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

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022)

I've finally got around to seeing the movie as it just became available on D+. In the case that you were living under a rock over the past few years, Chadwick Boseman passed away in 2020. Given those terrible circumstances, Marvel decided that the next BP movie would work in T'Challah's passing with some unspoken, incurable illness. So after Endgame, it was only a matter of time before another threat surfaced that the Wakandans would take head on. Now it's Princess Shuri's time to shine. You probably already know that I'm sucker for films where the women take the reins, especially the action ones. This certainly delivers in that regard. It's an entertaining movie. I'm not all that keen on the Atlantian-wannabees, but I guess with all the Marvel films over the past 15 years or so, where else would a threat come from?

Spoiler

I liked the idea of Shuri as the new Black Panther, but I guess the credits scene already hinted that T'Challah's son could be the next one; especially since he took on his name. So I guess that means that Shuri only goes back to being the technological egghead at the Wakandan capitol? Maybe it depends what kind of time jump they'd consider for the next one.

 

Arctic

I finally finished the third film in the Mads Mikkelsen Low Budget Adventure Trilogy: Polar, Riders of Justice, and Arctic. Arctic is actually the first film in the trilogy, but also it's not a trilogy. The movies have nothing to do with each other. I just ended up watching all these Mads Mikkelsen movies. No matter how bad the movies are, and Polar is pretty bad, Mads Mikkelsen himself never fails to entertain. And when he's not making these low budget things, he's been in every gigantic franchise ever. Next up, Mads Mikkelsen in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.

 

The Fabelmans

Had really been looking forward to this, even though there are only a few select Spielberg films I really love. But unfortunately I was pretty disappointed, for reasons I can't entirely put my finger on. I did love Gabriel LaBelle's performance (I found him quite endearing) and certain scenes/moments, but overall, it did not pack the emotional power I was expecting and felt too meandering at times. Still more to my taste than most movies widely released these days, though...so I guess it's got that going for it, which is nice...

When it comes to movies about a boy falling in love with cinema, I'll still take Cinema Paradiso any day!

 

Thirteen Lives (2022)

In June 2018, a soccer team of 12 boys and their coach in Thailand decided to take an excursion and explore deep into a local cave; without knowing that an impending monsoon was about to come, effectively cutting off their only way out. This biopic on Amazon Prime, directed by Ron Howard, shows the monumental effort by locals as well as brave men and women from all over the world who put their lives on the line to rescue the entire team. Considering the tremendous length of the cave and the rising water levels from the rain, specialists devised a rather unorthodox method of saving everyone. Of course I remember the story as it was happening, and couldn't believe the miracle that they all of the boys and their coach were rescued after 18 days. Of course the film has its share of dramatic moments that may or may not have happened, but overall it's about the story of everyone who worked together to get the team out, and I was definitely satisfied on how it was portrayed.

 

You've Got Mail (1998)
Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan being funny and sweet, with a great cast to back them up. For a chick flick, this is one of the most watchable.

 

You Can’t Get Away with Murder. I don’t really expect these thirties Bogart B-movies to be any good, but I just can’t help but watch them anyway. That’s the draw of Bogart.

Here, he’s the crook who lures young dumbass Billy Halop into a life of crime. Halop steals his sister’s fiancé’s gun for a job where Bogart kills a man. Bogart and Halop are pinched for a prior crime, while the fiancé, Harvey Stephens, takes the rap for the killing. They all end up in Sing Sing, where old librarian Henry Travers tries to be a positive influence, Bogart is a terrible influence as he fears Halop will flip, and Halop is tortured by guilt over Stephens’s death sentence and fear over getting the chair if he confesses.

It would all be acceptable enough, a functional if unexceptional crime movie, if it weren’t so profoundly stupid. The whole movie hangs on the complete inability to put together that the kid brother who was arrested that very night for an armed robbery might have possibly been the one who stole the gun for another armed robbery. The kid also seems to have no understanding of plea bargaining, implausibly unaware of the idea that he’s not going to get the chair as an accessory for naming the actual killer. Halop, a mediocre actor whose main technique seems to be laying on the world’s heaviest thirties-New-York accent, is stuck playing an imbecilic, cowardly dupe, a main character it’s impossible to sympathize with the way the movie wants you to. The plot is just fundamentally too dumb to work. There would be something to the concept if they could find a way to plot it out that makes sense, but as is it beggars belief even by the lax standards of mediocre thirties crime movies. Bogart does okay as the villain, but this is the same generic thug role he’s played into the ground by 1939, and there’s no spark there. It’s a miss.

