What MOVIE(s) have you been....seeing? watching?

Jackwraith wrote:

Nodens wrote: TWhat this movie has going for it is of course the music by Queen and Clancy Brown. And beheadings. And quotable lines. Oh my. I still loved it, warts and all. And even if you can't honestly say that it is a 'good' movie, some parts are perfect cinema.

Is genuinely a bad film. Will not begrudge anyone enjoying it. (And, yes, the sword technique is one of the things that sticks out to me every time I've seen it, as well. Have I seen a bad film more than once? I sure have.)

I agree that Highlander is a bad movie, with some great things: Queen, Clancy Brown, beheadings, and quotable lines. And an interesting overall concept, which is how we got a tv show that lasted several seasons, and multiple movie sequels of lesser quality. The notoriously bad first sequel movie made the mistake of trying to follow up the original movie, even though it had written itself into an ending that closed off any reasonable sequels. The tv show and other sequel movies functioned better with the understanding that it great to have these Highlanders running around and dueling each other, as long as it never came down to just one winning survivor.

In high school, I had a friend from Scotland who loved this movie so much. It’s a fun movie.

I liked the Highlander tv show, except for the super-annoying supporting character Richie. For all I know, Stan Kirsch may have been a lovely human being, but his character Richie was a constant drag on the show. He didn't have much of a career after Highlander, possibly due to his role on Highlander, his level of talent, or both.

Jackwraith wrote:

Nodens wrote: TWhat this movie has going for it is of course the music by Queen and Clancy Brown. And beheadings. And quotable lines. Oh my. I still loved it, warts and all. And even if you can't honestly say that it is a 'good' movie, some parts are perfect cinema.

Is genuinely a bad film. Will not begrudge anyone enjoying it. (And, yes, the sword technique is one of the things that sticks out to me every time I've seen it, as well. Have I seen a bad film more than once? I sure have.)

How dare you!

I'll defend Highlander till death but yeah, it makes little sense but since it keeps running and never looks back it all works. Because it has no preachy message it never trips up on it's own hypocrisy. If anything, watching it with the context of the second film (WTF?) and then the 3rd and 4th with the series, can radically alter the experience as 'the mythology' of highlander, such as it is, can not tolerate much, if any, scrutiny.

I've high hopes for the Cavill adaptation at least being more interesting with the swordplay. In particular how someone that is virtually immortal and fairly quick healing would fight compared to normal dudes. Run forward to take a sword to the chest just so you could take his head? Sure, why not? Use a thin bladed weapon when only decapitation is final....sure ok, I guess. More diverse traditional weapons as well, axes, ghurkas, maybe even a guy so bored of the whole thing he fights with a bo staff or wooden bokken, Mushashi style.

Star Trek: Section 31 was a disappointment. This should have been an automatic good movie for me, since it features both Michelle Yeoh and the Terran Empire of the Star Trek Mirror Universe. Michelle Yeoh is amazing. She started out as pageant queen, then switched to acting, with an emphasis on Hong Kong action movies. She often did her own stunts, and once upstaged Jackie Chan by jumping a motorcycle on top of a moving train. She was also a Bond girl, but continued to win roles as she aged due to her fluency in English, her cool demeanor, and her acting chops. And while the Mirror Universe always represented the opposite of the values that define Star Trek's Federation, it makes for an occasional refreshing counterpoint to the righteous protagonists of Star Fleet.

So how did Section 31 go so wrong? Some might complain that it didn't feel like a Star Trek movie, but I don't find that to be a valid complaint because Section 31 is the secretive black ops arm of the Federation that doesn't follow Star Fleet rules. I think the real problem is that this movie is what was left of a scrapped Section 31 show. So a lot of characters and concepts get introduced quickly, too quickly to land solidly. And the plot is too ambitious, covering too many events too quickly for viewers to keep up. It's possible that a better script could have made it all work, or maybe a better cast could have delivered the lines more solidly, but I think that the scope of the movie is still the biggest problem. Yeoh delivers a solid performance, no notes, and everybody else seems to be giving a real effort. But it doesn't come together as a cohesive work.

