I mean…
They left a drill embedded in the wall. You’d think that might count a wee bit towards it not getting ‘knocked down to a chickenshit misdemeanor’ 
.
The Bone Collector 1999
Denzel Washington, Angelina Jolie, Queen Latifah, Michael Rooker, Ed O’Neill
Great thriller. Angelina Jolie is very good as the quick-tempered, inexperienced trainee detective.
Denzel Washington delivers another excellent performance. I appreciate his approach to playing a brilliant but unlikeable mentor to Jolie.
It is a bit unbelievable that a completely untrained patrol cop would be allowed to act as a forensic investigator under Denzel’s direction.
The demand for Jolie to collect the hands & handcuffs from a corpse is total b.s It’s ludicrous to even suggest a New York Medical Examiner is too incompetent to retrieve and protect evidence.
But, it’s a movie and that was one grisly, dramatic scene.
Highly Recommend, 9 out of 10 stars
The Odyssey
Highly recommended.
Oh, boy, this was a great film. I wasn’t looking to see it in the theater, but my daughter wanted to go so we did. I’m glad we did. Excellent,
I was not a fan of Oppenheimer, but I do know Christopher Nolan can reach great heights. This is not his best movie by any means, but it is a solid 8 out of 10, maybe even 9 out of 10.
I can see it being nominated and maybe even win Best Picture at the Oscars. It’s the quite the spectacle.
I was pretty much blown away. Superb.
Backrooms really struck a chord with me. I think a commonly shared nightmare is trying to get to, or leave, somewhere and being hopelessly lost. Those are the most upsetting nightmares, to me. IRL, I almost completely lack of sense of direction (For instance, when I go to a restaurant and have to use the bathroom, I kind of freak out that I won’t know the way back to my table). Add to that the depressing yellow walls and awful fluorescent lighting. Even still photos of it make me uncomfortable.
I also really related to the therapist’s words. I don’t know if they’re based on a specific, existing source; the theme is hardly new to anyone who has sought some kind of therapy. It was odd hearing meaningful, actually helpful dialogue in a horror movie.
Like a lot of folks, I was really keen to see this and Obsession. I think Backrooms is superior.
I’m a fan of Jeffery Deaver and the Lincoln Rhyme book series (just finished one yesterday, in fact), yet I’ve never watched this film. I’ve resisted because I can’t picture Washington as Rhyme or Jolie as Sachs.
Perhaps I should reconsider and judge the movie on its own merits.
I haven’t yet seen The Odyssey so I can’t dispute your comment, but I’m curious about what Christopher Nolan movie you thought was better.
I was personally very impressed by Interstellar, despite some negative comments about it. My son, a Nolan enthusiast, saw it in 15-perf 70mm IMAX film format, and then went with me to a local theater where we saw it in a lesser but still impressive digital IMAX format.
Is Rhyme totally bed-ridden in the book? Washington really committed to the role of a quadriplegic with a high level spinal injury.
Rhyme has life-threatening seizures. A blocked in dwelling catheter almost kills him. Queen Latifah plays his nurse.
But, Rhyme’s brilliant mind is completely intact.
Sure. Better than the Odyssey:
- Inception
- The Dark Knight
- The Prestige
- Batman Begins
I can’t say for sure on some of the others. I don’t remember them well. I like Odyssey for sure way more than:
- Dunkirk
- Oppenheimer
- Memento
- Tenet <–his only complete misfire
Carrie 1976 Sissy Spacek, Amy Irving, William Katt, Nancy Allen, John Travolta, Betty Buckley, P. J. Soles
Large cast of up and coming actors. Several of them were cast in Halloween a few years later.
I sympathize more with Carrie’s character as I’ve gotten older. She had every bad break imaginable. Crazy mom, shy, socially awkward and no one she can go to for help.
The telekinesis is both an asset and a liability as it’s channled through her emotions.
Great movie that I’ve only seen a couple times. I find it personally painful to watch. I think many of us that didn’t fit in and faced rejection at high school feel the same way.
I would have liked seeing a sequel with Carrie in college. See her living away from the crazy mom’s influence and a fresh start. But still dealing with shyness and telekinesis.
8 out of 10
I don’t know if “bed-ridden” is quite the right word, but yes, his quadriplegia is a big part of his characterization.
“The Bone Collector” is book one, and it’s been years since I’ve read it. I think he did spend a good deal of that one in a bed, though as the series has gone on, he’s usually depicted in various high-tech wheelchairs.
The Queen Latifah character in the books is a gay man named Thom.
