Amph What was the last movie you saw? (Ver. 2)

Salt (2010)

My dad and I used to roast this movie every time we watched it--- and we watched it a lot so there was plenty of roasting. That said, behind my criticism was love and that love still holds up. Ms. Jolie has been an actress whose work I have enjoyed as she always seems so natural in everything I have seen her in. There are some actors/actresses that are so obviously acting that it becomes harder for me to relate to whatever emotions they are trying to sell. Now, I don't think that makes them bad actors, and I would not say that Jolie is the best actress alive, but those highly technical/auteur-ish performances can fizzle, even if they are considered "masterclasses" by critics and audiences.

The movie was corny in all of the right ways with the ending fight scene between her character and another character made more hilarious by the fact that the movie suddenly remembers that Jolie is quite slender. The film treats her character almost like she's a superhuman, anyway, so her one-punching people much larger than her wasn't that surprising, but dad and I definitely roasted this aspect of it back in the day. One thing I do appreciate now is the lack of 'She-Fu' acrobatics (the legs around the neck, the overreliance on kicking, camera shots focusing on her breasts, butt, etc.).

There's a possible sequel hook at the end, but reportedly Jolie declined the script that was sent her way.

 

One Night in Miami... Sam Cooke v. Malcolm X, the "bourgeois negroes" up against more radical sentiment. Other than the beginning and the ending, the whole thing takes place in and around a *****y hotel room. In addition to Cooke and Malcolm, then-Cassius Clay and Jim Brown are also present. The four men are at a crossroads in their lives-- Malcolm preparing to leave the Nation of Islam, Clay converting to Islam, Brown planning for his post-NFL career, Cooke realizing that he can't ignore the plight of African-Americans when it comes to his music. I can't say the film offered me any more insight into the real people-- except Jim Brown, about whom I knew little-- but it's well-acted, well-directed, moving, and my favorite so far of this weird, weird period in cinema.

 

Tropic Thunder

How have I never seen this before yesterday?

 

It's OK, man, even the worst of us can work our way back from full retard.

 

Conan The Barbarian (1982) Classic, violent John Milius pulp loosely based on Robert E. Howard’s character. Thulsa Doom is a creepy villain made all more potent by James Earl Jones’ movie stealing perf.

 

Thulsa Doom is such a striking character that ever since my first viewing back in college I’ve had a bad habit of trying to finagle “Crucify him” into conversations and, because I don’t routinely dress up as Pontius Pilate, it never really works.

 

Thulsa Doom is one of my favorite villains. So well spoken, but it’s that forked tongue.

 

I still think Vin Diesel would've been a great Conan .. maybe too late now.

 

Predator

Poncho: "You're hit, man. You're bleedin'."

Blain: "I ain't got time to bleed."

Still one of the best and glorious action movies of the 80's with a diverse cast of actors trying to out chew the scenery together and a terrifying and competent villain in the form of the Predator (competent villains being something that's harder to find in action movies these days). Definitely stick around and watch this glorious bastard of an action movie over that 2018 abomination.

 

Dude, the Hampton House was one of the few places black guests could stay in segregated Miami. It is the last one left standing today and is a historical landmark.

 

Also has one of the great movie scores from Basil Poledouris.

 

"The Beast Must Die", via Svengoolie. A well-made horror/mystery from Amicus in 1974. A driven, self-made millionaire (Calvin Lockhart) gathers a group of guests at his estate, then announces that he knows one of them is a werewolf. The full moon period is about to start, so he's going to wait and hunt down the lycanthrope. Builds up a nice atmosphere of suspense, with some good plot twists. Lockhart does very well as Newcliffe the host, with Peter Cushing providing the werewolf exposition, and familiar actors Charles Gray, Michael Gambon and Anton Diffring among the suspects. The budget didn't allow for a truly fearsome werewolf, and the estate's security controls were clearly borrowed from SHADO. But I really like 70's big band score (including wacka-chika guitars) and the Castle-esque "Werewolf Break", allowing the audience time to guess the culprit.

 

I know it was the only place they (except Sam Cooke) could stay. They remark on the room in the film.

