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Nov 15, 2016 9:28:25 GMT -5
Post by deuce on Nov 15, 2016 9:28:25 GMT -5
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Nov 15, 2016 9:45:15 GMT -5
Post by johnnypt on Nov 15, 2016 9:45:15 GMT -5
Kelly's Heroes 1995!
Good to see the dude from Blindspot getting some other work (how is he top billed over Jaimie Alexander anyway?)
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Nov 15, 2016 9:48:20 GMT -5
Post by themirrorthief on Nov 15, 2016 9:48:20 GMT -5
The Accountant is an excellent movie...good from start to finish. Superb action, huge body count...compelling back story. Beyond violent...I loved it.
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Nov 29, 2016 15:09:42 GMT -5
Post by deuce on Nov 29, 2016 15:09:42 GMT -5
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Nov 29, 2016 15:18:23 GMT -5
Post by lordyam on Nov 29, 2016 15:18:23 GMT -5
Saw Fantastic Beasts. Unfortunately they didn't have subtitles and I'm hard of hearing so I missed out. Ah well at least they gave me a free ticket as compensation.
I also enjoyed Dr Strange. It did retread a wee bit with the character arc being similar to Tony's arc but it was still damn good
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Dec 14, 2016 18:20:24 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on Dec 14, 2016 18:20:24 GMT -5
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Dec 21, 2016 12:50:09 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on Dec 21, 2016 12:50:09 GMT -5
Yeah, it's a beautifully shot movie, the Altai mountains look great. Aisholpan the 13 year old Kazakh eagle hunter and her eagle are obviously fantastic. There's a great scene where Aisholpan climbs down a cliff to catch the young eaglet that she trains for the tournament. There is a slight problem with the narrative, which at times feels forced. There's a scene where Aisholpan hears about the 'Eagle Hunting Festival' on the radio that felt unnecessary - all Kazakhs of the Mongolian Altai know about the annual eagle hunting festival. Also, there are interviews with the Kazakh elders not too pleased with the idea of a girl entering the eagle hunting tournament - one even goes as far to say that women should not even ride horses! Absolute nonsense, how can a nomad family survive with half the population not on horseback? For a start, Aisholpan is not the first female eagle hunter. When I was in Mongolia, the nomad women were tough. They worked incredibly hard, they were very confident and strong. I'd say they're tougher than most of the guys in the urban western world. And yes they were on horseback, and usually better educated than the men of the country. The kids are usually educated in a nearby town or city and return to the steppe on their holidays. These traits are common throughout Mongolia, irrespective of, whether they are Mongol, Kazakh or Dukha. Apart from the above concerns, I could go on for ages - I still loved the movie. Aisholpan (her name probably translates as ai/moon, sholpan/Venus, so Moon-Venus) and the eagle were great to watch.
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Dec 22, 2016 16:09:49 GMT -5
Post by deuce on Dec 22, 2016 16:09:49 GMT -5
Jim Cornelius is going to watch this tonight. We'll see what he thinks.
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Dec 24, 2016 0:35:16 GMT -5
Post by deuce on Dec 24, 2016 0:35:16 GMT -5
An interesting look at 2017's movies:
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Jan 1, 2017 11:29:56 GMT -5
Post by almuric on Jan 1, 2017 11:29:56 GMT -5
The Dragons of Camelot (2014) - One aspect of the Arthurian mythos that doesn't get much attention is what happens after. A great movie could be made telling the story of what happens when the legend ends and the dream of Camelot fails.
This is not that movie.
This is bad. Really bad. Like "destined to be featured on the new MST3K bad". I've seen stuff from The Asylum that was better than this. The Asylum.
So, we open with Morgana summoning three dragons. In doing so, she explains the plot, because I guess the dragons care about Camelot's politics. What's really odd is that she's just whispering this loudly, but the dragons seem to hear her from half a kilometer away. Guess dragon hearing is really good. Anyhow, King Arthur is dying. Of old age. This Arthur is also a bit out of shape, frankly. Also, Guinevere is about twenty years younger than he is. Also, Galahad is Arthur's son. Well, not really. He's the son of Guinevere and Lancelot, and Arthur knows it. Oddly enough, nobody's worried about the legitimacy issue, for some reason. Arthur croaks and Morgana launches her coup and takes over Camelot in a very lame battle that involves about twenty people who swing their swords at their opponent's swords rather than trying to hit anybody. Oh, and Gawain is a traitor, for some reason. Morgana breaks Excalibur (so easily that Merlin is stripped of his magic (off-screen) and he and the queen are taken prisoner. Galahad escapes and for some reason knows that sticking the pieces of Excalibur back into the Stone which it was pulled from will fix it.
