Movies you've just watched

[SuperPang]

Haha. No, not all of them. I can't remember if They Live is one of the terrible ones.

[drauch]

GP: What else is in the pipeline for potential missed classics?

[vol.2]

They Live is generally a loved movie among Carp heads. It's a good slice of 80s silliness with a lot of style. And the synth soundtracks are both amazing and musically prophetic. Recent soundtracks by artists like Devonté Hynes and Daniel Lopatin owe a lot to Carp's work.

[NYN]

Haha. No, not all of them. I can't remember if They Live is one of the terrible ones.

If I may substitude "terrible" with "less memorable", then I would concede to some. They Live has its moments, I feel. True, I remember his soundtracks when it's most eclectic: mood, stinger, melodic. Faves are Liquid EVIL, Jack Burton Misadventures, The 'ween and The Snake. And that's by no means any attempt at a list.

[Air Master Burst]

The cherry on top was the mullet which is top 5 Hollywood mullet material. Maybe not as pretty as Mel Gibson's circa Lethal Weapon, but still formidable.

For the record:

1. Brian Bosworth, Stone Cold
2. Richard Dean Anderson, season 5 of MacGyver
3. Brigitte Nielsen, Red Sonja
4. Roddy Piper, They Live
5. JCVD, Hard Target

With a special Lifetime Achievement Award for Patrick Swayze.

[xxx1993]

Extraction 2. A massive improvement over the first in every way possible.

[xxx1993]

Now I watched Black Clover: Sword of the Wizard King, also on Netflix.

[Lander]

And no spoilers, but the ending - bravo.

And the TV the camera pans past on its way there... Priceless

[Air Master Burst]

Scream 6 fucking sucked despite having a pretty good cast. 5 was at least okay, but honestly this franchise really hasn't recovered from the loss of Wes Craven.

[ChurchOfSolipsism]

Eh, I've always hated the Scream films... too much irony is not good for horror films. If you do meta-shit, do it as creatively as Cabin in the Woods did it.

[xxx1993]

Just saw The Flash, and boy was it quite a doozy!

[BIL]

I heard it BAWMB HARD @ TEH BOX AWFFICE Do you think it will be a misunderstood classic x93

[xxx1993]

To be honest, I dunno. And Elemental isn’t doing so hot either.

[xxx1993]

Finally watched Creed III in full. Another great edition to the Rocky franchise.

[xxx1993]

Mafia Mamma was pretty fun.

[Ixmucane2]

The Flash

A modest story of time travel paradoxes, with timelines doing double duty as a fashionable multiverse (with "rules" that are strangely close to the ones in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse).
I'm not sure how and when The Flash has learned to run so fast that he goes back in time, maybe in some TV series or some lost movie.

Mediocre execution (mostly not even trying to be realistic) and design (although not as stupid as Shazam 2) of CGI special effects; occasional strong or original moments in a normally flat and badly paced screenplay (e.g. Batman illustrating the concept of multiple timelines with spaghetti); generally satisfactory acting.

[xxx1993]

Just watched Polite Society, and… I’m glad I chose Sisu over this one.

[neorichieb1971]

No exit.

A bunch of random people end up in safe haven from a storm. Except not everyone in attendance is what they seem to be.

This is one of those movies where you really need to get the *uck out of there but you can't.. no phone signal and very limited options.

Its a 7 from me.

[Bloodreign]

1988's Heathers, 35 year old film, kicked around in my brain for years, only just watched it earlier in the evening after work. Considered a black comedy, yet seemed more dramatic later in the film than earlier in it. It was also Wynona Rider's first movie, and damn if she wasn't such a cutie back then, and still a cutie even today. I believe it got remade, but I have no interest in the remake from a few years ago.

To think it took me 35 years to watch it, but the local channels here never aired the damned thing, and I didn't have the premium movie channels back then to watch it when it was on. Never was on the big networks either when they aired butchered versions of theatrical movies back then either, not that I remember anyways.

[xxx1993]

iNumber Number: Jozi Gold, another movie on Netflix. Average.

[vol.2]

1988's Heathers, 35 year old film, kicked around in my brain for years, only just watched it earlier in the evening after work.

Rewatched it about two years ago and I felt like it didn't really hold up all that well. It's good for nostalgia goggles, but kind of dragged and the writing is ho-hum. Christian Slater from that time period is fun, but I guess I like movies where he's a hero or anti-hero better?

