What MOVIE(s) have you been....seeing? watching?

Took my daughter to see SPECTRE earlier today but I can't really give an impartial review. I kept flashing back to when my dad used to take me to see Roger Moore ham it up on the screen

My expectations for SPECTRE were moderate based on the lukewarm-to-poor reviews, but it managed to fall through the floor regardless. It is, I think, if not the worst Bond movie, certainly in the same league with A View to a Kill and License to Kill--and probably worse than those because SPECTRE tries to be both a throwback and gritty and fails at both spectacularly. How this script, credited to four people (often not a good sign, and likely reflecting the involvement of even more people), could've seemed like a filmable let alone a good idea is beyond me. The only good part was seeing it in the Ziegfeld Theater in Manhattan, a real treat of a venue.

Bummer about Spectre, especially since the reboot started out with so much promise.

Bond movies are so overrated in general, even before Daniel Craig. I wish the franchise would be allowed to just end so somebody starts some new espionage franchise with fresh ideas. The Cold War has been over for decades, and Bond brand of cool is rooted in the early '60s.

I recently watched Suicide Kings, after taking a pass on it in the theater many years ago. It is a lesser director's attempt at making a Tarantino crime drama, along the lines of Pulp Fiction or Reservoir Dogs. Despite the presence of Christopher Walken, Dennis Leary, and Jay Mohr, Suicide Kings falls far short of the quality of a Tarantino movie. The quality of the acting ranges from bad to meh. The music is nothing to brag about, and the same goes for the cinematography. The exciting car escape early on is dramatic but also very annoying. The story gradually present some moderately interesting plot twists and bit of intrigue, but the overall effect is still not even as good as The Usual Suspects, another imitation Tarantino that falls short. Suicide Kings is an okay movie, but don't bother with it if you have anything good to watch.

I watched The Purge:Anarchy. It had a Warriors and Mad Max vibe. I give it 4/5. I haven't seen the original.

I really don't understand the need for a "quick reply" button.


I took the kids to see Ant Man in 3d at the dollar theater (it was four bucks apiece). It had been a long, crappy Saturday, so it was nice to be in a room laughing witha group of strangers. As soon as I got home I quit thinking about it. I'm trying to think of an analogous experience. It was a little funnier and weirder than I thought it would be, but it feels like we've reached Peak superhero, and my kids both cringed at the Stan Lee enema near the end.

stoic wrote: I watched The Purge:Anarchy. It had a Warriors and Mad Max vibe. I give it 4/5. I haven't seen the original.

Don't see the original. It was the worst movie of that year. I saw pieces of Anarchy and it was better

It was the anniversary of my dad's death last week, so he has been on my mind lately. He didn't enjoy most movies, but he was usually willing to give a movie a chance. Slapshot was one of his favorites. At the time it was in theaters, he was playing in a recreational hockey league called MOTHRR, which somehow stood for Men Over The Hill Rink Rats. It was a bunch of middle-aged guys trying to recapture their hockey-playing youth in a state better known for basketball. I watched Slapshot with him, but I was pretty young and missed a lot of what was going on in the movie.

Tonight, I finally revisited Slapshot. As somebody who completely stopped caring about sports several years ago, I have never been an especially big fan of hockey, or sports in general. So maybe I am the wrong person to declare that Slapshot is a great sports movie. But it is a very good and sometimes hilarious movie, using the lens of a small, failing sports franchise to examine a changing sport, a failing economy, a dysfunctional society, and more than anything else, violence.

When I was a kid, I thought that Paul Newman's character was the hero, and the Hanson Brothers were awesome. Now I understand that Newman was bravely playing a sociopath, and the Hanson Brothers are disgraceful goons, albeit very entertaining goons. And yet Newman's character redeems himself in small, odd ways, telling his team comforting lies, trying to get back together with his wife, and helping his teammate's wife save her marriage. All this is against a backdrop of cartoonishly escalating violence and a fictitious setting that is rich with details. There is even a bad guy who is talked about in fearful tones early on but doesn't even appear until the championship. And then there is that bizarrely triumphant striptease and victory lap by the one teammate who refuses to embrace the violence.

Slapshot is a bold and rebellious movie that could probably only have been made in the '70s. The clothes, the music, the casual lifestyle are all firmly rooted in the '70s, but the ideas and relationships are more timeless in quality. It covers a full spectrum of life, with tragedy, comedy, action, lively dialogue, and some memorable characters.

Watched All the President's Men. As a look into the Watergate scandal, it's not too great, as it's not really about the scandal itself but how Woodward and Bernstein worked the story. As a look into how Woodward and Bernstein worked the Watergate story, it's not too great, because how they did it isn't particularly gripping or interesting.

Legomancer wrote: Watched All the President's Men. As a look into the Watergate scandal, it's not too great, as it's not really about the scandal itself but how Woodward and Bernstein worked the story. As a look into how Woodward and Bernstein worked the Watergate story, it's not too great, because how they did it isn't particularly gripping or interesting.

I really like this movie. I find it really atmospheric and slightly scary. Also, I have a thing for Robert Redford, he's so fucking cool in this movie.