AVA - with Jessica Chastain, she usually picks her movie roles well, but Whoa, what a piece of crap, lasted about 30 minutes and got the kybosh.

AVA - So bad it didn’t even MAKE IT to the moizmeter!

Maybe you’ll enjoy it Oz - since it’s from my review I hope it’s not a waste o’ time for ya! I haven’t gotten far into the second season yet - just not inspired to for some reason.

@LC - yeah that’s when I fell off too - my rewatch is still early season 6 - still quite good so far!

Half way watching Young Wallander, it's coming from Sweden, ya for sure. Kinda OK but jumps around alot and as usual, some dialogue hard to make out, can't these people speak the King's English?
Finished and it went nowhere. He quit, his boss got killed, his gf left and the bad guy got away. A 1 on the Moizmeter.

Just starting in on Love, Death, and Robots. If each episode of Black Mirror were conceived of as a novella, then each episode of LDR would be like a haiku. It’s interesting how the creators embrace the uncanny valley in their CG animations, rather than shy away from it, as most 3D animators do.

Watched “Splice” a few days ago. The sci-fi concept had some promise, but boy, they really blew it. The production quality was very good, but the story really irked me. If I were to say why disliked the story so much, I would have to give away lots of spoilers, so I’ll have to leave it at that.

@Moizmad: trust me, you didn’t miss anything when you bailed on Ava. This movie felt like somebody took every tired, hackneyed Hollywood action-movie cliche ever written, put them through a blender, and then took a good crap on top for good measure.

I started Love, Death, and Robots a while back but never finished it. It reminded me a lot of The Animatrix, Hubs and I are also fans of Black Mirror, I think we spent about 3 hours one night doing the “Choose your own adventure” version they put out last year. 2020 should be some good fodder for that show…

Saw "Greed“ staring Steve Coogan and a bunch of other famous British Comedians like David Mitchell, Tim Keyes, Will Smith etc. This is them trying themselves in a comedy drama

The movie was about the rise and fall of a dodgy billionaire who made his fortune conning his way to the top in the ”Highstreet rag trade“ - British for fashionable clothing shops in London XD

It would have worked better as a radio play. Out of them all only Coogan has the chops to do drama onscreen.

It was entertaining and there were smart points made about the financial skeeving that these rich people undertake to BECOME rich. It fell down in terms of characterisation and pathos. It was very superficial in that regard, we don't really feel for the characters and their plights, even when things are serious, it was just too shallow.
This is a typical fault of a lot of British Comedy writers in my experience: they write mainly in terms of tropes, not real individual humans. i.e. ”This man is a journalist or a nerd, or a teenager or a refugee" not writing about Bob, who happens to me one of those things but rather those things define who he is and how he thinks.

Anyway, decent film and a good critique of people like Trump etc, but not a great film.

THE HUNT - Betty Gilpin, Hillary Swank and a cast of…never mind. If you want to watch a movie where the “heroine” is a mass murderer and most of story? makes no sense, this ones for you. All to set up big fight scene finale with Betty and Hillary. A 1 on the Moizmeter.

Mandalorian season 2 finale - it was going okay, and I've enjoyed most of the season.

But that finale did stuff I didn't dare hope for. Very very satisfying (at long, long last!)

Banes wrote:
But that finale did stuff I didn't dare hope for. Very very satisfying (at long, long last!)

HAHAHA! I hope you used protection XD

—————–

I saw a couple of movies…
Wagons East…
It's a stupid 90s comedy western. A Richard Lewis vehicle, for when his horrible mullet was still black. I've never liked his humour, it's so derivitive of Rodney Dangerfield and a million other better Jewish comedians.
It's notable for havng John Candy in it plus two of the best actors from Star Trck Voyager: the guy who plays the Doctor and the guy who plays Nelix.
It had real native Americans in it too which was good.

——————

Also I saw Battle Beyond the Stars again.
CLASIC Roger Corman SciFi.

I love that Robet Vaugh is in it playing the same antihero character he did in The Magnificent Seven, which this film was based on. That's lovely how they did that.

Does the film hold up?
Sort of.

The models are top notch, mostly better or as good as the best CGI available, even today. The drawn animation for explosions and lasers does not hold up that well. The practical effects for the explosions are better than the best CGI though.

The story holds up, it's solid. The acting is mostly really great too. The plotting is great, it just works well. the writers were good.

The film is let down in the same place it was always let down though: just bad scene setting. The action onscreen, the scenes as theyre filmed etc don't match up with what the film needs to tell the story properly. It's like a comic artist without the skill or imaginiation to properly draw the scenes they need to tell their story.
So it's let down on budget, cinemotography, and editing.

THE MIDNIGHT SKY - George Clooney, Felicity Jones, Kyle Chandler and many more. 2 tedious hours long, dying George trying to warn space crew not to return to Earth which has nothing living left except him way up near North Pole. The space crew shots are amazing and must have cost millions but it's all for nothing as is the movie. A 1 on the Moizmeter.

