Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Good, if a bit predictable.

Just watched Ben Hur (the new one). Chariot race was not bad. Galley slave sequence was not bad. Rest was mediocre with a great big dollop of God-bothering at the end which the film could have done without. The actor playing Jesus was more like Zorro.

Sully

It was very good!

Cowboys And Aliens.


A surprisingly good movie. There are a few problems here and there but that doesn't affect the movie that much. It has bits of funny moments which really help the serious moments without overstepping. I love how it shows enemies uniting to defeat a common enemy. But unlike other stories, uniting actually had a positive effect in the conclusion of the movie. The acting was good, the story was good, though there were few awkward and poorly written moments and the action was top notch. You literally get what title says, though I love how it still plays out as a classic western. A 3.5 out of 5 stars in my book.

I watched "Bridget Jones's Baby" and you know I liked the movie because it wasn't stupid - like most movies about pregnancies are, but they rather decided to take a bit provocative way. For instance it reminded me what Alan Alda said in his autobiography, when he was a teen during the mass priest started attacking some movie playing then in theaters. According to Alda it was a light comedy adapted from a Broadway play. A group of Catholic watchdogs, called the Legion of Decency, had decided that seeing this movie would corrupt everyone, including adults, because it dealt with an unmarried woman who was pregnant. For proof how "disgraceful" the film was priest read a line from a movie that went: "'You’re pregnant?’ one character says. 'A drugstore on every corner in New York, and you’re pregnant?'"
After that whole congregation had to stand up and swear that they would never see this film or any film banned by the Legion of Decency, under pain of mortal sin. Everybody stood but Alan was brave enough and refused.

Or the story John Waters told many times how, when he was a kid, nuns in school were telling them that they will burn in Hell if they saw a movie called "Mom and Dad" (1945).He wandered what could be so bad about mom and dad to send you to hell and he found out that birth scene featured frontal female nudity.

So in that way "Bridget Jones's Baby" is a good movie: that they use taboo of woman's body and women so she's pregnant and doesn't know who's the father and guys kind of don't mind, they even cuss in churches and Anglicanism is portrayed as decoration to en everyday life in England. That they're on the nose with it is shown in the scene where she has a mom that is conservative and pushing for some small political liability, but she mocks her and in the next scene her mom is changed.

Jason Bourne

I went on a bit of a horror binge the last couple of days.  I'm going to list these in order of least-like to most-liked...

Invoked: A found-footage film that presents us with a group of young people that are so dull and unlikeable that you quickly find yourself rooting for the ghost to win.  And since the beginning of the movie informs us that they were never found, you realize that the ghost does win.  Influenced in part by the Grave Encounters franchise, from the looks of it.  If you hated Grave Encounters, you'll hate this movie even more.

Bleed: Horror movie that goes seriously off the rails after a relatively un-scary first 2/3rds.  Not only do we get bland and unsympathetic characters, but the plot just disintegrates near the end so that we don't know who the bad guys are, who the good guys are, and most importantly we really don't have a clue just what the fuck is going on.

The Presence: (German film w/subtitles) Three young people decide to spend a few days in an old haunted castle and it goes about as well as can be expected.  The alternate title to this film should have been "90 minutes of ghosts banging on the walls" because there wasn't really much aside from that.  There is a clear "Paranormal Acitivity" influence here.  If you hated Paranormal Activity, you'll hate this movie even more.  If you loved Paranormal Activity, you'll hate this movie even more than that.

The Damned: A decent take on the body-hopping demon trope and another movie that takes too much time trying to make me care about its characters and failing to do so, but once the action starts it moves at a brisk pace.  Still, when a movie cannot make me care about the characters it loses the ability to scare me aside from the occasional jump-scare, which this film happily uses very sparingly.

The Dead Room: Holy shit, a decent horror movie!  This one wastes little time setting up the plot and the characters and builds a decent mystery with a nice twist ending.  The motives of the 'spirit' that haunts the house become a bit confusing until the end and I think it hurts the film a bit by making it seem like they're using convenient plot devices until the big reveal.  But it's worth the time investment.

and finally...

Tucker & Dale vs Evil: A funny send-up of a few horror genres where two hilbillies working on their 'vacation home' deep in the woods run across a group of obnoxious teens who fear that they're being stalked by the harmless bumpkins.  There's a good thirty minutes or so of pure hilarity before the movie slows down a bit to resolve the plot, which lets the air out of the whole thing.  But that thirty minutes is worth the price of admission.

(December 14, 2016 at 12:31 am)Jörmungandr Wrote: Jason Bourne

Was it any good?

Rogue one!

Glengarry Glen Ross. One of my favourite movies.

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(December 15, 2016 at 7:15 pm)Jello Wrote: Rogue one!

Thoughts?