What Have You Watched Recently?

[Joe Walsh]

On 12/16/2022 at 6:00 PM, death tribble said:

The Howling III

 

Werewolves in Australia. It is cheap and it is fun. See once and then decide if you like.

 

I've always loved that entry in the series.

[Pariah]

Last night we watched Elf. It's one of about three Will Ferrell movies that I can stand. It features Bob Newhart as Elf Dad, James Caan as Grumpy Dad, Mary Steenburgen as Not-Grumpy Mom, Ed Asner as Santa, and Zooey Deschanel as the blonde-haired love interest, with Peter Dinklage as the "angry elf" kids' book writer. Goofy fun, and one of Lady P's family favorites.

[csyphrett]

Wstched Columbo with the boy and David Easche and Shere Dupree go in together to murder a broker and frame Barry Corbin for it. They are done in by Columbo realizing they know each other

CES

[death tribble]

Part of the Christmas round up

 

The Puppet Masters

This is a 1994 sci fi film based on Robert Heinlein's 1951 novel of the same name. America is attacked by alien parasites can Donald Sutherland and his allies defeat them ? There are a good few background actors who will be familiar to people like Keith David, Yaphet Kotto and Richard Belzar. The good guys are also portrayed as smart which is a nice change. The ending is a little rushed and I can see why the film does not have a lot of recognition.

 

Attack of the Lederhosen Zombies

This is a comedy Austrian zombie film with the heroes stuck on top of a mountain when a local outbreak starts. It is silly with the 'zombies' dispatched in a number of inventive ways. See once for a laugh.

 

Dinosaurs the Last Day with David Attenborough

David narrates the day the dinosaurs died based on evidence found on at a site called 'Tanis' in America. He presents the evidence for the end of the Cretaceous era and why there is difficulty in knowing why the dinosaurs died out. They use a cyclotron in Britain to look at some of the evidence including what is believed to be fragments of the asteroid that hit Earth. It is very interesting and a must watch.

 

Christmas Eve with Tom Baker

A church service from 1994 with carols and readings from the Bible but Tom is reading from a Christmas Carol. Very British.

 

Carry On Christmas Carol

The Carry On team do a version of the Christmas Carol with Sid James playing Scrooge. Dated but if you have seen the Carry On films, fun.

 

Bear Island

Donald Sutherland is part of a scientific group on the remote Bear Island trying to predict the weather due to climate change. It is superficially based on the 1971 book by Alistair MacLean and came out in 1979. The island was a U-Boat base and some neo-Nazis are trying to recover gold that was there to continue the movement. To do this they need to kill of some of the expedition. It is alright but wastes a cast that includes Christopher Lee, Vanessa Redgrave, Lloyd Bridges and Richard Widmark.  

[Logan D. Hurricanes]

Finally saw Black Adam.

 

That was not good.

[death tribble]

More catch up

 

Shelley Christmas Special

This is a Christmas episode of the sitcom with Hywel Bennett playing Shelley. It is a half hour programme from the early 80s. Meant more to me as I had seen the original series and the humour appeals to me.

 

Bloodbath at the House of Death

This is a comedy vehicle for Kenny Everett with him portraying a doctor looking into the paranormal at a house where people were massacred 8 years previously. Despite several reliable actors in the cast and Vincent Price as a guest, it just does not work. See it for Price.

 

The Blood Beast Terror

Peter Cushing is a Scotland Yard inspector looking into the grisly murders of young men in Victorian England. The killer is a giant moth who can take human form as Wanda Ventham. This is a horror film with Peter Cushing (although not Hammer), what more can I say ?

 

Perfect Friday

Stanley Baker, Ursula Andress and David Warner team up to rob a bank where Baker works. The idea is simple and although of its time the idea works due to the leads. Worth a look.

 

The English

This is a revisionist Western with Emily Blunt coming to America to avenge her son's death. She teams up with a Pawnee Indian and ex-cavalry scout to find the man responsible. There are quite a few British actors in the cast and it is quite dark subject matter but well worth a look. Chaske Spencer is the Pawnee Indian and someone to watch out for in future.

 

Rogue Heroes

The creation of the Special Air Service in North Africa is brought to life in this series. It was highly entertaining and as the narrative states what seems fantastical is mostly true. The series ends with the death of one of the founders and their commander David Stirling captured by the Germans. But you would not have wanted to upset this bunch. 

[wcw43921]

+1 for Rogue Heroes.  This would be an excellent premise for an RPG campaign.

