The son of "What the hell are YOU staring at?"

[D.A. Ridgely]

Basically, the movie would have been great if it had just been the following:

Poe prank calls the First Order and then we walk away from that story.
Luke and Rey go spearfishing while Chewie plays with birds.
Kylo Ren kills Darth Hefner, then gets rejected by Rey.
Last Ride of Admiral Holdo.
Astral projection Luke vs. Kylo Ren.

What, you don't want to get twenty minutes of 5MPH gravity bombers in space?

Also they needed to figure out how to re-cut the damned thing with it being Leia who last rides, not Holdo, because A - i mean she's gonna have to die in the first few seconds of EPIX and B - pink-haired Space Laura Dern is right in the sweet spot for male-gazing from saw-Star-Wars-as-kids-in-the-theater-first-run types who are all in their mid-40s to early-50s and who also got her as Ellie the Hawt Paleontologist in the original Dinosaurs Eating People while in the 18-25 demographic.

Plus, Pink-Haired Space Admiral who maintains composure in the face of a mansplaining Poe Dameron is exactly the Space Admiral that woke millennial Last Jedi fans needed, and they'd love Episode IX even more if she were in it.

So, yeah, kill the Boomer and make the Gen X lady the leader. Because I may not be Woke but I do enjoy some Soylent Boomer.

Not to mention from a serious standpoint that a sacrifice down-with-the-ship act from Leia, a character we've known since the first 10 minutes of the first film in 1977, would have had huge emotional impact, while a sacrifice down-with-the-ship act from Holdo, a character who was introduced in this movie and got maybe 10 minutes of screen time beginning maybe 110 minutes before her death just doesn't. It was a huge story-telling missed opportunity.

If only they knew she was going to die in real life, I'm sure they'd have gone for it.

[thoreau]

In light of the things that the Star Wars franchise has done to edit dead actors into movies, and imprint a young Leia onto another actress, I'm sure they could have managed some way of having her bid farewell to Holdo and then edit her into the control room of the ship before it rams the star destroyer. They had nearly a year from when she died to when Last Jedi was in theaters.

In fact, it would have given Leia's use of the Force earlier in the movie more meaning: She couldn't die then, because she had more to do. She needed to wait until her death could save everyone else.

[lunchstealer]

Basically, the movie would have been great if it had just been the following:

Poe prank calls the First Order and then we walk away from that story.
Luke and Rey go spearfishing while Chewie plays with birds.
Kylo Ren kills Darth Hefner, then gets rejected by Rey.
Last Ride of Admiral Holdo.
Astral projection Luke vs. Kylo Ren.

What, you don't want to get twenty minutes of 5MPH gravity bombers in space?

Also they needed to figure out how to re-cut the damned thing with it being Leia who last rides, not Holdo, because A - i mean she's gonna have to die in the first few seconds of EPIX and B - pink-haired Space Laura Dern is right in the sweet spot for male-gazing from saw-Star-Wars-as-kids-in-the-theater-first-run types who are all in their mid-40s to early-50s and who also got her as Ellie the Hawt Paleontologist in the original Dinosaurs Eating People while in the 18-25 demographic.

Plus, Pink-Haired Space Admiral who maintains composure in the face of a mansplaining Poe Dameron is exactly the Space Admiral that woke millennial Last Jedi fans needed, and they'd love Episode IX even more if she were in it.

So, yeah, kill the Boomer and make the Gen X lady the leader. Because I may not be Woke but I do enjoy some Soylent Boomer.

Not to mention from a serious standpoint that a sacrifice down-with-the-ship act from Leia, a character we've known since the first 10 minutes of the first film in 1977, would have had huge emotional impact, while a sacrifice down-with-the-ship act from Holdo, a character who was introduced in this movie and got maybe 10 minutes of screen time beginning maybe 110 minutes before her death just doesn't. It was a huge story-telling missed opportunity.

If only they knew she was going to die in real life, I'm sure they'd have gone for it.

I think they might've had time to do a re-shoot/re-edit afterwards, since it was almost a full year before the release date, but maybe they tried and couldn't make it work with the footage they had available.

Or what T said.

[Hugh Akston]

There's probably a good movie to be made about the fundamentally broken nature of the American criminal law system, but Roman J. Israel, Esq. is not that movie.

