Movies Watched 2021 Part 2
…continued from Part One…
by Chris Morris
Air Force One 1997
*finally
*these opening credits are longer than the ones for “Superman”…are they trying to piss me off before the movie even begins…
*3 minutes! At least in old movies it was called an “Overture” and you knew you could go pee without missing anything…it was classier!
*Ford’s speech…he’s mumbling even more than usual…where’s the guy in the back who yells “Can’t hear you…speak up!”
*I’ve seen the trailer for this a million times and can remember the soundbites “How the hell did they get Air Force One?” “He knows how to fight!” “Get off my plane!”
*so they land the plane in Germany, but the bad guys are able to make it take off again…that scene was dumb…shouldn’t we have seen people, cars, other planes flying around too due to the force of the engines?
*Andrew Divoff is one of the bad guys, who just played the main bad guy in “Toy Soldiers”
*the scene where the fire a missile at Air Force One is pretty cool
*gotta love a scene where a dude has to cut a wire…
*”I’m counting on you, red, white and blue…” eye roll #1
*watched the “Siskel & Ebert” episode where they reviewed this, “Good Burger”, “Cafe Society”, “In the Company of Men” and “Box of Moonlight”…they gave this two thumbs down, hated Good Burger, liked the others, especially “In the Company…”
*reading on Wikipedia that they wanted to have some suspense in regards who the mole was, particularly when Harrison Ford hands Berkeley a gun, but there is no suspense, as Xander Berkeley (him again), twenty minutes in, shoots everyone…not to mention when he first comes on screen there is a quick zoom into his closeup so that was a huge tip off right there…
*not one but TWO big explosions!
*so many explosions!
*so the girl who played the daughter, Liesel Pritzker Simmons, left acting and grew up to be a very rich woman…
*so many rah-rah moments, meant to get people yelling and cheering…
*wow what a long movie…
*it was…fine…I guess…if this is the kind of movie you like, you’ll like this movie…I’m never watching this again…
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River’s Edge 1986
*finally
*apparently this is “the darkest teen film of all-time” according to the internet…
*so the little kid, who is annoying, was supposed to be played by Corey Haim after he started filming but caught pneumonia…
*just keep thinking “that poor actress, Danyi Deats…having to be totally naked, out in the woods, with erect nipples, bugs crawling on her, with the crew and everyone standing around watching her…”
*weird how Crispin Glover cares more about “doing something” with about the dead girl’s body than the actual murderer Daniel Roebuck
*Glover and Roebuck see the cops and panic, assume Keanu Reeves told them and freak out…I assumed it was a misdirect but no, the next scene is Keanu leading them to the body…
*this cop is a dick…
*I know it’s mean to pick on a kid actor but this little brat is pretty bad, he can’t even slap a window realistically…I blame the director, not him…were those really the best takes they could get out of him?
*Glover’s choices are, as always, interesting…is one way to put it…is he supposed to be a Valley Girl?
*so they go to their friends’ house and their father shoots at them with a shot gun…weird reaction…and he shot through his own window, he couldn’t have waited until he was outside to shoot? That just created more work, having to replace that glass…
*so the little kids steal a car and are driving it around…does the kid driving have blocks of wood tied to his feet? Is he sitting on a phone book?
*so the little kid wants revenge on his brother, Keanu, so he’s going to tell Sampson about it but they already know, plus Sampson doesn’t care so what’s the point of this?
*Ione Sky mentions “Mission: Impossible” and Keanu starts signing the theme song…that’s funny…
*okay so Keanu told the cops about the body, they found the body, cops interrogate Keanu, he tells them everything yet here we are a half hour later (of movie time) and are the cops looking for Sampson? Looking for anyone?
*okay the little kid KO’s Dennis Hopper after two smacks to the head…sorry I don’t buy that…maybe he goes down but really I can’t see his reaction being more than “Ow, that hurt, you little dick…”
*okay so Glover is shocked when Keanu tells him he turned him in…okay so who did they think did? The guy who worked at the burger place?
*Roxana Zal plays Maggie in this, she played Lucy Lane on “Lois & Clark”
*Ione Skye’s 1st movie…
*I couldn’t get into this, I see how people say this is a horror film even though there are no Freddy Kruegers…I get it but I just couldn’t believe the characters…the concept itself is great but I didn’t buy the performances especially Glover…
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nothing (finally watching Constantine S1)
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House Party 1990
*finally
*read Roger Ebert’s review of this film, he really liked it, but said it was “wall-to-wall music”…the party doesn’t start until 30 minutes in, and the dance-off doesn’t start until around 45 minutes in so that’s not exactly wall-to-wall
*weird that the movie ends with the sound of Kid getting whipped with a leather belt by his father…different times…
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nothing (finished Constantine S1)
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nothing (watching New Girl S1)
*weird not having any real desire to watch movies…things should change seen though with the return of TCM Underground and Noir Alley…
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Without You I’m Nothing 1990
*TCM Underground 9/4/21
*Sandra Bernhard one woman show
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nothing (watching The Good Fight S1 & S2
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Addams Family Values 1993
*finally
*Raul Julia! Joan Cusack! Christopher Lloyd!
*hilarious when Morticia (Anjelica Huston) is in labour and seems to be enjoying it…
*holy crap Christine Baranski plays one of the camp counsellors (along with Peter MacNicol)…I’ve been watching “The Good Fight” and it’s weird seeing her at first…
*”I’ll be the victim” “All your life…”
*I just found out there was an Addams Family Broadway show with Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth….
*so the girl in the cake just…died?
*this movie is clicking along…around 35-40 minutes in, Lloyd and Cusack are engaged…
*five minutes later, they are married and on their honeymoon!
*Cusack tries to kill Lloyd on the honeymoon, throws a ghetto blaster into his hot tub and he screams in pain at first before turning out just fine…when Lloyd screams he sounds like The Judge from “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?”
*there’s Nathan Lane!
*okay so Baranski and MacNicol are going to torture the kids by showing them Disney movies (specifically saying “Bambi” “The Little Mermaid” and “Lassie Come Home”), but when they do the montage we hear “Sound of Music”, “The Brady Bunch” and “Annie”…
*so this is a summer camp so they are putting on a play about Thanksgiving?
*so they replaced the original Grandmama Addams, Judith Malina, with Carol Kane and then covered Kane in so much makeup I only knew it was her because of her voice…kinda weird they did this, that is something they’d usually do for the sequel to save money, as I can’ imagine Kane was cheaper than Malina
*this movie runs out of steam about half way though but still enjoyed it…it’s definitely Wednesday Addams/Christina Ricci’s movie as she steals the show…kind of shocked that all these years later they never did anything more with Ricci as Wednesday…and they are re-doing the TV show with Catherine Zeta-Jones as Morticia which is boring…
*Anjelica Huston has said that they could tell Raul Julia was sick during filming, and he died a year later which is very sad…
*so during the credits they play Tag Team’s “Whoop There it is” but shoe horn “Addams Family” in there…pretty dumb but I now really want to look up the music video, if there is one…can’t possibly be as good as seeing the Addams Family dinging with MC Hammer like for the 1st movie…
*not as fun as the 1st video with Hammer, it’s just the kids this time although they do get them dancing with the dancers which is cute…but not so surreal and entertaining as seeing Raul Julia and Anjelica Huston interacting with Hammer…not even close…
*always meant to look up that pet name Gomez has for Morticia…it’s “Cara Mia” which, according to the internet, means “my beloved” or “beautiful face” in Spanish, depending on the source…
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nothing (The Good Fight S2, Lucifer S2)
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Cloudburst 1951
*return of TCM Noir Alley
*in the intro, Eddie Muller calls this “fascinating”
*film noir done by Hammer Studios in England…
*Robert Preston in a film noir, a lot different than “The Music Man”
*wow his wife is killed in a really F*ed up way…
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Penn & Teller Get Killed 1989
*Penn & Teller have a movie, directed by Arthur Penn of all people…
*Penn is really obnoxious…
*so in their stage show, Penn kills Teller with audience members “helping” and no one reacts and in the end, they just walk off stage, and the audience claps, thinking the show is over and Teller is dead…I guess this is supposed to be satire?
*Jon Cryer cameo
*the 1st 45 minutes is establishing that they play very elaborate (and presumably expensive) jokes on each other
*then they have someone actually trying to kill Penn and it gets kind of interesting…
*but then the way Penn is reacting to everything kind of makes it obvious they are setting up Teller…
*Tom Sizemore!
*so I’m reading on IMDB that Caitlin Clarke played two roles, Carlotta and Officer McNamara but the McNamara character is listed as played by “Celia McGuire” so…why?
*that music video that the killer put together is pretty good by some random dude for 1989…Penn even says so…I’m guessing when they wanted to catch the guy they just looked up video editors in the Atlantic City area?
*so Penn is stabbed, they get to the hospital and he causally walks into the ER whistling…but later it’s revealed he actually was stabbed so why? Was it supposed to be funny throwaway moment or a misdirect? If I had to guess I’d say it was them thinking it was funny…
*okay never mind…it was another practical joke…
*Teller talks!
*okay the beat they take when they (well, Carlotta) realizes the gun is real is a good one…
*Reg E Cathey!
*the part where the guy explains how it all worked is good…
*this last part just goes on and on…Penn & Teller are supposed to both be “dead” but where is the blood? There has not been a lack of blood so far but in the scene where they are supposed to be dead…nothing…
*they are really dragging this out…will the ending be worth it? Will they pull it off?
*okay they kind of pulled it off…if you think continued suicides are funny I guess…
*I did like the line with the cop saying what he loved about the job was the paperwork
*so Carlotta jumped out the window, but where did her body go? I thought maybe the window faced another side of the building, but when they do the pull out, the window is facing the street where the cops come in, so where’s her body?
*alot about this is weird…I’d almost like it except Penn is absolutely unlikeable and the lack of blood in the finale is weird…
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Val 2021
*biography of Val Kilmer
*he did a great impression of Mark Twain is pretty great, I would have liked to have seen that movie…
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The Spirit 2008
*finally I guess…never really wanted to see this, but I am curious to see if it’s as bad as they say…
*beautiful women and not much else is how I’ve heard this described…
*a cellphone!
*so The Spirit is played by Gabriel Macht who ended up on “Suits” so good for him…
*the women in this are Eva Mendes, Scarlett Johansson, Paz Vega, Sarah Paulson, Stana Katic, Jamie King…
*Mendes shows up and yes, she is beautiful…
*ScarJo shows up and seems so bored…
*”Ditko Delivery Service…” nice…
*Dan Lauria!
*Young Neil!
*a Kitty cat!
*Central City? The Spirit and the Flash share a city?
*Stana Katic!
*Katic’s cop uniform…is that supposed to be from a costume shop?
*okay I guess they “explain” why…
*Katic shows The Spirit a video on a tiny Nokia phone…did they do that in 2008?
*Katic’s accent is a choice…I don’t hate it…
*remember when Sarah Paulson was an up and coming actress who you looked for and were saying “Why isn’t she in more things?” and now…well she’s in lots of stuff now so that’s cool…I remember first seeing her in “American Gothic” with another “up and comer who isn’t in enough stuff” Gary Cole…
*I’m so old I remember when Samuel L Jackson was that “up and comer you were rooting for…”
*so this isn’t a black and white movie? I thought it would be back and white, except for The Spirit’s red tie, but I guess not…
*The Spirit is hanging from the side of building, the people of the city (“his city” btw) yell for him to “jump!”…actually that was pretty funny…
*Paul Levitz cameo!
*I’m actually liking Macht’s performance, shockingly…
*Paz Vega!
*did Jackson really say “Dead like Star Trek…”?
*did they just melt a cat?
*so how many comic book movies has Samuel L. Jackson been in so far? I count 13 (do I count “Unbreakable”? Or “The Incredibles”? “Astro Boy”?)…wow Mr. Jackson likes to work a lot there are several movies in his filmography I didn’t know existed like “Cell”, “Big Game”, “Arena”…
*Paz Vega stabs him, the sword is all red sticking out of The Spirit and Vega skips away, barefoot on the concrete cement…why isn’t this a camp cult classic?
*the clone henchmen played by Louis Lombardi are actually kind of funny…am I kinda liking this movie?
*Spirit pulls himself out of the water and there’s a toy dinosaur there and we hear a “roar”…so was he in some kind of tar pits? No he was at the beach so…why the dinosaur? And again why isn’t this a cult classic?
*Eve Mendes’s outfit doesn’t seem conducive to a cold winter night…at least ScarJo seems to be dressed appropriately
*Katic’s gun is…impressive…
*”Are all the women around here nuts?” “No sir we’re just…equipped…”
*Hercules/Herakles joke…wow I think I am liking this movie…
*alot happens in the end…
*so did the Spirit shove a grenade into Jackson’s stomach?
*Spirit makes out with Mendes, which Paulson sees, she seems annoyed but forgives him, even when he flirts with Katic right in front of her…considering a few minutes later the last thing he says is that the city is the love of his life, he should have broken up with Paulson and said something like “I’ll just hurt you so we should break up” or something…
*so Spirit makes out with every girl in the movie…except Katic…and the reporter I guess…
*Christina Aquilera sings “Falling in Love Again” over the closing credits, I think…her voice so so Auto-tuned it sounds like she is singing under water…
*okay so getting past the whole “Will Eisner’s The Spirit” and “Frank Miller’s Sin City” are total opposite and shouldn’t be filmed the same way…other than that…maybe because I had less than zero expectations for this…but I actually liked it…weird…don’t think I will be going out and buying the Blu-Ray or anything…but yeah I think I liked it…
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Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
*seen them meet Frankenstein, the Mummy and the Invisible Man so gotta watch this on Svengoolie on MeTV
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Welcome to the Dollhouse 1995
*TCM Underground 9/11/21
*finally
*written, directed and produced by Todd Solondz
*I remember walking in late to a screening of “Happiness” during the opening scene (or at least I’m pretty sure it was the opening scene) with Jon Lovitz and Cynthia Stevenson and the audience roaring with laughter…from what I hear about this movie, this ain’t like that but similar subject matter…
*although honestly not sure if I’ve seen anything else of his…maybe “Storytelling”?
*apparently the main character, Dawn (played by Heather Matarazzo) is in two other movies “Palindromes” and “Wiener-Dog”
*a slow movie with some cringey scenes like when Dawn tries to save a kid from being bullied and then that same kid turns on her…fun stuff like that…
*”A-duh!”
*okay the part when Dawn goes to New York to find her sister and her sister is home and the mother hasn’t even noticed that Dawn is missing…funny stuff…
*”I think she liked being kidnapped, she had control over the pusher…” the PUSHER! Not the remote, the pusher!
*yeah so that was pretty much exactly what I thought it would be…
Avengers 2012
*again
*had a desire to watch the “team-up” Marvel movies one day…these are all amazing…
Avengers: Age of Ultron 2015
*again
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Captain America: Civil War 2016
*again
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Avengers: Infinity War 2018
*again
Avengers: Endgame 2019
*again
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nothing (re-watched Battlestar Galactica mini-series 2003)
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Unholy Rollers 1972
*something you’d see on TCM Underground, but it’s Thursday night…TCM seems to be adding these wacky movies here and there into the schedule more often…
*”A Roger Corman Production…” YES!
*this is a bad movie, not really “so bad it’s good” just bad…
*the best and worst part is the play by play and color commentary for the games…the announcers have no passion and seem to be in a booth reading off a script (kind of like pro wrestling announcers today) but then randomly in the middle of a brawl they will mention the local sponsor, the best one being the local pet store and the copy being something like “for all your pussies needs…” they do that a few times and you have to rewind to make sure you heard what you did…
*the announcers, at times, also seem like they have read the script…at one point a girl hits her teammate and two seconds later, the announcers talk about how they had just received a telegram from the commissioner’s office saying that player was suspended (or traded, or something…) which is a pretty quick turnaround for such news…not that I mind them hurrying up the plot, but that’s just silly…
*it seems like all the dialogue is ADR, and bad ADR too, as there are many times where the lip don’t match up to the words…there are even a few times when a person is supposed to be talking, they show that person, we hear dialogue but that person’s lips aren’t moving…
*Karen, the star of the movie, played by Claudia Jennings, is not bad, definitely the best part of the movie, unfortunately she died a few years after this came out…
*Karen quits her job at a cat food factory and becomes the biggest star in this roller derby league and become so rich she can buy a house and a brand new car…these roller derby games seem to be attended by like 50 people at the most, so I’m not sure how much these fans are paying for tickets but it must be a lot…
*there is three or four roller derby games in this movie and it’s the same two teams, the Avengers and the Demons and they just play each other…are there only two teams in this league? Seems odd…at one point a player is traded away for being problematic and she just goes to the other team…
*Kathleen Freeman is in this, in one scene, playing Karen’s mother…Freeman was in “Singing’ in the Rain” and “The Bad and the Beautiful” for frak’s sake! She was also the nun in “Blue’s Brothers”…
*on IMDB Trivia, it says this movie was Martin Scorsese’s first job as an editor! Now I see why this is on TCM! As a favor to Scorsese…that guy needs a break after all…
*considering it’s about roller derby, you’d think at least the stunts would be good but they aren’t, in fact they are terrible in some cases…at one point Karen hits a teammate with her helmet to the arm and the teammate goes down like she’d been shot and the announcers talk about it like she’s been crippled…was that really the best take?
*the last scene, with Karen standing in defiance after rolling around smashing things, kinda reminds me of the last scene of “Rollerball” which came out three years later…
*actually surprised there are so many roller derby movies in the world…probably never seeing this again…
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Lennox Lewis: The Untold Story 2020
*hard to watch any boxing doc and take is seriously after seeing the amazing “When We Were Kings” but here we go…
*was a big Lennox Lewis fan when I was a kid, even though he “betrayed” us Canadians by saying he was from England…just kidding…he was born in England, grew up in Canada, won Gold for Canada in the Olympics but when he became professional he was billed as being from England…but as a Canadian we all rooted for him anyway cause that’s how we are…
*I did stop following his career for a while and honestly didn’t know what was going to be revealed in this doc…
*at one point Lewis is sitting in a chair that seemed to have handles on the back like a wheelchair would and I was like “What happened to him?” but apparently it was just a weird chair I guess…
*had totally forgotten he fought and beat Mike Tyson, which is so strange that I have no memory of that, so when it came up in the documentary I was like “Wait that happened?” The night happened in 2002, so I can only guess that that close after 9/11 I was in a fog, maybe?
*also fun to find out his last fight ever was against Vitali Klitschko, who is the brother of Wladimir Klitschko, who Lewis “fought” in the boxing scene in “Ocean’s Eleven”, although I never understood that scene in that they were boxing, the lights go out, then come back on then the fighters are mad at each other, and the corner people get in the ring and hell breaks loose…did they think they had anything to do with the lights going out…still love the movie but the more times you watch it…
*also interesting to think that because of filming his scene in that movie, and other factors, Lewis then lost his next fight…
*great to see that he ended up retiring, happy with a family and seemingly without too much brain damage like some older boxers…great doc!
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Human Desire 1954
*TCM Noir Alley w/Dana Delaney introducing the film
*directed by Fritz Lang
*Gloria Graham is married to Broderick Crawford (seriously?) but he’s a jerk and Graham tries to seduce Glenn Ford into killing him…there’s more plot but that’s basically it…
*Graham is the most sympathetic character here, which is funny cause she clearly isn’t supposed to be…
*towards the end I really didn’t care much about these characters, especially Ford who just kind of wanders through the movie, smoking and scowling and not doing much…
*sucks hearing about how classic directors like Fritz Lang, Alfred Hitchcock and others were terrible people, especially in how they treated their actresses…
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Addams Family 2019
*watching a lot of Addams Family, so why not this too?
*an all-star cast, and I had no idea this existed…has a sequel coming out soon too!
*Oscar Isaac, Charlize Theron, Chloe Grace Moretz, Nick Kroll, Snoop Dogg, Bette Midler, Allison Janney, Martin Short, Catherine O’Hara…quite the cast…
*okay whomever cast the voices apparently didn’t make anyone audition first, just started writing checks…Theron is amazing, possibly the best actress of this generation, but she’s not good at voice acting, her voice is barely recognizable…and if we can’t clearly identify her by her voice, why spend all that money to hire her? Oscar Issac is the same, he does a bit better doing the Raul Julia impression, but not a lot better…
*Nick Kroll I recognized right away, same with Martin Short, but Catherine O’Hara is in one scene and wasted…
*Allison Janney, again, is amazing but here I had no idea it was her until I looked on Wikipedia…I thought maybe Andrea Martin or actually Bette Midler was playing this role…
*Midler pays Grandma Addams, another waste…
*Chloe Grace Moretz does the best job as Wednesday
*Pugsley actually has stuff to do in this movie…a first!
*Snoop Dog as Cousin Itt…why though? That’s like Vin Diesel as Groot, or Sylvester Stallone as King Shark (I don’t know that for sure as I haven’t seen “Suicide Squad” yet, but that’s what I hear…)
*I laughed once in the whole movie, when Wednesday comes home and Morticia notices she has a unicorn pin…Morticia looks at it and says “I can appreciate a horse with a spear through his head…” that was it…Nick Kroll as Uncle Fester has a few clever lines but his character is in the background and never focused on…
*this isn’t good, too bad since The Addams Family is rich with material, and seemingly animation would be a great way to show off their adventures but not here…that being said I might give the sequel a try when it comes out…just cause…
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nothing
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Cyborg 1989
*finally
*9/18/21 TCM Underground
*I say “finally” because this is a movie I’ve always heard about, as opposed to this being a movie I have always wanted to watch…
*another movie where the behind the scenes is (I’m guessing) more interesting that the actual movie itself…
*long story short (since you can look this up yourself, frankly…) is that Cannon Films was going to make a He-Man sequel and then a live action Spiderman movie back to back, with the same director, Albert Pyun, but then ran out of money but some of the costumes and sets were already built so they made this instead…
*the storyline was written in one weekend, the film itself was shot in 23 days and the budget was $500,000….
*wow, making a He-Man movie then a Spiderman movie back to back…or according to IMDB, simultaneously!…that would have been cool…
*apparently writer/director Pyun is a music fan as all the characters are named after musical instruments like “Fender” and “Gibson”….
*okay so a woman is an android (for reasons, I guess) and has information on a cure and has to get to Atlanta…she meets Van Damme and they talk for literally a few seconds and then she is captured so then, of course, Van Damme spends the rest of the movie trying to save her…
*the dialogue is bad and made worse when it’s Van Damme saying it…although to the director’s credit (I’m guessing) Van Damme doesn’t say much…although that means the other actors have to do the heavy lifting and these actors, while trying their best, aren’t exactly body builders…
*I actually do like how they do the flashbacks, with Van Damme remembering a family he saved and how he fell in love before Fender and his gang killed them…those are done well and effectively and that will probably be the last time I say that…
*so Van Damme and Nadi are walking, trying to catch up with the bad guys on a boat…walk for one day and look, there they are on their boat! What a slow boat…
*the fight sequences are even terrible, even from Van Damme…did they film the rehearsals, where they do every thing at half-speed?
*lots of yelling by the bad guys…
*Van Damme’s character actually turns down sex? Hmmm…
*that scene where Van Damme and the bad guy run at each other along a walk way…meant to be funny, right? It has to be…
*lots of running in this movie too…
*so that blonde girl is the little girl from the flashbacks? Twist!
*more running…
*Van Damme talks to the android-woman, they can get away but she says no, that Van Damme is weak and can’t get her to Atlanta…lady, you hired him before to take him to Atlanta, then he followed you there and has killed a few bad guys along the way…how is he not strong enough?
*Van Damme fights one guy, while we see another bad guy running in from the distance…Van Damme beats up one guy then the other bad guy catches up and they fight…rinse repeat…
*so Van Damme apparently blinded one of the bad guys for real during a fight, trying to figure out which fight it happened, I think it was the one where he fights the dude in the water, as Van Damme has a knife in that one…
*the scene with Van Damme on the crucifix on the beached ship as the bad guys look on isn’t terrible…
*okay the big flashback, where we see all that happened, as Van Damme is still crucified, is actually well done…the good guys are tied up not with top but barbed wide which is messed up…Hailey can save them if she can hold onto the barbed wire but of course she can’t…not bad…or my standards are very, very low…
*although Van Damme is able to use his heel to break the board he is crucified on, then he falls to the sand…now what? I guess it’s better to be on the sand than in the air?
*so in this world, a “Slinger” is a mercenary…they couldn’t have come up with a better world?
*according to IMDB, “Slinger” is short for “gunslinger” like in the Old West…okay…
*this final fight sequence, in the rain, isn’t bad either…if the first 45 minutes hadn’t been so terrible this might not have been a bad movie…
*the main bad guy Fender, played by surfer Vincent Klyn, is jacked…surprised Van Damme didn’t have it in his contract that no one could be more jacked than him…
*where’s the android-woman? Did she disappear? Oh there she is, apparently she was napping this whole time?