[Ternaugh]

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery: Set during the pandemic shutdown, this is an interesting murder mystery with Daniel Craig reprising his role as the great detective, Benoit Blanc. Worth a watch. (Netflix)

 

Strange World: This Disney animated film wants to be a pulp-style lost world adventure, but falls a bit flat in the execution. (Disney+)

[Starlord]

Wow.  Andor was really good...why can't all SW projects have this kind of writing....

[Ternaugh]

4 hours ago, Starlord said:

Wow.  Andor was really good...why can't all SW projects have this kind of writing....

 

Andor was written and directed as if it was a prestige drama that just happens to be set in the Star Wars universe.

[Ternaugh]

The Muppet Christmas Carol (Full Length Version): Disney+ has restored the VHS cut of this excellent version of the Charles Dickens story, which means that you won't have to go to Youtube to get the missing song. Look in the Extras section for it. (Disney+)

 

Babylon 5 Season 3 (and a bit more): Most of the episodes concerning the Shadow War. I hadn't remembered just how badass Vir was. (HBOmax)

 

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: Classic animated feature film, the first from Disney, and one of the best. (Disney+)

 

The Wheel: This is an imported British game show, where three contestants are spun to choose one to engage in a series of trivia questions with help from six celebrities, who are also spun around the chosen contestant to see which one will "help" them. I've watched the first three episodes in the NBC version, and by the second, I found myself fast forwarding past the player spins, and by the third, I was often fast forwarding through the celebrity spins. The basic trivia questions and celebrity interactions are good, the padding isn't. (Peacock)

[mattingly]

John Carpenter's The Thing. It's been a while since I've seen it. 

[BigJackBrass]

Ghostbusters was on the telly yesterday, which was on in the background at mum's. Since the nieces are now in their thirties and there weren't many people there for Boxing Day it wasn't so chaotic that I couldn't watch it.

 

Despite the inevitable TV editing removing Winston's best line it was great. Holds up remarkably well; and some of those model shots are still spectacular.

[Logan D. Hurricanes]

Started watching Tulsa King. Stallone is a mafia capo who's been relegated to Oklahoma. Fun so far. 

[csyphrett]

Belated Columbo night as our detective matches wits with Patrick McGoohan as a funeral director who kills Reporter Rue McClanahan when she threatens him. Sally Kellerman plays a dead guy's wife who McGoohan is wooing.

CES 

[Pariah]

On 12/26/2022 at 11:03 PM, Ternaugh said:

Babylon 5 Season 3 (and a bit more): Most of the episodes concerning the Shadow War. I hadn't remembered just how badass Vir was. (HBOmax)

 

There's not a single member of the main cast that doesn't have at least one legit badass moment. 

[death tribble]

Runaway Train

I have not seen this film since it was at the cinema. Jon Voight and Eric Stoltz escape a maximum security prison and board a train. Only the train becomes a runaway and the track personnel have to try and stop it. The warden of the prison is after the prisoners particularly Voight's. Danny Trejo has a bit part as a criminal who boxes. Worth a look.

 

Pirates of the Caribbean: Salazar's Revenge

Finally saw this one all the way through. I had no seen the start with the robbery. Nor the witch that Barbossa and the English consult. It does not have the magic of the others. Still good as it has Javier Bardem, Geoffrey Rush and of course Depp.

 

Bad Boys II

Unusually I had seen the original and the final film before seeing the second. It is long and violent and has lots of bad language. Means more if you have seen the original. Martin Lawrence is better when paired with Will Smith.

 

The Cheap Detective

Peter Falk in a spoof of many of the great film noirs of the 40s like The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca. You need to see these films in order to appreciate this one.

 

Song of London

This is a 1963 short with lots of music. It passes a half hour and is a glimpse into the past. Nice to see Harrods as there are certain bits of the store that have not changed.

 

Santa Claus Conquers the Martians

This has a reputation as one of the worst films. See it and understand why. It deserves to be one of the worst films.

[rravenwood]

Saw Avatar: The Way of Water today.  I enjoyed it, but felt that it should have pushed into new directions more than it did and not engage in as much apparent "we need to include this because the original had it too" as it did.  Don't get me wrong, there are many other sequels which are far more guilty of that sort of thing than this one, but it was noticeable enough to me.  Hopefully the subsequent films in the series really kick off into entirely new and different story dimensions.

[death tribble]

Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things

This is a 1970s horror film with a director and actors going to an island off Miami in order to create atmosphere for their performance. They also dig up a corpse and then conjure up the dead from an old spell book. But nothing happens. At first.... Then the dead arise. And the living have to find a way to stop them. For a cheap film it has some stand out moments like the dead coming out of the ground. The acting is pretty ripe and it looks a bit amateurish but it is worth more than one look.

