Recently watched movies!

[lhb412]

Ugh, gotta make my way through this stack of Blu-Rays...

Ace in the Hole

This is a really terrific Billy Wilder film (Sunset Boulevard, Some Like it Hot, The Apartment) I had not seen before. It's a really biting, pitch black, cynical film about the media that somehow came out in the early '50s but its message is sadly still topical. Kirk Douglas is a big city reporter who has been exiled to a dinky local paper out in the sticks after one scandal too many. He hopes for a big story that'll go national and get him back on top, and when a man is trapped in a cave-in he contrives to extend the rescue operation in order to drag the event out and make it into a media phenomenon, and things go more wrong from there.

[Dr Kain]

Zeta Gundam Movie 1 - I felt like I was watching Zeta Gundam Abridged, but they forgot the comedy. Seriously, this movie is put together by someone with ADHD. Nothing makes any sense and scenes are just stitched together just because. Like one scene Lila is talking to Jerid, she turns the corner, and around the corner her space suit is on. WTF? None of this makes any sense and they introduce Kamille already being interrogated and introduce Fa finding her mom, but never do we see the two have a proper introduction, nor do they even meet up until more than halfway through the movie. How is the audience supposed to care about them when they don't even know them unless they have already seen the series? But then, if you have seen the series, there is no point to these movies. So who the hell was the target audience? Why does this even need to be a thing?

Okay, okay, fine, yes, this was my introduction to Zeta, but I went out and bought the series 2 days after watching these movies because I was completely lost. I have not watched them since the week they came out on DVD and now I remember why. Man, I wish I had sold them off when they were actually worth something. At this point, I might as well give them away. Anyway, yes, I'm gong to watch the other two because I'm an idiot, but also because I feel compelled to do so. The new animation looks pretty nice, if it was on its own and not mixed in with the old animation. It just makes no sense why they made newly animated scenes that are pretty much identical to the old scene, especially the fight at the end of the movie. It's just a recreation of the original footage, but in computer generated animation that is out of place. Why? Why not just make an entirely new animated movie? Ugh, too many questions.

JL vs Teen Titans - This was total bullshit!! If this was a Teen Titans movie, it would have been fantastic. It had some really nice moments, especially the amusement park bit (although it was annoying having some crappy pop song play during this scene) where they actually got to be kids. And it was so awesome seeing Trigon in animation again. Unfortunately, the entire experience is ruined by having a forced in Justice League that did not need to be here. Clearly WB forced the JL to be in this. The only time Batman needed to be here was to drop Damian off at the Titans HQ and be done. Cyborg makes sense, but Superman, WW, and Flash did not belong at all. It should have been Kid Flash and Wonder Girl without Superboy. As is, the movie was soured by the inclusion of them. On one hand, I give it a 7/10 because it was an enjoyable movie that finally dropped the angsty jackass super heroes, but on the other hand, I want to give it a 5 because of the JL.

[Hybrid Gojira]

The Mist - What a cool movie. Some of the CGI hasn't held up, but the creatures are great and I loved the huge monster at the end. That ending tho. *gut punch* 8/10.

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 - I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed this movie. It does a fine job of wrapping up the series, but it also kills off a character in a way I wasn't expecting. The last 30 minutes were particularly brutal. 7/10.

The Dark Knight - For my money, this is still the best Batman movie to date and probably the best superhero film of all time. It's nearly perfect. This movie gets all all the things right that Batman v Superman so abysmally gets wrong. Ledger's performance as Joker is amazing, Batman doesn't kill people (hey Snyder, did you see this?), and the cast works well together. 9/10.

[Dr Kain]

I prefer The Mist in black and white and I feel the CG holds up in that version better.

Anyway,

Zeta Gundam Movie II - OH DEAR LORD!!! That was down right atrocious. This movie encompasses episodes 15-32 and it shows. Everyone is back in space by the half hour point, making everything irrelevant that even happened on Earth. Fourth has absolutely no character development whatsoever and her relationship with Kamille makes no sense because of it. If you just blink you might have missed an important scene because there is no pacing whatsoever. This feels like something Zack Snyder would have pieced together. The new animation continues to be out of place, but the worst part is that barely any of it even deals with the Zeta Gundam itself here.

[lhb412]

^I've heard only bad things about the Zeta compilation films, but have you seen the original Gundam movie trilogy? I've been thinking about revisiting the original Mobile Suit Gundam and am wondering whether I should go with the series or the movies.

