Adam Sandler in a very different role.
Adam Sandler’s body of work has been very hit and miss for me, this is a good one.
Watchmen
I feel like I should have watched the cinematic release, the Director’s Cut was too long for my taste with three and a half hours.
Soundtrack is excellent, and I loved the dark setting. After being tired of “shiny heroes saving the world” Marvel movies, this movie, despite predating them all, felt like a breath of fresh air, bringing heroes back down to earth, showing them to (mostly) be regular humans with all their errors and vices.
Overall, great fun. Just too long. Don’t watch it if you dislike very graphical scenes (both sex/nudity and violence/gore). It’s not an easy film to watch, both graphically and from the topics that it talks about.
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Saw Twisters in the theater last night. The last movie I saw in the theater was Top Gun: Maverick.
Twisters is a really good movie. A lot of action. Some romance. But, it wasn’t all mushy romance. A few homages to the OG Twister. But, it wasn’t a remake. I’d recommend seeing it.
Similarly, I heard that they told the Wachowskis that Matrix 4 would be made with or without them, and one signed up purely to deliver an FU to the studio. I get it, but I kinda wish we could have seen a love letter to the series instead of a deconstruction of it.
That would have been better from a fan POV, but could have then led onto studio demands for Matrix 5. The never-ending parade of superhero movies is testament that Hollywood will milk that cow until it drops.
True, true. It wouldn’t have benefited from the Star Wars treatment.
That’s partly why I was happy with John Wick 4’s ending. It serves as a convenient head-canon ending point. Meaning, if Lionsgate decides to milk the franchise until Keanu passes away, fans can easily pretend that the franchise ended at Part 4. On the other hand, it is technically open for sequels if they come up with a truly worthwhile script, doubtful as that may be.
Indeed. As far as I’m concerned Star Wars ended with Return of the Jedi, although I will give Rogue One an honourable mention.
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As far as I’m concerned, Star Wars died the day Disney bought it.
The extended universe was vast and detailed, and they threw it all away with the excuse that it included some sub-par material. I was an avid reader of the chapter books right up until Disney canceled the series I was working on (mid story arc). Their excuse holds no water, they could have cherry picked the good material and fans would have been ecstatic to see their favorite EU characters brought to life on the big screen. I firmly believe the entire reason they did it was to save money on paying authors to adapt their work. I hear they are slowly adding in concepts that were created by those authors now without crediting them. !%$!#^ Disney.
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“Andor” was actually quite good, which in itself was shocking, being a DSW product.
I only collected “Ashoka” for Mary Winstead’s can, but never got arsed enough to watch it.
I collected and hatewatched half of “The Acolyte”, the pinnacle achievement of Lesleye Headland, former personal assistant of Harvey Weinstein, and haven’t laffed so hard in ages.
The idea that this huge stone’n’metal fortress, carved into the top/side of a mountain, can burn up in minutes by pretty much just lighting it up with a tossed oil lantern, pretty much as if the walls were soaked in gunpowder and gasoline, had me almost on the floor laffing like a hyena. 
And “The Power Of Many”… 
Awww, man, that was such an unintentional comedy…
And did anyone see that “diss track” that chick made? Chef’s kiss on what a dumpster-fire that was and is.
And let’s not forget That Guy From Squid Game… Master Seoul… from Koriya… really? Like, really?
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My primary issue with it is that almost everything (including the main series of movies) since then has felt like really poor quality fan fiction. Andor and the first two season of The Mandalorian are the only bright spots. And they’re merely good, not amazing…but we’re grading on a curve here because everything else has been so bad that they are an A+ by comparison.
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Tonight on MyMovies! was “The Driver” with Ryan O’Neal, Bruce Dern, and Isabelle Adjani. Awesome flick!
O’Neal plays an ice-cold getaway driver just doing his thing. Dern plays the obsessive and positively loathsome cop who’ll do whatever it takes to get him. Adjani is the player who’s in cohoots with The Driver.
And yeah, there are no names at all in the movie. You got The Driver, The Player, The Connection, The Kid, Glasses, Teeth, Frizzy, etc. And it works!
