What Have You Watched Recently?

[Ternaugh]

The Great Race: 1965 Blake Edwards film starring Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon and Natalie Wood in a race from New York to Paris. The movie inspired the Hanna-Barbera cartoon, Wacky Races. I like old comedies like this, but YMMV. (HBOmax)

 

King's Man: Set in the early part of the 20th Century, this prequel to the Kingsman movies has a decidedly darker tone. I enjoyed it, even if the professional critics didn't. (Hulu)

[Pattern Ghost]

On 2/16/2022 at 12:10 AM, Old Man said:

Jessica Jones Season 1 Episode 2: All these characters are really likeable.  That's so weird.  Except Kilgrave, he seems like kind of a dick.

 

What? Killgrave is a great guy. The best!

[Pariah]

4 hours ago, Pattern Ghost said:

What? Killgrave is a great guy. The best!

 

Comment. Of. The. Day.

 

Well played, PG.

[Old Man]

Jessica Jones Season 1 Episode 4: Well, I guess attempted murder is one way to get your crush's attention.

 

Jessica Jones Season 1 Episode 5: Didn't think Malcolm would figure into the plot so soon.

 

Jessica Jones Season 1 Episode 6: This show keeps fast forwarding to the parts I expect to be saved for the last couple of episodes.  Poor Luke.

 

Also, I was wrong about Kilgrave being a dick.  He's so much more than that.

[Bazza]

Double dick? 

[slikmar]

Kilgrave is such a great villain that in a lot of ways, he was still the villain in the second series.

[tkdguy]

My PBS station is replaying the BBC production of the Wallander series. Nice to see it from the beginning.

[Joe Walsh]

We finished a few Hulu series over the weekend.

 

Dopesick: This was the hardest to watch, but it was the best of the bunch. It's hard to look directly at even one tiny aspect of our current reality.

 

Nine Perfect Strangers: This one was by turns strange, funny, disturbing and silly. But overall, it was worth watching, and some of the characters were so well done that they deserve their own series.

 

Marvel's Hit-Monkey: This animated series was well worth watching. Like NPS, above, it was strange, funny, disturbing, and silly. But also very well done, with some great plot twists.

 

[death tribble]

The Pit and the Pendulum

One of the Vincent Price and Roger Corman movies. Even if you can see how cheap the movie is, Price's performance keeps you hooked. A man comes to his brother-in-law's house as his sister has supposedly recently died. Then the haunting starts. If you have not seen this, I will not say anymore. Well worth seeing

 

The Superbowl 2022 edition

The Rams vs the Bengals was a lot closer than some games. I was not invested in either side as I have been in the past such as with the Bills, the Redskins, the Packers or the 49ers. The half time show did not outstay its welcome. I liked the whole thing and I feel sorry for the Bengals.

 

Juggernaut

A liner has a number of bombs planted on it and a ransom of £500,000 is demanded to defuse (over $1,000,000 at the exchange rate of the time). Richard Harris as a navy bomb disposal expert leads a team to the liner which is suffering in the bad weather. Omar Sharif is the captain of the liner. Anthony Hopkins is the police officer looking for the person who planted the bombs. If you have not seen it, worth a look.

 

Paris, Texas

It has been a long time since this was last on. Had never seen it (1980s film) and it is really good. I think I needed to be older in order to appreciate it. Harry Dean Stanton, Natassja Kinski and Harry Dean Stanton in what amounts to a road movie. A man who has been missing for 4 years is reunited with his son and then do they look for his wife. Quite incredible. Not an action movie or a comedy so its audience is possibly a problem.

 

Burnt Offerings

This is an unusual horror as there is very little gore but an awful lot of menace. Oliver Reed, Karen Black and Bette Davis star as a family who rent a house for the Summer for a snip. The people who they have rented the house from have left their mother in the attic. The more pain physical and mental they suffer, the more the house repairs itself. Unusual but worth a look at least once.

 

The Fan

Michael Biehn is the obsessive fan stalking Lauren Bacall's legendary actress. When he feels snubbed he goes on a rampage hurting those close to the actress. Dana Delaney has a supporting role. This is better made than a lot of other slasher movies and for that reason is worth looking at.

[death tribble]

Noose

A reporter who is about to get married tries to unmask a black marketeer. Her husband to be gets a whole bunch of people to wreck the marketeer's organisation despite the police warning them off. This was from 1948 and is not that bad.

 

Never Back Losers

This is about gamblers trying to fix horse racing by getting at the jockeys. A reporter works with the sister of a jockey who is now the target of the gambling syndicate. A short film but it gets its point over.

 

Embezzler

A bank cashier who finds out that he has only a little time left to live robs his bank and flees. As the police are alerted to the robbery he can't flee abroad so he flees to the coast and into a better class of hotel. He then tries to help several of the people in the hotel particularly as a guy turns up and acts like a parasite to them. This is an early 50s film so technology has outstripped it.

