Movies you've just watched

[GaijinPunch]

Some rewatches to nurse a hangover...

Training Day [2001]
Hadn't watched this in a long time - maybe since it came out. Almost forgot how great it was. Hard to not root for Denzel when he stomps so many bad guys. But dayum, he's a ruthless bastard. And hey, I did totally forget we got a shot of Eva Mendez in the buff, even though it was slightly out of focus. Still noteworthy. Bless her heart. Ethan Hawke great as well. Looking back over his filmography I have missed a ton of it. Doesn't feel dated in the least.

When Harry Met Sally [1989]
Such an easy flick to pop on and watch to the end - and I crack up every time. Most of the humor is quite sly. Perhaps it's gotten even a bit better with age? The late 80's atmosphere is definitely there (no cell phones, Sharper Image, huge Manhattan apartments) but spoils nothing. Definitely not a "this wouldn't happen if they had cell phones" thing, so maybe the younger kids can enjoy it. ironically I think the infamous diner scene was never that amazing, and while it has a point, I just don't think it's deserving of the comedy gold of the reputation it's received. Still good fun.

[Stevens]

I don't have a TV now but I have a stack of BluRays and other shit earmarked on streaming apps that I will watch when I get one (or a projector) which will be soon. I will fit the LotR series in there somehow. I think your sum up is pretty good. They are very much meant for a very wide audience, and yes, some pandering moments but on the whole fantastic. Always get chills when Annie Lenox starts singing. Gonna go out on a limb and say these came out at just the right time. Egregious use of green screen was likely too expensive in the big picture. That's a stab, but we can see what happened with The Hobbit.

I never read the books. Maybe I should do that. I have some long flights coming up.

I quite enjoyed the series. I tried to read the books once, got about 20 pages in and decided no. To be fair I tried to read Stranger in a Strange Land by Heinlein a year or two ago and the same thing happened. Books from 60 years ago are tough to read now.

I found SIASL quite boring.

[Mischief Maker]

Fellowship is the second book in the series, the first is The Hobbit.

They're usually packaged separately because The Hobbit is a fairly short standalone story aimed at children and the Lord of the Rings was meant to be an epic for adult audiences who read The Hobbit as children. Kinda like how the Harry Potter books get darker as they go along. And yes, it was incredibly silly that they took the way-shorter-than-LOTR Hobbit book and desperately stretched it into a trilogy. Too bad we'll never see Guillermo del Toro's original vision for a Hobbit movie, it likely would have been awesome.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTRUQ-RKfUs

So it's not surprising you only got 20 pages in starting at the second book and having no idea who Bilbo Baggins is supposed to be.

[Stevens]

MM I love your musings here normally, but you're wrong in this case. Knew who Bilbo was - Hobbit was assigned reading in 11th grade English. Didn't really love it as a 17 year old, figured maybe a few years older would make a difference. It didn't for me.

[Mischief Maker]

Oh well! It's pretty dry, and with a zillion imitators. Kinda like Citizen Kane no longer wows modern audiences with its avante garde camerawork thanks to all its subsequent imitators.

[GaijinPunch]

I read The Hobbit as well, as i wanted to read it before the movie came out. Technically I'm glad I did.

[NYN]

P0SSESS0R

Although a breed of its own, I feel this one lets Blade Runner look like a romantic comedy. If PKD had no humour in his sf and instead a heavy heap of horror, this would be it. Though I think we already exist in a Dick-ish nightmare, this experience was relentless. No galfriend material, at all (gladly estimated before). Men can't use what they can't abuse, is what it sums up for me. With a depiction of ultra-violence I haven't measured as an adult until now. Absence of all Hollywood-ism. Recommended, if you can take it.


The Hustler

No, not about Larry Flynt and his exploits. It's the prequel to The Color of Money, the only Cruise I'll gladly take. As that, it's no happy movie, it's quite dramatic. When players won't be allowed to be anything other than winners or losers and the peeps you are likely to care about are on the high way to ruins. Always glad when I can catch some George C. Scott. For some odd reason there is some pool without any water going on. Couldn't figure that one out. Huh.