[Dr Kain]

[Dr Kain]

Zeta Gundan Movie III - So this movie is supposed to encompass episodes 33-50, but in reality, it is 33, 34, 43-47, 49, and 50. Oh, and a scene from episode 41. Yes, you read that right. They pretty much don't even bother to use footage from half of the episodes the movie covers. They never go back to Earth, the Psycho Gundam is never seen again, making it completely irrelevant to have even been in these movies in the first place, Rosammy never appears, yet, she still shows up in spirit before Kamille during the final battle, and Haman joins with the Titans for maybe 7 minutes. Oh, and Reccoa does what she does for no reason. None of it makes any sense. Even worse is the cop out of a generic happy ending that takes away all meaning the ending of the series symbolized. It makes it impossible for ZZ to occur, which pretty much makes it kick off an alternate UC timeline that we did not need nor asked for. The funniest part was there was a scene where everyone is battling, escapes, and then it cuts to Mineva looking out a window and the Zeta with a white flag takes off from Haman's ship with the Quebeley. THe editing is extremely poor and I'm done talking about it.

In the end, my score for the trilogy is a 4/10 stars. If you want to know my score for the movies individually, they are 5, 4, and 3/10 as they just kept getting worse and worse as they go along. I have no idea how someone of Tomino's stature could fail so hard on this and get progressively worse with each installment, but he found a way to do it. If you have never seen Zeta before, don't waste you time on this recycled knock-off and go for the real thing. If you have seen the series before, you have no reason to waste nearly 5 hours of your life on this trash.

[lhb412]

[O.Supreme]

Unless I do not have access to a full anime series, I stopped watching anime compilation films a long time ago. It's just to difficult to take roughly 300-400 minutes of animation (depending on how many episodes it covers) and widdle it down to 150-180. Any new scenes/new animation doesn't justify the disjointed plots that accompany them.

[Hybrid Gojira]

Jurassic Park - I happened to catch this on TV last night, well, some of it...and it's amazing how good it still looks. The CGI is better than what we see in many movies today, and as a film it's just awesome. I need to pop in my bluray and finish it now.

[Hybrid Gojira]

The Thing (1982) - For my money, this is one of the best sci-fi films ever made and certainly one of my all time favorite movies. The story is briskly paced and keeps you guessing, the many incarnations of the thing are grotesque and awesome, and the characters work well with the story. 9.5/10.

[The Shadow]

A few Fridays back TCM ran several animated movies during the day -- one of the first that day was a movie titled Magic Boy. (Originally titled Shōnen Sarutobi Sasuke -- The Boy Sarutobi Sasuke)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Boy_(film)

The Wikipedia article notes that this movie was Toei's second theatrical anime (Dec. 25, 1959) and with it's June 22, 1961 North American release marks it as the second anime film released in the USA.

It's a very interesting movie, I don't know if it is an older story or a new story for the movie inspired by older stories. It's apparent in the movie (and mentioned in the Wikipedia article) that Toei was taking style inspiration from the Disney's animated films of the period with the inclusion of animal friends. The "magic" Sasuke learns are all ninja skills (based on legends surrounding what ninjas could do) the movie doesn't mention ninjas at all, and apparently MGM downplayed that aspect of the story.

One thing that struck me while watching the movie is that it seemed may be an influence for Masashi Kishimoto as he created and developed Naruto -- specifically the character of Sasuke Uchiha. But as I haven't read much about Kishimoto's influences I don't know if it's the version of Sarutobi Sasuke in the movie, due to original source stories/folk tales about Sasuke. Whatever the case may be, Magic Boy was an entertaining animated film and I recommend it. I don't know with TCM will run the movie again, if anyone is interested in watching it sooner rather than later, the movie is available on DVD-R thanks to the Warner Archive.

Toei's trailer for the movie:

https://youtu.be/yohGQmNsKis

[Dr Kain]

Hardcore Henry - AKA First Person Shooter The Movie and boy does it live up to its nickname. It was like the studio took the cutscenes from a 4 hour FPS and strung them together into an incomprehensible mess where the novelty wears off 10 minutes into it. If you are looking for a movie with even a tiny bit of plot or character development, look else where because you will find nothing but boredom here. The action is bland and the only saving grace for the main stuntmen is that they do not have to admit to doing this farce due to the lack of ever actually seeing their face on camera. If you love playing a pointless generic video game like the FPS genre tends to be, this is for you. Everyone else, don't even waste your time. In the end, while it will not end up being the worst movie of 2016, it is definitely a contender for it. I give Hardcore Henry a 5/10 and those five stars are for its music and the character of Jimmy, who is this movie's only highlight.

[Psycho Soldier]

The Sword in the Stone - I should've liked it more than I did. It feels inconsequential until the last 10 or 15 minutes. Arthur stumbles into Merlin, they spend the next 70 minutes futzing around, then Arthur pulls out the sword and becomes king. I can tolerate a thin plot if the proceedings are interesting or amount to something, but aside from the wizards' duel at the end, that's not quite the case here. Much is made of Arthur getting an education, but it's not really his education that puts him on the throne - it's the blind luck/fate of finding the sword, which Archimedes points him toward. You could argue his education allows him to survive up to that point, and will keep him on the throne, but the movie doesn't make a strong point of saying this.

