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

Freddy vs Jason

A versus flick from 2003 that pits two of the 1980s most notorious and "popular" fictional murderers against each other, although the film seems to take about 2/3 of it's 97 minute run time to get to them actually facing off, which ends up being underwhelming once they do.

Gotta tip my cap to whomever wrote this script for coming up with some of the stupidest **** I've heard in a long time including a token black character who is given cringey dialogue and is one of the more obnoxious characters in a truly impressively pathetic cast of characters in which you're pretty much rooting for them all to die except for the main blonde girl who does survive lol.

And that's the best part of the film; Jason killing all these stupid mofos. Oddly I found myself rooting for him over Freddy at times though I'm not a fan of the Friday the 13th series, wheras I do like at least 3 or 4 Nightmare On Elm Street films quite a lot.

But Jason is pretty badass in this and given even a sympathetic backstory in some camp crystal lake flashbacks. There are a few clever tricks, gags, references to lore in the old pictures and the film often plays like a comedy or some extremely annoying teen melodrama with **** actors; but it was entertaining and Robert Englund was as charismatic as ever in his last performance as Krueger.

The final battle was entertaining enough, but oddly comical in spots and the obnoxious cliched screamo soundtrack reminded me of how ****** the mainstream metal and hard rock scene started to get after Kurt Cobain died and Guns 'n Roses broke up.

Freddy vs Jason was funny and ludicrous but there were some cool kills if you're into that sort of movie.

 

@Master_Lok

Ah, Rasputin is an underrated villain IMO, played by an underrated actor in the form of Karel Roden. I do miss his stylish warlock robes from the comics though.


I'm a big fan of the Solomon Kane film, especially as it's the closest we've gotten to a decent swashbuckling adventure film in ages.

If they ever would make a Solomon Kane sequel I would love to see the filmmakers lean more towards the swashbuckling historical fiction of the pulps, with some supernatural flavor put into the mix. That or I'd even take a short film on a story like The Right Hand of Doom.

 

The most recent movie I watched was Treasure Planet.

It was good, but I did not love it and I have a hard time putting my finger on why. I think at least part of the reason is that the movie's first 2/3rds felt very fast-paced.

Still, I was glad I watched it. The relationship between the main character, Jim Hawkins, and John Silver is excellent, even if it cannot carry all the movie's weight. The soundtrack is also fantastic. Plus, it felt like a breath of fresh air to watch a movie I had never seen before with hand-drawn animation, after so much CGI animation.

 

I enjoyed the movie; definitely my favorite retelling of the classic Treasure Island story.

 

My biggest problem with Treasure Planet is that I don't like that version of John Silver. And if old Long John isn't likeable, the story just doesn't work. I love Captain Amelia, though.

 

What do you think of Tim Curry's John Silver from Muppet Treasure Island?

 

He's no Robert Newton, but he had enough enthusiasm to make the role work for him.

 

I just watched Monster's Ball (2001) and I have two compliments: 1) Halle Berry looks gorgeous in it and 2) The cinematography is really nice.

Everything else...eh. 1) The sex scene was awkward. 2) Ms. Berry was overacting in several scenes, including that one. 3) A love story between a racist dude and a woman who is the embodiment of his hate/distrust/whatever is not necessarily my cup of tea, but Halle won the Oscar for it, so I was interested to see what it was like.

Though I did like the scene when he put his dad out, it almost felt like the movie was going, "Billy Bob's character is a good one/ally now that he loves a Biracial woman" (in fairness, it also shows that people become less likely to stomach certain racist statements once they are involved with people of that race and while pretty heavy-handed, contrasting with how Billy's character in the beginning said nothing during his father's previous rants; I will give them points for realism on that front.) I would have liked a scene where he and Halle's character actually discussed race, informally, as his interactions with the kids at the start of the movie, in addition to his berating of his Black co-worker, were highly questionable in the latter and pretty racist, in the former imo.

Honestly, the whole thing felt very trauma-porn-y to me. Not the worst movie, but it is a very particular movie and I am sure it entertains whoever it set out to entertain.

 

Newton hailed from the West Country of England, so his Arrrrrrrr maties! sounded authentic if slightly souped up. I don't know about the other actors mentioned.

 

I thought Mr. Magoo did a good job in the role.

