Thread "What are you watching right now?" in forum "Comic Talk and General Discussion *"

Posted at 11:03AM, Mar. 20, 2020

moizmad wrote:
Alright, going to try again….
FREAKS - Emile Hirsch, Lexy Kolker, Bruce Dern, Grace Park. Only good thing I can say is filmed in my town Vancouver plus little Lexy does a good acting job for such a young lady. Gave it the kybosh before ending which gets it a Golden Goose Egg on the Moizmeter.

Funny it got 87% on Rotten Tomatoes and they hate everything.

If you must watch a movie called Freaks see the Tod Browning directed deeply disturbing 1932 film. Has in it carnival "freaks" of the period and is directed by a pretty freaky guy himself; Tod Browning. If you like period horror it's disturbing and terrifying as only one of those pre-code 1930s movies can be.

Dunkirk(2017) Once you get past the jumpy back and forth story telling and see the elements come together it is a very good piece of film making. Some bits are a little over the top but others strike home.

1917(2019) Talk about breath taking film making, this movie deserved its nomination. Super intense and very well done. The one take smooth camera adds power to this story of World War I. One of best WWI movies I've seen.

Midway(2019)Explosions every ten minutes and nonstop action and it's still an awful telling of the first six months of World War 2 in the Pacific. Planes defy gravity and the CGI effects don't even match up to those in the 2001 Pearl Harbor And WHERE ARE THE WILDCATS? One third of the carrier air group is missing since there are NO US fighters and no mention of them. What Northup/Grumman wouldn't let them use the trademark Grumman Wildcat? Yes, the characters are all real people and the events match what happened. But WW2 planes can't defy the laws of physics like that and some look like the Toho model work done in 1961's Storm over the Pacific

Watch the 1976 Midway. You'll notice that Woody Harrelson's portrayal of Nimitz is very much like Henry Fonda's. The story has a few fictional characters but is from a better generation of actors and it's all real planes and wartime footage and actually filmed on board USS Lexington CV-16.

And those pesky Russians have been turning out some excellent war fims lately too check out Tanks for Stalin, T-34, Tankers(AKA Indestructible) and Panfilov's 28.

Posted at 2:03PM, Mar. 23, 2020

POLAROID - Kathryn Prescott, Mitch Pileggi, Grace Zabriske, Tyler Young. Kathryn finds a vintage Polaroid camera (that seems to have an inexhaustible supply of film inside) and anyone who gets in photo dies a horrible death soonest. Throw the thing away Kathryn, but no, that would ruin movie. Filmed in Nova Scotia, near Halifax & Dartmouth. A generous Canadian 2 on the Moizmeter.

SAFE HOUSE - Denzel Washington, Ryan Reynolds, Vera Farmiga, Brendan Gleeson, Sam Shepard. (from 2012) In Cape Town, SA complex spy yarn where Denzel is arrested and placed in safe house, that's not very safe. Some big shot crooks/politicians try to kill him, as he has a list of all their names, and are the hired assassins bad shots or what? Ryan tries to get him to another safe house? and fights/gunfights, car chases ensue aplenty. An almost 2 hr. test to stay awake, got an almost 2 on the Moizmeter.

Posted at 1:03PM, Mar. 24, 2020

LAST FERRY - Ramon O. Torres, Myles Clohessy, Sheldon Best, Henry Ayres-Brown, Larry Owens. Fire Island, NY finds gay lawyer Ramon looking for love but gets drugged & mugged, and in this foggy state, sees a murder? He is rescued by Sheldon and his collection of gay buddies, tons of boring gay sex scenes almost drove me away before we finally get a clue who got murdered and by who. It's one of these movies that suddenly ends without an end and you're just left in the dark. A 1 3/4 on the Moizmeter.

