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Recently viewed movie thread - Rental, Streaming, Theater etc (5 Viewers)

Ilov80s said:
Not quite ready for Christmas movies yet and the idea hit me to do a little mini film binge of "Worst Sequels to Great Movies". So not necessarily the wort movies ever but just critically acclaimed beloved films that inexplicably had mediocre to awful sequels.

So far I have:

Staying Alive
Airplane 2: The Sequel
The Two Jakes
Exorcist II: The Heretic
French Connection II
The Sting II

These are all movies I haven't yet but have always had some morbid curiosity. Anything I am missing?
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Major League II?

The Jesus Rolls?
 
Control

Well done biopic of Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis.

Posits an interesting question - What if your talent puts you in a position where your neither physically nor mentally able to handle it? What if you're just not BIG enough? And does it make you a bad person if you're not?
 
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Ilov80s said:
Not quite ready for Christmas movies yet and the idea hit me to do a little mini film binge of "Worst Sequels to Great Movies". So not necessarily the wort movies ever but just critically acclaimed beloved films that inexplicably had mediocre to awful sequels.

So far I have:

Staying Alive
Airplane 2: The Sequel
The Two Jakes
Exorcist II: The Heretic
French Connection II
The Sting II

These are all movies I haven't yet but have always had some morbid curiosity. Anything I am missing?
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All the followups to Lake Placid.
 
Ilov80s said:
wazoo11 said:
I tried rewatching interstellar on Saturday night. When Matt Damon shows up, I immediately lose interest in the plot.
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Interesting? Not a Matt Damon fan?
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I've always find his showing up in the movie a bit distracting. Maybe that character being that famous of an actor overpowers the rest cast or something? Now that I have The Martian in my brain, I think I have a bit of that going on too. Despite the ending, I've grown to like the movie more on rewatches, and I added it to my 4k wishlist for Christmas.
 
The part in Interstellar when they are on the water planet and the giant wave comes is mesmerizing. I always have to watch that scene a couple extra times.
 
KarmaPolice said:
I've always find his showing up in the movie a bit distracting. Maybe that character being that famous of an actor overpowers the rest cast or something? Now that I have The Martian in my brain, I think I have a bit of that going on too. Despite the ending, I've grown to like the movie more on rewatches, and I added it to my 4k wishlist for Christma
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I's a movie starring Matthew McConaughey, Jessica Chastain, Anne Hathway and Timothee Chalamet. Not sure Damon is the one that tips it for me into distracting and overpowering star realm.
wazoo11 said:
Yeah, I just didn't get his character arc added to the story.
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Damon is the coup of the movie. They kept his name and face off of all the publicity for it so when he pops in, it;s a surprise. I just watched the movie in the last year or 2 for the first time and I didn't know he was in it. Then they totally play Damon's movie star hero persona against the character. I think Damon is one of the best parts of the movie.
 
fatness said:
All the followups to Lake Placid.
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Not sure I have seen the original Lake Placid. Is it good?

Eephus said:
I had no idea there was a sequel to Basic Instinct
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I have to see this at some point. I can't believe Sharon Stone is in it. Probably a reflection of how awful Hollywood treated her.
The Man With No Name said:
The Outlaw Josey Wales
sequel. Have not seen it but it has to be terrible
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LOL I just looked this up and it looks "worst movie you've ever seen" level bad.
 
Staying Alive: So bad. Just a series of MTV videos for mostly crappy songs that all sound the same. Only reason to watch this is if you are into Travola. Stallone sure was. He shoots him like Travolata is a Playboy Playmate. It's all oil and sweat and skin.

The Two Jakes: No it's not Chinatown and it feels a bit like the pilot for an HBO Max show. Go in with those expectations and it's pretty darn good.
 
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Ilov80s said:
Staying Alive: So bad. Just a series of MTV videos for mostly crappy songs that all sound the same. Only reason to watch this is if you are into Travola. Stallone sure was. He shoots him like Travolata is a Playboy Playmater. It's all oil and sweat and skin.

The Two Jakes: No it's not Chinatown and it feels a bit like the pilot for an HBO Max show. Go in with those expectations and it's pretty darn good.
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But what about Finola Hughes, “star” of Aspen Extreme and General Hospital?
 
