I'm checking out Locke and Key because Netflix told me to. No solid opinion yet. It seems to check off my list of things I enjoy in supernatural series so far. (Creepy but not gory. Children protagonists. Mystery.)

EDIT: I finished the season. It started slow but stayed intriguing and got progressively better. All the “twists” were maybe a little too heavily foreshadowed and predictable. But it was a nice solid story anyway, and definitely better than the opposite issue would be.

AMERICAN PASTORAL - Ewan McGregor, Dakota Fanning, Jennifer Connelly, Valorie Curry, David Strathairn, Peter Riegert. Mostly a bore about a successful family glove business where Ewan's daughter Dakota turns radical in the 60's. Goofy ending after Ewan dies of old age, boy, did he age and at his funeral his wife Jennifer doesn't look like she aged at all. A 2 on the Moizmeter.

THE BOY - Lauren Cohan, Rupert Evans, Diana Hardcastle, Jim Norton, Jett Klyne, Ben Robson. American Lauren, escaping an abusive relationship in the USA travels to England to take a well-paying nanny job taking care of a boy doll. Older couples 8 yr old son apparently died 20 years ago but they just can't accept reality, so the doll. They leave on a trip and Lauren is left alone except for Rupert who delivers the groceries. He knows a little history of the boy but not all that much. Lauren hears strange noises at night and things get moved around….the doll maybe? Finally things come to a head and we learn the scary truth about “the boy”. Pretty good, and was actually filmed in Victoria, BC, not far from Vancouver. A 3 1/2 on the Moizmeter.

John Wick - the first one

This is a super standard revenge fantasy, made out of all the standard tropes, with the addition of only a few subtle things.
The only really interesting and new feature was the Continental hotel for assassins and the god coin stuff. It wasn't used nearly enough.

People LOVE it, not really because of Keanu, the story, the directing, or the puppy dog stuff, they love it because they love “justified” holy vengeance style revenge fantasies.

Bonus points if the person getting revenge is hyper-competent, but that's often a feature of the genre.

Those things always score high with the public. Hilarious that Boondock Saints, which was people's previous fave in this genre. also features Russian Mafia as the bad guys and ALSO features Willem Defoe in a supporting role where we think he's against the protagonist/s but ends up being their closest ally.



John Wick was a decent film in the revenge killing genre. It was well done and only moderately overly violent.
There we some silly parts though:
John is a hyper-competent killer who makes few mistakes, his enemies are also very competent… Except when they all aren't.
1. John's home is easily breached by low level idiots and he is easily defeated by them and almost killed in the beginning. He wasn't ready for them but that shouldn't matter to this kind of protagonist.
2. His enemies know EXACTLY how dangerous he is from long, long experience, and yet refuse to kill him when they can, Instead they haul him off to some other location for the drawn out monologue scene that's typical of tropey action films.
3. Marcus is also hyper-competent, and yet the mob easily captures and kills him just by waiting at his house.
4. Miss Perkins is another hyper-Competent killer who's easily killed off.
In those ways it makes the film stylised and a bit silly in parts.

To make a hyper-competent person believably beaten you have to do it in a clever way. When Wick is subdued by the mob in the middle of the film that makes sens because he's beaten down by weight of numbers.

HOTEL ARTEMIS - Jodie Foster, Jeff Goldblum, Dave Bautista and who knows. Only thing making worth watching is Jodie, no make-up, playing elderly Nurse in crazy hotel for criminals that have been injured? Jodie gets it a generous 2 on the Moizmeter.

Star Trek Picard

Retired Jean Luc Picard heads back into space (gradually) to save an android lady in trouble. Along the way, he runs into different characters who berate and belittle him for giving up on everything, ruining their lives, or both. Picard apologizes weakly and begs for them to drop everything and help him. Most of them do.

For some reason, Picard is portrayed as weak and in need of protection half the time, and a horrible person worthy of scorn the other half.

The Utopian Star Trek future is now quite Dystopian - it's a lot like the bleak alternate timelines that would sometimes show up in other Star Trek shows, before things returned to normal.