Posted at 12:03PM, Mar. 27, 2020

THE DEAD DON'T DIE - Bill Murray, Adam Driver, Chloe Sevigny, Tilda Swinton, Tom Waits, Steve Buscemi, Danny Glover, Caleb Landry Jones. Local police, Bill, Adam & Chloe are called to the gory murders of 2 cafe workers. Adam quickly suspects zombies maybe? We know he's right and soon enuf thousands of corpses crawl out of their graves to feast on the townfolk. Crazy roles for Tom, Tilda & Caleb. A good laugh getting a 3 on the Zombiemeter!

Posted at 6:03PM, Mar. 28, 2020

MOTHER - Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Ed Harris, Michelle Pfeiffer, Domhnall Gleeson, Stephen McHattie, Kristen Wiig and a cast of thousands. Large old house sitting in the middle of nowhere sees JLaw fixing up and painting whilst hubby Javier deals with writers block. Then Ed & Michelle drop in and altho Javier doesn't even know them he seems to relish having them stay for as long as they want? JLaw isn't thrilled about this and soon Ed's 2 crazy sons show up and then a few hundred people making themselves at home, then 1 son gets killed and all leave. Several months later all is well with JLaw ready to give birth when another mess of Javier's fans arrive and it starts all over again. Is Javier for real??? A 2 1/2 on the Moizmeter.

Posted at 7:03PM, Mar. 29, 2020

ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD - Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Dakota Fanning, Bruce Dern, Kurt Russell, Al Pacino and a cast of thousands, in fact it would be easier to list who isn't in the film. Tarantino's fairy tale that stretches 2 3/4 hrs centres on Leo's declining career along with his buddy and stunt man Brad. Margot is ridiculously cast as Sharon Tate, doesn't even remotely look like her, and plays her like she was some kind of idiot. Endless series of vignettes all leading toward the Manson family murders of Tate/LaBianco on 2 nights in Aug 69 but film drifts into a new ending and I have no idea why. A 1 1/2 on the Moizmeter.

Posted at 5:04AM, Apr. 4, 2020

The Platform.

SPOILERS:

This is a Spanish SciFi art film about a weird experimental prison.
It's a thin tower with many, many floors. In the centre of every level is a hole.
There are two people on every level.
Once a day a platform goes down through the whole covered in rich, delicious food…
The people on the top level get first dibs on the food and the people bellow eat the leftovers. The further it goes down the more spoiled the food, till there IS no more food.
You stay on each level for a month and then you're randomly assigned to a new level.
You can't save food or the room heats up til you cook or cools down till your freeze.
You get a term in the tower for a crime or you can volunteer to go in yourself you get over smoking or something… Bad idea.
You can take in ONE item of your choice with you. Anything you want as long as it fits in the room.

That's the setup.

The lead character voluntarily goes in because he wants to give up smoke. He take in a copy of Don Quixote with him.
There's not enough food to go down to all the levels… Theoretically there might be if everyone rationed strictly and only took the minimum they need to survive, but no one ever does that…

The meaning of the film:
The lead character becomes Don Quixote, defending the week and the "poor", idolising a woman as his maiden in distress (his Dulcinea).
The levels represent the class system in society that people fall into from birth and wealth through luck and fate. We COULD have an equitable system very easily if we worked together but those on top would usually rather take what they can get and shit on those bellow. Anyone can shift up to the top of the bottom at any time by outside forces, we only have an illusion of control. It's easy to go down but almost impossible to get to the top in society by your own ability and then you need help from those above.

It's not bad but very brutal. Blood, gore shit, etc. And because it's more an art film than a straight SciFi it doesn't have a neat ending, things are more symbolic.

Posted at 1:04PM, Apr. 4, 2020

EUROPA REPORT - Anamaria Marinca, Michael Nyqvist, Sharlto Copley, Daniel Wu, Karolina Wydra, Christian Camargo, Embeth Davidtz. (from 2013) Crew of 6 are sent to Jupiter's moon Europa, thought to possibly have some kind of organic life in the water below it's frozen surface. Things start to go wrong in the cramped quarters and one by one we start to lose the crew. Will they find life? Maybe….and I found it quite interesting even without fights, gun battles, car chases, sex etc. Gave it a 3 1/2 on the Moizmeter.