Are there any documentaries worth watching about the women of Afghanistan or Iran? (That's not from a western perspective)
 
I had never seen The Bodyguard before and wasn't expecting much.
Not great, Whitney is not an actor, and the story wasn't anything to get excited about however...
I was completely smitten whenever Whitney Houston sang. It was not just good or even really good, her singing and performance was extraordinarily phenomenal, we're talking Princess Bride Wallace Shaw INCONCIEVABLY outstanding.
My gawd it took me back to the 80s when me and just about every guy fell in love with her. Man, oh jeesh.
Have to say if you were like me and had skipped the flick because you knew it would be mediocre which is in on just about every other level than Whitney 😍
Currently on Netflix.
She is enough to give it a big thumbs up.:thumbup:
 
Bracie Smathers said:
I had never seen The Bodyguard before and wasn't expecting much.
Not great, Whitney is not an actor, and the story wasn't anything to get excited about however...
I was completely smitten whenever Whitney Houston sang. It was not just good or even really good, her singing and performance was extraordinarily phenomenal, we're talking Princess Bride Wallace Shaw INCONCIEVABLY outstanding.
My gawd it took me back to the 80s when me and just about every guy fell in love with her. Man, oh jeesh.
Have to say if you were like me and had skipped the flick because you knew it would be mediocre which is in on just about every other level than Whitney 😍
Currently on Netflix.
She is enough to give it a big thumbs up.:thumbup:
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I still can’t get over her manager in the movie is Gary Kemp, formerly of Spandau Ballet and writer of many of their hits.
 
Another nice thing I can say about The Two Jakes is how gorgeous it looks. Vilmos Zsigmond is far better than the movie might deserve. I suspect this might be the best of the handful of sequels I check out.
 
Osaurus said:
I still can’t get over her manager in the movie is Gary Kemp, formerly of Spandau Ballet and writer of many of their hits.
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Both Kemp brothers had successful acting careers. They starred together as the gangster Kray brothers in The Krays. Martin was a regular on East Enders for a number of years.
 
Has anyone see Airplane II? What a dog. I love the original but part of the bit of that film is they run every joke into the ground. The same jokes can't stand up to another 90 minutes. There is no reason for this movie to exist. As bad as Staying Alive was, at least they tried to do something different with the story and characters.
 
Ilov80s said:
Has anyone see Airplane II? What a dog. I love the original but part of the bit of that film is they run every joke into the ground. The same jokes can't stand up to another 90 minutes. There is no reason for this movie to exist. As bad as Staying Alive was, at least they tried to do something different with the story and characters.
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Not nearly as good as the first, but I still like it.
“The sun, what is it?”
 
The Searchers 1956.

I viewed this not as a cinema historian, just someone looking to kill a couple of hours while recuperating from covid. I am vaguely aware there's a decent body of reverence for this film, but I haven't delved into it. I'm saying this because, on a strictly entertainment based watch, this isn't a good film. Maybe there are elements of it that became influential to filmmakers in some way, but I can't identify what they'd be. I'm not going to enumerate all the ways this isn't a good film, there are lots. I'll stick with the basics.

The story itself is simplistic (to put it mildly). The motivation for the primary plot driving action, the Comanche raid on a random farm house, is basically non-existent. The dialog is stilted, uneven, non-sensical at times. The acting is pretty uniformly poor - even if you grant stylistic allowances for how acting was done at the time, the acting is still bad, particularly if you compare it to something like Treasure Of The Sierra Madre. The direction - minimal at best, like action and cut with no other guidance, which results in really uneven tones throughout - weird attempts at what I suppose were intended to be comedic interludes juxtaposed with what should have been some pretty hard hitting emotional scenes that completely fell flat. The film covers 5 years, but you'd have a hard time knowing that without the dialog exposing that bluntly until the conclusion (at which point Deborah is obviously older than she was at the beginning of the movie).

There's of course the racism throughout, though I've read a bit from some who say Wayne's character is intended as a negative commentary on racism. Even if true (and honestly I'm not as sold on that as others are), there was plenty of other racism to go around unchecked - a Native American woman accidentally sold into slavery/marriage to a main character is played for laughs right up until she's murdered off screen and then is almost completely forgotten for the remainder of the film. There's plenty more like that. Also, why the insistence on mispronouncing Comanche throughout?