 

Well said.

This film has an incredible rewatchability component. It's exciting every time. Arnie's best role imo although T2 is close.

And what a terrific score.

 

Evil Under the Sun. Peter Ustinov returns as the fussy, pompous, self-promoting Poirot. The film is half-parody, with its often humorous tone and exaggerated take on Poirot, but it also works as a murder mystery. It spends plenty of time with its big cast of suspects before the murder, on a resort island where everybody seems to know everybody else. The murder mystery might be rather implausible, but you don’t come to this kind of thing for the gritty, grounded plot. You come for the elaborate murder and the cast of clashing personalities embodied by a great cast, and the film gets that and delivers a fun, winking murder mystery.

 

Night Monster another Universal old dark house murder mystery that I dug out to watch. A multiple amputee millionaire invites the 3 doctors who were responsible for his condition to his old mansion on the pretence of making a donation to their research. They join the strange butler (Bela Lugosi), the housekeeper, the insane daughter, a psychiatrist who’s assessing the daughter, a writer, an Indian with seemingly strange powers and the sleazy chauffeur to make up an eclectic cast of characters. There’s already an existing mystery of murders in the fog shrouded surrounds of the house and what are the mysterious spots of blood that keep appearing around the mansion floors? One by one the 3 doctors are murdered, but who is the culprit? How are they getting around and the house? It’s left to the psychiatrist and the writer to team up and find out the otherworldly secret to the murders.

Despite its claims on the rear cover this doesn’t focus so much in hidden corridors around the house, and there’s a chunk of it set in day time in the nearby town, which ruins the atmosphere of the film for me. It’s better when it’s in the mansion. I found the solution to the crime to be an out there idea that I didn’t see coming. It’s worth a watch, but it’s not up there with some of the better old dark mansion / hidden corridor / murder mysteries that it’s trying to be part of. On a side note I noticed that it used the same end credit music as they used in the Rathbone Bruce Sherlock Holmes films, which must have been a standard for universal back then.

 

Avengers: Endgame (2019)
"On your left." Sam's crowning moment of awesome makes me want to stand up and cheer. Cap's shield at the end is icing on the cake.

The cherry on top was ending with Cap and Peggy dancing. I don't even mind when "It's Been a Long Long Time" gets stuck in my head.

 

Ever since I set up my Roku last weekend, I've been trying to watch as many of the Oscar nominated flicks as possible. Forgot about this one, and it's on Amazon Prime. I'll check it out today.

 

Zack Snyder's Justice League (2021)
Well I finally got around to watching the movie, all 4+ hours of it. It's interesting how it's billed on the HBO Max channel in 4K; and yet it's it presented in scrawny 4:3 format to "preserve the integrity". I thought it was all right. It featured its share of poignant moments and the cliche scenes in a typical DC live action flick these days. Some things I didn't understand too well as far as what was going on, but overall it wasn't bad.

Spoiler

The long-winded ending certainly had me scratching my head. So will there ever be a follow up to which Darkseid does come to earth? And that bit where Luthor hires Deathstroke, what was the point of that? Martian Manhunter certainly had a tiny role, he could've stepped in to help the team even before Superman was resurrected, right? Not sure what to make of Bruce's dream that includes The Joker; just a nightmare I guess?

 

Yeah, the epilogue is just a bunch of stuff that might have been/most likely there to set up future story films, but it's innocuous enough and still neat to consider or ignore, whatever; it's curious how that epilogue bums so many people out and causes stress as it is pretty easy to ignore.

It actually feels/vibes as very MCU in that rather expensive/cheap or shallow, lackluster way in which those films excell. Ironic.

 

I turned into a culty DC fan having revisited Man of Steel, Batman v Superman, and the first two parts of Justice League.

Sorry

 

So they keep it for the people that want to see it in IMAX format in the theaters, knowing that the vast majority will be watching it at home on their widescreen televisions. gotcha.

 

Does HBO Max not allow you to just auto fill in if you don't like 4:3? I play with that all the time on other apps

 

Not sure about that. I tried fiddling with my TV's own picture size but it didn't help.