The Last Movie You Watched

[no one]

Just rewatched Pale Rider.

I don't think they know how to make anything worth watching anymore.

[Athene]

I've never bothered with any of the movies in the Fast & Furious franchise; The series strikes me as monotonous tripe.

I'm thinking about watching Hobbs and Shaw, though. It has Idris Elba in it.  
And Jason Statham.
That's a double dose of some pretty righteous eye-candy, actually.

Might warrant sitting through, if there's some semi-nudity and chestesis.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Robin Hood (2010, the one with Russell Crowe).

I didn't hate it nearly as much as I expected.  It was well shot, the acting was good, and the crashy-bangy-swordy bits were very well done.

But it played so fast and loose with both the history and the legend, I wonder why they bothered to call it 'Robin Hood' at all.  There's really no connection with the classic Robin Hood story until the very end of the film.  For the rest of it, it seemed to be just one of those pseudo-historical dramas.

6/10

Boru

Have you seen the new one?          

The less said about that, the better.

To my mind, this remains the best of all possible Robin Hoods:





Boru

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I've never bothered with any of the movies in the Fast & Furious franchise; The series strikes me as monotonous tripe.

I'm thinking about watching Hobbs and Shaw, though. It has Idris Elba in it.  
And Jason Statham.
That's a double dose of some pretty righteous eye-candy, actually.

Might warrant sitting through, if there's some semi-nudity and chestesis.

Boss Lady and I had fun with the Hobbs and Shaw movie. She more than I. Brainless fun is fun.

[Rev. Rye]

Yesterday, I found out about a short film through Diamanda Hagan, called Pax Masculina. It's basically a dystopian short about a world where the United States has been taken over by a misogynistic totalitarian dictatorship and the suffragettes have turned into a paramilitary force (and are still called suffragettes when NOBODY has the right to vote).

Review:




Actual Short:

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In case you're wondering why I put the actual short in hide tags, well, though it seems like it can be easily be treated as a movie about female triumph over misogyny that's just really dropped the ball, this is actually one of those movies that gets more disgusting once you read about it.

• Writer/director/producer John Scamehorn has something like 30 sexual harrassment complaints against him, with at least circumstantial evidence of more. This is objectively horrible, but one of my favourite films was directed by a man who's on record as having raped a 13-year-old girl, so, in and of itself, this isn't something that makes me want to not watch films.
  
• That reading where it's merely a feminist parable that's just incompetent at making its points? Apparently, at one point, he publicised it on Return of Kings with an article called “What the Western World Would Look Like If Women Were Never Granted The Right To Vote." And for those of us who don't know, Return of Kings is the kind of misogynist website where... fun fact: I once looked at it and found this article about Lolita, arguing that Humbert's main problems are actually the few redeeming qualities he had (embellished to make himself look good or not).
  
• You know how a third of the movie is devoted to a hanging of a resistance leader? That's because it's Scamehorn's big fetish. One of these accusations against him includes, "a large archive of photos of OU students, local actresses and their relatives collected by Scamehorn. Many of the alleged photos are said to be cropped and doctored in a way that it appears the subject is being strangled or hung in a noose."
  

If only he had fetishes that aren't horrible and he could create films that produce, like a world where women are roughly divided into two categories: sandal girls and barefooters (and many of latter are tough enough that they can walk on broken glass and not flinch) and foot fetishes are normal and nobody bats an eyelash at being told they have pretty feet. Sort of like Spectre in Big Fish, except it’s just the girls who go around with their toes exposed.

[EgoDeath]

Just watched American History X for the umpteenth time. Edward Norton is an amazing actor.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Watching the second half of "Gettysburg", the TBS miniseries from the 90s. Pickett's Charge (synonym for pointless slaughter) coming up.

