kind of “snakebit” recently.
the movies i’ve seen this week
are not very good or just plain awful.
here are three examples:
1. In The Blood.
2. Across 110th Street.
3. My Beautiful Laundrette.
(and i like Daniel Day-Lewis)
maybe my luck will change next week.
well, it should since i get to remove my sling.
Two good’uns tonight!
First was a nice little doc, “Amazing Africe”, a just-under-an-hour documentary about wildlife in Africa. The importance of watering-holes for, well, everyone, and the interplay between zebras trying to get a drink and crocs trying to get a meal, etc. Predator, prey, scavengers, bystanders, everyone has their place. Some circle-of-life clips, if you know what I mean, but that’s what life is like in the Dark Continent.
Quite good. Definitely worth the watch.
Next up, a shocker I hadn’t heard anything about before, at all: “The Phoenix Incident”. Holy Crap! Talk about grabbing you by the collar and not letting you go ’til after the end credits finish!
I know/remember the Phoenix Lights incident, but not a thing about the 4 missing hikers. I didn’t even look at the imdb entry under “trivia” or anything yet, so who knows. Either way, the “based on real incidents” flick was just f’n amazing. Documentary, interviews, found-footage, all stitched together seamlessly to tell a rather fantastic story. Of course, you have to suspend disbelief for a good part of the story, but you get so immersed in it that it’s really easy to do, even to consider it real found-footage.
And speaking of found-footage, the interplay between the soon-to-be-missing hikers as a group, and with one’s gf, etc., was so realistic. The goofball crap they pull on each other, the personal tension (one’s career choice and others being drifters through life, etc.) was something I could imagine real people doing. No “acting” sense at all, no forced dialogue, etc. Gotta give lots of credit where it’s due.
First impressions, I’d seriously give it a 10.
I saw Wolf Creek (2005).
This is a pretty boring horror film.
Most of the time, not much happens in the movie.
When things actually happens, it's not that interesting or entertaining.
The acting is okay, as is the music.
I didn't really care about any of the characters in the film.
I say skip this one.
I’ll try the Phoenix Incident and see if it grabs me. Sounds like something I can get into.
Interesting one. watchable.
When a pill that gives its users unpredictable superpowers for five minutes hits the streets of New Orleans, a teenage dealer and a local cop must team with an ex-soldier to take down the group responsible for its creation.
I was really (pleasantly) surprised by that. I hesitate to call it a “mockumentary” (“mock” as in fake, okay, but “mock” as in poke fun of or spoof, no, eg, “This Is Spinal Tap”).
Czech out the found-footage, especially. The guys act like jerks, just like some real friends do. One does a handstand and another hits him in the nuts, I mean, I can totally picture some people I know doing just that. So it works really hard to get that suspension of belief, as it almost hits you in the face with realism.
And the interviewees, totally. The detective that was interviewed could have been taken right out of those Real Crime shows. Throw in clips from McCain, Symington (Arizona gov), and Barwood (Phoenix vice-mayor?), and it tickles that “Holy crap, can this be for real??” bone.
And a 3-name nutjob that could be your typical serial-killer… perfect. :laughing:
To me, this hit all the right notes. Really well done.
Wow, don’t get me too psyched.
Okay, well, then once there’s “contact” and you see the aliens, it’s a little harder to suspend belief (ie, the gift’s unwrapped, so no more guessing), but hey, that’s what the movie leads into.
My only complaint is the ever-present Stupid Decision that someone makes. So, you’re in a creepy dark haunted house in the middle of a raging thunderstorm and all your friends are being picked off and horribly butchered one by one, and one idiot wants to go down to The Basement and try fidgeting with the fusebox. LET HIM. Otherwise, you’ll end up hanging upside-down on a meathook right next to him, too, y’know?
Me? I’d be like totally, “Dewd, you’re on your own. I’m getting the Hell outta here.” Better wet than dead.