But first, Galahad decides to go looking for dad. After getting almost robbed by former knights-turned-bandits (including requisite Action Girl Dindre), he finds Sir Lancelot in a very spacious medieval tavern doing a bad Han Solo impersonation and saying "I need a drink" a lot. Or maybe the actor was ad-libbing that. Oh yes, and Lancelot is third in line to the throne of Camelot. I guess sleeping with the king's wife has it's benefits. Then they go to find not-appearing-in-any-legend Sir Eckhart, another former knight who is now an overweight and out of shape farmhand. Because that's not a job that requires much physical effort, I guess. These bits are punctuated by dragon attacks which all play out in the same way: dragon lands, roars, characters ineffectually fight it, dragon bites someone's head off, takes off, returns, characters are suddenly effectual and kill it, another dragon is summoned, repeat. They're even filmed with the same angles. Also, dragon fire doesn't even singe grass. Who knew?
And that brings us to the character deaths. The movie keeps introducing characters and killing them five minutes later. Needless to say, it's rather hard to care much, especially when none of the actors are any good. I kept saying: "Oh no! Not that character I forgot the name of! No them too!"
Dindre's "archery" is hysterical. The actress holds her bow sideways and her grip suggests she was frightened of pulling the string too hard. She also launches multiple arrows at once, which seems unwise. Morgana's magic works by bad acting, Merlin's by bad poetry. At the climax, when Merlin gets his magic back when Arthur's ghost does the Obi-Wan thing (don't ask), he and Morgana try to kill each other with CGI lens flares. Excalibur has never been shorter, or duller than it is here. And for all the effort they go through to fix the damn thing, it barely figures in the climax.
And the armor. Oh dear. I bust a gut when Sir Eckhart pulls out his armor. It consists of pauldrons and a sheet of beaten metal which hangs over his ample gut like a bib. Yes, that will protect you, as long as your opponents don't stab you in the side or back or anything. Worse, some of Morgana's soldiers have the same armor style. Is getting a few mail coats so difficult? At least the shields look legit, and unlike any of the other props, actually look worn and used.
It definitely achieves "so bad it's good" status in a few scenes. My favorite is the bit where a peasant woman, after seeing her husband getting his head bitten off by a dragon, runs towards the dragon, shrieking in her squeaky voice: "I want to dieee with myyyy husbaaand!" And when the audience is tittering at what is supposed to be a heartbreaking scene of tragic loss, you've really failed. Morgana's lousy acting also provides a few laughs, especially near the end when she's about to kill Lancelot and Guinevere with CGI fire and is interrupted by Galahad and she rolls her eyes and extinguishes her flame.
So, I'd recommend this only if you're good at snarking at bad movies and/or have friends with alcoholic beverages handy.
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Jan 15, 2017 11:54:12 GMT -5
Post by almuric on Jan 15, 2017 11:54:12 GMT -5
Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films (2015) - This was awesome. Back in the '80s, I remember seeing posters for Cannon Films in every video store. In the early '90s, every other movie on cable was from Cannon, or so it seemed. For a glorious decade, Israeli-born cousins Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus dominated the B-movie market with an eclectic mix of schlock and art. Cannon could do a Death Wish sequel one month, and a Franco Zefferelli film the next. Movies were being paid for with the deals for other movies. Reality finally won out. Cannon started spending more on its films, and a series of flops (Over The Top, Superman IV and Masters of the Universe), finally doomed the company. The documentary is hilarious and frequently mortifying. Definitely worth checking out.
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Jan 16, 2017 12:13:02 GMT -5
Post by deuce on Jan 16, 2017 12:13:02 GMT -5
Akira Kurosawa loved Shakespeare (as did REH). Macbeth was his favorite play. Kurosawa's adaptation of Macbeth, Throne of Blood, is considered a stone-cold classic. Throne of Blood was released 60 years ago today.
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Jan 16, 2017 20:05:24 GMT -5
Post by deuce on Jan 16, 2017 20:05:24 GMT -5
IMO, John Carpenter has done the best "Lovecraftian" (ie, in the spirit of Lovecraft) films to date, plus a lot of other great movies. He's 69yrs old today. www.theofficialjohncarpenter.com/
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Jan 17, 2017 9:15:25 GMT -5
Post by deuce on Jan 17, 2017 9:15:25 GMT -5
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Jan 17, 2017 11:41:22 GMT -5
Post by johnnypt on Jan 17, 2017 11:41:22 GMT -5
I finally got a chance to see this one a few years back, surprisingly brutal for 1964.
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