Recent Viewings, Part 2

[Alex]

Trying to watch Bullet Train but it's not gripping my attention. I wonder if it's worth seeing?

Watch Train to Busan instead.

[ER]

Trying to watch Bullet Train but it's not gripping my attention. I wonder if it's worth seeing?

Watch Train to Busan instead.

Is that what it's based on?

[indianasmith]

TERRIFYING T-REX (2022)  Ever watch a movie that was completely free, but you still wanted your money back?  This offering from TubiTV was so bad I not only wanted a refund, I wanted to order a tactical nuclear strik against TubiTV headquarters for offering it on their network.  This movie isn't just bad; it raises bad to a whole new level!   LSS, a meteor strike opens a portal to some undeground chamber and lets a horribly CGI-animated T-rex loose onto a town of incredibly stupid rednecks who can't act.   The government sends in a special agent named Bellatrix who is morbidly obese, wears an eye-patch and a bustier, and who the director insists on showing naked despite the high percentage of suicides among his studio audience after said nude scenes. The T-rex chomps and stomps his way through the town's inbred ignoramuses, while the bumbling special agent tries to track him down.  The only high points in this steaming pile of cinematic dreck are A. the TV reporter, whose reaction to the inbred morons her station interviews are hilarious, and B. the fact that the movie ends with the President nuking the entire town.  It's a shame TubiTV's headquarters weren't located there!  1/5


WHO AM I KIDDING?  You guys would probably love this!

[Trevor]

DIE HARD 2 (1990)

John McClane attempts to avert disaster as rogue military operatives seize control of Dulles International Airport in Washington, D.C.

John is back in this by-the-numbers sequel. It's pretty much the same thing, but instead of a building, it's an airport. So what? It's still incredible fun, the villain is, once again, mysterious and menacing. It has amazing scenes, with much more tragedy than before. The humor is still there, with a lot of previous characters as well. The twists are not that surprising, but entertaining enough, especially the one where they shoot blanks and John tries and fail to kill a guy with the same gun.

It feels like a sequel, and it's damn fun. 9/10

When Die Hard 2 Die Harder was released here in 1990, a Pretoria cinema owner went a bit overboard with marketing for the film and put a wrecked aeroplane on the cinema's roof, causing quite a few accidents until claims and threats forced him to take the thing down. 

[Gabriel Knight]

DIE HARD 2 (1990)

John McClane attempts to avert disaster as rogue military operatives seize control of Dulles International Airport in Washington, D.C.

John is back in this by-the-numbers sequel. It's pretty much the same thing, but instead of a building, it's an airport. So what? It's still incredible fun, the villain is, once again, mysterious and menacing. It has amazing scenes, with much more tragedy than before. The humor is still there, with a lot of previous characters as well. The twists are not that surprising, but entertaining enough, especially the one where they shoot blanks and John tries and fail to kill a guy with the same gun.

It feels like a sequel, and it's damn fun. 9/10

When Die Hard 2 Die Harder was released here in 1990, a Pretoria cinema owner went a bit overboard with marketing for the film and put a wrecked aeroplane on the cinema's roof, causing quite a few accidents until claims and threats forced him to take the thing down. 

lol wtf, that's some serious advertising right there.

[Trevor]

DIE HARD 2 (1990)

John McClane attempts to avert disaster as rogue military operatives seize control of Dulles International Airport in Washington, D.C.

John is back in this by-the-numbers sequel. It's pretty much the same thing, but instead of a building, it's an airport. So what? It's still incredible fun, the villain is, once again, mysterious and menacing. It has amazing scenes, with much more tragedy than before. The humor is still there, with a lot of previous characters as well. The twists are not that surprising, but entertaining enough, especially the one where they shoot blanks and John tries and fail to kill a guy with the same gun.

It feels like a sequel, and it's damn fun. 9/10

When Die Hard 2 Die Harder was released here in 1990, a Pretoria cinema owner went a bit overboard with marketing for the film and put a wrecked aeroplane on the cinema's roof, causing quite a few accidents until claims and threats forced him to take the thing down. 

lol wtf, that's some serious advertising right there.

