Recently watched movies!

[The Shadow]

I picked up JL: Gods and Monsters the week it came out (I think, may have been the following week). I liked it, of course I knew going in that this was true successor to DC's now defunct Elseworlds line -- taking established characters and telling what could be very different stories. With JL: G&M we have Superman, Wonder Woman, and Batman but they aren't Clark Kent, Princess Diana, and Bruce Wayne -- other characters are different too, even though I kinda knew what to expect there were still surprises in the movie.

I don't recall all the details but apparently Bruce Timm and the rest of the DC animated team are working on a series that continues on from where JL: G&M ends.

[XvGojira]

Scooby-Doo! and Kiss: Rock and Roll Mystery - Just a barrel of fun. I seriously would watch a cartoon series about KISS and their mystical rock powers and realm of KISSteria.

I mean how could you not want to see more of this?

[lhb412]

Silent Movie

Not a revelation, but squarely in the second tier of Mel Brooks movies (which includes pretty much everything post-Young Frankenstein to Spaceballs). I feel like this film would have benefited greatly if it was shot in black and white.

[Quakerzilla]

[Dr Kain]

Cinderella - I haven't watched this movie since 1993 and now I remember why. It is easily one of the weakest movies in Disney's library because it has barely any story and the characters are unlikable and shallow. "I want someone to come and take me out of this life instead of doing something for myself." Oh give me a freaking break!!! Not to mention the prince just happens to pick her out of all of those people in the crowd? Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight. Also, the step mother is not even that interesting of a villain. She isn't evil, she is just selfish spoiled brat. The animation is pretty good and it does move at a brisk pace thankfully. Nevertheless, I give it a 6/10 stars.

[klen7]

Wyrmwood - What did i just watch? I've been hearing a lot of good things about this australian horror flick and it was available on netflix streaming. This movie is wild. Not sure if it's good or bad.. but it was bloody and weird and decidedly unique considering it was a zombie movie.

[Dr Kain]

The World is Not Enough - Man, how can a movie that has such a promising first half turn into a piece of **** in its second half? The movie has a great set up, but falls to pieces once Christmas is introduced and the whole thing becomes just a generic, predictable, boring, movie. Oh look, ANOTHER submarine finale. Oh, Elektra really was the villain the whole time, how surprising. How many times did it take her to say nuclear physicist? Does she even have any survival instincts or her own and does Bond have to tell her what to do the entire time? That is the absolute worst pun in the history of the franchise. Even those found in Moonraker are not as bad as that. Overall, I give this dose of hog wash **** a 4/10 because of its first hour.

[Dr Kain]

Star Wars - 9/10

The Empire Strikes Back - 10/10

Return of the Jedi - 8/10

I watched the original unaltered versions this time around since last year I watched the BD ones.

[lhb412]

Stagecoach

I'm used to John Wayne being perpetually middle-aged, so it kinda throws me to see him so young and fit and have people call him 'kid' and 'young man,' or to see him depicted as charmingly naive. This is a great film. It features a great cast/characters, well-executed premise (a small group have to cross the desert during one of Geronimo's raids), and beautifully shot. The highlight is an amazing action sequence when the Apaches attack the stagecoach, which must've blown 1939 audiences away, largely thanks to some fantastic stunts by stuntman extraordinaire Yakima Canutt.

[MekaGojira3k]

[klen7]

Still better than Die Another Day.

[eabaker]

[MekaGojira3k]

[Dr Kain]

[klen7]

[DannyBeane]

[lhb412]

The Great Dictator

It's just incredible that this movie was made, that Charlie Chaplin made a movie lampooning Hitler, fascism, and antisemitism when America was still isolationist (and, though we'd like to forget it, many Americans were sympathetic to Hitler) - and that the entire movie is predicated on what was already a cliche joke at that point; that Hitler and Chaplin's Little Tramp look alike! It's like Chaplin had to make this movie since the connection between him and Hitler was already in the popular consciousness and he had to give the definitive last word on the relationship between them.

The only problem with this film is that the narrative is kind of lopsided by the fact that the Jewish main characters are sidelined for the final third of the film while the film indulges in it's (admittedly brilliant and hilarious) spoofing of Hitler and Mussolini's relationship. That stuff is great and I'm not saying the film should have lost it, but it could have been done earlier in the story.

[lhb412]

The In-Laws

Alan Arkin's daughter is getting married and he meets the groom's father, played by Peter Falk, for the first time the day before. Turns out Falk is a kind of rogue secret agent who immediately involves Arkin's mild-mannered dentist in a increasingly dangerous caper to prevent the collapse of global currency. The entire film is an excuse for Peter Falk to say and do increasingly insane things while acting very calm and casual about it while Arkin reacts with incredulity, terror, and (eventually) exasperated resignation to being shot at and meeting psychotic dictators.

This movie is very, very funny, and I suppose Alan Arkin has people yell "Serpentine!" at him on the street all the time because of this film.

[Reaper G]

[lhb412]

[XvGojira]

Was over at a friend's house over the weekend and watched some Wes Craven stuff, he was going through Wes' filmography for the podcast he's recording today.

I came in at the end of Deadly Blessing so I can't say much on that.

The People Under the Stairs - It's a goofy urban version of Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Instead of hicks killing and eating white kids. It's crazy rich white folk killing ghetto folk and feeding them to the people they keep in the basement.

Deadly Friend - The first part of the movie almost seems like a coming of age/goofy family robot/lifetime original film mix. But then the girl dies and it makes one hell of a turn. If it wasn't for the proto-Roger Rabbit "Plbtbtbtbtbtb" noise B.B. makes, I'd swear they were just remixing Frank Welker's Stripe from Gremlins, instead of Charles Fleischer. And that ending. Wow. And BB's theme over the credits. This movie might not be great but it's something that needs to be seen at least once I think.

Swamp Thing - Holey rubber suit! No seriously, you can see holes by the arm pit and at one point you can even see the patch of blue from what Durock was wearing under the suit. Stupid, kind of fun, but totally worth seeing for Adrienne Barbeau's boobs.

Chiller - TV movie. Guy is brought out from a cryogentic freeze and is suddenly evil. The whole, came back from the dead as a different person. They don't say he was possessed by a demon, but that he's now soulless. Although there were some shots before he awoke where his eyes were all bloody and red (I think, it was a torrent of a VHS recording off TV so it was blurry as hell).

[eabaker]

[Dr Kain]

The Purge Anarchy - I don't know what to really think about this movie. It was a pretty good action movie, but the feature on the disc is calling it a horror movie. IF this is a horror movie, then the studio failed on every level. It had some really good scenes, the music was well done, and I did like the characters. This is what the first one should have been. Overall, I have two scores for it. As an action movie, I give it a 7/10 because it was highly entertaining. If I were to consider it a horror movie though, it gets a 3/10 because there was nothing remotely horror about it.

[lhb412]

Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger

Ray Harryhausen said Jason was his best film because it was "the most complete." I understand exactly what he meant; he had this huge creative vision and they had limited resources to execute that vision. Jason was the case where he was able to accomplish most of what he wanted. In that spirit, I want to volunteer this one for being perhaps his least complete: the film is often choppy and badly edited, the cast is pretty weak (Troughton acquits himself nicely, though), the special effects that aren't stop motion (the green screen work especially) are plentiful and uniformly terrible, and even Ray's stop motion sequences don't seem quite as well thought out as usual.

Still, the prince turned into a baboon and Trog are pretty cool. Even the worst of Harryhausen still has a lot of fun to it.

[eabaker]