Posted at 7:04PM, Apr. 4, 2020

I just finished LOST SONG on Netflix. That was the jrpg-est anime I've seen in a long time. Military+magic story line. Colorful cast full of anime archetypes. Messed up, hard-to-follow mindfuck in the middle (following the all-is-lost moment). Bittersweet ending. All the usual "magitech" including the obligatory "airships."

Honestly, I enjoyed it as a jrpg fan. If you like fantasy anime, check it out.

Posted at 11:04PM, Apr. 6, 2020

Sounds like a great show!

Posted at 5:04PM, Apr. 10, 2020

THE NINTH GATE - Johnny Depp, Frank Langella, Lena Olin, Emmanuelle Seigner. An oldie from 1999 directed by Roman Polanski. Frank is a famous book collector and hires Johnny to find and authenticate 3 versions of the 9th Gate book. Started OK but started to get goofy for me, others thought different. Apparently you need the 3 books to put a 9 page puzzle together written by Lucifer himself?? Give me a break. A 1 on the Moizmeter.

Posted at 8:04PM, Apr. 10, 2020

Watching 'Golgo 13: Collection 1.' It's an anime series about unstoppable hitman Duke Togo, a.k.a. Golgo 13. I grabbed this because I was so impressed by the animated feature film 'Golgo 13: The Professional.' That was pretty bad-ass; as good if not better than any live motion action film of its era. So I had to see the animated series adaptation…

I probably should have left well enough alone. Very little of the white-knuckle action and suspense which punctuated the movie are in evidence here, and instead this plays almost like a parody of the Golgo I came to know and love. Sure, in the movie Golgo was a tough highly skilled assassin, but now he's cartoonishly overpowered, and his adversaries are all pushovers and bunglers. The show is fetishistically obsessed with explaining minutiae of Golog's gear and how difficult of a long range shot he has to take… and none of it matters, because in the end you know he's just going to blaze through it all without breaking a sweat.

The episodes are all very similar. Golgo gets a mission, someone tries to stop him from completing the mission, and in the end he kills the guy, usually by shooting him with his sniper rifle. The end. There's one episode where it looks like something really clever's going to happen. Golgo gets himself arrested and sent to the prison where his target is locked up. He earns the man's confidence and they form a plan to break out together. And then there's this scene where they have to navigate between these searchlights, and if they mess up the timing they'll be spotted and likely shot dead by the guards. I'm thinking, "cool, so Golgo's going to trick this poor guy into being spotted, so the guards will take him out and it all looks like a failed escape!" Except that doesn't happen. They escape, and Golgo shoots him with his rifle.

This show is like Rammstein: Best consumed in the original language, without subtitles or explanation.

Score: .7158 Minutes of Angle

Posted at 6:04PM, Apr. 12, 2020

SHUTTER ISLAND - Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, Ben Kingsley, Michelle Williams, Emily Mortimer, Max Von Sydow, Patricia Clarkson, John Carroll Lynch, Ted Levine. (from 2010) Hard to review as virtually entire movie is the delirious thoughts of Leo, who has been in the nut house for 2 years since murdering his wife Michelle. He thinks he's a marshall brought to the island to find crazy woman who vanished but notta, and nobody is really the person he thinks they are. We see him wandering around the island looking for clues but hard to believe guards and doctors would allow anything like that, so finally, is that a bottle in front of me or better still, a frontal lobotomy. Some score it way higher than me, but I gave it a 2 1/2 on the Moizmeter.