I don't get it. Can someone explain why this film is held in good regard?
 
Gr00vus said:
The Searchers 1956.

I viewed this not as a cinema historian, just someone looking to kill a couple of hours while recuperating from covid. I am vaguely aware there's a decent body of reverence for this film, but I haven't delved into it. I'm saying this because, on a strictly entertainment based watch, this isn't a good film. Maybe there are elements of it that became influential to filmmakers in some way, but I can't identify what they'd be. I'm not going to enumerate all the ways this isn't a good film, there are lots. I'll stick with the basics.

The story itself is simplistic (to put it mildly). The motivation for the primary plot driving action, the Comanche raid on a random farm house, is basically non-existent. The dialog is stilted, uneven, non-sensical at times. The acting is pretty uniformly poor - even if you grant stylistic allowances for how acting was done at the time, the acting is still bad, particularly if you compare it to something like Treasure Of The Sierra Madre. The direction - minimal at best, like action and cut with no other guidance, which results in really uneven tones throughout - weird attempts at what I suppose were intended to be comedic interludes juxtaposed with what should have been some pretty hard hitting emotional scenes that completely fell flat. The film covers 5 years, but you'd have a hard time knowing that without the dialog exposing that bluntly until the conclusion (at which point Deborah is obviously older than she was at the beginning of the movie).

There's of course the racism throughout, though I've read a bit from some who say Wayne's character is intended as a negative commentary on racism. Even if true (and honestly I'm not as sold on that as others are), there was plenty of other racism to go around unchecked - a Native American woman accidentally sold into slavery/marriage to a main character is played for laughs right up until she's murdered off screen and then is almost completely forgotten for the remainder of the film. There's plenty more like that. Also, why the insistence on mispronouncing Comanche throughout?

I don't get it. Can someone explain why this film is held in good regard?
Click to expand...
There’s a lot to get into there. My first question is the lack of direction. At a bare minimum, you didn’t find it gorgeous to look at? The opening and closing shots are among the best. Gorgeous symbolic bookmarks to the story.
 
Ilov80s said:
Gr00vus said:
The Searchers 1956.

I viewed this not as a cinema historian, just someone looking to kill a couple of hours while recuperating from covid. I am vaguely aware there's a decent body of reverence for this film, but I haven't delved into it. I'm saying this because, on a strictly entertainment based watch, this isn't a good film. Maybe there are elements of it that became influential to filmmakers in some way, but I can't identify what they'd be. I'm not going to enumerate all the ways this isn't a good film, there are lots. I'll stick with the basics.

The story itself is simplistic (to put it mildly). The motivation for the primary plot driving action, the Comanche raid on a random farm house, is basically non-existent. The dialog is stilted, uneven, non-sensical at times. The acting is pretty uniformly poor - even if you grant stylistic allowances for how acting was done at the time, the acting is still bad, particularly if you compare it to something like Treasure Of The Sierra Madre. The direction - minimal at best, like action and cut with no other guidance, which results in really uneven tones throughout - weird attempts at what I suppose were intended to be comedic interludes juxtaposed with what should have been some pretty hard hitting emotional scenes that completely fell flat. The film covers 5 years, but you'd have a hard time knowing that without the dialog exposing that bluntly until the conclusion (at which point Deborah is obviously older than she was at the beginning of the movie).

There's of course the racism throughout, though I've read a bit from some who say Wayne's character is intended as a negative commentary on racism. Even if true (and honestly I'm not as sold on that as others are), there was plenty of other racism to go around unchecked - a Native American woman accidentally sold into slavery/marriage to a main character is played for laughs right up until she's murdered off screen and then is almost completely forgotten for the remainder of the film. There's plenty more like that. Also, why the insistence on mispronouncing Comanche throughout?

