What Are You Watching?

Thank's, Rabbit. :-) 

No prob Barry!

Emperor (2012)

The very early history of the U.S. occupation of Japan post WW2.

Some good acting by Matthew Fox. Movie was watchable enough. The cross-culture love story that took up about 50% of the film (while finely depicted) I later read was made up. Found this a little bothersome since it was connected to an actual person and not just a created character in a historical setting. Like, let's not COMPLETELY misrepresent someone's real life for drama and theme. Also, Tommy Lee Jones was front and center on the listed "box" cover art I saw and he probably has 8 minutes screen-time in the whole movie. lol

verdict: free television 

Recently streamed The Last Lullaby starring Tom Sizemore. In the credits, I noticed the feature script was based on a (9) page short story entitled A Matter of Principle by Max Collins. Curious, I downloaded a PDF of the short story, read it and found it is essentially a character study of the hit man character which appears in both the short story and the feature. The short story is filled with rich and colorful unfilmable internal conversations which would be a bitch to write in script format.

I found it interesting and imaginative that the bulk (the real meat and potatoes) of the feature was pulled out of thin air by two other writers who wrote the script.

My take away is there was a great hunger for a strong and interesting lead character played by Tom Sizemore.

Val (2021)

Quite enjoyed the first and (especially) final third. The middle portion did seem to drag a little.

Verdict: Paid Rental if interested in the documentary subject of Val Kilmer, otherwise skip.

^^ Patriot is excellent and well worth a binge!

Alone: Season 8 (History Channel)

Last by yourself in the wilderness using just ten survival items the longest without tapping out.

Had a great time with this series since it started, tho in truth I may only have a future season or two left in me at this point unless there's some sort of format change. I do hope they film a season with previous winners soon as there's enough for one (S10) as I would def check that out. Or another second-chance season a la S5 maybe.

CODA (2021)

The major plot points were mostly obvious but also VERY well done. Lots to say re: disability, dreams and... diaphragms (breathing)? Negative: More foul language and sexual comments than I would of liked. Little bit surprised they got away with PG-13. Maybe cause some were subtitles only.

Verdict: Paid Rental (imo parents should screen first before teen viewing)

Marie Antoinette (2006). I don't know why, but I didn't find out until today that this movie is streaming on Amazon Prime, Canadian, don't know if it's available for other countries. The second I found out, I rushed to re-watch. Beautifully made movie. Sad and quite true to French aristocrats in the 18th century. It's a pleasure to relive the way Sophia Coppola managed to seamlessly put a modern soundtrack in a story that's so heavily historical. Also one of the most perfect ways of showing the passing of time flawlessly. Truly a work of art.

I've seen Marie Antoinette twice thus far in my existence. Remember quite liking it... the bright colors and music were at once both "out there" choices and also seemed to work very well.

Also while the real Antoinette was not a perfect person or anything (tho no one is) she's gotten a very bum historical rap per my cursory understanding (via her adopted country's fear/distrust of foreigners at the time, lasting anti-monarchy sentiment in various places and enemies she had around/in the French monarchy itself that spread slander and rumors about her). France would have been broke Antoinette or no. 

Looking for Jean-Paul Belmondo movies, found That Man from Rio free on Tubi. 

Derek, the colors alone are gorgeous! Because I've lived in Montreal, I'm well-versed in French history and the revolution. I was expecting to be somewhat bored watching Marie Antoinette, and I wasn't. Coppola is smart to simply make it a story about a girl who became the queen of France. As a person, I think Marie wasn't any worst than any socialite. She was basically the Kim Kardashian of the 18th century, to put it in perspective.

France was a deeply divided country before the revolution, it wasn't just economics. Imagine if Kim K became the American First Lady while the country dealt with the worst economic depression in all of history and on top of that, the First Lady gives secret intelligence to a country who plans to invade America. That's basically what Marie did. She committed treason by giving her brother (Austria) the French army plans.

Perhaps it's not a one for one comparison but we tried to give Meghan Markle to the UK, however she returned. lol 

Anarchy in the UK! No wait...

Currently, I'm going back and watching alot of the 80s horror films I grew up on. Pumpkinhead, Critters, Rawhead Rex, Ghoulies are just a few I've watched recently. I have a whole room full of nothing but VHS films, most of them being horror, so I'm set for the next few months.

Link to all the SNL Celebrity Jeopardy sketches, including the ones with Norm Macdonald as Burt Reynolds. Hadn't seen most of them, Winona Ryder as Bjork is hilarious.

https://www.vulture.com/article/history-snl-celebrity-jeopardy.html

Friday Night Lights (2004)

The movie, not television show (haven't watched that). Very warm/cold throughout in different aspects. Tho I will say Tim McGraw gave a surprisingly good performance in his moderate-sized part & I didn't know exactly who'd win the "big game" till it happened. Worth viewing once, but I probably won't again and am glad I saw it free-streaming. I will stick with Hoosiers + Rudy for my repeat sports intake.

