When the role of Santa Claus becomes a walk-on part and you dump the best actor into it, well, you got problems.
Even better: the movie is over, nothing has happened, there’s a knock on the door and the sloth asks Am I late?
Red One. Yeah, too little J.K. I like some of the casting, e.g., Bonnie Hunt as the Mrs.
It did start out nicely and then just got repetitive and boring. E.g., between the action scenes there were some pretty big lulls of pointless talk. It also suffers from the “too many extraneous characters” syndrome like Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.
But the big “Why?” is the super hacker guy who doesn’t use any of his skills once the movie really gets going. Just dead weight for Johnson to talk to. And since Johnson talking isn’t such a great thing …
So you got an action buddy movie where neither buddy is nowhere the most interesting person in the film.
Give it 2 snowglobes. 1 of those is for Simmons.
And one for Ms Hunt - she’s adorable.
The actor playing Krampus was not too bad, at all.
I scared the crap out of my wife and the dogs during this - the big build up to Krampus appearing. There have been a lot of Krampus movies in the last decade or so and as they’re doing the build up I’m saying to myself They wouldn’t dare bring Krampus into this mess. Then the big reveal and I screamed I FUCKIN KNEW IT! and pandemonium ensued in my house and I deserved it.
You’ve Got Mail (1998) ($3.99 on Amazon Prime. Ironic.) Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks. A remake of the 1940’s “Shop Around the Corner” – Hanks’ big-box book store is threatening Meg’s cute little neighborhood store, not realizing that they’re also in a flirtatious online relationship. I hadn’t seen it since its initial release, and it’s charming and witty and hits all the feels. And it makes New York look fabulous.
It struck me as a trifle odd that they’re both in live-in committed relationships, but their partners (Greg Kinnear and Parker Posey) are completely disposable. It also says something fairly deep, about how Hanks’ can be both a cut-throat businessman and sincerely charming in his online persona. We contain multitudes, I guess.
And of course it’s dated, but it doesn’t matter. It existed in a time when big-box book stores (think Barnes & Noble) were the predator, not the prey. And that it was a novelty to have an on-line only relationship. And getting email was something new and delightful.
I finished wrapping presents and baked Christmas cookies, and while doing so put on movies in the background. I’ve already watched my Christmas movies, so I watched some weird ephemera.
I watched The Lost Zeppelin, an early (1929) sound film that I picked up at a place that sells weird and obscure movie DVDs. It’s about a zeppelin expedition to the South Pole. It succeeds, but the Zeppelin crashes and the crew has to survive and go for help (the radio dies). It’s apparently based on the actual story of the Italia that crashed on an expedition to overfly the North pole. Roald Amundsen, part of the search team, was lost during the rescue effort. The incident inspired a later movie, Dirigible (1931) (John Ford directed, and Fay Wray’s in it. Actor William H. O’Brien is in both movies)
It’s pretty slow-moving. The special effects are pretty decent for a 1929 film. The continuing story is a love triangle between the captain of the dirigible, his wife, and his second-in command (played by Ricardo Cortez, who was the first guy to play Sam Spade in the virtually forgotten version of The Maltese Falcon from 1931). The shots are pretty static, probably because the early sound cameras had to be sealed inside a bulky apparatus to minimize noise.
I also re-watched George Pal’s Atlantis, the Lost Continent. I’ve commented at length about this on my website, so I won’t go into it again here. I noticed this time that the giant Babylonian-esque idol (which had been made for The Prodigal had the snake in its hands replaced by what looks like an orrery.
As you know, a modern movie about the Italia was eventually made, The Red Tent with Peter Finch. And it’s boring. It leaves out the good bits:
When the Italia crashed, three crewmen, a dog and two engines hit the ice. Lightened, the airstrip and the rest of the crew re-ascended and drifted for a few more miles. In Humboldt’s Gift, Saul Bellow recounts how two of the three plus the dog were rescued by a Soviet icebreaker. The Soviets, making a propaganda coup out of how a man going missing but not the dog showed Italian Fascism at its heart, claimed the survivors had cannibalized the third man, and put the survivor’s man-meal poop on display in Moscow.
