Rate the Last Movie You Saw

[Raindog]

Star Wars - Just Star Wars, I am old enough, it is just Star Wars. I love this movie. I say the line before they happen. I wish I could watch the original version, again, but, I cannot complain. The updated version's CGI updates are dated, but who cares.

 

El Dorado. - Yes, the  John Wayne movies Rio Bravo and El Dorado are the same plot. This one has Ed Anser, James Caan, and Robert Mitchum. I watched it on A Prime, so you can read all of the goofs..... But still, it is comfort food.

 

Silverado. This in my top 5 Westerns of all time. It is a smarter version of the El Dorado, Rio Bravo trope with a great cast: Scott Glenn, Brian Dennehy, Linda Hunt, Danny Glover, Kevin Costner, Jeff Goldblum, and Kevin Kline. 

 

Few Dollars More. One of the last Spagheti Westerns, Lee Van Cleef and Clint Eastwood are a fine team of bounty killers hunting down a gang of killers. The recycles actors from other Man with No Name movies. I PREFER IT TO A fist Full of Dollars. 

 

 

[Brick Bungalow]

Knock, knock. 

Honestly, don't bother. Third rate thriller from mediocre director Eli Roth. Half credit for ditching the gore porn format and exploring a new theme but that's about it. None of the performances are remotely believable. Totally mis cast. None of the twists are remotely surprising. The 'money' lines get delivered in such phone in repetition that they lose all meaning. If you really need to see Keanus Reeves butt I guess give it a spin. But blecch. 

[WestRider]

7 hours ago, Brick Bungalow said:

Knock, knock. 

Honestly, don't bother. Third rate thriller from mediocre director Eli Roth. Half credit for ditching the gore porn format and exploring a new theme but that's about it. None of the performances are remotely believable. Totally mis cast. None of the twists are remotely surprising. The 'money' lines get delivered in such phone in repetition that they lose all meaning. If you really need to see Keanus Reeves butt I guess give it a spin. But blecch. 

That's unfortunate. I was interested in it, but I didn't know it was an Eli Roth flick.

Lake Placid 2: Strictly a downgrade from the original. Betty White's presence is sorely missed.

Lake Placid 3: One of the things I really hate is horror movies where a bunch of people get killed because they do something that the film considers really stupid, but then there's a kid  who is seriously too dumb to live, and he survives. See also: Jack Frost. Yancy Butler and a number of the secondary characters make this one worthwhile anyhow, tho.

[Munkie]

12 hours ago, Brick Bungalow said:

If you really need to see Keanus Reeves butt I guess give it a spin. But blecch. 

Or Ana De Armas' boobs! 

Goes sharply downhill after the threesome scene and all the related boobs and butts disappear.

[Brick Bungalow]

22 hours ago, WestRider said:

That's unfortunate. I was interested in it, but I didn't know it was an Eli Roth flick.

Lake Placid 2: Strictly a downgrade from the original. Betty White's presence is sorely missed.

Lake Placid 3: One of the things I really hate is horror movies where a bunch of people get killed because they do something that the film considers really stupid, but then there's a kid  who is seriously too dumb to live, and he survives. See also: Jack Frost. Yancy Butler and a number of the secondary characters make this one worthwhile anyhow, tho.

Yeah. That's actually the worst aspect of this movie... the ostensible 'message'. Which, I think, would be something like 'no matter how good a guy is women will find a way to demonize and torture him for no reason'. I suspect it's very popular in certain, ahem, internet communities. All that said, there are movies I like with no redeeming moral value so I can't high horse about it. If you dig Roths stuff in general you may get something out of it that I didn't. Sometimes I miss the point. 

[Munkie]

7 hours ago, Brick Bungalow said:

Yeah. That's actually the worst aspect of this movie... the ostensible 'message'. Which, I think, would be something like 'no matter how good a guy is women will find a way to demonize and torture him for no reason'. I suspect it's very popular in certain, ahem, internet communities. All that said, there are movies I like with no redeeming moral value so I can't high horse about it. If you dig Roths stuff in general you may get something out of it that I didn't. Sometimes I miss the point. 

I would say the message was supposed to be one of fidelity. "If you give into lustful temptation, you will bring ruin to the home and family you built".

Not saying the message was delivered effectively, but I think that was the point he was trying to make.

After they do the dirty deed, the girls go around and defile the symbols that would suggest this is a loving and stable household. After all, how meaningful are all the symbols of love if that love can be be so easily betrayed just because a brace of rain-soaked hotties show up at your door? His faithfulness lasted all of one laundry cycle.

Since the girls are the villains, it's easy to see women as villainized in its messaging, but I think they were more representative of the chaos that ensues when a married man lusts after women. 

They're the villains for him, but he's the villain of his family.

[Ish]

I’d say if your looking for a moral lesson in an Eli Roth flick, you’ve already lost.