*so Nady dies, but Van Damme gets Hailey back so it’s all good I guess…
*so much staring in this movie…there’s probably a supercut on Youtube somewhere that someone put together of all the longing stares back and forth…
*what an unsatisfying ending…some dialogue done with ADR and we’re out…lame…
*so this movie is the last movie Cannon Films ever released (at least in that form) so there’s a legacy here…not a good one but still…
*again, if the movie hadn’t been half terrible they might have had something…good as a TCM Underground movie, but even still, there isn’t a campy affect here as the movie takes it self way too seriously…
*apparently there is a director’s cut called “Slinger”…oh the temptation…
*so the movie is called “Cyborg” but Van Damme isn’t a cyborg…the woman is an android and I’ve always been told those are two different things so…why “Cyborg”?
*watching this just makes me want to re-watch “Electric Boogaloo” the Cannon Films documentary…
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Roller Boogie 1979
*part of TCM’s Thursday Spotlight on movies about Roller skating in September
*I know it’s his thing, but could do without Mank’s snarky-ness in these intros…I know he is the “Face of TCM” and all, but there must be a way to do the intros in a fun way and not give them a “I’m too good for this” vibe…
*another TCM Underground type movie and I’m looking forward to this…but mindful to keep expectations low…
*Cher does the theme song!
*that’s ALOT of people roller skating…
*those people skate off without hanging up the phone…how irresponsible of the filmmakers!
*Linda Blair!
*this movie has 0% on RT!!!
*I’m not a car guy but Blair’s old times car is pretty cool
*she’s just going to leave that glass of milk on the staircase for someone to kick over and spill all over the place, isn’t she? That’s so inconsiderate for her maid…
*director Mark A. Lester also directed “Bobbie Jo and the Outlaw”, “Stunts” and later “Commando”
*the dance montage in the roller rink is pretty good…
*then Jim Bray (who was a legit competitive skater IRL) yells out “Let’s Toga!” and they proceed to form a Conga Line…although there is a song on the Soundtrack called “Cunga” so maybe that’s the word…
*they head upstairs in their skates looking to repair one of Blair’s skates…not advisable but not nearly as bad as what happens next when they start climbing up on boxes and stand on a shelf WITH their skates on…
*in fact, not sure why I never noticed before, but the characters are ALWAYS wearing skates…
*an hour into the movie, the bad guys shows up…better late than never…
*actually a genuine moment with Blair and her father…ten minutes later he’s slapping her in the face…
*I read the synopsis and apparently Jim Bray’s character wants to go to the Olympics or something…I haven’t heard anything like that so for or did I miss it?
*Bray is American, apparently from California, but he switches in and out of a weird accent…
*”Phones”, played by Stoney Jackson, gets depressed towards the end and joins the Hare Krishna’s…that was funny
*the kids discover the bad guy is on tape confessing the plot…the kids listen to this and one of them says “No one will believe us…” apparently he doesn’t get what a tape recording does…
*it’s a pretty good recording of the confession considering the bad guy was basically whispering and the kids recording him where in the next room…
*that elaborate skate park…they had that in 1979? My hometown didn’t get one until around 1997ish…
*Linda Blair’s acting style seems to be “big smile…do something…another big smile!” and so on…she’s very likeable and too bad she didn’t do more stuff other than that movie she was nominated for an Oscar for…
*it ends with a big montage and dance routine which is nice…
*no happy ending, shockingly…again, they say he’s off to the Olympics to become a big star…is it the Summer Olympics? Cause this seems to be around September so the Summer Olympics would be over, and if it’s Winter Olympics okay but so is he a figure skater, who roller skates for fun? I totally missed any dialogue regarding that…
*not a great movie, but 0% on RT? Seriously? Come on…
======================
Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay 2018
*headshots! blood! limbs cut off! heads exploding! brains! All we.ve come to expect from WB Animation!
*one “shit” overheard
*Tobias Whale!
*Scandal Savage and Knockout! Is this actually a Secret Six movie? Did Gail Simone write it?
*no it was written by Alan Burnett, who wrote for “The Super Friends” among other things (basically everything WB Animation has done since the 80’s) and apparently this was his last gig before retiring…
*Vanessa Williams playing Amanda Waller, that’s different, first time I’ve heard of her doing animation, as far as I know…
*Christian Slater plays Headshot and he and Williams are the only real “stars” here, most of the others are typical voice actors which is great…don’t need stars if there are great voice actors…hear that “Super Mario movie of the future…”
*Steel Maxum has a Dr. Fate tramp stamp…okay…
*so this will be Suicide Squad vs. Injustice Gang (Reverse Flash, Silver Banshee, Solomon Grundy)…cool!
*apparently that’s Blockbuster not Grundy…sure dresses like Grundy although I appreciate Blockbuster as a Suicide Squad shout-out…Blockbuster died in the 1st ever Suicide Squad mission during the “Legends” mini-series in 1986(ish) if I am remembering correctly…
*Suicide Squad is Deadshot, Bronze Tiger, Harley Quinn, Killer Frost, Captain Boomerang and Copperhead…
*apparently Tara Strong is playing Harley Quinn which she has been doing for awhile but it doesn’t sound like her for some reason…
*Dr. Fate is a stripper?
*are they ever going to say Blockbuster’s name? Or is it too silly? Let’s see…
*Harley Quinn doesn’t have much to do here despite being, at this point, one of the top five, or top three, biggest characters in the DC Universe
*Knockout gets naked for no real reason…nice armour though
*so Vandal Savage gets involved, kills Knockout (or probably not but that’s what we are lead to believe…)
*wait the Squad gets the card but then just give it back to Savage? And still get shot at? Weird…
*Branson, MS…Denver…Lacoma, Utah…join the Suicide Squad and see the world!
*I kinda like the wacky-ness of this…never expected Reverse-Flash to be in a movie like this…but it’s not connecting…maybe it’s the flat animation style?
*Harley Quinn, Copperhead and Bronze Tiger sit down at a greasy spoon for some lunch…that’s wacky but again it doesn’t connect…
*I am interested as to how/why Reverse-Flash is losing his powers…
*Deadshot actually puts on his mask…this is animation not live-action and he’s not being played by Will Smith so not sure why it took this long…
*Deadshot says “hand jobs”…okay…
*Vandal Savage “I’m immortal not invulnerable” I like it when they make the distinction as they are definitely not the same thing…
*Deadshot takes his mask off…again, why? As if we didn’t see his lips move we wouldn’t be sure it was him talking?
*so this Reverse-Flash is from “Flashpoint”? Okay, that kind of makes this over-complicated but I’m sure some fanboys get real excited by that…I would hope so at least otherwise what’s the point?
*is Vanessa Williams just doing a CCH Pounder impression?
*Deadshot tells Harley to stay behind and “make sure they don’t leave” and then the wideshot reveals everyone is dead…was that supposed to be a joke?
*Reverse Flash slits Bronze Tiger’s throat and he’s able to still have a conversation with Deadshot…okay…
*Deadshot gives Bronze Tiger the card…why?
*then we get a supposed happy ending with Deadshot talking to his daughter…again why? And is that why Lawton never wore his mask, so we’d know who he was in this scene? Dumb…
*Harley Quinn fans shouldn’t watch this just for her, she’s very much a background character, which is actually fine by me, I haven’t been a big fan of the character until I finally saw the Harley Quinn cartoon (which is awesome)
*I keep saying it but the animation is flat and…well, it sucks, I’ll just say it. Compared to the Bruce Timm era, or the aforementioned Harley Quinn cartoon there is just nothing to this…I have seen the “Vixen” and “Freedom Fighters” cartoons, done in this style, which are connected to the Arrowverse (which I love and usually can’t get enough of) but those aren’t good, and it’s not just the dialogue…
*not sure how much Andrea Romano as voice director actually brought to this world too, I have always heard she’s the best and was the difference between something being good and being great…but she’s not here so…
*I liked the unpredictability of characters like Dr. Fate and Reverse Flash being in a Suicide Squad movie (and even a quick Two-Face cameo) but there just wasn’t much here to really enjoy…
======================
Mortal Kombat 2021
*watching this for one reason - Mehcad Brooks aka Jimmy Olsen on Supergirl!
*watched the 1995 MK movie, actually preferred the goofier “Street Fighter” with Jean Calude Van Damme and Raul Julia…I know that is sacrilege as there are hardcore MK fans, but then what doesn’t have hardcore fans these days?
*so the bad guys have super powers and the good guys have knives and guns and moxie…should have said “Guile” instead of moxie, right?
*best thing about the old MK was the theme song…I’m guessing they’ll bring it back here, at some point right?
*ten minutes in and Brooks seemingly has died…I’ve seen trailers so I know he’s not really dead otherwise I’d be annoyed…
*”I don’t have $3 million dollars, look at this place…” actually funny…
*45 minutes in and Liu Kang shows up and can throw fireballs…side note we’re already 45 minutes in so that’s good, the movie is going fast…
*okay so Earth has lost the last 9 tournaments and if they lose the 10th, bad guys can invade and take over…so after 9 losses, you’d think that meant the best of the best are dead, Raiden seems annoyed when Liu Kang shows up with these guys which is weird, you’d think he’d be happy if anyone shows up…
*so this movie isn’t about the tournament it’s about training for the tournament? Do we get to see the tournament or do we have to wait for next week, er, I mean the sequel?
*this Cole guy sucks…
*Kano heel turn which I probably would’ve seen coming if I, like, cared…
*hey we got to see Goro’s guts…
*Jax wants to fight Reiko as he has a sore to settle…he doesn’t want to fight Sub Zero, the guy who took his arms?
*so we’re just FFing thorough the tournament? Not that I’m complaining…
*good guys have got their asses kicked over and over so the plan is to go face the bad guys one on one?
*even after getting his powers, Cole still sucks…
*so Scorpion vs. Sub Zero is the big last fight, the big bad shows up, Ridden just flicks his wrist or whatever and sends him off…that’s it?
*and Cole is headed to Hollywood to find Johnny Cage…so we are going to have to wait for the sequel to see the ACTUAL tournament? Lame!
*admire the stunts and I’m sure the actors had to go through a lot, not to mention the VFX teams but this is a thumbs down for me…
======================
Bloodmatch 1991
*TCM Underground 9/18/21
*director Albert Pyun who also directed “Cyborg”
*in the credits, lots of guys with nicknames like Benny “the Jet” Urquidez…
*this opening scene goes on FOREVER…so much talking…and talking…and talking…
*the person who wrote this, K.Hannah, sure likes words…
*seriously, no one in this movie will shut up…every scene is at least twenty minutes…
*there’s a sex scene…the girl says “I’m done” and then chloroforms the guy…good for her…
*horrible fight scene that, again, goes on way too long…
*who are the good guys here? The main character is looking for his dead brother’s killer, but tortures (and kills) people to get information…
*usually with scenes this long and dialogue heavy, you think “This must be based on a play…” IS this based on a play? “Blood match - the play” or even a musical maybe? Now that I would love to see…
*WHO DID THE AUDIO FOR THIS? AND WERE THEY FIRED? For such a dialogue heavy movie, how did they not make sure to record the audio properly? And couldn’t they afford ADR? And does it matter?
*”Hurry up, we gotta a dog show in here tomorrow…” that’s pretty funny…
*so the main guy (Thom Mathews) has four people he suspects killed his brother so he fights them one-on-one…but the fights (this is deja vu) TAKE FOREVER! And the fights are terrible…the punches don’t land, the kicks are slow and again, THEY TAKE FOREVER!
*okay Benny “The Jet” starts fighting and he looks good…he was also the fight choreographer so maybe that was on purpose so he’d look good? Cynical of me I know…
*wait so did he actually kill the daughter?
*this scene is, let’s say it together, taking FOREVER and he hasn’t even “interrogated” the blonde girl, Connie Angel, yet…
*Hope Marie Carlton, who plays Connie Angel, was also in Hard Ticket to Hawaii which is a TCM Underground classic…
*”I could be cleaning bed pans but instead I’m here watching some pretty exciting Kick boxing matches”…really? I don’t think she’s ever seen kickboxing before…
*over an hour in and there are scenes where Mathews is in the ring, looking at Connie Angel sitting in the crowd and nothing happens, no one moves…I’m guessing this is supposed to be tense but it isn’t…
*Connie weakly throws a knife and it’s enough to kill the other female character, blood everywhere…
*more talking…exposition time…Mathews used to be Angel’s boyfriend Wood Wilson but his face changed or something…WOW WHY DO I CARE? And who’s name is “Wood”?
*MORE TALKING THAT WE CAN’T HEAR! Was this filmed during that transition period where silents turned into talkies and they didn’t know how audio recording worked?
*MORE TALKING!!! More importantly, ACTING!!!
*so this main guy/Brick/Wood Wilson character is after his dead brother’s killer, and they all know this dead brother, so wouldn’t Connie have figured out pretty quickly that this guy is her ex-boyfriend? Or did she not know her boyfriend-at-the-time “Wood” had a brother? Or at least I think that’s what they are saying I CAN’T HEAR THE DIALOGUE!
*this maybe a mean thing to say but I just get the feeling this main guy Thom Mathew is thinking to himself “I’m nailing this performance! This is the beginning of great things…”
*Thom Mathew did a few things with George Clooney, such as an episode of “ER”, the movie “Peacemaker” and “Fail Safe” then later retired from acting and started a construction company, working on the Osbornes’ house during filming of their reality show, according to Wikipedia…
*Connie is supposed to fight in that dress? With the dead bodies lying in the ring?
*oh and the jewelry…she’s wearing a lot of jewelry…
*so she beats him…okay…the death blow is her putting her foot on his chest and I guess stepping on him and he dies? This is horrible…
*one last scene…Connie meets with Benny The Jet’s kids, so apparently the daughter wasn’t dead, for a happy ending…
*wow this was terrible and not in a campy fun way…it might have gone camp if WE COULD HEAR WHAT THEY ARE SAYING! But even then, all that dialogue and exposition just went on and on…I actually liked “Cyborg” for the fact there wasn’t a lot of dialogue, seemingly director Pyun knew that wasn’t their strength, based on who he cast, so why bother? Here he figured they were doing for it, I guess…
*just horrible…one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen…just the worst…it’s one thing for a movie to have bad acting or bad dialogue but the technical aspect of this is just horrible, the fight choreography, the cinematography, the editing…have I mentioned THE AUDIO SUCKED?
*reviews at the time called this “a minor train wreck” which I guess a big movie like “Ishtar” or “Water World” is a major train wreck so I guess that works…
=======================
The Death of Superman Lives: What Happened? 2015
*Jon Schepp’s crowdfunded documentary…I actually donated to this…
*amazing that Jon Peters actually owned the Superman rights…
======================
The Melies Mystery 2021
*it’s “National Silent Movie Day” 9/29/21 in the US, apparently…
*amazing how in 1923, Melies destroyed his work “in a fit of desperation” 520 films he directed were all gone…wow…I can’t delete copies of copies of work stored on my external hard drive…
*around 40 minutes in they start to talk about the search for copies of Melies’ work…
*1st act of film piracy happened in the US…I’m shocked…
*now I am a little confused…TCM Host Jacqueline Stewart said in the intro how this was a documentary about the restoration of Georges Melies films (and it says that in the synopsis too) but that’s only the last three minutes and the rest is a doc about Melies career…not that I’m complaining cause that is fascinating but I was interested in learning more about the film restoration process…
*I guess I took the word “restoration” literally, as half of the movie is about trying to track down Melies prints, then the restoration…
*cool how they tied in Bugs Bunny and Looney Tunes cartoons…that’s always cool…
*need to watch “Hugo” again, haven’t seen it since it was in theatres although I seem to remember not being all that interested in the kid and wanting to know more about Melies himself…
*Melies work inspired not only “Hugo” but the music video for “Heaven For Everyone” by Queen (where they use footage from Melies movies) and the video for Smashing Pumpkins’ “Tonight Tonight” (where they re-create that footage, which is slightly cooler), not to mention a lot of Terry Gilliam’s work
*the chemical they need to use to restore old films can only be used in Europe, as the chemical is banned in the US due to “environmental reasons”…oh dear…
*great doc!
======================
Network 1976
*for the dozenth time
*part of the Ned Beatty TCM Tribute
*so much happens in the first 45-ish minutes…Howard Beel gets fired, talks about suicide, goes back on the air, is a hit but then a flop, finally does the “I’m mad as hell” stuff… if this was a TV series this would be episode 3 or 4…
*so much happens in this movie off screen, like the one exec’s heart attack…you have to pay attention to the dialogue to keep up…
*Ned Beatty is in only one scene (you could argue it’s two scenes back-to-back) but he’s awesome!
*also Robert Duvall, Faye Dunaway, William Holden, Conchata Ferrell…even a young Lance Henriksen uncredited…
*I remember watching this in a Film Screening class at Film School and after, a fellow student scoffed at it saying it was dumb and unrealistic…that was 2007…
======================
Watchmen 2008
*again but not since it was in theatres
*I remember wanting to give Zack Snyder the benefit of the doubt, as he had guts to try to adapt the un-adaptable…but then Snyder made “Sucker Punch” and and then the “Snyderverse” happened…
*this is a good movie, I enjoyed it when I watched it in theatres but whenever I watch it since, I like it less and less…
=========================
Hot Pursuit 1987
*young John Cusack, Ben Stiller’s film debut, along with Jerry Stiller, Robert Loggia, Shelley Fabares…
*this is a bad movie…full disclosure I actually didn’t make any notes for this when I watched it, so I had to go back and look this movie up and try to remember what it was about…
*according to IMDB this is an adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Treasure Island”…okay…
=======================
Cartoon Carnival 2021
*a doc about the early days of animation, from as far back as 1900, twenty years before Disney and Warner Bros took over…
*wow, Fleischer animation has always been the best…
100th Anniversary of Fleischer Animation Part 1 2021
“Out of the Inkwell series: “The Boxing Kangaroo”, “Reunion”, “Cartoon Factory”, “Vacation”, “It’s the Cats”, “Come Take a Trip in My Airstrip”
*Fleischer Animation was mixing live action and animation in 1920…amazing…
100th Anniversary of Fleischer Animation Part 2 2021
*”The Jazzsinger” comes out in 1927, the movie industry adjusts…add sound…and also, apparently, product placement for Texaco!
*”Hurry Doctor!”, “Betty Boop’s Crazy Inventions”, “Let’s Sing with Popeye”, “Betty Boop and Grampy”, “Dancing on the Moon” (in colour!), “Popeye meets Sinbad the Sailor!” although Sinbad (spelled “Sindbad” at one point) looks a lot like Bluto, Popeye’s regular nemesis…
*1st short has a song in it that would eventually become the Alfred Hitchcock tv show theme…
*the Betty Boop and Grampy short is friggin great, I now need to see more Betty Boop…
*again, Fleischer Animation was awesome, way ahead of it’s time, too bad they didn’t have more success
*also would have loved to have seen a “Superman” cartoon included but maybe that’s a rights thing…
=======================
Fun in Acapulco 1963
*Elvis, Ursula Andress
*Ursula doesn’t show up until 30 minutes in…what’s up with that?
*she does show up in a red bikini, though…
*Elvis sings a song dressed as a matador…
*apparently Elvis couldn’t actually film anything in the real Acapulco cause he got in trouble the last time he had been in Mexico, so anything shot on location is a stunt double or body double…
*also, Elvis was nervous acting with Ursula, refused to be filmed next to her without a shirt on as he was self conscious about his physique…
*Elvis does a 2nd song about matadors…or is this seriously the same song?
*later Elvis sings “Bosanova” and actually dances, in all his other songs he would just stand there not moving at all…
Broadcast News 1987
*again
*Albert Brooks sees a report on date rape and sarcastically replies “Wow you really blew the lid off nookie…” that wouldn’t fly in 2021
*still awesome
======================
Dolemite 1975
*TCM Underground 10/2/21
*Rudy Ray Moore as Dolemite!
*Jerry Jones who was played by Keegan-Michael Key
*D’Urville Martin who was played by Wesley Snipes
*watched the “Dolemite is My Name” Eddie Murphy so excited to finally see the original…
*in the parody, they made a big deal about how horrible the fight scene is where the one guy flies into the car trunk after Dolemite lightly taps him…well it’s really that bad…
*Dolemite gets out of jail, stands outside his limo and undresses, putting on his “Dolemite” clothes, then gets in the car and proceeds to be undressed so he can have sex with his girls…makes sense…
*lots of casual nudity…women dropping their tops like it’s nothing…
*another fight scene has Dolemite swinging punches that don’t land and kicks that are worse…was this the only take? I understand back then that they couldn’t see what the shot looked like until a while later, after the film was developed, but they couldn’t have re-shot it? Granted I know the answer to the question, but just thought I’d ask…
*best part is Dolemite going on a rant about the Titanic, here’s where we see Dolemite’s charisma, what we would have seen in his stand up routine…did they ever do a movie where Dolemite was in politics cause that would have been interesting…
*did I hear right or was there a “Eat Out More Often” reference?
*makes me want to watch “My Name is Dolemite” again, or at least the parts where they film this movie…
*according to IMDB, the New York Times called this movie “the Citizen Kane of Blaxploitation”…okay…
=======================
Star Trek Generations 1994
*again
*just binged all seven seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and want to watch “First Contact” but I figured I might as well watch this first just cause…
*the lighting is friggin dark once they get off the boat…so dark it was hard seeing some of the characters…after binging the show and now seeing this, I guess they thought they had to go “darker” for the movies but I’m not sure they should have meant it this literally…
=======================
Kind Hearts and Coronets 1949
*so apparently Alec Guinness plays all the roles or something…
*I was wrong, Dennis Price is the lead, and he kills off every member of a family, all of those are played by Guinness…
*took me a while to try to figure out who was whom…the Price guy does a voiceover which to me sounded like Guinness’ voice, so I was confused…
*Guinness is great but for some reason I can’t get into this…are we supposed to be rooting for this Price guy?
*maybe if Vincent Price had played the lead role? In 1949 he co-starred in “The Bribe” with Robert Taylor, Ava Gardner, Charles Laughton…that’s how into this movie I am…
Star Trek: First Contact 1996
*again
*still awesome
*never noticed this before, but why didn’t they just lure all the Borg onto the holodeck and kill them all with machine guns one-by-one?
*other than that, one of the best Star Trek movies, absolutely the best of the TNG movies but there’s not a lot to choose from there…
======================
Lego DC Shazam: Magic and Monsters
*fun stuff with Perry White yelling at the reporters in the Daily Planet, homage to the original Superman
*”His chin is like it’s made of granite…we’ll call him Captain Marble!” funny
*these villains…I recognize Penguin but are the others supposed to be Man-Bat, Blockbuster, Killer Croc or just random monsters?
*”Sister Eye! Or Cousin Eye”…are kids gonna understand a Brother Eye joke? Ah who cares…
*Justice League show up…Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash and Jessica Cruz Green Lantern!
*nice train save by Superman…why can’t they do this with live action? Well Spiderman did already, and did it great, so that’s probably why I guess…
*wait that isn’t the Penguin? It’s a villain called “The Dummy”?
*villains keep talking about their master, I’m guessing that will be Mr. Mind?
*I used to read a lot of Shazam comics and would be able to recognize his villains but not so much now…
*looking up Mr. Mind’s Monster Society of Evil from DC’s Who’s Who, there’s “Crocodile Man” “Dummy” and “Oom” so we know where these guys researched Shazam’s villains…don’t see anyone that looks like Man-Bat though
*Dummy refers to the Man-Bat-looking guy as “Jeepers”, who in Who’s Who looks like a giant mouse…these are some deep cuts!
*Dr. Sivana!
*last time I saw Shazam try to join the Justice League, it was in the Justice League Unlimited episode “Clash” and it ended with Shazam and Superman fighting and destroying a city, so…
*Krypto!
*having Billy Batson as a young kid, in a grown up Shazam’s body, is awesome and IMHO the only way to use Shazam…in the New 52 (and some animated movies) they have Billy Batson grow up a bit but by doing that they just make him a teenager and act like a jerk and who wants to see that? Plus him being a jerk teenager isn’t all that different from him being a jerk adult so…
*speaking of that, Mr. Mind turns the Leaguers into kids and mind controls them which is funny, makes me think of the Justice League episode “Kids’ Stuff”…
*Shazam trying to drive the Batmobile…funny…
*”Whiz” on Billy’s t-shirt…another deep cut
*I like how they explain Shazam’s origin…
*they really lean into the whole orphan thing…they should make a joke about Billy’s mother being named Martha, too…
*forgot to mention before that I love the joke about Shazam doesn’t recognize the Justice League when they reveal their secret identities to him…it’s a big world, why would Shazam know who Jessica Cruz or Barry Allen are? He recognizes Clark Kent though which is funny…also later, he doesn’t recognize Bruce Wayne which is funny…
*apparently Ralph Garman played the Wizard, I didn’t even notice…good for him…
*on the Smallville Kent Farm, Batman yells “Save me!” I’m gonna give them the benefit of the doubt and call that a “Smallville” reference…
*an hour into this thing and I still haven’t seen Black Adam…
*fighty-fighty…punchy-kicky…
*oh, there he is…
*it’s a Lego movie, so I guess it’s in the contract there has to be a scene where people build stuff right?