[Mo]

Nixon's Got My Back: The Roger Stone Story will have you covered.

[lunchstealer]

Nixon's Got My Back: The Roger Stone Story will have you covered.

Can't tell if that'd make Lifetime Original Movies more woke or less woke.

[dbcooper]

The Front Runner is not something I can watch more than 20 minutes of.

I think the audience is supposed to feel like they're part of a team fighting for good or something?

[dbcooper]

Can you ever forgive me?

Good little movie with very good performances. Slight but well executed. You won't remember much, but you won't be bored or find anything jarring.

[Hugh Akston]

The Front Runner is not something I can watch more than 20 minutes of.

I think the audience is supposed to feel like they're part of a team fighting for good or something?

Ever since Up In the Air I have felt obligated to watch Jason Reitman movies, even though they have all been treacly melodramatic turds since then.

[Andrew]

Another terrible movie Saturday with my friend:

1. Evasive Action (1998). It's Con Air on a train. Literally. They even drop a reference to Con Air on why they're using a train instead of a plane. It has Roy Scheider in the John Malkovich role, Clint Howard in the Buscemi role, and a surprising number of "hey, it's that guy!" actors. Plus Don Swayze. Terrible continuity errors, dropped plotlines, cheap stunts (where they show the before and after of whatever is happening but not the action itself), released in 1998 and appears to have been filmed in 1985, etc. All sorts of fun.

2. After thoroughly enjoying the Lorenzo Lamas spectacle Snake Eater last time, we were hoping to watch Snake Eater 2. Just look at this movie poster. You can tell it would be amazing: he teams up with a streetwise hustler from the ghetto! Sadly, it's not available anywhere, and the version on youtube is Spanish. So we watched Snake Eater 3 (1992).

It's essentially Cobra meets Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man. Lorenzo and his cowboy sidekick are hired to hunt down a biker gang who used a woman as a sexual slave. Not a single bit of the intentional comedy works, but the unintentional comedy is never-ending. In between the original and this one, Lorenzo put in lots of time building his biceps, so they get shown off a lot. Plenty of gratuitous nudity (obligatory strip club investigation scene), lots of violence, weird tonal shifts, and everything else a bad movie should be. And it turns out that murdering all the rapist bikers instantly cures a rape victim's trauma, which is pretty sweet.

3. The Sweeper (1996). As good as Snake Eater 3 was, this was the winner of the evening. Released in 1996 but I'm not sure there's ever a car newer than 1982 shown. The "star" is C Thomas Howell. They clearly had a decent budget and used it on all gunfights and explosions. The plot makes no sense but who cares because the violence and nudity (another strip club scene) is dialed up to 11. It's essentially a fight scene every 8 minutes with the bare minimum between to try to make a movie. There's a fight on a biplane, which is a refreshing change from all the helicopters. This was way more fun and entertaining than any Marvel superhero movie I've seen.

[Painboy]

Another terrible movie Saturday with my friend:

1. Evasive Action (1998). It's Con Air on a train. Literally. They even drop a reference to Con Air on why they're using a train instead of a plane. It has Roy Scheider in the John Malkovich role, Clint Howard in the Buscemi role, and a surprising number of "hey, it's that guy!" actors. Plus Don Swayze. Terrible continuity errors, dropped plotlines, cheap stunts (where they show the before and after of whatever is happening but not the action itself), released in 1998 and appears to have been filmed in 1985, etc. All sorts of fun.

2. After thoroughly enjoying the Lorenzo Lamas spectacle Snake Eater last time, we were hoping to watch Snake Eater 2. Just look at this movie poster. You can tell it would be amazing: he teams up with a streetwise hustler from the ghetto! Sadly, it's not available anywhere, and the version on youtube is Spanish. So we watched Snake Eater 3 (1992).

It's essentially Cobra meets Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man. Lorenzo and his cowboy sidekick are hired to hunt down a biker gang who used a woman as a sexual slave. Not a single bit of the intentional comedy works, but the unintentional comedy is never-ending. In between the original and this one, Lorenzo put in lots of time building his biceps, so they get shown off a lot. Plenty of gratuitous nudity (obligatory strip club investigation scene), lots of violence, weird tonal shifts, and everything else a bad movie should be. And it turns out that murdering all the rapist bikers instantly cures a rape victim's trauma, which is pretty sweet.