So it was in TPI. Instead of 4 dead/missing, there would’ve only been 1.
On the bright (haha) side, they all had decent flashlights.
I’ll give it a look next week and see if it passes my nap test. If it does you will be my go to movie critic from now on. Reminds me a little of Fire in the Sky.
eliminating the Stupid Decisions in movies would eliminate most movies.
especially the best one this millennium:
The Hangover.
The Hateful Eight extended version on Netflix
Don’t think that movie could be made today, but damn it’s long and good.
Need to watch again to pick up little clues.
Wellp, saw “Tesla” tonight… what a weird flick. And I’m a huge Tesla fan (the inventor, not the company/car), so that makes it rather bittersweet.
I was expecting something of a bio, but it was punctuated with narration by the chick who played Anne Morgan (daughter of JP), and had invented flashbacks that were immediately contradicted (“That didn’t happen, of course, but…”).
Worst was that so many scenes were set in front of a huge backdrop that was quite obviously (and presumably intentionally) a painting or video. Like leaning on a railing, soaking wet, looking at a picture of Niagara Falls. The worst was a video screen of a horse and foal frolicking in a field, and Tesla holding out an apple for one/both to take. Wtf?? Who came up with that? Neil Breen? Seriously, it was like the Neal-and-AstroEagle scene. :person_facepalming:
And the ice-cream-cone fight between Tesla and Edison?? I $#|+ you not… instead of bitch-slapping each other they jam ice-cream cones into each others’ chests, then chins, then faces. “That didn’t happen, of course, but…”
And the anachronisms… ay-yi-yi. Edison taking a seat at a bar and whipping out a smartphone was bad enough, but the end when Tesla grabbed a mike and started belting out “Everybody Wants To Rule The World”?!? If they were dead, Orzabal and Smith would be rolling over in their graves.
Seriously, I am not making this up.
There were a lot of good parts, though, like the huge eponymous Tesla coil that blew out a nearby town’s generator, being swindled by Jim Gaffigan (only not very funny), the ongoing war between Tesla and Edison, and other ways where he shows his technical genius but business naïveté.
Dunno, at 1¾ hrs long, I was expecting something more serious, and frankly, more of a tribute to the man.
It’s worth a look, but I was more than a bit disappointed.
I am forced to be a Hallmark movie fan, so I thought sharing this one is appropriate. This one is around Lake Tahoe, one of my favorite places in the US! nice scenery.
2020 is a bit thin on Hallmark movies due to various reasons, so this is an average-good movie to watch. Hoping for more hallmark classics in the fall.
My mom watches a lot of Hallmark movies, and family-friendly programming.
On the other hand, I mostly watch R-rated media when I want something with a plot.
To each their own. 
My SO is forcing me to watch these. haha. I got used to them so much by now… they are the perfect movies if nothing else is going on. the scenery is normally quite beautiful and the plot is… well… people talk to each other in these movies. haha.
HARRIET last night and it was fairly accurate from what I can gather.
Chris
Gone (2012)
Starring Amanda Seyfried (G.O.T. princess and Hunger Games)(edit: all of that’s wrong, I mixed her up with Natalie Dormer, I guess once I survived puberty all blondes started to look alike 
).
Basically a who-dunnit? If you start off with the idea that the protagonist may be imagining everything. She’s definitely crazy but is she wrong?
I enjoyed it a lot. I really like a movie without the lazy writing that falls back on stupid decision making or unlikely bad luck to prolong the suspense.
One of those movies where I don’t have any complaints. No bad acting or writing getting in the way of a good watch.
Mentioned already once, but the HBO Chernoby series I am watching has been quite gripping … even though they apparently took a quite a bit of artistic freedom with some of the medical science around radiation burns …
End of episode 2 and start of episode 3 even has some flashlight related themes too.
i wouldn’t play ball but i watched this on my ohn terms. good chick flick. actually, vely good.
The Secret: Dare to Dream (2020)
A’ight, I did some catching up, and got a few good’uns today.
