THE NINTH GATE - Johnny Depp, Frank Langella, Lena Olin, Emmanuelle Seigner. An oldie from 1999 directed by Roman Polanski. Frank is a famous book collector and hires Johnny to find and authenticate 3 versions of the 9th Gate book. Started OK but started to get goofy for me, others thought different. Apparently you need the 3 books to put a 9 page puzzle together written by Lucifer himself?? Give me a break. A 1 on the Moizmeter.

Watching ‘Golgo 13: Collection 1.’ It's an anime series about unstoppable hitman Duke Togo, a.k.a. Golgo 13. I grabbed this because I was so impressed by the animated feature film ‘Golgo 13: The Professional.’ That was pretty bad-ass; as good if not better than any live motion action film of its era. So I had to see the animated series adaptation…

I probably should have left well enough alone. Very little of the white-knuckle action and suspense which punctuated the movie are in evidence here, and instead this plays almost like a parody of the Golgo I came to know and love. Sure, in the movie Golgo was a tough highly skilled assassin, but now he's cartoonishly overpowered, and his adversaries are all pushovers and bunglers. The show is fetishistically obsessed with explaining minutiae of Golog's gear and how difficult of a long range shot he has to take… and none of it matters, because in the end you know he's just going to blaze through it all without breaking a sweat.

The episodes are all very similar. Golgo gets a mission, someone tries to stop him from completing the mission, and in the end he kills the guy, usually by shooting him with his sniper rifle. The end. There's one episode where it looks like something really clever's going to happen. Golgo gets himself arrested and sent to the prison where his target is locked up. He earns the man's confidence and they form a plan to break out together. And then there's this scene where they have to navigate between these searchlights, and if they mess up the timing they'll be spotted and likely shot dead by the guards. I'm thinking, “cool, so Golgo's going to trick this poor guy into being spotted, so the guards will take him out and it all looks like a failed escape!” Except that doesn't happen. They escape, and Golgo shoots him with his rifle.

This show is like Rammstein: Best consumed in the original language, without subtitles or explanation.

Score: .7158 Minutes of Angle

SHUTTER ISLAND - Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, Ben Kingsley, Michelle Williams, Emily Mortimer, Max Von Sydow, Patricia Clarkson, John Carroll Lynch, Ted Levine. (from 2010) Hard to review as virtually entire movie is the delirious thoughts of Leo, who has been in the nut house for 2 years since murdering his wife Michelle. He thinks he's a marshall brought to the island to find crazy woman who vanished but notta, and nobody is really the person he thinks they are. We see him wandering around the island looking for clues but hard to believe guards and doctors would allow anything like that, so finally, is that a bottle in front of me or better still, a frontal lobotomy. Some score it way higher than me, but I gave it a 2 1/2 on the Moizmeter.

‘Unorthodox” on Netflix. One of the most harrowing films I have seen in a long time. It’s based on the real-life memoir by a young woman who escapes from the Satmar Hasidic Jewish community. The Satmar community is based in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where I lived for 13 years. Seeing the events, which were all true events, playing out in the streets that were so familiar to me made it especially haunting.

CHARLIE SAYS - Another look at the Manson family murders focusing on the females with Hannah Murray as Leslie Van Houten, altho she doesn't even remotely look like Leslie, Sosie Bacon as Krenwrinkle, Marianne Rendon as Susan Atkins, Matt Smith as Charlie, facially very close but way too tall to be that little runt, Chace Crawford as Tex, doesn't say much. Merritt Weaver plays a woman interviewing the 3 females in prison. Looking back we got rid of Susan in ‘99 of brain cancer (or was that a lack of a brain), Charlie in 2017 but we’re still stuck with Tex, who should've been dancing at the end of a rope 50 years ago, I hope everyday someone will “do” him in prison. Leslie and Krenwinkle can rot in prison while thinking of how incredibly stupid they were. I gave it a 2 on the Moizmeter.

