# Movies you've seen recently (Part 2) **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** movies\ **Created:** [August 27, 2024, 5:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-youve-seen-recently-part-2/1006288 "2024-08-27T05:10:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 33
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2024, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-youve-seen-recently-part-2/1006288/641 "2024-11-18T13:58:39Z")
I had an incredibly busy weekend, but I managed to watch three movies. **Deadpool and Wolverine** – I loved the first one. Th second was _meh_, but this one was much better. I don’t agree that it’s 90% fanservice. There’s a lot in here that you’ll miss if you’re not a website-following nerd (I had to look it up afterwards), but there’s lot that can stand on its own, at least for people familiar with the MCU and the like. A lot of things were hilarious, even when the film was at its most meta. **The Astrozombies** - saw this in the RiffTrax version. I’ve seen it before – I’m a big fan of Bad Films – so I knew what I was getting into. The riffing was pretty good. If you’re not familiar with it, it’s a low-budget Ted V. Mikels film (that’s redundancy – ALL Mikels films are ultra-low budget). He’s along the lines of Roger Corman or Bert I. Gordon, but with even lower budgets and quality, but more sex. In this case Ted blew a large part of his budget by hiring John Carradine to play the Mad Scientist. The film also stars Tura Satana, one of Mikels’ stable of regulars , most famous for _Faster Pussycat! Kill Kill!_ The leaps in logic, pointless coincidences, and bad acting make this film a riffer’s delight. My favorite part is when one of the titular Astro-zombies gets his power pack pulled off, and would have shut down. Fortunately, however, Carradine gave him a solar cell in his head, so the AZ shambles out with a flashlight pressed against the solar cell. Think about that – you don’t need an expensive power pack to power your astrozombie. You can pretty clearly run it on a couple of “D” cells. Carradine gets hi own Evil Hunchbacked Assistant, who has greasy hair and eyes of two unequal sizes. And he’s named Franchot, which is at least better than “Ygor”. I thought of him and the tall Carradine as Don Quixote and Franchot Panza. I also watched the RiffTRax version of another film I’ve seen many times over – Bert I. Gordon’s **The Magic Sword**. This one has a cheesy plot and cheesy special effects, but they got hold of Basil Rathbone (!) to play the Evil Sorceror Lodac, and Estelle Winwood to play the Good Witch Sybil. They also got Maila Nurmi (the original Vampira!) to play The Hag and Gary Lockwood (long before 2001) to play the hero, George. Naturally, George fights a dragon. It’s got two heads and breathes real fire, so it must have used up most of the rest of the budget. It looks a lot better than three three-headed fire-breathing dragon in _Ilya Mouromets_ (AKA _The SWord and the Dragon_). Interesting thing. I notice that around 1960 it was a feature for fantasy films to have an evil sorcerer/sorceress who lived i n a castle surrounded by grotesque-looking hangers-on. This film has it, with Lodac’s minions including a lot of dome-headed pinheads and bird-faced people. The 1962 film **Jack the Giant Killer** has “witches” that are mainly people with grotesque masks. And Disney’s **Sleeping Beauty** , where Maleficent has a court with animalesque creatures, notably her pig-like soldiers. We haven’t seen much of that since, unless you count Jabba the Hutt’s stronghold in _Return of the Jedi_. It’s a “castle”, and Jabba isn’t a sorcerer, but has a lot of super-scientific tech. His Gamorean guards look as if inspired by Sleeping Beauty’s pig-guards, and Jabba’s hangers on are a medley of odd-looking aliens. I wonder if George Lucas was drawing on this 1960s trend, or if it’s just a riff on the Spaceport Bar meme. ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2024, 2:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-youve-seen-recently-part-2/1006288/642 "2024-11-18T14:17:15Z")
**Paint** on Hulu. It has Owen Wilson playing a Bob Ross caricature. The characters are all fun enough to make it worth while but the story is (pun intended) paint-by-numbers. There is one great gag in a barn that still has me laughing. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2024, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-youve-seen-recently-part-2/1006288/643 "2024-11-18T16:05:39Z")
I just finished watching “Twilight Of The Cockroaches” a 1987 Japanese film that is live action except for the animated cockroaches. Depressing, but very interesting. > **[Twilight of the Cockroaches](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twilight_of_the_Cockroaches)** > > Twilight of the Cockroaches (ゴキブリたちの黄昏, Gokiburi-tachi no Tasogare) is a 1987 Japanese fantasy drama film written and directed by Hiroaki Yoshida that combines live-action footage with animation. The plot concerns a society of cockroaches who live peacefully in the apartment of a bachelor named Saito, until a woman moves in and the humans begin to exterminate the cockroaches. The cockroaches are depicted through animation, and the humans are depicted through live-action footage. > Director Yoshida... ---