[BIL]

P0SSESS0R

Aww sheeeit, with that HTML, and the attached review - imma watch that 2-NITE

The Night Flier (1997) Classical vampire gothic, nestled within a grisly serial killer procedural. Hot on the titular fiend's airstrip-hopping trail, superbly-monikered arch muckraker DICK DEEZE (a dearly-missed Miguel Ferrer) finds himself discomfortingly stared back upon! FROM WITHIN, even! Just who is the REAL bloodthirsty parasite here, hmmm?



Pleasingly efficient, bracingly black-humoured horror/satire. Ferrer manfully carries proceedings, a cirrhotic predator with a nagging sliver of intact humanity (like a Dracula! ); decent acquittals by Julie Entwisle as SPUNKY ROOKIE/INNOCENT GIRL, and Dan Monahan as over-egged SLEAZY TABLOID BOSS. Conjures some superbly uneasy interludes of waking gothic nightmare, grounded in convincingly nasty practical gore. A minor knock for the killer's hammy voiceover; the surrounding film deserved more nuance, though it's easily forgiven in the thrumming air of doom.

[GaijinPunch]

Kuro Neko / Black Cat (1968)

Ghost/vengeance story mashup set in feudal Japan. Directed by Kaneto Shindo, also known for the fantastic Onibaba and a shitload of others I've not seen yet. He's definitely not afraid of showing the more base side of the era, as can be discovered in the first 5 minutes of this.

[emphatic]

I never read the books. Maybe I should do that. I have some long flights coming up.

Go for it. I have fond memories of the passages regarding the Ents especially. They are a chilled out breed with no comparison. The films intercut the stories from character to character nonstop, to please modern audiences. The books build up a lot more and they payoff is greatly satisfying.

[drauch]

Books from 60 years ago are tough to read now.

I found SIASL quite boring.

Aye, just depends what you read and who wrote it. There's stuff I love that's got 100 years on Heinlein that's wonderful. I've found most Heinlein to be a bit of a slog myself.

[NYN]

The Night Flier (1997)

Had that one on my radar, but now I need to see it. I might add that it is based on a Stephen King short, knowing that none here can be impressed by that.
Tough crowd. Just fits with making-movies-based-on-lit vein, right? Meet me in the poster gallery later, fellas, because for a 1997 flick it's got some ball poster art.
I kid you not.

[BurlyHeart]

The Stranger

Excellent based-on-a-true-story crime drama. I don't believe I have ever felt so stressed during a movie.

[BIL]

The Night Flier (1997)

Had that one on my radar, but now I need to see it. I might add that it is based on a Stephen King short, knowing that none here can be impressed by that.
Tough crowd. Just fits with making-movies-based-on-lit vein, right? Meet me in the poster gallery later, fellas, because for a 1997 flick it's got some ball poster art.
I kid you not.

Oh yeah, totally forgot to mention it's a King adaptation! One of the good ones™, even! TBH between this, The Dark Half, Christine, Carrie, The Shining (STANLEY ver), Salem's Lot, Misery, Apt Pupil, and Pet Sematary (and ofc TEH SHAWSHANK), I've revised my Lil 90s Kid (uwu) received wisdom that King Movie Adaptations Always Blow™. Those are all good fun! No need to even chuck in TEH RUNNING MAN, which can't really be called an adaptation, but at least doesn't spoil its fuckin ending like that shitty Importance Of Being Bachman edition of the book! (avoid the foreword, would-be bookworms; the daft cokeheaded cunt King goes and spoils the ending! cor, must've been after that speeding car rearranged his arsehole, and/or a great big bag of coke!)

