Rate the last movie you have watched.

I'll have to check out "The Heat", next.

I think you're in for a treat. Not only is the movie funny, the two leads have good buddy-chemistry.

American Sniper - not a bad story. I had to explain a lot of military jargon and whatnot to my wife, but she really liked it. And normally Bradley Cooper comes off as a lifeless generic douche bag but he was very good in this movie. It's worth a watch but not a classic. Also on Sunday I watched Battle Royale - an Asian movie that came out before The Hunger Games but it's pretty much the same thing - kids have to hunt each other down. Except this has Asian schoolgirls wielding automatic weapons, if that's your thing. Again, worth a watch but not a classic.

Exodus: Gods and Kings

Entertaining take on the mythology of Moses and the Israelites.

It's interesting to contrast and compare with the DeMille/Heston film from sixty years ago. I don't know which is more accurate to "the book", but the modern retelling of the story is much less sexual than the film from the 50s. Batman as Moses was pretty darn entertaining to me and I adore the DeMille flick.

Cecil would shit his pants at the "epic" scope of the newer film. The various plagues are on a scale he couldn't have imagined in his wildest dreams.

7.5/10

AIR. Little post-apocalyptic chamber play with Norman Reedus and Djimon Honsou. Better than expected. Would have been easy to turn this into a monster movie of some kind but they resisted. Very good. It's getting panned on IMDB (5.1) but I liked it. A few tweaks here and there and a stronger cast could have made this not merely good but excellent. Don't get me wrong, I like all three actors in this movie (Sandrine Holt is the third). But none of them is lead material and they kinda don't have much chemistry.

Still enjoyable enough. 7/10.

This movie is why every 3D camera in Hollywood should be burned. I watched it on the largest theater screen in town and boy did all those gigantic scenes look smaller than on my living room TV. I don't get why they are still doing this. Yea, I know, money. But while I usually don't mind 3D, it ruined E: G&K for me. I have yet to see it in 2D but right now, DeMille's timeless classic actually looks better.

The movie, however, is fine.

Yep, I dug it.

"Frankenstein: The True Story"
I was thinking of this ancient TV movie gem while watching another Michael Sarazin film the week before. Found it online and picked it up. Aired in two parts in 1973, it purported to tell Mary Shelly's story more accurately than any other version ever filmed. Having recently reread Frankenstein for the first time in decades, I was curious to see if the claim was true.

Nope.

It opens with James Mason telling us what we're about to see, and dives into 5 minutes of highlight previews that ruin the whole movie for us. We then meet Victor Frankenstein (Leonatd Whiting) as his younger brother is drowned, and he muses on the possibility of reanimating dead people. Rushing off to London (the novel takes place in Switzerland, not England), he meets mad doctor Henri Clerval (David Mccallum), who is already mucking about with reanimating dead flesh, and the even madder Dr. Polidori (James Mason), who has been experimenting with it even longer. In the novel, Clerval was merely Victor's close friend, and knew nothing of his experiments. Polidori was never met, though Victor referred to his medical books. In reality he was a friend of the Shellys. Just to be kinky, Polidori has no hands, lost to an experiment. Right off the bat, the film takes the initiative and genius away from Frankenstein himself, and makes him a groupie.

When Clerval dies of a heart ailment (in the book, near the end, he's murdered by the monster as revenge against Victor), Frankenstein completes the creature using Clerval's brain (nope). After the usual zappy light show (no method is specified in the book), The creature awakens, and is revealed to be the handsome and lythe Michael Sarazin - not the ghastly horror of sewn-together body parts of the novel. Victor begins a lengthy process of teaching the newborn being to speak (poorly), to have manners, to live in society. Nope again. In the novel, Frankenstein is repulsed by his creation and immediately abandons it and his lab in terror at his presumption upon nature.

After a while the creature does scamper off. Its flesh has begun to rot, it bones deform, so it's soon Sarazin with a heavy brow piece and lantern jaw. rejected by Victor, it wanders the countryside. Here it encounters the blind peasant DeLacy, as in the book. Though while in the novel it hides in their barn and learns to speak by listening to them for a year or so, in the film it's only a few days before DeLacey's grandchildren (or whatever) meet the deformed monster, try to kill him, and get killed themselves. this brings the exquisite young Jane Seymour into the film as the young woman, tragically trampled by a coach that doesn't even bother to stop. Having fallen for her, the creature carries her body to Victor and Polidori for reanimation, which they achieve using an alternate, chemical bath method. Nope again - in the novel, the monster did indeed demand a bride at the threat of killing Victor's betrothed, Elizabeth, and Frankenstein began the work. But he couldn't bear repeating his mistake, and destroyed the body.

Polidori has a coming out party for the bride, who reveals herself to be a wicked little bitch to anyone and everyone. Inexplicably, the decaying Monster bursts into the party, rips the girl's head off her body along the stitches, and leaves.

The novel involves a framing story, where a sea captain whose ship is trapped in the ice in the arctic encounters Victor, who is chasing the monster in dogsleds across the wastes. Victor tells the entire novel to the captain, who then relates it to his fiance back home in letters, which is how we come to know the tale. The movie's writers seemed to think they needed to include this in some form, so they have newlywed Victor and (pregnant) Elizabeth flee to America by ship, only to discover both the monster and Polidori are also aboard. There's a big denoument where Polidori gets zapped into a skeleton by lightning, the ship gets trapped in the ice, the monster strangles Elizabeth (which he does in the book, on their wedding night), and flees across the ice. Rather than listen to the story, the captain (Tom Baker!!!) has the crew abandon ship to get away from these people.

