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

Kong Skull Island

I like the 1933 original, it's a classic of course, as well as Peter Jackson's epic remake, but this one is my favorite Kong film.

I love the setting in Oahu, the awesome visual effects, the cast, and all the monsters.

Amazing soundtrack too! Black Sabbath, CCR, David Bowie.

 

Family Plot. Hitchcock’s final movie, it can’t touch his best work, but it’s a solidly enjoyable comic thriller. Barbara Harris is a phony psychic (is there another kind?) who’s hired by a rich client to find her illegitimate nephew, given up for adoption, to be her heir. She’s aided by cab-driver boyfriend Bruce Dern, who fancies himself something of a private eye and usually digs up the dirt for her psychic routine. To their danger, the heir turns out to be William Devane, who’s operating as a high-stakes kidnapper with girlfriend Karen Black. The whole thing is a little silly — Devane and Black’s whole schtick is bizarre and overcomplicated, and down-to-earth confederate Ed Lauter makes a better villain — but it’s fun enough, largely on the strength of the rapport between the adorably dopey Harris and the right-on-the-edge-of-sleazy everyman Dern. It’s not a classic, but it’s an enjoyable curiosity in Hitchcock’s vast catalogue, and worth a watch.

 

Wow, hadn't even heard of this movie, but it looks pretty great. And invoking Blue Ruin always gets my attention. Did you see Green Room? I quite liked it, but it's not as good as Blue Ruin. More traditional in a lot of ways.

 

Awww shucks.

 

Dark of the Sun. Rod Taylor and Jim Brown star as mercenaries hired to retrieve diamonds from a bank vault and evacuate civilians ahead of rebel forces in the Congo. They have to work with an ex-Nazi merc who’s obviously going to be trouble. This could be a fairly standard adventure film, except that it’s outrageously violent and brutal by 1968 standards. Even now, it’s a dark, grim watch. It’s a relentlessly, tastelessly vicious assault on the senses, but it’s also exactly the kind of film you can see a young Quentin Tarantino enraptured by (and Tarantino is, in fact, a fan, as is Scorsese). Its nihilistic, macho, exploitative brutality functions as an early indicator of the direction exploitation cinema would go in the seventies. It’s not a particularly good film, not a fun one, certainly not the kind you can unreservedly recommend, but it is a captivatingly grimy, testosterone-dripping, brutal action film.

 

Godzilla King of the Monsters

Gojira, Mosura, Rodan, and Ghidorah!
Doesn't get much better than that. This film has such awesome kaiju scenes. Rodan emerging from the volcano, Ghidorah's first appearance, Mothra sacrificing herself for Gojira after stabbing Rodan, and Gojira himself in all his scenes.

This is my favorite installment out of the 4 Monsterverse films.

 

Superman: Red Son (2020)
In an alternate reality, the alien that will be known to the world as Superman crash-lands in Cold War-Era Russia and grows up to be an ally of Joseph Stalin. It features a handful of DC characters with somewhat minor roles; I liked the movie more as a history lesson than just about Superman beating up the bad guys.

The alt reality of history definitely plays a major role, and not just for familiar DC characters like Luthor, Lois, and Jimmy Olsen, but real life historical figures as well.

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For instance, one scene has President John F. Kennedy alive and well in 1967. That couldn't have been an accident.

I haven't read the comics this was based on, but I imagine the story they had was far more detailed than the hour and a half film could possibly include.

 

One wonders when they'll get around to adapting "Speeding Bullets".

 

Well Marvel is already coming out with their What If series with alternate realities; maybe DC would follow suit at some point.

 

Ooooh!! I can't wait for the adaptation of ""What if the Silver Surfer, White Tiger, Night Rider, Iceman and Moon Knight fought Wendigo in a snowstorm?" followed by "What if the Black Panther fought the Shroud, Master of Darkness, in a coal mine?"

