RECENT VIEWINGS (Bad Movie Thread!)

[M.10rda]

I think Spielberg's made at least 10 really good-to-great movies....... it's just his +/- 10 stinkers that I'll take issue with!

FTR I'll take 1941 over MINORITY REPORT aaaaaaany old day.

[LordGraal]

I think Spielberg's made at least 10 really good-to-great movies....... it's just his +/- 10 stinkers that I'll take issue with!

FTR I'll take 1941 over MINORITY REPORT aaaaaaany old day.

I'll add his War of the Worlds version to this thread.  I love the book and have read it countless times.  Spielberg's version seemed very half-arsed in its adaptation.  Some obvious nods to the 50's film took me right out of it.  The ridiculous arrival of the aliens in tiny pods that look too small for them.  The whole idea of the tripods being buried for ages.  Far too much focus on TC and his family problems.  The cop out of the tripods having shields.  Unsatisfying set pieces that also focus too much on TC and co.  Spielberg seemed determined to avoid the Independence Day style spectacle to the point where the film is boring and the invasion pushed way into the background.  The tripod design and sounds are the only things I like about it.

Just make a version set in the original period.  Hollywood seem to think that people won't accept that due to our visits to Mars, but i'm sure a large amount would.  Jeff Wayne's musical version has been going for years.  They could've gone for a victorian steam punk look. 

[LilCerberus]

Tonight's Stinker
FLASHMAN (1967)
https://youtu.be/XRxcSeqzjQI?si=qTZxWYY5ZmE2HIop

An Italian goof of Batman, with a theme song to match...
A scientist creates an invisibility serum which is promptly stolen by gangsters...
Meanwhile, a group of pretty girls is running a counterfeiting ring at the same bank the invisible man decides to rob...
Flashman manages to get the money back from the gangsters & lead police to the counterfeiters, but then the invisible man & the leader of the girl gang decide to team up to rob the richest man in the world...

Very goofy, with plenty of riffable convenient plot twists....

[M.10rda]

^^^ I watched this in January, I think. The action was, shall we say... underwhelming?

[LilCerberus]

^^^ I watched this in January, I think. The action was, shall we say... underwhelming?

Yeah, I think that was the point...

[M.10rda]

Mmmmmaybe? I'll acknowledge the very final boss fight was amusingly... understated, shall we say.

[pacman000]

How Awful About Allen

Well made, but kinda slow TV movie. Some genuinely creepy moments, but nothing too scary. Not worth tracking down, but, if you already have a copy, go ahead & watch it.

[LilCerberus]

Tonight's Stinker
The Two Headed Monster (1959) AKA Manster
https://youtu.be/unyV97WKNzY?si=VPBbyVwoPxgX5jdp

Painfully slow & plodding...
An American reporter in Japan visits a scientist who's been working on devolution... The scientist drugs the reporters drink & shoots him up with the devolution drug, then sends him on his way...
Back in Tokyo, the editor wants the reporter to take one last job, but he just wants to get back to New York to a marriage on the rocks from all his traveling....
This quickly changes when the scientist & his lovely assistant show up, taking him on lavish dinners & bath houses....
After a few days of this, he becomes a mean drunk...
Mostly Theremin for the first 45 minutes....

[lester1/2jr]

KRISPR (2023) - I'm interested in CRISPR technology so this caught my eye. Unfortunately, it totally sucked. I don't think it even has anything to do with CRISPR, which is about gene editing not creating a Frankenstein chick that chews through sci fi cliches in a totally predictable manner. What if a super intelligent being started doing evil and dishonest, rather than nice and good, stuff to gain advantage in a situation? Mind blowing!

I should have known when it was produced, directed and starred the same guy that it would disappoint. It was a chore to get through and the scenario itself was ridiculous. The guy brings a 100 million dollar science experiment living thing and shows his family and they aren't like "holy crap a lab created person" they just go about their Christmas party. His wife is annoyed the whole time.

not good enough to be good or bad enough to be bad. It did have a decent budget.

1.75 /5

[LilCerberus]

Tonight's Stinker
The Flying Saucer (1950)
https://youtu.be/XUtbvrmMO6w?si=7ImYlFwBmFcye_44

A '50s spy mystery that doesn't move for the first thirty minutes, then gives away the entire plot in about five minutes...
A spy hiding out as a millionaire playboy is sent to his boring little hometown in Alaska to look for flying saucers, but first, he partnered with a female agent whose mission is to make his life as boring as possible...
Pretty slow paced, but makes up for it in video postcards....

[pacman000]

We're so used to flying saucers being ufos, I was surprised the above movie was in the old inventor-sci-fi genre.

[M.10rda]

TWISTERS (2024):
I hadn't watched a movie in over two weeks and I guess I was desperate. Also, I wanted to spend time w/ my wife, and she kept mentioning she wanted to see this. Well, I got to spend time w/ her, so that's something.

I'll add that I never saw the original from the 90s, a fact that perplexes Madame to no end. It was slightly ahead of the P.S. Hoffman renaissance, I was never a huge Helen Hunt fan, and - well, it's people in trucks following tornadoes around. I didn't get the appeal. After watching TWISTERS, I still don't. After forty-five minutes of me predicting plot "twists", Madame finally began to cede my point to some degree. (Usually anticipating nominal "twists" is her job, but she's intellectually honest enough to acknowledge when she has been hoist by her own petard.)

By the way, we paused the film at that 45m mark to go get drink refills. I was aghast to see that more than 75m remained in the running time. 2h+ movies are often fine by me, but by 45 minutes in we'd already seen three major sequences of trucks chasing tornadoes. How many more sequences could we possibly have to look forward to in the film's balance??? Quite a few, as it turns out.

Tunde Adebimpe (a musician and sometime actor whom I like) has a small supporting role in this, and Kiernan Shipka (who I think is okay) is onscreen for about 5 minutes. Otherwise the large cast bored me to tears and/or irritated me consistently. Not a Hoffman among them. I trust James Gunn is getting more out of David Corenswet than this director got...

Finally I nodded off on the couch near the end and woke up to the leads gloating smugly while working on a truck during the closing credits. Usually I watch a full film before I'll review it but that time spent in slumberland was the highlight of TWISTERS for me. For that:

2/5

The soundtrack is mostly indistinguishable modern country-western music, which confused me. I do believe TWISTERS made a lot of money this summer so I guess the producers know their audience. Ah well, it's clear there's no shortage of stupid Americans...

[zombie no.one]

so have they added an S to to imply it's a sequel, ALIEN(S) style?

original is a totally middling disaster flick for me, the highlight being Van Halen's kick ass theme song

btw, did you notice any scenes in this one where the twister passes directly over a house / barn / vehicle, and someone has to grab onto something for dear life, as their legs flail about in the air being sucked upwards by the twister?

that seems to be the standard occurrance in a 'twister'  apparently

[M.10rda]

Yup, that happens within the first 10 minutes and then at regular intervals thereafter. This movie has only a couple tricks and it will gleefully perform them for you over and over and over and over and over and over and over again to a non-Van Halen/entirely 21st century C+W soundtrack while grinning smugly.   

[zombie no.one]

I'm not against them in theory, but 99.9% of remakes / reboots / next gen 'sequels' have less than no reason to exist. it's actually depressing to think of all that energy money and time that could be put into making something original. - even if it's something original that sucks!