 

Beautiful Stranger

Ginger Rogers is having an affair with a business man in France when she finds out that he is not getting divorced. She starts seeing a local artist. She is also giving an old friend money but he is passing fake currency and the businessman is the brains behind the racket and he mistakes the old friend for the artist and issues threats. Interesting to see Ginger in a non dancing role. Stanly baker is the businessman and Herbert Lom is the old friend.

 

I Bury the Living

After a man becomes the new chairman of a cemetery, he begins to think that he has the power of death after he puts black pins instead of white into prepaid plots on a cemetery map. It begins to leave him disquieted so he speaks to the committee who overlook the operations and they dare him too swap their pins from white to black to prove nothing is wrong. This proves to be a mistake and the police are also interested. An odd film with Richard Boone as the chairman. Worth a look.

 

Is Paris Burning ?

The film starts with the appointment of a new General to look after the French capital which is after the Normandy invasion and the attempt on Hitler's life. His orders are that if he can't hold it, the city is to be destroyed. The film is in black and white as the French would not allow the Nazi flag to be flown in the city in its original colour but in green instead of red was fine. And as de  Gaulle was in charge a lot was done to keep him happy. The resistance is divided with the communists doing one thing and the rest doing another. Fearing that the Allies will bypass the city and fearing what happened to Warsaw an attempt is made to persuade the Allies to come to the Capital. Meantime the French rise up and attack the Germans seizing various buildings. There is a lot of footage from what happened as was captured on film. There are a good many French stars from the 60s including Delon , Belmondo, Charles Boyer, Simone Signoret, Yves Montand and Jean Louis Trintignant in the cast. As well as Orson Welles playing the Swedish consul, Gert Frobe as the German general, Kirk Douglas as Patton and Glenn Ford as Bradley. It is a long film at nearly three hours and I did not lik it when younger because of this. But now I appreciate it particularly the part of the theme that became the song Paris en colere. However I only like the version without the singing as it is uplifting.

If you want to see how divided the French were just watch the film. It ends in colour showing the city in the mid 60s that was saved as the German general decided not to obey the order to destroy it.

[mattingly]

4 hours ago, GM Joe said:

Marvel's Hit-Monkey: This animated series was well worth watching. Like NPS, above, it was strange, funny, disturbing, and silly. But also very well done, with some great plot twists.

 

I knew I'd watch it, but I didn't expect to binge the entire series on the day it released. 

 

[Old Man]

On 2/19/2022 at 5:22 PM, Bazza said:

Double dick? 

 

No thanks, I'm straight.  Appreciate the invite though.

 

Jessica Jones Season 1 Episode 7:  Stop making him sympathetic!  Stop it!

 

Jessica Jones Season 1 Episode 8: Okay, that's better.  But what's up with Simpson?

 

Jessica Jones Season 1 Episode 9: Oh, Hogarth.  I thought you were the smartest character, not the dumbest.

 

Jessica Jones Season 1 Episode 10: I keep forgetting this show is rated R and the next thing I know there's so much blood.

 

Kilgrave is easily the best MCU villain there has ever been or probably will be.  I am impressed.

[Bazza]

3 hours ago, Old Man said:

 

No thanks, I'm straight.  Appreciate the invite though.

 

That is not what I meant. You mentioned that Kilgrave was “being a dick” and my comment was to suggest that he was two times that, meaning two times worse. 

[mattingly]

3 hours ago, Old Man said:

Jessica Jones

Kilgrave is easily the best MCU villain there has ever been or probably will be.  I am impressed.

 

Season 2 is good but not great. Season 3 is almost as good as Season 1.

 

[Logan D. Hurricanes]

I finally saw The Mitchells vs The Machines and I loved it. I put it off for a long time because it looks like a silly mess, but I admit that the Oscar nom got me curious. Fantastic animation and several genuine laugh moments. Pretty clever writing and a dog/pig.

[Old Man]

8 hours ago, Bazza said:

That is not what I meant. You mentioned that Kilgrave was “being a dick” and my comment was to suggest that he was two times that, meaning two times worse. 

 

I'm really sorry, I meant to put a smiley on the end of my comment there.  That's what I get for posting late at night.

[Pariah]

19 hours ago, Old Man said:

Kilgrave is easily the best MCU villain there has ever been or probably will be.  I am impressed.

 

My vote goes to Killmonger, personally, but I can't fault your choice.

[Bazza]

8 hours ago, Old Man said:

 

I'm really sorry, I meant to put a smiley on the end of my comment there.  That's what I get for posting late at night.

No worries. 

[Bazza]

53 minutes ago, Pariah said:

 

My vote goes to Killmonger, personally, but I can't fault your choice.