*happy ending with Mary and Uncle Dudley!
*and there is a mid-credits scene with LOBO!
*way better than I thought it would be!
Star Trek: Insurrection 1998
*again, I think
*what’s with the joystick?
*meh…typical Star Trek stuff, might have been a good TV episode but was it enough for a movie?
Movin’ with Nancy Sinatra 1967
*fun watching stuff like this, as a time capsule of what TV was like in 1967, even including the commercials, although the commercials are all for RC Cola, who gave Sinatra $400,000 to make this apparently
*they have father Frank Sinatra (in the credits as “Daddy”), Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. in this special, although Davis dances but never sings and he and Sinatra exchange a “kiss” (which on IMDB they say was the actual 1st inter-racial kiss on TV, the year before that episode of Star Trek came out) although to me it seemed more like a peck on the cheek…maybe back then that was even more of a big deal, just white women and black men being on screen together, let alone touching?
Rogue One 2016
*again
*the Peter Cushing stuff looks terrible, especially compared to Ben Mendelsohn standing next to him
*parts of this are awesome, and parts are terrible…Forest Whittaker is an all-time great but he’s way too over the top here…
*spelled Mendelsohn’s name right the first time without even looking…if that’s not a sign of over exposure I don’t know what is…
*Alan Tudyk’s K-2S0 is awesome, as is all of the Rogue One team…
*Bail Organa, aka Jimmy Smits, gets more screen time here than all the prequels combined yet still gets the shaft…Captain Antilles gets a brief mention off screen…
*ended up just watching it…some great stuff but I would like to see a director’s cut of what it was going to be…from what I understand the entire end of the movie was re-shot (which alot of it can be see in the initial trailers)…
I do like it when people make prequels that actually make sense and the writers/directors pay attention to what came before, like how this movie leads directly into “Star Wars: A New Hope”…as opposed to, say, George Lucas’ prequels which make no sense…like seriously Darth Vader built C-3PO? F*ck off…
=======================
Star Trek: Nemesis 2002
*finally
*really sad that this is the last “Star Trek: The Next Generation” movie and was the end of the franchise until the recent “Picard” TV series which was just okay IMHO….this franchise deserved better…
=======================
Solo 2018
*again
*felt pretty ‘meh’ about this when I saw it in theatres
*as I think about it I am thinking “this is long, right?” I already feel exhausted…
*watching this I have the same feelings as I did watching it the 1st time…I get distracted by “okay, when does this take place? After “Revenge of the Sith” but obviously before “A New Hope”
*some great sequences here, but I just don’t feel anything, I don’t have any attachment to the characters…
*Chewbacca!
*Han and Chews showering together…cute…
*and Thandie Newton gets killed…the one girl…
*I got distracted from watching this movie by listening to an old episode of the “How Did This Get Made?” podcast about “Drop Dead Fred” so apparently my whole day will be made up of watching this movie…
*initially wrote “Right Said Fred” there…is there a podcast about them? There has to be…
*so is that Jon Favreau doing the pilot’s voice?
*a space heist…nice…
*Woody Harrelson takes about three seconds to get over that his girlfriend and bestie are dead…
*an hour in and Donald Glover hasn’t even shown up yet with his robot girlfriend…that happens right?
*have legit no memory who the bad guy is played by here so let’s see…oh it’s Paul Bettany…cause those poor Marvel actors need more work…
*Chewie is drinking!
*don’t they visit like three or four more planets?
*Han is a real dick…I guess he’s supposed to be but still..again another reason we didn’t need this movie…
*Donald Glover finally!
*Phoebe Waller-Bridge as L3…when I saw this initially, I think that I thought this was Gwendoline Christie, and I hadn’t seen “Fleabag” yet so…now watching this and hearing her voice makes me care more…not that I dislike Christie, but she’s already been in her own Star War…
*according to IMDB this movie takes place 13 years before “A New Hope”
*wait Michael Kenneth Williams originally played the Paul Bettany role but was replaced when Ron Howard took over? That sucks…RIP Omar Little!
*seeing the “brand new” Millennium Falcon is cool and all, but, again, do we need to see it? Really?
*the freeing of slaves/droids in the middle of a heist…that’s cool
*L3 getting blown up…not cool…
*although the scene where Lando cradles her in his arms as she dies…not sure it works and it almost comes off as funny…she was a sassy robot but I don’t know if she got to know her in order to love the character…maybe?
*Harrelson taking a second to adjust to how the guns work…little things like that is what was missing in the sequel trilogy…
*wait, so Lando makes L3 a permanent part of the Falcon, then (eventually) Han steals the Falcon away from Lando? What a dick move…
*I had to FF through the Kessel Run stuff…to much yelly-yelly and stuff…I’ve seen it before so whatever…
*Crimson Dawn…so from what I remember they are never mentioned again (at least in the movies) so they must not be a threat, right?
*so I think I remember that, when I saw this in the theatre, I had no idea who the Marauders were and didn’t remember them from before and I was confused…
*there is still a half hour left?
*I remember watching this and sitting through the “big talks” with Han and Emilia Clarke, then Woody, and thinking “man, my ass is sore…are we almost done?”
*they still have to swindle Bettany…
*more fighty-fighty, back stably-back stab…twisty-turny…
*the Darth Maul twist…I should have been excited but really I was just like “What?” At the screening I remember thinking that the rest of the crowd thought the same thing…it was supposed to be a crowd pleaser where everyone is pumping their fists but instead everyone was like “Huh?”
*when Han shot first, I know, again, it was supposed to be a fist-pumper but instead I was like “thank you! let’s goooo!”
*wow that’s finally over…that was WAY TOO LONG!
*good moments but needed about an hour or so taken out…not sure what they would have taken out but whatever…it was too much…
Star Wars: The Phantom Menace 1999
*again
*apparently I hate myself so I’m watching this, as part of a long weekend Star Wars marathon…
*not much I can add to this assuming most people have seen the “Red Letter Media” lengthy reviews of this movie…I remember watching them and I got more fist-pump moments from that than I did “Solo”…especially the one specifically about screenwriting and character development which I think is Chapter 4…or is it 9? If I taught screenwriting courses I would make my students watch that…I haven’t watched much else from RLM so that’s the only video of theirs I would recommend…
*I missed the first few minutes, picked it up with Jar Jar showing Quigon and Obi-wan to the underwater city…don’t think I missed much…
*I remember exactly when I watched this in the theatre…I worked a graveyard shift at a 7-11 in Vancouver, got off work at 7am, went on the Skytrain to Metrotown in Burnaby where they were having showings of this every 15 minutes, so I got there, the morning after it premiered at like 7:45 am and the place was still packed…and I had popcorn for breakfast!
*I also remember leaving the theatre wanting to convince myself that “that was good…right?” I might have turned around and gone to see it again just to confirm my suspicions (or to contradict it) that it was, indeed, after all that hype, a bad movie…
*admitting that was hard as I was a huge Star Wars fan, was so ready for this, had read most (but not all) the Star Wars novels and this was going to be my generation’s moment…I knew all the actors (other than Jake Lloyd of course) and was ready for a new era of Star Wars to begin…I remember the initial “Duel of the Fates” video that you had to watch Entertaniment Tonight to see first and it was amazing, so how could this movie POSSIBLY be bad?
*but it was…
*some people say the pod race is awesome but I disagree, it’s too long and redundant…
*the visual effects look terrible watching them in 2021 which is totally unfair as things have come so far in 22 years but still, it’s there…
*such bad dialogue, such stilted acting, things don’t make sense…
*like I get why Natalie Portman has a decoy, but the fact it goes nowhere and it’s revealed like it’s nothing…why?
*Portman is so young…I was a big fan of hers after “The Professional” and “Beautiful Girls” and it’s cool that Keira Knightly was the decoy, but even that is silly as how can anyone seriously look at the two of them and seriously not be like “Oh yeah they look exactly alike…”…and why dub her voice? So they sound alike? Dumb…
*so…much…bad…poor Ahmed Best…he didn’t deserve it…
*pretty amazing though they had the same actor come back from Jedi and play Palpatine and then go on to play it many more times…
*the droid army…seriously?
*so four fights gong on at once is probably one too many…and in two of those fights, the main character is incompotent and has no idea what they are doing (Anakin and Jar Jar)…one too many…
*another thing that has always bugged me since that initial screening…am I the only one who notices that Ewan McGregor’s hair is constantly changing, sometimes in scenes, from jump cut to jump cut…I can’t be the only one right?
*so the Gungans are an underwater species yet they have technology that wouldn’t seem to work underwater, right? Or does it matter? And shouldn’t they have tried to have the battle take place in the swamp where they would have a battle as opposed to the middle of a field? Or does it matter? No, it doesn’t…
*okay I guess the decoy-thing did pay off I guess in the tone room…but then why would the Gungan believe Portman was really the queen?
*so all that (off screen) killing and destruction by the Viceroy and their punishment is…(drumroll)…”I think you can kiss your Trade franchise goodbye”…oooohhhhh snap!
*at least this movie has one great thing, the final lightsaber battle, whereas the other two prequels have nothing going for them…the final battle, inside the coliseum, anyway, was good but not great and then it just drags itself out and is way too long…
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nothing (hockey’s back!)
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nothing (hockey’s back part 2, plus men’s soccer, plus Legends & Batwoman premieres)
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Truck Turner 1974
*TCM Underground 10/2/21
*Isaac Hayes, Yaphet Kotto, Nichelle Nichols, Dick Miller, Scotsman Crothers, a young Stan Shaw!
*what a cast!
*so I think it will be about Bail Bondsmen, since the opening montage over the credits has about 30 shots in a row saying “Bail Bonds”
*kinda two movies, with the first half being Hayes and his partner chase down a pimp named Gator, but then the pimp’s woman, Nichelle Nichols, goes to Yaphet Kotto, among others, for revenge
*the partner kind of disappears, but then shows up later just to die…strange as I thought “okay, he’s going to die” then he survives and you’re like “oh great, he didn’t get killed” and then it looks like he’ll get a happy ending then Bam! The roller coaster of emotions…
*the 2nd half of the movie is all about Nicholls and Kotto sending hitmen after Hayes, and they all fail, of course…
*they killed the cat???
*ends up with a lot of screen time taken up by car chases, foot races, gun fights but I guess that’s to be expected…duh…
*Yaphet Kotto’s death scene…perfection (Chef’s Kiss!)
*nice happy ending…way better than I was expecting…
Steelyard Blues 1973
*Donald Sutherland, Jane Fonda, Peter Boyle, Howard Hesseman (as a cop)
*made after Sutherland and Fonda had already been in “Klute” together
*how many times has Fonda played a prostitute?
*Sutherland using his “Kelly’s Heroes” accent in the scene with Fonda and Roger Bowen, who played Henry Blake in the “MASH” movie
*so this is just a movie about weird people, I guess? I’m watching it simply for the cast, we’ll see how long it takes before my eye start to glaze over…
*so they are crazy people who want to re-build an airplane and fly away to…somewhere…
*so the whole movie Sutherland is after Fonda, and he of course gets her, so therefore does he do anything for her to “win her”…no he just sticks around, keeps annoying her and she gives in…movie romance, everyone!
*the heist meeting run by Peter Boyle…Boyle holds up a sign that he clearly hand drew himself that looks terrible…I respect the hell out of that detail…
*so they build up for the whole movie them fixing up and flying away in an old plane then in the last two minutes they abandon the plane, blow it up and escape on horseback…nice twist…
*although in a modern movie, they would have blown up the plane to make it look like they are dead and Hesseman won’t be chasing after them to find them…
*started slow, so slow that I’m not sure the last bit saves the movie…
Fantastic Voyage 1966
*again, or finally?
*great opening scene, with no dialogue at all, but a lot is said with one handshake
*but I don’t want to be miniaturized!”
*nearly 30 minutes into the movie before Raquel Welch says anything
*not sure if I’ve actually seen this or just seen all the knock offs…
*Stephen Boyd, instead of getting ready for their voyage, flirts with Welch…not that I blame him but if he’s that nervous about this mission, maybe some focus would be in order?
*director is Richard Fleischer, son of the great animator Max Fleischer; Richard got into live action and directed a lot of sci-fi, including “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea”, “Solent Green”, “Red Sonja”, “Conan the Destroyer”, but also “The Jazz Singer” remake
*hilarious how people think shrinking down a boat and sending it inside someone’s body is “no big deal”
*it’s another 30 minutes ish where the boat is actually injected into the dude’s body…this movie is very technical, almost like a nerd made this with nerds in mind, thinking they have to explain step by step how this could feasibly happen, and also they love explaining how the body functions all work…not that it’s a bad thing, it’s just that at one point I felt like I could mute the movie, just watch the visuals and get the same idea
*Donald Pleasance plays the “Dr. Smith from Lost in Space” role
*”let me know when we pass the soul…” great line
*so there is some great stuff when they got going, inside the body, like the scenes where the antibodies “attack” but there is a lot of slow parts too…
=======================
Dr. Who and the Daleks 1965
*finally!
*I’ve heard about this for years, and since I first heard of it, and when I was a hardcore Dr. Who fan, I really wanted to watch this, even looking it up on Amazon and other websites to see if I could buy it…
*well I’m glad I waited to watch this for free…I saw on Amazon I could have bought this for up to $100 (not including shipping) and this was really bad…
*Cushing tries, and the young grand daughter character is fun, but the rest is pretty bad…
*I’m not an expert on the 1st seasons of Dr. Who but the TARDIS being an invention, rather than a stolen ship, and other details apparently aren’t that far off from how the show started, but are totally different than what Dr. Who became when it was rebooted with Christopher Eccelson…
*glad I’ve seen it, it’s off the list, but I’ll never watch this again…apparently there was a 2nd film and it’s better than this and if I get the chance, I’ll watch it but it has to be on free TV…
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nothing (HNIC is back)
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Aquaman: King of Atlantis Part 1 2021
*some funny moments early on, and a good cast, including Thomas Lennon and Gillian Jacobs, and I will watch the next two parts, but not amazing
*best part was the style of animation, totally different than anything DC has ever done before…
*kinda surprised that Aquaman loves to eat fish…one of those age-old questions about Aquaman…what does he eat? He talks to fish so wouldn’t it be weird to eat them? According to this, apparently not…
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The Thing Called Love 1993
*I remember seeing the box of this movie, with Samantha Mathis on the cover, walking towards the camera with her jacket over her shoulder, and seeing it in Blockbuster and thinking “I’l never watch that…” even though I had no idea what it was about…
*kinda odd they are showing this on TCM in primetime, especially in October when the usually show 24/7 horror movies…they said the theme was movies set in Nashville about country music…
*the director is Peter Bogdonovich, but you’d think they would have shown this when he was a major focus of the network a while back…or maybe they did and I didn’t notice…
*this has 57% on RT so not exactly a hidden/misunderstood classic but let’s see…but I am glad that TCM shows these kinds of movies, although I’m sure there are TCM hardcores who hate this…
*has Sandra Bullock in a huge early role, plus Dermott Mulroney and this is the last movie River Phoenix completed before dying
*the cast is great and fun to watch together, but really there is nothing surprising in the movie other than it’s ending, which you only see once you’ve already watched the rest of the film…that being said, the ending isn’t even a “wow”, it’s more of a “huh…” type of ending…if that makes sense…
*interesting that the stars wrote their own songs and also performed them
*this came out the same year as “Demolition Man” and the year before “Speed”
*Phoenix died on October 31st, 1993 in LA with his then girlfriend Mathis and others, weeks before this movie was going to come out
*the other big problem with movies like this about songs is that it is like a sports movie where builds up to the big moment in the finale where the lead actress sings a song which is supposed to blow everyone away and be a mesmerizing experience for everyone listening…I don’t envy any songwriter or performer who has to perform in this type of moment…some movies pull this off but I don’t think this one does…
*I’ve always felt bad for Dermott Mulroney after reading some reviews for “My Best Friend’s Wedding” where people loved the movie and the cast but then, when discussing Mulroney, said “but THAT’s the guy Julia Roberts is in love with?”…luckily he’s done well in his career…
*I didn’t really care about the main relationship and didn’t really care if Mathis ended up with Mulroney or Phoenix…the best relationship in the movie was Mathis and Bullock’s friendship
*in the last few minutes, Bullock kisses Mulroney and says “You could have had me for a song” before getting in her car (with her boyfriend and their dog) and driving off to New York…this is actually a sweet moment and makes you wonder what the movie would have been like with Bullock as the star…
*I’m glad I watched this, as I can take one more movie off my Peter Bogdanovich check list, but I’ll never watch it again…
=====================
Over the Edge 1979
*TCM Underground 10/16/21
*after watching so many “kids gone wrong” movies, including the movie that was paired with this tonight, “River’s Edge”, it’s hard to get worked up about the material…
*so they shut down the rec centre, the one place the kids can go and hang out during the day and not get into trouble…I’m sure that will be fine…
*okay the movie’s finale is pretty amazing…the kids lock up the parents inside the school as they have a town hall and then light cars on fire, shoot guns and destroy stuff which is quite the thing to see…
*I liked the moment where the counsellor, calmly, asks the little kid to bring her the phone and he even dials the number for her…nice little moment and kind of shows how the kid, with everything that’s going on, really has no clue what the consequences will be…
*that sheriff is a real piece of sh*t…
*not great overall, but a great ending…
======================
The Hot Rock 1972
*finally
*saw a trailer for this when George Segal died and was like “how have I never seen this before?” and finally I get to watch it…let’s see if it lives up to that hype…
*Robert Redford, Segal, Ron Leibman, Moses Gunn, Charlotte Rae, ZERO MOSTEL!
*written by William Goldman based on a Donald E. Westlake novel, directed by Peter Yates
*Quincy Jones did a lot of movie scores!
*I love Donald E Westlake for his Parker stuff, but apparently there are a series of “Dortmunder” novels too?
*Segal getting caught in the museum is hilarious!
*ZERO!
*I remember thinking years ago “Ron Leibman should be in more stuff” and turns out I just have been watching the wrong movies…
*the helicopter scene is pretty amazing, especially seeing the World Trade Centre under construction
*young Christopher Guest!
*the scene with them trying to get Zero to reveal where the diamond is is great…although is there one too many twists for it to really make sense?
*so did they let Zero just go home after they had their meeting in Moses Gunn’s office?
*funny that Westlake originally wanted the “Hot Rock” novel to be a Parker novel but it was “too funny” (also opposed to the darker Parker) so he invented the John Dortmunder character for this and ended up using for a total of 14 novels and 11 short stories
*kinda surprising that this was a box office bomb considering who is in it…good movie with some great scenes but not great…
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Solarbabies 1986
*finally!
*I’d heard about this movie on an episode of the podcast “How Did This Get Made?” and was fascinated by the concept and finally now I get to watch this…
*oddly produced by Mel Brooks…
*post apocalyptic film with rollerblading!
*Jason Patric, Jami Gertz, Lukas Haas, Peter DeLuise, Adrian Pasdar, Charles Durning, Sarah Douglas, James Le Gros, Mrs. Gilmore Kelly Bishop!
*again one of those movies where the behind the scenes stuff is probably more interesting…Mel Brooks heavily invested in this as producer, had to fly to Spain when the director Alan Johnson was behind schedule, and what he had shot made no sense, so they had to do extensive re-shoots and Brooks had to raise another $20 million and take out a 2nd mortgage on his house and it only broke even years later after DVD sales…for THIS movie…movie magic people!
*okay so they have post apocalyptic roller lacrosse…which is banned but not really…
*young Lukas Haas finds some weird globe thingy in a cave and he talks to it (as do others later) and it causes it to rain indoors somehow…
*30 minutes in I’m confused…well it happened sooner than that but now I’m typing it…
*okay so they are “playing” with the orb outside, Adrian Pasdar is watching them from above then it immediately cuts to, I’m guessing hours later, with Pasdar in the group’s room stealing the orb…that’s horribly edited…I had to rewind and make sure I saw what I saw…and I hate rewinding!
*according to Wikipedia, Brooks wanted to film in Spain due to the lack of unions and cheaper production costs…suddenly I don’t feel so bad for Mel…
*so Pasdar steals the orb, alarms go off as they jump ahead, apparently he’s escaped, then they jump ahead to Jami Gertz waking up Patric, saying Haas is gone, he’s gone after the orb, which apparently they know was stolen by Pasdar…I’m all for “getting to it” and expediting the action but this is giving me whiplash…
*Alexi Sayle is in this?
*Jami Gertz wakes up Patric in his bunk, he’s nervous, saying she shouldn’t be there, then later they meet up in their room to talk about going after Haas…so they have a room they go to to hang out but don’t sleep there? Their bunks aren’t co-ed? Little details like this not making sense just take me out of the movie…
*the group escape to go after Haas, set off an alarm, they blow it up by doing na over complicated move using a rock as a hockey puck…they couldn’t have just smashed the alarm with the hockey stick that was in their hands?
*kinda weird TCM showed this on a Thursday night, as opposed to Fridays on TCM Underground…apparently TCM is getting more adventurous in their programming (they showed the goofy classic “Ice Pirates” the other day in the afternoon) which is great for me but I’m sure the hardcores hate…
*riding rollerblades across the desert like that must have sucked for the actors’ ankles…at one point during a montage, Patric seemingly says “screw this” and starts jogging with his roller blades on…
*cut to Haas just walking along, carrying his roller skates…smart kid…
*and then, the kids are just caught…apparently he bad guys had actually started looking for them…no wonder no one ever succeeds in escaping…
*them being able to roller-jump over the broken bridge, without any kind of super powers, while the motor cycles chasing them can’t…well that’s up there with “Speed” where the bus is able to jump across the break in the highway…difference is I loved “Speed” and this…well…
*bad guys come and destroy a village that Pasdar had come to…if that village was so close why did it exist at all? Why am I asking this?
*so the blonde dude, who has made it clear he wants to rape the Jami Gertz character and has now killed the owl, better not have some kind of reception arc later cause that ass needs to die horribly…
*good guys find the kid but don’t seem too bothered by all the dead bodies around them
*there’s Alexi Sayle!
*Sarah Douglas! Ursa!
*they call the orb a spear?
*stuff happens…
*the guys lose Jami Gertz, get captured, she saves them with some people I’ve never seen before…who are these f*ckers?
*Gertz takes them to a new place and says “This is where I live…” and introduces them to her father…how much time has passed??? A day? A month? A year?
*it’s like in “Return of the Jedi” when the Ewoks saved Leia…except they skipped the part where the Ewoks saved Leia…
*they decide to leave the safety of the hidden village with food and water for…what?
*where are they going?
*okay so t he orb got captured I guess…I’ve done the eyes glazing over thing I do when I have lost interest and when I do that, I miss scenes…although with this movie it’s entirely possible that they never filmed that scene…
*low key MVP is DeLuise who is just in the background making faces, pumping his fists, etc.
*big fight, they find Pasdar in a cell…has he been wearing roller blades this whole time, or is it just these kids who wear them? I haven’t been paying attention to their feet enough, apparently…
*robot starts blowing up and it starts yelling “Yellow Alert!” what justifies a “Red Alert” here?
*they have to escape by going up some stairs…this isn’t a problem for these roller bladers though…
*Sarah Douglas does some amazing fake-being-electrocuted stuff…
*so the problem with there being no water was just a dam?
*is it strange that the villain, Richard Jordan, gets top billing? Or am I just overthinking that…of all things…
*watching this is great, it’s off my list but also now on my list of “seen it, never seeing it again” list…
*also makes me think of how the “How Did This Get Made?” podcast used to be different, interviewed people involved and actually answered the question of “how did this movie actually get made?” as opposed to the current version where it’s a comedy show where they need to find stuff to make fun of to make people laugh, which considering the movies they watch can’t be hard, but still…it’s just different, not better or worse, just different…
*this was bad…bad bad bad…badly made, scenes missing…its one thing to make a great movie with limited resources but this is just badly made…director Alan Johnson never directed another movie…not hard to imagine why…
Shaun of the Dead 2004
*for the dozenth time
*never appreciated this when it came out, not really a zombie guy, I much preferred “Hot Fuzz” as I was an action movie guy but the more I watch this I appreciate it’s greatness…
*the introduction of the characters, of the whole scenario, how these guys don’t even notice their neighbours becoming zombies…the first half of this movie is f*n brilliant
*also didn’t get the significance of the Jessica Stevenson/Martin Freeman/Julia Deakin/Matt Lucas etc. cameo at the time (and how significant Stevenson is in general to the whole thing) but of course now I love it
*”Spaced” is one of my favourite tv shows but watched it for the 1st time after I had seen “Shaun” and “Hot Fuzz”…
*also Lucy Davis, Peter Serafinowicz, Rafe Spall, Bill Nighy, Penelope Wilton aka “Harriet Jones”…
*Shaun’s gf played by Kate Ashfield hasn’t done a lot, relatively compared to the others, a lot of TV guest appearances…
*what else can I say about this that hasn’t already been said…shall I go on and on about things like, when Shaun is flipping the channels and how the words he hears on each channel all combined make a full sentence which is amazing…or the great sequence where they are beating up the zombie to “Queen”…or little details like how whenever someone tries to explain how the zombies came to life, they are interrupted…nah…what would be the point of typing all that out?