The entire movie’s rather frugal with conversation, but it doesn’t really need it, only the cops are “normal” in the way they talk with each other, but most of the others pretty much convey meaning with their expressions… or lack thereof. The Driver’s prolonged icy stare at The Kid is pretty brutal.
Some of the best car-chase scenes that rival “Bullitt”, too. Well, the movie is titled “The Driver”, so what would you expect?
Highly highly recommended.
I will admit to nurturing the hope that Disney will realise that releasing the theatrical cuts of the original trilogy on Blu-Ray would be an easy cash-grab, I would definitely buy the trilogy again to have HD copies of the un-molested versions. Ah well, Harmy’s Despecialized Edition is a thing. Jar-Jar was the point that they blew up the fridge for me, and the whole midichlorians thing smacked of Highlander 2.
Unfortunately I think the original trilogy is now so old that there’s a whole generation that doesn’t know how good it used to be.
Don’t forget Rogue One, and some of the animated series (Later TCW seasons, The Bad Batch - I still have to watch TBB but it is supposed to be very good judging from what I read).
To be entirely honest, the OT and the Prequels also have a lot of plot holes, weird writing and issues (And retconning through the later series made most of them worse, but that’s a different story about bad Disney era decisions). But at least they managed to create a cohesive story arc, where characters mostly make sense, and where the power scaling is not completely messed up by dumb writing or random deus ex machina power asspulls (because that was the only way to get the dumpster fire story they made in the sequels back on track).
No part of the Star Wars universe is perfect, or an “amazing” movie/writing imo (and I am a huge fan of the franchise). But the quality fell off hard once Disney took over.
TBH the fridge gag in Indiana Jones bothers me less than basically anything in the Prequel trilogy. I maintain the biggest problem with the prequels is actually the lack of shot variety. Too much exposition is given by people sitting and talking or walking and talking. Show don’t tell Lucas!! (Or at least make the telling more organic)
The book burning scene from The Last Jedi was like a slap in the face for me given how Disney rug pulled the book series I was reading. Andor might be good but I refuse to watch any more Disney produced Star Wars full stop
I was wondering which Liam Neeson action films were the best. Found this list but can’t take it seriously. They put Taken 2 and 3 above Unknown? 
Unknown is definitely better than Taken 2 and 3. Taken was great, Taken 2 was pretty good. By Taken 3 you’d think they’d have learned to just leave him and his family well alone.
I had a number of problems with the prequels, Jar-Jar and midichlorians I’ve mentioned, Darth Maul was very cool but most of his screen-time was in the trailer, they dangled the carrot of Vader’s origin for way too long for not enough payoff when it finally came… I could go on. I was just massively disappointed with all of them. I get that Hayden Christensen wanted to wear the Vader suit, and I don’t blame him, but Dave Prowse was six inches taller and about 100lb heavier and it showed.
I think I’ve watched two of the three sequels and was equally disappointed with those. The first one was just a tired re-tread of ANH, Captain Phasma was heavily hyped and totally wasted and possibly most jarring - Finn did not work in sanitation. Finn was a stormtrooper, that was his job. The Empire will have had support staff and maintenance people.
The most messed up character in the sequels imo. The way they built him up, I expected him to be a stormtrooper-become-jedi, which would have been cool. I expected Finn and Rey to become very different Jedi. Finn with his military background becoming a peace-loving Jedi, Rey with her scavenger background becoming a ruthless warrior Jedi eventually succumbing to the dark side, and Kylo, the dark side apprentice, getting a redemption arc and thne Kylo and Finn save Rey/kill Rey together or something like that.
Instead he turns from “I don’t want to kill my former comrades” to butchering tens of stormtroopers while laughing within 10 minutes and no explanation, and then becomes a completely useless sidekick for the rest of the 2.5 movies. No idea what went through the writers’ heads there. Lots of potential, even some build-up, only to then throw the character onto the waste pile of irrelevant side-kicks.
IMO Kylo, Finn and Rey all were really cool characters and they could have made the trilogy into something great. But they “somehow”[*] messed it up terribly.
[*] “Somehow Palpatine returned”
Sleeping Dogs ( Russell Crowe) ---- They call it a Crime Thriller — I thought it was a good watch
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