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

it wasn't just the water thing, but how incredibly ridiculous the alien looked, that made it really hard to stay in the moment after what was such a dramatic and suspenseful build through the majority of the film.

 

How to Train Your Dragon

 

Replicas

 

Strictly Ballroom (1992)
I've always enjoyed this film. Not only do I find it funny, but the characters are crafted with such love; and wow, it hits those mythic hero's journey points so solidly - the bit where Scott is taught to dance from the heart by Fran's father is Luke and Yoda in Empire, the son following in his father's footsteps to do what his father failed to do is very Luke Skywalker, and the bit at the end with his father clapping the beat for him (and then all the audience joins in and I come close to tearing up) is pretty much the trench run from Star Wars.

Really, this movie is more Star Wars for me than the prequels and the Disney sequels combined.

 

Solo (2018)
Third time seeing it, and it's starting to grow on me. I'm finally starting to accept someone besides Ford as Han, and I really like most of the other characters. It's fun, but without the emotional gut punches of R1. Still way better than any of the PT, even if it will never compare to the OT.

 

Predator. Arnold Schwarzenegger makes everything watchable. He’s not a great actor, but he has that rare leading-man quality of totally commanding the screen, just being wildly entertaining to watch, conveying a magnetic persona. And his persona is just so much damn cheesy fun. His films are almost all cheesy nonsense and that’s what makes them so fun.

But this is a rare treat: it’s both a great Schwarzenegger movie and a great movie, period. It’s a tense action thriller that delivers the goods without any kind of goofiness. The premise is kind of ridiculous in just how random it is, but damn if it doesn’t work. And a lot of credit for making this macho eighties spectacle work has to go to John McTiernan, who had one hell of an all-time classic action run with Predator, Die Hard, and The Hunt for Red October all in a row.

 

The Predator. This . . . is a very different movie. Even for a movie that was reportedly heavily recut to satisfy the studio, this is an incoherent mess. I have no idea why anything happened in this movie. Why does scientist Olivia Munn act like a fearless military-trained badass the entire time? Why does main guy ship the gear home and go on the run at the beginning? Most importantly, I didn’t believe anything in this movie. I didn’t buy Munn. I didn’t buy main guy. I didn’t buy the awful kid character. I didn’t buy the ludicrous evil secret government alien thing. Nothing made sense, there was no setup, and nothing felt credible within this world. It was a total mess. Also the CGI was garbage.

The only element of this film I liked was the dynamic between the bunch of nutjob goofballs bouncing off each other. They had a good energy and some funny patter. Put them in a movie without a terrible script and you might have something. I have no idea what happened to Shane Black here but he turned out a woefully bad product. Just a terrible, dire mess of a movie.

 

The Predator isn’t worthy to be in the same franchise as the original. To say they dropped the ball is a massive understatement.

 

Did you notice the other cameo from The Phantom Menace, besides Maul? Weazel was part of Enfys Nest's group. He was one of the individuals betting on the Boonta Eve Classic, and you could see him in the same room as Watto during the race.

 

Reign of the Supermen

Not bad

 

Wait. Are you baiting Sarge?
*reported*

 

The Old Man and the Gun. If there’s one thing America loves, it’s romanticizing bank robbers. And this does a hell of a job at it. A wonderfully low-key, sweet look at an old rebel whose joy comes from politely robbing banks, it’s content to just glide along sedately, full of character work and gentle humor. Redford is wonderful, and Danny Glover and Tom Waits are delightful as his old-man gang. A pleasant, well-crafted film that feels like a throwback to the keen, funny, sometimes rebellious adult dramas of Redford’s heyday, the era it depicts. Redford’s taken back his decision to retire on it, but he could hardly ask for a better film to go out on.

 

Bait? No thanks, I'm trying to cut back.

 

Queen: How They Broke Free (2017)
This was an hour-long documentary that I DVR'd off of Reelz channel; it's also available on digital channels. I thought it was really well done. Obviously plenty of archival footage with interviews of the surviving members. They even talk about who the song "Killer Queen" was about.

20th Century Women (2016)
Stars Annette Benning in a coming-of-age comedy/drama (stop me if you've heard this one before). It's a pretty good movie. Elle Fanning and Billy Crudup round out the list of familiar names. It takes place in '79, with some flashbacks and flash-forward narrations. Greta Gerwig has a very superb performance in her role as a twenty-something woman who lives with Benning and her boy in a rented room upstairs. She's the one who effectively brings him out of his shell.

 

Revolutionary Road. On the one hand, I could watch a whole film of nothing but hours of Roger Deakins-lensed midcentury interiors. On the other hand, the last time Sam Mendes tried a sorrows-of-suburbia picture we got the insipid, stupid, juvenile, smug, trite, repulsive American Beauty, one of the worst films I’ve ever seen. So depsite its excellent pedigree and appeal staight to my wheelhouse, I wasn’t sure what I was going to get.

What I got was pretty great. It’s a sharp, brutal look at a failing marriage. Kate Winslet is great as the wife, who dreams of some kind of greater fulfillment, some vague romantic destiny, and has let it make her bitter and cold, slowly but surely breaking down over the course of the movie. Leonardo DiCaprio might be at his all-time best as the husband, working away at an office job he hates, who’s just kind of let life wear him down into a certain selfish complacency. A scheme to abandon their stereotypically humdrum life for the romanticism of Paris prolongs the marriage before eventually breaking down and revealing itself as the last-gasp, desperate, childish flailings of a dying relationship, and the film handles that relationship really well. Both characters alternate between being sympathetic and off-putting dependent on the situation; they’re humans, capable of being selfish and of being wronged and both at once. The film keeps its balance well, not getting didactic or caricatured. It’s just really well made, avoiding the pitfalls that sank American Beauty. A great, absolutely gorgeous-looking film with a stellar cast (I mean, it’s got Michael Shannon as an abrasively “honest” mental patient, the role he was born to play! [okay, he was born to play any and every kind of mental patient]).

 

Freddie Mercury: The Great Pretender (2012)
This came out awhile ago, but it was on the Reelz channel and I DVR'd. This was really well done. There were more interviews with his friends and even a roadie, and some scenes were reenacted based on anecdotes by those involved. Definitely some interesting revelations that weren't covered in the Bohemian Rhapsody movie.

Halloween (2018)
Ugh. This is one of those movies where I watch with absolutely low expectations, and more often than not it still doesn't reach them. I figured when I saw all the trailers in advance of the movie's release last Fall, I wouldn't like it. The original John Carpenter movie is a classic. I usually watch it every Halloween and I'm never disappointed. This new one just featured too many of the same elements of the typical horror film that's out today; hardly any suspense - and they always tease you with a potential suspenseful scene but really isn't. The movie for the most part was too predictable. And don't get me started on Jamie Lee Curtis' reborn Laurie character. I've mentioned before in here as I saw those trailers how I wasn't too thrilled about her Sarah Connor-esque rebirth in this movie. I'm not taking anything away from her character and performance in the original; it's just this new one was corny and weird.

 

One of my all time favorites

 

Since there was about 6 inches of snow today after some clean up (and watching Wisconsin take down Michigan). Threw in Fellowship of the Ring in the old blu ray player. Decided to keep going with the Two Towers. Well made this far, finished up with Return of the King.

 

Marathoning Lord of the Rings sounds like a good way to spend a day holed up during a snow storm.

 

It really was. One day I might do a Hobbit/LOTR rewatch but I’m not sure. I don’t connect as much with the Hobbit trilogy.

 

ST: The Voyage Home on Syfy.