We watched a thoroughly stupid movie tonight called Heads of State,.
It was really, really fun.
Agreed. My wife said if it got too stupid for her, she’d just read her book, and she started to, but I’m pretty sure she watched at least 90% of it.
When do they start shooting Heads of State 2?
As soon as they find wheel barrows big enough to hold all the cash they need to wheel up to Elba’s and Cena’s front doors.
Watched it last night (my granddaughters request)…it was surprisingly funny in spots.
Yes, I’ve seen it three or four times, and I always “enjoy” it.
Interestingly, it was Frances McDormand’s first major movie role. The Coens wanted Holly Hunter who was a friend of theirs, but she wasn’t available. Hunter recommended her roommate – McDormand. Worked out nicely for her!
Dark City (1998). A sci-fi thriller in the full meaning of the term – a thriller in the style of film noir, and a sort of dystopian sci-fi. Alien beings with extraordinary powers, facing extinction, have quietly established themselves on earth, seeking continued survival by learning to become human-like individuals instead of the single collective mind they currently possess. Among their powers are “tuning” – the ability to alter physical reality through sheer will power, and the ability to extract memories from humans and imprint them on others.
The title references the fact that all the scenes are dark – it’s always night, and the interior scenes are all dark as well, and indeed it appears that the sun never shines, because this is an artificial reality that the aliens have “tuned”. The aliens are represented as vampire-like humanoids which is actually creepily effective.
Overall, not bad and worth seeing, and features a good cast including Keifer Sutherland and Jennifer Connelly. But it seemed to be aiming for a higher bar than it was able to achieve, and didn’t meet the high expectations I had for it.
Invaders from Mars (1953). Exactly the 1950s-era B-movie schlock you would expect. I don’t think the concept of a “spoiler” even exists for a movie like this, but out of courtesy I’m going to spoiler my snarky comments.
A 10-something-year-old boy witnesses a flying saucer land in a field some distance from the house. There is no sign of anything, but people who venture over there disappear, and then come back with an attitude. It is later speculated that the space ship has burrowed underground using extremely advanced technology we haven’t yet learned to harness, namely infrared rays! 
The army is eventually called in, and as the 10-yo appears in virtually every scene, he seems to be acting as tactical adviser and de facto commander of the US Army, who apparently would be helpless without his advice. (Incidentally, the kid can’t act worth a shit.)
As for the Martians themselves, they are much like humans except green, and, for some inexplicable reason not accounted for by any evolutionary utility, have tentacles coming out of their necks. The head Martian in charge of all this is, literally, a head in a jar, also green. Since the disembodied head cannot turn itself, it has become extremely shifty-eyed.
See my lengthy review of it upthread. As I note, the UK version is different, and I finally got to see it a few days ago.
What did you think of it? I watched it once in the 90s because it was my friend’s favorite movie. It seems to be one of those films that you either love or hate, I am in the latter group. However, I am not a fan of Bakshi’s rotoscoping film style. I had the same issue with his Lord of the Rings film.
I wasn’t a big fan. I saw it when it first came out, and it seemed wildly inconsistent. The cutesy fairies with explicit blood and gore. The Peter Falk-voiced “good” wizard with ambiguous morality. I wasn’t a huge fan of the heavy rotoscoping, but it worked better here than in his Lord of the Rings (where some scenes were so heavily rotoscoped that you wondered why he didn’t just print it as black and white film.
Most telling was the change in the ad campaign – originally the poster showed Necron 99 mounted on the weird two-legged steed. The back of his saddle had a skull and crossbones.
https://www.redbubble.com/i/sticker/1977-WIZARDS-VINTAGE-ANIMATED-FANTASY-MOVIE-by-ToniPohl/130261472.EJUG5
They changed that to the word “Peace” and added the tag line “An Epic Fantasy of Peace and Magic”
https://www.etsy.com/listing/1374035479/wizards-an-original-vintage-movie-poster.
The fairy-winged linor is a walk biy of fanservice and her father is literally a clown. There’s a section where the evil soldiers are asking a couple of religious guys what they should do with the prisoners. After a frantic section that appears to be skewering christianity and judaism, the religious guys do nothing, so the soldiers kill all the prisoners. And the point is… what? Religion is useless? It’s all posturing? It’s a pretty nihilistic performance overall, with no consistent message.
I think I’ve told this story here - Wizards played in Dallas at some kind of mini-festival in 1977, but we got the time wrong and arrived early. So, we watched whatever was playing then, and thus saw “Pumping Iron”, Schwarzenegger’s big US documentary debut, followed by “Wizards”. Strangest double-bill ever, but we enjoyed them both.
I suspect Wizards wouldn’t hold up for me now and have avoided it since then.
Jackie Brown (1997). Written and directed by Quentin Tarantino, and stars Pam Grier as a flight attendant whose criminal past relegates her to working for a second-rate Mexican airline, Samuel L Jackson as a gunrunner, Robert De Niro as his sidekick, Michael Keaton as an ATF agent, and Robert Forster as a bail bondsman, in which role he received the movie’s only Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor.
With this cast of characters one can see a typical Tarantino plot unfolding. The flight attendant turns police informant to save herself from smuggling charges, and then ensues a series of schemes and counter-schemes in which no one trusts anyone and violence and threats of violence rule the day.
