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I Just Watched... (Movies/TV/DVD)

Brocklock said:
I watched The Last Showgirl and I don't understand the raves for Pam Anderson's performance. She had one or two good scenes, but was mostly just herself. Her character was grating me at times and nowhere near as entertaining as Randy The Ram for a self destructive character type. I never realized how irritating her voice is until this movie. Not an impressive performance. Movie was saved by the fun supporting cast. The filming was kind of awful. Lighting was terrible and Gia Coppola nepobaby tried for a Dogme 95 thing, but it really hurt the visual style of the film. Jamie Lee was really good, but pretty much is playing her character from The Bear mixed with Tan Mom. Brenda Song was fun too as the snarky showgirl. Didn't care for Carrie Fisher's daughter at all. Her acting was wooden. Kiernan Shipka (The fuck with this mad libs name?) wasn't given much. I like her more when she plays creepy and unsettling like The Blackcoat's Daughter and Longlegs.

I thought the best performance in the movie came from Dave Bautista. Probably his best performance yet and he was pretty much the heart of the movie. Great mullet too. I think he should've had some oscar buzz for Supporting Actor for this honestly. It's a much deeper performance than Pam's.

Movie was pretty much a ripoff of The Wrestler. Lots of padding too for a 87 minute movie. "Total Eclipse Of The Heart" dance/montage scene was a waste of time.

5.5/10
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I just watched this and I have to agree. Pam wasn't bad but her performance didn't really stand out. Jamie Lee Curtis and Brenda Song outshined her.
 
So Independence Day: Resurgence (2016) gets a bit of a bad rap, doesn't it? I mean, I wouldn't call it a good movie, but it's far better than people have made it out to be. It just feels rushed, like they had a season's worth of a TV series ready to rock and had to cram it all into a 2-hour runtime.

I appreciated the Umbutu/Floyd pairing, really liked seeing Julius take over a grandfatherly role for the kids that rescue him (including Joey King and little baby McKenna Grace!), and actually loved the design of the post-invasion tech that was developed since the War of '96 because it fit the idea of retro-fitting alien technology into current designs. Were the new space-faring fighter jets just re-designs of F-23s? Sure, but it worked.

Even the additional lore, of the Harvesters and all of the alien races they've conquered, and the design of the Queen, worked enough for me. It was handled better in the first, where nobody knew anything besides what was in front of them, but it's not like the original is some brilliant masterpiece.

Nowhere near great, but oddly prescient in how crammed, half-baked, and rushed that major blockbusters would come to feel in the following years. It almost deserves a re-assessment due to that. 5.5/10
 
Youth N Asia said:
On episode 8 of Yellowjackets. I’m enjoying it, but I realized I don’t think I’ve ever liked Juliette Lewis in anything. I think she’s especially bad in this.
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Finally finishing up Season 1 of this on Netflix. Apparently Season 2 is coming July 1st (I think they just finished? Season 3).
 
Trainwreck: The Astroworld Tragedy was pretty interesting as somebody who mainly caught the news after the fact (obviously) and seeing everything that culminated almost immediately from the start on Day 1.

Copycat (1995) starring Sigourney Weaver & Holly Hunter
Pretty solid thriller from the mid-90s clearly influenced by SOTL (hard not to be) and with a really great performance from Weaver playing a criminal psychologist who ends up agoraphobic for 13 months after a killer she went on the witness stand against tries to kill her. Then SF police, led by Holly Hunter, are in pursuit of a serial killer copycatting classic crime scenes/killers and they turn to Weaver for assistance.

I really only remembered Harry Connick Jr (the killer who tries to kill Weaver initially) and he still steals every scene he's in. Such a great little gem of a performance. One of those 90s police thrillers that still holds up really well with a solid enough plot, good set pieces/execution, and a few great performances.

6.5/10
 
Just to clarify, I've loved Lilo & Stitch since it came out. My high school sweetheart was Disney-obsessed and made me watch it, despite my objections, and I found it to be thoroughly entertaining all throughout, with Stitch being such a great little agent of mischief and chaos that I can't help but love the little guy.

On top of that? Stitch is the first Disney character that Junior took to. He didn't care about meeting anyone else, not Sully or Ralph or Mickey or Goofy (his favorite stuffy), but when Stitch came out? He was all about him. So, of course, I'm biased even further.