**Author:** ![Sitnam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Sitnam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sitnam)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2024, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-youve-seen-recently-part-2/1006288/644 "2024-11-18T17:02:42Z")
**The Money Pit** (1986) My son and I are wandering through the comedy classics of my youth and since we had seen and he enjoyed **The Burbs** we went with this next. He enjoyed it and rated it 9.5 out of 10. I laughed once again with this charming classic and it was pleasant to see it holds up for Gen Alpha! ---
**Author:** ![burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/burpo_the_wonder_mutt/32/365_2.png) [@burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/burpo_the_wonder_mutt)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2024, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-youve-seen-recently-part-2/1006288/645 "2024-11-18T17:16:08Z")
(Just between you and me, how much better would it have been with someone other than Shelley Long?) ---
**Author:** ![Sitnam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Sitnam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sitnam)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2024, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-youve-seen-recently-part-2/1006288/646 "2024-11-18T17:25:30Z")
She’s not funny, but she works as straight laced shrew foil to Hanks’ buffoonery and they had chemistry as a believable couple. More so than Hanks and Carrie Fisher in _The Burbs_ at least, that didn’t work at all. ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2024, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-youve-seen-recently-part-2/1006288/647 "2024-11-18T18:51:49Z")
The wives in _The Burbs_ were secondary characters at best. Didn’t some of them go away for a chunk of the movie? It was all about the 3 guys. Their brotherhood of stupid paranoia made the movie. RIP Rick Ducommun. (A lot of other cast members have since died, of course, but his was a surprise.) “Pizza dude!” ---
**Author:** ![Cheesesteak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cheesesteak/32/3694_2.png) [@Cheesesteak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheesesteak)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2024, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-youve-seen-recently-part-2/1006288/648 "2024-11-18T19:10:04Z")
**Predestination** 2014 movie with Ethan Hawke and Sarah Snook. It’s a complex story, you’ve got time travel, terrorism, existential dread, all set in an alternate reality 1960’s - 1970’s. Based on a Heinlein short story All You Zombies. I liked it. As a time travel story, it’s going to be convoluted with flashbacks and flashforwards, but I think the movie did a nice job making sure we knew when we were, no “it’s actually 1963 and you thought it was 10 years later” trickery. Ending is open ended, it’s not a story designed to be tied up in a nice little bow. ---
**Author:** ![carrps](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carrps/32/2957_2.png) [@carrps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carrps)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2024, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-youve-seen-recently-part-2/1006288/649 "2024-11-18T19:15:15Z")
> [@Maserschmidt](#): > > We were browsing Kanopy last night and came across Le Samouraï (1967), and decided to watch. A French noir that embraces a bit of slow cinema, starring Alain Delon, whom I’d never seen before (but had heard of). We quite liked it, even if many of the beats and types are now familiar. I mentioned this one upthread. I liked it a lot, too. Gorgeous noir-ish cinematography. I like Alain Delon. He was in Rene Clement’s version of _The Talented Mr. Ripley_ renamed _Purple Noon_ and was very good in it. I also saw him earlier this year in _Swann in Love_ as the Baron du Charlus. Small part, but memorable. He only just died this last August. ---
**Author:** ![Maserschmidt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/maserschmidt/32/18829_2.png) [@Maserschmidt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maserschmidt)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2024, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-youve-seen-recently-part-2/1006288/650 "2024-11-18T20:58:44Z")
I also liked that his alibi/main squeeze in the film was his IRL wife. I’d watch more of him, is Swann in Love good? I appreciate the book _Swann’s Way_, so I’m intrigued. ---
**Author:** ![carrps](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carrps/32/2957_2.png) [@carrps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carrps)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2024, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-youve-seen-recently-part-2/1006288/651 "2024-11-18T22:11:14Z")
I don’t know if I’d say it was great, but I thought it was good, and it certainly looked gorgeous. I’d recommend it. ---