BLACK CHRISTMAS - Imogen Poots, Cary Elwes and a bunch of Kiwi's. Imogen and her girlfriends attend college life and are harrassed by the male pledges incl. one masked monster who goes on killing spree. Filmed in New Zealand and will the girls get even? Watch and see. A 2 on the Moizmeter.

THE LITTLE GIRL WHO LIVES DOWN THE LANE - Jodie Foster, Martin Sheen, Alexis Smith, Scott Jacoby, Mort Shuman. A oldie from 1976 but nothing else on except Trump and Covid. Little Jodie's father is dying and goes off after showing her how to administer cyanide to her mother and preserve her body down in the cellar. Landlady Alexis accidently kills herself making the discovery while her creepy son Martin tries to seduce Jodie who gets help from Scott. Jodie pulls a trick on Martin and everyone lives happily everafter. A 2 1/2 on the Moizmeter thx to cutie pie Jodie.

HOUSE AT THE END OF THE STREET - Jennifer Lawrence, Max Thieriot, Elisabeth Shue, Gil Bellows. From 2010/12, JLaw and mom Elisabeth discover a double murder took place many years ago at a house just down the street from their new digs. Naturally JLaw can't resist getting to know Max, the now grown-up son who survived the horror and now lives there alone. Or does he? The murder was committed by daughter Carrie-Anne who disappeared after the event. But Max has someone locked up in the cellar and JLaw makes a scary find. Mom to the rescue and you must watch to see what transpires. A 2 1/2 on the Moizmeter. (filmed around Ottawa)

I watched the first seaon and started on the second of The Mandalorian.

Everyone is raving about it but I was hesitant to watch it because of the OVER focus by fans on the cutesy baby crap with the yoda puppet.

THANKFULLY the baby yoda shit is NOT a major part of the series. It's there but there are Way, way better things to keep you distracted from it.

———————–

The series itself-
It's actually as good as its reputation.
No wank. The writers have gone right back to basics, they're not trying to be clever or secretly thinking they'r better than the soucre material or embarrssed by it and so producing shit like the latest sequals.

What I mean is that exactly like the first Star Wars movie (“Star Wars” not “a new Hppe” or “episode four” or any of that wankery, it was just called Star Wars), the stories are simple action adventure, simply told. No attempts are twists and turns, no wanky tricks, just scifi action adventure that's fun and engaging enough that it makes you willingly suspend your disbeleif.
That's all these stories need to do. It's not hard.

So far the series works well!

Saw The Rise of Skywalker
This is the final film in the latest Star Wars trilogy.

It had some beautiful scenes, truly amazing looking stuff! The acting and the chracters was also great.

The writing was very uneven though unfortunately…
It's like they had some really good, competent writers and some really crappy beginer writers working together and the beginers didn't pull their weight, manily in terms of the characters and their relationships:
We have characters with completely unearned relationships to each other, so much so it's like we missed a whole other film from the series… They just parrachute in with feelings, relationships and even whole new charcters. As a watcher that's very disconcerting and hard to follow.

—SPOILERS—
Examples are Lando Calrisian really caring for our new guys, really LOVING them specifically, plus C3PO, Plus Rei and Leia with a mother/daughter lovey dovey super caring relationship, our new crew caring SO MUCH about Chewbacca that they risk the universe to save him, the same crew caring so little that they DGAF whether C3PO gets his memory wipied and “dies” just so they can get somewher faster, a new Daft Punk golden helmet charater that wants to KILL Po for trope reasons and then LOVES him and then wants to sacrifice her one ticket to salvation to him and then doesn't care one WHIT for him… They give the audience no reasons for any of that.

Seriously WHO writes this badly???? Is JJ Abrams a moron?
If he's only good at big exiting scenes he should just have minimal story and do what Ridly Scott used to do. He was shit at stories but Brilliant at beautoful images so he let his editor and the audiece craft a story together out of his amazing scenes.

Anyway, there was a lot of fan service, a lot of it quite clunky, but they DID try and make a David Brent/Michael Scott* style guesture to fans of the original movies as well as the preqquels.
*The bosses from the Office who were hamfisted and awkward but had good intentions.

I didn't hate it as a film, I just wish they'd spent more time doing some really basic editing on the writing so it was above a Saturday morning cartoon level.

LADY BIRD - Saoirse Ronan, Laurie Metcalf, Lucas Hedges, Timothee Chalamet, Beanie Feldstein, Tracy Letts, Odeya Rush. Coming of age story in Sacramento, where Saoirse (Irish, pronounced Sur-sha) attends Catholic school and has difficulty getting along with her Mom, Laurie. Gets bf Lucas but he turns out to be gay, then she goes for Timothee. Her main goal is college in New York but financial and acceptances bog her down. Will things finally work out? A 2 1/2 on the Moizmeter.

moizmad wrote:
LADY BIRD - Saoirse Ronan, Laurie Metcalf, Lucas Hedges, Timothee Chalamet, Beanie Feldstein, Tracy Letts, Odeya Rush. Coming of age story in Sacramento, where Saoirse (Irish, pronounced Sur-sha) attends Catholic school and has difficulty getting along with her Mom, Laurie. Gets bf Lucas but he turns out to be gay, then she goes for Timothee. Her main goal is college in New York but financial and acceptances bog her down. Will things finally work out? A 2 1/2 on the Moizmeter.