Is it possible this entire season could be a horrific alternate timeline? I don't think so. From what I've heard it's in line with Star Trek Discovery with the darkness and nastiness and present-day slang. Weird!

Sounds like a sad piece of shit.

———————–

I watched the whole of The Tick (current live action version)
It was ok, pretty fun actually. A good little silly parody of the whole avengers thing plus superman. Not fantastic but good.

————————

Long Shot
Staring Seth Rogan and Charlize Theron. I think this is Seth's way of showing he's not just into old style sexist deceptions of women XD
It's about a blog writer (Rogan) who goes to work as a speech writer for his former babysister who's now secretary of state for the USA and running for president. They fall in love and it's an awkward romantic comedy with the traditional roles somewhat reversed because the women are in the more traditionally male roles of power and prestige.
It wasn't bad, cringy at times though.
The scene where they get “fucked up on molly” and Charlize's character has to negotiate to release American hostages was so annoying. Rogan's juvenile attraction to childish drug culture doesn't deserve that sort of validation.

Also: The Storyteller
-The 1987 version with John Hurt.

It was way more childish than I remembered: but very very good for kids!
A fantasy medieval style storyteller tells old folk takes that are brought to life by actors in the AMAZING costumes of the Jim Henson company. It's still just as impressive today, digital effects and modern makeup techniques have zero on what the Henson company could do in the 1980s.

I only rewatched the pilot, but the constant interruptions by the narrator were very annoying. It'd make it good for kids but as an adult it keeps kicking you out of the narrative flow.

The first story concerns a hedgehog boy who grows to be a man and marries a princess through a deal with a king (the first thing you see when you return to your kingdom will be payment to me). It's based on the same old German folk tale the Witcher recently used. Needless to say the hedgehog costume and makeup was 100000x better than the Witcher, the story though was a bit dull because of how self censored and choppy they made it.

The Hellboy reboot.

A bit lame really.
Horror and gore aplenty, unlike the earlier too movies, but the writing and acting is more like something from a kid's movie. It just doesn't mix well.

They should re-edit it to remove all the gore and swearing and tone down the horror stuff and just make it a kids movie for real. It'd work way better.

ozoneocean wrote:
The Hellboy reboot.

A bit lame really.

yeah, I agree entirely. Just not the same without Pearlman…

ROBOCOP reboot - watched a few nights ago. One of very few reboots I thought was better than the original. The original was good, but had this mixture of awful violence and being played for laughs, which was a bit off-putting for yours truly. ( I never watched the rest of the ‘series’ ). As always Gary Oldman is good value in this newer version.

3 Goldilocks on the Bear movie scale

“I'm not okay with this” on Netflix. A fun and relatively light- hearted example of the “teen-angst-manifests-as-superpowers” genre. I wish it hadn't been such a close clone of “Carrie” (1976). Still, I feel it was well-scripted and entertaining.

“Wild wild west” (1999) starring Will Smith and Kevin Kline. I wanted to watch this movie on Netflix because I thought it would be a good opportunity to look at some cool steampunk-meets-western production design. However, the story and the direction were so nauseatingly execrable that I couldn't last more than about 15 minutes. I ended up fast forwarding to any cool looking props or sets that I could see, and then taking screen-grabs of those for future reference.

fallopiancrusader wrote:
“I'm not okay with this” on Netflix. A fun and relatively light- hearted example of the “teen-angst-manifests-as-superpowers” genre. I wish it hadn't been such a close clone of “Carrie” (1976). Still, I feel it was well-scripted and entertaining.

I felt the same way. It reminded me of Carrie and a bit of Stranger Things. I'm still intrigued to see what the next season holds for “I'm not okay with this” though.

fallopiancrusader wrote:
“Wild wild west” (1999) starring Will Smith and Kevin Kline.

I watched this years and years ago… I don't remember much except for Branagh and the spider. He was good. I don't know about the rest.

Last night I watched 30,000 Leagues Under the Sea, a 2007 version of the “20,000 Leagues” story. It starred Lorenzo Lamas.
It looked like it would be bad and it was.
Lorenzo looked like a porn actor from the 1990s, complete with a short mullet and round goatee around his mouth, not a good look. Most of the male actors had really awful porny 90s facial hair.

