Fun fact: I have literally reserved a seat for my cello on an airplane.
Well that blows my next post for the:
what-is-extremely-common-in-tv-or-movies-but-almost-never-happens-in-real-life
A friend lent me his dvd of this film must have been shortly after it was released because it was ages ago. I quite liked it and found it an interesting concept.
We watched a TCM move the other night to come down after watching the DNC – People Will Talk with Cary Grant and Jean Crain. Weird movie. And it had incredibly (to me) high ratings on IMDB.
First, it made no sense. Cary Grant is a doctor at a university, and Hume Cronyn (depicted by the script in the most stereotypically mustache-twirling villainous way – a real insult to Cronyn) is a colleague who is investigating and wants Grant ousted for never specified “methods.” Cary Grant has a constant companion who walks around like a zombie. Jean Crain is a young woman who is pregnant with her dead fiance’s baby (fiance was a reservist called up for the Korean War) and tries to shoot herself because the shame would kill her father. Grant and Crain fall in love immediately and get married, like, two days later. And he tells her she wasn’t pregnant before, but it’s his baby?! Just a real muddle. And it was billed as a comedy! Nothing funny in it, although there were bits that you could tell were intended to be humorous. My sister apologized for taping it.
It was Jean Crain night on TCM, so we’d also recorded The Matchmaker and the Model. Jean Crain is just not a good actress, but Thelma Ritter is a treasure. I really enjoyed this one. Ritter rightly has the most screen time. The script was tight and funny. Very little cringe.
I just watched this last night. Categorized as ‘action/comedy’, there was action (surprisingly not particularly over the top), but not sure where the comedy was supposed to be (I guess the rom-com banter and some fish out of water training sequences?).
I did like one discussion of what to do if one runs out of bullets, eventually followed by the standard automatic weapons that never run out of bullets.
Inside Out 2.
It’s a movie, more or less. Has the Pixar label on it but not really a “Pixar” film, AFAIC.
I was hoping that they would avoid the scheme of the first movie. The gang finds themselves in another part of the brain, has to figure out a way back, lots of standard adventures tropes (e.g., almost going over a water fall), etc. But, nope. They went there.
The “Riley” side of the story was very generic. Pretty sad at times, in terms of lack of originality.
Give it 1.5 Pouchys. (If you’ve ever been forced to sit thru that animated Mickey Mouse Club crap, you’ll know exactly what they’re making fun of.) The worst Pixar film I’ve seen. It’s the kind of thing that the old Pixar would have made fun of.
Warcraft
Actively not recommended.
Terrible. Boring. I was kind of shocked because:
- I like movies more than most people
- I like the fantasy genre
This movie was boring and was completely disengaged and uninterested.
Avoid.
Jupiter Ascending (2015)
Disappointing. A bunch of good actors (Mila Kunis, Channing Tatum, Sean Bean, Eddie Redmayne) fail to save a bloated and incomprehensible script.
Kunis has a miserable life scrubbing toilets, until she finds out that she’s the reincarnation of some intergalactic queen, or something. Lots of people are trying to capture her for reasons that are not entirely clear. And of course it’s up to her to thwart the Big Evil Plan that threatens the earth.
It’s meant to be a fun sci-fi romp, I guess, but it’s mostly just tedious. And there’s a long and weirdly incongruous scene in some sort of space DMV (featuring a Terry Gilliam cameo) that feels like it’s out of a whole different movie.
There are some promising premises and impressive special effects, but none of it adds up to anything that seems to matter.
I was surprised to see that this film is nine years old. I can’t recall ever having heard of it until very recently. I guess there’s a reason for that.
I was so hopeful for Jupiter Ascending; I may even have paid to see it in the theaters. It was, I think, that rare thing nowadays; an original film; not a sequel, prequel, part of a franchise or based on a comic book, etc. I try to support original films when they appear.
Or as I like to call it “Extraction 3”
I watched Jackpot on Prime with Awkwafina and John Cena. Basically a self-aware “Most Dangerous Game” meets “The Purge” comedy where in the not to distant future, Awkwafina unwittingly wins a new version of the Lottery where ticket holders can claim the prize by killing the winner before sundown.
Your milage will largely depend on how much you enjoy Cena and Awkwafina play the same characters they always play.
I like them both, but I found Jackpot to be totally meh.
I thought it was better than meh, but not by much. Cute, funny, but neither as cute or funny as it could have been.
I do recommend Quiz Lady from last year, starring Awkwafina. Hilarious, laughed all the way through. Awkafina is the straight man, so to speak. Sandra Oh is the wild and out of control one. It was a great subversion of expectations and both were great.
Caught The Limey (1999, dir. Steven Sonderberg) on Prime. An habitual criminal/convict flys from England to LA to find if there was foul play behind the death of his estranged daughter.
Good critics’ reviews on Rot-Tom — it’s got some Point Blank/Payback vibes, with the protagonist entirely focussed on his mission. Terrance Stamp is the protag, who looks to be in his 60s. Peter Fonda is the daughter’s LA boyfriend and is impressively shallow.
Grade A-. Short film, well done, a few puzzling decisions.
(Previously reviewed here 9 years ago by Elendil_s_Heir)
(Double post)
Borderlands (2024). A passable light comedy, in the sense that it was sufficiently funny but not more that that. I have no knowledge of the video game so I had no expectations as to what the story should follow or what the world should look like, and maybe if I did it would have hit differently. As it was, I enjoyed it but it did not leave much of an impression.
//i\\
I’m tell you, this movie was clearly shot as an R-rated movie and was taken from the director to re-edit it down to PG-13.
I’d love to see its proper director’s cut.
I haven’t seen that since it came out, but I clearly recall liking it, especially Terence Stamp.
One interesting thing is that there are flashback scenes of Terrence Stamp’s character in this film which were all taken from scenes of Terrence Stamps’s character in the 1967 movie Poor Cow.
Ghostbusters: Afterlife.
Halfway decent. Not funny, though. Wasn’t trying to be funny.