Recent Movies You Saw

[Teddybear]

I am a big, big fan of the 1982 version of The Thing as well. Always loved the ending with Childs and Macready meeting up - as Mac said if either one was The Thing the other was in no position to do anything about it. Pass the bottle and just wait to freeze to death......awesome, awesome movie that still holds up perfectly 40 years later.

The original 1951 The Thing is also fantastic. James Arness swinging his arm at the door still makes me jump.

[Zack Burner]

More seasonally correct viewing: The Empire Strikes Back, the version I caught had never before seen footage such as a Wampa attack at the Hoth base, further interaction between Luke and Leia after his recovery, a short scene where Bobba Fett encounters some rebels, and others. The Hoth battle with the AT-AT's is a grand spectacle even though the forces of good have the odds stacked against them.

[VideoGameCritic]

Thanks for bringing this up Zack! Empire has been mandatory snow-day viewing for decades!
I think I could forgive people from stopping it after the first half hour though...

"An extended scene between Luke and Leia" is always awkward, knowing what we know now. LOL

[Zack Burner]

Thanks for bringing this up Zack! Empire has been mandatory snow-day viewing for decades!
I think I could forgive people from stopping it after the first half hour though...

"An extended scene between Luke and Leia" is always awkward, knowing what we know now. LOL

Oh yes, Leia just can't resist the charms of the "Stuck up, Scrawny-looking Nerf Herder!". "Laugh it up fuzzball...."

[Zack Burner]

Last night's movie: O Brother Where Art Thou? With George Clooney, Holly Hunter, John Tutorro, Tim Blake Nelson, and John Goodman. Based on Homer's Odyssey though set in the depression era Mississippi, we follow Ulysses as he tries to return to his wife and evade the law. If you're familiar with The Odyssey you can spot plenty of nods to the tale, the Tiresias (blind prophet) figure, the lotus eaters, the cyclops, the sirens, the nod to Poseidon. Add in a still awesome soundtrack and you've got a winner. I remember first seeing this in theaters all those years ago and it has held up quite nicely.

[C64_Critic]

"White Noise", starring Adam Driver and Don Cheadle (the only two people that had any name recognition with me anyway). Netflix had this billed as a Comedy (among other things). Somewhere in that description I even saw the term 'absurdist comedy', which I apparently don't recognize as a thing or I would have avoided this like the plague right from the start.

This nonsensical, pointless, ridiculous story starts and ends absolutely nowhere, with the promise of something cool and interesting happening in the middle but sadly never materializes. Some guy is a professor of Hitler studies, is married to some chick, they share a fear of dying before the other, they have a gaggle of kids who of course are generally smarter than their parents, there is a toxic cloud, the family flees, the cloud goes away, they return to their lives, all the while the wife is taking a mysterious medication, they shoot some guy in the end who was providing the medication, there's a huge dance number in a grocery store, the end. The best part about any of this was the song at the end while the dance number went on along with the credits, although I'd have enjoyed it more if they just played the song over the credits (Danny Elfman FTW!) and skipped the dancing.

The film loves to utilize the very-popular-these-days style of dialogue where one person responds to what the other person said or is saying so quickly and they go back-and-forth so rapidly that you can barely understand what anyone is saying. Add to this the generally muddled voices and how often people are talking OVER each other, I think I missed about 50% of the spoken dialogue over the course of the film (which probably didn't help my potential enjoyment of it of course). It was over 2 hours of my life I wasted, and even though it was set in the 80's - scientifically proven to have been the most awesome decade ever - I still couldn't get into it.

The more I read through other people's messages in this thread the more I have to come to terms with the fact that at least where cinema is concerned, I am a complete philistine. Maybe I'd have enjoyed this movie slightly more if it were billed (correctly) as a 'Dystopian Family Drama' as opposed to a Comedy. This, I blame ion Netflix. What they tag movies as when it comes to genre quite frequently bears little resemblance to what *I* would consider them to be, and this is yet another 'Exhibit A' in that trial. I think there were maybe three times during the entire film I cracked half a smile at something that was clearly intended to be funny and was at least in that ballpark, but aside from that I kept thinking to myself "When does the comedy start!?!?!"

[Stalvern]

The more I read through other people's messages in this thread the more I have to come to terms with the fact that at least where cinema is concerned, I am a complete philistine.

I thought the book was a smarmy, miserable mess, for what it's worth. America's true religion is consumerism. Academics get ahead by claiming arbitrary, meaningless niches for themselves. Kids ask hard questions that adults can't or won't answer. People avoid confronting death. All reasonable themes for a novel to explore, but they're presented through absolutely pathetic characters whom you're supposed to pity and wryly chuckle at because you understand this stuff and they don't, the poor saps. The way you describe the movie's dialogue is exactly how it feels on the page – overstuffed with ironic back-and-forth cleverness – so I guess the adaptation at least did its job there.

[jon]

I've been watching "6 Bullets", a Van Damme movie from 2012. He has to rescue a kidnapped child. It's really good. This along with movies like "Pound of Flesh" show that he'd stayed in good shape. I read something hilarious. Apparently there was a party at Sylvester Stallone's house around 1995, and Steven Seagal and Van Damme were there. Seagal had I guess said before that he could beat up Van Damme. Apparently Van Damme challenged him to a fight, but he said no. I'll give Seagal this; he was in his 40's and Van Damme was in his mid 30's, there's an 8 year age gap. Then they both were at a nightclub that same night and he tried to fight Seagal again but he wouldn't.

[Zack Burner]

The great Raquel Welch died yesterday at age 82, so to honor her memory, I chose the movie she's most famous for: "One Million Years B.C." where she plays Loana alongside John Richardson as Tumak in a fun prehistoric adventure with dinosaurs, engineered by the legend of SFX: Ray Harryhausen, plus a giant iguana and tarantula. Welch was immortalized wearing a fur bikini in the movie, which skyrocketed her to fame, and to think she almost turned down the role.......She still had the bikini for decades.

[Zack Burner]

Decided to catch a rare 80's movie that has some good laughs and a nostalgic look back: "Diner" 6 buds meet often at a Baltimore Diner to discuss their problems and their futures. With a nice cast of Steve Guttenberg (Cocoon, Short Circuit), Kevin Bacon (Footloose), Daniel Stern (Home Alone), Mickey Rourke (The Wrestler), and Paul Reiser (Aliens and TV's "Mad About You"), what's not to love? Also featuring some nice 50's songs like "Let's go to the Hop", "Come and Go with Me", "Whole lot of Shakin going on", plus some nice comedic touches.