The Movie Thread Reloaded

[Omega]

Shang Chi was the title slapped on... I have no clue what the hell it was.

[Wrath of God]

I'm gonna say my sentiment runs quite opposite. I considered DSiMoM to be most fun from all 4th Phasers despite obvious shortcomings of scenario.
But honestly I can say one scene of Strange harnessing souls of damned was kinda more interesting thematically and visually than all the rest.
No Way Home I especially considered one of most blatant nostalgia/fan baiting movies I ever watched.

But tbh probably worst of P4 was Black Widow - ultimately bland as fuck.

[Ghostmaker]

I'm gonna say my sentiment runs quite opposite. I considered DSiMoM to be most fun from all 4th Phasers despite obvious shortcomings of scenario.
But honestly I can say one scene of Strange harnessing souls of damned was kinda more interesting thematically and visually than all the rest.
No Way Home I especially considered one of most blatant nostalgia/fan baiting movies I ever watched.

But tbh probably worst of P4 was Black Widow - ultimately bland as fuck.

I don't know what the problem is, but Scarlett Johannsen simply cannot carry a movie. I'm not going to state it's entirely her fault, but it seems like every project she's been the lead in just tends to trip and fall on its face.

[oggsmash]

  No way home was blatant fan baiting/service.  But guess what...in the entertainment business your NUMBER ONE job is to entertain the people paying your bills (fans)...the sooner satan town remembers that the sooner they can move back to doing their real job, entertaining.

[cavalier973]

Going back to (near) the beginning. Over the past several days, I showed my five-year-old a series of silent comedies, beginning with "Steamboat Bill, Jr." with Buster Keaton, then "The Kid" with Charlie Chaplin, then the climbing scene from "Safety Last" (Harold Lloyd), then "The Cameraman" (Buster Keaton), "One Week" (Keaton, again), "Sherlock Holmes, Jr." (Keaton), and "The General" (Keaton). These are all available free of charge on YouTube.

She was attentive through most of them, but said "One Week" was her favorite.

"Steamboat Bill, Jr." has the scene where a wall falls on Keaton, but he just happens to be standing just where the window was. In order to maintain believability, that wall weighed enough to kill him. It was a stunt he had done earlier in "One Week".
The story is about a big, burly steamboat captain whose son is coming home, and discovers that his son is a short weakling.

"The Kid" is my favorite Chaplain film. It's first-rate melodrama; heavy-handed on the moralizing initially (comparing an unwed mother to Jesus), but then Chaplain gets accidentally stuck with the titular kid, and the story gets going. Chaplain's character is almost completely destitute, but manages to care for the child for several years. At the climax of the film, Chaplain really sells the terror, hopelessness, and despair of a parent whose child is being taken away by child services.

"Safety Last" is the movie that has the famous image of Harold Lloyd hanging off a tower clock (there is a homage to this in "Back to the Future"; one of Doc Brown's clocks in the opening of the movie is a miniature recreation of this scene, and of course *Christopher*'Lloyd winds up hanging off a clock at the end of that movie). Harold Lloyd is, today, the least known of the three top movie comedians of the era (Chaplin and Keaton being the other two), but at the time, he had the biggest draw at the box office. His stories are usually about a plucky young man who gets in over his head, but through perseverance and a little luck, manages to achieve his goals. In "Safety Last", he leaves his home to go to New York to earn his fortune. He gets a job with a department store, and convinces his boss to hire someone to climb the building as a publicity stunt. Hijinx ensue, and Harold winds up having to climb the building himself. Some breathtaking stunt work, even though it was revealed years later that the clock scene was a stage built atop the building. I didn't see it in the available list, but "Never Weaken" is probably Loyd's second best film.

"The Cameraman" has a really good, deadly fight between Chinese gangs. Also, a monkey. The changing scene at the public pool goes on way too long, though.

