Movie Time 2.0: TT mini reviews

BEAT said:

CRADLE 2 THE GRAVE IS ON NETFLIX AND I'M GONNA WATCH IT.

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BEAT said:

GOD I miss these kinds of early 00s action flicks about assholes getting in over their heads and then fighting their way out with karate.

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Don't think I've ever seen it, but I do recall seeing Romeo Must Die when it came out, which from what I recall was set in France for some reason? But everyone spoke English for the most part at varying levels of comprehensibility. I mention it because Wikipedia informs me it was by the same director and also starred Jet Li and the late DMX, I should give it a watch.

I think Jet Li's The One un-ironically remains my favorite of these kinds of movies. I'm not saying it's some masterpiece, but it's a lot of dumb fun with it's over the top one liners, action and period appropriate music choices.

The One absolutely has my favorite ending for one of these kinds of movies

Octopus Prime said:

The One absolutely has my favorite ending for one of these kinds of movies

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Are you talking about the part where the bad version of Lo is doomed to fight a mountain of other clones?

Doomed... or blessed?

He is absolutely living his best life

Paul le Fou said:

2. Everything else was extremely disappointing. Every character and story beat was straight out of the worst chapters of Disney's (if not Dreamworks's) most hackneyed, ham-fisted playbook. It somehow manages to feel whitewashed and orientalist even with an all-Asian cast of characters and actors.

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Well that sucks. I was really looking forward to that one! I suppose I'll probably still watch it someday for the visuals but I guess I won't be hunting it down quick now.

Watched 2 movies yesterday, both a lot better than I was expecting... King Kong (1976) is pretty funny. Had no idea it was going to be. Of the four leads (Jessica Lange, Jeff Bridges, Charles Grodin, Kong) only Bridges is served by some poor writing that makes his character mostly unintentionally annoying. 2021 is the year of me having a crush on Charles Grodin. (RIP) Kong's face is great. The island native stuff, well, really makes Peter Jackson's 2005 version seem even more indefensible on that front because it doesn't seem as jarringly bad. Not good, but, you know. Kong's end is absolutely grisly and his rampage is also horrifying in a way it isn't in the other versions I can remember. (well, just the 2005 one, I guess - can't remember Skull Island or the Toho standalone, and haven't seen the original in decades) That poor woman dressed like Lange!

Someone's Watching Me is a John Carpenter telemovie from 1978. Hadn't really heard much about it. Lauren Hutton as Leigh Michaels is a pretty great protagonist, though. Well written and very well performed. Also Adrienne Barbeau is a sympathetic lesbian and yes, the only sympathetic character we spend time with who dies, but still, didn't see the former coming. Pretty cool.

Every time I hear Adrienne Barbeau's name the Sealab 2021 bit floats through my brain.

Fight, Zatoichi, Fight

Up to the eighth movie in the series and boy, is this action lite compared to the title, which has the word "fight" twice and as the bread in a name sandwich. But its not a bad one. Basically, a woman is killed in an attempted assassination on Ichi and Ichi must take the woman's baby to her husband many towns over. On his trip, he convinces a pickpocket to help with the parenting duties and then must find a new home for the baby when the actual dad is a piece of shit yakuza. Its a weird title to slap on this one when "Son of Zatoichi" was RIGHT THERE in terms of generic titles. But this is a decent enough one. Again, it is lacking in the interesting villain department and it ups the goofiness a little but Ichi remains a solid character to carry a movie.

Olli said:

A Promising Young Woman was really really good. The basic premise is that Carey Mulligan's character has an act where she lures opportunistic rapists into thinking she's too intoxicated to resist, but after they try to take advantage of her, she turns the tables on the "nice guy" attackers.

The movie wasn't perfectly executed perhaps - there are some plot details that feel a bit awkward in retrospect - but emotionally it's a slam dunk. When the end music started playing and the credits began rolling, my jaw was on the floor. The movie pulls no punches describing rape culture and its effects on women. I also liked how

Spoiler

the only man in the movie who has a little bit of good in him is the scumbag lawyer who's had a probably irreversible mental breakdown after realizing how much damage he has done

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This movie was fantastic and ruined my week and everyone should see it.

Definitely a movie where I simultaneously think people should try to go in blind but also feel like it needs a big old honking content warning.

In the Heights is really freaking good, up there with the best movie musicals. It never feels like they're trying to shoehorn a stage show into a movie, it just flows naturally in and out of songs. Miranda's more story-focused songwriting definitely helps there, as there are fewer showstoppers to try and build around. It's also impeccably cast, in that everyone involved is both a good actor and a good singer.