Amundsen seems to have been motivated not entirely out of altruism. As first to the South Pole, his victory had been overshadowed and thus diminished by Scott’s heroic death. Not wanting that to happen again, he flew to the rescue. The first plane available happened to be Italian, but Mussolini forbade its use, perhaps seeing how Nobile, already having lost to Amundsen’s Norge airship, might replicate Scott’s sacrifice.
Whereas the Golden Age of Exploration was the result of the Fall of Constantinople, the Reconquest of Spain, and the rises of Mercantilism, the age of polar exploration was mostly the Second Industrial Revolution flexing its ego, same as it had done at the Somme.
I always liked her, but haven’t seen her in anything for ages. Nice to know she’s still working.
We watched the, to my mind, much more charming original last night. Jimmy Stewart and Margaret Sullavan star with a great supporting cast. I really like the conceit that the Sullavan character was falling for the Stewart character as himself (not as her secret pen pal) in the beginning and follows the advice of an actress in a novel from the Comedie Francaise who says to treat your lover like a dog. Bad advice that backfires. It makes their eventual getting together more believable and sweet.
Hanks is fine although his character is iffy, but Meg Ryan just does her Meg Ryan schtick and I find it annoying.
Looks like she’s been doing a lot of voice work for animated shows.
Here is the movie you don’t want to miss
If you don’t miss it I’ll give you a kiss
You can watch it whenever you want to on Kanopy
It’s all about the whole human panoply
It’s all about a man with a big long dangler
The name of this movie is The Greasy Strangler
He’s not a hunter, he’s not an angler
No, this fella’s The Greasy Strangler
He commits his crimes all covered in grease
He lives in LA and won’t leave them in peace
How he does it with hands that are slippery
Is never explained cause he can’t get a grippery
I knew about this, but I’ve never seen the film.
I agree with you. We watched it yesterday. I didn’t realize going in that it was set at Christmastime. It was a good thriller - perfect for a dark, gloomy day like we had yesterday. It didn’t seem like 2 hours, it was fast paced.
Midas Man. A biopic of Beatles manager Brian Epstein.
Jacob Fortune-Lloyd is great as Epstein. Emily Watson and Eddie Marsen are good as his parents. (Note for the “I’m getting old thread”. Since when does Emily Watson play the mother of an adult guy?) As for the actors playing the Beatles: “John” is pretty good. “Paul” and “George” are barely passable. “Ringo” is barely there. “Pete” is almost completely ignored until “the talk” between him and Epstein. “Stu” doesn’t appear at all as the story picks up after he left the group. Jay Leno as Ed Sullivan is one of the worst casting decisions of all time. Not just his voice and chin, but the guy is seriously heavy now.
The music ranges from fabulous to so-so.
The film takes a ton of liberties with the facts. E.g., the first time Epstein saw the Beatles perform at the Cavern is rightfully legendary. But the movies changes a bunch of things and makes it worse. Huh? And on and on.
The film is also quite choppy. Jumping around, and often around things that should have been in the film. It’s hard to adjust to having the Beatles being so secondary. The story is on Brian from his perspective. Which includes a lot of him talking to the camera, etc. Not at all like your typical Beatles biopic.
Yeah, Jacob Fortune-Lloyd nails it and that does make up for a lot of not-so-great parts. But it should have been a better movie.
Give it 2.5 Rickenbacker 325s.
I appreciate your reviews, but your numerical score is always incomprehensible to me.
How so? Lennon played a Rickenbacker 325. It was as much a star as he was.
2.5 stars out of 5.
Thanks, I did not know that.
Huh. I was thinking it’s out of 4, like Ebert, or out of 10 like most scales. I hadn’t even considered out of 5.
Your post gets 4.5 Eye in the Skys out of 5. 
Nice dig. The 325 is only a 3/4 scale guitar.
This evening I watched Man in the Wilderness on AMC. Pretty good movie that has held up well since its release in 1971. Storyline is a bit cheesy at times, but I enjoyed the show. Again.