Recently watched movies!

[Dr Kain]

Young Frankenstein - 9/10.

[O.Supreme]

Jaws 3-D (1983) great googly moogly! This film was bad...REALLY BAD. I cant even get into story points. Like some other films of the late 70's early 80's the 3D in this is so bad...I can see why the format went away for the most part for nearly 20 years. I think both the Shark *breaking* through the glass to the underwater control room, and the shark exploding are quite possibly the worst effects I've ever seen in a film. A couple of plusses...Lea Thompson was really attractive in this film, of course she was in her early 20's, as this was pre Back to the Future/Howard the Duck. Dennis Quade and Bess Armstrong actually gave solid performances...but the rest were pretty awful. Now I know many people say that "Revenge" is actually a worse film...but I actually saw that film in the theater, but I was 11 at the time, and though I have seen it since...I probably haven't seen it in 15+ years...I cant imagine how it could be worse than 3D, but tonight I may just find out.

[GhostMachine]

The Forest. Disappointing, because I saw the ending coming a mile away.

[EricDent]

Recent Blu-Ray purchases of Total Recall (Mind Blowing Edition), and The Dark Crystal.

Total Recall looked amazing, possibly even better than in the theater when I saw it.
As usual it's still such an awesome movie with plenty of action, fun Arnold one-liners, and of course nice looking ladies.

The Dark Crystal was also great looking, and such an epic movie.
The music, the visuals, and the story are all great.
Kinda wish Jim Henson didn't pass away so soon, and he made more movies like this.
Hopefully if those rumors about a sequel ever come to fruition, they will use puppets again.

[lhb412]

I begin my Shin Godzilla preparations by watching Godzilla, King of the Monsters!.

I've watched several noirs since I saw this last, and I can see some of the influence in this Americanization what with the terse voiceover narration and flashback structure.

[Hybrid Gojira]

Vampire Doll (1970) - This was a genuinely creepy movie. Although I had the "twist" figured out halfway through the film, it was pretty neat and not was I was expecting from a "vampire" film from Toho. I recommend it to anyone who enjoys horror flicks - it's barely over an hour long and a quick watch.

[O.Supreme]

Jaws: The Revenge (1987) oooh boy....am i glad that's over. How my 11 year old self was entertained by this I'll never know. Still...I am going to go off on a lot of things about this film, but at the end of the day...I actually rank this higher than Jaws 3D. Jaws 3D just had abysmal effects all around. "Revenge" went back to the mechanical shark, which is odd that the technology has not improved in the 12 year span from the first film to the last...but that's a whole other discussion. But for that alone I rank this film higher than #D, which i hope to never ever see again. Now as for this film....I know most people consider 3D as a "what if" and kind of discount it...but if we put all the films in context, some things work and others don't...The oldest son Micheal going form Sea World Florida, to the Bahamas is not much of a stretch...other than the fact that Dennis Quade, and the guy from "The Last Starfighter" look nothing alike...I can still accept this. But for the younger son Sean...in the 3rd film it was established he went to College in Colorado, hated the water (because of his traumatic experience in Jaws 2)...makes sense...but now in Revenge...he is back in Amity following in his fathers footsteps as the Police Chief...that obviously doesn't make sense. Also he is killed off pretty unceremoniously in the first few minuets of the film...establishing that "THIS" shark has a personal grudge against the Brody family, and Mrs. Brody knows it...ok yeah this is all totally silly and nonsensical...but even this totally awful basis for a story I can tolerate more than the bad effects in 3D.

"There are no great white sharks in the Bahamas...the water is too warm"--total BS...https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_white_shark

But still the idea of one shark traveling thousands of miles to hunt a family...yeah...but anyway...additional complaints. How can someone (Mrs. Brody) have flashbacks of events they did not witness? Did Jake survive or not? (Depends on if you watch this in the theatrical version...or on cable) And how did a 20+ foot shark fit in the hull of a sunken ship...Also I was watching this with subtitles on Netflix I noticed some oddities... Most of Jake's casual swearing was replaced with other words, or nothing all. There is a line at the very end "Take Care of Jake" but nobody says it onscreen...it just appears in subtitles...Also Michael Cane's character states "your mother knew this was the same shark that killed Martin & Sean"....it was established Martin (Roy Scheider's character) died of a heart attack...Mrs. Brody in her delirium attributed it to the fear of the Sharks...and Michael outed her for it...why did no one explain this to Hoagie to let him know he was falling in love with an old psycho woman? .

