What movie have you seen recently?

Movies
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It’s October and that apparently means John Carpenter movies in theaters! There was a trifecta of Carpenter movies I haven’t seen.

  • Prince of Darkness has the technobabble of Ghostbusters and the blasphemy of The Exorcist. It’s not the best, but it’s got creepy weirdness, a few actors from Big Trouble in Little China, and Donald fucking Pleasence. The last movie I saw him in was MST3K’s Pumaman, so it was refreshing to see him act in a not-entirely-awful role.

  • The Fog is interesting, but I can’t help but feel like it wrapped up too quickly. Imagine making a horror movie in the setting of Jaws. It’s a slow motion disaster set in a small town. It plays with distance in an interesting way, as one of the characters spends most of the time broadcasting from a radio station.

  • Halloween (1978) is horror classic—this was a 40th anniversary showing. I haven’t seen any of these teen slasher classics, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. The debut of Jamie Lee Curtis and more Donald Pleasence! I was greatly amused that Pleasence got a quick, funny scene where he scares a kid away from a somewhat legitimately haunted house.

But that’s not all!

  • Halloween IV was a double-feature with Halloween and was also celebrating its 30th anniversary—on an original 35mm print. I discovered afterward that the continuity and canonicity of the Halloween movies is a big damn mess. IV is basically a direct sequel to the original with some elements of II that they retconned. (III doesn’t involve Michael Myers at all.) All in all, it’s ok, but it shines best when it reincorporates details from the first movie. No regrets about skipping II and III to see it.

  • Halloween (2018) because why not after seeing the original a few days earlier? It’s a direct sequel to the first movie set forty years later starring a T2/Sarah Conner-style, ruggedized Jamie Lee Curtis in full prepper mode. It has many enjoyable callbacks to the original, including a refreshingly modern babysitting interaction. There’s some dumb teen bullshit that bogs down the middle, but it’s all business in the last quarter of the movie.

  • Venom is as dumb as you think it is.

626

I’ve watched that movie several times in a week while I worked. So good.

As for movies, finally got around to watching Tag, based on a true story. Silky fun. Worth watching. The wife played by Isla Fisher is my spirit animal.

627

E.T.

Not anywhere as good as I remember it. The pacing is so slow, and not in a steady or good way, just in a boring way. I can’t connect with the family, the child, or the puppet. And the music is good for one time round each theme, but there just isn’t the variety of characters for the leitmotifs to add anything except “bored of hearing this music for the 20th time already”.

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I wonder if kids still like it. How old were you when you first saw it?

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E.T. scared the crap out of me as a kid at like, 5-6.

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I first saw it when I was about 12 or so. I grew up without a tv in the house, so my first and main memory of ET was a story book with text and images (movie stills) which I must admit I have fonder memories of than the movie. I don’t have any childhood memories of the movie itself.

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10 Things I Hate About You

I wasn’t sure how well this would hold up, but it’s actually really good fun. Funny and smart, but also appropriately silly for a Shakespeare adaptation.

What surprised me most is how clever a lot of the cinematography is for a romcom. There were so many shots that made me think “there was a safe, normal way to shoot that scene, but they went for something crazy that worked waaaay better”.

One minor subplot, with Michael wooing Mandella, seemed way too brisk, and I guessed that a lot of that story had been cut for time. A quick check on imdb cleared it up: the story revolved around Mandella attempting suicide so she could be united with Shakespeare! That would have be tonally inappropriate, but also explains why Michael dressing up as Shakespeare was appealing.

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632

I have to agree with you as that turned out to be a surprisingly good movie. I ended up seeing it because I was taking some younger cousins out to the movies as part of a birthday celebration for one of them and it was one of the few age-appropriate movies in the theater at the time. I went in with low expectations and came out pleasantly surprised.

633

Bohemian Rhapsody is super lame. Queen is a really talented, dynamic, and innovative band and it’s given the most basic ass paint-by-numbers, straight-to-TV biopic. There’s a lot of fake stuff made up for drama reasons. Rami Malek is decent, he does far better with the performance aspect than acting normal. It’s painfully obvious in a lot of ways especially hinting at Mercury’s AIDS illness and a rather embarrassing Mike Meyers cameo.

You like Queen? Watch a concert video or listen to an album. Don’t let it paint your expectations of this cause this film doesn’t deserve the music.

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It also seemingly goes out of it’s way to deny that Freddy Mercury was Bisexual, rather than Gay, which was super disappointing.

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635

No joke when he breaks up with Mary Austen, it goes as such:

Freddie: Mary, I…I think I’m bisexual.
Mary: No Freddie, you are gay!

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I bet they didn’t even include the part where Brian May does the soundtrack for Rise of the Robots.

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No mention of Flash Gordon or Highlander either.

