Watch Watched Watching: Danny Ocean's Star Wars with Groundhog Zombies and Aliens at the Edge of 28 Days later than Tomorrow

[RhaenysBee]

I’m watching The Bold Type and even though it thinks very highly of itself, it’s as out of touch with realty as any one of its predecessors in the genre. Frankly, the characters are unspeakably boring and flat, the dialogue is exhausting and the plot is a cliche. That’s not necessarily a problem, being a cliche worked out quite well for Bridgerton, but there’s virtually nothing special, engaging, entertaining or endearing about this particular cliche story. 
No, I lied. There is actually one thing the bold type is trying to be distinctively special and novel about: the mean boss trope. But the result is the same, unrealistic and boring. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

@Maithanet,

I don't want to derail the dating thread anymore, funny as the convo was. I agree the original TMNT live action movie is great, but you don't also have some attachment to the first sequel? It's stupid, no doubt, but The Secret of the Ooze is still a lot of dumb fun imo. 

ETA: Holy shit, Sam Rockwell is in the first one?!?!?!?!?

[Argonath Diver]

I dressed up as a TMNT (specifically Donatello) for Halloween until I hit 12 or whatever age that stopped being cool. The second film came out when I was 10 and I definitely thought Super Shredder was amazing and terrifying. I need to rewatch those classics - after a J or two I'd guess.

[DMC]

I have nostalgia for Secret of the Ooze, but even as a kid I recall thinking it was crap compared to the first one.  Didn't even remember there was a third one made two years later til I just looked it up.

[A True Kaniggit]

I owned the first one on VHS when I was little.

All I really remember is them sitting around eating pizza as one does an impression, “You rat, you dirty rat, you killed my brother!”

Edit: Or was it father? Now I think it was father. 

[WarGalley]

Man.. I think that first TMNT movie was the first movie theater experience ever for me. I feel like there should have been a cartoon or something beforehand but my memory is real fuzzy going back that far. Vanilla Ice was definitely the most memorable part of the 2nd one.. and never even bothered with the 3rd time-travel to Japan one or whatever. Kind of funny since I had the TMNT-cartoon bedsheets through high school and I'm pretty sure my mom still has them if not still actively using them somewhere today. 

 

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

12 minutes ago, WarGalley said:

Man.. I think that first TNMT movie was the first movie theater experience ever for me. I feel like there should have been a cartoon or something beforehand but my memory is real fuzzy going back that far. Vanilla Ice was definitely the most memorable part of the 2nd one.. and never even bothered with the 3rd time-travel to Japan one or whatever. Kind of funny since I had the TNMT-cartoon bedsheets through high school and I'm pretty sure my mom still has them if not still actively using them somewhere today. 

 

 

I'm in the same boat, just not with TMNT. I know I saw some Disney cartoons beforehand, but I can't really say what they were. The first movie I recall seeing either had to be Speed, Jurassic Park or Apollo 13.

Great parenting, folks! 

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

America: The Motion Picture

Opened strong. Lots of funny/WTF moments. Got progressively less funny as it went on. Not a fan of Channing Tatum as George Washington. Meh. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

I was lied to and told a Netflix movie should be out today when in fact it won't be released for three weeks. A heist movie, in which all situations were perfectly planned for, except for there being a vampire....on a plane.

So I decided to watch a different vampire movie that I've heard gets a lot of love. What We Do in the Shadows is a go!!!

[RumHam]

58 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

So I decided to watch a different vampire movie that I've heard gets a lot of love. What We Do in the Shadows is a go!!!

 

I mean if you were watching a movie, wouldn't you enjoy it more if you knew no one had fucked it?

[TheLastWolf]

The Pursuit of Happyness 

With my dad

Belated Dad's day watch. 

[Veltigar]

7 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

I was lied to and told a Netflix movie should be out today when in fact it won't be released for three weeks. A heist movie, in which all situations were perfectly planned for, except for there being a vampire....on a plane.

 

You have my attention sir!

[Ran]

40 minutes ago, Veltigar said:

You have my attention sir!

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

41 minutes ago, Veltigar said:

You have my attention sir!

 

ETA: God damn you Ran.  Clearly Putin helped you beat me by 2 seconds.

[Veltigar]

1 hour ago, Ranivaka said:

 

 

1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

 

ETA: God damn you Ran.  Clearly Putin helped you beat me by 2 seconds.

Thanks to the both of you  It looks like it could be fun.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

31 minutes ago, Veltigar said:

 

Thanks to the both of you  It looks like it could be fun.

Fun is the right word because I can't imagine it will actually be good, but with the aid of a few beers and a joint I'm sure it will be entertaining. 

I wonder if you can gamble on robbers vs. a vampire on The Money Plane? 

[Maithanet]

The first TMNT is surprisingly gritty and violent for a kids movie.  Just off the top of my head, Shredder gets stabbed in the arm and bleeds, Shredder murders Hamato Yoshi and his wife in cold blood, and Shredder says about Splinter "The rat...kill it."  So many kids movies avoid any mention of death or killing. 

And they resisted the urge to wink at the camera about this ridiculous premise of talking ninja turtles in New York, which I give them credit for. 

In contrast, Secret of the Ooze really shies away from any violence.  Not only does Leonardo not stab anybody, none of the turtles use their weapons on anybody at any point.  Instead, they pick up less threatening objects and hit people with them instead, like sausages, toys, etc.  Raph gets captured in the first movie, beaten to a pulp and thrown through a skylight to the floor below (all on screen!)  In the second movie he gets captured by getting surrounded by foot soldiers, Shredder pops up in front of him, and then cut away.  Next scene he's tied up.  It is a very sanitized and childish movie, particularly in comparison to the first film. 