[InfestedKerrigan]

7 hours ago, Ish said:

I’d say if your looking for a moral lesson in an Eli Roth flick, you’ve already lost.

QFT

Smashed nazis with vote today

smash nazis with bat...tomorrow? Wait . . .

[WestRider]

19 hours ago, Brick Bungalow said:

If you dig Roths stuff in general you may get something out of it that I didn't.

Quite the opposite. I generally find Roth's films nihilistic and depressing. Not what I look for in my entertainment.

Lake Placid: The Final Chapter. A turn back up for the series. Yancy Butler delivers again, and Elisabeth Röhm is always solid. Lots of other good supporting character work as well. And at least the TDTL character is a teen doing stupid teen things this time. Also, after the first, the series took a lot of flack for the crappy CGI, and yeah, it is pretty bad, but I do like that they really started showing off how powerful the mutant crocs are supposed to be, with them hauling cars around and stuff.

Lake Placid: Legacy. Misleading title, as it's actually a prequel, revealing the origins of the mutant crocs. Surprisingly fun, tho, with a mostly solid cast including a couple of quite good apparent unknowns as well as Tim Rozon and Kat Barrell from Wynonna Earp.

[Brick Bungalow]

14 hours ago, Munkie said:

I would say the message was supposed to be one of fidelity. "If you give into lustful temptation, you will bring ruin to the home and family you built".

Not saying the message was delivered effectively, but I think that was the point he was trying to make.

After they do the dirty deed, the girls go around and defile the symbols that would suggest this is a loving and stable household. After all, how meaningful are all the symbols of love if that love can be be so easily betrayed just because a brace of rain-soaked hotties show up at your door? His faithfulness lasted all of one laundry cycle.

Since the girls are the villains, it's easy to see women as villainized in its messaging, but I think they were more representative of the chaos that ensues when a married man lusts after women. 

They're the villains for him, but he's the villain of his family.

Man, that's even worse. You've managed, somehow, to make me like this movie even less. 

[Brick Bungalow]

Dark Star

Probably tied with They Live for the strangest of the John Carpenter projects. This movie lampoons the sci fi genre hilariously even before most of the familiar entries existed. 

I re watch periodically out of nostalgia. Really clever if you appreciate a combination of subtle references and low slapstick. 

[WestRider]

Alien Implant. One of the worst movies I've ever seen. I only stuck through to the end out of a sort of horrified trainwreck fascination. Looking it up afterward, I was surprised to learn that it's the 12th(!) film by this director, and actually, I was pretty surprised to find that it was made in the US, since the dialogue came across like it was both written and performed by people who only had a vague knowledge of English.

Lake Placid vs. Anaconda: They finally acknowledged that Yancy Butler is the real star of the series and gave her the central role! Very fun capstone to both series, cheesy as hell but it doesn't matter. It does feature the phrase "snake extraction" enough that it got stuck in my head, tho 😉

[Ish]

The Queen's Gambit was a miniseries and not a movie, but the story is self-contained and there aren't any sequel hooks or follow-up seasons, so this feels like the more appropriate thread.

Anya Taylor-Joy stars as Beth Harmon, an orphaned girl with a troubled past who learns to play chess at a young age and is quickly established as a chess prodigy.  Set in the 1950's and 1960's, the story follow's Harmon as she works to become the world's champion chess player while struggling with emotional issues, drug abuse, and alcohol dependency.

It's sort of Searching for Bobby Fischer by way of Mad Men with a healthy bit of Postcards from the Edge thrown in.

I first saw Taylor-Joy last month in The New Mutants, where I liked her performance well enough but hardly considered her a standout. However, after seeing her work in The Queen's Gambit, where she displays an absolute mastery of the extremely important (and way too often unseen) ability to convey emotions and inner thought, often quiet complex ones, without actually doing anything more than the slightest shift in her posture or the smallest movements of her eyes... If she can find more projects of this quality in her future, she's going to be the next Meryl Streep or Katherine Hepburn. 

[Raindog]

From Russia With Love

My favorite of the early James Bond films. The movie still holds up. BTW, Grant, the Spectre Assassin, is Robert Shaw, the boat captain in Jaws. 

[Raindog]

Thunderball: I know this is some people's favorite James Bond film, but the movie has problems. The opening fight scene against the French Assassin who faked his death is odd. It is not funny or ironic, it is just awkward. The Tom Jones theme song is awful and mockable. The initial intrigue at the spa is not paced right and forcing kissing on the woman and blackmailing her for sex isn't cool. Winning her over with his sexual prowess seems a dated fantasy from the sixtes and seventies. Later 2/3 of the movie is so much better and saves the movie. You have the man-eating pet sharks, the scuba fights, and great scenes with classic characters. 