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I saw The Last Jedi again over the weekend. I hadn’t seen it since it originally came out in theaters. When I saw it the first time, I enjoyed it, but found parts of it to be stupid and generally didn’t like what the movie did with Luke Skywalker.

Having watched the movie a second time, and knowing what would happen, I think I enjoyed it more than my first time, but my initial impressions and opinions of the movie still hold true, I’m just able to look past them. I still think the entire sub-plot with Finn and Rose was stupid and a complete waste of time. Nothing against either actor, they did a fine job, but the whole casino planet/steal the code/hack the star destroyer plot could have been done so much better. There’s also the absolutely HUGE plot hole where somehow Benecio Del Toro’s character knew somehow that the Rebels were using cloaked shuttles to escape? I still don’t get that.

Poe Dameron is still a moron, and instead of treating him like a well-meaning puppy that just needs to learn how to shit outside, Leia and Holdo should have thrown him in the brig for attempted mutiny and treason.

Still not a fan of Luke’s portrayal, but knowing how it would play out ahead of time, my hatred of his character assassination is lessened. His scenes with Rey were good.

All that being said, just like the first time I saw the movie, I absolutely LOVED the Rey/Kylo Ren interaction and the whole sub-plot with Snoke. Yes, I wish we knew more about Snoke, but every scene with Rey and Kylo was fantastic. Also, the climax of the movie with Luke providing a distraction so the Rebels could escape was pretty badass.

Overall, I’m looking forward to Episode IX, both to see where they go with the story and more importantly, to finally clear the board of the remaining original trilogy characters. I think the greatest impediment to this new trilogy was trying to shoehorn in the original trilogy cast members, as if nothing had happened since Return of the Jedi, while trying to tell a new story.

At some point, I need to rewatch Rogue One to see if I still hate that movie as much as I hated it when I first saw it. And I absolutely hated Rogue One…

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I watched the live action Speed Racer the Wachowski sisters did a few years ago. Boy that movie is dumb but obviously dumb on purpose. I had a great time watching it.

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DJ was sitting in the passenger seat when Poe was explaining to Finn and Rose the whole “Cloaked Shuttles” plan over the comm system. There’s a small cut during the conservation to show that he was listening.

The problem with Poe and Holdo’s relationship could have been handled much better, but the story required tension no matter how much sense it made.

I’m glad they got rid of Snoke as early as they did. I am sort of interested in his backstory, but that’s something novels or comics could handle. Going forward, Kylo’s in charge and it’s his show to run. I don’t know what they’re going for exactly. “Family redeems” was a big theme in the original story, but in this movie maybe they’re going more for a “Family is more than bloodlines” angle so far.

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Agreed. If I remember correctly, Poe was one of the senior officers, or at least senior surviving officers, and I can’t think of any sane reason why Leah or Holdo would’ve kept the “run to the old, abandoned rebel base” plan secret from him. A lot of the bad stuff that went down could’ve been avoided if there was simply better communication among the senior officers.

Holdo may have been a war hero and may have come up with a good plan, but this particular engagement was not one of her better days.

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Ah, I missed that part where Poe is explaining everything to Finn and Rose and the Hacker guy overhears. Just one more example of how if Poe wasn’t an idiot, fewer people would have died and the Rebellion would have been better off.

I get how this movie was about Poe learning the hard way that action isn’t always the best solution and that there’s a difference between being a hero and a leader, but the way they portrayed it was terrible. I agree that his story required some degree of tension, but he literally tried to start a military coup to take over the Rebellion. The fact that Leia just kind of forgets that and ignores that is bad writing.

I have no problem with the movie getting rid of Snoke, that scene in his throne room chamber was one of the best in the whole movie, and I loved the homage to Return of the Jedi, where Luke is trying to redeem Vader, and I agree that I love Kylo being in charge now, I just wish I knew a bit more about Snoke. With Disney in charge of Star Wars now, I don’t think we’ll have as robust an extended universe as we did before, which is both a good and bad thing.

Finally, as much as a lot of fans and even the directors seem to want to get rid of Star Wars’s focus on the Skywalkers, and their various families and lineages, from a corporate stand point, I just don’t see how Disney would get rid of the Skywalkers entirely going forward. For better or worse, the Skywalkers are pretty much synonymous with Star Wars.

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I call this concept “moron ex machina,” where the movie or TV show or book has characters act like morons to advance the plot in a specific direction.

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Not quite - he wasn’t anymore. He was demoted by Leia, meaning he’s no longer a senior officer. And it was literally punishment for him taking plans he was privy to as a senior officer and then not only modifying them without authorization because he didn’t like them, but refusing to follow orders when told to stop or follow the original plan - it would be absurd to punish him like that and then just let him in on those details as if it never happened. And there was also the problem that he was pretty openly organizing a mutiny which might provide some disincentive to sharing plans with him.

It’s a war. Nobody’s having a good day.