The film started off fairly sensical with decent acting and story: a nuclear submarine finds something strange and follows it for a while and then gets caught and goes down. You're thinking “why follow a weird thing? Stay safe!” But it's a huge nuclear submarine and logically the safest/most dangerous thing in the ocean so it makes sense.

Then we see a shot from the air of an Iowa class battleship, called the Abraham Lincoln in this movie… Only aircraft Carriers have presidential names, but it's a silly movie and they're not to know that. Anyway, the captain talks to Lorenzo about rescuing the crew of the sub.
Lorenzo is the captain on a little sciencey experimental sub called the A7 or something. He has a special machine that converts water to oxygen and hydrogen gas. He's going to use that to save the sub somehow.

But he's not allowed to go alone! He has to be paired up with captain bitchface who is also his exwife. She brings along an engineer with a nasty porn beard.
The battleship captain tells his crew to go to “75 knots”, which made me pause, since Iowas were only rated for 36 knots and I don't know any big ship that can do anything even close to 75 knots… in fact 36 knots for a big heavy ship like that is still considered pretty fast I think. Annnnyway… that was a good sign things were getting bad.

They take their little sub down to find the lost sub and just as they try and dock with it things start to go wrong. Their sub is breached because Captain bitchface took off all the preasure seals or something because she knows better and hates everything. They start to lose air and their only hope is to get into the sunk sub and start up the air-maker McGuffin machine.

Before they can do anything they all pass out and Lorenzo wake up in a strange bed in a green cabin and looks out the window and sees he's on a giant submarine. He opens the door and meets with a fat guy in a black jumpsuit who takes him to an old British guy in another black jumpsuit covered in all sorts of rank insignia including medal ribbons. It turns out that this is Captain Nemo and by far the worst actor with the worst lines in the whole film.
He's some sort of billionaire who's made his own submarine in secret and also controls giant squids for some reason…
My question is though; if it's his own submarine, where did he get all the medals? And if he awarded them to himself to impress people then why isn't he wearing the actual medals instead of just the ribbon bars? no one will know what fake medals the ribbons are supposed to represent…

I ramble, but the movie only really starts to get seriously bad from this point. Before that it had a chance of actually being sort of ok, but at this turning point is where the writers had a stroke or something or let their young kids take over.

Nemo gathers the sub crew together and tells them that he rescued them just in time and they're NOT prisoners. They can't contact their mothership though because of volcano issues. Also, they can have a table full of “delectable” treats in the next room. That never happens though for some reason. The crew want to go back to their sub so they can rescue the crow of the downed sub. Nemo never explains why he didn't rescue them and the crew never ask him.
Nemo says the crew can go but Lorenzo and bitchybum need to stay behind for some reason. Nemo creepily asks them about their marriage. And that's all he does.

So they go to their sub which is sitting in a room in the Nautalis. The engineer with the nasty beard wants to stay with Nemo because he's scared of the water. They all get in (except for bad beard), and 5 seconds later they're piloting it out. No scenes of the room flooding or doors opening etc. They can't control it though because Nemo has a remote device in it. Which Nemo brags about over the radio. 2 seconds later they rip it out and get control again Bitchface says “doh, you stupid dickbrain, why did you do that?”.
This pisses Nemo off so he sends his squids after them and forces them to put it back. He controls their sub so it does something weird when it aproaches the downed sub. Nothing really happens and then they're back on the Nautalis. Nemo brags and goes on about some crap (he does this a lot).

It turns out Nemo nicked all the nuclear missiles from the sub.
Blah, blah world domination, blah blah blah… I'm going to stop here, it gets stupider.
The actor who plays Nemo is a cock.

SPENSER CONFIDENTIAL - Mark Wahlberg, Winston Duke, Alan Arkin, Iliza Shlesinger, Bokeem Woodbine. Former cop Mark….never mind, strictly Saturday Afternoon Matinee cont'd next week kids fare, got dumber as it went, ridiculous fight scenes etc., got a big fat 1 on the Moizmeter.

