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

No Questions Asked. With a B noir like this, it makes a big difference when you execute well and do a little something to distinguish yourself. No Questions Asked does both, delivering a snappy picture with a quality premise.

What makes the premise so good is that it isn’t a matter of murder or seduction or stolen money. It’s a matter of a guy cutting a few ethical corners in his business and not caring about the result, a much more down-to-earth sort of corruption. Barry Sullivan is an insurance lawyer who is eager to marry Arlene Dahl, but she’s fixated on financial security she can’t give him (you can tell it’s a different era when “insurance industry lawyer” is not a financially secure livelihood). When his company offers a big reward for the return of some stolen furs, he realizes that he can make a big score by getting in touch with mob figures and letting the thieves know they can return the furs to the insurance company for the reward, easy money, and he can get a finder’s fee. Dahl has already married for money, though, so Sullivan abandons himself to a cynical pursuit of money, becoming a go-between securing the return of stolen goods. This raises ethical questions, since Sullivan is now subsidizing crime, and crooks are stealing stuff they wouldn’t even be able to fence, just for the insurance payoff. Sullivan romances Jean Hagen, who makes something out of the usually unrewarding role of the good girl who loves the bad guy out of an unconvincing belief in his inner decency, while the police try to put Sullivan out of business by snatching up all his contacts and making him toxic to the underworld. Sullivan ends up in trouble when he gets involved with Dahl again, while the police close in.

It’s not a great movie, but it does a good job of taking a clever, grounded scenario and playing it out with quality patter and nice little touches that elevate the film. By the standards of minor B noir, it’s quite good.

 

couple of weeks for reviews from my website bigalreviews.com Very Expensive Netflix! Spies! Violence! Clones! Apples! CGI Dwarves dahhh!

Snow White
Snow White is yet another in Disney’s seemingly endless parade of Live Action Remakes, and even though the original Snow White and the Seven Dwarves is a technical classic that moved the animation medium forward, it isn’t exactly resonating with audiences for today. For proof, one has to look at the remake’s lackluster box office. These remakes seem to be created as Disney doesn’t know what to do and they might luck out like Lion King remake and make a billion dollars. This Snow White bobbles a few things, tonally it adds some rather modern stylistic twists, there is a lot of self-actualization, the Prince isn’t a Prince anymore, he’s a quippy bandit pirate leader with a crew of diverse bandits. The Dwarves are still here, although somewhat nightmarish CGI monstrosities. At least the remake drops the bad washing song by the Dwarves from the original. Classic or not, that song blows.

Mickey 17
Writer and director Bong Joon Ho, who won Best Director and Best Picture for Parasite, has a very diverse set of films. He is interested in themes like class struggle, environmental challenges, and settings like sci-fi, post-apocalyptic, action and monsters like his movies The Host, Snowpiercer and Okja. So as wild and wacky as his latest film, Mickey 17, is it is also a return to his thematic and stylistic roots. The movie is a darkly amusing comedic tale with monsters and messy violence and over the top performance choices, for a chaotic, zany sci-fi story. And Mikey 17 has something to say about workers at the bottom rung being so disposable they can be wiped and replaced with ease.

The Electric State
The Electric State is Netflix’s 300 million plus stab at event filmmaking by the writers and directors of the last two Avengers movies. After all that money and talent thrown around, the result is okay. There are cool robots smashing stuff, even if almost all of them look grungy, but there is also a randomly super depressing ending to substitute for thematic depth that hits all the wrong notes. Chris Pratt is just playing Star-Lord again which is fine, he’s really good at it. And lead Millie Bobby Brown’s performance choices oscillate between, snarky, mopey, crying and repeat. Electric State better than Borderlands, although it doesn’t exactly look or feel all that different. But at least there’s a few good jokes, some decent sized action, and the musical score by Alan Silvestri is close enough to his Avengers work to fake it.

Black Bag
Black Bag is a spy thriller that doesn’t go very hard on any spectacle “spy movie” moments, and this film even has a James Bond in it. It is more about the lies that people in espionage tell each other. There isn’t exactly any firearms going off except for a brief and important moment in the finale. It has the same husband vs. wife spy bit as in Mr. and Mrs. Smith but these two know they’re spies and so lying to each other is part of the job. Black Bag is definitely a bit on the slow side, but performance moments and reveals that occur to make this a compelling, slow burn of a spy mystery.

