Then steer clear of The Adventures of Baron Munchausen or you’ll spontaneously combust.
I really liked both 12 Monkeys and Time Bandits.
I got the impression this inspired a whole bunch of fantasy movies, the story, the structure, the animation, it was almost seminal in the same way Star Wars was. I could be wrong, and it could just a be a drop in the ocean, I’m thinking Labyrinth, and a bunch of other fantasy movies.
Gilliam is a visionary, and this is one I loved (and it works well on rewatches), but you get a great movie once in a while and a complete dud other times (perhaps the dud is loved by others, like Munchausen). Brazil, Time Bandits, Twelve Monkeys were the ones I loved, never cared much for Adventures of Baron Munchausen, some loved it, Fisher king was well rated, but not for me, and seen a bunch since I’ve long forgotten what the hell they were about…
12 Monkeys ended up becoming a good show as well.
12 Monkeys is such a great movie! Haven’t seen it in a while, I should rewatch it.
I love Baron Munchausen!
BTW, when I saw Time Bandits the first time, I didn’t understand that Sean Connery was playing Agamemnon or why his wife seemed to look at him with pure hatred. But then after watching Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey film, I did some reading (mostly on Wikipedia) and learned that she planned to murder him.
Twelve Monkeys was based on the 1962 short film La Jetée.
The Amateur 2025 Rami Malek, Rachel Brosnahan, Caitríona Balfe, Michael Stuhlbarg, Laurence Fishburne
On Prime
In the film, when a CIA cryptographer’s wife is killed in a terrorist attack, he blackmails the agency into training him so he can personally seek revenge.
Ok, its far fetched. They do say the character has a 170 IQ and he’s very good at code breaking and analysis of intel.
I enjoyed the film. It’s interesting to watch his early, fumbling start. He makes mistakes. It helps that the other characters under estimate him.
Revenge is a great teacher and motivator.
Rami Malek is a very compelling actor. He’s excellent at playing extreme characters like Freddie Mercury
I recommend watching because of Rami’s performance.
8 of 10
A 170 I.Q. occurs about one time in 650,000. (assuming a 15-point standard deviation for I.Q., which is the most typical). It’s pretty unlikely you could say if someone has such an I.Q. Generally, no legitimate I.Q. test gives an I.Q. above 160, which is one time in 31,500. I understand that you’re just quoting from the movie. I suggest nobody gives an exact I.Q. for somebody unless you’re a professional at the job and being asked by the person who’s taken the test.
The Sheep Detectives
I had high expectations of this one, after reading some very positive reviews on here and the general reception of the film by professional reviewers and the public at large. And… it disappointed me.
It just felt like a discount 'Knives Out’ and was clearly aimed at both adults and kids but seemed to fall somewhere in between. The murder mystery, or at least who the guilty party was, was so obvious it took any tension out of it, and the moral lesson about treating people with respect and not being a prejudiced piece of you-know-what was all rather ham- (lamb-??) fisted. I don’t think a single character felt like an actual real human being (not counting the sheep).
I’m assuming they were going for the ultra-English countryside, chocolate box village, not quite real world feel that it came off as (I mean, it had talking sheep, so of course it’s not meant to be real), so that worked pretty well. I can ignore them not calling in CID as soon as the body was discovered!
5/10
Another remake of an adapted from a novel film. I thought it was kinda alright if you don’t think too hard about it. But I do generally wish Hollywood would stop going back to the well so often. They don’t need to remake every 30+ year-old film.
Legal Eagle has a 34-minute video on the laws broken. Some are quite serious.
Just watched that, interesting review, but it did mention something (and didn’t expand on), something that I missed Nicki made a wish before the end, and looking it up was something like making Bear love her, and I’m not sure the “Implication” (now that is a word which should have been used in that movie) is. Could that mean there could be a sequel where, given the supernatural nature of the wishes, where an Obsessed Bear comes back from the dead?
I finally got around to watching Sinners. Excellent movie.
I was impressed by how Coogler was able to work a lot of subtle themes about society into a movie about being attacked by vampires. Alternatively, I was impressed by how Coogler was able to work a lot of vampies into an intelligent movie about the inner workings of American society.
One thing about the film that has stuck with me that I haven’t seen mentioned elsewhere is just how spectacular of a dick Jedidiah was.
If your son comes staggering into church covered in blood, clutching a broken guitar neck, in massive shock and bearing great claw wounds across his face, and your first instinct is to tell him “I told you so!”? You’re an asshole of the highest degree, a terrible father and a pretty shitty preacher too.
IOW all too typical of a certain brand of Christianity in this country. How many families have turned out their children who were gay or even engaged in premarital sex?
I think there’s a subtle connection there. Jedidiah Moore was the brother of Adam Moore, the twins’ father. And we know that Adam was abusive to his sons. So I think Coogler was saying that Jedidiah was also abusive, albeit in a different way. And Sammie, like his cousins, ended up going to Chicago to escape his father.
The End of Oak Street. Saw it in our new plush leather-recliner theater with surround sound, and enjoyed it for what it was. It’s 2026 and writers apparently still require people to do stupid shit to move a plot forward, but it had lots of good action scenes.
Anne Hathaway can actually run really fast.
I wish that one was available. Come on, TCM!
But I prefer the original, because the remake left out my favorite part. That the “terrorist” was a CIA spy, and murdered the wife only to establish his credentials. Very 70s.