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

Catalina Caper (1967)
Hey, it's a beach teen comedy, that somehow got relatively famous people in it (at various stages in their career) - Tommy Kirk, Little Richard, Lyle Wagonner (of Wonder Woman fame) and Peter Duryea (whom I recognized from the Star Trek pilot). There's also some of worst musical numbers you could imagine, the whitest white people in the world, lots of scuba diving, the flimsiest of plots, and a painfully unfunny pratfalling 'comedic' relief with the stupidest character name ever.
Four stars. Check it out!


As for Doctor Sleep, my only comment is that my SO for some reason calls that movie "Doctor Slurp" and finds it endlessly hilarious to call it that.

 

saw Dr. Sleep about a year ago , I honestly can't remember a thing about it.

 

Hmm is it still streaming on HBO? I wanted to watch it

 

I've never seen "Catalina Caper" unriffed, but it strikes me as a pleasant enough movie. Second-tier, though, compared to AIP's Frankie/Annette/Eric von Zipper series.

 

I mean, it's got some actual talent in it.

But apart from Little Richard, those musical acts are supremely awful.

 

Eyes Wide Shut is such a great movie , probably my favorite kubrick film along with Spartacus, Paths of Glory, Full Metal Jacket, The Shining ,A Clockwork Orange and Dr. Strangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey i have never liked lol

 

Paths of Glory is maybe my favorite.

 

2001 is my favorite. But I like them all except for Eyes Wide Shut and his early ones, for as far as I’ve seen then anyway.

I kind of have mixed feelings about A Clockwork Orange, but I pre-ordered the 4k anyway.

 

Red Cliff (2008) Abridged version.

It was okay. The action was a little lighter than I would have liked, the style wasn't quite right either, and I didn't like the casting choice for Zhuge Liang at all.

I was thrilled that Zhao Zilong's rescue of Liu Bei's son was included, though it was not executed well, there was no tension. It was great to see the Eight Trigrams formation play out visually, it's very hard to picture it while reading. Was glad to see Zhuge's arrow collection, it's a neat tactic.

It was far too long for what it was, clocking in at 148 minutes for basically a single battle. I can't possibly imagine how the full length version reached 288 minutes without expanding the timeline greatly, and I don't want to watch to find out.

It had it's moments, but it didn't hit the Three Kingdoms spot for me. So I tried again.


Three Kingdoms: Resurrection of the Dragon

I liked this one a little better. The visuals are very desolate, matching the tragedy of the Three Kingdoms era. The action is likewise suitably brutal, and the style captures the spirit better. Sammo Hung actually does a decent acting job, and it's no surprise that the action was more on point with Sammo on as choreographer. I'm not a huge fan of Sammo, but he seems to get the point of whatever's he's doing.

Zhao's rescue of Liu Bei's son is in this one, too. It's better than Red Cliff's version, they at least have the sense to revel in it, but it could have been better. Why not just do it exactly the way it was done in the novel? They hit the high spots closely enough, but it was much more tense and exciting in the novel and would have worked wonderfully. It's more complicated in the novel, requiring more details to be introduced, but it's hardly too difficult to replicate exactly.

The mournful mood alone made it more worthwhile for me than Red Cliff.

 

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. My go-to has been to say that The Royal Tenenbaums is Wes Anderson’s best film. It’s the platonic ideal of a Wes Anderson film, and a complete artistic triumph. But The Life Aquatic is my favorite Anderson film, the one that personally brings me the most sheer joy. It’s his most hilariously quotable and laugh-out-loud funny (perhaps not a coincidence, it’s his only film with Bill Murray in the lead), without losing any of the poignancy that marks Anderson’s work. I love it more than any other film, with perhaps the exception of Raiders of the Lost Ark. That’s how I balance my appreciation of Anderson’s two best films; one a slightly greater artistic achievement, one slightly closer to my heart. But, you know, I’m not entirely convinced anymore The Life Aquatic isn’t his greatest picture too.