3. The Sweeper (1996). As good as Snake Eater 3 was, this was the winner of the evening. Released in 1996 but I'm not sure there's ever a car newer than 1982 shown. The "star" is C Thomas Howell. They clearly had a decent budget and used it on all gunfights and explosions. The plot makes no sense but who cares because the violence and nudity (another strip club scene) is dialed up to 11. It's essentially a fight scene every 8 minutes with the bare minimum between to try to make a movie. There's a fight on a biplane, which is a refreshing change from all the helicopters. This was way more fun and entertaining than any Marvel superhero movie I've seen.

Is that Howell in the beard and hair combo? If so I know what I'm watching soon.

[Andrew]

Is that Howell in the beard and hair combo? If so I know what I'm watching soon.

Indeed it is. Also, neither of those cars on the cover appear in the movie, so you know it's good.

[JasonL]

Tag line is really tight.

[Hugh Akston]

Perhaps not surprising of a 2015 movie that's already in the Criterion Collection, but Phoenix is really good. Good performances, good dialogue, subtle filmmaking that respects the audience. The marketing apparently invoked HItchcock, which I guess I can see looking back, but at the time I picked up a lot of Bergman influences.

[Painboy]

While bouncing around on Amazon Prime I found a couple of 80s craptaculars.

The first one was a 1984 David Carradine tour de force The Warrior and the Sorceress. It wasn't actually quite the garbage fire I was hoping for. This was partly because they just used Yojimbo's (aka Fist Full of Dollars, aka Last Man Standing, aka...) plot verbatim so it retained some narrative coherence it didn't really deserve. Carradine mostly glowered and stumbled through his role as per his usual practice. Everyone else was chewing scenery at a prodigious rate which gave it a kind of weird manic energy. The movie was really more bizarre than bad.

Some observations:

- The soundtrack never seemed to figure out what it was going for. From Tangerine Dream style ambient weirdness that meandered into spaghetti western sounds that then turned into up beat Errol Flynn "HaHa!" fight music.
- Despite the title as far as can tell there wasn't actually a sorceress. There was a priestess who did a magic thing or two but no sorceress.
- Speaking of the priestess there isn't a scene in the movie were her breasts aren't bared. Literally. Initially she's a prisoner so it might make some sense but she's freed later and still walks around topless. This includes the big fight at the end where she's running around bewbs a flying.
- Carradine does maintain his tradition of being the worst choreographed fighter on film. Ironically amusing given the series "Kung Fu" is what put him on the map.
- I don't know if you could ever sue a movie poster for false advertising but if you were going to try this would be a good one to start with. That muscled guy is supposed to be Carradine. Not only does he not have muscles like that, they keep him in a black cloak the whole movie so you don't see his clearly developing paunch.
- And yes there is a four breasted woman in the movie for no apparent reason. Eat it Total Recall!

Warrior_Sorceress_.jpg (159.53 KiB) Viewed 1026 times

[Andrew]

I have added that to my to-see list. I like how even muscular, idealized Carradine on the movie poster looks like a balding dope. It's a bad (awesome) sign when Chevy Chase looks better on the Vacation poster.

[Jasper]

Yeah, that poster is fucking amazing.

[Painboy]

Is that Howell in the beard and hair combo? If so I know what I'm watching soon.

Indeed it is. Also, neither of those cars on the cover appear in the movie, so you know it's good.

So I just saw this fine movie. I think if there was a word to describe this thing it would be "inexplicably." As in a fire fight starts in a drug lab clearly in the middle of the day but when Howell chases the bad guy outside it's inexplicably late evening. Or those helium tanks the bad guy is shooting are inexplicably filled with nitroglycerin and can be detonated by spraying wildly out the back of his window one handed with an Uzi. Or Howell inexplicably catches one of the tanks bouncing all over the freeway on his hood, balances it, and then drives his car into the bad guy's car flinging the tank into the bad guy's front seat where Howell shoots it and it explodes.

