What have you watched lately?

[Ran]

In conclusion, this movie should not be confused with Buckaroo Banzai.

Did I mention it has probably been 40 years since I've seen either of them?

The Confusius guy guiding someone rings a bell. And, I remember Buckaroo Banzai driving a car really fast through a mountain. That's about it.

[vynsane]

holy shit, i've never heard of remo williams. that's insane.

[Tom Foolery]

In conclusion, this movie should not be confused with Buckaroo Banzai.

Did I mention it has probably been 40 years since I've seen either of them?

The Confusius guy guiding someone rings a bell. And, I remember Buckaroo Banzai driving a car really fast through a mountain. That's about it.

Definitely stick to your original plan and rewatch both of them. The nostalgia factor alone is worth it.

[Tom Foolery]

The Crow. Had it on in the background while I was doing other stuff. Afterwards, Amazon Prime’s algorithm recommended Little Nicky to me. Fuck you, Prime. Do better.

The Peacemaker. Some bent Russians steal a bunch of nukes and Clooney and Kidman stop a guy from blowing up the U.N. After I saw it was directed by Mimi Leder, I looked her up. It’s not often you see women directing action films back in the day. She only directed a few films and then went back to television.

Also watched the second season of Reacher. Binged four episodes last weekend, and the other four today. Good stuff.

[Tom Foolery]

Dune. In preperation, I rewatched part 1 during the week. It’s the third or fourth time I’ve watched it. I was kinda underwhelmed when I saw it in theater a few years ago. Thought it was overlong. But I like it more with each viewing.

And today, went and saw Part 2. Just as visually magnificent as the first one. They changed some stuff from the book. Ended on a rather dour note and sort of another cliffhanger.

I never watched the original 1984 adaptation(until a couple months ago) so the first one I watched was the Sci-Fi miniseries. But I hardly remember anything about it. Might be interesting to rewatch it to compare the three adaptations.

[Ran]

It took me several tries to get through the original Dune without falling asleep.

I tried watching Part 1 of the new Dune, but I couldn't concentrate on it and gave up.

[jjreason]

I loved part one, but I was a captive audience (on an airplane) watching it. I love the costumes & would have been hard-pressed to say no to figures had I seen any available. I'm excited about part 2, but not about the cliffhanger part. I know there are other books in the series, but it would have been nice to give it a bit of a wrap for a couple of years.

[Tom Foolery]

Cliffhanger is perhaps the wrong word. The movie changes one big aspect of the first book, but ends at the same place. I don’t know if you’ve read the books or seen the other film versions, so I don’t want to spoil anything.

After trying to avoid the prophecy and his destiny as the Kwisath Hadderach for most of the movie, Paul embraces it, and makes a play for the Imperial Throne. He succeeds, but the other Houses don’t recognize his ascendance. “A holy war is coming!” his mother gleefully announces, and the credits roll.

Chris Nolan said this was Empire Strikes Back. That’s a fair comparison.

[Tom Foolery]

Ghostbusters:Frozen Empire. First off, they had trailers for Despicable Me 4 and the Garfield movie, and then the last trailer before the movie was for the horror movie Tarot. Which was hilarious to me since the audience was filled with children.

The movie itself was solid. They have quite a few characters from Afterlife, and added a few new ones, and also keep the original cast involved. But it was a nice balance. The villain was actually pretty terrifying, and they built up to him well. And the music played at the end and the aforementioned children sitting in the audience were yelling “Ghostbusters!” when the song asks ‘who you gonna call?’ A good sequel to the sequel.

[Tom Foolery]

Revolver. A Guy Ritchie movie from 2005 that I’d never seen. Jason Statham with a really bad hairpiece has a revenge plot against casino owner Ray Liotta. But the whole thing is like all of his multiple personalities duking it out in his head? Whatever. It was a shitty movie.

Voyagers. Children are sent on a multigenerational spaceflight to a new world, and it turns into Lord of the Flies in space. Meh.

Ocean’s Eleven. To cleanse my pallet after two turds, I had to rewatch a classic good film.

[Diabolical]

Ghostbusters:Frozen Empire.
The movie itself was solid. They have quite a few characters from Afterlife, and added a few new ones, and also keep the original cast involved. But it was a nice balance. The villain was actually pretty terrifying, and they built up to him well. And the music played at the end and the aforementioned children sitting in the audience were yelling “Ghostbusters!” when the song asks ‘who you gonna call?’ A good sequel to the sequel.

The version I saw was overall a fun movie, but I have nitpicks.

It had way too many characters. Most of them didn't get enough screen time to have any real development. There are two that shouldn't have even been there (Lucky and Podcast), and another that should've been a very minor part (the new, science nerd guy). At one point there were 11 people suited up as Ghostbusters. Eleven. Fuck.

And the villain was just a big CG nothing monster, and the build up was lackluster. It was no Gozer, or even Vigo.

Now we have super powers in the GB world?

Another cameo from Sigourney Weaver would've been nice.
A cameo from Rick Moranis would've been amazing.

And where is Dana's son, Oscar?
He's a no-brainer to be included in the franchise.

I think Jason Reitman is the wrong person to be leading this franchise.