Anyway...yeah glad this is over. I know there have been some rumblings in Hollywood about remaking the original. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE.....don't let this happen. not everything needs to or should be remade. Asylum can pump out all the cheesy shark films they want...none of them will tarnish the reputation of the original Jaws. I admit I would probably bite (pun intended) on a Megladon film if it were made by a legitimate studio, but barring that...the best and only shark film for my money was made in 1975, and that's the way it will stay.

[lhb412]

Mobile Suit Gundam III: Encounters in Space

The finale! Newtypes! Lalah! Char vs. Amuro! Lots and lots of mobile suit battles! When I was watching the series in 2001 the final week of episodes was canceled in response to 9/11, so it's nice to finally have seen the story whole... and tomorrow in the 15th anniversary of the 9/11! How strangely apropos.

It is rather neat that the show fell so naturally into the three parts necessary for the transition to movie trilogy, but, like in the series, the time-crunch of the series' shortened episode count is evident. So many new elements are introduced in this last installment (or, last third of the series episodes) and it feels like they could have used a few more episodes - or, in the case of the movie, maybe bumping it up to three hours - to accommodate it all.

[Dr Kain]

X-Men - I haven't watched this one since 2009 and that's because it just isn't that great of a movie. The plot is rather boring and the action is very uninspiring. Not to mention Cyclops and Storm have no purpose being in this thing because they do absolutely nothing to further the plot. In fact, Scott comes off as just a glorified jerk who can't even convey a lick of emotion while Storm is just a tool. She is one of my favorite X-Men characters and this movie treats her like a third string character. Hell, the longest moment she speaks has her spouting some stupid ass line. In fact, this movie might as well have been called "Wolverine and His Merry Band of X-Men." I also don't care for how very little it even considers the source material. Magneto would NEVER sacrifice an innocent mutant just to further his ambitions, not to mention Mystique has no relation to Rogue one bit, Sabertooth is just some lame goon and they completely wasted their potential to do something worthwhile with Kelly and Geirich in future installments. Overall, the music is by far the best thing about this movie as Kamen's score kicks total ass that also feels very reminscent to the amazing theme song the 90s cartoon featured. Now I do give them credit for a first attempt at a live action X-Men movie, so I'm giving it a lenient 7/10.

X-Men 2 - A vast improvement over the first movie as it tries to fix a lot of its issues. Unfortunately, in doing so, it also creates a few contracitions to the first movie. Also, it pretty much remains The Wolverine Show as Scott continues to be reduced to nothing more than an emotionless jackass. At least Storm got a good scene this time around despite her voice being different. The plot dealing with Stryker is well done as Brian Cox does a phenomenal job portraying the character (last week I read God Loves, Man Kills and even with Stryker being a preacher I heard Cox's voice coming from him). Lady Deathstrike is quite useless and we don't even get Mastermind called by his code name. Oh, and those colorless costumes need to go. They are terrible and I forgot how allergic to color Fox was in the beginning. Then again, they still haven't changed much, but at least the First Class uniforms looked like X-Men costumes. Anyway, there are a lot of great moments to be found here even if it isn't that greatest X-Men movie as it was once believed. It has certainly aged far better than its predecessor and the travesty that came after it. It's a shame that they rushed right into the Phoenix story without any sort of development though. It would have been much better to actually develop Jean's powers over the course of several movies instead of just, "She feels very powerful and now she sacrifices herself to come back as Phoenix." Magneto also feels more natural this time around and I love how he easily manipulates Pyro without any effort. In the end, I give this movie a 8/10.

[lhb412]

Labyrinth

Seeing this on the big screen reminded me of just how movies are designed to be shown on the big screen. There were several effects that looked much more artificial shrunk down on a TV screen that read better in the theater.