It was also Wynona Rider's first movie, and damn if she wasn't such a cutie back then, and still a cutie even today.

Nein. She had a few films before that; her first big one and the one that launched her career was Beetlejuice. I remember very well falling in love with Lydia. She was my first celebrity crush.

[GaijinPunch]

The cherry on top was the mullet which is top 5 Hollywood mullet material. Maybe not as pretty as Mel Gibson's circa Lethal Weapon, but still formidable.

For the record:

1. Brian Bosworth, Stone Cold
2. Richard Dean Anderson, season 5 of MacGyver
3. Brigitte Nielsen, Red Sonja
4. Roddy Piper, They Live
5. JCVD, Hard Target

With a special Lifetime Achievement Award for Patrick Swayze.

This is why I this sub is top notch.

GP: What else is in the pipeline for potential missed classics?

Conan The Barbarian

Inspired by this very thread, and legendary BIL stating, with his tail somewhat between his legs, that he was a late comer to this some six years ago, I figured it was time I knocked this one out. Shitty seat on a brutal flight, this one helped me knock two hours off the haul. Keep in mind, I didn't watch this through nostalgia glasses (although I can see why anyone would). Like we always say, sadly, they don't make them like this any more. No rush to get to the end, plenty of T&A, a distinct lack of Arnold one-liners, but tons of muscle and gore. James Earl Jones wig was something else. The orgy scene at the end could have been a bit more overt, but I'll let it pass. Definitely saw where Taito used (stole) this for Rastan. Magical times.

Looking at IMDB, anything else w/ Arnold as a barbarian is to be avoided like the plague.

[GaijinPunch]

1988's Heathers, 35 year old film, kicked around in my brain for years, only just watched it earlier in the evening after work. Considered a black comedy, yet seemed more dramatic later in the film than earlier in it. It was also Wynona Rider's first movie, and damn if she wasn't such a cutie back then, and still a cutie even today. I believe it got remade, but I have no interest in the remake from a few years ago.

Heathers is great! I can't believe they tried to remake it. I'm surprised the original isn't cancelled due to the main subject matter, and the subtle subject matter (bulimia, etc.). Still crack the fuck up watching it. "Fuck me gently with a chainsaw."

[emphatic]

"I love my dead gay son!"

[NYN]

I'll pick the parody of the universal happy fam bit:

Dad: "Will someone tell me why I smoke these damn things?"

Plucky Daughter Veronica: "Because you are an idiot!"

Dad: "Oh yeah, that's it."

Mom: "You two!"

Does it every time. That, and the mineral water.

[BryanM]

Elemental is very baffling to me. I'm glad they're ballsy enough to make something people obviously don't want, but as a for-profit subsidiary of Disney you'd think they'd put a little more effort into profit. A little less married to the core gimmick of "What if this thing that doesn't normally have feelings had feelings?"

Remember when I brought up those kickass schlocky horror movie posters that are 10,000x better than anything that could be in the actual movie itself? Of course you do, it was only ten years ago.

I think there's a huge benefit in thinking about the movie poster first, since that's core to "how the hell are we gonna sell this thing?" I take a look at an elemental still and wonder "who was this for?"

Was it for teens/adults? Adults like sex appeal, and that means putting some human butts on the screen at the very least.

Was it for kids? Kids like pets and animals and toys. They don't want to make friends with the fireplace. ...Except for the weirdos.

It's not exactly squaring the circle, here. It's easy to come up with visual premises that work: like say there's an evil organization that's growing a kaiju in a lab. And the "behemoth" kaiju is just a very very big kitten that does cute kitten things. There's cute shit, and human characters.

You can still shoehorn in some of your feelings about coming from an immigrant family or whatever. But you can also have cool giant monsters fighting each other or something, too. If you want it to be rated G, the monsters can cutely wrestle with each other. Martial conflict doesn't have to always have a bunch of cool blood and guts.

There's a million movie posters thrown out in the pitch meetings, and this was the best of all possible worlds they chose to go with??

It's just a little bit of a shame. Unlike those lying movie posters, Pixar can make movies that actually look like the poster. Just a bit of a waste of potential.

Little Mermaid remake

.... christ. I really think the main problem isn't the messages or changes or whatever other perverted things they want to put in... but that they don't have any enthusiasm or interest in story telling or the original material. You can get a writer that wants to say almost any crazy shit they want, but once you have a seagull breathing and talking underwater you've lost me bro.

