Recent Viewings, Part 2

[M.10rda]

More info required, Trevor!

You must have missed this post: https://www.badmovies.org/forum/index.php?topic=159642.0

Somehow I did - but just enjoyed it! Congrats Trevor and I will look forward to seeing it myself!

I liked this detail Trevor mentioned in the other thread:
>>> Actually, you had to be 21 years or older to see FMJ back then but in 1987 the Angolan War was happening and school leavers as young as 17 were being drafted into the army. 😳 So, you could go off and fight in a real war but God forbid you would want to see an Oscar nominated war film. 😳😳

^^^I myself saw FMJ around age 10 and maybe it kept me from a life in the military.    End of HS all the armed services started calling my house and pressing me to enlist. Finally I engaged one recruiter in a discussion of how much I empathized w/ Pvt. Pyle and I never heard from them again. 

[M.10rda]

The Burglar (1957)
edit: if you don't find Mansfield attractive the score is probably a point lower, honestly

She looks a lot better there than I think she looked a few years later when she seemed harder and overly glammed up. She looks like a youthful normal (attractive) person in your picture!

[lester1/2jr]

It's early Jessica Alba level perfection

[M.10rda]

 

[FatFreddysCat]

"The Jersey Sound" (2024)
This cool little documentary traces the Garden State's long history of contributions to popular music, from Sinatra in the 1940s and 50s to Southside Johnny and young Bruce Springsteen in the 60s and 70s, to Overkill and the Misfits in the '80s to today's varied hip-hop and alternative rock sounds. Interviews and comments from such Jersey luminaries as Bobby "Blitz" Ellsworth, Steve Brown (Trixter), the late Jonny Zazula, "Uncle Floyd" Vivino, Rachel Bolan, Ted Poley, Al DiMeola, and many more prove what those of us who live here have always known - New Jersey ROCKS!

[indianasmith]

CHARLIE'S FARM (2015) I wasn't sure if I had seen this one before or not, but about 15 minutes in I realized that I had.  This Australian slasher was still worth a second watch, though!  Four friends - one of them played by AMERICAN PIE's Tara Reid - drive into the bush to search for a farm house once owned by a family of cannibal serial killers.  The murdering couple were killed by an angry mob of locals back in the 80's, but their dim-witted, deformed son, ten at the time, was never found and presumed dead.  But it turns out little Charlie is alive and well, and not so little anymore!  Played by FRIDAY THE 13th's Kane Hodder, Charlie is a huge, malformed, angry killing machine who doesn't like young folks playing around at his family's farm, as Tara and her gang are about to find out!  This is a pretty much by-the-numbers slasher film, but I will say that it's worth watching just to see Kane Hodder in action again.  He is a huge man, and the makeup and prosthetics they used to turn him into "Charlie" are pretty cool and terrifying. 4/5

[Trevor]

More info required, Trevor!

You must have missed this post: https://www.badmovies.org/forum/index.php?topic=159642.0

Somehow I did - but just enjoyed it! Congrats Trevor and I will look forward to seeing it myself!

I liked this detail Trevor mentioned in the other thread:
>>> Actually, you had to be 21 years or older to see FMJ back then but in 1987 the Angolan War was happening and school leavers as young as 17 were being drafted into the army. 😳 So, you could go off and fight in a real war but God forbid you would want to see an Oscar nominated war film. 😳😳

^^^I myself saw FMJ around age 10 and maybe it kept me from a life in the military.    End of HS all the armed services started calling my house and pressing me to enlist. Finally I engaged one recruiter in a discussion of how much I empathized w/ Pvt. Pyle and I never heard from them again. 

Thanks 😊😊🙏🐢

[FatFreddysCat]

"Batman Returns" (1992)
In Michael Keaton's second go-around as the Caped Crusader, he faces the Penguin (Danny DeVito), who rises from Gotham's sewers to run for Mayor with the help of a crooked tycoon (Christopher Walken) and Catwoman (Michelle Pfeiffer) a femme fatale with a feline obsession and a skin tight bondage suit. Much darker and weirder than the first "Batman" flick -- they really let Tim Burton go nuts on this one. Great cast, fantastic set designs and even more Gothic atmosphere than the '89 movie. It had been a while since I'd last seen this one but I think I may prefer it over the O.G. nowadays.
Unfortunately, the franchise took a swift nose dive after this installment, as Burton left to make way for Joel Schumacher's pair of neon-colored cheese fests.

[M.10rda]

LOGAN (2017):
All reports in confirmation, this is indeed the best X-MEN film, at least prior to the one that opened on big screens Friday... and by a pretty significant margin. Co-writer/director James Mangold (who also did a nice job on 2013's THE WOLVERINE) ups his game and very wisely severs this film's continuity from all previous entries - it doesn't even seem to follow THE WOLVERINE in any clear way besides being about the same central character. (There is a small part about a bullet that may be borrowed from the excreable X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE, but the heck I'll ever go double check that.)

To its credit, LOGAN is the first X-MEN movie to correctly nail the TONE of the best X-Men stories and of most good Wolverine stories. Mangold's film is bleak, almost strictly minor key (as emphasized by Marco Beltrami's distinctly depressive score), and shot through with anxiety instead of manic valor. That mightn't have sounded like a recipe for a crowd-pleaser to producer Lauren Shuler Donner through the 00s, but it is an accurate reflection of the tone of the literature, which mostly focuses on characters contending in vain against prejudice, genocide, and rejection from even their own peers.