Steve Zissou, as played by Murray in one of his greatest performances, is a man of faded glory. Once a star oceanic explorer and filmmaker, he’s now behind the times and something of a joke. His relationship with his wife is strained, and he has no children. He can’t get financing. And his best friend has been eaten by a jaguar shark. He is washed up, with nothing to show for it. After a life of oblivious egotism, he has come to the end of his career and is finally facing the question if any of it was worth it, if it meant anything. It’s a devastating position to be in. Into this yawning void steps Owen Wilson as a sweet, sunny-dispositioned, naive young man who idolizes Murray. Both he and Murray believe him to be Murray’s illegitimate son. Murray is terrified of fatherhood, but also yearning for it, desperate to connect with Wilson and find meaning in a relationship of mentorship and admiration, but frightened of the intimacy becoming too much, too raw.

This growing relationship, with Murray’s slow maturation, takes place against a backdrop of Murray’s hilarious, adventurously digressive voyage of revenge against the jaguar shark. There are pirate attacks, shipwrecks, lab equipment (and espresso machine) thefts, money-bumming, daring rescues, a ton of laughs, and terrible tragedy. There is also Wilson’s beautifully innocent romance with Cate Blanchett, at her loveliest as a pregnant, adrift, disillusioned reporter writing a story on Murray while staring into the uncertainty of single motherhood, a woman who can no longer quite seem to fathom her own life choices. Other highlights include Anejelica Huston as Murray’s frustrated wife; Michael Gambon as his shady producer, a dilapidated relic of the swinging sixties; Jeff Goldblum as his effete, glamorous, moneyed archrival; Willem Dafoe as his fiercely loyal and emotionally needy right-hand man, who’s morosely jealous of Wilson’s place in Murray’s affections; and Bud Cort as the “bond company stooge” who provides the film with some of its most wonderfully unexpected moments.

It all climaxes in one of Anderson’s most sublimely beautiful moments, when Murray finally comes face-to-face with the shark that has cost him so much. “Do you think it remembers me?” he asks, and breaks down in tears. A rediscovered awe at the beauty of nature mingles with the weight of all his regrets settling on his shoulders. But also on his shoulders are the hands of all his family, his friends, his business associates, even his greatest rival, signaling that they are there with him in his grief and wonder, giving him the acceptance of the strange community he has forged. They love him despite all his mistakes, love him, perhaps, all the more now that he finally realizes them. It is a perfect moment of peace, reconciliation, and beauty. Wes Anderson has created dozens of poignant, indelible moments. But I don’t know that he’s created anything that can top that. The Life Aquatic is one of the funniest movies I’ve ever seen, and one of the most emotionally potent. That’s a hard combination to beat.

 

Gunpowder Milkshake

Karen Gillan stars .
trying to be a kinda Kill Bill and John Wick vibe , but just isn't up to it . There's a couple of neat ideas in the action scenes , but the dialogue is awful and the acting not much better . Lots of Brits doing american accents , maybe it was made here , can't be bothered to check.

 

The Killing is a fun noir heist picture for anyone interested in an early Kubrick classic. The Killing has a strong rewatchability factor too as the story is told out of sequence and through flashbacks and whatnot which is revealing upon multiple viewings.

It's quite an impressive and creative piece of film imo.

 

Don't Breathe 2 (2021)

Don't Breathe (2016) was neat little horror thriller about three burglars who break into the house of blind Gulf-War veteran Norman play by Avatar actor Stephen Laing. They have heard that he has $300,000 in the house, a settlement from when a lady crash into Norman car and kill his daughter (the back story is important) All manner of suspense and running around in the house in the dark follow, with the blind man trying to hunt them. It was not too bad a film, with an interesting twist on the home invasion genre.

The sequel see Norman now living with a young daughter who is wanted by some villains who you first think are just some pedophiles or something, and once again Norman end up in a situation where he is killing people in his house in the dark. This film tries to show Norman as a more sympathetic anti-hero, and the people he is up against are far more deserving of his violence (of which there is much) The first half of the film is very similar to the first film premise, with the addition of the young daughter now also trying to hide from the home invaders who are trying to snatch her.

However, the reason for the kidnap of the girl and the "twist" make the second half of this film descend into very ridiculous territory. If you want to know what that is, I put in the spoiler window below.