 

Danger: Diabolik! (1967)

Mario Bava’s super sexy -and sometimes silly- ode to Italian comics villain, master thief Diabolik and the authorities many attempts to arrest him and his lover Eva Kant. I love this film. It’s my second favorite movie by Mario Bava (Best known for kick starting Italian horror, giallos and making the template for the slasher genre). If Mario didn’t make the brilliant Mask of Satan (a.k.a. Black Sunday), this would be my favorite of his movies.

Anyway, you’re not to here to watch the government and police trip all over themselves trying to capture Diabolik. Nor do you care about their uneasy relationship with other criminals to snare our title rogue. Nope, this is all about cheering on the rakish, ninja-like thief as he steals jewels and money for his girl.

John Phillip Law came from that stoic ‘60s acting style of wooden camp. He was a good looking man who played good looking superficial men -and a blind angel- and it’s fun to see him make Diabolik such a playful and dashing thief. Bava never hides how gorgeous Marisa Mell was either. As Eva she often steals the scenes with her beauty and cleverness, easily wearing mod fashions better than the models of the day.

Watching these two having sex underneath millions of stolen dollars just seems right.

When you want a playful, psychedelic take on comic book super thieves, start here.

 

I think it looks fine. Frankly I'm more excited about it than I am over the new Falcon/Winter Soldier series.

 

I've seen this both MSTed and unMSTed, and enjoyed it. It's interesting to compare Law's more restrained work here with his more humorous work as Sinbad in "Golden Voyage of Sinbad" and his waaaaaay over-the-top villain in "Space Mutiny".
Oh, and I understand they made a new Diabolik movie that was supposed to be released in Italy last year, but COVID scrubbed those plans.

 

Shutter Island Great at building atmosphere and Leo gives it his all. The twist was obvious and dumb-- so much that I was waiting for the "real" one-- and kinda dragged everything down. Don't know why I didn't watch this earlier.

Stardust Wanted a fantasy or science fiction movie I hadn't seen that wasn't total crap. This was decent enough. Nothing special. It was clearly trying to be a New Princess Bride, but never reached it.

 

Extraction

This was a better than expected action movie - good fight choreography, gunplay to match John Wick and topped off with an excellent pay-off at the end.

 

I love JPL as Sinbad, Diabolik and his sullen gunslinger in Death Rides A Horse. I revisit Sinbad and Diabolik at least 1-2x a year. Space Munity was fun too (Haven’t seen that in ages though). Barbarella remains a struggle (but at least Law wasn’t crammed into leather hot pants like David Hemings!) I heard about that new Italian Diabolik, I hope it does well if it ever gets released.

 

I was looking forward to seeing this, but watching this trailer again: yeah that looks great.

I like that What If? is an anthology series. Love the animation style (Nods to classic Disney while definitely feeling more like Marvel Studios which I see was the point. That’s awesome.) Of corpse,

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I’ll sit through Marvel zombies yuck to see Buck again
(if they release merch -especially a figure or art with this WS incarnation- I am all over that.)

Looks like there will be more than one season so I’d

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like to see Marlene become Moon Knight as she has her own issues with violence.

Anyway, thanks for reposting the trailer.

 

Interesting teaser, but it should've ended with Law-style laughter.

 

The Hucksters. Clark Gable plays a fast-talking, fast-living ad man trying to get back in the business after World War II, but who gets a creeping conscience after romancing socialite Deborah Kerr. The film, adapted from a trashy “expose” of Madison Avenue but cleaned up enough to get on screen, is pretty mediocre. There’s a good cast, including Ava Gardner as an old flame, Adolphe Menjou as Gable’s boss, and Sydney Greenstreet as a tyrannical client, but the film is rather messy, too much melodrama all over the place and not enough focus.

 

Journey to the Center of the Earth (2008)
VFX are OK, Brendan Fraser is always fun as the dork next door, but the writing just isn't good enough.