What makes him such a compelling villain to you? 

[Joe Walsh]

We finished S1 of Pennyworth last night. We enjoyed its mix of action, drama, and humor. Not the best supers show out there, but for us it was well worth watching.

 

[Grailknight]

10 hours ago, Bazza said:

What makes him such a compelling villain to you? 

 

I would put Killgrave first and Killmonger  second, but I do understand the draw of Killmonger.

 

He's a villain that was manufactured directly by bad choices made  by T'chaka.  First,  his father was summarily executed without a trial or hearing. It may have been legal under Wakandan law, but surely it would have been better to take him home for trial. Then T'chaka and his lieutenant abandoned a child and family member without a second thought or care to the streets. Killmonger was just thrown into the trash by Wakanda and survived by making himself into what Wakanda feared most. If he had just wanted rulership of Wakanda, he'd actually be somewhat admirable. And a small part of him knows that he is a villain. T'challa could have saved him at the end but he refused the offer because he knew he would never be able to accept being second to T'challa.

 

 

[Michael Hopcroft]

I am having a hard time with Netfliz' cartoon adaptation of the notoriously difficult video game Cuphead.  Which seems incredibly bizarre and at the same time pretty familiar.

 

I understood much of what was going on, not from playing the game (I didn't) but from a knowledge of the history of animation -- specifically the brilliantly flawed early soung cartoons of the Fleischer brothers (better animators than Disney, but terrible businessmen who were eventually at each others' throats).  The legacy of these shorts (which originated the character of Betty Boop, and don't get me started on how controversial she was) were among the first American productions to regularly feature the great black musicians of the day. But they also had issues with racial caricatures (one short, built around Luois Armstrong's recording "I'll be Glad When You're Dead (You Rascal You)" was placed with a cartoon about fleeing a "primitive cannibal tribe", a common racist trope in those days. (There were also anti-Semitism issues in other shorts, because stereotypes about "greedy Jews" were still considered funny, although the Fleischers were Jewish immigrants themselves).

 

That in itself made Cuphead the game controversial -- it used the Fleischers' stylings in art and music without really dealing with the racist times that generated them.

 

And it is the disconnection with the times that bothers me about The Cuphead Show. Not so much the racial issues, which strangely do not bother me as much since I know the producers were in no way making that a focus. NO, what bothers me is that I'm unclear who their audience is.

 

How many people starting out with Cuphead on Netflix know who Max and Dave Flesicher were? Or who Cab Calloway was? Although Calloway was one of the great cultural treasures of the 20th Century, we are now almost a quarter of the way through the 21st. So to have a major character modeled on him is one of many in-jokes that nobody outside a niche group of fans will get. There are also several snatches of Calloway-like music from the modern composer of the score, who could ape his style but not capture his genius. And while I am not at all into Satanic Panics... well, I don't think this will spoil anything.

 

The chief antagonist of Cuphead and Mugman is the literal Devil, who is drawn black from head to toe and voiced like -- well, you'll have to hear it to believe it.

 

 

(The actor is Luke Millington, and he everything he says comes out that way. I saw a clip of him recording that song, and he had a lot of fun!)

 

So while I am the sort of person most likely to appreciate The Cuphead Show, I am not its intended audience. So is the problem with the show or with me?

[death tribble]

Crossing Lines

Season 2 starts with the team in London trying to rescue the major and his wife. It continues with Kim Coates trying to cause more chaos and brings in Carrie Anne Moss as Fichtner's ex-partner on the force. There are several London based episodes and the background of one of the group is explored as his family are part of the Traveller community. The end of the series is a two parter with experienced criminals getting out of prison but then committing crimes (robberies) for no purpose. But one of the team is following a lead to their past which has tragic results. You need to have seen the first season to follow this one to its conclusion.

 

Master of the World

One of several Vincent Price films I have seen recently, with Charles Bronson in support. Price is a pacifist committed to ending war by making everyone disarm by using his flying machine to bomb them into submission. Bronson is a government agent sent to a mountain after explosions are heard there as well as someone quoting scripture. An arms manufacturer and his prospective son in law provide a balloon which enables them to see the inside of the mountain. Attacked, the crew are taken aboard the flying machine the Albatross as it sets out on its mission to end war. Despite the fact that this uses archive footage for battle scenes, this is well worth seeing for Price's performance alone. Bronson is a bonus.

 

Scream and Scream Again

This film, nominally stars Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and Vincent Price. However Cushing is in it briefly and shares no screen time with the other two. Michael Gothard plays an odd killer who is pursued by Alfred Marks's police inspector. There are several plot strands which come together at the end. It has to be seen to fully understand it. Price again is good as a mad scientist.