I highly recommend it for anyone who likes musicals, or anyone who wants to watch a fundamentally cheerful and optimistic movie that never feels saccharine or fake. It is kind of long, though.

watched the lost boys at a drive in movie tonight. was a lot of fun, a weird/trippy/flashy teen romance/horror/80s kidventure comedy thing that manages to work, and i really think it's because it's perfectly willing to be stupid as hell. most of the humor hits with the same tone as someone awkwardly trying to defuse a tense room, and so even though they're almost all written with the dumbest or most obvious punchlines i could imagine it actually works because they're recognizable as jokes even when you didn't expect them.

really one of the weirdest things about consuming media while getting older is just kind of seeing those sorts of obvious "period" elements of media over time. it's a really pleasantly 80s movie, which i say without any true nostalgia (having been born in '89), and that still really shines through the costuming and setting. this isn't something that's exclusive to movies set in the "real" world either (to me the "80s" elements of spaceballs land as much funnier than the star wars parody, for example), but it's really fun here with all of the random people in the opening and the flamboyant appearance of the main vampires in particular. can't say the movie being super hot for kiefer sutherland doesn't hit a little different after two decades of 24 and shit, but it's still kinda great.

there's also a scene early on which seems like it may have inspired that one eurovision song that caused the whole "epic sax guy" thing

there's some kinda interesting theming around the whole vampire thing, particularly how it's the main connection to the "80s teen movie" genre elements, which i feel like the movie maybe doesn't entirely want to examine due to the plot needing to resolve by killing them all at the end, but definitely hints at with stuff like the earring and the train bridge scene. in the end i still laughed at loud at the scene full of fake blood exploding all the pipes in the house so what can i say, i loved it. i really just think they don't make bad movies this good anymore

Oh man, you'd never seen The Lost Boys before?! Required viewing. Used to be in the rotation when I was a teenager. (I was born in '80, so I remember when it came out.)

Hercules

The Disney one.

I haven't seen it in a long time. I remember that when it came out, I was all into Greek mythology and wacky humour and this seemed specifically aimed at me but when I finally got around to watching it years later, I was disappointed for reasons I couldn't articulate. Watching it again, I like it more. Maybe it just seemed slight at the time. After all, even though it is about a hero battling monsters, its almost more of a sports story, which the film leans into. It does have some elements that I don't care for from the Disney renaissance at the time (just some weaker jokes that feel like they are for the trailer) but I definitely like it more than I don't. James Woods the man is a huge pile of shit but he is good at playing people who are almost as scummy as he is (re: Videodrome).

I will say, outside of the songs with the muses (which are great), the other songs are simply serviceable. I feel like we are heading to the spot where The Emperor's New Groove is happening, where they stop the musical numbers and just make a wacked out comedy.

Ninja III: Domination

I was made to watch this movie tonight. It's an obscure 80s movie so it's full of problematic 80s nonsense but oh man. This is literally the most Octo-thing I've ever seen. I'm sure you guys have heard of this film before since it seems like a cult classic. But in case you haven't, here's the first few minutes of the film:


There is no context to what happens in the beginning here, no lead-ins, or narration, this is just how the movie starts.

That's the one where the aerobics instructor gets possessed by the ghost of a ninja and continues to do ninja things, right?

True Romance

I had heard of this one for a while, knowing it was a Quentin Tarantino script. Boy does it feel like it, in the worst way. And I like Tarantino a lot but this feels like young Tarantino, writing a movie about a "cool" version of himself. The first act is kind of hard to tolerate. Its all his worst instincts. It never gets completely good, but it gets to be a much more watchable movie as it goes on, with lots of fun moments. Its also got a Hell of a stacked cast, including some real "before they were mega stars" dudes in smaller roles, like James Gandolfini as a heavy and Brad Pitt as a stoner (there is a great scene between them). I think as it goes on, the better instincts of Tarantino in terms of building tension peak through but so does a lot of the ill-considered race stuff that feels nakedly "transgressive" without actually being clever as he thinks. Its also very much a Tony Scott movie as much as it is a Tarantino one. Very of its era, for better AND worse.

Gary Oldman as the drug dealer too. It's definitely a movie.

Where'd You Go, Bernadette is an odd movie. Certainly not the movie the trailers I kept seeing a couple of years ado sold it as. It made me think of The Goldfinch, another fiction adaptation from the same time. I will kind of defend The Goldfinch; it is a failure of movie, but it is also weird and interesting in its failure. Where'd You Go Bernadette is less of an outright failure, but it feels like all the things that would make it weird and interesting have been sanded off. I read the novel synopsis on wikipedia afterward, and it seems like everything is re-arranged and softened to the point where the only character who is at all compelling is Bernadette. It's hard to describe; with the cast and Linklater directing it never fall below a certain level of competence, but its all for nothing.

Mightyblue said:

That's the one where the aerobics instructor gets possessed by the ghost of a ninja and continues to do ninja things, right?

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That's not the least of it, but yes you've got the right movie. It's a trip.