 

The Liquidator. This very early Bond spoof has a Shirley Bassey theme song, a colorful illustrated credit sequence, Jill St. John before she was a Bond girl, and absolutely no idea what it’s doing. Rod Taylor plays a guy who’s recruited as a spy-killer by intelligence honcho Trevor Howard on mistaken premises. He enjoys the high life, but, finding himself unwilling to kill, he hires out the actual killing to a professional hit man. This is the film’s one real idea, but it does nothing with it; it’s just a throwaway gag in a film that’s otherwise extremely short on gags, a spoof that has no clear idea of what it’s spoofing, and little more than a sort of vague wink at Taylor’s skirt-chasing to offer on the comedy front. The closest the thing even comes to a plot is Taylor chasing St. John, Howard’s off-limits secretary. It’s an utterly misguided effort. It has some very nice scenery and sets, and one decent action sequence where Taylor fights a henchman atop a precariously perched cliffside car. Aside from that, all you can say for it is that at least St. John is better than she was in her actual Bond film.

 

Son of Kong (1933) starring Robert Armstrong, Helen Mack, Frank Reicher, Victor Wong and Kiko; directed by Ernest B. Schoedsack. It's fun, it's piquant in the sense that "it pricks the interest," and it seemed a good Easter film because it says much about feelings, remorse and redemption. It's interesting to me because it reminded me of Fantastic Four from a long ago read in that Reed gets sued by NYC due to his part in bringing destruction to the city from his enemies attacking the FF. The look on Reed's face mirrors Robert's as Robert dodges process servers and figures out how in the hell he's going to get out of his fix. He can't. Luckily, good ol' Frank offers him a partnership hauling copra in the Dutch East Indies, which is where Robert meets Helen. Helen is a waif songstress in her dad's tiny showbiz act currently performing in Dakang (which is in Taiwan if that's the place they meant, but never mind), soon orphaned and a stowaway but wouldn't Fate have it that mutineers shove Robert et al. ashore on Skull Island, which places her into danger, too.

Kiko (which seems to be Kong's son's name per fans) is cute as a button at 12 feet tall, young and playful and protective of Robert et al. once Robert saves him from quicksand. Throughout, the feels surge to the forefront without the dangerous backbeat of King Kong's size and strength. I liked the lessening in tension without comparing this film to the classic one released a mere eight months earlier. At 70 minutes, there's action aplenty in the final third and one fantastic bit with Helen right about mid-film; she drags her comatose dad out of their burning home backwards and a tracking shot emphasizes her strength as she kicks chairs, boxes and everything else out of her way. He dies anyway, her possessions go up in smoke and there's neat foreshadowing because the next day, she tries to recapture the monkeys that form the pitiful remnant of her dad's act. Robert happens along and gets his own love interest via Helen because she appears to need his brand of sunny optimism.

Soon, the same King Kong screenwriter (Ruth Rose, married to director Schoedsack) put Kiko through his paces in wonderful stop motion against a cave bear and mysterious dragon appearing creature; other menaces include a sea serpent and a styracosaurus that just, I don't know, got tired of menacing Frank, Victor and the bad guy and wandered away. Talk about realism in animal behavior! Speaking of the bad guy, he gets his comeuppance via Skull Island's marvelous fauna. I liked this movie because it was like a fairy tale, not just for the fantastic fauna but for the apocalyptic end of Skull Island and poor little Kiko via the above clip. For a jollier clip, here's an April Fool by a very accomplished director:

 

Yes. Son of Kong is a fun little movie.

 

The Wolf Man cant believe I’ve never seen this classic before. Lon Chaney Jr plays the cursed Larry Talbot who returns home to Wales after the death of his brother, only to be bitten by a werewolf when he tries to rescue his friends girlfriend that’s attacked. The make up of the monster looks a bit funny by today’s standards and its been parodied so many times over the years too. But you cant deny that Universal knew how to do atmospheric fog shrouded gothic horror films. This and Scarlet Claw only 3 years later are perfect examples of it. In fact I’m sure The Wolf Man borrows some of the score from the Rathbone / Bruce Sherlock Holmes movies.