 

Bloody New Year

Six teenagers become stranded on an island off the coast of Wales. They are fleeing troublemakers at the funfair. The hotel is deserted but then strange events start happening. And why is the hotel got Christmas decorations up when it is July ? This is a supernatural horror film and is not bad. Different to the slasher films as there is not one big bad like Jason or Freddy Kruegar. Definitely worth a look.

 

Waking the Dead (pilot episode)

This was about a cold case unit looking at unsolved crimes in Britain. The pilot looked at the case of a girl who had been abducted for ransom and then killed. However as news breaks that the case is being looked at again, the killer abducts another girl. The police look at it as two separate cases despite the killer wanting to talk to the Cold Case Unit's head who headed the original investigation. The killer toys with the police even as they find the original murder site. Meant more to me as I had seen the original series and was thus more invested in it.

 

Jools Holland Hootenany

This is the New Year tradition as the other sided tend to be rather bleh. It was not that good this year but it is music and it does not get hysterical.

 

Tommy Cooper Christmas Special

Tommy Cooper was a comedy institution for the British. Standing at 6 foot 3 and wearing a fez he would do a magic act that nearly always failed but it was the build up that had you. The show was a bit dated but still fun,

 

No Time to Die

Daniel Craig's last outing as Bond starts with a mother and child being menaced by a masked gunman. This turns out to be Mr White's family from Casino Royale. The mother is killed but the child tries to escape and falls through the frozen ice of a lake only to be rescued by the killer. Madelaine, Mr White's daughter, is with Bond in Italy when he goes to see Vesper Lynd's grave and is then almost killed by a bomb. Assassins then try to kill him. He manages to escape with her and gets her to a rail station where he says his goodbyes. Five years later a laboratory is attacked and a scientist is kidnapped but everyone else is killed. Felix attempts to get Bond to look for someone in Cuba and MI6 warn him off. Bond goes to Cuba and teams up with an eager CIA operative played by Ana de Armas as they infiltrate a meeting of SPECTRE operatives. You hear Blofeld talking to them and he tries to kill Bond with a gas but this turns out to have been sabotaged by the scientist to kill SPECTRE personnel. Lashanna Lynch playing Bond's replacement in MI6 Nomi grabs the scientist but is topped from getting away and Bond gets the scientist. Bond has worked out that someone else is in charge and trying to kill people. The scientist is working for them and Felix's partner is one of his stooges. He fatally wounds Felix and leaves Bond to die on a sinking trawler. Bond returns to London to confront Blofeld and finds Madelaine is his psychiatrist. The killer from the start of the film is the one in charge and he wants Madelaine to infect Blofeld with killer nanobots. This succeeds only because Bond touches Madelaine and then tries to strangle Blofeld. Bond goes after Madelaine and finds her in Norway as Safin's people try to grab her. She has a five year old child who Madelaine claims is not Bond's. Safin's people grab Madelaine and child but Felix's treacherous partner is killed by Bond. Bond and Nomi go to an island in the Sea of Japan which is Safin's base. It is an old Russian missile base which is a farm and factory for Safin's nanobots and a garden of deadly plants (which is a throwback to Blofeld in the books having a deadly garden). Nomi and Bond plant explosives but have to call in a missile strike as the factory and farm need to be wiped out. Nomi kills the scientist while Bond rescues Madelaine and her child. Bond goes back to open the silo doors but is infected by the nanobots by Safin which will kill Madelaine and her child so he stays on the island to ensure that all trace of them is wiped out.

The film is quite poignant and follows the theme of Craig's tenure by linking all the films and the emotional impact that it has. The theme tune is also pretty good.

[Ternaugh]

Stargirl season one: Much better than I thought it would be, I'll be starting season two soon. (HBOmax)

 

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three:  The original, with Walter Matthau as a New York MTA police detective dealing with the hijacking of a subway train by a gang of four (led by Robert Shaw as "Blue") for a ransom of $1 million. Always worth a watch. (HBOmax)

 

 

 

 

[Pariah]

I recently re-watched the first few episodes of the animated Gargoyles series from the 90s. Beautiful artwork, amazing voice cast, intricate plots and overall story arc, and one of the smartest, savviest villains in television history — not just animation. It's as good as I remember. (Disney+)

[Logan D. Hurricanes]

The Menu. Now this is my kind of horror. Loved it. Ralph Fiennes is awesome as always, and I'm developing a huge crush on Anya Taylor-Joy. Highly recommend. 

[Cancer]

One splinter movie channel showed Tora! Tora! Tora! last night.  I think that's the first non-sports thing I've watched start to end on TV in literally years.

[Tech]

Started rewatching Disney's Gummi Bears on Disney +.

[csyphrett]

Columbo night brings our detective trying to crack the alibi of conductor Billy Connollaly.

CES