Section 31 might still be worth a watch if you like Michelle Yeoh, the Terran Empire, or science-fiction action movies. The movie looks good, on par with the modern Star Trek shows Discovery and Strange New Worlds. The pace is brisk and the fight choreography is good, even though Yeoh is now in her early 60s. There is even some humor in the mix. Check it out on Paramount+ if you like.

Was getting over a cold recently, so I watched some movies. Amazon Prime seemed to have a bunch of crime and espionage dramas, so I dove in.

Scorpio (1973) is all about internal intrigue at the CIA. It seems gritty and realistic, and also very clever at times, but the story runs wild with the CIA bringing in a freelancer to assassinate one of their own operatives who may or may not be a double agent. Plenty of action, featuring Burt Lancaster, Alain Delon, and Paul Scofield.

The Seven-Ups (1973) features Roy Scheider as an undercover cop who uses unconventional tactics to catch criminals who tend to get sentences of 7+ years in prison. He also displays a wanton disregard for proper police procedures, such that zero of his cases should survive the scrutiny of a grand jury or a judge, but that falls outside the scope of this movie. There is a great car chase scene, and some other action.

Bad Company (1995) is about a dirty private company that hires former CIA operatives to blackmail executives and officials for financial gain and political influence. Lawrence Fishburne and Ellen Barkin star, and Frank Langella and Spaulding Gray are in the mix. Fishburne is as impressive as usual, but Barkin often steals scenes. I have not seen many Barkin movies and had the odd impression that her career was relatively brief, but IMDB shows that she has been steadily working for decades.

Busting (1974) stars Elliot Gould and Robert Blake as a couple of extremely dedicated vice cops. Unfortunately, their current case involves somebody who is bribing local officials to leave his business (drugs and prostitution) alone. A good amount of action, with a downbeat ending.

The Last Voyage of the Demeter (2024) I don't want to spoil the big twist for anyone who would go into this movie blind, but it takes a few pages from a famous horror story and expands it into a good horror movie. The movie works as a fine period piece, and some of the nautical scenes look like classic paintings brought to life. My only complaint is that the primary threat is too monstrous in appearance, given the role it plays in the rest of the story in question. Corey Hawkins and Liam Cunningham are not big stars, but they both deliver decent performances in this movie.

In recent years, I have seen amusing memes that link Easter with the Alien movies. Today, I submit for your consideration the possibility that Bad Lieutenant (1992) is a good movie to watch on Easter Sunday. Sure, it's an appalling, grimy, cynical movie about a very dirty cop that also displays some full frontal male nudity. And there is a scene where a nun gets raped. And yet Jesus is in this movie, literally, and the story dares to explore the boundaries of faith and redemption. Harvey Keitel's performance is riveting and essential, but also a bit tedious and overbearing at times.

The Last Voyage of the Demeter is very nice, the 19th century atmosphere is well established with sets and visual effects that work well.

Watched a couple of movies on an airplane this weekend (which is a perfect environment for cinema, of course). It's safe to say I would have felt better about all of these films had I watched them at home.

Wicked - I expected better after all of the praise.... it's fine.

Saturday Night - I thought this movie about the emergence of Saturday Night Live would be funnier.... it's quite average.

The Blackening - A group of Black friends get together for a Juneteenth celebration in a remote cabin. They discover a creepy racist board game and are being hunted down by a masked killer. It's horror comedy, but I'd say it leans more on comedy. I still have 33 minutes to go on this one but I intend to try to find it to finish, which I'd say is a good recommendation.

Conclave - Rather timely, of course. I had heard many good things. I was immediately on alert when I saw that it was PG. The film is full of top tier acting. I liked it, but I think I was disappointed because I had been led to believe, or maybe just assumed, that it was going to be a lot more sinister than it was. It's PG, alright.

Sinners (2025) is a very good horror movie. It takes place in rural Louisiana in 1938, and stars Michael B. Jordan and a skilled young musician named Miles Caton. The movie takes its time to get where it's going, but the payoff is great. Sinners is a violent movie that also celebrates music, and features at least one more genre than you expect. The ending is surprising, and there is a post-credits scene worth watching if you enjoyed the music.