First up, “Sonic Sea”, a really good hour-long doc about underwater noise-pollution and how it’s hurting if not killing critters by driving ’em batty and disrupting their hunting/locating abilities.
It actually makes sense as I’ve know for a long time that sounds can travel a long way underwater, that whales can communicate over hundreds of miles (if not thousands), and just not too long ago came across how noisy hyu-mons are underwater, everything from paddling with oars, jumping into the water, a typical motorboat, and so on, even just splashing around (ie, a shark’s dinner-bell).
All these “mysteries” of whales beaching themselves, being rescued, only to make another run at the shore and beach themselves again, repeatedly, isn’t such a mystery after all. I long suspected that sonar could be driving ’em batty, as I’m one of those people for whom an old-timey teevee could drive me buggy from the 15kHz whine they make. I remember once walking into a room when the teevee was on but sound muted, and knew it was on regardless (and no, I didn’t see light from the screen, either).
So yeah, with new supersized cargo-ships, described accurately as “skyscrapers turned sideways” would make an assload of noise being pushed along the surface with a propeller the size of a house.
Excellent and eye-opening documentary, highly recommended even if you’re not a tree-hugger or eco-freak. 
Next up, some mindless fun with “Slave Girls From Beyond Infinity”. Uhhhh, okay, as they weren’t slave-girls as far as I saw, and I have no idea what “beyond infinity” means or how they came from there. Still, there was some absolutely amazing jiggly scenery that put my mind at ease and those questions pestered me no longer.
Two grils in Jane-From-The-Jungle outfits get captured and thrown onto a space-freighter as human cargo, manage to escape, and make their way towards a planet that’s throwing out a beacon signal. Of course, the intent of that signal is to make the ship crash on this loony’s planet, and said loony must’ve watched “The Most Dangerous Game” a few too many times, because he wines’n’dines his prey and then goes after ’em.
He’s got these 2 clunky robots to serve him, and there are not only zombies but a badass mutant on the planet, too!
Hilarity ensues.
Bad acting, horrible horrible dialogue (eg, out of nowhere, “I get the feeling that the laws of time and space don’t apply here.”; I’ve got to work that line into conversation one of these days), a Swiss-cheese plot with so many holes it’s not even funny (well, actually, it is), and it’s just an embarrassingly bad movie… that was so much fun to watch!
Yes, it’s highly recommended, both for the scenery and for things like the two robots getting bitchy with each other, even to the point of one calling the other a tattletale. 
It’s a hoot!
Last up, “The Last Kill”, not to be confused with “The Final Kill” which was a hoot… and had Billy Zane!
Anyway, “The Last Kill” is definitely a slow-burner. An older guy ends up in a fight with two yutes and gets himself knifed for his troubles. You find out he was trying to save the girl who at some point comes to him asking for help, but ends up raped and killed, and the coppers are looking at him as the prime suspect.
You slowly get small pieces of the jigsaw puzzle that also slowly start to fill in and give you glimpses of what the picture shows. It’s almost tedious, but it keeps your attention, if only out of curiosity. Well, in the end it pays off, and you get to know his background as an ex-spook who had to do horrible things “for Queen and Country”, and that’s why the coppers see him as prime suspect.
Amazingly, you get the picture with practically zero actual violence. Capturing one of the yutes by bagging him, literally, is one, but there was no blood in that, and his aim was to take him alive, which he did. It takes Hitchcockian “implied violence” to a whole ’nother level!
And the guy definitely had a message to, well, pretty much all of society, and took steps to make it all known and get his message out there.
For a flick that seemed to be slow, almost tedious, it still just flew right by. Lingering shots had their place, giving you almost time to pause and contemplate what it was that you just saw. It was almost like being shown flash-cards one after another, each one showing another piece of the puzzle. It’s definitely low-key, but it works.
Another one highly recommended, as long as you’re not expecting things to blow up or massive shootouts or anything.