I’d give this a “meh”, but many Tarantino movies are just not my style. Not gonna diss it – it’s worth watching – but unlike some prior movies I’ve mentioned, it’s not particularly memorable.
This was originally written by Elmore Leonard as Rum Punch, with Quentin Tarantino merely adapting the novel. I remember this being the first Tarantino film I got to see at the cinema as it was a ‘15’ certificate in the UK and I had just turned that age so it was a bit of a thrill.
Your review was much kinder than my snarky one. It turns out, on doing some further research, that the film developed a kind of cult following, maybe in part because some notable directors recalled it from their childhood (from Wikipedia):
The film developed a cult following in the years following its initial release, and was championed by directors like Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, and Joe Dante as a childhood favorite. A remake film was released in 1986, directed by Tobe Hooper. In 2024, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”
When I watch older films or TV series, I sometimes wonder what the actors are doing today, or are they still alive. The discoveries are sometimes surprising. The freaky fact about Jimmy Hunt, who played the little kid, is that he died just 4 days ago, on July 18, at the age of 85. The other odd thing is that this was his second-last film. After that he gave up acting and as an adult went into sales. He returned to film only once in adulthood, to play the police chief in the Tobe Hooper remake of the same film.
Did you see me even earlier review further upthread?
Wait, is it Talk Like a Pirate Day already? Yarr!
From July 16:
You rang?
Yes, I’ve seen Invaders from Mars many times. I first saw it one Sunday afternoon (one channel, I think it was CBS, was into running science fiction movies on early Sunday afternoons). I was young, and properly impressed. Especially by the Marian-head-with-tentacles-in-the-glass-sphere. Creeped me out.
As I got older, I was less impressed. I saw this movie once at the Dryden THeater at Eastman House in Rochester NY. You have to understand that this was an Art Cinema, where you heard the capital letters. People got dressed up to go to retrospectives here. There were no snack bars – you could watch the movie, secure in the knowledge that you wouldn’t have to unstick the soles of your shoes from mostly dried-up soda and squashed Milk Duds. People here were SERIOUSLY into watching the movies for content, understand? These were folks who knew that Invaders from Mars was directed by William Cameron Menzies, the legendary production designer of both versions of Thief of Bagdad, was responsible for the very look of Gone with the Wind, who shot the Salvador Dali-inspired dream sequence for Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound. So you knew they were going to be respectful and careful note each nuance of this rare directoral effort by Menzies.
But that’s not what happened.
The audience groaned at the dialogue and shouted derisive comments at the screen. They howled at the pronunciation of “Mu-TANT”.
It was an interesting evening. Critics made much of Menzies’ set design, shooting everything as if seen through the eyes of a child, and of the sense of creeping paranoia, but that simply couldn’t stand up beside film that the audience clearly considered to be dumb and stupid.
On thing I will give the movie – at the end they set the bomb to destroy the saucer on a timer for, let’s say, five minutes (I can’t recall the exact time). I timed the screen time between the setting of the bomb and its explosion , and was very surprised to see that it was the exact interval the bomb had been set for. They don’t usually do that in the movies (the only other case I can recall is that episode of the TV series M.A.S.H. with the clock in the lower corner). When you’re watching the film the time feels absurdly long, as if they’re just padding it out, but it was, in fact, the real interval. Five minutes just feels longer in Real Life.
In any event, as you can tell, I was a lot less impressed by the movie as an adult. It’s not on my “top Ten” list of SF films. Not even of SF Films of the 1950s.
Ifyou haven’t seen it, give the 1986 remake a shot. It was directed by Tob Hooper (Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Poltergeist) from script by Dan O’Bannon (Dark Star, Alien**Return of the Living Dead) with effects by Stan Winston (Jurassic Park, among a great many others) and John Dykstra (the original Battlestar Galactica). With the child star from the 1953 version, Jimmy Hunt, playing the police chief, and with “W.C. Menzies Elementary School”. If you look close when they’re going through the school basement, you can see the original Golden Martian in a Glass Ball in the background, out of focus. Starring a lot of familiar faces. I suspect they got Laraine Newman just so she could do the Connie Conehead “alien” voice. Worth a look.
Moving through the Harry Potter cycle in regular Blu Ray.
Gave up on the 4k versions but might try again when tthe replacement Ultra BR player arrives for the flaky one.
Previously had watched and last two movies very dark - too dark to watch easily.
New 2025 cheapie FFalcon 55" 4k TV the HDR is much improved. Still dark but easily watchable now.
Might try again in full 4k when the repacement player arrives.
Hoping it solves the issues I’ve had. tho not with all 4k discs.
Will be happy when this is resolved but I’m going to start buying some used standard Blu Ray discs as the upscaling is pretty good.
I have a review of Invaders from Mars on post #2769 in this thread.
Soaring Highs and Brutal Lows: The Voices of Women in Metal. Interviews with eight singers, mostly from the symphonic metal subgenre. Don’t go in expecting a comprehensive look into all metal bands with women in them, but if you like symphonic metal, it’s worth a watch. Alyssa White-Gluz brings melodic death metal into the picture and Doro Pesch represents the old school. Floor Jansen, Simon Simons and four others make an appearance. It’s from 2015, so misses recent developments, but still holds up.
Though I’m not one to watch ( or avoid ) a film just because it’s a Quentin Tarentino one, I do like this film a lot. Slick, stylish, some neat dialogue.