The horror element was strong enough to trigger the young woman sitting on my right, who jerked and flopped about in her seat at several points. A scene near the ending was so moving that both she and I shed tears. In several ways, I was reminded of that terrific first episode of Lovecraft Country. However, Miles is a better musician than actor, and there weren't any interesting new twists on the standard tropes of the threat involved. The use of music in the movie was occasionally transcendent, and there was one surprisingly good use of the theater sound system, as a character exited a scene shouting, and their voice trailed off in the righthand speakers in the theatre, starting in the frontmost speaker and moving towards the back.

I also recently saw Strange Darling (2023), another fine horror movie. It has some interesting things to say about men and women early on, then eventually spirals into fast-paced mayhem. The story is told in chapters, but the viewer experiences those chapters out of order, leading to a dramatic revelation partway through the movie. Willa Fitzgerald turns in an amazing performance, but co-star Kyle Gallner is also good. If you are a fan of Veronica Mars (I am), you will remember Kyle from that show, as well Ed Begley Jr. Barbara Hershey is also in the mix. There are several surprises, and I enjoyed not knowing what to expect next.

I enjoyed Sinners as well. An interesting aspect outside of the movie itself is how Ryan Coogler has negotiated a reversion of the film rights from WB after 25 years which thematically ties to some of themes in the movie around black ownership.

Thunderbolts* (2025) is good but not quite great. If you are burned out on superhero movies, you should skip it. If you are only a little weary of the standard superhero movie formula, this one stands out as somewhat different. Thunderbolts reminds me of the very inferior first Suicide Squad movie, and also the slightly inferior first Guardians of the Galaxy movie which was also directed by James Gunn. (I really believe that the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie is an overrated mess, but don't want to get sidetracked here.) There is the same mix of abrasive and selfish characters who manage to band together as a team under great duress. I can't reasonably compare Thunderbolts* to the second Suicide Squad movie despite some obvious similarities, because the second Suicide Squad movie is so very funny and extremely dark.

Thanks to my deep knowledge of Marvel comics and the first four phases of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I knew what was going on. I even correctly anticipated before the start of the movie that a certain character was going to die early on. But I didn't see some of the specific movies or shows that introduced this cast: the Black Widow movie, the 2nd Black Panther movie, the Hawkeye tv show, and the Falcon & Winter Soldier tv show. I did see the first three Captain America movies, all the Avengers movies, and Ant-man & Wasp, which are also relevant viewings. But none of them are required viewing, as this movie tells you just enough to appreciate these characters in this movie.

What makes this movie worth watching is strong performances by Florence Pugh and Julia-Louis Dreyfus, as well as decent helpings of action, humor, and visual effects. The rest of the cast is also capable, and I feel optimistic that Wyatt Russell could eventually become a bigger star if he just connected with the right role.

By now, everybody knows that they should watch the credits for an MCU movie, as there will be a mid-credits scence. There is one, and there is also a longer post-credits scene, The first one is amusing, and the second one is a prelude for the next big Marvel movie.

Love Lies Bleeding - watched on Max. A lesbian who works in a gym takes a liking to a muscle-bound lady who starts coming to the gym. They start down a path of sex and drugs, and there might be some rock and roll but I don't remember.

Ed Harris plays the gym worker's father. He owns a combination firing range / bar, which is of course a perfect combination. The muscle lady just happens to get a job at the gun range.

Long story short, every character ends up intertwined with every other character, and eventually some very ill-thought out crimes occur. The plot gets more and more insane, with steroid use clouding the characters' judgment, as well as perhaps their innate violent natures.

I did not care for this film. It's weird, it can be gross, and it was frustrating watching every character make increasingly bad choices. 3 /10

Companion (2025) is well worth watching if you have Max. Jack Quaid plays a major character, but there is no question that Sophie Thatcher is the star. Who is Sophie Thatcher? She is a rising star with formidable acting chops, and is currently 3 for 3 in my book: Yellowjackets, Heretic, and now Companion. This science-fiction movie seems to start out as a rom com, turns to dark comedy, and finally crosses a line into horror, with Sophie comfortably adapting to each genre as needed. Jack Quaid is also good, but within a slightly more limited range that some of us have already seen in The Boys.