Novocaine
Novocaine is actually a sweet love story wrapped in ultraviolence. The chemistry between the leads is very electric and then that turns into a ton of crazy action scenes. With a weird high concept hook, it gives the movie free license to have some very over the top action as the hero can take a beating and keep on ticking. While a lot of action movies just tend to pretend that the hero is impervious to pain, here the hero can literally not feel pain which is why it can go nuts. It is a goofy concept, but it lets the action be bonkers which gives Novocaine its charm.

 

when you say "later versions" , do you mean it's the same film but with changes or ... ?

 

It's the same, but with different voices for the father: Dustin Hoffman in the original telecast, Alan Barzman for the repeat, Alan Thicke for cable showings, and Ringo for home video releases.

 

Enemy Mine. This is eighties sci-fi that feels more like something out of the fifties or sixties, not because of the visuals but because of the story. It’s not a Star Warsesque space adventure knockoff, despite going in for some action at the end. It’s an adaptation of a short story that tells a generally quiet, thought-provoking, Twilight Zone-style sci-fi story.

Its protagonist is Dennis Quaid, a fighter pilot in a war against space aliens who crashes on a remote planet. Also crashed is his opponent, alien Louis Gossett, Jr. The two of them end up having to work together to survive, overcoming their enmity and bonding as friends.

It’s a typical sort of sci-fi message, but it’s an enjoyable enough one. Gossett and Quaid give solid performances, and their hesitant, often frustrated chemistry with traces of the old tension is good stuff. Where the film struggles the most is that it’s just not all that cinematic, narratively. You can tell it’s a short story, an interesting idea that struggles a bit being played out at length because it’s sort of inert and not very visual, and just seems like it works better in its initial medium. But several twists in the second half give it a little more dynamism. Plus, while it’s apparent the film didn’t have a huge budget or top special effects, Wolfgang Petersen makes great use of location shooting and good set design and prosthetics to at least create some convincing visuals that fundamentally sell you on the planet and the aliens.

It’s a story that struggles a bit in adaptation, but it’s done pretty well for all that. It’s interesting and fun, and that counts for a lot. It’s the kind of film that was never going to find a broad audience, but it can definitely find a cult one.

 

Escape to Athena (1979)

Filmed on location in Rhodes, this is a WWII adventure comedy with a lot of explosions, a sequence with scuba divers and boats traversing water that is on fire, lots of shooting and hand to hand combat, and a truly well shot and exciting motorcycle chase through narrow streets of cobblestone.

Roger Moore plays a nazi officer who joins some allies attempting to escape a Greek POW camp and then pull off a heist.
The cast is the main reason to watch it, as you've also got Telly Savalas, David Niven, Elliot Gould, Stefanie Powers, Richard Roundtree, and Sonny Bono among many other solid secondary characters. It's a bit slow in spots and sometimes the editing seems off in a counterintuitive way. The music is quite nice, especially the use of plucked string instruments.
It's a solid adventure film, not top tier, but decent.

 

Sonic The Hedgehog 3 (2024), Mufasa: The Lion King (2024), Venom: The Last Dance (2024), and Dog Man (2025)

Ranked:

1. Sonic The Hedgehog 3
2. Dog Man
3. Venom: The Last Dance
4. Mufasa: The Lion King

 

Loved this movie growing up. Haven’t seen it since the 80s, but you’ve inspired me to do a rewatch.

 

Thunderbolt. There were plenty of World War II propaganda documentaries like this made during the war, but this one has a couple notable features. It’s directed by William Wyler and John Sturges, and it wasn’t finished during the war — but Wyler believed in it so much that he fought to get it a release in 1947. A forty-five-minute short, it’s not anything revolutionary, and Wyler losing his hearing during production of it probably had the biggest impact on him wanting it to at least be released, but it’s a good documentary piece and I enjoyed watching it.

After a brief introduction by Air Force veteran Jimmy Stewart, the film follows the efforts of P-47 Thunderbolt fighter-bombers based out of Corsica in support of Operation Strangle, the effort to cut off supplies to the front during the long stalemate in Italy by devastating transportation well north of the front. It introduces us to some of the daily life at an airfield and the background, with an emphasis on the youth of the pilots (a twenty-four-year-old lieutenant colonel?!), and stitches together lots of airborne footage into a sort of representative mission.

The Technicolor footage, on air and ground, is very cool, and the film has a winning charm as it narrates its way through the wartime life. The film has its moments of fun, its thrills, and its darker moments, and watching it at this remove I still found myself stirred by the power of what the armed forces accomplished and the danger they overcame. I’m glad it did get its release, and I’m glad I watched it.