Southpaw (2015)

The very first words in this movie were song lyrics "I'm a mother******* beast!", so that got shut off right away. I mean, I guess it was right up front at least so I didn't waste a bunch of time first. 

Miracles From Heaven (2016)

About 85% of the heart of something such as "Fireproof" but with like 3x the production value. Filming, acting... Faith Based films industry has come a long way in the last 10/15 years. I was a little worried Jennifer Garner might not have much range (don't think I've seen anything with her previously) but she def did. Not just a very pretty face that one! Also an unexpected treat to randomly see Eugenio Derbez as the doctor, who I'd also just caught for the first time in CODA of recent. Verdict: Purchase  

13 Going On 30 (2004)

For good and not this was Cotton Candy / Candy Floss: The Movie.

Verdict: Streaming

Note: have altered "free tv" to "streaming" due to possible unmeant negative-connotations of former. I mean, even gratis / paid for buffet is still 2 hours of one's life.

Enjoyed The Hard Way (1991, dir. John Badham), action comedy with James Woods as a NYC cop who has to put up with tagalong Hollywood actor Michael J. Fox doing research for a role. Great scenes and chemistry with Woods and Fox and gritty NYC locations. 

But it's marred by a weirdly paced and choppy third act. Trivia says shooting the extended climax atop a Times Square billboard drew all kinds of attention from both US and foreign news networks but little of that drama shows up in these scenes in the film. It's clunky and loses steam. The action sequence in the movie theater is much more suspenseful with a great payoff when real-life MJF rips through the movie screen of his own film.

Also I'm not a fan of the "unkillable" villain. Stephen Lang builds a riveting character in the early scenes with threatening body language and techno-speak. He's scary and mysterious. But then in the later sequences he starts talking like a cliche badass and keeps popping back up after he seems to have been shot dead with no explanation. All the menace in his character seems to drain away.

And yet the scenes with Wood and Fox are so funny and it's a great love-hate relationship. 

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)

I recall walking out the cinema a decade ago and thinking I'd wasted my money.

The film was on television last week - and I made myself watch it. In the next few days I watched it twice more.

Back in 2011, I'd failed to grasp the plot - appreciate the innuendoes, the subtle remarks, hints, clues.

The screenplay is genius. Pure class.

A flurry of new media projects coming soon focused on Julia Child. Interesting look at her lasting appeal in "Welcome to the Juliaverse" on grubstreet.com. 

PlutoTV has a live 24/7 Julia Child channel with episodes from all her series (also available on demand on Pluto). There's something mesmerizing in how she talks so candidly to the TV audience even in the early low-budget shows. If I'm feeling low, watching a bit of Julia revives me.

Also love the classic parody sketches: Dan Akroyd as Julia on SNL and Carol Burnett as Julia Wild.

Midway (2019)

The CG in this movie was present and glaring enough to be distracting to me. Borderline Sky Captain & The World Of Tomorrow (which did work there if way-back memory serves due to style/subject-matter) or a videogame (tho I'm no real expert on videogames) in places - not a look I'd go for in a historical battle film imo. Also pretty constant foul language throughout. I did get (a little) more into into it as movie progressed but not enough for a 2+ hour run time. Verdict: Skip  

One I watched recently on Amazon Prime is T-34, about a Russian tank crew's escape from a German POW camp. Well worth watching.

I've started to question the savviness of me "needlessly" critiquing established industry productions. LOL. That being said I think criticism (the art of) can be a different skill set than production sometimes and even say, a gondolier operator may have worthwhile ideas on film without necessarily being able to make a fantastic movie themselves. That's why I've always thought any (hypothetical) "So you think YOU could do better?!" counters were kind of silly. (of honest critics anyway, there are certainly other kinds)

That all being said, when did I let a lack of savviness stop me before (lol)? So...     

Sigh. You and me, both, CJ. That hateful, witch hunting mob mindset just because someone didn't like watching a movie or tv show, is such a waste of energy and time to me. But, let's be honest, there's not a lot of people in the overall movie audience who know how to analyze. For the most part, it's either absolute love and they don't know why, or absolute hate, and they still don't know why.

The irony is, these days, with the ease of online streaming, even if the entire world hates a movie/show, the more people talk about it, the more money it makes, and the more people will be reminded of whatever they didn't like watching, We live in an upside down world.

I am watching Fringe and the characterization of Walter as the repentant mad scientist is really interesting.

The impetus of all that is I very recently watched Dumbo (2019) and thought to myself "I guess it IS possible to do fantastic and emotive animal CG nowadays!" (for Dumbo character) which reminded me of a movie critic on twitter I saw claim he was publicly roasted by someone who worked on a different major film (film & person unnamed by me cause I didn't do enough investigation at the time to be throwin' grenades at anyone's specific reputation now) for criticizing that movie's animal CG (but having seen that other film myself I agree at least that the animal CG in it was poor) and I thinks "Guess the public internet isn't as private as everyone assumes LOL".

But yeah, Dumbo in contrast was quite good and I'd classify that as Paid Rental.     

I will agree tho that some people do make cracks based on ignorance and/or bitterness.