**Author:** ![icon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c6cbf5/32.png) [@icon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/icon)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2024, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-youve-seen-recently-part-2/1006288/652 "2024-11-18T22:23:01Z")
**Red One** (2024) A fairly generic Christmas Comedy. Very light fare that I found enjoyable, though I was surprised by the amount of cursing in it. If you enjoy Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evans, then you will likely enjoy this. Of course since it deals with Santa being actually real it has only as slight mooring to reality, which is fine. `//i\\` ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2024, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-youve-seen-recently-part-2/1006288/653 "2024-11-18T22:31:21Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > I had an incredibly busy weekend, but I managed to watch three movies. > > **Deadpool and Wolverine** – I loved the first one. Th second was _meh_, but this one was much better. I don’t agree that it’s 90% fanservice. There’s a lot in here that you’ll miss if you’re not a website-following nerd (I had to look it up afterwards), but there’s lot that can stand on its own, at least for people familiar with the MCU and the like. A lot of things were hilarious, even when the film was at its most meta. The “fanservice” worked IMHO given the fourth-wall breaking nature of Deadpool’s character and as a sort of homage to the pre-MCU Marvel films. Some of the fight scenes did drag on a bit IMHO. I can only watch unkillable people shoot and stab each other for so long before it gets boring ---
**Author:** ![TRC4941](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/trc4941/32/6792_2.png) [@TRC4941](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TRC4941)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2024, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-youve-seen-recently-part-2/1006288/654 "2024-11-19T15:04:45Z")
> [@Sitnam](#): > > **The Money Pit** (1986) I’ll have to watch this one again sometime. I remember it being pretty funny. It reminds me of one of my all-time favorite movies - Mr. Blanding Builds His Dream House with Cary Grant and Myrna Loy. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2024, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-youve-seen-recently-part-2/1006288/655 "2024-11-19T15:31:10Z")
No surprise, as The Money Pit is a _loose_ remake. ---
**Author:** ![burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/burpo_the_wonder_mutt/32/365_2.png) [@burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/burpo_the_wonder_mutt)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2024, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-youve-seen-recently-part-2/1006288/656 "2024-11-19T16:22:26Z")
I watched **Big Trouble** last night. Fantastic movie; excellent cast. Gets better with repeat viewings. ---
**Author:** ![Llama\_Llogophile](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@Llama\_Llogophile](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Llama_Llogophile)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2024, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-youve-seen-recently-part-2/1006288/657 "2024-11-19T16:35:03Z")
**The True Don Quixote** Saw it a few years ago and re-watched last night. It’s the Done Quixote story told in the modern world. There have been a lot of DQ adaptations, but this is my favorite. Tim Blake Nelson, who many will remember most from O Brother Where Art Thou, is DQ. Really quirky and funny movie. ---
**Author:** ![carrps](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carrps/32/2957_2.png) [@carrps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carrps)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2024, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-youve-seen-recently-part-2/1006288/658 "2024-11-19T20:46:43Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > Some of the fight scenes did drag on a bit IMHO. I can only watch unkillable people shoot and stab each other for so long before it gets boring Yes, indeedy, yes. And car chases. Most aren’t exciting as the film makers think they are. Not every one can be like _The French Connection_ one. I’ve occasionally watched movies at home where I’ve ff’d through enough of the movie that I’ve cut the run time in half. I _did_ watch the entire fight scene of _They Live_ the first time just to say I had. > [@burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](#): > > I watched **Big Trouble** last night. Fantastic movie; excellent cast. Gets better with repeat viewings. We really do have similar tastes! I always LOL when I watch it. Did you read the book? In the book, the Martha Stewart persona was Elizabeth Dole. I thought it worked for the book at the time, but, now, who’d remember who Elizabeth Dole was? Also, the movie was due to be released like ten days before September 11th, so it was delayed a year. I love the casting. Everyone was perfect, even the teenage kids (who are usually the weak spot in movies like this). I get sweaty palms at the end, even though I’ve seen it at least 3 or 4 times. ---
**Author:** ![Cheesesteak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cheesesteak/32/3694_2.png) [@Cheesesteak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheesesteak)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2024, 10:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-youve-seen-recently-part-2/1006288/659 "2024-11-20T10:57:04Z")
> [@carrps](#): > > Also, the movie was due to be released like ten days before September 11th, so it was delayed a year. Looks like it’s time to start spreading a new conspiracy theory. ---
**Author:** ![burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/burpo_the_wonder_mutt/32/365_2.png) [@burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/burpo_the_wonder_mutt)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2024, 3:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-youve-seen-recently-part-2/1006288/660 "2024-11-20T15:03:37Z")
“Dave Barry Caused 9-11”? Where’s the humor in that? 😉 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-youve-seen-recently-part-2/1006288.md?page=32) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-youve-seen-recently-part-2/1006288.md?page=34)