*one nit pick…the scene in the garden where they try to decapitate zombies with Shaun’s record collection…funny bits sure but it could have been cut…who thinks they can hurt zombies with vinyl records?
*reading on IMDB about how “We’re coming to get you Barbara” is a “Night of the Living Dead” reference…I didn’t put that together but of course…duh!
*love seeing Michael Smiley dressed in his “Tyres” character but as a zombie…
*amazing…
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Aquaman: King of Atlantis Part 2
*opening 8 minutes are hilarious…the rest is good too…
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nothing (Canada Women’s Soccer, HNIC…)
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The Ladykillers 1955
*FINALLY!
*amazing movie, totally worth the wait!
*one of my new favourites…almost tempted to watch the Tom Hanks/Coen Brothers remake…
=========================
Emma Mae 1976
*TCM Underground 10/23/21
*written and directed by Jamaa Fanaka, who also directed “Penitentiary” which was the other half of this TCMU double feature…
*felt bad right away for Emma Rae trying to walk in those gross shoes...
*Emma Mae does everything with her eyes closed…she loves, fights, screams, is upset…all with her eyes closed which is quite the choice…especially throwing punches with her eyes closed…
*that fight with Emma and the girl fighting on the picnic table…can’t remember the last time I was more worried for two actresses safety in a fight scene…
*not really what I would expect from TCMU, it’s not “wacky” at all or a typical blaxploitation movie, just a straight movie, and it’s great it’s shown here so more people can see it…
*best part is when Emma Mae beats the crap out of her boyfriend in the end, including the repeated shots to his crotch…just one after another…I’ve always wondered why more people don’t use that move in fights…not the nicest way to fight someone, but just seems the easiest way to win…
Penitentiary 1979
*TCM Underground 10/23/21
*written and directed by Jamaa Fanaka, who also directed “Emma Mae” which was the other half of this TCMU double feature…
*according to IMDB, Fanaka was still a film student at UCLA when he made this…Emma Rae was three years earlier so was he a student then? Or did he make that movie and THEN go to UCLA?
*opening shot is of an inmate walking around with a lit cigarette sticking out his ear, reminds me of Lister in “Red Dwarf”
*according to IMDB, the jail cell fight scene took three days to film and neither actor had a stunt double…I believe it…whole thing is around 7 minutes of screen time…
*then it becomes a boxing movie…
*boxing sequences intercut with sex scenes…
*during the boxing scenes there are gay and trans cheerleaders, like there was in the Adam Sandler remake of “The Longest Yard” but yet they seemed to be treated with more respect in this 1979 movie…
*hilarious when the young fighter is knocked out, is revived and is unbelievably happy about it…
*some of the boxing matches could have been shorter, even montages, but the movie itself is barely over 90 minutes…
*the last part, with Too Sweet saying goodbye to his coach is great, something out of “Shawshank Redemption”
*although the last scene, over the credits, where Too Sweet has to walk back to town, after he’s been let go because he’s going to be a big boxing star, is hilarious in a bad way…they couldn’t send a car for him? Even if he refused and for some reason he wanted to walk, that’s just silly…
*good stuff…apparently they made two more of these? I’d be interested in seeing those…
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Ulysses 1955
*okay, so they showed this on Silver Screen Classics, and I’m confused as it’s in Italian…it’s a Kirk Douglas movie!
*so according to IMDB, there were two versions, Italian and English, and so for some reason SSC is showing the Italian version, with Douglas dubbed…kinda weird but whatever…
*Rossana Podesta plays Nausicaa, a year later would play Helen in “Helen of Troy” and later would play Hera in “Hercules”
*Silvana Mangano plays both Penelope (Ulysses’ long suffering wife) and Circe
*Anthony Quinn!
*so Ulysses has been gone fighting in the Trojan War, then took ten years to sail home (if I remember by timeline correctly) and in that ten years, suitors showed up and hung out, waiting for Penelope to stop mourning Ulysses and choose one of them to be her new husband…ten years is a long time to hang out, especially if she doesn’t pick you…after all that, what do you put on your resume?
*according to this, Ulysses had amnesia, which is why he never made it home for all that time…that makes a little more sense that the suitors just hanging out purposely for all that time
*in the original poem, Ulysses is referred to as Odysseus and a god like Neptune would be called Poseidon so it’s weird how they used those names although is that due to the Italian translation somehow?
*some good clips of Ulysses in the Trojan War, with the Trojan Horse and the Greeks invading Troy, a quick scene which I initially thought was footage borrowed from another film, like “Helen of Troy” but turns out that was made a year later…
*in terms of Douglas’ filmography, this is after “Out of the Pas” (1947), “Ace in the Hole” (1951), “The Bad and the Beautiful” (1952), the same year as “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea”, and before “Lust for Life” (1956), “Paths of Glory” (1957), and “Spartacus” 1960…
*Cyclops!
*okay it’s messing with my mind, this dubbing of Kirk Douglas’ voice…I think it’s giving me a headache…it wouldn’t be so bad, as I like watching foreign films but Douglas has such a distinct voice…
*Achilles, Ajax and Agamemnon…did people back then know who these guys were if they hadn’t read “The Illiad”? Shouldn’t they have made “Helen of Troy” first and this was the sequel?
*an okay movie, not the best…I’ll never watch this again, assuming I remember I watched it at all…
====================
Carl Laemmle 2019
*he took on Thomas Edison (and won), was a founder of Hollywood and then took on Hitler
*2,000 people attended his funeral…
*had saved over 300 families from Nazi Germany…
*and did other stuff too like came up with the Universal Monster movies…
*amazing story
=====================
nothing
=====================
Aquaman: King of Atlantis Part 3 2021
*Topo!
*Aquaman and Mera are attacked by villains escaping from jail, Mera dropkicks one of them out of the place they are in, through a window and the villain yells “Thank you!” and Mera realizes “Oh yeah, they want to escape…” good stuff
*a little while later, bad guys shoot fire out of their mouths at a dude, dude asks “How are you doing this under water?” great stuff…just the right about of self-awareness, silly humour and serious action-y stuff…
*very good 3-part series, this last one was the best, as it included Aquaman as King of Atlantis (who would thought considering the title) and having to deal with his subjects and the comedy that comes out of that…I’d definitely be interested in more of these…
=====================
nothing
====================
Jennifer’s Body 2009
*finally
*written by Diablo Cody; I remember when this came out, it was a said to be a “meh” all around so I never bothered watching it…the last few years I’ve seen it referred to as a classic so…let’s check this out…
*so does Amanda Seyfried’s character have super powers? Or are we supposed to believe she could kick that woman over the tables like that?
*only when standing next to Megan Fox would Seyfried be considered a nerd…
*Chris Pratt?
*Adam Brody!
*filmed in Vancouver in early 2008
*director Karyn Kusama also directed “Girlfight” which is awesome
*JK Simmons! Geez this cast is stacked!
*Kyle Gallner!
*Amy Sedaris!
*weird seeing Johnny Simmons with so many lines after seeing him as Young Neil in “Scott Pilgrim”
*so I thought Megan Fox killed Adam Brody’s band and that’s how she got all the blood all over her but they are still alive?
*”tragedy boner”
*”PMS isn’t real”
*I like how Seyfried and Simmons just have sex, there’s no big discussion or debate or Seyfried doesn’t have to ask her friend Fox what she thinks or here mom saying “if you have sex you’ll be a bad person”…they just do it and seem to enjoy it up until the end…
*okay I’m not complaining that there is a make out scene with Seyfried and Fox but it does seem to come out of nowhere and then they just stop doing it and talk…maybe if they mentioned that it wasn’t the first time they had done that during their sleepovers, as they don’t even mention it, the whole thing is just dropped and they talk about other stuff…
*Cynthia Stevenson!
*well this movie doesn’t mind getting ugly…that pool is super gross
*fun scene where, after we’ve seen carnage and a demon and blood and stuff then into this world comes Jennifer’s mother who is like “did you just stab my daughter with an exact-o-knife? WTF?”
*weird that after this movie, and “Jonah Hex” the following year that Megan Fox’s career tanked…it’s not her fault…but then again her career is soaring right now and it’s because (unless I missed something) she’s super hot and dating another famous person, so I guess it all worked out?
*Fox was 22 when this was made. Seyfried was 23 years old…just always find it fascinating when adults play teenagers still in high school
*I liked this, not sure if it deserves to be thought of as a “classic” like some do but it was good! It definitely doesn’t deserve the “bomb” reputation that it had for years…
========================
Hell Night 1981
*TCM Underground 10/30/21
*Linda Blair double feature with “Exorcist II: The Heretic”
*half an hour in, nothing has happened…
*off camera screaming!!!
*Frank Darabont was a PA on this film, and according to IMDB Kevin Costner was a Grip…
*Linda Blair says this movie was shot in 40 days, with six day weeks and days lasting from 5am to 11pm and no time off for holidays…this will always suck but lately after hearing IATSE horror stories, this hits even harder…
*so they only have to stay in the “haunted” house for six hours? That’s easy…I’d freak out if I had to spend time overnight or over a weekend, the idea of having to sleep at some point but not being able to and then the lack-of-sleep messing with you…etc. Six hours is nothing…not that I’ve ever had to do it…so what do I know?
*an hour in, someone leaves the house and goes out into the outside world…
*kid runs into the police station, says kids are being murdered but no one believes him so he steals a machine gun…of course!
*okay I kind of zoned out, I admit…it ended and I was glad, I think that says it all…
Exorcist II: The Heretic 1977
*TCM Underground 10/30/21
*Linda Blair double feature with “Hell Night”
*have to admit I’ve never seen the first “Exorcist” movie and not sure why I’m watching this other than because it’s for TCM Underground
*great cast with Linda Blair, Richard Burton, Louise Fletcher, Max von Sydow…wait James Earl Jones and Ned Beatty are in this?
*this was voted as the 2nd worse movie of all time, behind “Plan Nine from Outer Space”…well now I’m definitely watching!
*okay so Linda Blair meets Richard Burton…so he wasn’t in the 1st movie? Any thoughts I have of these movies are blended together, I guess, cause I always thought Burton was in the first movie…admittedly I have never actually thought about this, so…
*Linda Blair with the head bang thing on is definitely an image I’ve seen before…
*Louise Fletcher is pretty chill about all this stuff that’s happening…
*Dana Plato!
*Linda Blair and Dana Plato both on screen at the same time, in this movie…that has to be some kind of “Just say no” type of PSA in itself…
*John Boorman also directed “Point Blank”, “Deliverance”, “Zardoz”, “Excalibur” and “The Taylor of Panama”
*so this was two years after “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” (so Fletcher was already an Oscar winner), this same year Ned Beatty was nominated for “Network”
*so was Ned Beatty only in those two scenes?
*watching this in 2021, it’s pretty cool seeing James Earl Jones and Richard Burton in a scene together, being in a scene with a legend like that, and hopefully Burton appreciated it…
*so they have a scene where Fletcher is bathing her kids and they are splashing around and she gets wet, while the phone is ringing then they cut to Blair’s nanny, who is also wet, running to answer the phone…was this purposefully confusing? Or just bad filmmaking?
*so of course it ends up yelly-yelly spook-spooky
*so Louise Fletcher’s character ended up being pretty useless in this movie, right?
*well I didn’t react to this like some others did, I don’t think this was any where near the worst movie I’ve ever seen but then again I didn’t really care all that much, I’m sure if I’d seen Exorcist and loved it, I would have more of a reaction to this but I don’t…
*I really hope these guys got paid a lot of money for this, especially Beatty (and his two scenes) and Jones for his (five-ish scenes)…
=========================
The Leopard Man 1943
*TCM Noir Alley Halloween double feature w/“Cat People”
*great stuff, although the backstory of the Val Lewton/Jacques Tourneur collaborations, that inspired “The Bad and the Beautiful” is even better…
=========================
Black Sunday 1977
*finally
*or am I confusing this with “Two Minute Warning”?
*pretty fascinating in that they filmed at the actual Super Bowl X
*Bruce Dern has said he regrets being involved with the film as it probably gave terrorists ideas…
*up until the Super Bowl finale, it’s pretty standard procedural stuff going back and forth between Dern and Robert Shaw…good but don’t think I’ll ever see it again
The Maltese Falcon 1941
*again for the hundredth time
*TCM has started Noir-vember, so many movies to watch, but if I record them all, my PVR will be full in no time…
*watched episodes of some new episodes of TV today and ended up just FFing through all of it, saw this was on and I’d rather watch this for the hundredth time than those shows again…
======================
Ride the Wild Surf 1964
w/Fabian, Tab Hunter, Shelley Fabares, Barabara Eden surfing in Hawaii
*and that guy who totally isn’t Robert Mitchum’s son…James Mitchum!
*Barbara Eden flips Peter Brown easily and humbles him, and he sulks away…kind of empowering for her I guess? I wasn’t expecting that result…
*Fabares ends up with Fabian…she’s blonde so I didn’t recognize her at first…
*Eden and Fabares show up at the beach to watch the boys surf…any female surfers back then?
*”What do fireworks have to do with New Year’s Eve?” so Times Square didn’t exit in 1964?
*Eden’s character’s name is “Augie Poole”, wasn’t that one of the kids’ names in “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory”?
*when the boys are surfing, they have a guy come in an do do voiceovers like it’s a sporting event on TV…an interesting way to explain what’s happening on screen…couldn’t they have given that to the girls as dialogue as opposed to just having them sit there saying nothing?
*the way Peter Brown is dealing with those broken ribs…”how do they feel?” (Shrugs) “Eh, it hurts…” and this is after he had been out surfing in suicidal waves…
*they’ve been talking about suicidal waves and now at the end suddenly it’s about winning something? I thought the goal was just to survive but now you have to win a trophy too?
*for the 2nd time, dude gets a bloody nose while surfing with Fabian, at first has no idea his nose is bleeding, then says to Fabian “You did this!” and vows revenge…so is he implying Fabian hit him in the face with his board? If so, how did he not notice that?
*surprisingly, the finals come down to Fabian and Mitchum Jr., who actually hasn’t been in the movie much until now…did his dad put it in his contract “Look my kid will be in your silly surfing movie but he has to at least get to the finals…” or am I always just assuming there is tons of nepotism in Hollywood?
*jeez this movie is two hours long! (with commercials on Silver Screen Classics to be fair)
*so off the top of my head I’d say Fabian was the most famous at the time, Barbara Eden is the most famous over all (for “I Dream of Jeannie”), Shelley Fabares has had a long career too and Peter Brown had the most diverse career, if he’s the person I think he is…he’s one of those character actors who has seemingly been in everything although I didn’t recognize him at first with his blonde hair…
*and of course Tab Hunter is probably the most infamous but I could be wrong…
*good movie, better than most surfing movies, not as fun as a “Beach Blanket Bingo” but still good…
===================
Taking Tiger Mountain 1983
*TCM Underground 11/6/21
*part of a Bill Paxton double feature with this and “Near Dark”, although in Canada we saw “Wicked, Wicked” instead as the second movie (and I’ve seen “Wicked, Wicked” and it’s DUO-VISION! before…)
*so this was a movie made by young people just going around filming stuff with locals (as opposed to actors) and then years and years later, one of those people got the footage and re-edited it and added voiceovers and such…so confusing to try to follow the history especially since the movie isn’t that great…
*some full frontal nudity and apparently Bill Paxton actually has sex on camera here
*I’d actually be way more interested in a documentary about the story I just wrote about in that last paragraph…another movie where the behind the scenes stuff is more interesting than the movie itself…
====================
Blondie Plays Cupid 1941
*so apparently the “Blondie and Dagwood” comic strip, which has been around for 90 years or so, at one point had a series of movies made about it…not one or two but 28 of them! Over 12 years! Back when they didn’t have TV I guess…
*this is the 7th of 28 Blondie movies, and TCM is showing 3 tonight…why start with the 7th? I’m guessing it has something to do with this one having Glenn Ford in it…
*only 68 minutes so we’re definitely watching this…
*so we are over 30 minutes in and I don’t know how Cupid comes into this…the family go on vacation on the 4th of July weekend…an unless I missed him, no Glenn Ford yet either…
*as soon as I write that, there is a kid who shows up who looks like Glenn Ford…Ford was 25 when this was made…apparently he was born in Quebec, I had no idea Glenn Ford was Canadian!
*okay the plot is starting to come together…Ford wants to marry Millie, but Millie’s father disapproves, so Blondie and Dagwood have to get them back together and wackiness ensues…
*the little kid “Baby Dumpling” drives a car at one point and it’s pretty funny when they have the long shots and it’s totally a dude driving instead of the kid…they couldn’t have found a little person?
*there is a dog climbing a ladder…repeat…there is a dog climbing a ladder…
*familiar face Will Wright plays the disapproving father…
*since it’s supposed to be the 4th of July, there is a running gag of firecrackers…it all comes full circle when they think they are lighting a firecracker but it’s dynamite, they throw it and cause an oil strike…of course it does!
*okay there’s two more of these tonight, don’t think I’ll watch the other two…I think I got the idea…
*still amazing that they made 28 of these over 12 years…
*the kid and the dog are pretty good but the adults…not so much…
==================
Jingle Bell Bride 2020
*starring Julie Gonzalo from “Supergirl”
*tis the season for Christmas Hallmark movies so why not embrace it?
*also, most of these are filmed locally (or as local as four hours away from where I live) so I like watching these to see if I recognize stuff
*this was supposed to be filmed in April 2020, after Supergirl wrapped in Vancouver, but due to COVID it was bumped back to July 2020, which means it must have been one of the first films to go into production after the outbreak
*so weird that they film Christmas movies in the summer, of course but of course they have to in order to have them ready to show in winter…
*also has Donna Benedicto and Lucia Walters who I’ve seen in lots of stuff filmed locally…
*so the plot is by the numbers (wedding planner goes to Alaska to fulfill the wishes of her Bridezilla for a quick trip but gets stuck there due to wackiness, falls in love, etc.) but it all depends on the charm, charisma and chemistry (the 3 c’s) of the actors and this is pretty good…
*the Northern Lights!
*can’t really tell that this is filmed under COVID, these movies are (relatively) low budget and usually don’t have a ton of extras anyway so this doesn’t really seem they did much differently here…I guess the big question is will there be a big kiss in the end? These movies never have kisses until the end (or at least the ones I’ve seen)
*yep there was a kiss…I wonder if they had to chug mouthwash after?
*I really liked this and Julie Gonzalo is great, she wasn’t given enough to do on “Supergirl”…
===============
The Thin Man 1934
*for the hundredth time
=================
nothing (Supergirl finale!)
=================
The Christmas Train 2017
*what a cast…
*no offence but WTF is Joan Cusack doing in this movie…she is a freaking national treasure why is she in his Hallmark Christmas movie…and she’s not even one of the top three characters…the poster just has the main three stars and she isn’t even shown…
*and who are the main three stars? Dermot Mulroney, Danny Glover, Kimberley Williams-Paisley…not a bad cast at all…
*I like Dermot’s character, he’s really friendly but not in a weird way
*they are all on a train going from one coast to the other which is exactly what I did one summer…although I’m guessing this is a special train, as I don’t remember there being leather couches on my train…I’ve actually been on lots of trains and don’t remember anything really comfortable at all on them, really…
*Dermot is heading home for the holidays and his girlfriend is waiting for him, although she is a horrible person and guilt trips him every time they talk on the phone…he must be really looking forward to going home!
*I’m thinking Cusack is a ghost or something…or she’s the equivalent of John Candy in “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” and is heading home for the holidays but has no one to go home to so is going to teach Dermot a lesson along the way…
*Kimberley Williams-Paisley will always be great…
*okay so Cusack only had dialogue scenes with Dermot, so I think the ghost theory is good, as she does have scenes where she is in some crowd scenes, even standing right next to Danny Glover but never says anything to them which is weird…
*she better be a ghost cause why have Danny Glover and Joan Cusack stand next to each other but not say anything?
*the train makes a hard stop at one point and Cusack falls down and Williams-Paisley helps her up, so maybe the ghost theory is debunked?
*there’s a subplot of a thief on the train stealing people’s belongings that goes nowhere…did they even resolve who the thief was or did I blink and miss it?
*lots of stops along the way for this train…when I went across the US we never had this much downtime along the way…
*movie is kind of absurd but the charm and charisma of it’s actors is pulling it forward but my mind is starting to wander…
*this was filmed in Vancouver…
*on IMDB trivia it says “These are obviously not Amtrak trains” so someone watched this and took offense…
*okay so Cusack isn’t a ghost and is just a lonely woman who likes riding trains who hasn’t talked to her son in years and misses him…so did it say why she just rides the trains back and forth across country? I have to admit I kinda fell asleep towards the end and had to rewind but even then I still couldn’t pick this movie’s plot points out of a police lineup…
*happy reunion with Cusack and her son…just cause I guess…and why not it’s Christmas!
*and of course Dermot and Kimberly get together but that’s good cause they are charming but also that means the movie is over…and Dermot’s terrible girlfriend is happy about it too which is a twist I didn’t see coming…
========================
MASH finale: “Goodbye, Farewell and Amen” 1983
========================
The Accursed 2021
*I watched this, actually “rented” it, for $6.99 because Izabela Vidovic, who played young Kara on “Supergirl”, is one of the producers and the production team “Almost Normal Productions” reached out on Twitter and very nicely asked me to…it’s just that simple…
*not really a horror guy but I took a chance…great to see Yancy Butler and Melora Walters on screen!
*no spoilers…great stuff, go check it out!
====================
Julius Caesar 1970
*Jason Robards, John Gielgud, Robert Vaughn, Christopher Lee, Richard Chamberlain, Michael Gough…and Charlton Heston
*and the real reason I’m watching this (to be honest) DIANA RIGG as Portia…
*on both IMDB and Wikipedia, they really go after Jason Robards…apparently he didn’t want to be in the movie and everyone hated working with him on this, with Heston even saying that Robards gave possibly “the worst performance by a really good actor” in movie history…ouch!
*Vaughn is almost unrecognizable with a beard and curly hair
*Christopher Lee’s 100th film but he has only five lines…
*a half hour in, DAME DIANA RIGG appears! But not for long…
*Christopher Lee shows up for his five lines…I think that, technically, he’s in two scenes, so it’s not really a “blink and you’ll miss it” type role, but it’s close…
*Michael Gough shows up and, if this is his only role, it is in fact a “blink and you’ll miss it” role…
*so a major moment is when Caesar turns down a crown multiple times but it’s off camera…
*the stabbing of Caesar…where does Heston disappear to?
*every time I see a scene like when Heston gives the speech to the crowd I always think about the Sermon on the Mount in “Life of Brian” when people in the back are like “speak up” and “what did he say?” I mean he’s not even projecting, not even trying to have the people in the back hear what he’s saying…
*or these people, who two minutes earlier who were totally cool with Brutus killing Caesar, are just gullible morons…
*Richard Chamberlain shows up late in the movie…
*of course this has all the quotes…”Beware the Ides of March”, “Et tu Brute”, “Friends, Romans, Country men…lend me your ear…”
*Brutus says, with zero passion, says Portia (DAME DIANA RIGG) is dead…she died off camera…yeah that relaxed attitude seems so realistic…I say sarcastically…
========================
The Santa Stakeout 2021
*this caught my eye do to the question “why is Joe Pantoliano in a Hallmark Christmas movie? And he’s not even the star?”
*also starring Paul Campbell (from “Battlestar Gallactica”) and Tamera Mowry-Housley (half of the twin sister duo from “Sister, Sister”)
*well there isn’t much about this on IMDB and the movie doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page so not sure if there is a backstory here…presumably it was filmed during the pandemic, I’m assuming in Vancouver but don’t know for sure…
*Joey Pants hasn’t done much after being red hot in the late 90’s and early 2000’s, he was in the last Bad Boys movie and a couple episode of the new MacGyver but nothing else really of note…
*a fine Christmas movie with a bit of mystery, the fact the cops think Joey Pants is the bad guy basically guarantees he isn’t and we get a happy ending so what else do you need?
