Recent Viewings, Part 2

[chefzombie]

i liked league too, i'm glad i'm not alone! 

[Alex]

Yeah, I liked the League too. I believe the reason Connery retired though was because of how the director treated him on set rather than the film's lack of success. There was at least one point where the pair were reported to have been close to blows. Shame really.

[Gabriel Knight]

I thought the one that led him to retire was THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN, which I personally loved and it's one of my guilty pleasures in the world of cinema. 

L.X.G. (which I also enjoyed) may have been the bomb that finalized his decision to step down, but "The Avengers" probably helped. :D

You too liked it? Man, that movie is so strange, it seems that everybody enjoyed it, yet it's somehow universally hated.

[chefzombie]

yeah, it's kind of the opposite version of citizen kane, lol!

[indianasmith]

DEADLY INSTINCTS (1997)  A meteorite lands at a Boston girls' school, discharging a slimy alien and his captive human female.  This bizarre mashup of HUMANOIDS FROM THE DEEP and INSEMINOID features plenty of violence and mayhem, occasional nudity, and a thrown-together plot that is laughable but keeps the story moving.  A good way to spend a quarantined evening, especially since it was free on Amazon Prime.

[Rev. Powell]

MST3K: ROCKETSHIP X-M: The movie is quite dumb without really being easy to mock because it's also drab and talky. It's about mankind's first rocket to the moon that goes off course and lands on Mars instead where they have a brief encounter with some cavemen (groan). The real attraction of this episode is the introduction of TV's Frank, who steps completely into his role from the very first ("I'm the God!") and gives the series that piece it was missing in season 1. It's also the first time Mike Nelson appears on the hexfield screen. Not a great episode, but a huge leap forward from Season 1. 3.5/5.

[FatFreddysCat]

"Vinylmania: When Life Runs at 33 Revolutions Per Minute" (2012)
A record collector and DJ travels the world visiting record stores and pressing plants, and talking to fellow vinyl junkies about why the LP format continues to thrive and survive.
This seems a bit artsier and more pretentious than usual for this sort of doc, but it's still a fun watch. Maybe it's just me, but I always get a kick out of seeing a copy of one of my favorite albums randomly hanging on the wall of a record shop in Tokyo, or wherever.
This was apparently the "Official Film of Record Store Day" in 2012, for whatever that's worth.

[FatFreddysCat]

"You Only Live Twice" (1967)
James Bond travels to Japan, where SPECTRE is stealing U.S. and Russian space capsules out of the sky in order to kick start WWIII. Over the top, action  packed fun.

[FatFreddysCat]

"Hired Gun" (2016)
A highly entertaining and enlightening documentary about the often-unsung, anonymous rock musicians who make a living by renting out their talents to superstar artists, on tour and in the recording studio. Lots of great stories are told by longtime road warriors like Jason Newsted, Nita Strauss, Rudy Sarzo, Eric Singer, and many more. This was worth watching just to learn how badly Billy Joel screwed over the members of his '70s backing band. Not cool, Billy, not cool.

[lester1/2jr]

The OA - Netflix series about a girl with mysterious powers working with a group of random people from her town to try and rescue some people somewhere. Pretty vague description but its heavy on twists and turns so I don't want to give them away.

If you were a fan of Medium and/or Brit Marling's other work like Another Earth its definitely a must see. going in cold it might come of as too slow and a little girly. excellent villain

4.5 /5

[FatFreddysCat]

"Dead Heat" (1988)
While investigating a string of bizarre robberies committed by seemingly-indestructible goons, a pair of wisecracking L.A. cops (Treat Williams and Joe Piscopo) learn that a mad scientist (Vincent Price!) has invented a way to re-animate dead criminals.
This action packed (and quite gory) buddy cop/horror spoof totally missed a bet by not calling itself "Beverly Hills Zombie."

[indianasmith]

ATTACK OF THE TATTIE-BOGLE (2017) A group of friends meet to spend the 4th of July weekend at a remote lake cabin in Wisconsin.  None of them are particularly memorable; the conversation seems more like something from 2016 than 2017 - the two liberals, for example, comparing George Bush to Hitler and questioning whether the 4th is worth celebrating any more while a redneck conservative pushes them to wear flag bandanas - but all of that is forgotten when a masked stranger shows up and starts killing them.  That's really it - he is killing everybody he finds, they are scrambling to survive.  Minimal gore, no T&A, unlikable characters - and yet the story is entertaining by its sheer simplicity and short run time (1 hour).  And you never find out what on earth a "Tattie-Bogle" is or why the name is in the movie's title.   2.5/5 - I've seen worse films on Amazon Prime, and at least this one was free.

[Alex]

A Tattie-Bogle is a local thing around here. It is along the lines of a scarecrow. One of the villages near by has a festival based around them where homemade versions are hung outside their houses.

https://sco.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tattie-bogle

[Rev. Powell]

THE OTHER LAMB (2019): Young Selah starts having doubts about the nomadic cult she's grown up in, which is divided into "wives" and "daughters" and led by a single male "Shepherd." Well-shot and well-intentioned, but it really should have picked up the pace; it seems a lot of opportunities for drama and character development were avoided in favor of scenes of walking, or Selah staring portentously. 2.5/5. 

[FatFreddysCat]

"Warlock" (1989)
A powerful male witch (Julian Sands) escapes the gallows in the 1620's by casting a spell that launches him forwards in time to 1980s Southern California, with a witch hunter in hot pursuit.
Essentially a supernatural spin on "The Terminator," this '80s video store fave hasn't aged particularly well but Sands is an appropriately nasty bad guy and Lori "Footloose" Singer adds some comic relief as a Valley Girl who gets caught in the middle of the battle. Followed by.two sequels.