What MOVIE(s) have you been....seeing? watching?

Shellhead wrote: Saw Alien: Romulus last night. It is the indisputable bronze medal winner of the Alien franchise. Takes place in between Alien and Aliens, but isn't really a prequel or sequel so much as another horror story that takes place in the same science-fiction setting, with new characters. There are some interesting ideas and the writing is good. There is a little too much fan service, in terms of callbacks to scenes in other movies from the francise. The set design is excellent and the overall look of the movie is great. However, I didn't like most of the characters, and the actors themselves were mostly young and not particularly talented.

I agree with pretty much all of this. One callback was pretty neat, one was embarrassingly bad. The kid who plays the synthetic did a really good job. That's not a spoiler, you find out he is one pretty much immediately.

I paid matinee price and don't feel cheated.

hotseatgames wrote: I watched Jackpot on Prime, the new John Cena / Awkwafina film. Awkwafina wins a lottery, the entire city is trying to kill her, and it's up to John Cena to keep her alive.

If you like John Cena's antics, and why wouldn't you, he's a delight, you will enjoy this film. I was a bit drunk, but I liked it. And if you watch the credits, you get to hear him say "GET TO THE CHOPPA!"

I started watching this. Did they really try to pass off the line "You look too young to be a cop" towards a woman in her mid THIRTIES??? And I thought the only rule was "no guns" and the first kill was....with a gun? Maybe they address it later if The Stifler returns. Anyway, cool concept, kind of a retread of The Running Man which REALLY should get a proper remake.

Awkwafina is always a bit more miss than hit with me. She has a very odd face that looks like a filter and that raspy voice.

I have seen Furiosa. Not bad, not great. Way too much CGI.

I put it above Thunderdome, but that is not high praise.

Chris Hemsworth was hilarious and had some great lines.

Finally saw The Mist (2007). I enjoyed the novella way back in the day, and this movie was a reasonable interpretation. For budgetary reasons, the movie opens just after the big storm is over, and just as the mist first appears across the lake. Thomas Jane utterly dominates the movie, both in acting ability and sheer physical presence, though he looks more like a middle-aged former football player than the vigilante Punisher that he played just three years before this. Andre Braugher is okay, but doesn't rise above the middling dialogue that he is given, unlike when he ruled the interrogation room in Homicide: Life on the Streets in the '90s. The rest of the cast is completely unremarkable. The rest of the story follows the story pretty closely and is reasonably entertaining, much better than most movies based on Stephen King stories. However, the shocking movie version of the ending is unusually dark and cruel.

Watched HORIZON, the first of four ( maybe ? ) Coster directed westerns. On the plus side, Costner obvisouly knows how to shoot a western; it looks great and the casting/acting for the most part is well done . On the minus side, and this is where I think the box office fell short, is that not only is it long at three hours, but audiences know going in there are three more after this - why not wait til they all come out ( if they ever do ) then binge ? The storytelling is uneven, esp the first half its hard to see how the various storylines tie together and some in fact don't converge like you might expect them to. One characters fate is left totally vague/unknown .

This would have made more sense as a TV series IMO. Given its financial struggles, I gotta wonder if they are gonna rewrite it to wrap up after the third installment. AFAIK, the second one is already done but its initial August theater debut was pushed back with no apparent release date I could find . I think they are shooting the third one ? Or maybe after the dismal box office its been scrapped. I have a feeling it may go direct to streaming at this point.

Episode I with the kids. The eldest has been obsessing over a Maul card from Unlimited’s second expansion, so I figured the boy ought to see his debut.

Number one was psyched every time Maul was on screen and tried and failed to figure out Anakin’s relationship to Luke. Number two said it was good but too long. Number three just wanted to watch Bluey. Number four fell asleep.

The youngest two were right. It’s still bad. The prequels have gotten a critical reappraisal as the kids who grew up on them aged into YouTube essayists, but they’re wrong. I would take the first two sequels over Phantom Menace. Lucas tried something new in his storytelling, but at least the Disney movies tried to entertain.

Did Lucas tell his stable of Oscar nominees not to emote so they wouldn’t upstage the CG performances? Say what you will about racial caricatures, but Jar Jar, Watto, Boss Nass, Captain Tarpals and Sebulba had identifiable emotions. Beside Ian McDiarmid, the only human performance of note is Shmi. Her understated acting at least made sense for a suffering woman just barely holding it together.

Chronicles of Riddick - I never really felt old until I discovered this movie is 20 years old already. I always liked Pitch Black better but this holds up okay. The Necromonger invasion is still cool. As is Karl Urban and his spin-punch. Diesel should consider putting this universe into a tv series at some point. The whole merc\bounties thing alone in this universe could carry even a low-budget one.

I recently re-watched Chronicles of Riddick with a friend who had never seen it. I think that it's a good movie that was almost great. Loaded with ideas and interesting visuals, especially compared to all the lame Star Wars sequels that have been churned out for decades with light saber after light saber. The sequel to this movie was not quite as good, but still well worth watching. There was also a not-quite movie length anime featuring Riddick, Kira, and the Imam priest, set shortly after Pitch Black.

They are working on a fourth movie.

Pitch Black is a surprisingly good sci-fi horror movie. It leans far closer to "gritty realism" than the "cartoony superhero-ism" of the sequels. So much so that it's hard to consider it part of the same series.

Watched TRON LEGACY the other day. Visually stunning; the plot fell victim to techobabble that I only loosely followed. But visually its quite a treat.

Msample wrote: Watched TRON LEGACY the other day. Visually stunning; the plot fell victim to techobabble that I only loosely followed. But visually its quite a treat.

And that soundtrack!

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon - Hadn't watched this movie in a long time. I've seen it enough at release to shut off the subtitles a few minutes in. I didn't know what they were saying in every scene but I know what the story is so could follow well enough to enjoy. It's held up really well. The fight choreography is still top tier even when they're not doing the gravity-defying stuff.

It’s a beautiful movie throughout.

I watched the new Mission Impossible on Amazon Prime. It's 3 hours, and is part 1!

If you like these films, and I do, you'll like this. I don't come to them expecting top tier writing, but they deliver top tier spectacle. The stunts in the last act are amazing. Say what you will about Tom Cruise as a person, but as an actor he always delivers, and his stunts are crazy. This is the one in which he jumps a dirt bike off of a mountain.