LOST GIRLS - Amy Ryan, Gabriel Byrne, Reed Birney, Thomasin McKenzie, Oona Laurence. One of mom Amy's daughters goes missing, police in no hurry, lots of missing girls in area. Then some bodies are found, mostly hookers, but not Amy's girl altho she was on a sex for hire web-site. Amy's frustration boils over to investigator Byrne, who's near retirement age. Nothing turns up but more bodies found but not our girl. A few suspects but no evidence and then finally - watch and see. Based on true story. Not too bad, getting a 3 on the Moizmeter.

Emerald City
It's a retelling of the Wizard of Oz.
It's modernised because Dorothy is a nurse in her 20s from the 2000s.

The Munchkins are now tribal people, the Scarecrow is a soldier who's been crucified and lost his memory, the Tinman is a clockwork cyrborg, the cowardly Lion is a soldier who gave up on making a hard decision… and has a lion helmet.

It's a good drama series, but I don't like the change to the theme and narrative:
Basically magic is good and the witches are the good matriarchal rulers of Oz. The Wizard was the lowest ranked dogsbody of a scientific team, he was jealous of his female boss so he sabotaged her team's experiment and it sent them to Oz. The Wizard then uses his inferior “science”, blackmail, violence, betrayal and other tools to totally take over Oz and remove the power from the witches.
It also turns out that even his “science” was not all his and he was secretly blackmailing his boss (who came with him) to make all the science stuff…

So the theme is: bad men, going against nature and steeling female power.
Fair enough if you want to make that statement but don't do it with Wizard of Oz pleeeeaasse :(

Besides, at it's heart it's sexist against women because 1. you imagine them as powerless and easily controlled, and 2. you imagine them as “closer to nature” and fundamentally different from men, not just physically but mentally.
People are people, not trapped by gender roles in any way but societally. This natural determinism that they always fall back on is primitive and sickening.

I'm so pissed right now, just did two movie reviews and total waste of my time as I got a Gateway error, don't think I'll bother with this anymore.

moizmad wrote:
I'm so pissed right now, just did two movie reviews and total waste of my time as I got a Gateway error, don't think I'll bother with this anymore.

Please keep it up
Usually your browser saves the text when you click the “back” button.

I don't know why they'd be a gatweway error… maybe a spoke in site usage?







———————

I finally watched 2010's Legion.
It's about god deciding to wipe out humanity again (like with the flood), but Archangel Michael rebels and decides to protect humanity instead. The “angels” take the form of demoniacally possessed people. The survivors hang out at a lonely petrol station and fight the angels there with a bunch of military grade weapons that Michael brings. They have to protect a pregnant lady so her baby can be born and “save” everyone.

Absolutely stupid film, but very fun. Took itself completely seriously. It was well made, the acting was good, scripts were good too. Just the premise is stupid and the scenes are crazy. I'd recommend it as a fun action horror apocalypse film.

There were a bunch of these *millennilist films from leading up to 2000 and just after it/ This was the latest I know of.
*No relation to “millennials”, this term is MUCH older and describes a belief that 1000 year date milestones signal the end of the world, either religious or from some other source.

“Flowers” on Netflix. It's about a neurotic family of clueless buffoons living in the rural English countryside, surrounded by neighbors who are even more neurotic. It has a great blend of hilarity and dark, dark psychological depravity. Two seasons so far. I liked the first season better, but so far it's entirely a very entertaining (and disturbing) madcap romp!

Alright, going to try again….
FREAKS - Emile Hirsch, Lexy Kolker, Bruce Dern, Grace Park. Only good thing I can say is filmed in my town Vancouver plus little Lexy does a good acting job for such a young lady. Gave it the kybosh before ending which gets it a Golden Goose Egg on the Moizmeter.

THE GIRL ON THE THIRD FLOOR - CM Punk, Sarah Brooks, Trieste Kelly, Elissa Dowling. Starts off OK with Punk trying to fix-up old house he and his wife just bought, but then things get silly (and really messy), and heads straight down the sewer into fairy-tale land. A 1/2 on the Moizmeter.

