Genejoke wrote:
In the shadow of the moon. A Netflix exclusive movie, and I'd say slightly better than most of their exclusives. It's a sci fi type thing tied in with a serial killer and doesn't play out like you might initially expect, but the twist is a little obvious but that doesn't detract from it. Worth a look.
Why didn't she just go back and kill that guy that was starting the whole mess, why did she have to kill all those other people?

Brooklyn nine-nine. Lol, Hilarious show

I like Brooklyn Nine Nine, too. I'm a couple seasons behind; once in awhile I revisit it and binge for awhile.

This past few months I rewatched The Walking Dead. Nice to revisit the whole series, after the excellent season 9 with Rick leaving, and the shocking season ending (on a stick!)

I admit, I got bored during the season 8 rewatch. I had to skip most of that season. Not sure if I'll rewatch the rest of 9, since season 10 starts up tomorrow! Excited!

Not exactly “now”, but I forgot to mention it when I was….watching Comic Book Men S5, Ep6, with Stan Lee spending the day in the ‘Stash’ shop. He was such an iconic old bugger for so long, sometimes it's hard to think he's actually gone. He did SO many cameos, he ended upon in the Top Ten highest-paid actors….as did Warwick Davies. Neither are exactly what you think of as “Hollywood types”, eh ? B-)

A large %age of my viewing at the mo'is taken up with World Cup Rugby - there re little gems amongst the non-playing stuff, like interviewing the Russian captain, who has the mist amazing IRISH accent ! B-)

Metropolis remix Fans took the 1927 classic and colorized it. Now it was originally tinted and that has been restored but in remix it's true colorization. But still washed out and stark compared to the bw cinematography so it really only looks like improved tinting. But the close ups are so much better now with that exaggerated piercing eye color.

This has nearly all the restored scenes. Some are pretty grainy compared to the other super clear footage but it does serve to fill in so many spaces in the narrative.

They added sound. Mostly foley (sound effects) with spoken dialogue with nearly all only from the inter-titles. So the dialogue isn't too obtrusive but at times the dubbing is awful especially for Bridget Helm. And in color you really get to appreciate the analogies including her as the whore of Babylon. I had forgotten just how much she tears at the lacing of her dress. If she'd actually had cleavage you would have seen a lot.

It's also remarkable how much so many other films owe to the ideas and design of this one. And how many images some have actually just used outright.

It doesn't replace the original but it does compliment it as opposed to ruin it like the Ted Turner colorized movies often did. The thing about Ted Turner, every movie he colorized had to be completely restored first which often included restored footage.

Here the restoration came first and then the color and sound. I

IN THE TALL GRASS - Patrick Wilson and a cast of blades. Optional title “In The Tall Stories”. Beyond stupid getting a 1 on the Mowermeter.

Watched EYES WIDE SHUT again, Kubrick's last film and have always been unsure of Tom's mask business. The costume bag was locked in his apt. overnight and when he returned costume & the mask wasn't there he seemed surprised & casually offers to pay for it's loss. Of course later in film he finds it neatly on pillow beside sleeping Nicole. Does that mean she was also at the orgy, found costume bag and is making a statement to bad boy Tom? I rewatched scene where Red Cloak orders Tom to remove mask and Tom keeps it in his hand while we look up at masked woman who interrupts and I lose sight of what Tom does with the mask. I've heard some scenes were cut out and maybe we missed something, what the hey do I know anyways. Nevertheless it still gets a 5 on the old Moizmeter giving Stanley 3 along with Strangelove & 2001.

Watching all of 30 Rock. It's fun :)
Not a deep show, but it's well acted and very tight.

There are no dud episodes (so far), it's smooth, slick, funny, well crafted… never exceptional, but always consistently good.

moizmad wrote:
Watched EYES WIDE SHUT again, Kubrick's last film and have always been unsure of Tom's mask business. The costume bag was locked in his apt. overnight…. Nevertheless it still gets a 5 on the old Moizmeter giving Stanley 3 along with Strangelove & 2001.

I watched (but for the first time), about 6 weeks ago. My assumption was that she'd found the parcel and kept the mask. But yeah, I liked it.
About to rewatch “Basic Instinct” for about the 4th time . Loved that too.