The Lineup 1958
*TCM Noir Alley
*actually was a TV show first, then a movie rather than the other way around…
*w/Eli Wallach, Richard Jaeckel, Emile Meyer, Raymond Bailey
*kinda strange in that they turned a TV show into a movie but didn’t bring back the TV stars so really, what was the point? Especially after in his intro, Eddie Muller says the studio didn’t even want to call this “The Lineup”…
*pretty good procedural…the 1st half hour is all about the cops, then they disappear and we follow the “bad guys” and they meet up in the end…
*apparently back in the 50’s they made guardrails out of cardboard…
*so because of the success of the TV show, the local police in San Francisco were able to give the film full cooperation, so something did come out of the TV show affiliation
*director Don Seigel later directed the similar “The Killer” as well as many collaborations with Clint Eastwood like “Two Mules for Sister Sara” and “Escape from Alcatraz”
The Angel Tree 2020
*so I watched this simply because it was filmed in the summer/fall of 2020 in Summerland, BC which is ten minutes away from where I live so I wanted to see what it looked like on camera…but then I totally fell for Jill Wagner, the star…
*Jill Wagner is the former sideline interviewer for the original “Wipeout” and I didn’t know she had become an actress with many credits to her name including lots of TV movies…
*the only real time I can tell they are in Summerland is about 45 minutes in when the two leads are walking arm-in-arm down main street and I was like “I know where they are…on her right is where the old fish and chips restaurant used to be…”
*cute running joke that the guy keeps sneaking up on Wagner and scaring her…should be dumb but it works…
*very sweet movie and makes me want to watch more of whatever Jill Wagner is making…
===================
Christmas Sail 2021
*another Christmas movie, made by star Katee Sackoff (from “Battlestar Gallactica” and “Longmire”) and her husband who wrote it…
*filmed in Vancouver (Gibbons, to be specific) which is funny to me…years ago after Battlestar stopped filming, Katee Sackoff went on a podcast and went on a rant about how much she hated Vancouver…since then she has married a guy from Vancouver and spends tons of time there between filming cameos on “Flash” and that other show she does for Netflix (“After Life”?)…funny how life turns out…
*her Netflix show is “Another Life”…
*w/Terry O’Quinn (as Sackoff’s crusty old father) and Patrick Sabongui, who plays Captain Singh on “Flash”
*actually got teary when the little girl (Emma Oliver) asks Terry O’Quinn (her grandpa) why they can’t all “miss grandma together”
*O’Quinn, of course, is awesome here with his subtle reactions to things and when he ultimately defrosts it’s great…but saying he “defrosts” isn’t actually all that accurate as his character isn’t a monster, he immediately wants to spend time with his granddaughter and clearly treasures her, he’s just not into Christmas at first and that is completely realistic…not because I’m like that myself or anything…
*this got a lot of bad reviews on IMDB but I liked it…great seeing Patrick Sabongui getting a larger role…
*so the writer Robin Gadsby, as mentioned before, is married to star Sackoff and it’s good to see a writer finally getting his shot…oh wait, checking IMDB…this is the first thing he’s ever written ever…hmmm…
*ten minutes after I watched it…so did they resolve the issue with O’Quinn losing his house? I remember Sackoff saying she couldn’t get her insurance money in time…so if he sells the family boat will that be enough money to save the house? I was figuring he would lose the house but then decide to keep the boat, since it reminds him of his dead wife and sail around the world or something…it’s possible they did resolve this and I missed it…
The Gay Divorcee 1934
*again
*not the best Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers musical, in fact the first hour is just so-so, but from that point on, it’s awesome…
*includes some of Astaire/Rogers best stuff like “The Continental” and one of my all-time favourites “Night and Day”…
*plus the amazing supporting cast of Edward Everett Horton, Erik Rhodes and Eric Blore, plus Alice Brady who starts off like her air headed character in “My Man Godfrey” but seems to get smarter as the movie progresses…
*people debate between whether “Top Hat” or “Swing Time” is the best Astaire/Rogers musical and I’d go with Top Hat…both have amazing numbers, but Top Hat has the same amazing supporting cast (although switching out Helen Broderick, who is also in “Swing Time” for Brady) and no blackface, so that pushes it forward past the finish line for me…although “Swing Time” seems to have the better musical numbers overall…ask me again in six months and I might have a different answer…
*the entire “Continental” scene is nearly 18 minutes long which I doesn’t seem like…
*if I had a billions of dollars, one of the things I would do is build a hotel that looks just like the one in this movie and call it “The Continental”…although isn’t that the name of the hotel from “John Wick”? Oh and of course, unlike Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, I’d solve world hunger…silly stuff like that…
=====================
*nothing (Canada soccer, Flash returns)
=====================
Skidoo 1968
*TCM Underground 11/13/21
*directed by Otto Preminger
*all star cast w/Jackie Gleason, Caesar Romero, Carol Channing, Frankie Avalon, Peter Lawford, FRANK GORSHIN, Burgess Meredith, George Raft, Mickey Rooney, GROUCHO MARX, Arnold Stang, Phil Arnold, SLIM PICKENS, Michael Constantine, a young Austin Pendleton, Richard “Jaws” Kiel…
*amazing that “Batman 66” villains Meredith (Penguin), Romero (Joker) and Gorshin (Riddler) all appear directed by Preminger (Mr. Freeze)…
*about five minutes in, Gleason goes out of his way to say that he married Channing while she was three months pregnant (or something like that)…
*twenty minutes in I’m not sure if this is supposed to be a comedy or a serious drama
*based on what it says on IMDB, Preminger seemed like a real asshole…he berated Groucho Marx to the point Jackie Gleason wanted to beat up Preminger…
*the yacht used is John Wayne’s…
*to prepare for the film, Preminger and Groucho (and others, I’d imagine) tried LSD and Groucho even wrote about it later…
*Rob Reiner wrote drafts of this and was hired and re-hired on a daily basis by Preminger…
*again a movie where the behind the scenes stuff is more interesting…
*just gonna watch this just for the cameos…
*young Austin Pendleton and Richard Kiel show up in the same scene…
*GORSHIN!
*so Gleason goes into jail on purpose in order to kill Mickey Rooney as a favour to God, who is played by Groucho…
*the idea of Groucho as a mob boss named God is pretty funny, but at the same time, the fact George Raft is in this playing a Skipper is funny too…
*what exactly is Channing’s motivation for taking off her clothes in Frankie Avalon’s apartment?
*GROUCHO!
*Gleason’s acid freak out takes forever, almost as long as the opening scene where he and Channing flip TV channels back and forth…
*Groucho is clearly reading off cue cards off camera…
*Constantine keeps making rape jokes…
*Burgess Meredith is the warden!
*is that Slim Pickens only role?
*the dancing barrels scene is fun but I guess it makes sense…kinda…how it leads to Gleason and friends escaping…they couldn’t have just walked out the front door with everyone wasted?
*how long does this stuff last? It’s the next morning, Gleason and Pendleton have taken all night to construct their hot air balloon thingy and the guards are still stoned?
*apparently this prison is on an island, like Alcatraz so that’s why they needed the hot air balloon…
*there is a shootout at the end of the film involving hippies which is a weird sentence to type…
*towards the end of the movie (hopefully) Channing sings a song called “Skidoo” (presumably) and I guess that’s why the movie is named this?
*amazing cast and, honestly, I would have loved to be on set to meet all these cool people…I’m glad I saw this but I will NEVER watch this again…
*Dr. Timothy Leary and Sammi Davis Jr. appear in the trailer, along with the film’s stars who appear to be just hanging out in Preminger’s house with a camera trying to convince people to go see the movie…
====================
High Anxiety 1977
*again
*saw this for the 1st time at the TCM Film Festival at Grumman’s Chinese Theatre (aka TCL) with Mel Brooks in attendance doing a Q&A before the screening and he was amazing and hilarious and I have to say he was the best part of the experience…
*not that the movie is bad, of course but seeing Mel Brooks live is a memorable experience…
*Ron Carey from Barney Miller!
*also with Harvey Korman, Cloris LEachman, Madeline Kahn…
*not a great film but good; plus I have good memories associated with it…
Blazing Saddles 1974
*for the dozenth time
======================
The New Ice Age: A Year in the Life of the NHL 1998
*again but not since it came out
*a six part series detailing the 1997/1998 season
*funny watching this is 2021, I remember watching it back in the day and it was very eye-opening, but I remember very little from back then as a hockey fan…like such a hug moment for me was Canada losing to Czech Republic in the shootout, but in my mind, Canada lost in the finals, I was stunned to see (and then remember) that Canada lost in the semi finals and then lost the bronze medal game too…and at the time, the NHL going to the Olympics was remembered (by me) as awesome, not because of the results but just that it was cool, but after watching this documentary, it was a disaster and frankly I’m shocked the NHL ever went back after 1998…I’ll always remember 1998 for the Women’s Hockey and the heartbreak associated with that but how it ended up as a positive overall for the game…
*I do remember all that stuff about the Team USA team being jerks…and overall Brett Hull really seemed like a jerk back then…although Theo Fleury seemed like a great guy and he’s apparently a jerk in real life so what do I know?
*weird seeing Brian Burke working for the NHL here, as I remember him as the Vancouver Canucks President and GM for years…at the end they say that after that season was over, Burke took the job with the Canucks…
*funny that Joe Thornton was a disappointment as a rookie and Sergei Samsonov won the Calder…I had no memory of this and had to look up Samsonov, his career peaked there whereas Thornton’s got a lot better…
*weird seeing how the Edmonton Oilers were saved at the last minute but how Peter Pocklington and Glen Sather were visibly annoyed by it and were like “well that sucks” but I see the points about how the Canadian teams couldn’t survive in that system…although it was years later when the NHL brought in the salary cap
*the 1998 Entry Draft was a bad year, as I only recognized Vincent Lecavalier and Manny Malholtra, and this doc is so old those guys have long since retired…
*and at one point, Jared Stoll was said to be “The Next One”…poor bastard…
*as a comparison, Connor McDavid was born in 1997, the same year this doc was being filmed…
*great stuff, quite the time capsule seeing what things were like back then…today there are way fewer dramas in the league such as teams moving or going out of business, in fact really it’s only the Arizona Coyotes who provide that drama, and there is one more Canadian team, Winnipeg Jets…there are some teams, like Florida Panthers, who this season are doing great but have trouble getting fans into the buildings, but that also could be due to COVID…
*so I’m guessing big money from TV deals and the salary cap kinda “fixed” a lot of these problems?
*anyway great watching this, although I’m pretty sure the reason why there was no sequel series is that Bettman does come off badly a few times and while I appreciated the “worts and all” coverage (like with the Brett Hull stuff) I doubt the NHL liked it…but they were down at the time so, like the WWF allowing “Beyond the Mat” behind the scenes for that doc, at the time thinking “all coverage is good coverage” but then the end result wasn’t all that complimentary…
===================
The Nine Lives of Christmas 2014
*Christmas movie with Brandon Routh and an actress I hadn’t seen before, Kimberley Sustad, who is great…
*and there’s cats!!!
*great movie and apparently there will be a sequel coming out soon that I definitely want to watch…
===================
Superman Returns 2006
*again but not for awhile…
*this just happens to be on, so…
*I remember being so pumped for this, saw it in theatres and wanted to love it but I just didn’t…
*I remember there being parts that I loved but more that I didn’t
*Bryan Singer and Kevin Spacey…seeing those names in the credits in 2021…
*kinda weird seeing the old style credits saying names like “Parker Posey” and “Kal Penn”…not bad just weird…
*love that music though, although in the 1st movie it made sense…the camera, our POV, was following Kal-El in his pod through space to Earth…in this movie Krypton explodes, and I guess we are just going through space towards Earth cause it looks cool?
*so right off the bat…Superman has left Earth and has been gone for five years cause he found out there was A SLIGHT CHANCE that Krypton was still out there…despite all that Jor-El told him with the crystals…I remember sitting in the audience thinking “He couldn’t have sent a probe? Five years is a long time to be gone for a SLIGHT chance…”
*plus in this version Krypton doesn’t explode on it’s own, the sun explodes and destroys Krypton?
*the old lady (who is played by Noell Niel, the OG Lois Lane) says Lex Luthor showed her pleasures…that line is still gross, even moreso in 2021…
*I do like how they get to the point, Luthor finishes signing her name after she dies, then storms out, saying “The rest is mine” and Parker Posey follows him out, no explanation needed…they are the bad guys…nuff said…
*Eva Marie Saint!
*Ma Kent has a boyfriend? Good for her…
*Kal-El’s ship returns, no one sees it except Ma…okay…
*okay Luthor and the bad guys find the Fortress of Solitude and go there…at first I was like “How did they find it?” but then I remembered Luthor was there with Miss Tessmacher in Superman 2…but then he asks Jor-El to “tell me everything” but you’ve already been there, did you forget what he said before? If he had said “Tell me more about the crystals and what they do…” that would have made more sense…
*Clark Ken returns to Metropolis and the Daily Planet, Jimmy Olsen (Sam Huntington) is there to enthusiastically greet him with a cake that someone has already taken a piece from…this works…
*Perry White says he’s only back working there cause someone died…that works too…
*but Superman’s been gone five years and so has Clark…seriously?
*Clark finds out Lois is a mommy…this f*king subplot…
*Jimmy thinks Clark needs a drink…isn’t this like 9am? On Clark’s 1st day back he’s there five minutes and they leave? Perry White’s gonna fire their asses…now I know why he’s always yelling at Olsen, I just thought he was a jerk but if this is Olsen’s typical work style…great caesar’s ghost!
*Luthor and the bad guys return to the old woman’s house…Posey says “weren’t there two dogs before” that’s a great line…nothing more is said about it which is good, there doesn’t need to be…
*henchman with the video camera…this goes nowhere from what I remember…but let’s see…
*so this next part, with Luthor and his minions and Superman saving Lois on the plane is the best part of the movie…perhaps the only reason to re-watch it?
*so Luthor’s premise is that one of the crystal can be added to water and land will grow out of it…okay I remember thinking in the theatre “How?” but after watching the original, Clark goes to the North Pole, throws the green crystal and out of that, the Fortress of Solitude just grows (so it’s a good thing he didn’t do that in, say, downtown Metropolis) but do we, the audience watching this movie, know that? There isn’t even a scene later where Clark remembers that and is like, “Wait, I get it…it’s like when I threw the crystal at the North Pole…” but no…in fact Brandon Routh says hardly anything throughout the movie but we’ll presumably get to that later…
*the train set is cool, as a piece on it’s own I’m not sure it makes sense, Luthor never explains how he was so mored living with that old lady that he had to go into the basement and make this elaborate train set to pass the time…but whatever…
*”Wow, that’s really something Lex” “Wait for it”…is funny…this whole scene is pretty great…funny that Lex is caught off guard and scared but later happy with the results…
*OG Jimmy Olsen Jack Larson!
*I remember watching a BTS video where Bryan Singer talked about how important it was for Richard Branson to be in the movie as one of the jet-thingy pilots…whatever…
*okay, Kate Bosworth…I guess technically she didn’t do anything wrong…she was horribly miscast though she looks like she is 12 years old…Brandon Routh did his screen test with Keri Russell, why couldn’t she have gotten the role? Apparently Amy Adams auditioned too…ironic…or is it?
*I read somewhere where, at the time (and maybe still) they want to cast really young actresses for these tent pole movies as they have to think long term as if they are going to make ten of these movies and so…blah blah blah…
*I love how in Luthor’s lair, the little town is destroyed and it’s basically a recreation of the end of Superman I where, after the nuke lands on the San Andreas fault, the towns are destroyed…that’s some genius level stuff…
*Peta Wilson…what’s she done since this?
*Superman saving the plane, first with his heat vision and then with brute strength is all great stuff…some people hated the part where he grabs the wing and it breaks off but I thought that was great as it shows he’s rusty after being gone five years…plus how would YOU stop a plane from falling?
*those poor stunt people getting slammed around inside the plane…be that was a fun day on set…
*I also remember people hating the “statistically speaking…” part, but I think it would have worked more as an in-joke to Lois, if he was maybe more sly about it, as opposed to him seemingly really worried about whether or not those people won’t feel safe on airplanes anymore…
*so how do they get that plane out of the baseball field? I’d be pissed if I owned that ballpark…
*introducing Jason as “fragile”, knowing now that he is Superman’s son, is interesting which I guess for the sequel, as I guess Kal-El when he first landed on Earth could have been “fragile” adjusting to Earth’s atmosphere but Jason was born on Earth, with an Earth mom, so…
*another subtle bit that’s great…the bad guys showing up with a van full of bullet holes but they did what they needed to…no explanation needed, really…
*according to IMDB, Kal Penn had a much bigger role including the fact he planted false information which lead to Superman leaving Earth…that actually would have been good to know…as opposed to Kal Penn having (I think) ZERO (or practically ZERO) dialogue in the movie…
*Kevin Smith, in reviewing this, joked about how the movie turned Superman into a stalker when he eavesdrops on Lois but I think it’s normal for someone to be gone for five years and want to check out what she’s been up to…
*Superman flying around saving lives is a cool scene but not amazing like it could be…
*the whole thing with the guy with the big gun on the roof is a cools scene but now when I see it I just think “How long did it take for them to set up that machine gun-thingy? I’m guessing it wasn’t there already…no one noticed it beforehand?”
*of course it’s cool when Superman saves the car, setting it down gently in the “Action Comics #1” pose, which is a distraction for Luthor stealing the Kryptonite…but really where was Superman when the bad guys stole the van earlier?
*Posey says she is suffering from heart palpitations, but wouldn’t Superman know she was lying?
*looking back, I love Brandon Routh, but kinda shocking to me they didn’t cast Matt Bomer…
*so without the Kal Penn character subplot, when it’s revealed that Lex Luthor was released from prison because Superman didn’t appear in court because he was in space…that makes Superman’s disappearance all the shittier…he had responsibilities, dammit!
*the Kryptonite shiv is lame, doesn’t even look as strong as a pencil, it looks anything but lethal…
*Lois taking off her shoes, then not noticing they have already taken off…more good stuff
*their flight together is also great…not as good as the Christopher Reeve-Margot Kidder one but no lame poem voiceover so…
*Superman flying them past Lois’ home is kind of a dick move though…
*and that song…so great…
*the slow reveal of Clark being in the board room, already eating is also great…
*they show Lois actually being a reporter…that’s great…but then she takes her kid with her to check out a story straight to the bad guys…that’s bad…
*the Lex-Lois scene has some great stuff in it, this scene could have been where Lex points out he manipulated Superman to leaving Earth…
*I remember the scene with Jason playing the piano with the bad guy being very tense and even hilarious when the bad guy starts playing the piano while Lois is trying to send the fax…good stuff…
*having a glass bottom to the boat is fun…
*building an island is kind of interesting and one made out of Kryptonite to keep Superman away is also interesting, but wouldn’t the island be radioactive and therefore inhabitable?
*Jason being Superman’s son is less of a secret as I remember but that plot development really has more problems than anything…how does Lois not know this fact? As Kevin Smith said, wouldn’t she be mad at Superman and be like “When did you roofie me Superman?” It’s never explained, I guess it would have been in the sequel, but maybe Lois was supposed to have known all along? But she does seem surprised when Jason first uses his powers…and did she really think Jason was Richard’s kid? So many questions that never got answered although I guess it doesn’t matter so…
*Closeups of Brandon Routh…it’s almost funny how he looks nothing like Brandon Routh today…he epitomizes the phrase “Baby face”…there was speculation that Bryan Singer didn’t want Brandon Routh the actor he just wanted the guy who looked like Christopher Reeve, evidence which is backed up by Routh/Superman having so little dialogue…anyway today’s Routh would have killed this role, as he recently showed in “Crisis on Infinite Earths” when he played Superman again…
*Superman saving the city is fine I guess but nothing like in the original when Superman stops the San Andreas fault…somehow that scene, using 1978 special effects, is way better than 2007 CGI…
*kinda strange they had to invent a whole other character, Richard, and have him save Lois…
*wouldn’t Lois just be constantly screaming “SUPERMAN! HELP ME!” all the time? He has super hearing…
*the Superman saving them while lifting the boat, then letting it go is pretty great…they did something similar in Supergirl S4 but she lifted a whole building…
*there is a lot unsaid…they don’t really explain why Superman is in pain (sweating) when he lands on the Kryptonite Island, or why Lois says they need to go back and save him…normally in movies there is a ton of exposition, spoon feeding viewers everything they need to know as it comes along and this movie takes the chance that they don’t need to do that…judging people’s opinions of this movie, I’d say that doesn’t work…
*two hours in and finally Superman and Lex come face to face…
*I HATE the scene where the bad guys beat the shit out of Superman…he looks so weak, never gets in any offence, and then they die “by accident”…people cited the whole “Superman never gets to throw a punch” reason for hating this, although even de-powered it would be weird to see Superman punch these bad guys in the face…anyway I still hate the scene and again the K-shiv looks lame…
*Superman crawling away and trying to escape, looking scared and getting in no offence and the way the ADR is in the scene, it’s like he’s screaming and begging for mercy…kinda shitty way to show Superman…
*so did Kal Penn and the others get sent to jail by Superman? What is their motivation for hating Superman so much? I guess “bad guys are bad” isn’t enough for me…
*they really go out of their way to make Richard look good, like a hero…I guess to make Lois’ choice not so cut and dry but at the same time…no one else in Metropolis can fly a plane? Couldn’t they have just named his character Bruce Wayne?
*love the scene where Superman has to go absorb the sun’s yellow energy to “re-charge” but was that ever explained in any of the Christopher Reeve Superman movies? Is that one of the facts Lois rattled off earlier? My point is, do Joe and Nicole Smith from Dickburg watching this know what that means? Or is Singer assuming they do?
*so the bad guys are just hanging out on their island, playing cards? Shouldn’t they be putting up shelter, did they bring tents? Sleeping bags? Can they build a fire or will the radiation…ah who cares…
*so there is not one but two scene where planes can’t take off yet manage to at the last minute…
*Superman doesn’t get to punch anyone in this movie but he sure lifts a lot of things…the shuttle, the plane, the car, the Daily Planet globe, the Kryptonite Island…
*then, the point where Superman is taken to the hospital…the movie falls apart here…
*Lois coming in, waking him up with a kiss, she says stuff about his kid that is supposed to make sense but it really doesn’t…
*I guess they were teasing him dying and the whole “The Death of Superman” story…
*I forgot about the two headlines joke which is really good “Always be prepared…”
*Martha Kent being in the crowd but Lois doesn’t know who she is…like they never met? Ah I guess not, since it was retconned that Lois doesn’t know Superman is Clark or vice versa…and while Superman is in the hospital, doesn’t anyone ask “Where’s Clark?”
*so presumably Lois whispers in a comatose Superman’s ear that he’s a father and suddenly he’s a-ok…
*so Martha Kent’s boyfriend is there…does he know Clark is Superman?
*so yeah…that dog is the first to go…no question…sorry pal…
*they try to make is all poetic with “The son becomes the father, father becomes the son…” stuff with him and Jason as if it makes it all come full circle but it really doesn’t…
*never noticed before that Jason is wearing Aquaman pyjamas…I’m not even going to get into the ramifications of all that…
*then Superman just flies off, no explanation from Lois…actually Kevin Smith’s roofie joke should that be reversed? It seems like Lois has a lot to explain to Superman, not the other way around…
*I thought this movie was dedicated to Christopher and Dana Reeve but I never saw it in the credits…
*one interesting piece of trivia: in Superman IV, the last thing Superman says to Lex is “See you in twenty” and then this movie comes out twenty years later…kinda fun…
*what a long ass movie…2 and a half hours!
*so strange watching a blockbuster superhero movie with subtlety and not a ton of exposition…I can’t believe I’m going to say this but I don’ think that works, this movie could have used more dialogue rather than longing looks…
*there was a lot more of this movie I enjoyed than I remembered but still it’s not great…seems like a lot of unfulfilled promise…
*funny that Singer left the X-Men franchise for this and then it “bombed” (it did well but not like what it was “supposed to do”) but he did okay, directing “Valkyrie”, “Jack the Giant Slayer”, “X-Men Days of Future Past” and I had forgotten he directed “X-Men: Apocalypse”…all bombs except for “Future Past” and then the whole “Bohemian Rhapsody” controversy happened and he was “cancelled” although now I would guess that means he’s due for a comeback soon, like Mel Gibson and Louis CK were “cancelled”…
======================
Next Stop, Christmas 2021
*Christmas movie with Christopher Lloyd and Lea Thompson…according to IMDB they have been in seven movies together but never had a scene where they talked to each other on screen which is funny…
*starring Lyndsy Fonseca who is usually great in everything…
*so another time travel/“A Wonderful Life” type Christmas movie where someone goes back in time to see how their life would have turned out if…this seems to happen a lot…
*so with these movies, it takes a while to get going because they have to have those scenes where they establish the current timeline, the main character goes back in time, she has to figure out she’s gone back in time, she has to remember how it was back then and get established, then react to that…etc.