All of which is to predicate that I think Lilo & Stitch (2025) is the rare live action remake of a Disney movie that actually works for me, but I'm not sure if it's because of my own personal affinity for the character or because the movie succeeds on its own.

Maia Kealoha (Lilo) does as admirable a job as she can, and Sydney Agudong delivers with what she has, but it seems the story choices oddly don't let the relationship between the sisters build as thoroughly as they did in the original animated feature. I greatly appreciated seeing Tia Carrere, who voiced Nani in the original, showing up as a social worker, even if it meant that the role of Cobra (Ving Rhames in the original, Courtney B. Vance here) was turned from hard-ass government agent to generic bureaucrat.

The less said about Zach Galifianakis as Jumba versus the voice work of the late David Ogden Stiers? The better. Galifianakis feels like he's sleepwalking through any line where he isn't in a "human" disguise, made all the worse by the choice of Pleakley (Billy Magnussen here, Kevin MacDonald originally) feeling true to the source.

...and the excision of Gantu was dumb. I won't lie.

But what truly shines here? It's Stitch. There's more weight to the chaos, more humor to his insanity, and more heart to his appreciation of his new family.

Yes, even though there are story elements from the original that were written out, like Stitch's love of the Ugly Duckling story and unspoken desire to find a family, this one does a bang-up job of translating the character to the silver screen for a new audience.

It ain't the original, but it also isn't bad. 7/10 from me, and my son's first theater-going experience being a hit definitely helped.
 
Watched "Warfare" a few days ago. One of the most realistic depictions of modern combat I've seen I think. I appreciate that it didn't force a narrative or anything it let you just take in the battle and see for yourself how pointless and wasteful it was.
 
Warfare is one of the better movies I've seen so far this year along with Sinners and, maybe just me, but Magazine Dreams has been burned into my brain since I saw it. Majors is a horrible person, but his performance has stuck with me, especially towards the end.



I just finished the latest Nic Cage movie called The Surfer and it was way different than I was expecting. Gave me vibes to the crazy 70's Aussie movie Wake In Fright at times, and it is straight bizarre at points. Cage starts reserved and then gives you want you want. Loved all the scuzzy villains too. Good time and much better than the director's previous movie Vivarium, although still maybe too weird for a lot of people. I've mostly enjoyed this Cage renaissance run. Even something like Dream Scenario which got a mixed reception. The weakest of his recent run post Mandy to me is probably Longlegs.

7.5/10
 
KPop: Demon Hunters on Netflix is a ton of fun with it probably being the new Nimona for Netflix. The KPop band Twice supply the songs and they are all really good and catchy. The plot is surprisingly solid with the girl group Huntrix (Rumi, Mira, Zoey who's my fav) being part of a generation of girl groups that keep demons & its leader Gwi-Ma in check from invasion through songs but a group of demons, led by 400 year old Jinu, create their own boy band in Saja Boys to steal their fans and help break through to invade Earth.

The songs are the highlight, of course, but there's some great animation (similar to the style of Disney's Turning Red), entertaining fight scenes (one in a bath house particularly stands out), funny humor, and legitimate heartfelt dramatic moments.

8/10
 
Watched "Mobland" the last couple days and it was great and more importantly hysterical. Pierce Brosnan and Helen Mirren were hilarious. Tom Hardy is much better as the stoic straight man than doing comedy in "Venom". Great cast.
 
Superman. Besides reminding me that Michael Ian Black exists, which was random, I enjoyed it. It's actually Superman and not Zach Snyder's Ann Randian nightmare person.
 
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Smues said:
Superman. Besides reminding me that Michael Ian Black exists, which was random, I enjoyed it. It's actually Superman and not Zach Snyder's Ann Randian nightmare person.
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Superman is a really good movie. There's some flaws, as expected, but I think some of the criticism was overblown and thoroughly enjoyed it a lot. The
Supergirl
cameo was a pleasant surprise and I thought Nicholas Hoult did a good job as Lex Luthor though he kind of felt like he stepped off the Smallville set. David Corenswet was great as Superman, solid-ish as Clark Kent but we didn't get a lot of that side of the character.

The Justice Gang was fun and I can see Rachel Brosnahan going either way with Lois Lane in the future (reminding me a bit of Gwyneth Paltrow as Pepper Potts where I thought she was great in the 1st movie and then kind of got scaled down in future movies).