FRACTURED - Sam Worthington and not sure of others. His daughter is injured in a nasty fall and Sam and his wife rush her to the hospital. The girls are taken downstairs for a scan while Sam dozes in waiting area. When he wakes up the staff can't find any record of them, just him. He raises cane and brings in the police and then a headshrinker who discovers some shady things in Sam's past. Is he nuts? What happened to the girls? A good watch getting a 3 3/4 on the Moizmeter.

THE HUMMINGBIRD PROJECT - Jesse Eisenberg, Alexander Skarsgard, Salma Hayek. A dark tragic comedy? about 2 very stupid men and their ridiculous plan to make a fortune building a fibre optic cable from Kansas to New Jersey which causes some kind of delay, the length of a hummingbird's wing flap, that enables some advantage in stock market trading. Seriously? A 2 on the Moizmeter.

Swamp thing. Just binged watched the whole season and in shock that genuinely good. Unrelated to other DC shows, fortunately, and it shows as it's not as camp and cheesy as most of them. It's a shame it got axed after two episodes.

THE HUMMINGBIRD PROJECT - about 2 very stupid men and their ridiculous plan to make a fortune building a fibre optic cable from Kansas to New Jersey which causes some kind of delay, the length of a hummingbird's wing flap, that enables some advantage in stock market trading. Seriously? A 2 on the Moizmeter.

Actually this IS ‘kosher’ Mo' and TWO separate systems were run- one microwave towers ; one fibre-optic ( not Kansas though ), so that Chicago or wherever, didn't suffer the few nano-seconds time lapse that meant dealers there suffered a tiny disadvantage, compared to ‘home’ traders at NASDAQ !
I know - bizarre, eh ?

BearinOz wrote:

THE HUMMINGBIRD PROJECT - about 2 very stupid men and their ridiculous plan to make a fortune building a fibre optic cable from Kansas to New Jersey which causes some kind of delay, the length of a hummingbird's wing flap, that enables some advantage in stock market trading. Seriously? A 2 on the Moizmeter.

Actually this IS ‘kosher’ Mo' and TWO separate systems were run- one microwave towers ; one fibre-optic ( not Kansas though ), so that Chicago or wherever, didn't suffer the few nano-seconds time lapse that meant dealers there suffered a tiny disadvantage, compared to ‘home’ traders at NASDAQ !
I know - bizarre, eh ?

It was Kansas to New Jersey, check it out.

I am not a fan of horror movies…
But I saw Hereditary.

I have not laughed that hard at even a comedy film for some time. This was duuuuuuummmb. Oh SO, so bad.
And I felt bad too, because I've long decried bad digital effects… well, this movie seemed to have mostly practical effects and they were all terrible.

So many things bad about this film… but they're so bad they're funny, like Toni Colet's Troll 2 level of MASSIVELY overacting and emoting more than all the other actors combined… WTF is wrong with your face woman? It's pure comedy.

The good:
1. All the other actors apart from Toni put in pretty good performances, especially fat old decrepit Gabriel Byrne.
2. The framing of the sets was done really well! Toni's character makes model dioramas and the framing of the sets is done to make them look like life sized model dioramas too. It really lends nothing to the story or plot but it's a but detail, though a bit too “Wes Anderson” at times.

Funniest moment in the film:
XXX SPOILER XXX

Peter, the teenage boy, runs up into the attack to escape his possessed flying mum. he pulls the stairs up after him. she grabs onto the outside and tries to get in by repeatedly smashing her head against it. It's so funny! Partly because it's IMPOSSIBLE to ever open that way so it's ridiculously futile, and partly because she looks hilarious…
But the funniest part is to come!
He's in the attic and he sees a photo of himself with the eyes burnt out of the paper, that horrifies him and he screams, looks up and sees his mum floating in the ceiling and mechanically sawing her own head off with a wire while gurning ferociously.
THAT is pretty funny, but wait…

He looks away queasily and then sees 3 fat old naked pensioners standing in a corner and grinning at him. At THIS he screams, utterly horrified and runs RIGHT through the attick window, only to fall FACE first into the garden and lie completely flat, all stretched out.
I lost my proverbial shit at that point. That was the climax of the film and the funniest part… Fat old naked people are apparently WAY more scary that a possesed mum practising self decapitation XD

The Conjuring

A “True” story about Ed and Elaine Warren, self styled “Demonologists”

What's true?
Well Ed was a real guy and Elaine still is, they really do have a stupid museum full of crap.