Big Tyme Superfans of the man (I'm not) will always carp about TEH STAND this (muh CAPTAIN TRIPS!) or MAXXXIMUM OVERDORIBU that (rockin! WHO MADE WHOOOO ♫), but tbh, they can all go choke on a great big black cockerel Quit crying, bitches! There's more than one way to choke a cockerel! (hey! that landmark BIG 4 slab has songs about APT PUPIL and br00tal adjacent fave JUDGE DREDD, too! and SPREADING TEH DISEASE has TEH GUNSLINGER too, for when you need to forget that recent shitty Dark Tower adaptation! I mean I heard it was shitty, from all you whiny neckbeards! IDGAF about any of that shit!

come to think of it, The Ramones did okay-ish with their King tie-in, too, albeit not a patch on The First Four, but the fuckyougonnado? Spin up Leave Home and make sure it's not the pussy-ass edit missing "Carbona Not Glue," for the fucking love of Christ! best song on the record, that - and that's fuckin sayin' somethin!

Ran out of paint, and ROACH SPRAY 2 3; )

That's some smooth poster art indeed I felt a bit bad for the filmmakers, the 1997 poster just plonking their no-doubt sweated-over practical WAMYPR face front n' center like that. In the video store I said "LMAO" but years later catching the finale on cable I said "SHEEEEEIT, MAH MANS" Like that newer poster, the film's a lot more elusive and shadowy, which is half the battle with good PFX!

[Air Master Burst]

Running Man is the only King movie I will always go to bat for, although Maximum Overdrive is a fucking blast.

The Shining is a well-made movie but it bores me to tears.

I'm not a very avid novel reader but I enjoyed the original version of the first Dark Tower book. Got real sick of his bullshit right around the time he wrote himself into the series as a major character, and frankly that series might have the most insulting cop-out ending I've ever read; it was doubly infuriating when The Big O shamelessly stole it.

[BIL]

Ahnuld's Running Man is a stone-cold 80s classic for certain, albeit about as close to source as The Terminator is to I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream ("deadly gameshow" / "genocidal AI") - which makes me half-want a closer adaptation... only half, because god knows they'd find some way to fuck it up nowadays.

Mildly frustrating to see works that were already nigh-perfect remade for EZ cash-ins, when there's stuff that was either flawed or (in The Running Man's case) simply divergent enough that a close adaptation would for all intents and purposes be a new film altogether.

Yo WTF, they keep comin' outta my musty brainmeats! The Boogeyman has a famously shite mainstream-ish Hollywood adaptation, but this student effort is genuinely pretty intense. ~25mins, worth a look. Killer OST.

[Air Master Burst]

Philip K. Dick is the other author who's frequently adapted beyond recognition for movies, although even the worst of those (Impostors, Screamers, Minority Report) tend to be pretty entertaining. The only one I really hate is Paycheck, and that's because it's the Hollywood movie that finally broke poor John Woo.

It also helps that Total Recall is one of the raddest movies ever made. It's a real shame we'll probably never get to see the original, uncut version of the escalator shootout. Apparently Richard Gere was originally supposed to be the lead, which would have been absolutely wild.

ETA: It was Jeff Bridges instead of Richard Gere, but either way, would've been bonkers!

[drauch]

King cannot write an ending to save his life. He just doesn't know when to quit! Both Carrie and The Shining go on wayyyyy too long after the conflict is resolved. "This is what X and Y character did afterward in case you have no imagination!"

Maximum Overdrive is god tier, though. I wish he directed more while coked-out. Supposedly it was even more violent but it made crybaby George Romero sick when he watched it! Seems hard to believe with Day of the Dead coming out the year before, but I guess the kid getting ran over by the steamroller and having his head pop in a shower of gore was too much. Now lost forever with that gorier Event Horizon footage. #sad!

[EmperorIng]

Looks like this weekend my theaters are going to start playing Guillermo del Toro's stop-motion Pinocchio. I am pretty excited for it; I've been wanting to see it for some time. I'll probably go this weekend!

The Hustler

No, not about Larry Flynt and his exploits. It's the prequel to The Color of Money, the only Cruise I'll gladly take. As that, it's no happy movie, it's quite dramatic. When players won't be allowed to be anything other than winners or losers and the peeps you are likely to care about are on the high way to ruins. Always glad when I can catch some George C. Scott. For some odd reason there is some pool without any water going on. Couldn't figure that one out. Huh.