That isn't even the worst(best?) of it. The characters just seem to do things because that's what you do in these kinds of movies. For instance Howell basically just glowers through the whole movie but inexplicably the bad girl vamp in the movie falls for him and of course has a change of heart. Apparently to cheap to do an actual scene after Howell's 9th suspect killing as a cop his chief doesn't haul him into his office but inexplicably leaves a crazy and long winded rant on his answering machine. It's like they forgot to shoot that scene and said oh wait these movies have to have the police chief getting angry at the hero for his wild card shenanigans, here just scream into this mic.

Yeah the movie is a hoot.

[Warren]

Yeah, that poster is fucking amazing.

Aye

[Warren]

I have felt that Melissa McCarthy has a great role in her, and have been waiting for her to step into it. Her portrayal of Lee Israel in Can You Ever Forgive Me? isn't it. But it is good work and the film is worth watching if you have an interest in the story. It's a gritty story of someone alone and desperate, short on comic relief. We spend half an hour setting up the isolation and desperation before we get to the criminal activity. I have no idea how well it conforms to the true story it's based on but it feels very real.

[JD]

Last night I watched Shogun Assassin - well, technically I watched Lone Wolf and Cub: Sword of Vengeance; the movie known as Shogun Assassin in the US is apparently a re-edit consisting of a small part of LWaC:SoV and most of the sequel, Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart at the River Styx.

It's a pretty cool B samurai movie: the disgraced former Shogunate Executioner, framed for treason, wanders Japan as a swordsman for hire while seeking revenge - all with his toddler son in tow, sometimes literally carrying him during swordfights. It was adapted from a manga, which explains some of the weird parts, like "Why is this old guy introduced as the apparent Big Bad and then never seen again?" And of course there are some parts that are still weird, although some of that may have just been because it was 1972. Lots of boobs for a samurai movie, one rather intense rape scene, and one really weird sex scene. Lots of red paint spurting as nameless samurai lose arms, legs, heads, etc. There's a cool bit in the climactic fight scene where the hero uses a naginata instead of a sword. The beginning of the movie, where we find out Lone Wolf and Cub's backstory, is actually very dramatically effective. Looking forward to watching the sequel.

[Jennifer]

Apparently to cheap to do an actual scene after Howell's 9th suspect killing as a cop his chief doesn't haul him into his office but inexplicably leaves a crazy and long winded rant on his answering machine.

Is this set in America? It is indeed unrealistic, to think an American cop might get chewed out just for killing a whole bunch of people.

[Warren]

Went into The Happytime Murders with low expectations and was pleasantly surprised. It's more than a string of felt dick jokes. What it is, or rather what it wants to be, is Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
It falls well short of that. But it was a fun time. No regrets.

[JD]

Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart at the River Styx (yes, that is really the title) was sadly not quite as good as the first movie. It's got some good parts - there are some visually and dramatically effective scenes, like the well scene, or the boat fire, or the attack in the desert - but in general it's longer on gore and shorter on story. I do see why it was considered one of the "video nasties" in Britain; scenes like the one where the ninja is dismembered by the female assassins, or the head-splitting scene, are pretty intense. But it does include the great death scene of the final brother, where there's a red mist billowing from the slash in his neck, and he says

The cut wails like a cold winter wind. They call it mogari-bue, ‘the whistle of a fallen tiger.’ I’ve always wished to kill someone, just once, and create such a fine cut as to sing this tune. Now I’m hearing it from my own neck.

Then I watched The Thundering Mantis, aka Mantis Fist Fighter. It's a fairly formulaic kung fu movie, but it's fun partly because the soundtrack is pure 1970s funk and partly because the dubbing is so amusingly bizarre - the characters have really thick British accents. But everything works dramatically and the final fight scene gets really intense and fun to watch with the lead busting out his "insane mantis" style.

[Hugh Akston]

Drop Zone, a skydiving movie starring Snipes, Gary Busey, and Cory Nemic. Of all the Bad 90s Thrillers I have seen, this one was the most aggressively 90s. Soundtrack included INXS and Toad the Wet Sprocket; lots of Zubaz, No Fear shirts, and neon poly windbreakers; Bud Dry product placement; and so many man pony tails.

Also Hans Zimmer did the score, and there was definitely an early draft of the Pirates of the Caribbean theme.

As skydiving movies go, this one was somewhere between Coleman Francis and Point Break.