What's not true?
Pretty much all the rest.

This was scarier than Heredity because it was filmed better and the acting wasn't over the top. There were some pretty good scares.

However, I disapprove of fake “true story bulshit so that takes marks off, and the scene with the ”exorcism“ combined with the ”True Story lie is just plain dangerous because people actually DO that and use that crap as a template.
People die for real during stupid “exorcisms” and that's the scariest thing about the film, so much so they should either cut that or ban it outright.
-There are no ghosts or demons and “exorcisms” are evil.

ELI - Charlie Shotwell, Kelly Reilly, Max Martini, Lili Taylor, Sadie Sink.
Poor little Eli (Charlie) has to be shielded from normal air due to immune disorder. His parents Kelly & Max take him to scary doctor Lili who runs air-tight? (window paper thin can hear Sadie talking like she's in same room, and bugs flying around inside) spooky house for treatments. Needless to say they don't go well, former cases in cellar, maybe not too air-tight down there I'm thinking. Then gets really stupid getting a 1/2 on the Moizmeter.

THE LAUNDROMAT - Meryl Streep, Gary Oldman, Antonio Banderas, and a huge cast of cameo characters incl. Robert Patrick, David Schwimmer, Jeffrey Wright, Sharon Stone to name a few. Meryl's husband along with 20 others are killed in a ferry boat accident. Then the chase is on to claim any insurance which goes from dead-end to dead-end. All seems to point to these 2 shysters in Panama (Gary & Antonio) who explain how the rich get richer passing the buck from nowhere to nowhere. Does Meryl take this lying down? No way Jose. She fools them all and a surprise revelation ending which you must see for yourself. It's a complicated 3 on the Moizmeter.

,,,a n d No-one got in before me on the new T.V. “Watchmen” series ! I've got it all series-booked on the idiot box, and watched S1. E1 yesterday. It looks promising. Pity they killed off Don Johnson…
Pleeeeez don't let me down, like you usually do, ‘TVLand’, by turning it into an endless soapie, like DCs usual superhero stuff I don't watch (although I was sucked into “Legends” for a while, some time back) B-)

POISON ROSE - John Travolta, Morgan Freeman, Famke Janssen, Brendan (good grief, is that him?) Fraser, Robert Patrick, Peter Stormare. Spent most of time trying to figure out what happened to Brendan, whoa, he used to be Tarzan or somesuch! Then Travolta's bad hair piece, whoa, what were they thinking? Story is beyond stupid, cost me $1 on pay per view, giving it a very generous minus 1 on the Moizmeter.

I saw a new Russian series the other day “Silver Spoon”
It's a pretty conventional action drama series about the son of a wealthy oligarch who is forced by his dad to get a “real job” as a police detective- to see the consequences of his thoughtless, spoiled actions… which he does when a friend of his kills a young girl driving while under the influence of narcotics.
(His dad has the power to make him a detective and circumvent the usual hiring procedures, qualifications etc.)

The interesting part of the show is seeing Russian society and locations through THEIR eyes rather than as an outsider looking at them which is what we always have otherwise.

THE KING - Timothee Chalamet, Joel Edgerton, Robert Pattinson, Sean Harris, Ben Mendelsohn. 15th Century period, dying King Ben is reluctantly replaced by wayward son Timothee who quickly changes from delinquent to King Henry V and leads England in battle with France. Even wins fights altho the scrawny skinflint doesn't look like he could fight his way out of a wet paper bag. Big battle scene where the only thing I cared about was the poor horses. Apparently based on actual history. Joel & Pattinson almost unrecognizable, and some of the dialogue hard to hear with accents and mumbling. 2:20 long and gets a generous 2 1/2 on the Moizmeter.