The Color of Money were partially shot right by my childhood home, where I grew up in the shadow of seedy pool dives. I still see old sharks occasionally shambling in my folks' neighborhoods with pool sticks in tow.

[xxx1993]

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.

[BIL]

X93-kun, you better be with your ladyfriend, or taking a mean shit, or both*, because you're letting our side down again (｀w´メ)

Remember, son! GOOD POSTING IS REQUIRED (■｀w´■)

Was it any good? Bit shite? I myself don't like superhero films as a general rule, but I thought TEH WINTER SOULJAH was pretty dope. Punted a dude into a jet turbine, yeee boyee! Had enough after that though!

*in these cases a short note and followup edit within 48hrs is acceptable

[EmperorIng]

Saving his energy for his christmas date with Arch Mandler in Sol Cresta, words take too much out of him!

[BIL]

Understandable

[BryanM]

I was going to say that the Running Man barely has enough substance for a ~20 minute Outer Limits segment, when I came across this.

A new film adaptation of the novel is in development with Edgar Wright directing and Michael Bacall penning the screenplay

I don't know how I managed to be caught off guard by this, but I totally was.

..Maybe you can kinda understand why I'm into webnovels these days. A bunch of hack frauds writing their hacky pulp fiction that isn't allowed in the corporate product line anymore. At least, any pulp fiction that's new. (Supposedly The Destroyer "was still in play" back in 2018... I'll believe it when I see it.)

Maybe in 30 years Xianxia will start to creep into the mainstream. The corpos are always 30 to 70 years behind the current hot nerd shite.

[BIL]

Honestly, as with the Boogeyman adaptation linked above - I think 20/30min anthology shows are a fine format for a lot of this stuff (including several of the King adaptations I listed). The Running Man (novella), on the other hand, I could easily see working as more of a feature-length trek, ala The Fugitive, given the similar aspect of a man on the run (haw!). Longform chase thrillers are always good for a laugh.

Good to know something's in the works. I have to admit I didn't know Wright by name, but Shaun of the Dead eh, decent work. Marginally less disinterested than I'd otherwise be!

[xxx1993]

X93-kun, you better be with your ladyfriend, or taking a mean shit, or both*, because you're letting our side down again (｀w´メ)

Remember, son! GOOD POSTING IS REQUIRED (■｀w´■)

Was it any good? Bit shite? I myself don't like superhero films as a general rule, but I thought TEH WINTER SOULJAH was pretty dope. Punted a dude into a jet turbine, yeee boyee! Had enough after that though!

*in these cases a short note and followup edit within 48hrs is acceptable

Wakanda Forever was pretty good. But it can get depressing at times due to Chadwick Boseman's death two years ago.

Saving his energy for his christmas date with Arch Mandler in Sol Cresta, words take too much out of him!

It's just "Mandler". Or "Sol Mandler". But why else do you think I've been playing the Trial Version of Sol Cresta lately? For training purposes. Kinda like how the cadets in the game actually play Terra Cresta 3D.

[BIL]

Blimey yeah, poor guy was no age at all.

[Mischief Maker]

Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970)

Hugely influential rogue AI movie, especially for The Terminator, that unfortunately was not a hit in its day since its President character is a less-than-flattering rendition of JFK, and Kennedy got assassinated right as the film was wrapping up, so nobody was in the mood for a hapless JFK-alike in over his head.

The lead is Charles Forbin, a brilliant and suave scientist who has just completed a secret project to put control of the US nuclear arsenal in the hands of an independent AI located deep in a fortified bunker. As he smugly explains to news crews, the Colossus AI is capable of analyzing more data than a normal human could comprehend so as to detect a secret Soviet launch, and is capable of making end-of-the-world-tier decisions with perfect emotionless clarity. It does not go as planned.