I just finished CELLS AT WORK. It's a monster-of-the-week anime. No deep plots, no melodrama, quite episodic. The “violence” is quite cartoon and there are no deep storylines or relationship arcs. A good, light watch. It's also dubbed, which is a must for me these days. I like to watch TV passively while I do other things.

fallopiancrusader wrote:
‘Unorthodox” on Netflix. One of the most harrowing films I have seen in a long time. It’s based on the real-life memoir by a young woman who escapes from the Satmar Hasidic Jewish community.

A mate recommended it to me, after a faceache comment, yesterday…
A different mate (who was Jewish) always referred to them as Acidic Jews - at first I thought he was just dropping his ‘H’ as many people do in the U.K., until I finally said “Don't you mean..?” NO. He didn't. B-)

I'm trying to catch up on 8 years worth of SUPERNATURAL episodes.

THE PARTS YOU LOSE - Aaron Paul, Danny Murphy, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Scoot McNairy. North Dakota gets played by Manitoba, where young bullied deaf boy Danny finds wounded Aaron, drags him to an abandoned barn and nurses/feeds him back to health. Aaron teaches Danny how to stand up to the bully and a bond develops. Mary is the boy's mom and Scoot his brutish dad. Then Danny finds out Aaron robbed a bank and police are on the hunt. We knew this friendship couldn't last much longer, but a good watch 3 on the Moizmeter.

A VIGILANTE - Olivia (be still my heart) Wilde, Morgan Spector, Tonye Patano, Judy Marte, C. J Wilson, Estafania Tejeda. Olivia's brute hubby Morgan killed her son and beat her. She takes up martial arts and joins a women's support group. Soon enuf she beats a battered woman's hubby into a pulp, and also gets these women financial help in addition to pulverizing their soon-to-be- ex-husbands. Then her hubby shows up and a finale battle ensues, guess who wins and also gets his life insurance now that he's dead. An Olivia inspired 3 on the Moizmeter.

moizmad wrote:

A VIGILANTE - hubby shows up and a finale battle ensues, guess who wins and also gets his life insurance now that he's dead.

Oh, I DO love a happy ending ! B-)

1999's “Galaxy Quest” : Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver and Alan Rickman doing a great spoof version of “Star Trek” and associated fan cons. I hadn't watched this for many years, and had forgotten just how much fun it is ! A T.V. ‘spaceship crew’ of actors gets mistaken for the ‘real deal’ by naive aliens. Way better than “When Mars Attacks”, in my opinion.

Gets a 3 Goldilocks from me.

….and makes me want to re-watch ‘Paul’ (also with Sigourney in)

WACO - Michael Shannon, Taylor Kitsch, Andrea (be still my heart) Riseborough, Paul Sparks, Rory Culkin, Shea Whigham and a cast of thousands. A 6 part Netflix series. An illegal shipment of grenades to the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas brings the ATF sneaking up with a search and arrest warrant for David Koresh (Taylor), the exalted leader, but a tip-off starts chaos, who shot first? The FBI is called in with Michael as top negotiator. Koresh preaches his version of the Bible to a pack of 80/90 of the stupidest people, all lost at sea with no direction known. But the authorities weren't much help and mistakes just led to more mistakes. But most of blame goes to Koresh, a goofball like that goes on a power-trip and gets 80 or so people, many just young kids, killed, takes the fall in my opinion. A 3 1/2 on the Moizmeter.

“Red Joan” 2018 Judy Dench. Based on the book of the same name, which is ‘loosely’ based on a real story**, we have Judy Dench as the aged central character being arrested on espionage charges, then ‘reminiscing’ back to the events (thank God no-one uses that ‘wavy mist’ effect, these days).

People. I love films about people, especially real ones, although the ‘reality’ of this one has been rather morphed. Heroes/Villains; Terrorists/ Freedom fighters; Patriots/Traitors….they're all basically two sides of the same coin. POV is what defines them. The French Resistance were terrorists or freedom fighters, for e.g., just depending on your point of view.

So ‘Joan’ was a traitor - passing secrets from Britain's “Tube Alloys” (the codename for Atomic research) to the USSR. IN the film, she's a science student, not a communist, has a couple of affairs, gets recruited from university (as SO many were, in the late 30s) and only passes on the info for philanthropic reasons, not monetary nor ideological. The pretext is that with both sides having nuclear weapons, neither side will use them, ‘eh voila’ world peace.

