Gonna watch the second one later this week. Not all films can stand the test of time.
The Back to the Future trilogy, as well as the original three Star Wars movies fall into this category.
Watched A Knight’s Tale with family two weeks ago. Was a delightful and funny romp through the Middle Ages. The movie’s finale had us all cheering.
So, I watched the Mummy (Brendan Fraser, Rachel Weisz, Arnold Vosloo) and the second one as well.
Delightful.
The third one… something definitely felt “off” about it. Perhaps because we expected it to continue in the Egyptian tradition, or that Imhotep came back as the Dragon Emperor.
Anyway. Pity they did not deem it fit to continue with the Egyptian side of events.
Maybe because it was a movie called “The Mummy” that had nothing to do with mummies?
I feel like we’ve watched a bunch recently:
Anybody still watching the original Stargate with Kurt Russel and James Spader?
I rewatch it from time to time. It’s one of my favorite sci-fi movies.
Haven’t watched it in years, but I have a feeling it would still be enjoyable.
We talked about Ready Player One couple years ago when it was current but I just got around to watching it.
I listened to a podcast recently that reviewed it as part of their “Summer of Spielberg” and it’s important to note that it’s the one movie they branded under their “Rocket Surgery” branding, which is reserved for bad movies.
It’s not good. I enjoyed the book and will admit it’s kind of a dirty pleasure. One quote from the podcast that resonated with me was, “I know it’s pandering, but it’s pandering to me so I enjoyed it.”
The book had a few gaps… The movie seemed to be more gaps than not. Making the penultimate ‘puzzle’ reliant on something that would be trivial knowledge is weird. (Knowledge of an 80s atari game that has been heavily documented and explored in the real world.) More importantly (and I think the podcast missed this) the movie really focuses on the idea that the Oasis is a single gigantic ‘game’ and ignores two major points:
There’s worse movies… But this could’ve been better. I think the animation is a turn-off in many places and almost would have rather seen it down with more live action (even for the ‘in the Oasis’ segments).
The ‘Egg glimmer in the real world’ is a Very Spielberg kind of unexplained thing I think, along with Halloway’s whole deal.
The cavalcade of cameos felty a bit forced at times. Oddly this felt like the main recognition of stuff past the 80s as we saw Halo marines, Goro from MK, the Iron Giant, and such.
Also the guy playing Old Halloway really makes me think of Garth from Wayne’s World.
If anyone’s interested in seeing a current movie in theaters, you should do it by Thursday night. All of the theaters in my area will be playing exactly three movies starting on Friday: The Addams Family 2, The Many Saints of Newark and Venom: Let There Be Carnage.
I very much enjoyed WIlly’s Wonderland, which is a pretty blatant ripoff of the idea behind the Five Nights at Freddie’s series of computer games, from what I can tell. Nic Cage has no speaking lines at all, which makes it one of my favorite of his films. The dialogue and general plot development is, I choose to believe, a loving homage to 80s slasher flicks and not an indicator of the writers’ actual talents.
If you hate large animatronic animals that sing and dance and would like to see Nic Cage beat the shit out of a bunch of them while not talking, this is definitely the film for you. (I found it on sale on Amazon video for $6.)
What in the everlovin’ flerken was that?
This is made by the Chicken Soup for the Soul people?!?!?!?
Yeah, I saw that too.
Looks like the wild Fandangos got loose in the theaters again. Now the Fandango website is showing more than three movies after today at all theaters.
Watched Free Guy on Disney+ tonight. We really enjoyed it - it was a lot of fun. I found the first part a bit overly long; they could have probably cut out about 15 minutes and not lost anything. It struck me as Tron + Ready Player One + The Truman Show, but in a good way. Oh, and I found that Taika Watiti was a bit too much Taika in this one.
I have watched the Dune.
Now bad. I feel like the Lynch version was definitely an influence of sorts, albeit with more modern looking tech (smooth lines, blade-like edges, less baroque almost steampunk styling) and a bit more adherence to the novel.
I liked the slightly expanded role for Lyet Kynes, who is also a woman in this version.
There’s a few clunky exposition moments and Paul’s change from “Do I even want the job of ruling?” to “I will rule and fix everything.” seemed a bit abrupt. And I knew it was part 1 of 2, but if you didn’t it could be an ugly ending.
I have no idea how coherent it is for those who haven’t read the book and seen another version or two, but it feels a bit more coherent than the Lynch version.
And this is how you add more diversity to a story. The gender of this character makes absolutely no difference to the role, and could be enhanced by the change. Just like Vetinari being a woman in The Watch, which I refuse to watch based on reviews and other horrific miscastings.
This is the opposite side of the “Make Bond a Woman” kind of crap. Making Bond a woman changes the whole story, and if it doesn’t then why bother to make the role female?
Sylvester Stallone released a new version of Rocky IV on the 11th called Rocky IV: Rocky vs Drago - The Ultimate Director’s Cut. It was in theaters for just that one day and is now on streaming services. I’m going to refer you to the Moviepedia Wiki if you want to see the development and timeline of what changed.
There’s also a documentary that you can watch on the Total Rocky website or YouTube about what Stallone went through with creating the director’s cut. I just jumping around at random through it and stumbled across the point where he is going back in for yet another change after he thought it was finished and he says art is never finished. You just get to a point where you have to pull the plug to stop. But this has allowed him to correct a flaw in his own film-making, which is he was trying to avoid having the audience get bored because of his own lack of patience and confidence, so he didn’t extend the moment to let emotions sink in.
I think this is another example of how he gets discounted when he really is a skilled actor, director and writer. I didn’t even realize that he was all three for the Rocky movies until I saw his interview on The Director’s Chair.
NEO!
TRINITY!
TETSUO!
KANEDA!
I wanted to give a review of The Last Starfighter, but my partner has some very strong views on it so I’ll just leave it alone.
It’s a story of a young man, trained by a propaganda tool, kidnapped, and forced to fight in a war that he has no control over. He uses his much practised video game skills to kill people. I could go on, but it’s making me a little angrysad.