I saw Mountainhead on HBO yesterday. This is the new movie from Jesse Armstrong, I believe he’s responsible for The Thick of It, Veep and Succession, which is probably the most relevant to the subject of this one. Four billionaires gather at a lavish mountain cabin for a reunion of sorts. It was good.
That billionaire retreat cabin was featured in Succession, right? The Roy family met there at some point?
As a preacher, no less!
Den of Thieves 2 (Pantera). Not as good as the first and enough plot holes to sink the titanic, but not a bad watch.
I don’t think so. The New York Times has an article on the setting and it sounds like they only recently found that house (which sold recently for an amount in the high $50 million range).
You are correct. Google is telling me Succession filmed that retreat back in season 2 at Whiteface Lodge near Lake Placid.
It has a deep comedic cast, including a pre-All in the Family Jean Stapleton as the mayor’s wife going on an eating binge after quitting cigarettes.
Van Dyke’s preacher character uses sex as his nicotine substitute.
Cold Turkey maybe the first use of audible flatulence in a mainstream American movie, three years before Blazing Saddles
Spencer Confidential - A pretty good Wahlberg action film for a dull Sunday.
I started watching the original 1990 tv version of Stephen Kings It on Max.
Max also has It Chapter Two 2019. Is it also really good? No pun intended. 
I’m enjoying the first tv movie. It’s 3 hours. I’ll watch over two nights like it was broadcast on ABC.
The cast was a tv viewers dream. Richard Thomas, Harry Anderson, John Ritter, Tim Reid. All stars from 80’s tv.
My wife and I thought both Part 1 and Part 2 of the modern remake of IT were pretty lame.
Couple moments here and there, but not worth your time.
I’m sure I saw Tim Curry’s version at one point, but it has been a long, long time.
I haven’t seen the show since the 1990 broadcast.
I’m excited to see it again 35 years later.
I know Tim Curry had a stroke and is in bad shape. His best work was Rocky Horror and It.
Speaking of which … I re-watched Deep Horizon the other day, one of the few films that I enjoy Marky-Mark in. Although his rapid fire delivery that is supposed to display his knowledge comes off as lines memorized and spit back out just so he could be done with it. Still, I liked Kurt Russel as the crew chief (or whatever) and Malkovich as the evil corporate greed-monger.
Mountainhead is one of those absurdist dark comedies that is paradoxically believable. I have no doubt that these kinds of deluded assholes with god complexes are the rule and not the exception among tech billionaires.
Deepwater Horizon, I mean.
The Accountant - I’d tried to watch this before and gave up early on, but given the sequel release thought I’d give it another go. It did improve, in large part because JK Simmons improves every movie no matter how dumb, but the film was fairly predictable and I’m not entirely sure how many grains of salt to take the portrayal of autism in the film with. Seems like it might be a lot.
The Wild Robot
I wound up dissatisfied by this movie. It started out exceptionally well, robot stranded in the woods interacting with woodland creatures, making friends, and caring for an orphaned goose. It’s intended to pull your heart strings and does so.
The second act just lost me. I think the scenario got too unlikely, too divorced from reality for me to just go along with the ride. I’ll put it behind spoilers since it’s so new, but:
In a battle between a team of security robots armed with laser guns and woodland creatures, the robots win, and all the woodland creatures are dead. If you want the woodland creatures to “battle” the robots and win, make them unarmed or something, don’t give them laser guns and still have them lose. Seriously, they’re just there to capture a lost robot, they don’t need guns, they don’t even need to be trying to harm the woodland creatures.
Second, in a battle between a goose and the windshield of an aircraft, the windshield wins. The goose doesn’t break through with a sprained wing to save his robot friend. Seriously, it’s a giant futuristic drop ship with tractor beam technology and it’s having a problem navigating a flock of geese? It was already stupid as hell that the anti-gravity flying combine wound up crashing because of geese, like it doesn’t have fucking brakes?
Other than these scenes that bugged the heck out of me, it’s very well done.
I saw it as well and wish I had waited for it to come out on streaming.
Not because the movie was bad, but because the theater was freezing cold. I live in west Texas. Highs in the 90s by now. You’d think theaters would anticipate people showing up in weather-appropriate clothing and, for example, keep the temperature at least in the mid-70s to account for people wearing shorts and a t-shirt when it’s 90-degrees outside (shocker, I know), but no. I swear, this place was in the 60s—maybe even 50s.
Back when I used to go to movies more regularly, I would remember this and bring a jacket and maybe even some sweatpants, but it’s been so long since I’ve been in a theater (probably something like a year, maybe longer?) that it slipped my mind this time and. I didn’t realize my error until I opened the door to the screening room itself and got that blast of arctic air. Ugh.
People don’t go to the movies for the AC anymore. Drop it (or rather, raise it—the temperature). People who need a movie theater to provide AC don’t have the money to go to the movie theater. They’ll just hang out in the mall food court if it comes to that.
All that to say, I have the sense it (the movie) was a perfectly adequate entry into the MI franchise, but I was distracted and uncomfortable throughout due to the cold in the theater. Although I suppose that did provide an immersive experience during the second act scenes on or beneath the ice.
Perhaps the theater anticipated a full house?
Idiocracy on Hulu. I’d been aware of this one for years, and I knew the premise: Human intelligence declines over time, with the result that an average-intelligence guy of today is recognized as the smartest guy on the planet after he’s done a five-hundred-year Rip Van Winkle thing. But for whatever reason, it just somehow never rose to the top of my watch list until last night.
And, well, Best. Movie. Ever. Yeah, that initial burst of enthusiasm will level out over time, but even so, it’s pretty damn good.