Colossus is well aware that its only means of affecting the world are launching ICBMs and printing out limited text on crappy dot matrix displays so it needs the cooperation of humans. What follows is a game of cat-and-mouse between Forbin and Colossus. The computer spits out various demands with strict timetables under threat of nuclear annihilation and Forbin attempts to find means to neutralize his unassailable computer even as the cage it traps him in grows smaller and smaller.

Unlike Skynet, Colossus doesn't have an army of killbots, but it's smart enough not to need them; if someone's a problem just blackmail their government into killing them or it'll nuke a major city. Forbin is every bit as unflappable as he is suave, keeping a cool head as Colossus grows increasingly demanding and the bodies start to pile up, but time and time again he's caught off-guard by how well his rational and emotionless supercomputer beats him at his own game. In one scene, a captive Forbin is passing the time playing Chess against Colossus, when the computer informs him that an attempt to deactivate it was thwarted and his colleagues directly responsible will be executed outside his window, then without missing a beat announces its next Chess move.

It's a great film that does a much better rendition of an implacable machine intelligence than many of the later attempts. Recommended!

[BIL]

Sterling review I only skimmed cus I like 2 be BLIIIND, cheers for reminder! It stars Eric Braeden, my grandma's favourite soap star, so it's always been somewhere in my pop consciousness. Onto this week's list.

many

Oof, among the worst things in an already shite film. 3; I'm of the opinion that, in Terminator context, the AI should remain effectively alien. It's an artificial consciousness with a survival instinct that's declared existential war on its creators after they tried to kill it. Cool, that's plenty. I do like the notion of its creations developing some sense of individuality, there is a definite poignance there, but as with gods in general, the source is best left unknowable imo.

Obviously there's the classic A.M. but I Have No Mouth is a very different animal, where the AI is effectively an artificial and supremely wrathful God - not the digital equivalent of a cornered animal lashing out.

Eh. I try to respect Salvation for at least not rehashing T1 yet again, but that's all the charity I can give it. Also holy fuck, stop making Terminators pick up and throw people they're trying to kill. First thing PeeWeeHermanBot does to CYBER BIEBER in Dark Stool, pfft. In T1 the throw-ee was already a corpse, Ahnuld was probably just getting him out of the way so he could blast what he thought was his target. In T2 he needed the guy's clothes, ripping his fuckin nutsack off would've ruined 'em. Next chump he got his hands on was gonna get a free LEAD SALAD to go with his mangled arm, until the kid stepped in and he was specifically instructed not to kill humans.

Spoiler

Even then, he still hit them so hard they spontaneously race-swapped on impact.

Spoiler

GOD FUCKIN DAMMIT! The YT upload of Virus is down. Best Robo Punch ever! Holy fuck, terrifying! Hang on, I'll go looking for another.



Ah, here we go. BOOF! Now that's what a 10,000PSI metal fist can do - FOR U Fuck it I may as well repost my PRO REVIEW. It's not a bad film! Not a very good one either, but worth a go, and A FUUUUCK sight better for Horror On A Cold Boat than that utter POS "Inanimate" aka "Harbinger Down," which had sympathy points being by the guys who got their PFX shafted on The Thing 2011, plus has lovely ol' Lance Henriksen, but is nevertheless ARRANT SHITE.

---

Virus (1999) Didn't bother rewatching in full. IDGAF! Decent The Thing (1982)-esque, but swap arctic base for arctic boat, Macready for Not Ripley, and Thing for Robo Thing. Also swap existential horror and bleak mirth for ALIENZ EAT MUH FACE 2 BREED III b-larfs. Robo Thing also be stealing your body, and creating obscene horrors from your biomass, and shit, but he's much talkier about it. I just skipped around for the scene of the Best Horror Movie Robot Ever hauling off on a muhfucka, a sobering reminder of Robo Violence. Boom! Splat! Mortal flesh, meet TEN THOUSAND PSI METAL FIST. (the robot from Demon Seed could fuck, I'll give him that, but a gross creepy rapist is no match for the overwhelming gorilla dominance of Robo Thing, who would tear his jaffers off and fist him into next week)

[xxx1993]

I also watched R.I.P.D. 2: Rise of the Damned.