[Dr Kain]

Transformers The Movie - Still one of the greatest movies based off an animated series of all time. Sure, it's cheesy, but it's fun, action packed, and has some truly spectacular animation despite the normal animation errors. Going from the TV show to the movie is like going from the original Gundam series to Zeta Gundam. It is that huge of a leap. Not just that, but my god, Shout! Factory has done a truly outstanding job remastering this movie into a 4K scan. It has never looked as gorgeous before and Hot Rod is no longer the bright hot pink he was on the Sony DVD (contrary to what one review site is spouting). The scene when Megatron is turned into Galvatron is so littered with details you couldn't see in the past due to how thick and bright the lines were in the old releases. Here they are thin and you can see every little line that must have taken hours to draw. The only area that is lacking is with the audio, but that is not Shout!'s fault as that is just how the movie was mixed. The 5.1 track is still quite impressive to the ears as everything is as loud and explosive as it should be. Finally, all of the new bonus features are fantastic. In the end, both the movie and the new BD get a 9/10 from me. Well, time to see if I can get anything for the Sony DVD as I no longer have a reason to keep it.

[lhb412]

The Return of Godzilla

Finally! Thank you Kraken Releasing.

You know I do feel this film has a bit of kinship with Kong '76. I know they're 8 years apart, but it feels that they tonally share an era, you know?

[Dr Kain]

Nope. Godzilla 84 is good, Kong 76 is not even worthy of being dogshit.

Anyway,

The Last Man on Earth - This was the last of the three adaptations of I Am Legend I had yet to see and I really don't get why Matheson hated it. It was great. Sure, it was slow moving and the vampires acted more like zombies, but other than that, you got the feel that Robert was indeed the last man on the planet. His madness wasn't over the top and you got the sense that he was tired. Not just that, but it is easily the closes to the book of the three versions. I give it an 8/10.

[lhb412]

[Rody]

I saw Kubo and the Two Stringslast night. My full thoughts are , but tl;dr version: it's a very good movie that's highly entertaining and surprisingly melancholic, with magnificent art and animation. I'd rate it a B+ and strongly recommend it.

[canofhumdingers]

Sully - I was skeptical about this movie at first b/c, while the landing on the Hudson was no doubt an incredible feat, I've always felt the media glorified Capt. Sullenburger maybe a bit too much and mostly overlooked all the other heroes that day, including the other four crew members on the flight (First Officer Skiles and the three Flight attendants) who all played crucial roles in saving everyone's lives.

But I'm happy to say this was an excellent film. I really enjoyed it. It is probably one of the most accurate representations of the aviation industry Hollywood has ever produced. They really did a great job getting this film right. They even used actual U.S. Airways pilots in the simulator scenes and even hired some of the actual boat crews and rescue people who were there that day to play themselves in the film's version.

I've read the full 213 page NTSB report and have listened to the CVR tape that was released and the film very accurately represents what actually happened. There are a few small details left out here and there, and there are a handful of forgivable technical gaffes involving things that the vast majority of people will never notice. Oh, and I HIGHLY doubt the flight attendants actually got up and walked around right after hitting the birds. But for a dramatization, it's darn accurate.

They do take some liberties with the ensuing NTSB investigation. They play up the drama between the investigators and the pilots and kind of make the NTSB into the film's "bad guys". They also make it seem like the investigation only took a week or two and the pilots were holed up in a hotel the whole time when the reality is it took months and they both went home. Also, the public hearing plays out more like a trial, which it was not. But despite making the investigation more "Hollywood", the information presented is all accurate and true.

And the film itself is well written, acted, and directed. I found it quite enjoyable. I never thought I'd see a movie so heavily focused on the airline industry and walk out saying, "yeah, they actually did a very good job 'getting it right.'"

[jellydonut25]

[lhb412]

The Gorgon

Hammer decided to go with a different mythological monster for this movie, but in practice it feels something between a typical vampire or werewolf movie (not a bad thing!). Peter Cushing plays a doctor with mysterious motives, Pat Troughton is an unhelpful policeman, and Christopher Lee - in a ironic reversal - plays the Van Helsing-type character!

[Dr Kain]

Popstar - Borrowed this movie from the library and it was a lot better than I was anticipating. There was some legitimately funny stuff to be found here and the movie knew not to drag itself on for more than about 80 minutes before the credits. The plot is down right dumb though and the acting is mediocre. It is far from the worst movie of the year, which is very surprising, so we'll see what other contenders for my worst movies of the year list will bring. I'm going to give it a 7/10.