I don't get it. Can someone explain why this film is held in good regard?
Click to expand...
There’s a lot to get into there. My first question is the lack of direction. At a bare minimum, you didn’t find it gorgeous to look at? The opening and closing shots are among the best. Gorgeous symbolic bookmarks to the story.
Click to expand...
I didn't, but I may have not been watching the best quality transfer. I've read about the whole doorway thing, but it just didn't grab me - maybe knowing about it ruined it for me. It's also problematic that the ranchers are supposed to be in Texas but they're using monument valley for a lot of the settings. Monument valley is beautiful - it's got nothing to do with Texas. I kept thinking I'd missed some line that explained why they were now in Utah/Arizona, the way they later exposed they'd gone to New Mexico. That also lessened the impact of the natural settings. Then there was the jarring juxtaposition of the natural settings and the (not the greatest or most convincing) built sets, that also cut into my appreciation of the natural settings. Finally in the 65 years or so between now and when this movie was made, the old west scenery thing has been done to death, so I don't put much stock in the directorial accomplishment of capturing the old west landscape anymore. I suppose this is maybe an area this film broke new ground in, but even so I've seen it done much better in other films at this point.
 
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Gr00vus said:
Ilov80s said:
Gr00vus said:
The Searchers 1956.

I viewed this not as a cinema historian, just someone looking to kill a couple of hours while recuperating from covid. I am vaguely aware there's a decent body of reverence for this film, but I haven't delved into it. I'm saying this because, on a strictly entertainment based watch, this isn't a good film. Maybe there are elements of it that became influential to filmmakers in some way, but I can't identify what they'd be. I'm not going to enumerate all the ways this isn't a good film, there are lots. I'll stick with the basics.

The story itself is simplistic (to put it mildly). The motivation for the primary plot driving action, the Comanche raid on a random farm house, is basically non-existent. The dialog is stilted, uneven, non-sensical at times. The acting is pretty uniformly poor - even if you grant stylistic allowances for how acting was done at the time, the acting is still bad, particularly if you compare it to something like Treasure Of The Sierra Madre. The direction - minimal at best, like action and cut with no other guidance, which results in really uneven tones throughout - weird attempts at what I suppose were intended to be comedic interludes juxtaposed with what should have been some pretty hard hitting emotional scenes that completely fell flat. The film covers 5 years, but you'd have a hard time knowing that without the dialog exposing that bluntly until the conclusion (at which point Deborah is obviously older than she was at the beginning of the movie).

There's of course the racism throughout, though I've read a bit from some who say Wayne's character is intended as a negative commentary on racism. Even if true (and honestly I'm not as sold on that as others are), there was plenty of other racism to go around unchecked - a Native American woman accidentally sold into slavery/marriage to a main character is played for laughs right up until she's murdered off screen and then is almost completely forgotten for the remainder of the film. There's plenty more like that. Also, why the insistence on mispronouncing Comanche throughout?

I don't get it. Can someone explain why this film is held in good regard?
Click to expand...
There’s a lot to get into there. My first question is the lack of direction. At a bare minimum, you didn’t find it gorgeous to look at? The opening and closing shots are among the best. Gorgeous symbolic bookmarks to the story.
Click to expand...
I didn't, but I may have not been watching the best quality transfer. I've read about the whole doorway thing, but it just didn't grab me - maybe knowing about it ruined it for me. It's also problematic that the ranchers are supposed to be in Texas but they're using monument valley for a lot of the settings. Monument valley is beautiful - it's got nothing to do with Texas. I kept thinking I'd missed some line that explained why they were now in Utah/Arizona, the way they later exposed they'd gone to New Mexico. That also lessened the impact of the natural settings. Then there was the jarring juxtaposition of the natural settings and the (not the greatest or most convincing) built sets, that also cut into my appreciation of the natural settings.
Click to expand...
That’s a fair criticism. I don’t think it was going for accuracy. To me the whole movie is more of a symbolic story of an Old America vs New America, the futility of holding on to the past, a separation of who we were and who we have become. Texas, Utah, California. Doesn’t matter, it’s all the American West. There is absolutely racism in the movie but still Ethan isn’t a hero. He and Scar are the villains of the movie. Ethan’s entire goal in the movie is to find and kill his niece. It’s dark as hell and the movie makes it very clear imo that Ethan doesn’t have a place in our society.
 
The casual racism and dated comedic sequences can be off putting to modern audiences but I still like The Searchers in the context of other Hollywood Westerns of its era. The character of Ethan combines the Western threads of heroism and vengeance and Wayne's portrayal captures this duality perfectly.