That's been on my list to watch…out of curiosity, how high does the Moizmeter go? 2 out of 5, or 2 out of 10?

moizmad wrote:
LADY BIRD - Saoirse Ronan, Laurie Metcalf, Lucas Hedges, Timothee Chalamet, Beanie Feldstein, Tracy Letts, Odeya Rush. Coming of age story in Sacramento, where Saoirse (Irish, pronounced Sur-sha) attends Catholic school and has difficulty getting along with her Mom, Laurie. Gets bf Lucas but he turns out to be gay, then she goes for Timothee. Her main goal is college in New York but financial and acceptances bog her down. Will things finally work out? A 2 1/2 on the Moizmeter.

That's been on my list to watch…out of curiosity, how high does the Moizmeter go? 2 out of 5, or 2 out of 10?

Re Lady Bird: Netflix uses max of 5 so that's what I use.

Now, I'm watching Bojack Horseman and It's quickly become one of my favourite shows. I'm one of those types who can appreciate both comedy and soul-crushing depression, but it's rare to find a show that blends the two elements so seamlessly.

TENSA1 wrote:
Now, I'm watching Bojack Horseman and It's quickly become one of my favourite shows. I'm one of those types who can appreciate both comedy and soul-crushing depression, but it's rare to find a show that blends the two elements so seamlessly.

I really liked Bojack Horseman and binged it a while ago!

There was one sour note for me though: Diane had a bit of the Lisa Simpson disease. i.e. we had a whole bunch of interesting and highly flawed characters, while she'd have relatively few (if any flaws) and she was very intelligent so not as funny as the others in a derpy way, so it robbed her off the same humanity as the rest of the cast.
You never need a character who is more perfect than everyone to point out their foibles and bring common sense because any other the other flawed characters can have a turn at that. All it does is make them stand out as not being part of the same group and not fit into the show as well.

JACKIE - Natalie Portman, Peter Sarsgaard, Greta Gerwig, Billy Crudup, John Hurt, Caspar Phillipson. Follows heavy smokin' Jackie just before and after the assassination of JFK in 1963. Sarsgaard as Bobbie makes no attempt at his voice, Caspar looks quite alot like JFK in his few scenes. Hard to hear Natalie, speaks in whispers mostly. And of course no attempt to show who fired the fatal shot. Almost fell asleep sometimes and a drowsy 2 on the Moizmeter.

LUCY IN THE SKY - Natalie Portman, Jon Hamm, Zazie Beetz, Dan Stevens, Ellen Burstyn. Too stupid for words, a 0 on the Moizmeter.

moizmad wrote:
Re Lady Bird: Netflix uses max of 5 so that's what I use.

Ah, makes sense! And sorry for double-posting!

Live nude Girls

Well this was weird.
It's set in the 1980s, about a man that inherits a failing strip club from his uncle in LA. He drives across country with his best friend in a replica of Kit from Kightrider. They encounter the strange people at the strip club, there are boobs and butts, the club is under threat and they save it…

The story is straight out of a conventional low budget 1980s D-movie sex comedy, complete with bad acting and terrible scripts, except this was made in about 2015 and stared some pretty noted actors, like Dave Foley for goodness sake, as well as a whole lot of porn stars.

It was weird. It was just as bad as a real 1980s sex comedy. Deliberately so. So what was the point? Even the actors looked like they were from the 80s, just fatter, because people were all skinnier in the 1980s.

Ozoneocean wrote:
Live nude Girls

Well this was weird.
It's set in the 1980s … people at the strip club, there are boobs and butts, the club is under threat and they save it…

The story is straight out of a conventional low budget 1980s D-movie sex comedy, complete with bad acting and terrible scripts, except this was made in about 2015 and stared some pretty noted actors, like Dave Foley for goodness sake, as well as a whole lot of porn stars.

It was weird. It was just as bad as a real 1980s sex comedy. Deliberately so. So what was the point? Even the actors looked like they were from the 80s, just fatter, because people were all skinnier in the 1980s.

Many actors need to top their Superann. up, once in a while, Oze B-)

Maybe 😜


______

Love actually
Some touching moments, overshadowed by nonstop cringe. Like a high-speed 6 barrel rotary 20mm vulcan cannon of cringe blasting away destroying all in its path 😭

“Toon” on Netflix. A tour de force of deadpan humor. The subcurrent is a merciless critique of the kind of empty celebrity that so dominates social media. Unless you speak Dutch, you will be limited to reading subtitles.

Been sucked into Twin Peaks recently. David Lynch is one of my favourite directors and frankly I feel ashamed that it's taken me so long to watch it.