The Odyssey
Although missing some of the best parts (the bag of wind, the year as Circe’s sex slave, Achilles in Hades, the Phaeacians) and the Laestrygonians are all but unrecognizable (but do look cool), it was about as comprehensible as you could make it under 3 hours. Spider-Man and MJ were distracting while John Leguizamo and Robert Pattinson deserve Oscar nominations. Not the unforgettable epic many reviewers promised, but still worth seeing in a theater.
Glass (2019). Written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan and starring James McAvoy, Bruce Willis, Samuel L Jackson, and Anya Taylor-Joy (who many will recognize from the miniseries The Queen’s Gambit).. Apparently part of a trilogy that includes Unbreakable and Split, but it stands on its own just fine.
I can’t say too much without introducing spoilers, but much of it centers on the leading characters (McAvoy, Willis, and Jackson) imprisoned in a mental hospital because they suffer from the delusional disorder that they’re superheroes. Since this is a Shyamalan production, you can bet that supernatural elements creep in.
Shyamalan movies are somewhat hit-or-miss – not every one is the calibre of The Sixth Sense, but I like his style and most are worthwhile. In this one he seems to be aiming high and trying for something profound, but falling quite a bit short of that goal. I’d rate it as recommended, but it’s not something that’s going to stick with you for a long time or win any major awards.
Just watched Enola Holmes 3 - which is every bit as fun as the first two Enola Holmes movies. Millie Bobby Brown shines as always. It isn’t that these movies break the 4th wall; there just is no 4th wall. This adventure takes her to the island of Malta with lots of amazing scenery, and even at one point displays the Mediterranean roots of the spaghetti western. The plot setup is reminiscent of Charade.
The Will Kill You Fun action horror movie that borrows very heavily from the works of Tarantino, Sam Raimi, and the Ready or Not films.
The Lost Boys My 9 year old daughter loves this movie. Rewatching it after many years I’m kind of struck by how nonsensically 80s the plot is, and yet it makes sense.
- Michael (Patrick) and Star (Gertz) make googly eyes at each other at the Sergio sexy saxophone concert.
- They get on his bike
- David (Sutherland) and The Boys roll up
- Star gets on David’s bike
- They go on a motocross race through the beach that ends in a game of chicken with Michael and David nearly driving over the bluffs
- Michael punches David
- David asks menacingly “how far do you want to go?”
- They all go back to the hideout to do drugs, drink and eat Chinese food
I thought we were going to fight over a girl! Did we just become best friends!?
YEP!!
Project Hail Mary - It was good. Ryan Gosling was his usual charming self. The Gorignak alien was adorable. Suspending disbelief at yet another film where humanity tosses together a secret project involving interstellar travel and planetary engineering at the last minute,
Lost Boys was rollicking good fun with a strong cast and I will never apologize for liking it, silly though it was.
There is a sequel with a different girl playing a different character and it’s atrocious. But Amy Irving’s in it. Big whoop.
The Long Walk on HBO. Based on a book by Stephen King. Unless you really like watching people walking and being killed, I’d pass on this one. Boring and predictable.
Just watched the The Texas Killing fields. Great cast. An utterly confusing mess of a plot. Plot holes galore and lots of loose ends.
Agreed - as storytelling goes it holds together pretty well and a lot of unnecessary exposition got dropped without losing anything.
Pattinson is fine in craven bully mode but Leguizamo is unrecognisably good here and definitely deserves an Oscar nom. Anne Hathaway also makes the most of her limited role, as do Samantha Morton, Himesh Patel, Elliot Page, and Bill Irwin (as Polyphemus!).
At the other end of the spectrum, Tom Holland plays Tom Holland being all Tom Hollandy, Jon Bernthal is an odd choice for Menelaus, Zendaya has nothing to do until a few seconds near the end and thus looks bored for the rest of the film, Lupita Nyong’o is practically a cameo despite playing two different roles, and Charlize Theron looks like she just stopped by while on her beach vacation.
Oh, and I came away feeling like Matt Damon had just done a three-hour impersonation of Josh Brolin. But in a good way.
I would definitely see this on the big screen and in particular a cinema or IMAX with an excellent sound system because the sound design is really quite noteworthy throughout, from the subtle rustle and crack of trees moving in the wind to the deafening thunder of war. The scene with the sirens was done rather cleverly.
If I were the Oscar committee, I’d nominate:
- John Leguizamo
- Matt Damon
I didn’t see much else nomination worthy in the acting category.
It has a ton of awards coming in the technical field, though. I didn’t think the score was particularly good, though.