FIFTY SHADES FREED - Dakota Johnson, Jamie Dornan, Eric Johnson, Rita Ora, and Jennifer Ehle???, Kim Basinger????, Callum Keith Rennie???? supposed to be in movie but think their scenes got cut. Mostly sex scenes over and over had me ready to kybosh but stuck it out, a royal waste of my time. Too stupid for words altho mostly filmed in my town Vancouver. A minus 1 on the Moizmeter.

PHIL - Greg Kinnear, Emily Mortimer, Jay Duplass, Luke Wilson, Bradley Whitford, Robert Forster. Dentist Greg is having suicidal thoughts and is shocked when an apparently happily married successful patient commits suicide. Greg re-invents himself as a Greek Mr. Fix-It and gets involved with the widow, Emily. I'm not exactly sure why but I guess he was just trying to figure out what was going on in his own head. OK watch with Vancouver playing the part of Portland, Ore. and the Burrard St. Bridge (suicide jumper) is only 3 blocks from my abode! A home-town 3 on the Moizmeter.

Hole in the ground - I think that's what it was called?
It's a horror film set in Ireland about a single mum that flees to a remote town with her son to make a new life after leaving an abusive relationship-
That, like most of the film has to be inferred because you're not told much directly.

So, there's a big scary hole in the forest near her house. She meets a mad old woman in the middle of the road who screams at her son. We learn that years ago the old woman went crazy and thought her son had been replace with a monster and then accidentally killed him by running him over.

Eventually the woman starts to fear her own son has been replaced by an imposter…

———-

The film seems low budget but is made very well in spite of that. The Finnish location impersonates Ireland well but the forest looks a bit too Baltic.
The tension and story is let down by having a bit too much being left unsaid and the motives of all the character unclear, that takes away from the scariness a bit because if you're really unclear of the motivations it's too easy to assume silly ones and just think of actions as being nonsense or stupid.
Showing and not telling is good, but there are limits. You can let the audience do the work and assume stuff but unless you construct things well they'll assume the wrong things and your story will seem silly to them.

EARTHQUAKE BIRD - Alicia Vikander, Naoki Kobayashi, Riley Keough, Akiko Iwase. Alicia has left a troubled past behind her and now lives in Japan. She meets Naoki, a noodle cook and amateur photographer, who also has a mysterious past. They begin romance but along comes Riley who joins the romantic trio. Then Riley disappears and police charge Alicia with her murder, but no evidence and she's released and does she reunite with Naoki? One of these movies that keeps switching present with past and you have to sort where we are. A confusing at times 2 1/2 on the Moizmeter.

We got Disney+ so my husband and I have been watching shows that were on the Disney Afternoon block when we were kids. Though we saw a few episodes of several shows that were on the block, there is one that has become our go to, Tail Spin.

My husband and I think this one has aged the best of the ones we have watched so far because it is a period peace set approximately in the early 20th century. There are still some anacronisims because it isn't perfectly fit to the time period. When we were kids we didn't appreciate it as much as the other shows on the block.

Everything else was more or less set in the present day (1990s). Though it can be a time capsule the shows just don't feel right anymore.

THE OPERATIVE - Diane Kruger, Martin Freeman, Cas Anvar. Whoa, I'm going to have to watch it again as I got lost there trying to figure out what she was trying to do, some scenes totally baffled me…please stand by…

Watched The Operative again and it's still confusing, jumps from present to past without any notice, that scene in the desert totally baffles me as to what or how she did what she apparently did. Should watch with sub-titles, many times couldn't catch what she or Martin said even tho in English. Then of course the ending leaves you up the creek with no idea what will happen to her….maybe a sequel coming???

AVENGEMENT - Scott Adkins….wait, say no more, say no more, quite possibly the stupidest movie ever made. A Royal 0 on the Moizmeter!

LIGHT OF MY LIFE - Casey Affleck, Anna Pniowsky. Future pandemic has wiped out most of the female population worldwide. Casey's pre-pube daughter is somehow immune and he must protect her from the raging males who need any living female. He keeps her disguised as his young son but with each passing scene she is getting more female looking and not fooling many. Will they survive? Filmed all around Vancouver and Duncan, BC getting a 3 on the Moizmeter.