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What Did You Watch Today?


BlackFlagg

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Happy Gilmore was fun silly comedy, it was nearly all carried by Sandler barring Shooter, but still good stuff.

8 Mile was great, and made for a really good story that both used standard tropes and subverted them. My one gripe was that Bunny never once had a battle he looked like he might lose.

Darkman was campy 90s superhero stuff and was hilariously brilliant and awful at once. Amazing makeup work too.

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Have been going through the Halloween films lately. Just finished Halloween 5 today. Not until 4 did I really understand how important mannerisms and such were in regards to Michael. Nick Castle and Dick Warlock were wonderful playing Michael. Their slow walk, tilting of the head, eyes during close-ups, it was tremendous. Unfortunately for 4, there's quite a gap between it and II. Classic mask is replaced with a terrible one and George P. Wilbur just... can't get it done as Michael. His walk is off, sometimes too fast, and because of the hockey pads he's got under the outfit he's so stiff and crunched up.

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Sunshine (2007) is not my kind of sci-fi movie. You know, the kind of gritty "let's just stick a few people in one ship/station and watch a 100 minute procession of absolutely everything going wrong (with many deaths)" sci-fi. Ehhhh.

Grumpy Old Men (1993) is very good fun. I mean, for goodness' sake, Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau!

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Sunshine (2007) is not my kind of sci-fi movie. You know, the kind of gritty "let's just stick a few people in one ship/station and watch a 100 minute procession of absolutely everything going wrong (with many deaths)" sci-fi. Ehhhh.

Grumpy Old Men (1993) is very good fun. I mean, for goodness' sake, Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau!

Lemmon and Matthau are really wonderful together. Have you seen The Fortune Cookie? It's their best movie, just crazy good when they're together.

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Going over the stuff from my 'first week' on the 365 film thingy.

DuckTales the Movie: Treasure of the Lost Lamp (1990)

I think I just wanted the opposite of a horror movie at this point and saw this on Netflix so why not? The voice of the villain is provided by Christopher Lloyd and the character is pretty over the top with the power of immortality and shape-shifting and whatever. Going by his turns in Roger Rabbit and even that stupid Food Fight movie, you'd expect a similarly 'crazy' performance but he actually seemed a bit subdued in places.

X-Men 2 (2003)

What's the deal with Alan Cumming? He was born in Scotland to what seem to be British parents but he has a thing for playing foreign types, like Nightcrawler here or Boris in Goldeneye. I had to laugh at this line on the film's Wikipedia page in regards to it's cast: "Shaquille O'Neal wanted a role in the film but was ignored by the filmmakers." Poor Shaq. I suppose when you've been in things like Shazam and Steel, it's only natural they'd give you a wide berth.

The Rocketeer (1991)

I think Sousa needs commission from Disney for this one. Speaking of Disney, I mentioned to a friend that I had watched this and he didn't know what it was so he looked it up on YouTube, finding a video of someone critiquing it, citing it being a Disney film as one of it's failures because it's too kid friendly. Seemed pretty violent to me though. Wasn't a fan of the makeup job on the big goon Lothar but I liked the part where they're fighting on the blimp and you feel this is something you've seen a hundred times before, fighting on a precarious platform like a planes wing or on top of a train or whatever. But here he actually straps himself to the blimp so he isn't going to get knocked off. The ever escalating face off at the end is great and the whole "I may be a no good crook but I'm still an American!" thing is hilarious.

Office Space (1999)

I know the Milton character came from the little animations that inspired this movie but I didn't much care for him. Nor the final third of the movie in general really. Peter just no longer giving a shit and actively getting rewarded for it, the consultants seeing him as some sort of untapped genius was amusing.

The Naked Gun (1988)

Wasn't super into this one but I have to tip my hat to Detective Drebin for saving our beloved Queen. The whole part at the baseball game was great.

Down Periscope (1996)

This one came up as a recommendation on Netflix after watching Naked Gun and Kelsey Grammer as the commander of a submarine piqued my interest. He's made out to be some sort of renegade which is something you wouldn't expect with Grammer but all it seems to amount to is that he got drunk one night and ended up with a tattoo on his dick. Huh? And it also has Rob Schneider in it so it continues to lose points.

The Final Countdown (1980)

Watching Down Periscope led me to rewatch a more interesting US Navy movie, one that they seemed to have a hand in and played it up as some sort of recruiting tool. All the footage of planes taking off and landing is interesting, if a little confusing to me. I can see the idea behind the planes using a hook to latch on to some sort of bungee cord to help them land because you only have so much space, but I'm just a little surprised that they don't have so much momentum that the hook gets torn right off. I say this stuff is interesting, perhaps only the first time, they make a point of showing it quite a bit so it becomes quite tedious.

he story in the movie is that a modern day (for 1980) aircraft carrier ends up back in time on the eve of the attack on Pearl Harbour. This of course leads to all sorts of quandaries as they could probably wipe out the entire Japanese force with their superior firepower and I think anyone with the chance to re-write a wrong like this would want to do it, especially when you're a patriotic member of the military. But if you were to do so, what would be the ramifications? I was to understand that this incident is what led to the US involvement in the war and you've got to imagine that if they didn't, maybe things would turn out differently. But their line of thinking seems to be that there might not even be much of a war since they could wipe the floor with whatever came up against them with their F-14's. And it is pretty funny to see these two old timey Japanese planes getting tailed by these multi-million dollar aircraft.

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I really don't think that West Side Story (1961) has aged well. I'm also not sure whether it being Romeo & Juliet makes it better (for being grounded in a classic plot) or worse (for having ten thousand other R&J adaptations to stand up to).

It's not just the age of it, because there are even older musical films that are great (e.g. Singin' In The Rain). It's just...a lot of meh.

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On the other hand The Italian Job (1969) has aged just fine and is an amusing romp. Having never seen it fully before I had high expectations which weren't met, but there are worse ways to waste an hour and a half. It's a bit slow to start but picks up more and more as the film goes on.

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West Side Story has aged fine, in my opinion. The score is still so resonant and powerful, the choreography is fantastic, the lyrics are fucking awesome, Wise has a great set of actors to work with (Wood and Chakiris in particular), and it's overall a fun as fuck film to watch. "Maria", "America", "Gee, Officer Krupke" and "One Hand, One Heart" are all great numbers, and the use of the orchestra just plays with all your senses while you're trying to see a movie. There were some weak points, sure, but overall I thought it's a great, solid musical.

The Rock's Hercules is basically what you'd expect, but Ian McShane is still brilliant in it, he's hamming it up like crazy and it's awesome.

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