"Sherlock Holmes, Jr." has a lot of interesting, innovative camera tricks. It's also the movie where you can watch Buster Keaton breaks his neck in real life (but didn't know it until years later, when his doctor was looking at some X-rays). It's the scene where the water spout knocks him off the train.

"One Week" has a newly married Buster and his bride receiving a gift of land and a house from his uncle. The house is actually a kit, which they have to put together. A rival messes up the instructions. Hilarity follows.

"The General" has Buster as "Johnny Gray", a train engineer on a Georgia railroad, when the Civil War starts. Union spies steal his train, and he proceeds to chase them down.

[jhkim]

I'm gonna say my sentiment runs quite opposite. I considered DSiMoM to be most fun from all 4th Phasers despite obvious shortcomings of scenario.
But honestly I can say one scene of Strange harnessing souls of damned was kinda more interesting thematically and visually than all the rest.
No Way Home I especially considered one of most blatant nostalgia/fan baiting movies I ever watched.

But tbh probably worst of P4 was Black Widow - ultimately bland as fuck.

To me, Dr. Strange harnessing damned souls felt like an uncreative rehash of Raimi's prior work from Evil Dead and Army of Darkness, without any effort to work it into the previous Dr. Strange themes and visuals. I loved the first Dr. Strange movie as a creative adaptation of the psychedelic visuals of the comics into live-action movie visuals. Whereas the second felt to me like Raimi lazily falling back on his old tropes.

But obviously preferences differ, and that's fine.

[Wrath of God]

I don't know what the problem is, but Scarlett Johannsen simply cannot carry a movie. I'm not going to state it's entirely her fault, but it seems like every project she's been the lead in just tends to trip and fall on its face.

Yes. But honestly considering how this film is written and filmed - even Meryl Streep would not help.

No way home was blatant fan baiting/service.  But guess what...in the entertainment business your NUMBER ONE job is to entertain the people paying your bills (fans)...the sooner satan town remembers that the sooner they can move back to doing their real job, entertaining.

I mean maybe. I was not entertained because it added extra layer of turbo-artificialness to generally quite artificial MCU.
And if that's what the people wants, then I can only hope Hollywood will stop giving that to people, so Hollywood shall bankrupt and The people will be forced to watch old movies and small indie horrors for all eterenity

To me, Dr. Strange harnessing damned souls felt like an uncreative rehash of Raimi's prior work from Evil Dead and Army of Darkness, without any effort to work it into the previous Dr. Strange themes and visuals. I loved the first Dr. Strange movie as a creative adaptation of the psychedelic visuals of the comics into live-action movie visuals. Whereas the second felt to me like Raimi lazily falling back on his old tropes.

But obviously preferences differ, and that's fine

.

I can kinda see it. But nevertheless I liked it for its own sake (and I watched Army of Darkness looong ago, so I didn't even had it's visuals in mind really).

[Lurkndog]

Going back to (near) the beginning. Over the past several days, I showed my five-year-old a series of silent comedies, beginning with "Steamboat Bill, Jr." with Buster Keaton, then "The Kid" with Charlie Chaplin, then the climbing scene from "Safety Last" (Harold Lloyd), then "The Cameraman" (Buster Keaton), "One Week" (Keaton, again), "Sherlock Holmes, Jr." (Keaton), and "The General" (Keaton). These are all available free of charge on YouTube.

Spite Marriage (1929) is also up on YouTube. Buster Keaton plays an ordinary guy infatuated with an actress, who gets the opportunity to marry her, but it's all a sham to make her old flame jealous. There is a big fight scene on a ship at the end that is pretty good.

[cavalier973]

Spite Marriage (1929) is also up on YouTube. Buster Keaton plays an ordinary guy infatuated with an actress, who gets the opportunity to marry her, but it's all a sham to make her old flame jealous. There is a big fight scene on a ship at the end that is pretty good.

Thanks; I will check it out. I am surprised I haven't heard of it, before.

Another good Keaton movie is "Seven Chances", where he has to get married by the end of the day to inherit his uncle's (or grandfather's or somebody's) fortune.

