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Which movie did you watch today and how would you rate it?

Slash/Back. 2/10

For some reason I was in the mood for an independent horror flick I knew nothing about. I don't know why I do this. With one memorable exception (Anything for Jackson), all of these movies are terrible.

This movie in particular is about a group of young Alaskan people in an isolated area of Alaska (I've already forgotten specifically where) who encounter an alien being(s) much like that found in 1982's The Thing.

It's a shame because the writer(s) get some really neat things right about kids that age, but that's as good as it gets. The rest is pretty awful.

I have a good amount of tolerance for child actors, but there are limits.

It's just bad. Don't watch this... I just checked Rotten Tomatoes and somehow this non-chemical coma inducing device has a 92% score with critics. I think I know why that is, but I don't feel like getting into an argument about it.

Suffice it to say the writing, SFX, and acting are fucking awful. The movie sucks, so don't see it.
 
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World

Conservatively, my tenth viewing.
I'm as much a Tolkien geek as you'll commonly find, but the academy award for sound editing was stolen that year (2003) and I will die on that hill. Master and Commander sets a tone like none other for with its sound design and cinematography. One of very few movies that makes a wooden ship of war feel as confined and isolated as they were in real life.
 
Top Gun
6/10

Before he was famous, Tom Cruise had to do thinly-veiled gay romantic comedies. Most well-known of them is probably Top Gun. Lots of showers, topless volleyball, moustaches, and arguments over who gets to be "top". And there's a character nicknamed "Wood" with a picture of a naked butt on his helmet (it seems his radar dude also had one, guys they were the bottoms).

top_gun_butt_guy.png

And he discusses erections with his buddies over the air. The 80s sure was something.
 
Ticket to Paradise with George Clooney and Julia Roberts.

I'm not much for giving movies ratings. ("This movie was a 3 out of 3.7526.")
So I'll just say that it wasn't Die Hard, Butch Cassidy, or Harold and Maude.
It wasn't Jacob's Ladder,

It was good. We had a good time watching it. We enjoyed it.

I liked it a lot more than The Rose or Beaches or I Spit on Your Grave.

I liked it better than Ishtar. I may be the only one who liked Ishtar.

Ishtar
probably has more rewatch value, though. I tend to rewatch at least parts of Ishtar every ten or twenty years.
 
Die Hard, 10/10; A great action movie starring Bruce Willis at the top of his game. Also stars the wonderful Alan Rickman.
Die Hard was the first movie Rickman ever appeared in. He was perfect for the role.
 
Barbarella, 5/10; Stars Jane Fonda in a 1968 Sci-Fi adventure. The movie is based on a French comic. Barbarella is sent on a mission to find a rogue professor called Durand Durand who has possession of a deadly weapon of mass destruction. The journey sees Barbarella come into contact with all kinds of bizarre characters including the dolls with razor sharp teeth which are well creepy. Definitely dated, the plot is simple enough and it can be visually quite interesting to watch. Jane Fonda was incredibly sexy throughout the movie with some great costumes and the opening scene has her writhing around naked which was very well done. 10/10 for that scene.
Funny! One of my favorite movies when I was young. I've heard that some local movie theatres run the movie like a cult movie similar to The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
 
Die Hard, 10/10; A great action movie starring Bruce Willis at the top of his game. Also stars the wonderful Alan Rickman.
Die Hard was the first movie Rickman ever appeared in. He was perfect for the role.

I've read more than once that the look of surprise on Rickman's face at the very end when he falls was not acting. Rickman truly did not know that he was going to be dropped or that there was protection below. That's the look of someone who truly believes he is about to die, and that is hard to fake.
 
The way I read it, the director told Rickman that he would be dropped on the count of three, but really dropped him on the count of two.
 
Watched The Magnificent Seven (1960) for the first time in my life. 7/10

The best part was the score.
 
The Art Of Racing In The Rain

Standard dog and family tear jerker. The interesting twist was the main character was an IMSA prototype level driver who ended up driving for Scuderia Ferrari team in Formula One. Maybe that was to sucker the guys into watching it. It worked. It got me to watch it.

That won't happen again.

4/10
 
Violent Night. 7.5/10

pretty close to what I expected. It is basically Die Hard, but in a mansion, and the hero is Santa. Lots of Christmas puns and jokes. Santa is about ready to quit, tired of all the greed, ungratefulness, and unbelief. He is taking his time delivering to a mansion when it is taken Over by criminals after $300 million in a vault. The crooks find him, but they have two things working against them. 1: they took hostage a cute girl who is on the Nice list. 2: before becoming Santa, he was apparently a Viking warrior. The Naughty get punished in rather gory ways. Not the best of movies, but good violent fun.
 
Two movies I watched over the last week. Both cover some of the same ground. One is far, far better.

On the plane on the way back from the holiday break: Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.

Hmm. Well, it certainly looks like 200 million dollars. Incredible special effects. Tremendous battles. Many bizarre worlds. And it just fell flat. Bendersnatch Cumberdink looks like Dr. Strange from the comics, does a good job delivering the lines, and doesn't make me care about his character all that much. The first Dr. Strange movie was better at this...arrogant doctor gets a reality check and learns the value of humility and sacrifice. This one? Not so much. I didn't really care for the America Chavez character either. They telescoped her "young girl discovers her powers in the last act of the movie" bit way to obviously, and didn't really give an emotional center to her other than "her two moms were lost because of her inability to control her powers." Still not sure exactly what I'm supposed to feel about Wanda at this point (I didn't watch the Scarlet Witch series) and I'm not sure I care. Plus they were pretty casual with what should be a mind-blowing "holy shit there's alternate realities?!" thing. It just turned into another "people with godlike powers fighting other people with godlike powers" MCU spectacle. Good enough to kill a couple hours on a flight.

Everything Everywhere All At Once.


Alternate realities? Check. Fraction of the budget? Check. Better in almost every way? I thought so. Why spend a hundred million on CGI when you can rent some studio space and hire really great fight choreographers and skilled martial arts performers? Instead of creating a computer generated version of your protagonist to fight giant monsters, just have her tilt her head to the side a bit. And isn't it amazing how far good acting can take your story? Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan make you feel something...not just for their "main universe" characters, but their alternate selves across the multiverse. Plus - unlike the "insert quip here" attempted humor in Dr. Strange - this is funny in unexpected and yet also welcome moments. These are not godlike characters fighting to save the multiverse from evil...they're normal people struggling to stop a really bad bagel. I want to watch it again just so I can see all the stuff I know I missed the first time around.
 
Confess, Fletch.

It's a great book. The movie is not good.

The best I can say for this is that it's better than the terrible things Chevy Chase did to Fletch books.
 
The Menu
7.5/10

I really enjoyed this one. Well written, well acted, good mystery and suspense, some good humor, and some intriguing twists and turns. It has some obvious things to say, but a lot of clever subtext as well. I'll definitely have to watch this one again.
 
The Menu
7.5/10

I really enjoyed this one. Well written, well acted, good mystery and suspense, some good humor, and some intriguing twists and turns. It has some obvious things to say, but a lot of clever subtext as well. I'll definitely have to watch this one again.
Watched it last night. Surprisingly good.
 
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