Well… I personally see the merit of that, since having watched 50+ years of U.S. foreign policy makes me think they might well have used theirs, had there not been the opposite deterrent. I'm a lifetime cynic anyway.

** Unfortunately, reading up on the ‘real’ Joan (Melita Norwood), the story is far greyer, with her taking non-science subjects, dropping out about 5 years before the start scenario….the real ‘Joan’

Anyway, I enjoyed it, feeling a bit disappointed that the IRL ‘Joan’ hadn't had that ‘Hollywood’ version of her life

- 3 Goldilocks.

Loved Cells at work- it wasn't so much Monster of the Week as just an entertainment educational show. There's some character development of the red bloodcell as she grows and matures over the season and the white blood cell becomes less of a pure savage.
The main purpose of the show is to teach you about the body's immune system and how it responds to different problems- and watching it with a registered nurse who specilised in that in her post grad degree- it's apparently quite accurate :D

I saw Brimstone the other day.

I recommend against this film most strongly. It was well made, acted, filmed, good costumes, sets effects, dialogue etc, but the story was so dark and depressing that I felt horrible after I watched it.
Dancer in the Dark is a depressing film but compared to this it was a Disney cartoon. I'm not exaggerating for effect.


Brimstone about the old west in the mid 1800s and the struggles of a young woman of Dutch heritage, done in a grimly realistic style which belies the fact that it's basically utter fantasy.
You can go one way and make history a lot more fun and safe and friendly, or you can go to the other extreme and makes it a thousand times grimmer. This does the latter.

It's not bad for doing that, you just have to acknowledge that it isn't a realistic vision, and ask yourself if you're really the sort of person who likes to be left depressed and sad by what they see. If yes, then see this. If no then don't.

I wish I had been warned like this.

THE VALHALLA MURDERS - Nina Dogg as Kata, Bjorn Thors as Arnar, rest of cast all Icelandic actors. Really enjoyed 8 part series but very confusing for me. Kata is detective in Reykjavik, Iceland investigating a series of murders that seem to involve a boys school called Valhalla some 35 yrs earlier. Victims seem to be the teachers, horribly slashed with their eyes cut out. Arnar has been working in Oslo but is called back home to help. I'm still not sure how many murders there were and show seems to indicate that more than 1 killer involved?? Those Icelandic names of who is who made the confusion even worse, and those cuttings on the arms baffled me, Kata has one at end and have no idea what that meant. Also looks like the main killer got away somehow. Anyway, I liked it, getting a 4 on the Moizmeter!

After Icelandic Valhalla I then moved to Sweden for Quicksand and now Italy for The Trial, reviews to follow soon.

Now I've gone to Poland for The Mire, learning all the time.

O.K. Two series….

“The Plot Against America” Torturro, Rider…and obviously others I don't know by name. On FOXtel.
I've always loved ‘alternate reality’ stories - The Man In The High Castle probably being the most recent one I enjoyed.
Similarly themed, in that it's a W.W.II alternate history, where Lindbergh wins the 1940 election and keeps the USA out of the war. Nicely written**, nicely set ( I love the way they dig up all the old cars,etc.) and believably acted. The ending was a little ambiguous…
** My big problem, once the date that popped up from time to time got into 1942…obviously “What happened to Japan ?” Were the convinced they had nothing to worry about, now Lindbergh was in ? What about the Philippines ? Did they just walk in ? They needed it for resources… anyway, NO mention
…but 3 Goldilocks, nevertheless.

“Babylon Berlin” Can't remember actors names, and you wouldn't know them a any more than I did. A German home-grown effort, dubbed into English. Netflix.
Its 1929. The Twenties are ‘Roaring’ in Berlin, as much as anywhere. An out-of-town police detective is in Berlin to work, but also has his own case to solve, involving porn photos and blackmail. He is also a “shaker” a'shell shock' victim, as PTSD was called then, and uses morphine. I guess joint-primary character is a girl from a poor background, who does part-time at a whorehouse, and even smaller part-time working at the police dept. as a cataloguer/clerk.
Like “Plot”'s 40s, “Bab”'s 1929 Berlin is evoked wonderfully and it has all the background of Russian Embassy skulduggery and Trotsky-ite revolutionaries, Germany's own socialist protestors in the streets, other W.W.I survivors besides our ‘hero’, veterans remembrance, and right-wing politics.
Lots going on, including an actual plot, nudity, sex, drug use…. and definitely worth 3 Goldilocks again.