LOGAN also highlights a major aspect of the character which other films have generally ignored: the brooding, violent, nihilistic, and not-sexless Wolverine as unlikely protector and father figure to adolescent girls in jeopardy. This is a role he played in comics for years, to Kitty Pryde, Rogue, Jubilee, and Armor, though (curiously) rarely to X-23/Laura. Nevertheless, it was natural and commendable choice to build an entire film around this dynamic. Watching Logan & Laura struggle with each other and collaborate to cut the hell out of bad guys evokes the dark magic of Arya Stark and the Hound on GAME OF THRONES - a partnership consciously inspired by Kitty and Wolvie.

Also, LOGAN unexpectedly provides the best version of Professor X, a character I've never warmed to in print or onscreen (and appropriately, for - as Kitty famously told readers in the 80s - Professor X is a jerk). In this film, however, the nonagenarian and nearly helpless Xavier elicits compassion for a long life led to dead ends. It's a warm, humorous, and deeply felt send-off for Patrick Stewart (who gave an equally outstanding but diametrically opposed performance in GREEN ROOM the same year).

Obvious allusions to classic westerns and slightly less obvious ones to THE ROAD WARRIOR and BEYOND THUNDERDOME. Jackman is iconic as ever, bringing to mind Eastwood (one of Wolverine's inspirations) and Gibson while maintaining a very human quality to a figure who, in shakier hands, could be even less than two-dimensional.

4/5
Some nice meta bits, too, which segue conveniently into what inevitably would be Jackman's return to the role.

[M.10rda]

"Batman Returns" (1992)
 It had been a while since I'd last seen this one but I think I may prefer it over the O.G. nowadays.

I have always felt this way. Great script, Pfeiffer and Walken are terrific, and I sincerely think this is DeVito's best performance. If Heath Ledger deserved an Oscar, DeVito certainly deserved a nomination.

[Rev. Powell]

"Batman Returns" (1992)
 It had been a while since I'd last seen this one but I think I may prefer it over the O.G. nowadays.

I have always felt this way. Great script, Pfeiffer and Walken are terrific, and I sincerely think this is DeVito's best performance. If Heath Ledger deserved an Oscar, DeVito certainly deserved a nomination.

Thirded.

[FatFreddysCat]

"Spread" (2024)
An out of work journalist (former TV teen queen Elizabeth Gillies, of "Victorious" fame) reluctantly accepts a temp job at "Spread," a low-rent adult magazine that's on the verge of bankruptcy. As the new, hip young blood on staff, she's assigned to turn the mag's fortunes around by developing its online presence. In spite of her initial distaste for the subject matter (and for her new co-workers) she eventually realizes that porno people are regular people, too.
This Tubi original is a cheap, breezy workplace comedy (with a dash of rom-com) with a fair share of laughs (and cleavage). The cast (which also includes Harvey Keitel as the mag's Larry Flynt-ish publisher and Diedrich "Office Space" Baeder as Gillies' dad) makes the most of the thin premise. Better than I expected.

[RCMerchant]

CARDBOARD BOXER (2016)
A slow but honest homeless man in L.A. is used by some teenage brats to fight other bums. Desperation will make you do some s**t.
While digging in the trash, he comes across the diary of a motherless child who's face had been disfigured in a fire.
He writes and mails her letters from rooftops via paper airplanes. His is a lonely, violent existence. By movies end your either blubbering or board to tears.
I watched it all and having been homeless, I could relate. And the ending, as corny and contrived as it was, got me teared up. It is what it is.

[FatFreddysCat]

"Addicted to Porn: Chasing the Cardboard Butterfly" (2017)
A dreadfully dull documentary in which an endless parade of psychologists and other "experts" weigh in on porn addiction, its effect on society, how to combat it, and blah de blah de blah.
In other words... it's 90 minutes of "Kids? Porn is bad, mmm-kay? It's gonna mess up your brain, mmm-kay?"
The only reason I even pressed "play" on this flick was because it was narrated by James Hetfield of Metallica (of all people!), which was just weird enough to pique my curiosity. I'd love to know how the hell he got involved with this project. Maybe he has had, errr, "issues" in this area? Whatever. Watching paint dry would have been more interesting than this doc.
For the love of God, AVOID.

[lester1/2jr]

The Love War (1970) - Aaron Spelling serves up a not that great sci fi oddity that wants to be "Demon with a Glass Hand" but is more like an MST3K adventure. It has it's moments, though.

Sea Hunt master Lloyd Bridges is an alien taking part in a weird kind of war where two planets put 3 people each on a third planet, in this case Earth, and the 3 battle it out. Helping him along the way is Scooby Doo and Friends alum Angie Dickenson, who is like a less sexy Goldie Hawn.

Spelling misses obvious stuff like: when she puts on the special "They Live" type glasses to see his real form, wouldn't that be a perfect opportunity to do some janky special effects? It totally would. Instead, we just get some "pew pew" laser sounds here and there.

The ending does rise to the occasion, the writing is intelligent enough, and I'm sure it has it's defenders but it's just okay. Then again, it's a TV movie so what more did I expect?

3.75/ 5