[Rev. Rye]

This week in the Deep Hurting Project: Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2. The original was briefly the worst film I'd ever seen that wasn't officially part of the Deep Hurting Project (at least until it was added to the SO Bad It's Horrible Film list)

• Well, the opening is worse ear rape than the original, focusing on crying and then babbling.  And then they're supposed to be talking and the effects look even worse than in the first movie, and they look like the mouths are fake and their body language looks an alarming bit like Michael J. Fox's tardive diskinesia.
  
• Also, I know these are supposed to be geniuses, but why are they conversant in the Cold War?
  
  
  
• So, the main character is The Kahuna, a super baby who hasn't aged since the 1960s. Thing is: that's not a fucking baby! I was going to say he was a kindergartener at least, but then I looked it up and discovered his actor (well, actors) were closer to TEN. And they're the same triplets who played Sly and Whit in the original. And even here, his voice seems to be clearly dubbed over even though they're clearly old enough to talk.
  
• How is "duck" the appropriate word for dodging a turbo-powered baby buggy?
  
• What the fuck happened to Jon Voight? His right-wing politics only go so far in explaining why he keeps doing this shit. He was nominated for four Oscars and even won once. And yet, he was also in Getaway and also the Bratz movie, which I have to admit is fucking hilarious.
  
• Nobody can act in this movie, not even Oscar winning actors.
  
• Fucking Hell, that anti-corporate website looks shitty even by Web 2.0 standards.
  
• So, why are they suddenly on board with interrogating a baby?
  
• Okay, so there's this jock and he's being tutored by this college student who looks like a younger and blonder Shelley Duvall, and it turns out she was actually in the Bratz movie too (playing Chloe, the least interesting of the four heroines). Who the fuck else was in this shit and the Bratz movie?  A line producer, a regular producer, and a sound man (who's done everything from legitimate Hollywood blockbusters to pornos). Why did I think this would be more interesting?
  
• So, there's a character called Muggles the Frog? Let's hope Nancy Stouffer doesn't hear about this. Also, that's not a fucking frog.
  
• Why does The Kahuna have his own Willy Wonka cave? And why isn't this more insane? And why is not-Shelley-Duvall so blase about this?
  
• And they're superheroes now? Fucking really? It's like Bob Clark's just given up on creating any coherent story out of this.
  
• So, the jock kid is in on the whole Big Kahuna thing, and he's also on Skyping terms with Whoopi Goldberg, O-Town, and fucking Dubya. It's at this point I realise I can only say four words about this film: "Why the fuck not?"
  
• So the Kahuna is apparently a super solider in the same age cohort as Steve Rogers. Why the fuck not?
  
• And the glowing green liquid that looks the same as the fountain of youth serum is an "all-natural formula" that interacts with his "unique physiology". Why the fuck not?
  
• And they give Not-Shelley-Duvall a new dress almost instantly and makes her look less like Shelley Duvall. Why the fuck not?
  
• And Jon Voigt starts a countdown at FIFTY-FIVE. Why the fuck not?
  
• And the Kahuna's laser beams hit just the exact spot they needed to make him vanish. Why the fuck not?
  
• And the babies create their super plan immediately without knowing what they can or should do. Why the fuck not?
  
• And being a bouncy ball is a superpower. Why the fuck not?
  
• And one of the babies defeats two of John Voight's goons by turning them gay. Why the fuck not?
  
• And John Voight and the Kahuna are brothers. Why the fuck not?
  
• And the DVD they used as a McGuffin was entirely pointless, since the program, the broadcast hijacking and the message were independent of it. Why the fuck not?
  
• And mind control can be used to promote free will. Why the fuck not?
  
• And the Kahuna leaves on a Casablanca reference. Why the fuck not?
  
• And somehow the Jock recognises his  mother instantly despite not having seen her since he was an infant. Why the fuck not?
  
• What better way to take over the world than television? What about the Internet? This was in 2004, it's not like the Internet was an unknown commodity at this point.
  
• One million to the 14th power. One in a long scale Quattuordecillion.
  