 

"Creature from the Black Lagoon" on Svengoolie. It's a particularly good Universal Horror entry, with a good cast, great underwater cinematography, and a very memorable title character. I particularly like it for how it makes a point of looking at the conflict over "leave the Gill Man alone & study him" and "capture him & bring him back, dead or alive". Plus, there's some real consideration over the humans being in the wrong here. It's much better than in the sequel ("Revenge of the Creature"), where John Agar "studies" the Gill Man using a cattle prod and nobody seems to think it's even mildly wrong.
And, regarding the iconic scene with Julie Adams unknowingly swimming with the Gill Man, I have to figure Spielberg was inspired by it when filming the opening sequence in "Jaws".

 

Have you seen "All Through the Night" yet?

 

No, but I have it recorded off TCM.

 

It's a good one, with a great cast.

 

One of my favorite films.

 

Knock at the Cabin (2023)

Dave Bautista is the standout performance in this. He's excellent, and I'm excited to see what his post-Marvel career looks like. The film itself is actually pretty solid, although it deviates pretty greatly from the source material, which I can see being an irritation for some. Overall, I liked it and would recommend it.

 

The Matrix Resurrections

This was a wonderful experience. I really wasn't expecting it. There's a lot here. There are a ton of meta references, a lot of politics, most of them are great, and they really work in-universe (and out) because this is a meta world, but what I loved, what put the movie over, was the romance. I never saw it this way before. I saw glimpses of it in the original. It's obviously supposed to be a big thing in Reloaded and Revolutions, it drives the characters, but it never did anything for me in those movies, and really took a back seat to the whole revolution thing. This one made the romance more important than anything. It made it the only important thing. All that other stuff? Doesn't really matter. I did not expect that. Easily the best since the original.

I just loved, loved, loved that the characters literally didn't look like themselves in the Matrix. They couldn't be themselves because they didn't look like themselves. Tiffany couldn't believe she was Trinity because she didn't look like her. She didn't see her in the mirror. Her husband laughed at the idea. But they both saw the true person underneath the other's surface. Touching.

The designs, the look of things, all cool as ****, as expected. A neat surprise to see the machines and humans working together, their technology intermixed.

The hordes were called bots, and the matrix turned them into living bombs. They looked like anyone, instead of men in black agents, and there was a focus on attack helicopters. I see what Lana did there, and I like it. If I happened to meet her in person, I'd offer to shake her hand, and thank her for making this movie.

About the only thing I didn't like was Jessica Henwick. If I never saw her again, it would be too soon.

 

Love and Fire.

Checkout this documentary on Disney+ or in a theater. Totally worth it. Just beauty.

 

Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. Great drama, an enganging story, and much better FX than the last one. I also liked the moments of humor here and there, even if it isn't a comedy like The Voyage Home. There's a good reason why the Khitomer Treaty is still being referenced in the later series. I think that this movie's the best with the TOS crew.

The first one's a bit of a Kubrick ripoff, and even if the story's interesting, I have issues with the pacing. I despise Khan, so I can't really get into the fan favorite movie II, although I can appreciate the drama of the writing and the cinematography. The Search for Spock is better in my book, even if the ending is a foregone conclusion given what came later. The Voyage Home's a barrel of laughs, but I always feel somewhat cheated when a sci-fi movie or episode with a crew that's usually meant to be in space or on alien planets is set on Earth instead. Even given what I said about Khan, The Final Frontier's still the weakest of the lot...

 

First They Killed My Father (2017)

Now that was a very powerful film. I've had this on my Netflix queue for a pretty long time and only today got around to watching it. In 1975 as America begins their evacuation of Southeast Asia, Communist forces led by Pol Pot take over a city in Cambodia and force the civilians to leave; on the ruse that the Americans will be bombing soon. A seven year old girl joins her six siblings and parents as they march first to a labor camp where the Kmer Rouge strip them of their possessions and brainwash them into believing that they're all "equal". It's a difficult watch, knowing that it is based on true events, especially considering this is all shown from the perspective of a seven year old. There's points in the film you might develop some fantasy of Rambo or Schwarzenegger's Commando to come and rescue all of the innocent civilians. But it's an important story to tell and I'm glad I saw it.

 

The Menu Anya Taylor-Joy and her cheekbones have to deal with Nicholas Hoult playing a Nicholas Hoult character and Ralph Fiennes playing a Ralph Fiennes character. The movie is absolutely bat**** and couldn't be more thematically blatant. Best Picture of 2022.

 

Every one of you is becoming Rogue 1.5. What is happening?

 

I don't know what you're talking about. Now I'm going to write 12 paragraphs on a Veggie Tales VHS I found at a yard sale.

 

Black Adam

Why did they do this? Why did they do it this way? Because The Rock wanted it? There are two, maybe even three potentially good movies here, and they're all wasted together here. Why is DC such a mess?

 

And somehow the grammar sounds wrong.