It made front page news as well. 

[Dr. Whom]

Spaced Out/Outer Touch (1981)

A spaceship from an all-female planet makes an emergency landing on earth and picks up some passers-by. As the aliens have never seen males before, they plan on selling them as exotic animals to a zoo, but they become intrigued by the 'vestigial third limb' of their captives.

As a soft core SF sex parody, this is about as silly as it gets. Director Norman Warren described it as a 'cross between Carry On and Fire Maidens From Outer Space', although I'd say there is some Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy in there as well. The whole thing is done firmly tongue in cheek, and everyone gets into the spirit. My favourite moment is when the Skipper pulls on a lever, which comes loose, so she tosses it away and pulls another one.

Silly but charming

[ER]

TERRIFYING T-REX (2022)  Ever watch a movie that was completely free, but you still wanted your money back?  This offering from TubiTV was so bad I not only wanted a refund, I wanted to order a tactical nuclear strik against TubiTV headquarters for offering it on their network.  This movie isn't just bad; it raises bad to a whole new level!   LSS, a meteor strike opens a portal to some undeground chamber and lets a horribly CGI-animated T-rex loose onto a town of incredibly stupid rednecks who can't act.   The government sends in a special agent named Bellatrix who is morbidly obese, wears an eye-patch and a bustier, and who the director insists on showing naked despite the high percentage of suicides among his studio audience after said nude scenes. The T-rex chomps and stomps his way through the town's inbred ignoramuses, while the bumbling special agent tries to track him down.  The only high points in this steaming pile of cinematic dreck are A. the TV reporter, whose reaction to the inbred morons her station interviews are hilarious, and B. the fact that the movie ends with the President nuking the entire town.  It's a shame TubiTV's headquarters weren't located there!  1/5


WHO AM I KIDDING?  You guys would probably love this!

You're usually charitable to even the lousiest stinker of a bad movie, so this thing must've really dropped into the depths of sheer awfulality.

[Alex]

TERRIFYING T-REX (2022)  Ever watch a movie that was completely free, but you still wanted your money back?  This offering from TubiTV was so bad I not only wanted a refund, I wanted to order a tactical nuclear strik against TubiTV headquarters for offering it on their network.  This movie isn't just bad; it raises bad to a whole new level!   LSS, a meteor strike opens a portal to some undeground chamber and lets a horribly CGI-animated T-rex loose onto a town of incredibly stupid rednecks who can't act.   The government sends in a special agent named Bellatrix who is morbidly obese, wears an eye-patch and a bustier, and who the director insists on showing naked despite the high percentage of suicides among his studio audience after said nude scenes. The T-rex chomps and stomps his way through the town's inbred ignoramuses, while the bumbling special agent tries to track him down.  The only high points in this steaming pile of cinematic dreck are A. the TV reporter, whose reaction to the inbred morons her station interviews are hilarious, and B. the fact that the movie ends with the President nuking the entire town.  It's a shame TubiTV's headquarters weren't located there!  1/5


WHO AM I KIDDING?  You guys would probably love this!

I can always recommend some more movies for you. I remember how much you and the entire family enjoyed the last one. 

[Rev. Powell]

FIRE OF LOVE (2022): This documentary about Katia and Maurice Krafft, a married couple of co-dependent volcanology addicts, shares the decades of daring footage they shot together of Mt. St. Helens and other eruptions. The explosive lava footage suggests that hot magma flows are more intoxicating than love, a thesis with which the intentionally childless Kraffts would likely concur. 3.5/5.

[lester1/2jr]

Loan Shark (1952) - solid mid tier film noir type thing, more of just a straight crime movie. A guy (George Raft) gets out of jail and immediately is dragooned into running some sort of undercover operation to find a loan shark boss. I can't remember why they asked him specifically to do this or if they even said why.