THE LAST THING HE WANTED - Anne Hathaway, Ben Affleck, William Dafoe, Rosie Perez. How much did tobacco co's pay to have Anne smokin' it up in every scene of movie? I couldn't make any sense of most anyway but toughed it out giving it a 1 on the Moizmeter.

moizmad wrote:
Alright, going to try again….
FREAKS - Emile Hirsch, Lexy Kolker, Bruce Dern, Grace Park. Only good thing I can say is filmed in my town Vancouver plus little Lexy does a good acting job for such a young lady. Gave it the kybosh before ending which gets it a Golden Goose Egg on the Moizmeter.

Funny it got 87% on Rotten Tomatoes and they hate everything.

If you must watch a movie called Freaks see the Tod Browning directed deeply disturbing 1932 film. Has in it carnival “freaks” of the period and is directed by a pretty freaky guy himself; Tod Browning. If you like period horror it's disturbing and terrifying as only one of those pre-code 1930s movies can be.

Dunkirk(2017) Once you get past the jumpy back and forth story telling and see the elements come together it is a very good piece of film making. Some bits are a little over the top but others strike home.

1917(2019) Talk about breath taking film making, this movie deserved its nomination. Super intense and very well done. The one take smooth camera adds power to this story of World War I. One of best WWI movies I've seen.

Midway(2019)Explosions every ten minutes and nonstop action and it's still an awful telling of the first six months of World War 2 in the Pacific. Planes defy gravity and the CGI effects don't even match up to those in the 2001 Pearl Harbor And WHERE ARE THE WILDCATS? One third of the carrier air group is missing since there are NO US fighters and no mention of them. What Northup/Grumman wouldn't let them use the trademark Grumman Wildcat? Yes, the characters are all real people and the events match what happened. But WW2 planes can't defy the laws of physics like that and some look like the Toho model work done in 1961's Storm over the Pacific

Watch the 1976 Midway. You'll notice that Woody Harrelson's portrayal of Nimitz is very much like Henry Fonda's. The story has a few fictional characters but is from a better generation of actors and it's all real planes and wartime footage and actually filmed on board USS Lexington CV-16.

And those pesky Russians have been turning out some excellent war fims lately too check out Tanks for Stalin, T-34, Tankers(AKA Indestructible) and Panfilov's 28.

POLAROID - Kathryn Prescott, Mitch Pileggi, Grace Zabriske, Tyler Young. Kathryn finds a vintage Polaroid camera (that seems to have an inexhaustible supply of film inside) and anyone who gets in photo dies a horrible death soonest. Throw the thing away Kathryn, but no, that would ruin movie. Filmed in Nova Scotia, near Halifax & Dartmouth. A generous Canadian 2 on the Moizmeter.

SAFE HOUSE - Denzel Washington, Ryan Reynolds, Vera Farmiga, Brendan Gleeson, Sam Shepard. (from 2012) In Cape Town, SA complex spy yarn where Denzel is arrested and placed in safe house, that's not very safe. Some big shot crooks/politicians try to kill him, as he has a list of all their names, and are the hired assassins bad shots or what? Ryan tries to get him to another safe house? and fights/gunfights, car chases ensue aplenty. An almost 2 hr. test to stay awake, got an almost 2 on the Moizmeter.

LAST FERRY - Ramon O. Torres, Myles Clohessy, Sheldon Best, Henry Ayres-Brown, Larry Owens. Fire Island, NY finds gay lawyer Ramon looking for love but gets drugged & mugged, and in this foggy state, sees a murder? He is rescued by Sheldon and his collection of gay buddies, tons of boring gay sex scenes almost drove me away before we finally get a clue who got murdered and by who. It's one of these movies that suddenly ends without an end and you're just left in the dark. A 1 3/4 on the Moizmeter.

THE DEAD DON'T DIE - Bill Murray, Adam Driver, Chloe Sevigny, Tilda Swinton, Tom Waits, Steve Buscemi, Danny Glover, Caleb Landry Jones. Local police, Bill, Adam & Chloe are called to the gory murders of 2 cafe workers. Adam quickly suspects zombies maybe? We know he's right and soon enuf thousands of corpses crawl out of their graves to feast on the townfolk. Crazy roles for Tom, Tilda & Caleb. A good laugh getting a 3 on the Zombiemeter!