8/10
 
cobainwasmurdered said:
You thought Paltrow got scaled DOWN in the future movies?
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To be very fair, it's been a long time since I've seen Iron Man 2 and 3 but I also don't remember much from them outside of the villain stuff for the most part and it was a time when a lot of the MCU stuff was starting to bleed together for me (2010-2017 was like prime CA, Thor, Iron Man, Spider-Man solo stuff once a year while being all inter-connected and tying into the Avengers stuff) outside of the really big Avengers style team-up stuff.
 
I was so pleasantly surprised by Bad Boys: Ride or Die (2024) that I'm actively going to push for at least one more of these.

After 2020's Bad Boys for Life brought the franchise back after a 17-year rest, Detective Mike Lowrey (Will Smith) and retired Detective Marcus Burnett (Martin Lawrence) find themselves at an odd place in life. Marcus suffers a heart attack during Mike's wedding to Christine (Melanie Liburd), the PT that nursed him back to health after nearly dying in For Life, and has a vision of the deceased Captain Howard (Joe Pantoliano) that hits a switch in his brain to uncover a grand conspiracy between the Miami PD and the Colombian cartels.

Involved in the conspiracy is McGrath (Eric Dane), an omnipresent terror that actively seeks to frame Lowrey and Burnett as the ones who orchestrated Captain Howard's assassination at the hands of Armando (Jacob Scipio), the illegitimate son of Lowrey. Hot on the tail of everything is Captain Howard's daughter Judy (Rhea Seehorn), a US Marshall that has vowed to gun Armando down if she ever finds him on the street.

Wow, that's all very convoluted, and yet it works the best out all of the sequels. The tone balances well between the "serious" moments, like Lowrey's new issues of irregular panic attacks brought on by the stress of now having a family that can be harmed, and the hilarious, like each time Marcus spins a yarn about things he saw when he was dying. This is the funniest Marcus is outside of the ecstasy scene in II. There are callbacks to each prior film, with characters from both Bad Boys II and For Life returning to get involved in the action.

And speaking of action, the directing duo of Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah NAIL IT. The action is hectic but never so much as to lose track of where every character is, vicious but never ultraviolent, and hilarious but never treated as a throwaway gag. This is some of the finest western action directing since the first John Wick, not something I'd say lightly.

This is a modern twist on the original recipe, never expanding too far into the Michael Bay absurdity that II relished in but leaving enough of its taste to satiate.

Oh, and Marcus finally learns the words to the song. 7.5/10
 
HarleyQuinn said:
Superman is a really good movie. There's some flaws, as expected, but I think some of the criticism was overblown and thoroughly enjoyed it a lot. The
Supergirl
cameo was a pleasant surprise and I thought Nicholas Hoult did a good job as Lex Luthor though he kind of felt like he stepped off the Smallville set. David Corenswet was great as Superman, solid-ish as Clark Kent but we didn't get a lot of that side of the character.

The Justice Gang was fun and I can see Rachel Brosnahan going either way with Lois Lane in the future (reminding me a bit of Gwyneth Paltrow as Pepper Potts where I thought she was great in the 1st movie and then kind of got scaled down in future movies).

8/10
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I love this movie to death.

Maybe we need a DCU thread like the marvel thread or to make the Marvel thread apply to both?
 
Big Papa Paegan said:
I was so pleasantly surprised by Bad Boys: Ride or Die (2024) that I'm actively going to push for at least one more of these.

After 2020's Bad Boys for Life brought the franchise back after a 17-year rest, Detective Mike Lowrey (Will Smith) and retired Detective Marcus Burnett (Martin Lawrence) find themselves at an odd place in life. Marcus suffers a heart attack during Mike's wedding to Christine (Melanie Liburd), the PT that nursed him back to health after nearly dying in For Life, and has a vision of the deceased Captain Howard (Joe Pantoliano) that hits a switch in his brain to uncover a grand conspiracy between the Miami PD and the Colombian cartels.

Involved in the conspiracy is McGrath (Eric Dane), an omnipresent terror that actively seeks to frame Lowrey and Burnett as the ones who orchestrated Captain Howard's assassination at the hands of Armando (Jacob Scipio), the illegitimate son of Lowrey. Hot on the tail of everything is Captain Howard's daughter Judy (Rhea Seehorn), a US Marshall that has vowed to gun Armando down if she ever finds him on the street.