*by coincidence, last night I had flipped through “A Kiss Before Christmas” with Teri Hatcher and didn’t last long cause it was the exact kind of time travel movie…this movie has a more well rounded cast so I’m giving it more of a chance…
*this one isn’t bad, it’s about 30 minutes (with commercials) and the plot kicks in…although it was a little frustrating when they are on the train, Fonseca is asking Lloyd “what’s going on?” and he just smirks…why can’t characters just be like “I sent you back in time because…”
*Fonseca actually is really charming and when she reveals to “Ben” that she is from the future it is pretty funny…she tries to convince him by saying “tonight we will make gingerbread houses” and he replies “well of course we will, it’s Christmas” which is good…
*movie does a good job revealing how the Fonseca character was pretty self absorbed and oblivious (in order to have her re-living her past but at the same time not sure what’s happening) but not in a mean way that makes her unlikeable…
*so her boyfriend Tyler is supposed to propose but doesn’t because he gets a phone call with a job offer but they don’t really explain why, in the previous time line, he didn’t get the same job offer and DID propose…details like this are important, it may seem small but stuff like this is where movies like this fall apart…it’s why a movie like “Back to the Future” is the best time travel movie…the screenplay is a masterpiece…
*although Fonseca’s character Angie being so oblivious towards Ben, the guy she’s clearly supposed to be with, is kind of annoying…its one thing for her to be so oblivious but she could also be like “sure I like Ben but the reason I’ve time traveled is so I can marry Tyler so I can’t be with Ben…” or I’m over thinking this Christmas Hallmark movie…
*I admire the line Lea Thompson gives when explaining how her and her husband grew apart…”once you kids moved out, we actually had to talk to each other”…so simple but true…
*the dog, Boomer, is freaking cute…
*just thinking about all these Christmas movies Hallmark makes…they have to be the most prolific Hollywood studio out there, right? They make, it has to be, dozens of movies all year round just so they can show them at this time of year…compared to what even the big studios like Warner Bros. are putting out each year…Hallmark has to employ the most actors, the most writers, the most crew; all over the world…just something that occurred to me…
*they have to rush through the last ten minutes and this is when it’s tough to stick the landing…so Fonseca and Ben have now been dating for ten years and he proposes…that’s fine but why has it taken them ten years to get married? He does ask “Will you FINALLY marry me?” which is a nice touch I guess…
*good movie with the expected happy ending…nice to see Thompson and Lloyd…Thompson does a lot of TV directing these days which is cool so it’s nice seeing her acting…
*apparently this was made in Connecticut…a Hallmark movie that wasn’t made in Vancouver? Weird…
The Big Cube 1969
*TCM Underground 11/13/21
*another pretty good cast, with Lana Turner, George Chakiris, Richard Egan, Don O’Herlihy
*random striptease in this movie…
*evil druggie teens kill rich, old white saviours…
*so 45 minutes in, the plot actually starts with this being about Lana Turner going crazy cause her step daughter is being manipulated by George Chakiris from “West Side Story”…
*from IMDB “Hairy chested George Chakiris was subjected to a complete body waxing so as to appear less virile in his shirtless scene” was a sentence I didn’t know I would type someday…
*not only are these evil kids drug users, they are swingers too!!!
*so will the young girl Lisa end up with Richard Egan, an old wise white man instead of the too-verile Chakiris?
*so it ends up with Egan and Turner together and the step daughter all happily ever after…
*meh
Jersey Girl 2004
*again but not since it came out
*didn’t really like this back in the day, so let’s see if I still don’t like it today…
*should clarify I didn’t think it was terrible I just didn’t connect with it…
*plus at the time the Ben Affleck-Jennifer Lopez stuff in the media was unbearable, good thing we don’t have to put up with that in 2021 right?
*pretty standard stuff so far, nothing that really screams out “Kevin Smith” really…then again not all filmmakers would try to make a family movie but also one that repeats the phrase “cracked out whores” repeatedly in a scene…
*George Carlin!
*Stephen Root!
*S. Epatha Merkerson!
*I remember watching this and then when Will Smith shows up at the end I was like “why is Will Smith here and why does this seem to important” as I had totally forgotten that the reason Affleck got fired was due to him making fun of “The Fresh Prince” so the impact was lost on me at the time…
*although looking back, I don’t remember Kevin Smith talking a lot about working with Will Smith, and I used to listen to most of his podcasts (for a little while anyway) so it must have not been significant or he just knows not to slam Will Smith like he has people like Bruce Willis…
*I don’t remember the J-Lo dying stuff taking so long, I actually remember her dying a lot sooner in the movie, not twenty minutes in but the memory bank is weird…
*Affleck’s character is named Ollie, which was weird to me as I had read “Ollie” in comics for years but never heard someone say the name…now after “Arrow” it’s not a big deal but all the time…
*on a side note, still weird that Kevin Smith directed episodes of “Flash” and “Supergirl” but not “Arrow”
*do we really need to see the baby poop?
*Jennifer Schwalchach arrives!
*Jason Biggs plays the part Jason Mewes was supposed to play but was in rehab…
*according to IMDB, Bruce Willis was going to be in the Will Smith role…this was years before they worked together I guess…”Cop Out” came out in 2010, FYI…
*forgot about the face Affleck and Will Smith would later be in screen together in “Suicide Squad” as Batman and Deadshot…don’t think about that movie at all, really…
*Jason Lee and Matt Damon…at first I thought Lee was Brian O’Halloran and they were re-creting their characters from “Chasing Amy” but I guess not…
*when Gertie grows up the movie kind of slows down, the “what are your intentions?” scene (both of them) are kinda dumb
*ah the video store adult section…remember when we had to leave the house and face possible public humiliation to get porn?
*Liv Tyler is great…news flash
*Raquel Castro is great casting for J-Lo’s daughter
*when I first saw this I had no idea what “Sweeney Todd” was and really had no idea still until the Tim Burton movie came out three years later…
*Affleck repeatedly turning down Liv Tyler, especially when she is begging for him to have sex with her, is pretty dumb…although technically he already made out with her a lot in “Armageddon”…
*not sure why, when they were caught by the daughter together, they went into the shower and turned the water on…there clearly were other options but then I guess how else would they pay off the repeated references to Gertie forgetting to flush the toilet…
*the big inspirational speech by Affleck is done via montage which is supposed to be, well…inspiring but since it was a montage, it probably wasn’t…
*are there any parents, other than ones in a Kevin Smith movie, who would put on a Sweeney Todd performance at their kids’ concert? Anyone? I guess there has to be someone, but really?
*Ben Affleck just ain’t that guy, sorry Hollywood, after he got put in “Movie Jail” after this and “Gigli”, he crawled back as a director and he became kind of likeable again, but even then he insisted on casting himself in his own movies (and for awhile was the only one who would cast Ben Affleck in anything) but now that “he’s back” (again) thanks to the J-Lo publicity, it just really sticks out how annoying he is…if he’s in a movie, even if I hear good things about it like “The Accountant”, I’m way less likely to see that movie…just how I see it…
*the scene with Will Smith is great, the best thing about the movie…
*why is Stephen Root in this? And by that I mean, did he have a subplot that got cut out? According to Smith he could have had a way longer movie, where J-Lo didn’t die until the 45 minute mark, but Root was really in demand, right? In 2004?
*funny that everyone performs “Cats”; in 2004 I knew about the legend of how bad “Cats” was but had never seen anything about it or name any songs…I think sometimes people in Hollywood and New York over estimate how many people from small towns outside those areas know much about Broadway…
*you know Affleck was anticipating an Oscar nomination for this…I mean he cried AND sang badly! It worked for Richard Dreyfuss and “Mr. Holland’s Opus”…
*the fact Affleck is stopped on the way to the concert by his own ripped up road…I like that…
*friggin George Carlin…so great…
*this movie…it’s great that it exists and that Kevin Smith made this movie about fatherhood as a tribute to both his daughter and deceased father but the movie itself just doesn’t really work…
*also great that, in the meantime, Jason Mewes cleaned himself up…that’s super cool…
Christmas at the Plaza 2019
*just watching this for Elizabeth Henstridge, who was on “Agents of SHIELD” and I haven’t seen her do much else…
*but also with Bruce Davison and Julia Duffy
*recognized Wanda Cannon, a Canadian actress, so I looked it up and this was filmed in Winnipeg…
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Dean Martin: King of Cool 2021
*Dean Martin is friggin cool, so this should be great…
*I have fond memories of watching the Martin & Lewis show repeats on the Family Channel (which I think was just a Canadian re-branding of the Disney Channel but I don’t know that for sure) and loved those and later seeing Martin in “Rio Bravo”, which for years was the only Western I’d ever seen…plus I love the original “Ocean’s Eleven” and the Rat Pack in general…
*the clips of the Martin & Lewis stuff is so great, haven’t seen this stuff in years…
*the clip of Sugar Ray Robinson tap dancing with Gene Kelly…more of that please!
*I actually didn’t know that “Rio Bravo” was so soon after Martin & Lewis broke up…I thought it was later in Martin’s career…always love that movie…
*the highlights of the Dean Martin Variety show seems like the greatest TV show of all time…it was on for nine years and these are the best bits of course but I’d like to see more of those…
*that Christmas Special with the Martins and the Sinatras seemed pretty amazing too…
*such a wonderful doc, highly recommended!
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The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm 1962
*MGM could have had Alec Guinness and Peter Sellers star in this but said no…
*focus on lesser known Grimms fairy tales like “The Dancing Princess”, “The Cobbler and the Elves” and “The Singing Bone”
*cool seeing some scenes that were filmed with special Cinerama cameras (you can tell by how some scenes have the screen seemingly cut into three pieces)
*Barbara Eden!
*Buddy Hackett!
*not sure which version of this it is, apparently there is a restored version coming out, and this has the overture, intermission etc. included but this was shown randomly on a Friday afternoon, usually they have a big premiere for something like this, although it’s possible they did that and I missed it…
*great stop motion animation…and by great I don’t necessarily mean it looks great but it’s…well let’s say it’s “cute” and leave it there…
*this was good in parts, way too long, almost three hours long and it absolutely didn’t need to be…kinda tuned out in certain points I have to be honest…
*nothing wrong with the movie other than it’s length, it was good but I’ll never watch it again…the only reason would be if I were to be at the TCM Film Festival and they showed this at the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood…but that’s assuming things ever get back to normal and isn’t the Cinerama Dome gone out of business?
====================
The Incredible Mr. Limpet 1964
*again
*I’ll watch anything with Don Knotts, even this which I remember seeing recently…
*TCM showing this instead of Cary Grant’s “Room for One More” for some reason…well I assume it’s because of rights issues and nothing else, so I guess I know the reason…
*always a fun watch…
=====================
Gold Rush 2002
*again but not for awhile
*nearly 2 hour doc about Team Canada winning the Gold Medal in hockey at the 2002 Olympics; I actually thought, due to the length, it was about the men and women’s teams but it was just about the men’s but there is a lot here and there is a lot of detail here, I’d say almost a perfect sports doc…
*the 1st 45 minutes is just about putting together the Olympic team, and the rest is the team competing at the Olympics…I can remember Team Canada winning the gold medal, Gretzky’s memorable speech and not much else so this was a doc I was familiar with but it’s been so long that some details were fresh to me…
*also great was the fact that the filmmakers where clearly close to their subject matter, as they got everything they needed said into the camera and if they missed something, they were able to get what just happened explained to them…after Canada wins the Gold, players actually come up and high five the cameramen which is funny…
**also watched “Team Canada 2002: Reflections of Gold” a 4-part series that uses all the same men’s footage but combines it with footage of the women’s team and how they won Gold; kinda weird but I ended up just FFing through the men’s footage, although they did seem to have updated sit down interviews with Wayne Gretzky and others…
*great stuff although I also tried looking for any behind the scenes stuff from the 2006 Olympics and couldn’t find anything…that Olympics I have no memory of…the 2010 Vancouver Olympics I remember vividly…
=====================
Alien 1979
*finally
*originally this was an “again” but as I watched it I realized I hadn’t seen it before…weird…
*anyway, this was amazing, I loved the production design, especially the bowels of the ship looking so huge but also old and gross, compared to something like “2001” where everything looked brand new…
*Yaphet Kotto!!!
*great stuff…almost makes me interested in the whole “Alien” pantheon…almost…
======================
nothing
=======================
Window Wonderland 2013
*the wonderful Chyler Leigh in a Christmas movie pre-Supergirl
*Paul Campbell is hilarious here, he gets all the best lines while Chyler has to play the straight-person
*Naomi Judd plays Chyler’s mother; the family scenes together are the best for Chyler as she gets to smile and joke around and show some personality
*Cameron Mathieson plays Chyler’s jerk boyfriend; he’s one of those guys whose face was all over the place for awhile there so the less we see of him, the better…
*so the Paul Campbell character is poor and lives at the mall…we are supposed to feel sorry for him but really…I’m jealous!
*this mall doesn’t have security guards? If they are that cheap then I guess they deserve this…
*Christie Laing is in this…she played Carly Diggle on “Arrow”
*so of course Chyler and Campbell end up locked in the mall all night, tease kissing but are interrupted by a security guard, so they don’t kiss but then cut to commercial then it’s the next morning and they wake up…so what happened during that commercial break? They just fell asleep? Lame…
*so Chyler is embarrassed of her mom, a bathroom attendant, and changed her name to a snobbier one to fit in…Mathieson finds out and is upset and jeez I actually might feel bad for him…he’s a dick at the beginning of the scene let kinda sympathetic by the end of it…I do hope this is the end of his character though…
*so there is a big TWIST in the end, where the window washer who they are friends with (who they just set up Naomi Judd with) is the rich owner of the store (and Mathieson’s father, I think) and makes it all a happy ending so that’s fun…
*Chyler and Campbell kiss in the end and it’s kinda weird seeing Chyler kiss a dude after all these years of Supergirl, even though I know she’s married to a dude in real life…
*the end credits song, “This is Christmas” by Suzie McNeil has become a big holiday favourite…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jUpyqptf18
*great movie!
===================
Christmas Joy 2018
*starring Danielle Panabaker from “The Flash”
*so many Holiday movies starring stars from the Arrowverse!
*the first few scenes are kinda strange…the aunt is up on a ladder, reaching for something off a top shelf and we know what’s going to happen, but then, before anything does happen, cut to the local hospital where the movie’s dude is talking to his assistant, we expect the end of the scene will be someone saying something like “we have incoming!” but there is nothing, then we cut to Panabaker getting a phone call saying her aunt is in the hospital with a broken ankle…we can assume I guess that it’s the same hospital as the dude, I guess? It’s strange that they didn’t piece together the scenes a little better, or are they giving us the credit of understanding what’s going on? I can’t decide if this is good or bad, really…my instinct says it’s bad and that the scenes weren’t supposed to go in that order so they had to do some editing but whatever…even a sound effect of a “crash” when they cut away from the aunt…
*Panabaker drives from DC to North Carolina to see her aunt in the hospital where she runs into dude-guy, she asks about visiting hours, he says there is no such thing, cause it’s a small town…now I live in a small town but our hospital still has visiting hours…and if it really is that small of a town, would it really have a hospital at all? Am I thinking about this Hallmark Christmas movie too much?
*Lucia Walters plays Panabaker’s boss…she played the Earth-1 President of the US in “Invasion” of the Arrowverse…Earth-38’s President was played by Lynda Carter, in case you were wondering…
*according to IMDB, Panabaker, Walters and 9 other actors in this movie have been in the Arrowverse
*lots of ADR
*kinda weird that Panabaker volunteers to take on a massive project with little knowledge about what it actually is and refuses all attempts for people offering help but I guess that is supposed to be adding drama? If it was another actor it could border on her looking unlikeable but not with Panabaker…
*as kids they went to go see “Love Actually” in the theatre…way to make me feel old, Hallmark Christmas movie…
*the boss really likes texting/calling Panabaker with work stuff at late hours and expecting her to have it done the next morning…what kind of abuse of power is this?
*Panabaker drives two hours (both ways) to get grief from her bored aunt and later when dude comes over they go skating…how much work is getting done here?
*funny, it just occurred to me, late in the film that I’m not sure if I’ve seen Panabaker’s character actually working on anything…she probably has, but I just looked at the screen and with only hours to go and many cookies to bake, the camera cuts to her and she’s just standing there, looking at the ingredients…that just popped into my head…
*okay, next scene, there she is, mixing cookie dough and such, so never mind…
*that gingerbread stadium is pretty cool…it only got 3rd place?
*so she’s leaving to drive 5 hours to DC for a party, then driving back the next day for the cookie thing…dude gives her a present, she says “I’ll be back tomorrow” and he says “In case you don’t come back” which is kind of a dick move…she should have just handed it back to him and been like “dude, I said I’d be back TOMORROW!”
*anyway, this is pretty great, but these types of movies all depend on the likeability and charisma of the stars…so without Danielle Panabaker this wouldn’t be as good…
=================
Shall We Dance 1937
*again for the dozenth time
*very important not to include a question mark at the end of the title if googling this, FYI…
*lesser Fred and Ginger but still awesome…
*with Edward Everett Horton and Eric Blore so that maybe makes this less of a lesser Fred and Ginger?
*big final number takes this down a little, as it’s Fred dancing with a few dozen girls with Ginger masks on (which is kinda creepy, honestly) and not Ginger, which is bad, until the very end and then the movie ends pretty abruptly…
*”Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off” is from here…Ginger’s weird pronunciation of words is, well, weird but it makes the song funny…especially how she says “oysters” like “ersters”
*the dance number on roller-skates is amazing…but like I said earlier, this movie peaks early and kind of trails off…
*the comedy with “are they married or not?” is funny when it comes to Horton and Blore’s reactions to it, but is kinda confusing…like, why do they actually get married?
==================
Beebo Saves Christmas 2021
*funny, I knew this existed but had no idea when it would be airing…I would have missed it completely except I saw Yvette Nicole Brown (Shirley from “Community” and one of the voices here) tweet about it…
*Victor Garber does the opening narration…will any of the other Legends provide voices? Or any other Arrowverse stars? If I had to guess I’d say no but we’ll see…
*computer voice NOT played by Gideon aka Amy Louise Pemberton?
*Ernie Hudson is Santa!
*pretty good show, no Arrowverse cameos other than Garber, it could have been 30 minutes long but I think it’s some kind of law that no show can air on The CW that isn’t 42 minutes + commercials
The Loveless 1983
*TCM Underground 11/20/21
*Willem Dafoe double feature, with this an “Wild at Heart” but is there also an Elvis connection?
*film debut of Willem Dafoe, plus Kathryn Bigelow’s directing debut (and co-directed by Monty Montgomery)
*30 minutes in and not much has happened…lots of actors standing around, smoking, trying to look cool…
*synopsis says “trouble ensues when a motorcycle gang stops in a small southern town while heading to the races in Daytona” we are an hour in and still nothing has happened…
*well suddenly, Dafoe is naked, having sex in a hotel room…someone (I guess her father) comes along with a shotgun…okay things are happening…about a half hour left in this…
*another connection in this double-feature: Monty Montgomery wrote and co-directed this, and was a producer on “Wild at Heart”; he was a collaborator with David Lynch on “Twin Peaks” and “Mulholland Drive”; he also is a founder of American Cinematheque which I am a member of which is cool…
*so after that little burst of action, we’re back to nothing happening…
*”they’re communists…” reasons to die in a small town…
*again…something briefly happens then it’s back to people standing around smoking…
*so the young girl that Dafoe slept with, her father sexually abuses her, which I didn’t get at the time but Dafoe has a voiceover memory flash later that explains it, so it makes sense when the girl shows up and kills the dude, then kills herself…then the bikers get on their bikes and ride off…okay…
*I’m guessing someone out there will see this review and he like “you don’t get it…you see they were all vampires but it was sub text…” or something, but whatever…
Wild at Heart 1990
*TCM Underground 11/20/21
*Willem Dafoe double feature, with this and “The Loveless”
*again but not since it came out
*I had a weird relationship with this movie…it came out around the time I was just discovering movies, saw the trailer on, probably, Super Channel, Canada’s movie channel, and later watched it and at the time I was a very “guarded” (sure let’s call it that) young lad and had no idea about sex or such things, so I was confused about a lot of things in this movie…haven’t seen it since, so considering it’s a David Lynch movie, I’ll probably still be confused about a few things…
*not only is Nicolas Cage dialled up to 10 but so is Laura Dern
*Diane Ladd!
*Harry Dean Stanton!
*Lynch said this movie was about, among other things, “finding love in Hell…” I like that…
*this won the Palm D’or controversially but got mixed reviews when it was released…Siskel thought it was an ambitious near miss, and Ebert totally hated it…
*only a half hour in and the long dialogue scenes between Dern and Cage, trying to be philosophical with southern accents, is kind of annoying…
*lots of naked ladies’ breasts here…
*Calvin Lockhart!
*lots of sex scenes but they aren’t really sexy at all…
*the “take a bite of peach” scene is burned into my memory let wasn’t quite how I remembered it…
*”hotter than Georgia asphalt…” I remember when I first saw the trailer I thought Dern said “Georgia Ass Falls” which, considering how she pronounces it…
*the Diane Ladd lipstick scene is freaky…
*Crispin Glover…seeming right at home here…
*”Wicked Game” by Chris Isaak…I’ve heard some people say this was the best thing to come out of this movie…the music video was directed by Lynch too…
*Sherilyn Fenn!
*so are Isabella Rossellini and Grace Zabriskie’s character supposed to be sisters or something?
*wait, Dern’s character pukes and then just leaves it there?
*Pruitt Taylor Vince!
*and there he is, Willem Dafoe! And his teeth, or lack of them…
*everyone smokes in this movie, so to convey Cage’s mind being blown, he has to smoke two cigarettes at a time…
*the “little bunny rabbit” scene with Dern and Dafoe…I admit I probably watched this scene over and over and was confused each time…
*Dafoe wants to rob a bank for $5000…tries to convince Cage to help, saying $2500 will help set them up real good…okay 1990 isn’t THAT long ago, it’s not 1935…
*we see Dafoe blowing his own head off so is TCM showing us the Director’s Cut?
*that’s a lot of blood…Dafoe shoots two guys, point blank with shotguns, both are a-okay a minute later, joking around despite losing a ton of blood, but one guy is missing his hand…as they look for it, a dog walks out of the bank with the hand in his mouth…so I guess Tarantino didn’t start the over-the-top dark humour trend in the 90’s?
*”…I’ll pull your arms out by the roots…” I had to rewind that to make sure I heard what I heard…
*that ending…okay then…
*well I am glad I saw this, all these years later but, as I predicted, I’m still confused by a few things…actually confused is the wrong word I guess…yet I don’t care enough about this movie to explore this topic anymore…
*I don’t get David Lynch…off the top of my head I’d have to say my favourite movie of his is “The Straight Story” so that tells you my tastes, I guess…although I did love “Mulholland Drive” too…
====================
Archival Screening Night 2020
*a fun collection of shorts from as far back as 1897, some only seconds long and one that actually stars Jack Lemmon in his first leading role…
*fun stuff, and I’m very happy that there are people out there who are making sure films like this are preserved by the Association of Moving Image Archivists…
Fragments 2010
*similar to Archival Screening Night, debuted at the 2010 TCM Film Festival, shows lots of “thought to be lost forever” nitrate films that have been preserved by cool people…
*tidbit of info: actually had no idea nitrate film was so dangerous until I saw “Inglorious Basterds”
The Christmas Pact 2018
*Jasmine Guy & Kadeem Harrison reunited from “A Different World”! This is the only reason I’m watching this…I don’t think they are the stars so I may start FFing…
*so it’s about their kids who start little but then it jumps ahead 10 years later…
*Guy and Harrison are in the 1st scene and then don’t show up again until 15 minutes later…
*then it jumps ahead another 10 years…hard to keep track…
*Guy and Hardison age twenty years in twenty minutes but don’t age at all…they play father and mother to the main character…
*apparently this was filmed in Vancouver…I don’t really recognize many actors so I’m actually a smidge surprised…
*it was fine…not enough Guy and Hardison…
=====================
Mysteries of the Abandoned 2019
*apparently there is a show about abandoned cities, and this is some 2 hour special where they do a Top 10 of the abandoned…kinda weird as the show is made up of shortened segments of the other shows they do…for example one segment was twenty minutes on an abandoned Russian Coal mining city, which they covered for an hour in the show I had just watched prior to this…I ended up watching the segment to see if there was anything different and thee wasn’t so that part I FFed…
*I erased it before I could write down all the segments but I remember a Nazi resort, the African town that was in the middle of the desert, the Old West town in Virginia, the city on the top of a mountain in Italy where half the town was lost in a landslide, the Greek town where people were told to just leave and they did but no one replaced them…
*interesting stuff but it got a teeny bit repetitive…each segment even takes a minute or two just to say where the city is which was kind of frustrating…
*are there any shows about Abandoned Malls? I’d watch that for sure…
======================
The Big Town 1987
*Matt Dillon, Diane Lane, Tommy Lee Jones, Bruce Dern, Suzy Amis, Lee Grant, Tom Skerritt, young Davud Marshall Grant, Cherry Jones…
*Siskel and Ebert both loved this movie, but overall it got mixed reviews and was a bomb at the box office…
*one thing I got from Siskel and Ebert’s review was this was an old school film with no surprises although to me that’s not much of an endorsement…I can see where everything is going, can practically write the outline as I go and I’m not really interested in that…
*they both praised Suzi Amis and wanted to see more films with her…she ended up in a few movies here and there, was Gabriel Byrne’s love interest in “The Usual Suspects” and then was in “Titanic” where she met future husband James Cameron and retired not long after that…
*Ebert made fun of the fact Dillon never loses through the whole movie (except once and only when the dice is loaded) so at first I thought it was going to be a bad review but he said that like it was a good thing…
*3rd time Dillon and Diane Lane had worked together, with “The Outsiders” and “Rumble Fish” prior to this…
*first few times I saw Diane Lane I actually had no idea that was her, I don’t know if it was her with too much makeup on or what, but she looked like someone trying to look like Diane Lane…
*so Dillon and Lane go to dinner together, knowing Tommy Lee Jones is her husband? Not exactly sneaking around…
*so Dillon is having sex with Amis then five minutes later, he’s having intense sex with Lane on top of a bar, then making out with Lane in the middle of the street…the balls on this guy…
*it was still hard identifying Diane Lane through the movie…she was around 20 years old when they made this, perhaps it was her, as an actress, trying to transition to more adult roles? Hair, makeup and wardrobe seemingly were all meant to make her character look older, since she was married to the Tommy Lee Jones character, seemed to be more world-weary than Dillon…maybe?