I subscribed for the free week to Disney Plus so I could catch up on Marvel films.

So far I've rewatched Guardians of the Galaxy volume one (saw it in Istanbul when it came out so it's a very happy memory), Avengers Age of Ultron, and Iron Man 3 in that order.

Guardians was just as good a second time.
Age of Ultron was very video game like and not much was explained, I loved the voice acting by James Spader and the interaction between Ultron and Vision at the end, but the rest of the film was blah and Ironman/Tony Stark was super irritating. There was a lot of self aware shit from Hawkeye and Johqnsens's character that was just annoying.
Ironman 3 was really good. As good as the first Ironman.

Overall they're all dumb movies

I'm not watching anything at the moment actually. I do want to watch the most recent season of American Horror Story catch up on Castlevania eventually. I'll probably check out some of the shows you guys have been watching too! :]

Carol Burnett. Many of the skits and even whole shows are on YouTube and they are always good for some laugh out loud moments. And that's what I need is comedy.

Perry Mason - the other night guess who the murderer was? Mr. Spock no less, he played a real sleaze ball (from ‘62) didn’t become Spock until 65?

moizmad wrote:
Perry Mason - the other night guess who the murderer was? Mr. Spock no less, he played a real sleaze ball (from ‘62) didn’t become Spock until 65?

The pilot for Star Trek was shot in 1964. The series first aired in 1966.

I've been enjoying the series What We Do in the Shadows. I can't really put my finger on what I find enjoyable about it. The humor is pretty obvious, and the characters and acting is fun and well done. It's not especially clever and is a little crude. The concept for episode are kinda ridiculous (like the Superb Owl party), but I am thoroughly entertained.

I also watched the series Solar Opposites. Not great but okay having on in the background. Violent, crude, goofy series about a family of space aliens.

I watched Black Panther and Captain Marvel.
They were both pretty good.

One obvious discrepancy in Black Panther is how they created such a massively advanced culture without input, trade or competition from other cultures (because they've always been strict isolationists) But then it's a comic book movie and that's par for the course.
It was fun.

Captain Marvel was a pretty good comic book scifi romp. The Danvers character didn't have much personality, but then maybe she's just meant to be a bit of a dick? Lots of people are, so that's not unreasonable.

Weird to see Noah Taylor in another comic book film… he gets around. He was always a weird Aussie actor who did independent stuff. He had great big eyes and a very bony face. Very elfin looking.
Now he plays gruff American businessmen and aliens.

ozoneocean wrote:
…Overall they're all dumb movies

LOL I kind of suspected that this would be the case, but thanks for the heads-up! XD

“Happy!” on Netflix.

Treads that fine line between ultra-violence and slapstick comedy.

Bonus feature: unicorns and lawn ornaments making sweet, sweet love.

ozoneocean wrote:
I watched Black Panther and Captain Marvel.
They were both pretty good.
Weird to see Noah Taylor in another comic book film… he gets around. He was always a weird Aussie actor who did independent stuff. He had great big eyes and a very bony face. Very elfin looking.
Now he plays gruff American businessmen and aliens.

yeah… I re-watched Vanilla Sky, last week. Plus a bit of Tomb Raider. He pops up a lot, in odd films. We seem to have a disproportionate number of Ozzies doing quite nicely in Hollywood stuff, eh ? Apart from the Hemsworth, Crow, etc. guys - there's Toni Collette, Cate Blanchett, Rebel Wilson, Naomi Watts and others even Jackie Weaver's in something at the mo'

Don't overlook Dan Spielman, whoa, is he good-lookin' or what? Recently the bad guy in Deep Water (with Noah Taylor) and now watching him as the good guy in The Code.