This story would've worked better as a 6-8 episode tv series. Flesh it out more, give characters the proper attention, and build the threat.




And fuck off, Patton Oswalt.

[anarky]

Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension. I had NEVER seen this movie. Holy shit, this movie might need it’s own topic. It’s been living in my head for the last few days more than it should have a right to. Given the cast, I feel like this movie was a wasted opportunity for something with so much potential. But at the same time, it’s cemented as a well deserved cult film. Just…wow. And the end credits are like….every movie should end exaxtly like that from now on.

You're fucking kidding. I also had never seen this movie and watched it several months ago. I'm not sure how I lived anything that anyone would consider a life without having watched it. And, yes, those end credits are the greatest achievement in the history of film? Citizen Kane? Fuck you, Orson, until you can just strut with the rest of the cast to a catchy synth tune, you're a fucking putz who somehow lucked out being cast as Unicron.

I finally made the jump to anime over the last year. I held out for the longest time, because so much of it is just daunting as hell. (One Piece has something like 1,200 episodes!?!?) Not exactly a huge leap, but (Not So) Baby 'Nark and I have been watching My Hero Academia and Demon Slayer in particular. Both of them are excellent; we're caught up on Demon Slayer aside from the season that just dropped in Japan, and about halfway through MHA. I'll probably piss off the purists, but we've been watching dubbed (I figure I can eventually go back and watch subbed if time permits). One item of likely interest: an awful lot of the place names in MHA are really blatant homages to Star Wars locations. I mean really blatant.

[anarky]

Escape from Alcatraz. Probably never would've guessed that based on my other post, huh? This was a movie I vaguely knew existed (thought it was much older, though), and someone posted about it about a week after I'd visited the real place again. Very good movie. Very tense, doesn't gloss over the characters being unsavory nor does it really demonize any, and mostly sticks closely to what's known of the real story. Clint Eastwood in his prime is always great. (Okay, his prime stretches several decades now. Dude is just one of the best.)

65. Been meaning to watch this for a while. The commercials didn't really say much about the setup, but basically Kylo Ren is a pilot in an ancient alien society (that also has a shit healthcare system) who's transporting unspecified passengers from unspecified Point A to unspecified Point B. (Sounds like a lot of vagueness when described, but I like that the film doesn't waste time with trivial BS and jumps right into it.) Debris from an unrecorded asteroid strikes his ship, it crashes into Earth, all the passengers die except young Ahsoka Tano, and she doesn't speak (what is translated as) English. He has to get her to an escape pod that was separated from the rest of the ship so it's not a total loss. Also you may have picked up on an asteroid, Earth, and 65 million years ago, so they're on a tight schedule (and Earth seems mysteriously devoid of all dinosaurs except nasty carnivores). It had the potential to be excellent or a real pig terd, and they pulled it off. It reminded me a lot of the sort of sci-fi flicks we saw in the 80s (Enemy Mine stood out, though the plot isn't particularly similar).

[Tom Foolery]

Wish. Disney celebrated 100 years of animation and had their storytellers watch every animated film ever to channel that magic into this one film…and somehow missed the point of every single one of them. And tragically could not come up with a single catchy tune either. And a minor nitpick, the end credits had animation for every Disney film…except apparently The Rescuers and The Black Cauldron. Fuck those two movies I guess.

Wrath of Man. A Guy Ritchie movie with Jason Statham. A mysterious man gets a job at an armored car security firm, which unfolds into a revenge flick. Not Ritchie’s best movie, but not his worst.

Top Secret. Goofy spoof mashup of cold war spy movies and Elvis Presley movies. From the guys that made the Airplane and Naked Gun films. Val Kilmer’s first film. Also has a weird backwards scene with Peter Cushing in one of final roles.

Mad Max. The original. Eh, not really as post-apocalyptic as you might think. More like ‘we filmed this in rural Australia where nobody lives, so we had to throw a narrative card on the front end of the film explaining why ain’t nobody around…’ I read that it was the biggest profit margin for a film( low budget against how much Box Office it generated) until Blair Witch beat it decades later. Also, the vengeful climax was kinda weak. This might be heresy, but this movie would kick ass if it were remade with a bigger budget and streamline the story.

My son was in town this weekend, so we watched a bunch of movies he’d never seen before like Usual Suspects, The Departed, My Cousin Vinny.

[anarky]

Wish.

My daughter turned this on when she saw it on Disney+. She couldn't keep with it, and said it was like a bad Disney Jr show. From what little I saw, it looked like a straight-to-DVD knockoff in the Walmart bargain bin.

Top Secret.

Please, for the love of God, tell me that was your 600th re-watch. I love that goofy movie.

Also definitely look up on YouTube where someone reversed the bookstore scene. They actually filmed an actual scene and played it in reverse. The timing is absolutely brilliant.

Man vs. Bee. Not sure how this was originally disseminated, but it's a bunch of short sequential episodes that essentially add up to one movie on Netflix. Rowan Atkinson plays a housesitter, there's an irritating bee, and, well, you can figure it out. Is it original? No. Is it great? No. Is Rowan Atkinson always worth watching? Absolutely yes. Is this the closest we'll come to new Mr. Bean material? Sadly, also yes.