Last Movie You Watched...

Mortal Engines.
It had some moment but essentially meh.

A documentary about Joan Jett (sp?). It wasn't anywhere near as good as the Blondie doc, but it was pretty revealing about The Runaways, and how they paved the way for all-girl rock bands, which I didn't realize. You had the sweet ballad singers of the 60s and 70s, and then along comes Joan to tear the lid off of things, which I thought was ground-breaking.

Velvet Buzzsaw

I found it extremely entertaining, if not necessarily as deep or surreal as it wants to be. We all agree that true art is when you're poor and selling-out turns you dead inside, but it feels a little rote. The characters come off more like archetypes, which is mitigated by the fact that the cast is very good, and they're all having a lot of fun. Gyllenhaal, Rene Russo, Toni Collette, Malkovich, Daveed Diggs. Gyllenhaal's career is taking a course somewhere between the understated self-parody of Keanu and the overstated self-parody of Cage. I am here for that. Plus, the horror elements manage to be both funny and get some good scares.

So it's pretty good! But for a horror/satire set in the art world, I'd say Deepest Dark is better.

After watching the version with zombies, I've been watching some versions of Pride and Prejudice.

I wasn't so keen on the 1995 miniseries. The actress playing Elizabeth Bennet seemed too old to me and her mother was awful. Mr Darcy seemed OK. The pacing was off: considering that the series was over 6 hours long, all the worthwhile things happened in the last half hour of the final episode.

The 1980 miniseries was somewhat better in all these regards and I liked the Mr Darcy. Better pacing, too and less overacting. Alas, the cheap production values are too obvious to ignore.

The 2005 movie was the best - a lot of the unnecessary filler was condensed or ignored, leaving more room for the downs and ups of the central Darcy & Lizzie story. Keira Knightley was really good and the Mr Darcy was played properly sternly.

It's strange but for the Zombie version I would not have considered watching any of this sort of thing.

If you're checking out variations of Pride and Prejudice, make sure to include Lost in Austen! A devoted modern Austen fan switches places with Elizabeth Bennet & has to make sure the story stays on track. It's a lot of fun, & an interesting take on some of the characters.

I've been catching up on the Hanger 1 episodes that I missed. One right after another. Keeps me from checking my email box every 10 minutes.

Avatar. Man, this movie is still pretty. Man, it's got some deep problems. I can't believe there's a sequel in production. Let alone a whole series of them. What possible currency could a whole series of Avatar movies have more than a decade later? What could they possibly say? (yeah, I know, I know, $$$)

Albedo said:

Avatar. Man, this movie is still pretty. Man, it's got some deep problems. I can't believe there's a sequel in production. Let alone a whole series of them. What possible currency could a whole series of Avatar movies have more than a decade later? What could they possibly say? (yeah, I know, I know, $$$)

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The less I say about that movie the better, but man I love that starship. Project Rho did a good writeup on it, likely the most plausible interstellar vessel we'll see in film.

​Not so much into the smurfs.

Kjbartolotta said:

The less I say about that movie the better, but man I love that starship. Project Rho did a good writeup on it, likely the most plausible interstellar vessel we'll see in film.

​Not so much into the smurfs.

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oh god, Don't get me started on the smurf people. So much work went into that movie's creature design and buidling plausible alien life, and then we got giant blueberry kitty men. I imagine James Cameron leering over the concept artists at their work, screaming "bigger! Bluer! BLUER!"

I've got my own theory, re: the Na'vi being old human invaders, who have been fully assimilated into the Eywa god-organism. Shades of the cruciform people from Hyperion. This would explain why they're not evidently phylogenetically related to any of the Pandoran animals we see, and yet are able to, um, 'dock' with them (and thanks for that remarkably uncomfortable scene where Sam Worthington has unconsenting ear-congress with a dragon, Jim).

The tech was boss!

Albedo said:

I've got my own theory, re: the Na'vi being old human invaders, who have been fully assimilated into the Eywa god-organism. Shades of the cruciform people from Hyperion.

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Mine is that they were from Earth, but were put there by prehistoric aliens (or whatever). Y'know, that movie was not for me, but I can't really hate on it. Srsly, the tail-bonding. Way too kinky for me.

Oh, I definitely don't hate it. But I've got a habit of nitpicking big popcorn sci-fi movies, and Avatar really lends itself to scrutiny. Probably because it was so bombastically marketed, trumpeted at the time as the movie that was going to change how we watch films forever. That panned out, didn't it?

Kong: Skull Island. Not nearly as good as I was hoping for given the stellar cast... I must have missed the promotional campaign when it was first released, because I was surprised at how much of it was just Apocalypse Now with big monsters. (And, as a friend pointed out, a fair bit of Moby Dick as well.)

Kong; Skull Island just irked the heck out of me when I saw a morphological-looking primate ape just walking around like some dude. His posture--completely straight up--straight down. The cast was fine. Riley is really starting to grow on me, and I'm seeing him more often in movies.

The Prodigy. Not horrible, but not great. Formulaic with some interesting scenes.

Creature From The Black Lagoon on Svengoolie. The episode was dedicated to Julie Adams, who played Kay, the unsuspecting maiden, who'd passed away this month.

The Bird Box

Overlord. Scrappy WWII soldiers on a mission run up against Nazi zombies. Great action, memorable characters, a lot of body horror but it still stands on its own as a war movie. Solid, well-executed fun all the way through, nothing to snark about and a whole lot to appreciate.

Tutankamun, a last, or most recent examination of the boy king's life. It was well done in story format, showcasing Canarvan (sP?) and Carter and the political strife they went through to stay on the dig and catalogue everything.

"The Ballad of Buster Scruggs". A must see.....it stays with you.

The Bank Job (2008)

I like a good heist film and it was an interesting insight into that part of history because it was based on a true story. Pacing was a little off, we paused half-way through and I would have thought we were 75% through from where we were in the story-line.
It's on UK Netflix until the end of this week (23rd Feb).

Bohemian Rhapsody. The resemblance is uncanny most of the time, and funny some of the time.