**it was a fine movie…just fine…Suzy Amis was, in fact, great…she seemed like the only real person in this movie in a world where everyone is smirking, scheming and being loud…Lee Grant might fall into that category too actually…
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The Nine Kittens of Christmas 2021
*sequel to “The Nine Lives of Christmas” with Brandon Routh and Kimberley Sustad
*so there was no happy ending for the 1st movie, as the beginning of this movie has Routh and Sustad broken up and she’s with a new boyfriend…
*Her cat Queen died, but his cat Ambrose is still alive…
*someone drops off nine kittens at the firehouse!!! NINE!!! KITTENS!!!
*so Sustad has moved away, became a vet and opened her own office, but is coming back home for Christmas…
*she immediately dumps her boyfriend over Zoom which was surprising but I don’t mind them advancing the plot…
*what are the odds that the boyfriend (Miles) shows up to surprise her just as she and Routh are connecting again?
*the town vet has retired…seems convenient…
*so Sustad and her sister decide to take care of the nine kittens while they are being adopted…the niece comes in and sees the kittens and my immediate thought was “don’t let that little girl get attached!!!” and weirdly, the sister says just that seconds later…
*wait, Paul Campbell is in this? Just shows up randomly…makes eyes with Sustad, so maybe Miles isn’t showing up?
***edit after the fact: apparently Paul Campbell and Kimberley Sustad were in a movie together “Christmas by Starlight” in 2020 so I guess that was a wink towards that?
*apparently “sisters” Sustad and Stephanie Bennett appeared on “Travelers” together
*so far, I like this as Routh spends more time with Gregory Harrison’s family, and Sustad spends time with her sister, brother in law and niece…as well as the kittens of course…
*she calls Routh “a superhero” which is true three times over…Superman from “Superman Returns”, Ray “The Atom” Palmer from the Arrowverse and Superman from Earth-96/Crisis on Infinite Earths (apparently the Supermen were two separate Supermen)
*wow they really fixed up that fire engine quickly…saved us a few montages there…
*oh there’s Miles…he showed up after all…haven’t seen Paul Campbell again so that was a weird, random cameo…although now I’m doubting that it happened…I’ve erased it now so I can’t go back and look…weird…
*so yes, Sustad decides to take over as town vet, Routh proposes and hopefully this time they will indeed live happily ever after…
*I don’t recall one argument in the whole movie (unless you count when Sustad very nicely broke up with Miles over Zoom) and therefore, you would think, this movie has no drama but it does and it works due to the great cast…
*they could have added drama…for example, Gregory Harrison has a daughter, Abby, who works with Routh at the fire hall…she could have had a crush on Routh (or even been his ex), she could have hated it when Sustad shows up back in his life, but she didn’t and she was just another nice character…great stuff and actually comes off as almost revolutionary…the only real weakness is some side stuff, as in how they hell they fixed up that old beaten up fire engine so quickly…
*one tiny thing I noticed…in the trailer they show the part where Sustad gets flummoxed with Routh, says “it’s a date…no, not a date…a rendezvous” and in the trailer it’s great, showing off her comic timing, but in the actual movie they’ve added (either in post production or it was just a different take) fire engine sirens and lights and it steps on her delivery of the dialogue…not a big deal but it affects the scene…just something I noticed…
*great stuff and I hope there is a third film, just about Routh and Sustad living with Ambrose and Rudolph happily together, with her as the town vet and him as the fire chief…looking forward to it!
================
Coming Home for Christmas 2013
w/Amy Jo Johnson aka the Pink Power Ranger
*two Christmas movies in a row that take place in Oregon but was filmed in Vancouver
*Johnson actually plays the mother of the two main characters, who are adults…kinda surprised by that as I think of her from Power Rangers and “Felicity”…does that make ME old too? Can’t be…
*funny how the dad has been “aged” with grey in his hair and beard (and he squints a lot), while they seemingly told Johnson to just “Don’t worry about sleep, let the bags under your eyes show up, take it easy on the makeup and poof! You’re an old lady…”
*PS some Hollywood weirdo probably thinks it’s true, but Amy Jo Johnson does NOT look like an old lady, just to be clear…
*the dad either has a bad underbite or is doing something weird with his chin…is that an acting choice?
*the adults sisters are played by real life sisters Carly and Britt McKillip, and I didn’t notice how alike they looked until they were in a scene together…they are a singing duo IRL apparently…
*seemed like the point of this movie would be the sisters reconciling but 45 minutes in, they have…I guess it’s more about getting the parents back together, and having the one sister hook up with the wood working guy who lives in their old house…and somehow get them all back in that house…
*main girl (not Amy Jo) and wood dude have a BBQ picnic but it’s outside, it’s pretty windy and she’s wearing a skirt…she must be freezing! And as first dates go, this doesn’t seem thought out…he’s wearing a suit so this is indeed a very weird 1st date…
*just realized wood dude is dude from “Virgin River”…apparently he has a name…Ben Hollingsworth…he’s pretty unlikable on “Virgin River” but that was his character…here it’s not so good for the male romantic lead…
*they seem to be teasing that the other sister will end up with the teenager “son” of the wood dude…even weirder!
*apparently the dad is George Canyon, a country singer/actor who was on “Nashville Star” (a country version of “American Idol”?), he was in the Royal Canadian Air Cadets and ran for the Conservative Party in the 2019 election so screw that guy…
*big sing along for the happy ending…at one point the teenaged kid (who didn’t end up with the other sister, btw) gets to sing but it sounds like an adult’s voice and he’s lip syncing…it was a nice scene but it was distracting…
*the dad and the sisters do most of the singing, but not Amy Jo? She was right there…
*pretty good movie, I admit I liked it…it helps that I seem to be watching only the Christmas movies with actors I know and like in them so I come in already “rooting for” them…if I watched the same movie with a bunch of randoms I don’t think I would be as interested…or maybe I would, hard to say…
Live in Front of a Studio Audience 2021
*Facts of Life and Different Strokes
*the first one of these was great (has there been more than one?) but this one was really bad…
*I looked it up, apparently this is the 3rd one of these, the 1st was “All in the Family” and “The Jeffersons” and the 2nd was “All in the Family and “Good Times”
*the other one of these that I remember seeing is the 2nd one…I remember Woody Harrelson as Archie Bunker and, of all things, Jesse Eisenberg’s cameo but I do remember enjoying it…those first two seemed to have a theme, wanting to say something politically and they had a point to make…not sure why these were picked other than “how many famous people can we cram into these?”
*there was a commercial with Serena Williams in the Matrix for DirecTV that was better than this show…
*40 minutes in and it’s still just on the Facts of Life segment…was this originally a two-parter? Did Facts of Life ever have a two-parter?
*the stunt casting is horrible…having Woody Harrelson play Archie Bunker is one thing, but having Jennifer Aniston, Jason Bateman, Jon Stewart, Katherine Hahn, Will Arnett playing teenagers just looks stupid…maybe they thought it would add an extra layer of meta or something but it just made them all look really old…except Hahn as Jo…she was to old for the part of course but, like Alison Tolman, at least it wasn’t too distracting…
*and all the ovations for the stars when they made their entrances got really annoying…
*and then Kevin Hart shows up, playing a toddler…actually that kind of fits…
*Damon Wayans playing Willis comes in, makes a joke and the audience is deathly quiet but then Snoop Dogg shows up and the crowd goes wild…lame…
*okay, they go to commercial but before the cameras cut, Damon Wayans goes over to the desk, picks up what looks like his cellphone and starts looking at it…is he checking Twitter? Can’t he wait until after the show to check in with his family? It’s live, they can see him can’t they?
*tried watching this on mute and it’s funny now…when the actors enter and there is an ovation, but I don’t hear it, and it’s just the actors standing there looking at each other waiting for the crowd to stop…now that’s funny stuff…
*I guess John Lithgow and Ann Dowd are age appropriate although isn’t Dowd too young to play Mrs. Garrett?
*I’m kinda still watching…since Kevin Hart is in this does that mean The Rock is going to show up at some point, since they are joined at the hip? That’s about the only reason I’ll keep watching this…
*jeez Norman Lear is 99 and he’s out there, among people? Those jerks better all be vaccinated…if he doesn’t make it to 100 that’ll suck…
*so The Rock didn’t show up, I guess Dwayne Johnson was busy accepting some People’s Choice Awards in Santa Monica…
*so I guess once they picked “Facts of Life” and “Diff’rent Strokes” as the shows they were going to do, we shouldn’t expect much politics or anything, so these should be really funny episodes they picked, right? I’m guessing these were picked by the guest stars they could shoe-horn in (with FOL) and which episode did Arnold wear a superhero outfit, cause wouldn’t Kevin Hart look funny in that?
*in case I wasn’t clear…this was BAD! Like, so bad that my celebrity crush on Jennifer Aniston is gone now, that’s how bad…sorry Jen…
===================
American Psycho 2000
*finally
*I’ve heard so much about this movie, and always resisted watching it…I don’t like watching movies that glorify bad people and make it cool or funny to show an asshole being an asshole…
*I’m only watching this because I saw a random online list of 100 movies and I scored 92 with eight I hadn’t seen…this was one of them…
*quite the cast with Christian Bale, Reese Witherspoon, Chloe Sevigny, Josh Lucas (who I thought was Aaron Eckhart for a second, they look alike), Jared Leto (of course he’s in this), Justin Theroux, Samantha Mathis, Willem Dafoe
*I like Bale’s little dance just before he kills Leto…
*Cara Seymour is in this, who I’ve only ever seen in “You’ve Got Mail”
*so Jared Leto calls Bale “Marcus” and that seemingly is a good way for Bale to not get caught after killing him, but yet Dafoe, the detective, goes straight to Bale after Leto goes missing…
*Guinevere Turner! Apparently she co-wrote this…
*so in the big murder scene, Bale is murdering lots of people in Leto’s apartment, did a bunch of those happen off camera?
*his shootout with the police…this is a dream sequence right?
*okay the last twenty minutes…I don’t get it…I admit it…so it was all a dream? Lame…
*so I guess people thought it was awesome that in this movie, Batman (Bale) kills Joker (Leto) but… whatever…
*and I’m sure there are some thing to be said about a misoginist book being adapted into a movie by a feminist but again…whatever…
*I did like the detail of the fact we never actually see Bale, or any of his co-workers, actually working…
*the Huey Lewis/Weird Al “Funny or Die” parody is pretty funny…
*well I watched it…so much talent…too bad…
*so now I have only 7 movies on that random list I need to watch…”100 Movies Bucket List” I still have to see the original “Old Boy”, “Rosemary’s Baby”, “The Intouchables”, “Lagaan” and some randoms called “3 Idiots”, “Mary & Max” and “Baahubali”…
*FYI on the AFI Top 100 of all time list I have 4 that I haven’t seen…”Intolerance”, “Cabaret”, “Sunrise” and “Yankee Doodle Dandy”
=================
Space Jam 1996
*again, but not since it came out
*cute opening with little Michael Jordan and his father, leading into the opening credits with showing MJ highlights, just in case there is someone in the audience who doesn’t know who MJ is (and that is possible, believe it or not)
*funny that they have to shoe horn in this baseball stuff, which is kind of hilarious in hindsight as MJ playing baseball was a small blip on his radar but that’s what was going on when they made this movie…
*although this seizure-inducing credit sequence is hard to watch…
*although this baseball stuff is hilarious with the catcher telling him what pitches are coming, but isn’t that illegal, for the catcher to tell the batter what’s coming? Wouldn’t the umpire put a stop to that?
*also funny that they still have him strikeout despite knowing which pitch is coming and everyone gives him a standing ovation for striking out…
*Theresa Randle!
*unfortunately, they showed highlights of old Warner Bros cartoons, which look amazing despite being decades old, then they have the “new” Bugs show up and he looks…well not great…and the voice doesn’t sound anything like Bugs…
*MJ’s dog is named Charles…that’s great…
*Jim Rome plays a jerk which is typecasting I guess…
*is it weird having an actress play his wife and actors play his kids? Or are those actually his kids?
*Patricia Heaton and Dan Castellaneta!
*the aliens stealing the talents of the NBA stars, which then means the Looney Tunes have to recruit MJ, because he’s retired, actually makes total sense…this movie is doing really well with having everything make sense…not sure how “Space Jam 2” did this but I can’t imagine it making this much sense…
*Bill Murray!
*and Larry Bird too!
*okay this golfing scene with MJ, Bird and Murray is pretty good, they show personalities and it’s really well done…I’d forgotten all this stuff…
*the Tunes have now recruited MJ and the plot kicks in…so now the rest of the movie is MJ acting with a green screen and not other people so let’s see how this goes…
*this cut away to Charles Barkley watching some girls playing basketball and the Barry White “ohhh yeahhh”-style sexy music coming on IS SO WEIRD!
*the NBA stars getting therapy is funny but again that music is weird…
*Lola Bunny shows up! Who had to be de-sexy-fied for the sequel…
*lots of girls in this, playing basketball…was the WNBA starting up soon?
*WNBA’s 1st game was on 6/21/97, so they had to be in the beginning phases when this movie was made…
*the little girl playing MJ’s daughter is adorable…
*A MIGHTY DUCKS JOKE! Holy crap! Daffy suggests the name the team “The Ducks” and Bugs replies that “What kind of Mickey Mouse organization would do that?” That’s awesome…
*apparently on some Disney affiliates when they show this, the Ducks line is edited out…really?
*according to IMDB, WB couldn’t agree on terms with Noel Blanc (Mel Blanc’s son) who would have done all the male toon’s voices, so they had other people do them…makes sense…it’s actually Billy West from “Futurama” doing Bugs’ voice
*apparently the Mighty Ducks line was supposed to be a dig at Disney, as the producers wanted a few Disney characters, like Mickey Mouse, to appear in cameos but Disney said no…WB figured Disney would allow it because of how they worked together on “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” but no…
*are they encouraging steroid use?
*a random “Pulp Fiction” reference…
*looking up Theresa Randle’s career, she was hot for awhile and just kind of disappeared for awhile, nothing on IMDB between 2010 and 2020 (where she returned for the “Bad Boys” sequel) and Wikipedia doesn’t help…interesting…
*the director apparently wanted Michael J. Fox to play Stan but the studio wanted Wayne Knight…really?
*Bill Murray was only supposed to be in the golf scene but asked to be in the big game…
*I take back the whole “shoe-horn his baseball stuff in” as that story made a ton of sense and was important to the plot and I had no idea this was made when MJ had returned to the NBA…
*overall really great! I was surprised the basketball game took up most of the movie, I thought they’d lose the first game and have a rematch or something but no…that dragged out but picked up when Murray showed up…the movie is great and I’m curious now to watch the Lebron James version even though I hear it was not nearly as good…
==============
The Birdwatcher 2015
*Canadian film about a single girl who finds out she is dying so she wants to find a family for her two kids, tries to track down her birth mother, and such…
*Camille Sullivan is great, should be in more stuff…
*also with great Canadian actors Gabrielle Rose, Garwin Sanford, Aidan Devine…
*very well done, nice happy-but-not-too-happy ending
Mangiacake 2015
*watching this just for Melanie Scrofano, to be honest
*apparently “mangiacake” means “a person who is not Italian”
*Scrofano’s character’s personality seems to be “yell, then yell some more…then yell louder!”
*two sisters, their mother and grandmother living in one house is what this seems to be about…
*Christina Cuffair, who plays Scrofano’s sister, co-wrote this…
*so these Scrofano and Cuffair characters…they are supposed to be adults, right?
*so…much…screaming…
*this guy…needs to run…RUN, DUDE RUN!
*Scrofano says Cuffair’s character is 29 years old…but then says “you’re not allowed to have boys over…”
*are we sure Scrofano’s character is the one with the concussion and not the other sister?
*these people…just so much happening…so many stereotypes…WHY IS THIS DUDE STILL HERE?
*I think the dude also has a concussion…otherwise I can’t really explain anything he does in this movie…
*it’s hard writing something like this for a low budget Canadian indie film that had to have been made with a lot of passion and such over the course of, I’m guessing, years…but this was a bad movie…only the charisma of Melanie Scrofano kept me from turning this off…and the sort of “watching a car wreck” type of feeling as well…
*this was released six years ago, so I doubt saying this will hurt anyone’s career, so yeah…bad…bad movie…
====================
Memory: The Origins of Alien 2019
*weird…this movie’s first five minutes is just weird stuff happening, then three old ladies waking up and having weird teeth…I had assumed they put the wrong movie in the VCR back at the home office, but then “Memory” came on screen…and some people start talking about “Alien” so…
*then some dude starts talking about a “schematics(?)” experiment with sand vibrating…I almost turned it off right there…it’s a movie, guys…
*I’ll give it a few more minutes…
*”a movie prop that lives in our dreams…” I liked the movie but it’s a movie…I am aware it’s a movie…
*Ben Mank!
*Mank drops some interesting stuff on us…
*then another dude says “we’re all one cough, one kiss…away from global disaster…” okay…good thing I don’t kiss…I do cough though…
*Mank comes back and talks about more movie influences…okay I’m back in…
*Roger Corman!
*once they get to the part where they talk about the process of developing the initial idea, then filming it, how Ridley Scott got involved, etc. then I’m enjoying this, I am a sucker for behind the scenes movie stuff, but unfortunately some stuff borders on pretentious nonsense…
*this was good but not great
Babes in Toyland 1986
*finally
*Drew Barrymore, Keanu Reeves, Eileen Brennan, Richard Mulligan, Pat Morita
*made for TV movie and while they build a big set it has a simple charm…the bear and bunny costumes are just, well, bear and bunny costumes…the cars they drive around in are just bumper cars and that has an appeal to it…
*this is such a “Wizard of Oz” ripoff that it’s funny…
*Richard Mulligan does his usual yelling a lot routine as the bad guy Barnaby…he has a long fingernail on his thumb, that’s what the kids refer to as a “coke nail” isn’t it?
*according to IMDB, there was a 90 minute version and a 140 minute version…this is the long version unfortunately…
*Pat Morita plays the Toymaster, but it’s basically him playing Santa…
at this point, Barrymore was 11 years old, loved going to nightclubs, had been smoking for two years, was dabbling in drinking on her way to lots of drugs…
*it comes down to Morita saying that Barrymore has grown up too fast and has to believe in Toyland for the good guys to win…really? That kinda comes out of nowhere to me…she seems to believe in Toyland just fine…
*this was two years after “The Karate Kid” for Morita, four years after “ET” for Barrymore, for Reeves he had 9 projects in 1986; “Youngblood” and “River’s Edge” being the biggest ones, and this was three years before “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure”…
*this was…fine? I guess…never watching it again…actually remember seeing the box at video stores, with Keanu Reeves on the cover and being like “WTF is this?” but never rented it, so now I guess that’s off my “to-do list” but never again…
================
Battle of the Sexes 2017
*again, but not since it came out
*I remember this being an awesome movie that I really enjoyed…
*an amazing cast…Emma Stone, Steve Carell, Sarah Silverman, Bill Pullman, Alan Cumming, Natalie Morales, Fred Armisen, Martha MacIsaac, Andrea Riseborough, Chris Parnell…
*Elisabeth Shue!
*just noticed that, an hour into a movie about tennis, this is the first time we are seeing people playing tennis…
*had forgotten that Bobby Riggs beat Margaret Court so easily
*I like the Bobby Riggs character, how he’s a nice guy as well as a showman…how he beat the rich guy while having two dogs on leashes saying “well, to be fair, it was 3 against 1…”
*apparently the Margaret Court character was even more homophobic in real life, she became an anti-gay activist and fought to suppress same sex marriage in Australia…so now I’m happy she lost to Riggs…
*I like how King’s husband Larry (whose name is Larry King, btw!) is a good guy and very supportive despite knowing she doesn’t love him the way he loves her…
*at one point, after watching Riggs beat Court on an airport TV, King storms out and over her is a big signs saying “Aloha!”…makes me think of the movie “Aloha” and wow was that terrible!
*this is kind of a story about pro wrestling and showmanship and how to promote a big event…
*so Riggs mentions that after the match with King, he could face Christine Everett for a million dollars…that needed a smidgen more explaining for me, so is she still playing for Bill Pullman? Not a big deal but it stood out to me…
*an important thing is that when doing interviews and such, it does seem that Billie Jean King is laughing and enjoying herself a bit, as opposed to grinding her teeth and getting upset…then going off and seriously training…
*Brie Larson at one point was going to play Billie Jean King but left the role…that would have been cool but Emma Stone is pretty perfect in the role…
*again, kinda confusing that Bille Jean’s husband is named “Larry King”…when they first mention his name I thought they meant THE Larry King…a small nitpick…
*funny seeing Natalie Morales on camera with Howard Cosell
*weird seeing John C. McGinley in such a small role…
*had forgotten how easily Billie Jean King had won the game yet it was still incredibly dramatic
*the end credits stuff fails to mention that Marilyn Barnett ended up being really sugarcoated in the movie and after they broke up, she outed Billie Jean King, sued her for palimony and it damaged King’s career…
*cool that King and Riggs were friends until he died in 1995
*great movie, shocked to look back and see it was a box office bomb and got zero Oscar nominations, although Stone and Carell did get Golden Globe nominations…still a great movie though…
Easy Money 1983
*Rodney Dangerfield’s 1st starring role after “Caddyshack”
*Jennifer Jason Leigh!!! I had no idea she was in this…
*Joe Pesci! Pesci and Leigh were in a movie together and it was this?
*Dangerfield’s wife, played by Candice Azzara, seems to be playing her role as if she’s in a 50’s sitcom, just smiling at everything like she’s Mary Tyler Moore in “The Dick Van Dyke Show”
*Jeffrey Jones = sex offender…
*Tom Noonan - according to IMDB, Bill Murray was supposed to play this role but dropped out…
*Leigh is marrying Taylor Negron?
*okay so 40 minutes in, the plot starts…Dangerfield’s rich mother in law dies and there is a clause in her will that he must be sober for a year and if so they inherit $10 million…
*so at one point, Dangerfield meets his new neighbour, a blonde who is sunbathing topless in the backyard, he looks at her and says “she’s not worth $10 million”…is he not allowed to have sex for a year? I heard he wasn’t allowed to drink, do drugs, smoke for a year and has to lose weight but not have sex?
*not really interested in the sub plot of Negron trying to break into Dangerfield’s house…
*did they actually say how much weight Dangerfield has to lose? 50 lbs? Cause you’d think he could come up with a diet where he could still eat some food he’d enjoy over the course of a year and hit his mark, without having to eat nothing but celery right away…
*not a great movie…Dangerfield has done some good stuff, like “Caddyshack” and “Back to School” but this isn’t good…the fact this takes place over a year hurts it, you lose track of time, are thinking about little dumb details like “so what month is it now?” should have had it more like 30 days or something…
===================
The Big Sleep 1946
*for the hundredth time
*doesn’t make sense but who cares?
*so much happens off screen, or is talked about but not seen about characters we never meet but who cares?
*all the times I’ve seen this, I actually never noticed the part where Marlowe is sitting at the counter and as he thinks of something, the waitress turns on the light overhead…
*Elisha Cook!