Overall, the movie is watchable, but is no Dr. No or from Russia With Love. 

[InfestedKerrigan]

Colossus 7.5/10

70s scifi based on 60s scifi novel.   Super computer is created to end wars.  Shenanigans ensue.

Webcams feature heavily.  Plenty of dated things, but still an enjoyable movie.

 

[Raindog]

The Man With the Golden Gun.  

Another James Bond movie, but this time a Roger Moore's  007 film. It is Moore's second.

This is weird film. Christopher Lee is the villian. Moore's Bond is smarter and subtler than Connery's. The story is fine, but everything is so dated. The special effects are cheap in places. Lee's shooting gallery hunting ground is a bad disco mashed with a clumsy western carnival. Lee oddly lacks gravitas. Britt Ekland's character, Mary Goodnight is Bond's assistant from the books. Goodnight is stupid and probably the worst agent in MI6. Maud Adams is Lee's lover, but she is also Octopussy and has a cameo in A View to a Kill. And having Sheriff J.W. Pepper replay his roll from Live and Let Die is just weird since Pepper is vacationing in Thailand.

It is not in my top ten bond films......

 

[Ish]

Terminator: Dark Fate popped up on my Amazon Prime list... With nothing better to do, I decided to give it a shot. It was good, not great, but after the last several Terminator sequels all this one had to do was be not terrible.

It’s basically a re-hash of Judgement Day, in much the same way that The Force Awakens was a re-tread of the same story beats of A New Hope. It was good, but I don’t think it’s going ever get a repeat viewing from me.

The original film is a classic example of how a film maker can make a small twist to an old formula – its basically a slasher-horror movie where the implacable supernatural killer is a robot – to make something greater than the sum of its parts. The first sequel is usually remembered as a marvel of special effects, but I think what made it really work was letting us see how the damsel-in-distress grew into a grizzled badass. Another innovative twist on an old formula. 

Terminator: Dark Fate is better than the other post-Judgment Day sequels, but falls short of being as good as the first two.

If you haven’t seen it, I’d say give it a watch... But I don’t feel like you necessarily need to go out of your way to see it. 

2.5 outta 5.

 

[Munkie]

23 hours ago, Ish said:

Terminator: Dark Fate[...]

The original film is a classic example of how a film maker can make a small twist to an old formula – its basically a slasher-horror movie where the implacable supernatural killer is a robot – to make something greater than the sum of its parts. The first sequel is usually remembered as a marvel of special effects, but I think what made it really work was letting us see how the damsel-in-distress grew into a grizzled badass. Another innovative twist on an old formula. 

The other problem with successive sequels is the diminishing returns of revisiting the same essential time paradox: killing the Connor lineage to win the future war or destroy Skynet to prevent the future war.

With each sequel you further illustrate the point that it does not matter what the characters do. Either they are stuck in a paradoxical loop forever or there multiple realities being visited. In either case, you win some you lose some, but the circle keeps going around.

I haven't gotten around to Dark Fate yet but I probably will. The only one I liked since Judgement Day was Salvation. But mostly because Christian Bale does a good job (and it spawned his famous rant!), and it's more an exploration of the post-apoc world than a paradoxical loop.

[Ish]

Spoiler Warning

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One of the reasons that Dark Fate rose above the other sequels was that it does deal with the predestination paradox of the kill/save John Connor plot. Namely, the time travelers come from a different timeline than the Skynet one. The terminator isn’t looking for the Connors and the time-traveling protector doesn’t know who the hell Sarah Connor is or what Skynet is.

Yeah, it’s a little far-fetched; But if you’re already to buy in to the notion of time traveling robot assassins, then it’s not too much of an ask to imagine that there’s multiple possible [big bad swear word]ty futures where different killer AI’s invent time traveling robot assassins.

[InfestedKerrigan]

Ish, we had spoiler tags. Dunno how to trigger them in latest update.

[Ish]

I don’t think anyone is going to be too put out by having the plot of a Terminator flick spoilt. We’re not exactly talking Hitchcockian suspense thriller here.

[Blustorm]

5 hours ago, Ish said:

I don’t think anyone is going to be too put out by having the plot of a Terminator flick spoilt. We’re not exactly talking Hitchcockian suspense thriller here.

Actual overheard conversation -

"It's like that part in the Hobbit, where the dragon flies over the town, breathing fire on everyone!"

"Please don't ruin it for me; I haven't seen the movie yet.."

[Ish]

About fifteen years ago, I was the manager of a Blockbuster Video. Someone once yelled at me because they didn’t like that their roommate had spoiled the ending of Passion of the Christ.

 

[Romans832]

1 hour ago, Ish said:

About fifteen years ago, I was the manager of a Blockbuster Video. Someone once yelled at me because they didn’t like that their roommate had spoiled the ending of Passion of the Christ.

Surprise?