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

Miyagi buys her a dress for the prom.

 

Flatliners 1990
If you look up "films that don't age well" in the dictionary you might see this listed. Great cast (Keifer Sutherland, Julia Roberts, Kevin Bacon, Oliver Platt) and directed by Joel Schumaker. The entire film looks like some bad late 80's music video/horror film. This is one of those movies where everyone wears glasses to make them look smarter. Bacon is the only one I could see as a med student. Near death experiences are reduced to childhood memories that come back to haunt the characters. One such scene had a neon graffiti alleyway that looked like an outtake from Batman and Robin.

 

I didn't even think of Ironside in Cobra Kai. That would either be epic or a jump the shark moment.

 

I've only seen the original Karate Kid and its nonsensically titled 2010 remake. I've heard 2 and 3 aren't very good, but I'll give them a shot.

 

Fiona Volpe in "Thunderball", and her counterpart Fatima Blush in the "Never Say Never Again" remake, also stayed villainous after Bond's attentions. Fiona even taunts Bond over it.

 

Judas and the Black Messiah Happy I wasn't disappointed with this. Stanfield and Kaluuya are great, and Plemons is around being the casting directors' Philip Seymore Hoffman 2.0. It doesn't really sanitize Hampton as I'd feared it would. There was this annoying aspect and typically Hollywood to portray the FBI agents, other than Hoover himself, as acting in good faith because they genuinely believed the Panthers were "just like the Klan."

 

I guess my question is, are the KK sequels better than the Rocky sequels? Keep in mind, I didn't like II, really enjoyed III, hated IV and V. Balboa and the two Creed films are good to great.

 

I didn't really care for KK3, but it did kind of lay the subversive groundwork for the series in how a good guy can become a Cobra Kai. The series did it much better.

 

As someone who has actually seen them all I'd say they are about the same. A slight edge to rocky series before the show but now they are both pretty good quality wise, with some notable duds. (KK3 and Next and Rocky 5) Rocky 3 is fantastic.

 

1. The Karate Kid
2. Rocky
3. The Karate Kid Part 2
4. Rocky 2
5. On second thought, I'm not continuing with this ranking exercise.

 

Ah, yes, that's true, thanks for reminding me.

 

Wow really? I envy you getting to see it for the first time! I've seen it many times.

 

I watched “The White Tiger” on Netflix. Very good.

 

I got the Coma miniseries/remake from 2012. I'm a huge fan of the Michael Crichton directed original; I wonder how this will be. It's 4 hours long, which is either good or bad.

 

Muppet Christmas Carol

 

The Pawnbroker (1964)
Rod Steiger stars as an elderly pawn shop owner who's been haunted by his past where he lost his wife and son during the Holocaust. This is one of those movies that certainly doesn't hold well over the course of time. You understand the premise of the movie but it's very slow at times and the music throughout it kind of takes away from what's going on.

 

Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar (2021)
Directed by: Josh Greenbaum

An enjoyable, extremely surreal buddy comedy.

 

While the City Sleeps. This Fritz Lang film revolves around a serial killer, but it’s really a semi-noir at best. Lang gets some mileage out of the creepy, menacing killer stalking women, but the film’s real focus is on the corporate jockeying accompanying the media coverage of the crime. When the kingpin of a media empire dies and is succeeded by his no-good son, the race is on between three department heads to see who will become his top manager, and TV anchor Dana Andrews is in the middle as they latch on solving the sensational murders as their ticket to the big job. It’s really a cynical look at the media, dressed up as a serial killer movie. The commentary and office politics are okay, but Lang is clearly at his best when he gets to play with the killer. The end result is a film that’s solid, but a little disjointed, and doesn’t quite live up to the potential of the material. Still very much worth a watch, though.

 

The Snows of Kilimanjaro. I think it’s difficult for any movie of his time to really capture the feel and spirit of Hemingway’s writing. This tries, and some of the time it gets close. It’s working from a short story, about a Hemingway-like writer dying of gangrene on safari, reflecting on the feeling that he’s wasted his talent, and helplessly taking out his frustration by being irritable at his caring wife. The film gets that out to feature length by going into much more depth with the flashbacks, which is where it’s weakest. When it’s Gregory Peck on his deathbed, growling and stewing, it’s at its best, though of course it lacks Hemingway’s laconic lyricism and it goes for a Hollywood ending. It’s too bad it’s padded out with lost-love melodrama.