*an interesting experiment would be, like they did for “Mildred Pierce”, turn this into a mini series and by doing that, fill in some blanks and see if that does anything to make this more…I don’t know…anyone got $30 million or so to spare? I’d actually really love to do this with “Rio Bravo”…that movie begins already half way through the story…anyway, always fun to watch “The Big Sleep”…
====================
nothing (binging UK’s “Line of Duty” S1, S2)
====================
nothing (binging UK’s “Line of Duty” S2, S3)
====================
A Christmas Proposal 2021
*only watching this for Jessica Camacho, who played Gypsy in the Arrowverse
*of course this was filmed in Vancouver, in June 2021…a Christmas movie set in Seattle…at least it’s not Portland this time…
*once the plot kicks in, wow this dude is a jerk…she needs to run away…but won’t…
*okay this whole, “speed dating so everything is technically true” thing is good…
*Camacho looks different with blonde hair (in a great way) and I never noticed she has so many freckles! She is very charismatic and it’s very believable the dude’s family loves her right away…
*I’m muting or FFing through all scene without Camacho…just how it is…
*the sister is gay? In a Hallmark Christmas movie? Or, is this a Hallmark movie? I wrote about this before, but is “Hallmark Christmas movie” just a brand name like Kleenex?
*is it too much to hope that Camacho ends up with the sister?
*so things are going well, then her friend Brooklyn shows up and she’s going to ruin things, isn’t she?
*Jessica Camacho is great, Flash should have given her a bigger role and especially not just killed off screen but she has been on lots of other shows and been able to show her talents there so good for her…
*Flash has had a bad history with being accepting of their actors with smaller role wanting to explore other options (see Shantel VanSanten’s show exit, also Violett Beane too)
*this was good, despite the typical “big confrontation then we all hate each other but not really”…I also think it’s kind of funny how these shows are like “okay they kissed…we’re out!”
*better than I thought it would be, honestly…
==================
nothing (Line of Duty S3, S4, S5)
===================
*finished off Line of Duty S6
**this show should be remade in the US, at what better time in modern history could there be a cop show where Internal Affairs are the heroes?
A Godwink Christmas: Miracle of Love 2021
*only watching this for Katherine Barrell…
“Godwink: a new word for those little coincidences that aren’t coincidence, but come from divine origin. God winks are always signs of hope.”
*not sure about this one…seems religious-y which is fine but not for me…
*also noticed one of the producers is Kathie Lee Gifford so there’s that…
*I follow Kat Barrell on Instagram and I saw that she just filmed this like a month ago and saw the director had just a few weeks to edit this and get it on the air…
*Barrell is very joyful in this…her name is “Joy” so…her character is always smiling, cheery…
*another bit of trivia is that her son was born only a few weeks before filming, so this was her first project since becoming a mom, so congrats to her!
*this community service advent thing seems like a grift/scam, right?
*the scene in the nursery, with Barrell and the mother, is pretty sweet…
*okay so the town doctor is out of town and the weather is getting bad, so I figured he’d be snowed in and so Barrell (a nurse) would have to help deliver their friend’s baby…but no I was totally wrong…I usually have a pretty good guessing average with these…
*this is just okay…Kat Barrell is kind of wasted here even though it has a good message, I guess…
=================
Best of Private Screenings 2019
*for the dozenth time
*one of those shows that I always have to watch when it’s on…the interviews with James Garner, Jane Fonda, Debbie Reynolds, Walter Matthau & Jack Lemmon, Liza Minneli, Tony Curtis, Angela Lansbury are all ones I’d like to see the full versions of…
*always wonderful seeing the great Robert Osbourne on screen…
===================
Creem: America’s Only Rock n Roll Magazine 2019
*I only know about Creem due to “Almost Famous” and I think I remember watching it in the theatre thinking “Is that a real magazine?” Turns out it is!
*Ted Nugent is in this? Ew…
*Robert Crumb did cartoons for them and in exchange, they paid his doctor’s bills…neat detail..
*love docs where they say “so-and-so was a legend because he…” and then cut to that person saying “That’s BS, I never did that…”
*I was just thinking “when does Lester Bangs show up?” and there he is…
*Ben Fong-Torres!
*so they had offices in downtown Detroit, where the people who worked there were afraid to go, and moved it all to a farm where they all lived together, and they ended up hating each other, and then moved to a small town office…where was that season of “Real World”?
*kinda surprised they never mentioned “Almost Famous” as it would have been where a new generation (like me) heard about them, especially with Cameron Crowe involved in the project and that Lester Bangs was portrayed by Phillip Seymour Hoffman…
*anyway, sad how it ended but an interesting subject…also it seemed to me like one of those things where all those people seemed super cool or at least part of a cool movement, but in real life kinda seemed like assholes, but what do I know?
Engraved on a Nation: On the Line 2019
*again
*Canada vs. USA Women’s Hockey was cancelled due to COVID so they replayed this and it was still awesome…
Contact 1997
*for the dozenth time
*one of my favourites, great script that balances science, politics, religion…
*Robert Zemeckis doesn’t get enough credit as one of the best directors ever…”Back to the Future”, “Who Framed Roger Rabbit”, “Forrest Gump”, “Contact”, “Cast Away”…he’s had some stinkers too but so has Francis Ford Coppola…
==============
Last Action Hero 1993
*finally
*instead of a “review”, I’ll just point out all the cameos…
*Tina Turner!
*was that Noah Emmerich?
*Tom Noonan!
*Sir Laurence Olivier!
*Mercedes Ruehl!
*Anthony Quinn!
*Art Carney!?!
*Charles Dance!
*Sharon Stone!
*Robert Patrick!
*F. Murray Abraham!
*Danny DeVito’s voice!
*Bobbie Brown & Angie Everhart as the “video babes”
*the stuff with Stallone starring in T2…that was funny…
*Toru Tanaka!
*Bridgette Wilson!
*okay the kid is annoying…I’ll just say it…
*Humphrey Bogart!?!?!
*then not much happens for awhile…
*Little Richard!
*Maria Shriver!
*Jim Belushi!
*Chevy Chase!
*Damon Wayans!
*JCVD!
*MC Hammer!
*wow this movie is long…way way way too long…
*I get the meta-nuttiness of it all, but it’s just not funny…which is weird since Shane Black co-wrote it…
*Sir Ian McKellen!
*apparently I missed Melvin Van Peebles’ cameo…
*I never watched this back in the day cause I heard it sucked and here we are…well I’ve seen it now…moving on…
===============
She Freak 1967
*12/4/21 TCM Underground
*oh no…carnies!!!!
*so this was made with the cooperation of carnie people so the first ten minutes of this is basically a documentary…
*filmed in ten days(!) so it’s gotta be good!
*according to IMDB “the mummified body of Elmer J. McCurdy was used as a prop”…as a coincidence, I just watched the episode of “Drunk History” where Justin Long plays Elmer McCurdy so that’s funny…
*a bunch of montages late in this movie…moving the plot along is always welcome…
*so that movie…okay…I’ve seen that movie now…okay…
Mutations 1974
*12/4/21 TCM Underground
*Tom Baker is in this??? The 4th Dr. Who!!!
*and of course Donald Pleasance is too!
*this is also called “The Freakmaker” which I honestly think is a way better title…
*I like this time lapse over the opening credits…
*so I’m not really playing attention to this until Tom Baker shows up, I’m not going to lie…
*so there he is, I think, wearing Elephant Man makeup and the Dr. Who trench coat and hat! Just missing the scarf!
*more carnies!!! I’m guessing a theme here…
*Air Canada! Now you really have my attention, movie…
*wait so the guy getting off the plane is American, and the flight landed in London, right? Why Air Canada? They were able to cough up the most sponsorship money?
*Tom Baker’s 1st official Dr. Who episode aired on 12/28/74; he “regenerated” on the last episode of John Pertwee’s run on 6/8/74; this movie was released 9/25/74
*some freaky stuff here…this was “inspired” by “Freaks” so that makes sense…
*and…then it becomes a basic horror movie…nice to see Tom Baker although really I didn’t get to…never seeing this again…
Christmas at Castlebury Hall 2011
*only watching this for Katie McGrath…
*apparently also called “A Princess for Christmas”…
*her family are dicks, it seems…
*apparently these kids are her niece and nephew, and their parents died last Christmas…
*they have direct flights from Buffalo to Castlebury? That will probably turn out to be the most unbelievable thing about this movie…
*filmed in Romania…
*Roger Moore!
*so basically Moore is the Grinch and the kids are going to help make his heart grow while Katie falls in love with the prince-dude…
*it’s getting better now 45 minutes in since we’ve got to know the characters…the head maid crying was a nice twist…
*wow Roger Moore defrosted way quicker than I thought he would…and I like it!
*so the Prince guy is Sam Heughan, the guy from “Outlander”?
*Katie dancing!!!
*Moore dancing with his little grand daughter is so cute!
*seem headed towards a happy ending but there’s like half an hour left so…maybe not?
*I was wrong, it’s a happy ending right on schedule which is great!
*Katie McGrath smiling and being happy makes me happy, so this is a great happy ending! For me and the movie!
*so Katie is Snow White or is it Cinderella? This castle has four servants who find her a dress…they couldn’t afford three more to make is seven servants? Or do they represent the mice who made Cinderella’s dress? There’s no glass slipper, and at one point they make sure to have Katie holding an apple, so…
*there was, at first, a running gag where Katie would slip on the floor but she only did it twice…isn’t there a rule of three’s with all jokes?
*starts slow but ends up being really good!
The Apartment 1960
*again for the dozenth time
*one of those movies that I didn’t “get” the first time I watched it, having heard it was an all time classic, but the more times I’ve watched it (including at the TCM Film Festival one year at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, I think) the more I love it…
===============
Silent Night, Deadly Night 1984
*12/11/21 TCM Underground
*Santa Claus as an axe-murderer…
*well…that happened…
Santa Claus 1959
*12/11/21 TCM Underground
*Santa gets help from Merlin, of all people, in his fight against THE DEVIL!
*apparently this is an age old fight that has gone on for centuries…every year Santa defeats Pitch, who is a representative of Satan, but this year is particularly important for some reason…
*Santa’s workshop is looking very sci-fi here…with his “cosmic telescope”
*Santa has a screen with giant lips sticking out as it talks…there was a panel in a comic book, I’m pretty sure it was from Justice League International, that I’ll always remember and I wonder if that was inspired by this movie…
*so forget “Metropolis”…if I ever made a movie, I’d want the production design to look like this movie…I’m only kind of kidding…
*I’m pretty sure I’ve seen this at some point before…interesting to watch this weirdo version of Santa Claus, with a sci-fi slant yet including a character like Merlin…was the writer on drugs? If I had to guess, I’d say absolutely…
*fun for what it was…
Buttons 2018
*I recorded this just to see Dick Van Dyke and Angela Landsbury, but this has quite the cast…
w/Ioan Gruffudd, Abigail Spencer, John de Lancie (“Q”), Robert Picardo, Roma Downey, Jane Seymour
*oh and KATIE MCGRATH is in this???
*and Kate Winslet and Robert Redford BOTH narrate this? Two narrators?
*apparently this was in theatres for one night(!) and then released on streaming…
*reading about this on IMDB, it has some scathing reviews…one person pointed out there are no credited screenwriters…was this an Alan Smithee situation?
*I barely noticed, but in the opening credits, it says “Tim Janis…Buttons…” which at first I guess I assumed this was a book adaptation and Tim Janis wrote the book but Tim Janis is really the director of the movie…so of all the stars in this, HE gets top billing…wow…
*Ioan Gruffudd starts singing and it may be him singing but it looked like he was lip syncing…unless he really is an opera singer…
*Dick Van Dyke starts singing and it seems like they are going for an “Annie” vibe…
*35 minutes in and Katie McGrath shows up!
*so again Kate Winslet and Robert Redford are credited as “narrators” but it’s actually Angela Lansbury who is the narrator…
*one reviewer on IMDB: “Why is this called “Buttons”? There are no buttons in the movie?”
*Charles Shaughnessy is in this, as Jane Seymour’s husband but does he have any lines? If he does I missed it…
*so I guess we get a happy ending…technically…
*did Kate Winslet really just provide four lines at the beginning of the movie, that were said over the opening credits? Was she getting paid by the word?
**later edit: according to IMDB, part of this movie’s sales were donated to Kate Winslet’s charity, “The Golden Hat Foundation”…
*did Robert Redford really just provide a few lines at the beginning and the end and that’s it? And did he only give them one take?
*so at the end of the movie I see that director Tim Janis and Elizabeth Demmer are the credited screenwriters, and Demmer is the producer, then it lists “Sponsors”…what does that mean? A movie has sponsors? Is that like when people donate to Kickstarter?
*Tim Janis is also credited as the Director of Photography Unit #1…there were 7 Units…that seems like a lot of Units…
*Tim Janis also composed the music…
*Sir Paul McCartney contributed a song called “Nova”…
*Tim Janis is also credited as on of the Art Directors and for the “Set Design and Construction”
*there is a very long list of just people’s names, maybe this was on Kickstarter?
*I looked up Tim Janis…he’s mostly done composing but not for anything major…the biggest projects he’s worked on have been “Reindeer Games” and “Pride & Prejudice & Zombies”…
*there has to be some kind of explanation for all this…either Tim Janis is the greatest guy ever and has tons of friends in Hollywood who just wanted to help him make a movie or…something…
*I hate it when people dismiss movies and say “that was crap” when I have to give Tim Janis credit…dude went for it! A period piece with a huge ensemble cast that is also a musical? Give him credit for that…and it was cool seeing Van Dyke and Lansbury, and of course Katie McGrath, but this movie just isn’t that good…
*the only thing notable about it is that it brings up more questions than answers…this would be a perfect subject for the podcast “How Did This Get Made?”
====================
Under the Christmas Tree 2021
*saw stuff about this on IG and watching this for Elise Bauman from “Carmilla”
*apparently this is the “gayest Christmas movie ever” so that’s cool…
*w/Wendy Crewson, Ricky Lake and ENRICO COLANTONI I actually didn’t know he was in this…
*Bauman and Colantoni play daughter and father again, after 1st doing it in “Carmilla”
*okay 30 minutes in and I’m loving this movie…the characters are all great…there was some initial tension between Elise Bauman’s character and Wendy Crewson but turns out they are daughter-mother so that’s okay…that’s allowed…
*I love anything that takes place in a small town where whether or not someone is gay or straight doesn’t matter (like Schitt’s Creek, for example)…
*Bauman and her romantic co-star, Tattiawna Jones, have great chemistry so I in all their scenes I am like “just kiss already”…
*little things I love like the goth girl and the grandma teaming up to make a ginger bread house…fun…
*although the teams are chosen at random, but they seem to have a plan…Elise and Charlie (Tattiawna’s character, my spell check keeps screwing up her name so I’ll just call her Charlie from now on) work well together cause Elise has a plan and Charlie is there to help, but what about the other team?
*the other team made a gingerbread house inspired by “The Nightmare Before Christmas” while Elise and Charlie made on inspired by “It’s a Wonderful Life” and if I had to guess I would have thought those would have been flipped, with the main character going for something weird and the other team going for more traditional but no…and it worked cause being traditional meant Elise and Charlie won!
*Charlie starts playing the piano, Enrico walks in and looks sad…OH NO what’s going to happen? Why do I feel so tense? Things are going so well…
*they start playing together and it’s beautiful…WHY AM I CRYING?
*the girls didn’t kiss after looking at the tree?
*Enrico and Wendy Crewson are tremendous together…
*the girls kiss but then go back to normal like they didn’t kiss…
*just gonna watch the rest and enjoy…
*that envelope…it will be trouble…
*the girls exploring the tree…that’s great stuff…
*anyway, bad stuff happens, but it all works itself out and I WANT A SEQUEL!
*I’ve been watching a lot of Christmas movies lately and this is probably my favourite! A great showcase for Elise Bauman to show off all her talents for comedy and drama…great stuff!
A Christmas Letter 2021
*just caught this on CBC, missed the first few minutes…
*with an all-star Canadian cast of ENRICO COLANTANI again (this time his character is in a wheelchair), Colin Mochrie, Roger Cross, Sean Cullen, Boomer Phillips
*the only two in the cast I don’t really know are the leads, David Lipper and Glenda Braganza…
*apparently Lipper wrote the movie…
*kinda funny in that it takes place in Michigan, and they make a trip over the border to Canada and along the way there is ZERO snow…I had to think twice and wonder “okay is this really a Christmas movie?” Granted they usually film these in the summer but they try to make it snowey with fake snow and/or using stock footage but no…
*Is this about climate change? Is that why there is no snow? Is this set in the not-so-distant dystopian future?
*Mochrie plays Santa and he’s great of course…
*Enrico isn’t given much to do, as there are about a dozen main characters…
*an old school Canadian Penny makes a cameo…
*a fun, nice little movie, and I appreciate the Canadian shout-out…all these movies are filmed in Canada but are rarely set there…probably won’t ever watch this again, though…
Christmas by Starlight 2020
*I mentioned this before, a Christmas movie with Kimberley Sustad and Paul Campbell
*we’re ten minutes in and I already like Sustad’s character a lot…she helps people with adoptions so that’s cool…her parents run a small town cafe that is going to be torn down…
*Campbell has an office in a skyscraper looking over Winnipeg, at one point he points out the window and says “Chicago…” and I’m like “That looks like Winnipeg…”
*this was indeed filmed in Winnipeg in fall 2020, so it was an early production coming back after the COVID shut down
*okay so Campbell is a business man who holds the fate of her parent’s cafe in his hands, he hires her due to wackiness and he promises that if she helps him, he will save the cafe…she is a lawyer yet never get Campbell to sign a piece of paper assuring that he will save the cafe…seems naive…
*Sustad and Campbell came up with the story for this movie and Campbell wrote the screenplay so that’s cool…
*okay I’m way off here…Sustad and Campbell made two movies together back to back and this was the second…the 1st was “Wedding Every Weekend” that was filmed July 2020 in Vancouver, which wasn’t a Christmas movie…
*Sustad and Capbell ALSO starred in “A Godwink Christmas” in 2015…how many “Godwink” movies are there?
*there is a male gay couple in this Christmas movie? This came out in 2020 so this shouldn’t be shocking right?
*about an hour in, the Campbell character “defrosts” and becomes a person and it’s great!
*Campbell almost becomes the sympathetic character, as he wants to be in Sustad’s life but she keeps giving him crap as she doesn’t believe him at first…
*okay so her parents are aware that Campbell is the guy who owns their building right? I’m pretty sure they do and the fact they are still nice to him is great…normally in one of these movies he’d be “undercover” and it would all come out later in a big reveal…
*Lyle is pretty great!
*the happy ending is very much welcome here, although it seems sad that Sustad is cheating on Brandon Routh but by that logic Campbell is cheating on Chyler Leigh which is completely unacceptable so let’s just not think in those terms…someone might get hurt!
*great stuff…the fact he found an exact key for her snow globe that she’s had since she was a kid is a stretch…I figured he would find the key when they were cleaning out the book store or something but it’s a cute moment so who cares if it makes sense?
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A Godwink Christmas 2018
*finishing off the Kimberley Sustad, Paul Campbell series with the 1st one (I think) they starred in together, which is also (I think) the 1st Godwink movie…
*my (very little) research says there have been four Godwink movies, this was the 1st and there have been four movies in the last four years…
*w/Katie Lee Gifford co-starring
*filmed in Vancouver, in August 2018
*so about a half hour in, Sustad’s character meets Campbell’s character when she is looking at a poster and he explains it to her…I guess that’s the “godwink” that brought them together?
*they are both very subdued, the whole movie is very low key compared to the others…doesn’t seem like there are very high stakes here…
*she’s engaged to a guy but doesn’t love him; Campbell is on Martha’s Vineyard, happy with where his life is but not totally satisfied I guess…
*so they get close and keep saying goodbye but then something happens and they get to spend more time together…
*by the third (or is it fourth?) time they are about to be split, they don’t say anything, she hugs him and then just leaves and he looks devastated…an hour in and they are in love but we have an hour to go…
*she leaves and spends time with her aunt Katie Lee Gifford who explains what Godwinks are…
*stuff happens…I do like this sort of “low stakes” method of filmmaking…she could marry the fancy dude and be happy but she knows it just doesn’t feel right and she breaks up with him and not because she finds out she cheated on him or anything, she just knows it’s wrong…much like life, I guess…
*Campbell finds Sustad, says “hey I love you…” and she says “I can’t I’m engaged…” and it’s like…”no you’re not!” and he leaves…lame…just dragging it out here, people…I mean, THE ANTIQUES SHOP IS FOR SALE! C’mon!
*a funny bit by Gifford, actually…Sustad returns, reunited with Gifford at the airport and they have to immediately head out on another plane to Martha’s Vineyard, Sustad has no idea this is happening, Gifford just hijacks her and grabs her suitcase and walks off and as she does, Gifford says “Let’s go before you change your mind…” and Sustad is baffled but goes along with it, never having a chance to decide anything…fuuny stuff!
*something I thought of…if Gibbons has been going to Martha’s Vineyard for years at this point, how come she never brought Sustad with her before…and how did Gibbons never meet Campbell before? Not important but whatever…
*pretty great movie, a definite change of pace…the chemistry of the stars for sure made a difference…
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Christmas in Connecticut 1945
*again, probably…
*one of those movies with lots of lying but in a funny, charming way…
*Barbara Stanwyck, Sydney Greenstreet, S.Z. Sakall, Una O’Connor (from “The Adventures of Robin Hood”), Frank Jenks, Dennis Morgan…
*one of those movies where the main characters are forced to do something and they could end it with one sentence but are backed into a corner in a believable way where you actually understand…Stanwyck, if she comes clean to Greenstreet, it will not only cost herself a job but her editor too, who has a family…
*I love it when, after getting home after spending the night in jail, and when the madness can get a mother arrested, Stanwyck just says “screw it” and confesses but then has to spend ten minutes explaining everything to Greenstreet as he doesn’t believe her
*great stuff, should watch this every year…
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Holiday Affair 1949
*again for the dozenth time
*a holiday favourite with an oddly (but welcome here) cast Robert Mitchum!
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Remember the Night 1940
*not really a Christmas movie, I guess…more of an overall holiday movie
*not as good as the other old Christmas movies I’ve watched lately…still good though…
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Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer 1947
*for the dozenth time
*will always love this and “Vivacious Lady” as two of the first ever movies I watched on TCM and got me hooked…always love telling that story too!
Midnight Run 1988
*again
*one of those movies I don’t “get” but keep watching it in case one day, I do…
*I get it this time, it’s a great movie…happy?
*what’s with the scene on the train where Robert DeNiro is just sitting there, not moving his lips, and there is terrible ADR that sounds nothing like DeNiro…just terrible
*but seriously, wtf with the smoking? Every scene has someone smoking, that had to be a specific choice by the director…DeNiro always has a smoke in his mouth, as bad as in “Casino” or probably worse…maybe I shouldn’t care but I do…it’s really annoying frankly and I’ll most likely never watch this again…it’s gross…
The Fan 1996
*I hate this already, with Wesley Snipes calling in to Ellen Barkin’s radio show they have loud music playing in the background, so we can’t hear the dialogue plus the every 3 second jump cuts
*Ellen Barkin has a cigarette in her hand the whole scene but never takes a drag…just to have the smoke flowing cause “it looks cool” I guess…
*same with John Leguizamo in the next scene, never takes a drag, just has the smoke in his hand “for reasons”…
*Jack Black…for three seconds!
*Kurt Fuller!
*wow this sucks…the extreme closeups, the crazy lighting, the extreme emotions…
*Benicio del Toro is in this?
*I’ve stopped caring, this is lame…
*when Snipes dives into the water, then comes up for air it’s clearly not Snipes…did they think we couldn’t tell two black people apart? F*ck off…
*when the kid pulls out the knife and looks at DeNiro…that’s cool…
*so late in the movie, Snipes goes to the mound and threatens the pitcher with his bat…that’s totally legal, right? Nothing wrong with that…
*wow they are really dragging out this last at-bat…
*DeNiro stabs Snipes in the arm, he’s bleeding everywhere but does that affect Snipes? Of course not, he’s fine…
*I kinda doubt the FBI would let Snipes lead the charge into the building to find his son but whatever…
*I kinda grew up on Tony Scott’s movies, kinda…as a kid I loved “Beverly Hills Cop II”, “Days of Thunder” and later “True Romance”…later I appreciated “The Hunger” and “Crimson Tide”, even “Top Gun” but that being said, his style actually mostly annoys me…I think his version of “The Taking go Pelham 123” is the best example…all style, too many closeups, Travolta and Denzel yelling instead of talking…it seemed later he just focused on the style rather than any kind of substance
*to be fair, I have never seen “Domino” and people say it’s great…maybe one day…
*garbage…what a horrible movie
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Meet John Doe 1941
*again
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Ocean’s Eleven 1960
*for the hundredth time!
*always love this, especially the ending, where this movie is definitely superior to the remake…won’t spoil it in case you haven’t seen it!
Happy New Year!
Happy 2022!