I feel like the there is renewed interest in lower budget or lesser known 80s and 90s horror and action movies going on right now. Red Letter Media's Best of the Worst covers this material regularly. Vinegar Syndrome is putting out lesser known genre movies with nice blu rays.

A big part of the appeal of these movies is the discovery. Sometimes you may have an uninspired copy of a higher budget movie and sometimes you have a ninja killing people on a golf course.

Having these lower budget and lesser known films available now reminds me of the better parts of the video store era. Where you rent something blind and sometimes it surprises you.

Godzilla vs Kong excelled when it gave me things like the crazy underground upside down world, magic axes built for giant gorillas, and Godzilla boring a hole to the center of the Earth with his laser breath, and at every instance where a giant monster punches another giant monster.

Fortunately, all that makes up 70% of the film.

The other 30% is Millie Bobbie Brown teaming up with a podcaster to expose the truth of an evil robot company and a not terribly well explained evil plan by villains that everyone is surprised by

I don't think the robot plan was intentionally evil. At least not for reasons beyond the usual greed. Building a remote controlled robot to fight giant monsters doesn't seem like an inherently bad plan in world where giant monster attacks happen. The evil part came in when they used the brain of a evil space Cthulhu as a necessary and vital component of said robot.

Voncaster said:

Vinegar Syndrome is putting out lesser known genre movies with nice blu rays.

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It's funny that you mention Vinegar Syndrome - I happened upon their web store recently and had thought of telling people about it here.

Rascally Badger said:

I don't think the robot plan was intentionally evil. At least not for reasons beyond the usual greed. Building a remote controlled robot to fight giant monsters doesn't seem like an inherently bad plan in world where giant monster attacks happen. The evil part came in when they used the brain of a evil space Cthulhu as a necessary and vital component of said robot.

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Well when you’ve got that as your start point you’ve kind of gotten past the idea of having a giant robot for good

Treasure Planet

In the waning days of the Disney Renaissance, this is one of the later films and a bomb. Does it deserve to be? ...No but its also not super great, either. The lead isn't particularly engaging and it all falls on the shoulders of the villain. Now Long John Silver is one of the most beloved villains in literature. He is kind of scummy, but also genuinely kind in his way, so its a shock when his betrayal is reveal. The film lets us no pretty early. I kind of understand if you assume the audience knows. But I don't know if the children in the target demo are as familiar with Long John outside of the name (especially since he is just "Mr. Silver"), so it is a shame they didn't. Also, the end he gets a bit of a quasi-redemption and Hawkins miss him while I think in the original his feelings are more complicated. Still, some of the animation and alien designs are cool. But for the most part, the sci-fi element doesn't feel necessary. I could really do without Martin Short's "wacky" robot character.

Orphan is still incredible after all these years. Preposterous trash. Also I wanna know where exactly this movie is taking place that it is snowing every day and cold enough for a pond to freeze, but never otherwise piling up. Isabelle Fuhrman gives an all-time great performance but also they should not have had a child do all this shit! Well, I'm glad she seems to enjoy the movie's legacy. I should check out her new film The Novice while you can still rent it.

Torzelbaum said:

It's funny that you mention Vinegar Syndrome - I happened upon their web store recently and had thought of telling people about it here.

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I ordered my first set of movies from them over the Memorial day sale. My order came with a cool sticker (below).

I also thought the name of the company was pretty weird and unique. Vinegar Syndrome is apparently the phenomena of what happens when film stock starts to degrade. I didn't know that before.

Last night I watched my first Vin Syn blu ray: Rest in Pieces. I thought it was okay. I will say the restoration work Vin Syn performs is great.


With the exception of one scene the movie is not very violent. It is funny though because the VHS cover of the film (reprinted on the inside of the blu ray) makes the film seem very extreme. The actual film is pretty tame in terms of horror and violence. Got to love misleading cover art; a hallmark of the VHS era!

Hadn’t watched Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines in quite a while (possibly since it was in theatres), so I decided to fix that.

Its great if the one problem you had with the other Terminator movies was Sarah Connor, because not only is she not in this, she’s barely mentioned as existing! In her place is Grown Up Homeless Alcoholic Drifter John Connor! And if you think that doesn’t sound like an exciting character to follow for an action movie or, indeed, to be a messianic leader for a ruined humanity good guess! Ersatz Sarah Connor, Kate, is a much better character, but takes more than half the movie to reach the point where she’s willing to accept the idea of a time travelling skeleton murder-robot.

Fortunately, the Terminators, and the Mechanical Uprising they’re so concerned about, is as fun to watch as I remember (setting aside the bummer ending involving a lLiterally Everybody Dying). And if you judge a movie entirely on the amount of both trucks crashing into things and bathroom carnage, you will find little to better suit your weird specific needs

T3's not bad as an action flick, save for the boobinator. That was just...bad back then, I can't imagine that getting any better with the passage of time.