There are some cute girls with pointy boobs but no BLONDES with pointy boobs, probably due to budget constraints. I watch and turn off movies all the time and I didn't with this one, so that's a major endorsement! It doesn't have any mysterious night cub scenes or other noir type stuff and there is more than enough of Raft and his weird "charm" he allegedly has. You can watch it while you are getting ready to watch something better


3.99/5

edit - I forgot: the Professor from Gilligan's Island is in it

[ER]

FIRE OF LOVE (2022): This documentary about Katia and Maurice Krafft, a married couple of co-dependent volcanology addicts, shares the decades of daring footage they shot together of Mt. St. Helens and other eruptions. The explosive lava footage suggests that hot magma flows are more intoxicating than love, a thesis with which the intentionally childless Kraffts would likely concur. 3.5/5.

Been meaning to see that on streaming. Maybe tonight I will.

[Dr. Whom]

Fire Maidens From Outer Space (1956)

As the director of Spaced Out mentioned it, I had to check it out. This is a very lame remake of Cat Women of the Moon.

A very earth-like new moon of Jupiter is discovered, and an expedition is sent out. On Moon 13, they find the last survivors of Atlantis (the Atlanteans apparently took to space before the continent sunk). These consist of the titular Fire Maidens and Atlantean Papa Smurf. There is also a monster, and the Fire Maidens do dance acts, but more in a classical ballet vein than the Cat Women. The Atlanteans have a nefarious plot to have the astronauts kill the monster and marry the Fire Maidens, but the Intrepid Captain and Princess of the Fire Maidens save the day by their daring plan that results in killing the monster and sending more astronauts over to marry the Fire Maidens. 

The main problem of the movie is that anything that could be exciting happens off screen. So we are left with a lot of padding and stock footage. Seeing a Lockheed Constellation fly might have been more interesting in 1956 than now, but having a secretary walk down some steps, getting a folding chair, taking a message, carefully putting back the folding chair, and going up the steps again, certainly was not.

It was ahead of its time in product placement. There are packets of Chesterfields lying about, and all the crew members are chainsmokers. Also a lot is made of the 'Longines Space Watches' and that the pictures are taken with Polaroid cameras.

Watch Cat Women of the Moon instead.

[Rev. Powell]

ARGENTINA, 1985 (2022): A middle-aged prosecutor with an inexperienced team of lawyers reluctantly takes on the job of prosecuting nine high ranking officers of the recently-deposed Argentinian junta for their crimes against the people while facing a constant stream of death threats. Hits all the notes you expect it to. Argentinians will doubtless give it a patriotic star boost. 3/5.

[M.10rda]

the OA season two - a little more conventional and a lot more complicated than the first season. Now, the action is in two different dimensions, as the OA, reemerging as a Russian heiress, attempts to stop the evil HAP from doing whatever he's doing. The group of kids from the first season try to make sense of it all without the help of their ostensible leader and a new character is introduced: a detective investigating a mysterious house around which all the plots come together. like I said, its kind of complicated.

Netflix apparently didn't promote the show very much and it was cancelled after this. Too bad, I was riveted and could certainly have watched another season if not many more

5/5 in memoriam

Hey, sorry for replying to a 2.5-year old post, but it's bound to happen a lot more, probably. Anyway, I've suppressed my urge to pitch in a couple cents to a bunch of these old ones - had to take the bait finally on THE OA...

......What a phenomenal second season. I was hooked hard - definitely enjoyed the (very weird) mystery, and Kingsley Ben-Adir was incredibly compelling (not to mention offbeat) as the detective. Considering the cruelly cut-short two season OA, the even-more-unfairly truncated single season THE SOCIETY (which had enough promise to run 40 or 50 episodes), and the comparatively voluminous but still too-brief magic that was G.L.O.W., I can only assume Netflix executives are ADHD-addled 13 year olds or hopeless cokeheads or both. The budget for THE (appallingly dumb) GREY MAN alone would have bankrolled an additional season or two for all three of these fantastic serials. Ugh.