[Maithanet]

My wife and I have been watching Generation War (in German "Our Mothers, Our Fathers).  It's on Amazon Prime and has very good production value for a German miniseries.  The show has its flaws but overall I'm really enjoying this WW2 drama.  Very excited to watch the second half. 

[Zorral]

Though at one time I watched many French New Wave films, the French gangster noir was a subset mostly missing, perhaps because my mentors weren't interested in it themselves?  So I just watched for the first time Borsalino and Co. (1974),  featuring Alain Delon and produced by Alain Delon, on Amazon Prime. This is the 1974 sequel to the 1970 Borsalino, which co-starred Jean Paul Belmondo and Delain. Amazon provides subtitles or one can watch a dubbed into English version. As the time line is 1930’s Marseille, from the perspective of 2021, this is doubly a period film. As with most period screen work prior to very recently, and even now,  see women’s shoes! --  the women’s hair is anachronistic – still following that teased, sprayed variations on the Bardot big hair flip of the swingin’ 60’s. Otherwise, the details, whether the vehicles -- which includes horse's harness -- and particularly the men's suits, are period accurate. Men's suits, to die for, for sure -- hey the characters are French and Italian, so of course.  The women mostly don't wear much, but what they do wear would fit right into what is unworn mostly in contemporary fifty years after Borsalino and Co., in today's "Gentleman's Clubs." 

We begin in a cemetery, in silence, followed by a long, silent take of the hearse advancing out of the cemetery, front-on toward the viewer, infinitesimally slowly, during the credits roll.  First 5 + minutes, nobody speaks. People are merely watching, attending the action, as are we, the viewers. Yet, we quickly learn, that in the tradition of ancient connection between southern Italy and southern Gaul/France, the antagonists-protagonists are Mafia gangsters, who have the paid cooperation of the French police and politicians.

The plot emerges out of collusion of the Mafia w/ the contemporary fascist-nazi international movements, and their proponents in local and national governance, law enforcement and finance – German, Austrian, Italian, Spanish, and yes, in France's and the UK's too  -- who use them to get guns and muscle, financed by the gangsters' free rein with bootleg and smuggled booze, and the manufacture and distribution of heroin. Volpone, the bad Mafia Big, displays autographed photos of Mussolini, never specifically focused upon by the camera eye, but part of scenic decor. Volpone's sneers that Siffredi's style, taking revenge, is out-of-date and over for their kind; we gangsters are now part of the establishment, and taking over the whole world in tandem with the politics of the fascist international. 

When Siffredi gets his mojo kicking in again after his hero's arc reversal, he leaves Marseille for Genoa, to get the money to recruit for vengeance. Nothing during the Genoese chapter of Siffredi's life is shown or told as to how he and his no-back-story to explain his boy's bottomless loyalty, obtain the money and mojo to take “Borsalino and Co.” to France again, and work that out-of-date revenge. But surely we the viewers know it wasn't done politely or legally, and surely there are bodies piled up.

Cinematic and history's style, period, tone, culture, meld elegantly. We see throughout what Peckinpah, Scorsese, Coppola -- particularly Scorsese -- took note of in their close studies of the French New Wave, particularly with the set dressing, mise-en-scéne in scenic structure. Demonstrated on the screen we see what the French directors learned from US directors of the gangster and western films. At one point, ever so suave Seffredi, not yet broken by the bad bad guy, shoots with a revolver in one hand and double barreled shot gun in the other, bodies falling over balconies, down stairs, blasted into wall, piled up in an anonymous heap of nobodies who matter only to illustrate how competent the Siffredi character is with guns. In a reflection of the silent credit roll of the opening, in the opening sequence to Our Hero's arc of redemption of his Marseille fall, is a long sequence which is a train speeding through the night, car after car, brightly lit inside, so we outside in the dark see into every compartment, even the details of passengers reading, eating, talking, sleeping, until the car in which Our Boys are interested appears. This long sequence is simple, elegant, hypnotic, so much longer on screen than anything we will see today, except overt, graphic scenes of violence. But, never fear, this section concludes with an act of brutality that not even Tarantino has out-done (who was nine when this film was made).

The film concludes on a luxury liner, with Siffredi, his boys (and one girl) going to America in 1937. Where "We surely will find  and make some very good friends." Which leaves me with my 2021 sensibility resenting that I've had to root for just-as-bad guy protagonists vs. their bad-bad guy antagonists, that the dominance of the screen has me cheering on bad guys. All of them are black Borsalinos.* Nevertheless, I was entirely engaged with the film's artistic, historic and political vision.

* In case: Borsalino.
 

[Martell Spy]

Quote

 

The first TMNT is surprisingly gritty and violent for a kids movie.  Just off the top of my head, Shredder gets stabbed in the arm and bleeds, Shredder murders Hamato Yoshi and his wife in cold blood, and Shredder says about Splinter "The rat...kill it."  So many kids movies avoid any mention of death or killing. 

And they resisted the urge to wink at the camera about this ridiculous premise of talking ninja turtles in New York, which I give them credit for. 

 

There was also this scene where Tatsu beat to death one of the teenager recruits with a baseball bat, I believe. I was 13 years old when I saw the movie and it really made an impact on me.

Really happy that Leverage is returning this month and with the original crew.