Well, this movie is dumb enough that it got me to shut my brain off, more than can be said for the original. So, it's got the "not total cancer" award for me. And now I just remembered I forgot to do the awards for the last few go-arounds. Hopefully, I'll remember when I do the youth film for this go-around.

[Rev. Rye]

This week in the Deep Hurting Project, The Identical. So, Elvis fans might know about how Elvis had a stillborn twin called Jesse Garon. So, imagine what would happen if Jesse survived. So, this group of Messianic Jews created a movie based around that premise, with the "dead" twin being adopted by a preacher, and he grows into an Elvis Impersonator. Except he's not Elvis; not only have the names been changed, but, well, I'll get to it.

• The opening is normal enough, with Not-Elvis looking at cotton fields as he drives through, even if he does look like Joseph Fiennes in that cancelled TV special where he played Michael Jackson. And then he sees what appear to be slaves (well, technically, sharecroppers) in black and white, and I legitimately did not know you could fuck up black and white cinematography in this age this badly. It actually does get better after it goes to colour, but it's still rough going.
  
• "Blacks and Whites, Jews and Gentiles, all equal in the eyes of the Lord!" A remarkably progressive sentiment for a revival preacher in the Jim Crow South. It's surprising he didn't get run out of town on a rail. To be fair, it's clear that Ray Liotta's actually trying to put out a good performance in this stinker. I take him for granted in Goodfellas and even with this, he's not phoning it in. 
  
• The music sounds like shit. It all sounds like lawyer-friendly versions of legitimate rock songs, and they even do this for banjo licks that want so badly to be "Foggy Mountain Breakdown." And the song Ryan uses as "his song" with his love interest sounds a lot like Weird Al's "One More Minute." And then, the music gets a lot more out of step with what Elvis was doing, with one sounding a lot like it came out of Rumours-era Fleetwood Mac. In 1967.
  
• "I Love Beer." Truly the spirit of Coleman Francis is guiding this movie.
  
• Jonah did listen to the Lord's call. He just decided he didn't want to follow through with it. A seminarian should know this.
  
• So, Ryan stalks his girlfriend after leaving the army. She's already taken, and he finds out about that, and he shows up to her apartment to serenade her, and she calls the cops. And then in the next scene they're married.
  
• 72 Minutes in, Ryan's manager says "there's only one Elvis." So, Elvis still exists in this universe? And somehow, Colonel Tom Parker didn't sue Drexel "The Dream" Hemsley into oblivion?
  
  
  
• City of Peace Records, just like the film company that financed this movie.
  
• Also, there's a brief scene where Ray Liotta talks about the Six Days War and how important it is, and it's just shoved in there randomly. It's like, well, I once wrote a story in review form and, in it, out of nowhere, the writer decides that the need for ritual purity is paramount, and they decide to fuck bears (because that's part of the author's religion). And this sermon on the Six Days' War feels like that. It has a scene devoted to it and it's never mentioned again. With that and the sudden revelation that Hemsley was Jewish, it just looks like they're trying to shoehorn Judaism into it.
  
• And the letter from the Hemsleys is laid over footage from the first 12 minutes, and it just looks lazy.
  
• And goddammit, the last 20 minutes of the movie really fucking drags. It just keeps going on and it never stops.
  
• So, that opening shot of Drexel Hemsley, it turns out he died years before that scene happens. And when Ryan drives through the old family home, it's on a motorcycle. And while Mr. Hemsley has a limo, Ryan never rides in it. A good opportunity for a bookend that never happens. Dafuq?
  
• And we finally end with a copywritten song: a cover of Ringo Starr's "It Don't Come Easy."
  

This was going to go into more detail, but about 30 minutes in, my computer crashed and I lost the work I put into writing the first version. And it took 15 minutes for it to reach a condition where it wasn’t at “100% disk.”

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Just rewatched Pale Rider.

I don't think they know how to make anything worth watching anymore.

THAT was a fine film.

Boru