Spoiler

The twist is that this leader of the villains who kidnap the young girl is her biological father, and they are a gang of methamphetamine manufacturers. They want the girl because her natural mother is alive, but her heart is failing due to an explosion in a meth lab years ago. Norman found the child in the street after this explosion and raise her as his own. Now her parents have engage a surgeon to perform an illegal heart transplant from the child to the mother. WTH? It is so silly.

 

The Mitchells vs. The Machines (2021)
An animated feature film exclusively on Netflix. Essentially a weird family are the only people left in the world to save it from a robot apocalypse. The movie does have some heartwarming moments but otherwise it was pretty dumb overall. Danny McBride stars as the father with a handful of other familiar actors. It was distracting that it had the young boy voiced by an adult actor. I really hate when they do that in animated films. They can't just get a child to voice the lines?

 

Is the Sammo Hung one the version he did with Andy Lau in 2007? I saw that one (really for Shaws folks’ Ti Lung and the late, great Yueh Hua).

Die Hard 2

Christmas is not the most wonderful time of the year for John McClane; but DH2 for all it’s thickly sliced cheese is still fun to watch.

 

Wonder Woman 1984.
I liked it. Not as good as the first one, but has a couple of great opening sequences (the contest and the mall scene) and a very unique Hans Zimmer score. Some nice choral music, no he's not just the bahhhm guy. They do overdo it on the 80's stuff as movies usually do; no everyone did not walk around in spandex and parachute pants.

 

I love this movie very much. Too bad you didn't like it. Maybe just watch documentaries from now on?

 

Yeah, it went off the rails a little bit.
Then again, I may have been expecting a little more of the Wonder Woman TV show throwback, which was one of the few things from the 70s that was great. (Although the bit at the end was a nice touch).

 

A Universal Horror double feature at the Mahoning Drive-In: "The Wolf Man" and "The Mummy's Tomb". The former is one of the better UH movies, with Lon Chaney, Jr. giving his most famous performance (Lennie in "Of Mice and Men" is a close second). He does very well as Larry, a reasonably nice guy suddenly locked into a terrible, cursed existence. The wolf make-up by Jack Pierce is particularly good. There's also a fine cast (Claude Rains, Evelyn Ankers, Ralph Bellamy, Warren William) doing well, though for a movie set in Wales there's not a single Welsh accent to be heard. Maria Ouspenskaya is perfect as the mysterious, sympathetic Maleva, and, while he's only there for about five minutes, Bela Lugosi delivers a great performance as Larry Talbot's lycanthrope predecessor. And the movie clocks in at a brisk 70 minutes.
"The Mummy's Tomb" wasn't all that good. It's the usual "kill the white guys who broke into the tomb" plot, with Lon not so much playing a character (in this case, Kharis the mummy) as being a walking plot device. Turhan Bey does alright as the priestly villain, but the role is cliched. And the movie runs 60 minutes, with the first ten being an extended recap of the previous movie ("The Mummy's Hand"), which this movie largely undoes. George Zucco briefly shows up to reprise his bad guy character from that movie, and he's OK.
I misjudged my time and couldn't stay for the third feature, "The Invisible Man Returns", with Vincent Price.

 

Yes. Andy Lau plays Zhao Zhilong, the movie follows his career.

 

By the way, the final Wolfman story -

Spoiler

Reveals that Larry's 'curse' is nothing more than a brain injury that... causes lycanthropy? Yes, that's the explanation a mad scientist gives, and offers to operate on Larry. And it works! Yes, the story ends with Larry cured and living.

The problem with the Mummy series is that the first one is the best of the bunch, and the rest of the series is its own thing, where the mummy goes from a sinister antagonist to a plot device.
And it's a shame you didn't see The Invisible Man Returns. It really is one of the best of the series, where you have a police inspector who immediately begins using ways to suss out an invisible foe, some wonderful humor, good acting, and - weirdly enough - a pro-worker message.
The Invisible Woman is a flat-out comedy, but is worth it. Avoid The Invisible Agent at all costs - avoid, avoid, avoid!

 

No necessarily.

Spoiler

"Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein" shows him cursed again. And he has one terrific exit in that one.

 

That might be taken as 'non-canon'.

(That is the best of the Abbott & Costello horror films, though - by far!)

 

Speaking of old films, I picked up March of the Wooden Soldiers with Laurel and Hardy.