That said, it's not my favorite Ford Western and I think it's been overrated by the critical community over the years. The latest Sight & Sound poll came today and The Searchers ranked #15 of all-time. Only two Westerns made the list with Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West tied for #95.
 
Movies I watched in November

It was kind of a weird month with some travel and family visits

Crossroads (1942 - J. Conway)
Confess, Fletch (2022 - G. Mottola)
All Quiet on the Western Front (2022 - E. Berger)
Fletch (1985 - M. Ritchie)
Louis Armstrong's Black and Blues (2022 - S. Jenkins)
CODA (2021 - S. Heder)
Jimmy the Gent (1934 - M. Curtiz)
FIFA Uncovered (Series 2022 - D. Gordon)
Island in the Sun (1957 - R. Rossen)
Goldfinger (1964 - G. Hamilton)
Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter (1957 - F. Tashlin)
Dracula A.D. 1972 (1972 - A. Gibson)
The Little Rascals (1994 - P. Spheeris)
The Automat (2011 - L. Hurwitz)
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004 - K. Conran)
Slam Dance (1986 - W. Wang)
Trouble in Mind (1985 - A. Rudolph)
Best Seller (1987 - J. Flynn)
A Better Tomorrow (1986 - J. Woo)
Blue Steel (1990 - K. Bigelow)
8 Million Ways to Die (1986 - H. Ashby)
Tough Guys Don't Dance (1987 - N. Mailer)

I'm late to the party on CODA but I thought it was very well done.

Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter and The Little Rascals always make me laugh and I've probably seen Goldfinger more times than any other movie.

The Automat was a fascinating little documentary about a 20th century chain of automated cafeterias in NY and Philadelphia. It succeeded in making me nostalgic for something I never knew existed two hours earlier.

I forgot all about Noirvember until the end of the month so I closed with a series of seven 1980s Neo-Noirs (or sort of noirs because none really fit squarely within the classical genre boundaries). The two I enjoyed the most were Best Seller, an odd buddy picture with Brian Dennehy as a cop-turned-author and James Wood as a professional assassin, and Blue Steel, a cop film that played almost like a horror flick with a top tier villain in Ron Silver's psycho killer. Slam Dance, Trouble In Mind and 8 Million Ways played more as character studies trapped in film noir clothing and suffered from slack storytelling.

None of this prepared me for Tough Guys Don't Dance written and directed by Norman Mailer. The narrative is a mess jumping haphazardly between bizarre characters and confusing flashbacks. I didn't care who the killer was by the end but parts of it worked as a black comedy. It was kind of like an East Coast Twin Peaks but with more sex and less metaphysics. I laughed although I wasn't sure I was supposed to. I guess I'm glad I've seen it but I'll never watch it again.
 
Not sure if I posted the switch, but my Dec director became Spielberg instead of Scorsese. I thought it would be perfect to tie some of his movies I haven't gotten to with watching his new one which sounds autobiographical.

The haven't seen list includes: Amistad, Always, AI, Bridge of Spies, Color Purple, Hook, The Post, and a few others.

We started off by watching Close Encounters of the Third Kind last night. It's uneven, and I don't really like it much when it drifts away from Dreyfuss and crew. I still get the impression that I like it more than most around here.
 

KarmaPolice said:
We started off by watching Close Encounters of the Third Kind last night. It's uneven, and I don't really like it much when it drifts away from Dreyfuss and crew. I still get the impression that I like it more than most around here.
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It has occasional good parts, but it's just not a very good movie, IMO.

It is paced like Star Trek: TMP, which is to say "plodding".

And Roy just isn't a guy you can root for (yet neithet can you root against him - his family is atrocious).

I still maintain that the film is a cathartic explanation for Spielberg vis. why his dad left his family.
 
Eephus said:
Movies I watched in November
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Not a dig at all, I'm actually a little jealous, but you watch more movies in an average month than I have in probably 5 years. I think I've seen maybe 4 or 5 movies this year.
I need to start making time for regular movie viewing. While there are still some good TV shows, I think the "golden age" of TV might have run its course. Time to get back to the movies!
 
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