Wow, that's all very convoluted, and yet it works the best out all of the sequels. The tone balances well between the "serious" moments, like Lowrey's new issues of irregular panic attacks brought on by the stress of now having a family that can be harmed, and the hilarious, like each time Marcus spins a yarn about things he saw when he was dying. This is the funniest Marcus is outside of the ecstasy scene in II. There are callbacks to each prior film, with characters from both Bad Boys II and For Life returning to get involved in the action.

And speaking of action, the directing duo of Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah NAIL IT. The action is hectic but never so much as to lose track of where every character is, vicious but never ultraviolent, and hilarious but never treated as a throwaway gag. This is some of the finest western action directing since the first John Wick, not something I'd say lightly.

This is a modern twist on the original recipe, never expanding too far into the Michael Bay absurdity that II relished in but leaving enough of its taste to satiate.

Oh, and Marcus finally learns the words to the song. 7.5/10
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After doing some digging, I realize the same team directed For Life. A massive amount of respect needs to be shown to them for improving on their formula in a similar way that Richard Donner did when making Lethal Weapon 2.
 
Finally got around to watching "The Menu" last night. Should have watched it sooner. Really fun movie with some great performances. We also watched "Mickey 17" which was good but could have been so much better.
 
Watched Poltergeist for the first time since I was a teenager. I remember liking it back then, but honestly it's one of my favorite movies I've watched in forever.
 
Dangerous Animals starring Jai Courtnay has been getting some hype online and good to great reviews and I was a little let down. Jai was awesome and much more suited to playing a hulking psycho than a generic tough guy hero. But, it was a one man show pretty much. The discount Jennifer Lawrence that was the lead was really bad at times. Some of her deliveries were making me laugh. Her character was kind of grating too. And, the script was a mess, and some of the effects were on par with Shark Attack 3.

I've seen people say this is one of the best shark movies since Jaws and it's probably not even in the top 5 or so. I'd take Deep Blue Sea, The Shallows, Open Water, The Reef, and 47 Meters Down, off the top of my head, over this movie. Jaws 2 is also better. Just don't get the hype for this one other than Jai Courtney.

5/10
 
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The entire station of co-workers (and myself) have been watching The Hunting Wives on Netflix. It's a risque, entertaining little murder-mystery with a lot of well know actresses and actors. Almost an adult version of a CW Teen Drama but done (sort of?) better.
 
I found Materialists really dull. I'm not as down on Dakota Johnson's acting as a lot of the internet, but she was really miscast and her line deliveries were so flat. l get that it was kind of the point of her character during her first few scenes, but she was still vacant and monotone in her heartfelt scenes. Kind of tanked the movie for me and she didn't have much chemistry with Chris Evans. Anne Hathaway would've been better in this part. I saw that Jodie Comer was the first choice and had to drop out, and she also would've been much better than Dakota. I didn't really buy Chris Evans as a struggling actor either and his character was pretty blah.

It was at least 20 minutes too long. And, I found the opening and closing scenes so pretentious. Pedro was really good and charismatic, but not in it as much as you would want. The cinematography and score were probably the highlight of the movie. It was well shot and technically made, but I found it so boring for most of the screentime.

4/10

28 Years Later is one I want to watch again. I read people online hating the second half and loving the first half, but I think I'm one of the few that prefers the batshit insane second half. Aaron Taylor Johnson was okay, but there is something hammy and theatrical about the way he delivers lines that I just can't stand. He didn't stick out as much as in Nosferatu. Focusing on Spike the kid was a smart choice and the child actor was fantastic. Jodie Comer did the best with what she had to work with, but still felt a tad wasted. The ending was kind of awesome and hilarious. I laughed pretty hard and Danny Boyle movies tend to have drastic tonal shifts and crazy shit. Took me a bit to get used to the shaky cam and quick cuts again, but once I got on board I really enjoyed this movie.

7.5/10
 
American Splendor is still my favorite comic book movie. Hadn't seen it in at least 15 years, and maybe it's because I'm older or something but it hit very different now.
 
I had LDP watch the Town for the first time ever last night. How she could be from Massachusetts and never seen it is beyond me. Now she realizes why I love Affleck when he puts forth any effort at all.
 
Started up Beyond the Bar on Netflix and am liking it. It's a Korean show centered around a group of associates joining the Personal Litigation department of the Yullim law firm. The lead female is good and it reminds of a bit of Extraordinary Attorney Woo mixed with something like Suits.
 
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