If God doesn't even care about the world he made, why should anyone else care either?

Conan The Barbarian

The god in the sequel is one of those visuals I can never get out of my head.

This is why I really wish they'd finally do that new The Destroyer film, I love pulp fiction and the modern equivalent of that is webnovels. So much wonderful trash. But sometimes it's nice to go back to the classics. If done well, it'd feel like the antithesis of what most blockbusters are.

Their first stab at it... The Adventures of Remo Williams..... eh, the first part of the movie is pretty good, but it feels like a generic 80's action movie by the end of it. Didn't really have the budget or special effects to do anything supernatural, and these plots are supposed to be absolutely ridiculous.

[vol.2]

Unleashed (2005) 6/10

Wow. I just ran across this oddity on Netflix and was expecting a fairly normal martial arts flick, and boy was I surprised. I'm very interested to hear other opinions on this one because I feel like it will be extremely derisive. What Unleashed does right is the acting and characters; Bob Hoskins, Jet Li, Morgan Freeman, and even the supporting actors were all great. Clearly this wasn't the performance of the lifetime for any of them, but everybody turned in a solid performance, especially considering what they had to work with. There are also some fantastic fight scenes, but not as many as I wanted and expected from a Jet Li movie.

Everything else is just decent but not great. The editing is totally competent, the music (by Massive Attack) is slightly above average but didn't blow me away, and script did it's job but there wasn't anything that stuck out or became memorable.

But right, then there's the whole bizarre premise of Jet Li being raised as a trained attack dog with no free will. This absurdity is either going to be okay with you, or it's not. Personally, I thought it was really interesting to see Jet Li act in something more complicated, and I thought he did a really good job with it. It's clearly a bit silly, but that whole tone really works to smooth over some of the more absurd edges to the movie as a whole. This is a 6/10 that I like more than that, but that I recognize has some really mediocre elements to it, and doesn't really do anything excellently.

[drauch]

Conan The Barbarian

Inspired by this very thread, and legendary BIL stating, with his tail somewhat between his legs, that he was a late comer to this some six years ago, I figured it was time I knocked this one out. Shitty seat on a brutal flight, this one helped me knock two hours off the haul. Keep in mind, I didn't watch this through nostalgia glasses (although I can see why anyone would). Like we always say, sadly, they don't make them like this any more. No rush to get to the end, plenty of T&A, a distinct lack of Arnold one-liners, but tons of muscle and gore. James Earl Jones wig was something else. The orgy scene at the end could have been a bit more overt, but I'll let it pass. Definitely saw where Taito used (stole) this for Rastan. Magical times.

Looking at IMDB, anything else w/ Arnold as a barbarian is to be avoided like the plague.

The great CMoon (he's out there somewhere, by Crom) once called it poetic, which always stuck with me. Scant dialogue, arid landscapes, visions, and that incredible soundtrack. It's a shame that so many movies after copied it and never came close.

Destroyer and Red Sonja are fun, but I'd only recommend if you really love S&S and such.

[blackoak]

Destroyer and Red Sonja are fun, but I'd only recommend if you really love S&S and such.

For whatever reason, I'm able to tolerate and even enjoy Red Sonja for what it is, but I can't abide Destroyer. I watched it right after Barbarian once and it was legitimately depressing, haha, haven't made that mistake since. Ditto Alien 3 (though its not in the same league of bad)... file under "movies that don't exist to me"

[Lander]

I'm in a similar boat with Arnie's other barbarian showings; Red Sonja is an extra-camp family romp with enough moxie to totter around on its own two feet, and is good fun as a result.

Destroyer seemed more a shallow imitation of the original work; the characterful rough edges rounded off for broader appeal, replaced with an annoying sidekick and overambitious practical effects.
There's enjoyment to be had if you're thirsting for more sword and sorcery after the first, but it's a hard act to follow.

That sense of myth, the way it's cut it like a comic book with unimportant parts of the adventure elided to sprinting across spanish plains, the sheer gravitas of James Earl Jones' Doom, my god could beat up your god and countless other classic lines...
Lightning in a bottle!

The great CMoon (he's out there somewhere, by Crom) once called it poetic, which always stuck with me. Scant dialogue, arid landscapes, visions, and that incredible soundtrack.

I've heard a genre scholar describe it as a romantic depiction of barbarian fantasy (in the storytelling sense rather than the literal), which seems like a fitting reification of the its's got soul, man I took away from it.