 

Fellowship of the Ring (2001 - Theatrical) - first time viewing the theatrical cut in many years, and the first time seeing in a theater. It has serious propulsive and frenetic pacing, ala Force Awakens. Seeing this cut in theaters really took me back to 2001, in the best and worst of ways. For instance, imperialist ideologies in the immediate aftermath of 9/11- Boromir’s deathbed lamentations regarding the impending collapse of “Western” civilization if you will, were taken at least by my 10 year old self as subtext regarding the Christian West vs the rest of the world. This was obviously not the intent of the filmmakers, but it must mean something that I can still feel it all these years later. Those disturbingly racialized Uruks don’t help.

 

I just watched Soylent Green after three decades of ignoring it. I’ve always found Charlton Heston to be one of the most unlikeable actors in the business and he didn’t disappoint in this sci-fi classic.

 

The Falcon and the Snowman. Timothy Hutton plays a young defense contractor who gets himself upset about the CIA and decides to start sending information to the Soviets via his drug-dealer friend Sean Penn. As a look at insider espionage, it has a few interesting points, and some amusing illustrations of the perils of depending on a junkie lowlife for your extremely sensitive spy activities, but all in all it feels a bit dull. For all the high stakes, it just comes off as rather inert, more interested in Hutton moping around than anything else.

 

A Raisin in the Sun. The inciting incident for this film is the arrival of a life insurance check for the patriarch of a struggling black family, which pulls them in different directions about what to do with it, but of course the real meat is the web of issues running underneath the debate. Sidney Poitier desperately wants to invest the money in an opportunity to start a business, so he can finally be something more than a chauffeur, get ahead, and provide for his family. His wife, Ruby Dee, doesn’t trust his friends and doesn’t want him to do it. His sister, Diana Sands, is going to school to be a doctor and expects the money to fund her education. And the matriarch, Claudia McNeil, won’t hear of going into the liquor business, and wants to buy a house and get the family out of the overcrowded old apartment they’re all in.

There’s plenty of drama as they argue back and forth, and what really makes it work is that they all have sympathetic motives but unsympathetic characteristics. Sands has some ambition, is interested in her African heritage, but is also a spoiled baby who burns through the family’s money, feels entitled to more, and complains about everyone else. Dee is suffering and working herself away trying to keep the family afloat, and gets little appreciation, but she also gives her husband no support and shoots down his dreams. McNeil can’t seem to understand the concept of having dreams at all; she’s a loving mother, but she’s smothering her family and holding them down, treating everyone’s dreams as ingratitude for her and her husband’s work, undercutting Dee’s attempts to discipline her son and get him to do his schoolwork. Poitier has his dreams, but it takes until the end of the movie for him to get the slightest sympathy from anyone in his family. He’s expected to provide, provide, provide for everyone else, but when he tries to do better, he’s told to shut up and go to work. He’s just relentlessly dumped on throughout the movie, and his answer is to shout and to out and get drunk with his loser buddies. I found all these characters and their complex interrelations fascinating, and the film is a really powerful drama.

The one thing that bothered me a bit was that Poitier’s character really couldn’t even get support from the movie; it ends up dumping on him for trying, too. The film’s final defense of him, when he finally gets even a bit of sympathy and his grace note, is tepid and not really related to his struggle. It ultimately seems to sort of endorse the whole “why are you so worried about money?” message that his family has been holding him down with, this sort of skepticism of the black man as entrepreneur, the idea that to want more is ungrateful. It doesn’t mean to, but there’s some troubling subtext in the way the character’s treated, the “shut up, be a man, provide and keep your dreams to yourself,” attitude that never quite gets refuted. He’s never affirmed quite the way the other characters are affirmed. It’s a great film, but I am dismayed by the subtext around the character.

 

I like Heston but he does come across as arrogant.

 

he plays a jerk in planet of the apes too , but I like it , it makes for a more complex character as opposed to the clean cut type.

 

Love and Monsters (2020)
Surprisingly charming post-apocalyptic adventure with Dylan O'Brian trekking across the monster-riddled landscape to find his sweetheart.

 

Godzilla vs Kong

Pretty much exactly what I expected. Every insane theory put together. But a lot of fun. Kong was amazingly the best character in the family.

