The Fall Guy must be the most forgettable film I’ve ever seen and I only finished watching it a half hour ago.
The Fast And The Furious (2001)
As someone who somehow has never watched any of the entire series, I really enjoyed this first installment but mainly as an interesting undercover cop film. I feel the second it stops being about cops and robbers I’m just going to hate it.
Night of the Comet
When Earth passes through a comet’s tail and most everyone is turned to dust, two sisters Reggie and Sam (Catherine Mary Stewart and Kelli Maroney) try to survive zombies, evil stockboys, government scientists, and a shopping spree at the mall. It features a great improvised line – the two are firing a MAC-10 submachine gun at a parked car and the weapon jams. Director Thom Eberhardt told the two to stay in character no matter what due to limited time and budget, so when the weapon malfunctions, Sam looks are her sister and says “See, this is the problem with these things. Daddy would have gotten us Uzis.”
Great songs from Phil Collins as well, who returned to Disney for Brother Bear only to realize they didn’t want him to sing all the songs for Brother Bear…so they compromised and also let him write the score.
I just watched Otto, Very bittersweet and a little sniffly.
Tom Hanks is - as usual- fantastic.
I ran across a Mark Ruffalo movie that I’d never heard of before - What Doesn’t Kill You (2008), costarring Ethan Hawke and Amanda Peete, who all do a fantastic job. Great performances. It’s just the movie didn’t really tell much of a story, and the story it did tell kind of dragged out forever. It’s essentially a redemption story. Small time hood turns his life around in the nick of time.
Most of the first 2/3’s watches like a poor man’s Goodfellas, except far less intriguing and far more repetitive. Essentially Ruffalo and Hawke are two kids from the neighborhood who end being errand boys for the Irish mob, so a lot of the movie is just them doing shitty things but nothing really noteworthy - a few beatings, kidnapping a dog, a robbery here and there.
Then the last 1/3 is Ruffalo trying to get his shit together and be a good father. It’s a pretty boring section of the movie, I gotta say.
So, yeah, I don’t know if I’d recommend it. It’s just dull, though it really shouldn’t be, and there are some questionable editing choices that bothered me (the same scene is shown three times in the movie and you never know if it’s a flashback or a fantasy). Then again, Mark Ruffalo is one of my favorite actors so I’d watch him read the phone book if they filmed it for two hours.
I re-watched Saturday Night Fever for the second time in 40 years. The first time I saw it was with my mother, some fifteen years after it was released. Kind of awkward but we enjoyed it, IIRC.
Watching yesterday, all alone, and it’s still awkward but in a different way. Maybe the word I’m looking for is cringeworthy. The music is still great, Travolta is a great dancer, but dayum, the acting and dialogue is so over the top it’s SNL skit style. I hadn’t remembered the repeated use of the word "cunt’ (doesn’t bother me) but maybe it wasn’t that big of a deal then. Also, the “teenagers” look every bit the twenty and thirty years old they were at the time.
Travolta was the youngest of Kotter’s high school sweathogs at the age of 25.
The author of the article that Saturday Night Fever is based on admitted eventually that he knew almost nothing about the disco scene and made up much of what’s going on in the movie.
Watched The Lady Vanishes last night. I was amused to learn that the two annoying cricket-fixated Englishmen became meta-characters across many movies and radio shows.
It’s really terrible. It has high production values, so the previews look good, but it’s terrible. The only noteworthy thing is that Count Orlok looks like Bram Stoker’s description of Dracula in the book, which is the first time this has been done, but that’s really not much.
Wait-- there’s a 2024 version? what?
I thought you couldn’t find the 2023 version because the producers were making a big deal about it being ONLY in theaters. Like, it’s so precious, it can’t be online. Has to be on the silver screen.
Scratch that-- I’m confused-- that is the 2024 version. And yes, I’ve seen the 2023 version, but so long ago, I barely remembered. It’s not very interesting, if you are a fan of the 1922 version, but it’s not terrible. The production values are supposed to match the 1922 version, but don’t.
The 2024 one is the really awful one.
Wow. Have to beg to differ here: Herzog’s version is AMAZING. It’s one of the few remakes that is as good as the original. And it is beautiful; it’s ironically beautiful. The beauty of it foreshadows the end, albeit, there’s a crack in it, like many of the beautiful things in the film. I loved this film.
You could make a drinking game out of the 2024 version, though-- take a slug every time somebody on screen pukes.
Good to know. I was really looking forward to it but excess vomiting is a deal breaker. Unless it’s just vampires upchucking blood or Renfield upchucking bugs.
As far as I know, there’s only two scenes with vomiting.
Escape Plan 2013 Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger
Interesting idea. Stallone is an expert at testing Prison Security. He goes in as a prisoner and finds a way out.
It’s a lucrative business for him and his partner.
Things get very serious when all his safety protocols are taken away. He meets Arnold in prison and they depend on each other to survive and find a way to escape.
It’s ok. Definitely not a great movie, but it’s a pleasant way to spend a couple hours.
My biggest criticism is the setting is too confining. Stallone and Arnold are larger than life. You expect big things from the characters. Instead they’re in a prison getting beat up by sadistic guards and fighting other inmates.
I’m more accustomed to seeing both actors in charge and making bold plans. Action Heroes
Escape Plan 2: Hades Sylvester Stallone
Watched 15 minutes and changed the channel. The prison is to futuristic and includes the cliche of staged inmate fights. (Gladiators)
The Warden is called The Zookeeper. That’s when I reached for the tv remote.
Both Escape movies are on Peacock.
Stallone either makes very good movies or crap. Remember Over the Top, the arm wrestler movie. There’s not much middle ground.
We loved that when I was a kid, but let’s be honest, arm wrestling in a big contest seems cool to 10 year old.
I’m watching the Herzog film now, I’m right at the scene with the rats departing the ship (the backstory on the rats is pretty interesting in itself). With the haunting soundtrack and the lingering set pieces, it seems almost like a continuation of Aguirre, the previous Herzog/Kinski collaboration. For those interested, it’s available for free on Kanopy.