Posted at 7:04PM, Apr. 12, 2020

‘Unorthodox” on Netflix. One of the most harrowing films I have seen in a long time. It’s based on the real-life memoir by a young woman who escapes from the Satmar Hasidic Jewish community. The Satmar community is based in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where I lived for 13 years. Seeing the events, which were all true events, playing out in the streets that were so familiar to me made it especially haunting.

Posted at 2:04PM, Apr. 13, 2020

CHARLIE SAYS - Another look at the Manson family murders focusing on the females with Hannah Murray as Leslie Van Houten, altho she doesn't even remotely look like Leslie, Sosie Bacon as Krenwrinkle, Marianne Rendon as Susan Atkins, Matt Smith as Charlie, facially very close but way too tall to be that little runt, Chace Crawford as Tex, doesn't say much. Merritt Weaver plays a woman interviewing the 3 females in prison. Looking back we got rid of Susan in '99 of brain cancer (or was that a lack of a brain), Charlie in 2017 but we're still stuck with Tex, who should've been dancing at the end of a rope 50 years ago, I hope everyday someone will "do" him in prison. Leslie and Krenwinkle can rot in prison while thinking of how incredibly stupid they were. I gave it a 2 on the Moizmeter.

Posted at 9:04AM, Apr. 14, 2020

I just finished CELLS AT WORK. It's a monster-of-the-week anime. No deep plots, no melodrama, quite episodic. The "violence" is quite cartoon and there are no deep storylines or relationship arcs. A good, light watch. It's also dubbed, which is a must for me these days. I like to watch TV passively while I do other things.

Posted at 1:04AM, Apr. 15, 2020

fallopiancrusader wrote:
‘Unorthodox” on Netflix. One of the most harrowing films I have seen in a long time. It’s based on the real-life memoir by a young woman who escapes from the Satmar Hasidic Jewish community.

A mate recommended it to me, after a faceache comment, yesterday…
A different mate (who was Jewish) always referred to them as Acidic Jews - at first I thought he was just dropping his 'H' as many people do in the U.K., until I finally said "Don't you mean..?" NO. He didn't. B-)

Posted at 11:04AM, Apr. 15, 2020

I'm trying to catch up on 8 years worth of SUPERNATURAL episodes.

Posted at 7:04PM, Apr. 15, 2020

THE PARTS YOU LOSE - Aaron Paul, Danny Murphy, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Scoot McNairy. North Dakota gets played by Manitoba, where young bullied deaf boy Danny finds wounded Aaron, drags him to an abandoned barn and nurses/feeds him back to health. Aaron teaches Danny how to stand up to the bully and a bond develops. Mary is the boy's mom and Scoot his brutish dad. Then Danny finds out Aaron robbed a bank and police are on the hunt. We knew this friendship couldn't last much longer, but a good watch 3 on the Moizmeter.

A VIGILANTE - Olivia (be still my heart) Wilde, Morgan Spector, Tonye Patano, Judy Marte, C. J Wilson, Estafania Tejeda. Olivia's brute hubby Morgan killed her son and beat her. She takes up martial arts and joins a women's support group. Soon enuf she beats a battered woman's hubby into a pulp, and also gets these women financial help in addition to pulverizing their soon-to-be- ex-husbands. Then her hubby shows up and a finale battle ensues, guess who wins and also gets his life insurance now that he's dead. An Olivia inspired 3 on the Moizmeter.

Posted at 1:04AM, Apr. 16, 2020

moizmad wrote:

A VIGILANTE - hubby shows up and a finale battle ensues, guess who wins and also gets his life insurance now that he's dead.

Oh, I DO love a happy ending ! B-)

Posted at 3:04AM, Apr. 18, 2020

[…starts typing again, after lappie decided to reboot in the middle]

1999's "Galaxy Quest" : Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver and Alan Rickman doing a great spoof version of "Star Trek" and associated fan cons. I hadn't watched this for many years, and had forgotten just how much fun it is ! A T.V. 'spaceship crew' of actors gets mistaken for the 'real deal' by naive aliens. Way better than "When Mars Attacks", in my opinion.