Seeing the movie does make me want to listen to Blind Guardian, though. Always a plus.

[Dr Kain]

Ant-Man - Great movie, 8/10.

[EricDent]

Pee Wee's Big Holiday: heard it was on Netflix, so said "what the heck" and watched it.
It was fun, not quite as fun as Pee Wee's Big Adventure or his TV show, but it wasn't bad.
Does Pee Wee have a "thing" for larger ladies? Not that its a bad thing, but it was kinda odd to not have a slender girl in there.

[klen7]

Sharknado 2: I remember really disliking the first film in the franchise, mostly because it felt like a film that almost no one involved cared about the film they were making. This movie is vastly improved in that area. Now i'm actually looking forward to watching Sharknado 3.

[O.Supreme]

Justice League vs Teen Titans -being set in the DC New 52 Animated universe, this is the 6th film in the series, which mostly focuses on Robin's (Damiens) relation to the Titans and Raven. Too bad the Justice League are pretty much just used as pawns for Trigon until the very end. Its an OK film. 5/10 I still prefer the super hero vs super-villain mash ups, but I know every once in a while they have to try something different.

[lhb412]

The Sand Pebbles

This is one of those '60s movies that's about some other conflict but it's really about Viet Nam. A bit on the long side, and I'm not sure the whole thing quite gels, but there's a lot of neat actors (starring Steve McQueen, Richard Attenborough, Candice Bergen, and Mako! - with the requisite cameo role for James Hong).

[Dr Kain]

Jungle Book - Man, Disney is so far two for two this year and with more hits on the way (sans Alice in Wonderland 2, which is going to suck worse than the first one), this is going to be one of their biggest years. Taking something as fun, but shallow, as Jungle Book is a strange task because it makes it easy to improve upon it, yet, a lot of filmmakers tend to mess it up by making things way too convoluted for their own good. Thankfully, his live action version is not the case and improves upon the original on every level. Not only that, but this is hands down some of the best CGI to ever grace cinema as it truly enhances the experience rather than hinders it. The voice acting is great, but the real star of the show is easily Neel Sethi, who is down right phenomenal for being a child actor and one that has to interact with air. This boy is going to definitely go places and I look forward to seeing where he ends up ten years down the line. They also managed to add in some homages to the animated classic while keeping everything in a more serious, yet entertaining, tone. On the other hand, there are some areas where you can tell the animals were CGI and Mowgli does seem to be Mr Invincible at times. Nevertheless, The Jungle Book does show that a live action remake can work, and even outdo the original, as long as the people behind it actually care about their work. WB, you might as well scrap your live action adaptation because you are never going to top this near masterpiece. I give The Jungle Book an 8/10 stars.

[lhb412]

^ I haven't seen it yet, but I've read they split the difference between the original Disney film and the source novels by Kipling, making it something of a hybrid adaptation.

[klen7]

Mirror Mirror - Not good. Awkward script, many bizarre liberties taken with the Snow White story. It's directed by Tarem Singh who is known for impressive visuals, but these feel incomplete and cheap.

[lhb412]

Speedy

Man, this film is worth it for all the amazing location footage of 1928 New York City! There's even an amazing 15 minute section set in Coney Island - well, the special features tell me that some of these rides were actually filmed at a California Park, but still: crystal clear Blu-Ray footage of amusement parks for 90 years ago is super cool!

This is one of Harold Lloyd's 'thrill' pictures: he alternated between character based movies and action/stunt based movies. An old man owns and operates the last horse-drawn streetcar in New York (in real life the last one ceased running in 1917), and his granddaughter's boyfriend (Harold Lloyd) has to protect the streetcar from unscrupulous business interests who need to run their railroad through the old man's line. There's also, as mentioned, an extended visit to Coney; Lloyd as a cab driver who ends up picking up his idol, Babe Ruth; a enormous mob scene where an army of old men take on the hired thugs hired by evil business guy; and at one point Lloyd shoots a bird! Probably the first time that obscene gesture was filmed and preserved for posterity!

It's great, but I feel the thrill aspect is sadly undercut in the finale: these films are built around these amazing stunt-gags, and after a fraught time of location shooting in NYC they threw up their hands and did most of the final chase sequence using crude rear-projection methods, meaning it's nowhere near as impressive as the stuff that happens earlier in the film.

[Dr Kain]

[lhb412]

I actually saw most of Mirror Mirror in the last few months as it's been airing on TV. I liked what I saw! I mean, it was nothing revolutionary, but it seemed a pleasant, straightforward version of Snow White that added some comedy and adventure elements and I thought it would be great for kids. It felt like a throwback to when they'd just do a straightforward fairy tale movie for young audiences without rethinking it to be super post-modern or doing a grim and gritty version or whatever.