MOTHER - Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Ed Harris, Michelle Pfeiffer, Domhnall Gleeson, Stephen McHattie, Kristen Wiig and a cast of thousands. Large old house sitting in the middle of nowhere sees JLaw fixing up and painting whilst hubby Javier deals with writers block. Then Ed & Michelle drop in and altho Javier doesn't even know them he seems to relish having them stay for as long as they want? JLaw isn't thrilled about this and soon Ed's 2 crazy sons show up and then a few hundred people making themselves at home, then 1 son gets killed and all leave. Several months later all is well with JLaw ready to give birth when another mess of Javier's fans arrive and it starts all over again. Is Javier for real??? A 2 1/2 on the Moizmeter.

ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD - Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Dakota Fanning, Bruce Dern, Kurt Russell, Al Pacino and a cast of thousands, in fact it would be easier to list who isn't in the film. Tarantino's fairy tale that stretches 2 3/4 hrs centres on Leo's declining career along with his buddy and stunt man Brad. Margot is ridiculously cast as Sharon Tate, doesn't even remotely look like her, and plays her like she was some kind of idiot. Endless series of vignettes all leading toward the Manson family murders of Tate/LaBianco on 2 nights in Aug 69 but film drifts into a new ending and I have no idea why. A 1 1/2 on the Moizmeter.

The Platform.

SPOILERS:

This is a Spanish SciFi art film about a weird experimental prison.
It's a thin tower with many, many floors. In the centre of every level is a hole.
There are two people on every level.
Once a day a platform goes down through the whole covered in rich, delicious food…
The people on the top level get first dibs on the food and the people bellow eat the leftovers. The further it goes down the more spoiled the food, till there IS no more food.
You stay on each level for a month and then you're randomly assigned to a new level.
You can't save food or the room heats up til you cook or cools down till your freeze.
You get a term in the tower for a crime or you can volunteer to go in yourself you get over smoking or something… Bad idea.
You can take in ONE item of your choice with you. Anything you want as long as it fits in the room.

That's the setup.

The lead character voluntarily goes in because he wants to give up smoke. He take in a copy of Don Quixote with him.
There's not enough food to go down to all the levels… Theoretically there might be if everyone rationed strictly and only took the minimum they need to survive, but no one ever does that…

The meaning of the film:
The lead character becomes Don Quixote, defending the week and the “poor”, idolising a woman as his maiden in distress (his Dulcinea).
The levels represent the class system in society that people fall into from birth and wealth through luck and fate. We COULD have an equitable system very easily if we worked together but those on top would usually rather take what they can get and shit on those bellow. Anyone can shift up to the top of the bottom at any time by outside forces, we only have an illusion of control. It's easy to go down but almost impossible to get to the top in society by your own ability and then you need help from those above.

It's not bad but very brutal. Blood, gore shit, etc. And because it's more an art film than a straight SciFi it doesn't have a neat ending, things are more symbolic.

EUROPA REPORT - Anamaria Marinca, Michael Nyqvist, Sharlto Copley, Daniel Wu, Karolina Wydra, Christian Camargo, Embeth Davidtz. (from 2013) Crew of 6 are sent to Jupiter's moon Europa, thought to possibly have some kind of organic life in the water below it's frozen surface. Things start to go wrong in the cramped quarters and one by one we start to lose the crew. Will they find life? Maybe….and I found it quite interesting even without fights, gun battles, car chases, sex etc. Gave it a 3 1/2 on the Moizmeter.

I just finished LOST SONG on Netflix. That was the jrpg-est anime I've seen in a long time. Military+magic story line. Colorful cast full of anime archetypes. Messed up, hard-to-follow mindfuck in the middle (following the all-is-lost moment). Bittersweet ending. All the usual “magitech” including the obligatory “airships.”

Honestly, I enjoyed it as a jrpg fan. If you like fantasy anime, check it out.

Sounds like a great show!