 

Theatre of Blood

Vincent Price plays a mad stage actor who enacts Shakespearean revenge on a group of critics who humiliated him. The critics are all played by British actors known to film or television viewers in Britain. Ian Hendry is the chairman of the critics who acts as the foil to Price quite literally in a sword fencing scene. This is a slasher with a number of inventive deaths which predates Halloween and Friday the 13th by over half a decade. Diana Rigg offers great support as Price's daughter and Coral Browne who became Price's wife is one of the critics who he kills.

 

The Dunwich Horror

Film version of the H P Lovecraft story with Dean Stockwell as Wilbur Whatley. A colour effect is used to represent the twin's attacks when it is revealed. It is not bad as an adaptation of the story although it does stray too close to the Old Ones being associated with the Devil.

 

Killing Eve Season 3

Villanelle is supposed to be getting married when the Twelve bring her back into the fold. Eve is recovering from being shot by Villanelle and is working in a Chinese restaurant in the back. Her husband is recovering from Villanelle killing his new girlfriend and making it look like suicide. Kenny is now working with a magazine and is looking into the Twelve. He contacts Eve and hopes to get her help. Kenny's mother Carolyn is pushed aside after the Rome debacle and has someone in to oversee her. After Kenny asks Eve to meet up he falls off a roof to his death and the series proceeds with the question who killed him and why. Harriet Walter is Dasha who trained Villanelle and who is trying to prove she can handle her in order to return to Russia. After Villanelle duplicates one of Dasha's kills Eve and Carolyn are on her trail again. Darkly comic as ever there are some neat twists before Villanelle and Eve decide to part for good on a London bridge but end up looking back at each other. If you have not seen any of the series, start with Season 1 and if you like that follow it through to season 2 and then this in order to get the full effect.

[archer]

I nominate Free Guy for the best movie of the year.

[death tribble]

And back so quickly !

 

Doctor in Distress

Dirk Bogarde back as Simon Sparrow in a Doctors film. Both he and his boss Sir Lancelot Spratt, played by James Robertson Justice, are pursuing women with more comical effects for the latter. It is not as good as the first outing. It is pleasant enough for the 60s.

 

Finders Keepers

This is another Cliff Richard and the Shadows musical with the group in Spain to play for a hotel of guests. Except there are no guests as an American plane has dropped a mini-bomb somewhere in the Spanish countryside and the American military are trying to find it. The hotel's owner is working 'for the other side' and is tasked with finding and transporting the bomb. Said owner is played by Robert Morley who previously played Cliff's father in another earlier musical. here are no notable musical numbers which maybe why this has not been screened in years. Based on the real 1966 incident when America did lose 4 bombs over Spain.

 

Fall of the House of Usher

Clear proof if you have the right actor that even something cheap can be made to reek of quality. This is one of Roger Corman's Poe cycle with Vincent Price as Roderick Usher. He is intent that his sister must stay in the decaying house of their birth and die without issue so that the evil of the family dies out with them both. I had not seen this in years and it is really good. It has only four actors (plus others in a dream sequence) but it keeps you interested and gripped. If you have not seen this, put it on you must see list.

 

Gog

From 1954 comes what was supposed to be a 3D film. After two deaths at  a top secret base, a scientist investigator is despatched to find out what is going on. The idea of a computer controlling a base and two robots is ahead of its time as well as the idea of using the sun a s a weapon. And common sense is also used. When the investigator says reduce the number of people on station at any one time, it is immediately acted upon and implemented. The robots looks laughable but Richard Egan as the investigator is always watchable (He went on to play King Leonidas in 300 Spartans).

 

Frogs 

One of the first eco-horror films and one which has a different death for one character in the trailer than is in the final product. Sam Elliot (without moustache and sideburns) is a photo journalist documenting pollution who is almost run over and killed by one of the Crocket family in their speedboat. He is then brought to the Crocket home where the family are waiting to celebrate the patriarch's birthday on the 4th of July. Only the wildlife and plants decide to strike back and attack the family and kill them. Some of the deaths are laughable. The killing of the patriarch's son in law by alligators and the daughter in law by alligator turtle are cases in point. However I have seen worse and this is not bad.

 

Knives Out

A famous novelist is found dead the day after his birthday and the police with the assistance of a private detective have to decide whether it was murder or suicide. Someone has hired the PI to investigate the death and he does not know who. The family it turns out have secrets to hide.and so are not exactly forthcoming wjhen originally questioned. so the nurse employed to look after him is called in and that's when you find out what is supposed to be going on. When it is then revealed that said nurse is now the sole beneficiary of the will, chaos ensues.

This has an all star cast with Christopher Plummer as the novelist, Jamie Lee Curtis as his daughter, Don Johnson as his son in law, Michael Shannon as the younger son and Chris Evans as a grandson. It is really good.