 

The Towering Inferno (1974). Steve McQueen and Paul Newman were pretty good in this one.

 

And now for something completely different...

The Letter Room (2020) This is nominated for the Best Live Action short at this year’s Oscars.

Richard, a lonely corrections officer at a state prison, is sympathetic toward the inmates. Some time before, he requested a transfer to a prison job that allowed him to work in a more amicable position with the inmates. We see his amicable with a death row inmate named Jackson. Soon after, Richard is transferred to the title room where he must scan all incoming mail for various red flags: contraband, porno, threats of violence and terrorism. Inadvertently, he starts reading the letters Roscita writes to her Death Row (now former) lover Cris.

Roscita writes some seriously racy and beautiful letters, but Cris discards them. When Richard mentions the letters Cris goes off on him These letters heighten Richard’s longing and desire. Richard actually goes to meet Roscita near her home and she tells him she writes these letters to give Cris hope, but she is now with another man. These confrontations snap Richard out of his lust and admiration for the love he thought Roscita had for Cris.

Meanwhile, Jackson learns of Richard’s transfer and asks him to look through older correspondence for letters from Jackson’s daughter. She stopped writing to her father two years prior. Richard told the inmate there was no mail for him. The short ends with Richard giving a Jackson a forged letter Richard wrote as Jackson’s daughter. The short ends with Jackson’s laughter as he reads the “letter” the corrections officer hands him.

+++

So I thought this was an interesting mirror for loneliness and yearning some people are experiencing during the Covid lockdowns. Some look toward fantasies, holding out hope for something better. Some want to try to make things better. It’s described as a comedy, but I think dramedy is a better fit.

The cast were quite good, the actor playing Jackson rivals Oscar Isaac who plays Richard with kindly empathy and longing. Oscar’s wife Elvira Lind wrote and directed the short. The shaky cam photography works here as it feels like it echoes the documentaries Ms. Lind made before this short. She has a wonderful grasp for character.

I watched this through Amazon Prime’s Topic channel. I kept seeing notations about The Letter Room on social media so I decided to watch it. I hope Elvira wins the award for it.

 

Prosecuting Evil: The Extraordinary World of Ben Ferencz (2018)
Crimes against Humanity. You've heard the term before. If you've been alive for the past seven decades you've heard the term before. But once upon a time, that was just something no one talked about. World War II changed all of that. This documentary available on Netflix gives a portrait of Ben Ferencz; the last surviving prosecutor of the Nuremberg Trials over the Nazi crimes against humanity. This little man stood up to throw the book at dozens of Nazis with documented evidence of having murdered thousands of people each. Well over half a century later, he's still active in fighting the good fight; in the hope that one day the world can come to a resolution that genocide is not the way and that the rule of law prevails on a global scale.

 

I can see that. He did go very broad and haughty, but I feel like his character got the perfect comeuppance in the original Planet Of The Apes. For me, Edward G. Robinson and the bleak Soviet style sets/ costumed were the reason to watch Soylent Green (beyond the shocking reveal).

 

Something of Value. Rock Hudson and Sidney Poitier play young men who grew up together in colonial Kenya, but become separated by racism. Poitier winds up in the Mau Mau movement, where he’s put off by its brutality but increasingly radicalized as open conflict breaks out, and murderous Mau Mau rampages provoke repressive responses. Hudson, meanwhile, wants peaceful coexistence but ends up fighting back against the rebellion, and obviously conflict results. This is one of those well-intentioned films that wants to denounce racism and promote everyone living together in peace and respect, but its perspective on Africans still feels a bit racist; it’s earnest but clumsy. And it’s not helped by its muddled structure. It doesn’t end up being much of a movie.

 

Batman Begins

I'm willing to admit that the Dark Knight is the better film, but this will always be my favorite Batman film for whatever reason. Perhaps one of the best comic book origin films in general as it perfectly captures the whole idea of Batman and the character of Bruce Wayne to great effect. While no Heath Ledger Joker, unlike some I think Liam Neeson's take on Ra's al Ghul is excellent and underrated despite many changes from the comic version.

 

Terminator Dark Fate
Excellent sequel. very funny and some great action sequences. Easily the 3rd best Teminator film for me. I didn't really care for the 3rd and 4th films (I barely remember the 5th) but this one was good.