Note: In The Long Walk, the lead was played by Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s son.
At one point, his character talks about his dead father and honestly, I know there was no connection to the actor’s actual dad, but it was hard to watch without thinking about. He had to think at least a little of his actual father when acting that scene.
Using drugs as a McGuffin in 1967 was pretty novel, so I don’t think the writers had gotten their volume straight yet. The characters all act like it’s true, but the amount of heroin that can fit inside a doll is not worth a small fortune.
In the book it was 4 mph, glad to see they dropped that rather brisk pace. I’m looking forward to this, and to seeing if/how they change the ending.
Oof! I’m still recovering from They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?
Oh, yeah, thanks. I just saw that a few months ago and it is another one of these stories.
The key difference is that this one, Hunger Games, and Battle Royale all make it clear that it’s a battle/walk to the death.
In Horses, I think they were just dancing until the last couple won some money.
Mission Impossible: FInal Reckoning. God, I disliked this movie, other than the plane stunts, and Esai Morales’s over the top acting. There was so much treacle-y, gloppy fan service and on-the-nose dialogue (the Asian assassin’s main job, besides kicking ass, was to drop the occasional dramatic metanarrative, like an announcer from 60’s era Batman)…parts of it even reminded me of the last 20 minutes of Return of the King.
Oh, I liked seeing the dude from the secure room in the first movie, but even he got a really terrible monologue.
Just…gah, no.
Warfare (2025) on HBO Max
This was a very frustrating film and I can’t really recommend it. It’s about a SEAL team assigned to take over a civilian house in Ramadi, Iraq to provide overwatch for an operation by the Marines. We are never told what that operation is, what the rules of engagement are, or even who is in overall command. Very little of the copious military jargon is explained or easily inferred. We learn nothing about the characters except their particular specialties (MOS…I know that one). I’m sure there’s a good story in there somewhere, but they drop the viewer into this mess with hardly any context or ability to connect to the characters.
Yeah, she enjoyed it.
We sometimes watch a mindless action flick if the reviews are good and Thunderbolts* The New Avengers filled the bill. Most critics glowed over this, so we gave it a shot. It’s OK. There’s some humor in between the action scenes. Most of the characters are only slightly irritating. You can doze off, wake up and not have missed anything, which both of us did. It’s a decent Saturday evening’s entertainment but forgettable. I had to look up the title when writing this review because I couldn’t remember it.
All of that said, I’m not a fan of superhero movies and only watched it because the reviews were mostly favorable. Your mileage may vary.
I initially gave this a thumbs up, but looking back, it was dull. I think I just had high hopes. It’s Alex Garland’s worst movie.
I gave up on it after about 30 minutes.
Spinal Tap II: The End Continues. The band reunites for a show in New Orleans, and rehearsals and preparations are carried out in usual Spinal Tap style. It doesn’t have that spark-of-genius, capturing lighting in a bottle element the first movie had, but then again, there’s really no way it could. It has its moments, though, and if you’re a fan of the first movie, it’s nice to catch up with the boys after all these years.
Oh, and appearances by Paul McCartney and Elton John, if that catches your interest. And video phone conversations with a small assortment of drummers you might know, depending on how your musical tastes run, as they try to recruit someone for the job.
I saw Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale today. I enjoyed it, though I doubt someone not familiar with the program would. Lots of references to bits and pieces from the program or the two earlier movies (and also, I think, a few references to Gosford Park, which was also written Julian Fellowes).
Warfare 2025 Ray Mendoza
On Max
In 2006, after the Battle of Ramadi, Navy SEAL platoon Alpha One takes control of a local two-story house under the cover of darkness. JTAC communications officer Ray Mendoza coordinates air support to monitor their position, while sniper and medic Elliott Miller monitors a market down the street with fellow sniper Frank.
The film portrays the attack by insurgents and the teams efforts to evacuate wounded.
Movies portraying real events are difficult for me to watch. I don’t understand why a small team of men are ordered to take a position in that house. They have very little direct support and the house is a easy target for an insurgent attack. It’s impossible for eight guys to defend a two story house against an attack from every direction.
It’s well made. The script is drawn from the testimonies of the platoon members.
I agree Warfare leaves a lot of unanswered questions. Why they were ordered to take the position. What were the objectives? Why no direct support?
I guess the film took the viewpoint of the team. They didn’t fully understand the orders or tactical situation. Fog of war.
I think the movies were pretty much aimed exclusively at fans of the series, of which there were many millions. I was one! There was something about it that was pleasantly captivating.
I loved Downton Abbey too. I watched the series, but now I can’t remember if I watched both of the earlier movies or just one of them. I’ll just have to watch both of them so I can watch the newest one.
Ocean’s Eleven (1960) (TCM) The Rat Pack version, also with Cesar Romero, Angie Dickinson, Richard “Barzini” Conte. Plus cameos by Red Skelton and Shirley Maclaine.
I’ve seen (and loved) the remake many many times since seeing the original, so I thought it’d be fun to give it a look.
It’s surprisingly dull. They literally spend the first hour screwing around, making unfunny jokes, before ringleader Danny Ocean (Sinatra) reveals the plot to rob 5 Vegas casinos on New Year’s Eve. The perpetrators were all 82nd Airborne paratroopers in WWII, so they all bring particular sets of skills. One of them (Conte) is an electrician, and the plot requires that we watch him spend the next 20 minutes sneaking in and out of casinos, inspecting the wiring. Yawn.
The heist itself is as complicated as knocking off a liquor store: walk into the cashier, say “stick ‘em up”, and throw cash into a duffel bag. The intricacy, such as it is, involves opening the cashier doors.
The heist and follow-up get the story moving, and ends in a cruelly ironic twist. In this version, crime doesn’t pay…at least, pay as well as it does in the remake.
Dean Martin sings “Ain’t That a Kick in the Head” 3 or 4 times. Sammy Davis Jr sings something called “E O Eleven”, and I have no idea what that means.
In this fantasy, when the lights go out in a Vegas casino the patrons just keep singing “Auld Lang Syne” instead of grabbing all the chips they can get, and all the security guards – instead of rushing to where the money is – go home.
Conte has the kind of cancer that has no symptoms until you keel over and drop dead in the street.
They never explain how Sammy fought in the 82nd Airborne, when the Army was segregated at the time.
A film about what the original eleven actually did in World War II would be hilarious. I’ve never seen a member of the Rat Pack in a war movie where I wasn’t constantly rolling my eyes. The only one that served was Davis and he was in an entertainment unit.
Rewatched Terminator 2: Judgment Day with our son, who hadn’t seen it before. It mostly held up better than I expected, though James Cameron didn’t do Linda Hamilton any favors with dialogue or direction…her character was way more over the top than I remembered. But Arnold was still great, and Robert Patrick even better than I remembered.