[Tom R VanSlambrouck]

Godzilla 84- Watched the international dubb wednesday night. I thought the dubbing was ok not as bad as I thought but not good either. I really wish they could have gotten G85 on the disc too but it's all good.

[Dr Kain]

Meet the Blacks - If this was supposed to be a comedy parody movie, then the filmmakers failed on every level. I laughed once during this racist, degrading piece of dog "OH GODZILLA! WHAT TERRIBLE LANGUAGE!" that makes the Scary Movie franchise look like a Mel Brooks film. This 90 minutes of garbage has just become the worst movie of the year and I don't think anything is going to be as bad as this chauvinistic crapfest. This is the Donald Trump of movies and it gets a 1/10 stars.

[lhb412]

Frankenstein (1931)

I love how crazy the abandoned windmill/laboratory set is. It's like a Dr. Seuss nightmare.

[Dr Kain]

X-Men 3 - Man, I forgot just how bad this movie is. They couldn't get anything right at all. From the poorly done CGI to make Charles and Magneto look younger in the flashback scene to screwing up the love story for Rogue and Iceman (by adding Kitty into a forced romance that goes nowhere even though she is suppsoed to go out with Colossus), a Colossus who isn't even Russian, Juggernaut not even being related to Xavier, and then Magneto just sacrificing all of his brothers because reasons. What the hell? Did Brett Ratner even read an X-Men comic in his life? This whole movie plays out as if it were some poorly written fanfiction from a guy who say the toys on the shelves and that was it. Oh yeah, and then there is what is supposed to be Phoenix, but she doesn't even turn into a phoenix or even actually really do anything but stand there and stare blankly into the camera. Was Famke even there for filming or did they just have a mannequin of her in the movie and paid her for her likeness? Overal, this giant turd is absolutely terrible and is made even worse when you start identifying who each of the mutant fodder is. Psylocke, Callisto, Flea, WHAT THE HELL?! I give this crap a 4/10 all because Beast was the best thing in the movie.

X-Men Origins - Jesus, the guy that edited this movie must have been the same person that would go on to edit Suicide Squad because the editing is a nightmare. The camera angles are always changing and the plot doesn't make any sense. Why the hell would Sabertooth be brothers to Logan but not know who he is in the original movie? How did Scott get his ruby quartz glasses when he hadn't met Charles yet? THere are tons of more plot holes, but I'm not going to put in any effort to spout them because that is more effort than the people who made this movie put into it. The effects are down right awful from horrible looking CGI to explosions that don't even make sense. How does a farm house get a missile into it and then blow up 5 times over? This movie is so poorly written that even Joel Schumacher would be like, "Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamn, son!" Not only is this the worst X-Men related movie ever (Generation X from the 90s was a better movie), but it is right there with Eilektra as the worst movies based on a Marvel property ever. And who ever thought Barakapool was a smart idea needs to be smacked in the head. Lastly, the acting is atrocious, especially from the likes of Gambit and Silverfox. How they were able to continue a career after this mess is beyond me, but they are what ruined John Carter of Mars. I'm thinking this is a 2/10 movie because it does have two good moments, Silverfox dying alone and forgotten (like this movie deserves to be) and the moment the credits start rolling.

Crimson Peak - Last year when this came out I decided to go see Goosebumps instead and boy I am glad I made that decision. That isn't to say this movie was terrible by any means, but it wasn't worth paying money for. Visually, it was absolutely outstanding. The costumes were all fantastic and the Sharp mansion/castle itself was so gorgeous to look at. Unfortunately, the plot is pretty lackluster and predictable to the point that we have seen this before. The ghosts also don't mean a damn thing in the movie. You could remove them from the plot and nothing will change at all. Also, the sister's acting was well over the top. Overall, I give it a 7/10 as it was worth watching once.

[lhb412]

Forever filling out Universal's Wolf Man sets: Werewolf of London and She-Wolf of London. I think Jack Pierce's makeup for Henry Hull's werewolf is pretty neat, and in a way as influential as the Wolf Man makeup. I actually think She-Wolf is a smidgen of a better made film, despite (SPOILER) the werewolf thing being a hoax.

[Dr Kain]

The Fog - While I still don't get the point for JLC to be in this film, the movie is an outstanding ghost story that gets better with each viewing. In fact, it just barely misses my top 10 favorite horror movies of all time list. Nevertheless, it gets a solid 9/10.