I remember seeing the news footage of when the plane cartwheeled in flames. Amazingly more than half of the passengers survived.
Outstanding movie: Crash Landing: The Rescue of Flight 232 re-titled A Thousand Heroes.
Don’t forget James Coburn.
Watched Man From Earth (2007), a tiny-budget film adapted from a screenplay by Jerome Bixby (author of several Star Trek TOS episodes and the short story “It’s a Good Life”).
A few college teachers throw an impromptu good-bye party for a departing colleague who (perhaps jokingly) explains that he’s 14,000 yrs old and has to move before people realize he doesn’t age.
Grade: A-. An intelligent treatment of an inherently interesting concept. It does have a “filmed stage play” feeling, and the acting isn’t strong (possibly the director’s fault).
The film was discussed a bit in the Forgotten Movies thread. I watched it on FreeVee but it’s also streaming on Amazon.
I happened upon the original Carrie with Sissy Spacek and thought “I haven’t seen this in forever”. Wow, that was a really poorly made film. With few exceptions, the acting was awful and the dialog stupid. Travolta was basically doing his Barbarino schtick, and Katt was just. . .awful. Piper Laurie was her usual competent self and Spacek did a decent job considering the material.
I posted “I always reserve a seat for my cello” (or whatever the correct wording is) in the challenge-us-with-a-line-from-a-movie thread; can’t remember if anyone got it.
Oh I missed that one, or I would have got it!