 

Angels & Demons (2009)
Tom Hanks returns as symbologist Robert Langdon in this follow-up to The Da Vinci Code, adapting Dan Brown's series of nonsensical thrillers out of sequence after initially opting to capitalise on the controversy generated by the more infamous novel. I went to see The Da Vinci Code at the cinema the same day I finished reading the book, and ended up largely disappointed by a laborious page-for-page, scene-for-scene adaptation. In comparison, Angels & Demons is a smarter movie because it remembers to actually be a movie first and foremost, making small yet significant changes to the source material in service of convention and credulity (which is really saying something when you consider that we're talking about an Illuminati plot to destroy Vatican City using a suspended particle of anti-matter, but hey). Ewan McGregor, Ayelet Zurer, and Stellan Skarsgård join the ever-reliable Hanks, while Hans Zimmer lends one of his most underrated soundtracks to the proceedings. It's all claptrap, but surprisingly engrossing and well-presented claptrap, so I like it.

Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977) and Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
Finally got around to starting another re-watch of the entire Skywalker Saga, this time following the "flashback" viewing order (4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9). Gonna try and get through two movies a day. I'll have to see how things go but, for today, I'm off to a good start.

 

John Carpenter's, 1976' film, "Assault on Precinct 13." I was not expecting it to have the feel of a slow moving zombie flick. I dug it.

 

top secret! (1984) - watched this last night in honor of val, hadn't seen it since i was a kid. it's a pretty insane mix of absurdism, dad jokes and some stuff that was way more adult oriented than i remembered. overall it was a lot of fun and i loved how many gags they threw in it. there were like four musical numbers that went on a bit too long and kind of killed the movie's momentum, but that's my only real complaint. can't believe skeet surfing hasn't become a real sport yet.

 

A fantastic movie with so many amazing moments but boy oh boy the discussion on the ferris wheel....

 

There's an E.T. reference in that movie that I can't imagine younger audiences getting at all. They'd likely be wondering why that woman's chest lights up!

 

I never saw that as an "E.T." reference, since her boyfriend has survived and it's her breasts that glow.
Anyway, "Top Secret" is easily ZAZ's most underrated effort.

 

I think that when her breasts glow there's a sound effect that is similar to the sound heard when E.T.'s heart glows but I might be remembering that wrong.

 

Also, the development of Tarkin in Rogue One was aided by the life cast of Peter Cushing's face, used for Top Secret!

Spoiler

 

The Borgia never ruled Italy.

 

Don’t Worry Darling (2022)
It’s not nearly as bad as I expected. It looks fantastic with its polished 1950s styles and impeccable set designs, and Florence Pugh has yet to give a bad performance. Chris Pine has real movie star presence as the villain, but he’s not on screen very much. Harry Styles isn’t bad at all, though his hair is his standout feature for me (it looks great all the time), not his acting ability. The real problem for me is it owes so much to The Stepford Wives without adding anything really substantial, and I found the ending very abrupt. It’s a film with top quality parts that doesn’t quite deliver like it should.

 

The Simpsons (2007)
It was funnier than I expected, considering it was a movie based on a half-hour TV show, the pacing was decent too.

I haven't watched the TV show in ages, but at trivia Wednesday night, the announcer said next week there would be 3 trivia rounds all about The Simpsons. So now I need to watch some episodes and see how much I can cram before next Wednesday. Anybody have any favorites or must-see episodes? I'm already planning on at least a few of the first Treehouse of Horrors.

 

Captain America: Brave New World in which Friend and I relaxed in recliners and while she cringed at the loud volume, I thought it was all right, sort of typical in the first huuuge action scenes. We loved Ford and were bowled over by the ~Transformation, which took us both by surprise, thanks to no spoilers on this thread. I liked the Lumbly moments especially, got jolted by the White House moments, and mourned especially the cherry tree and rose garden casualties. Initially, we'd hoped to see the Looney Tunes film, but it'd moved on ... Mackie and the rest of the cast served up decent jobs. I must look up the Abomination, big island, and why the enormous rocks resembled hands emerging from the ocean.

 

Did they specify if it will be only certain seasons (i.e. the classic/golden era)? Also how hard are the questions typically at your trivia nights?

 

"You Only Move Twice" and "Homer's Enemy". The former is a big fan favorite with great work from Albert Brooks. The latter may be the most divisive and dark episodes of the series.

 

If you're near Lehigh County, PA, it's on a double-bill with the "Minecraft" movie at Shankweiler's. It's still around at a few theaters.