[Omega]

Finally sat through the odd little movie Arthur and the Minimois which is based on a series from France. It alternates between live action for the real world and CGI for the fae realm. It has a very Diterlizzi sort of breezy look to it and the dialog is really fast. Like one person finishes a sentence and the next character follows right after sometimes.

The setting is like REALLY chaotic and the whole tale is fantastical. In a way it has a sort of Alice in Wonderland sort of nonesense flow.

It is currently free, with ads, on youtube.

[hedgehobbit]

Took my family to see Super Mario this morning. Firstly, the movie is very light and family friendly. It won't be spawning any awkward conversations with the kids. The main downside to the movie is that it plays it very safe. There isn't much surprising or outrageous going on, just a romp through the worlds of the various Super Mario games. It feels that they didn't want to push too hard into a Nintendo Cinematic Universe and that is probably a good idea. 

I've heard that people didn't like some of the voice work. Chris Pratt was passable as Mario and Seth Rogan's Donkey Kong wasn't bad but it wasn't good. Jack Black was Jack Black.

I'd put the movie as better than Sonic but nowhere near as good as the original Lego Movie. (I understand that this is a huge range).

[Lurkndog]

I caught up with an old Hong Kong b-movie from the 90's that I hadn't seen.

It is called I Love Maria, and if you can put up with cheap practical effects, it's a lot of fun.

In the Hong Kong of the near future, a gang of master criminals called the Hero Gang commits a daring bank robbery using a 12 foot tall robot called Pioneer-1. Looking like a red Zaku from Mobile Suit Gundam, Pioneer-1 tears through the police in a whirlwind of low-budget destruction.

Meanwhile, Curly, a down-on-his-luck inventor working for the police, encounters a drunk named Whiskey in a bar. Whiskey turns out to be a former member of the Hero Gang who has parted ways with them. When Whiskey gets blackout drunk, Curly takes pity on him and lets him crash on the couch at Curly's apartment.

Back at the Hero Gang's hideout, the gang leader introduces his newest creation, Pioneer-2, a robot made to look exactly like his sister Maria. The gang leader proclaims that Maria will now live forever in robot form. The real Maria is not impressed.

The Hero Gang sends Robot Maria out to get Whiskey. After another madcap action scene, Robot Maria is destroyed when she falls several stories into a giant ventilation fan. When the police show up and try to arrest everyone, Whiskey and Curly flee in Curly's specially built supercar, with Robot Maria on board.

Hiding out in the abandoned orphanage that Whiskey grew up in, Curly repairs Robot Maria and programs her to be good. But the Hero Gang has sent Pioneer-1 to finish them all off, and a series of crazy battles ensues.

I Love Maria is a lot of fun, particularly if you like clever practical effects, and gonzo Hong Kong comedy.The effects are low budget, but they are fun, and you get a lot of them. And the movie runs at a frenetic pace, so there is rarely a dull moment.

Here is a YouTube video that covers I Love Maria as an example of the charm of practical effects.
https://youtu.be/BwJUOFItvjc

I bought the Region 1 blu-ray of I Love Maria off of eBay.

[Omega]

Speaking of. Young Detective Dee is up on YouTibe for free view for now. Some pretty good production values. Was not so keen on the supernatural side. But others may like that.

I saw the first TV series which was very well done Magistrate Dee.

Heads WILL roll.

[Thornhammer]

News that Amazon is going to start firing up production on some MGM properties that have laid low for a bit.

Stargate - movie, then a new TV show. I'm happy to hear this.

Robocop(!) - new TV show, then a movie. I can't see this going any way other than very poorly.

[cavalier973]

News that Amazon is going to start firing up production on some MGM properties that have laid low for a bit.

Stargate - movie, then a new TV show. I'm happy to hear this.

Robocop(!) - new TV show, then a movie. I can't see this going any way other than very poorly.

My immediate thought was a remake of "Gone With the Wind" and the "Andy Hardy" movies.