Gets a 3 Goldilocks from me.

….and makes me want to re-watch 'Paul' (also with Sigourney in)

Posted at 6:04PM, Apr. 22, 2020

WACO - Michael Shannon, Taylor Kitsch, Andrea (be still my heart) Riseborough, Paul Sparks, Rory Culkin, Shea Whigham and a cast of thousands. A 6 part Netflix series. An illegal shipment of grenades to the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas brings the ATF sneaking up with a search and arrest warrant for David Koresh (Taylor), the exalted leader, but a tip-off starts chaos, who shot first? The FBI is called in with Michael as top negotiator. Koresh preaches his version of the Bible to a pack of 80/90 of the stupidest people, all lost at sea with no direction known. But the authorities weren't much help and mistakes just led to more mistakes. But most of blame goes to Koresh, a goofball like that goes on a power-trip and gets 80 or so people, many just young kids, killed, takes the fall in my opinion. A 3 1/2 on the Moizmeter.

Posted at 8:04PM, Apr. 24, 2020

"Red Joan" 2018 Judy Dench. Based on the book of the same name, which is 'loosely' based on a real story**, we have Judy Dench as the aged central character being arrested on espionage charges, then 'reminiscing' back to the events (thank God no-one uses that 'wavy mist' effect, these days).

People. I love films about people, especially real ones, although the 'reality' of this one has been rather morphed. Heroes/Villains; Terrorists/ Freedom fighters; Patriots/Traitors….they're all basically two sides of the same coin. POV is what defines them. The French Resistance were terrorists or freedom fighters, for e.g., just depending on your point of view.

So 'Joan' was a traitor - passing secrets from Britain's "Tube Alloys" (the codename for Atomic research) to the USSR. IN the film, she's a science student, not a communist, has a couple of affairs, gets recruited from university (as SO many were, in the late 30s) and only passes on the info for philanthropic reasons, not monetary nor ideological. The pretext is that with both sides having nuclear weapons, neither side will use them, 'eh voila' world peace.

Well… I personally see the merit of that, since having watched 50+ years of U.S. foreign policy makes me think they might well have used theirs, had there not been the opposite deterrent. I'm a lifetime cynic anyway.

** Unfortunately, reading up on the 'real' Joan (Melita Norwood), the story is far greyer, with her taking non-science subjects, dropping out about 5 years before the start scenario….the real 'Joan'

Anyway, I enjoyed it, feeling a bit disappointed that the IRL 'Joan' hadn't had that 'Hollywood' version of her life

- 3 Goldilocks.

Posted at 5:04AM, Apr. 25, 2020

Loved Cells at work- it wasn't so much Monster of the Week as just an entertainment educational show. There's some character development of the red bloodcell as she grows and matures over the season and the white blood cell becomes less of a pure savage.
The main purpose of the show is to teach you about the body's immune system and how it responds to different problems- and watching it with a registered nurse who specilised in that in her post grad degree- it's apparently quite accurate :D

Posted at 6:04AM, Apr. 25, 2020

I saw Brimstone the other day.

I recommend against this film most strongly. It was well made, acted, filmed, good costumes, sets effects, dialogue etc, but the story was so dark and depressing that I felt horrible after I watched it.
Dancer in the Dark is a depressing film but compared to this it was a Disney cartoon. I'm not exaggerating for effect.

Brimstone about the old west in the mid 1800s and the struggles of a young woman of Dutch heritage, done in a grimly realistic style which belies the fact that it's basically utter fantasy.
You can go one way and make history a lot more fun and safe and friendly, or you can go to the other extreme and makes it a thousand times grimmer. This does the latter.

It's not bad for doing that, you just have to acknowledge that it isn't a realistic vision, and ask yourself if you're really the sort of person who likes to be left depressed and sad by what they see. If yes, then see this. If no then don't.

I wish I had been warned like this.