The tragedy (of a script) ends with Victor catching up with the creature in an ice cave, and they perish together with knowing smiles as the iceberg collapses because Victor shouted.

Three hours long. Used characters from the book, but invented some out of whole cloth. Used events from the book, invented some, ignored some, twisted some. Got the creature all wrong. What a mess!

I found Spy to be a better tale the The Heat, although it really missed the chemistry you got between McCarthy and Bullock.

Took spookdom more seriously than most serious action movies, even though it was done so very amusingly. And Statham sending up pretty much every single action role he had was brilliant.

I think Ghostbusters is going to be a very good film.

Finally caught up with a few movies:

The Departed - I'd heard varying views on this, but it was brilliant. Nicholson stole many a scene, but both Damon and DiCaprio were pretty outstanding in a nicely done plot.

History of Violence - starts of slow, but then accelerates. A curiously enjoyable, but unfulfilling, film.

I saw Vacation with Ed Helms and Christina Applegate. As a lover of Vacation, European Vacation and Christmas Vacation it seemed like a no brainer to check this out even though I was pretty sure it wouldn't match up to the old ones. I was right in that it didn't, but it definitely still had its moments and had me laughing my ass off several times. The younger brother steals the show, that kid can talk some serious shit.

7/10

I dunno, that film's running a 27% over at Rotten Tomatoes.

YMMV. I like the concept of disastrous family trips because ho boy did my family have some back in the day, so I'm probably a bit biased towards the Vacation franchise.

I'm a bit biased toward Christy Brinkley...

1980:


1996:


2015 (now playing the 'mom' in a commercial spoofing her Vacation appearances):

Tomorrowland with George Clooney and Hugh Laurie.

Critics Consensus: Ambitious and visually stunning, Tomorrowland is unfortunately weighted down by uneven storytelling.​

The visual effects are indeed breathtaking, and it's probably worth watching just to see them.

The story telling actually pretty good until you realize

Yeah, it was made by the guys who wrote and co-created Lost...

The stuff that's good about Tomorrowland just makes the movie all the more disappointing.

Yep. It starts out tempting you with expectations of seeing one of the most beautiful, uplifting, and epic movies in a long time, then nosedives to become some twisted version of the Lost series finale.

John Wick. He kills so many people. It is good.

Shoulda been called Head Shot: the Movie.

I thought it was pretty damned good.

Spanglish.

6/10

Last night I saw The Water Diviner with Russel Crowe - an interesting story, nothing worth seeing again.

Fear Clinic.
Meh.
http://dickynoo.blogspot.com/2015/09/uncle-robert-saves-day-part-2.html

This may develop into a RR thread (or maybe not since Muad isn't around any more) but what the hell...

I had never watched Gone with the Wind, so decided to do that this weekend.
It's technically very impressive and you can see how influential it's been even though the story isn't up to much. More notable than the story is the setting in the civil war US south. How this is depicted is completely anachronistic by now - and all the more interesting for it.
The American civil war is portrayed as Yankee aggression and nothing to do with slavery. We've got the slaves, referred to throughout as "darkies", shown as blissfully happy, supportive of the Confederacy and unsuited for rights that are eventually granted them. We've got anything to do with the north - Shermans army, the carpetbaggers and the reconstruction shown as vile and intrusive (though in the case of the March to the Sea there may be a legitimate point). We've got marital rape being portrayed in a positive light. We've even got the KKK, though not mentioned by name (the political meeting) being lionised.
Obviously it'd all be a complete disgrace if released now, but it's fascinating to see how mainstream attitudes, even those in the US south, have developed.

^ I don't know, I thought the stuff at the start of the movie at the party where Rhett Butler argues that the south can't win the war because "all we've got is slaves, cotton, and arrogance" is extremely well done. The fact that all these southern gentlemen can so casually dismiss Rhett's statement about "there isn't a single cannon foundry in the entire south" speaks volumes about the entire plantation mentality. To me the movie weakens the more it focuses on Scarlett instead of Rhett. With Rhett Butler you have the conflicted man who is for the most part a greedy war profiteer but still lurking in his heart is just a bit of southern pride and patriotism that leads him to finally join the fight AFTER (Shermans march) it has become obvious the war is a complete lost clause.

But when focused on Scarlett the movie is just a run of the mill "spoiled woman forced to become a strong woman" thing that the Hallmark channel used to produce by the truck load.

My wife and I saw "The Martian" yesterday afternoon. It was good. Pretty much what I expected thought it wasn't quite as in line with actual science and engineering as I had heard claimed it would be. For one example, Hermes is something like 10 times larger than it would be in real life both inside and outside. The interior would be more appropriate on the starship Enterprise than the first mission to Mars.

The Nightmare, a documentary about sleep paralysis and the weird hallucinations that can aflict people with the condition. Very engaging and interesting.

I know it's a movie, but Butler's statement isn't factual. Tredegar Iron Works was located in Richmond and produced about half of the Confederate field artillery during the war.

It wasn't enough, obviously.

At the time of secession of the original southern states, Virginia had not seceded so perhaps Rhett was right to not consider the commonwealths resources.

I've often heard the complaint that the movie endorses or glorifies marital rape. The scene where Rhett grabs his wife Scarlett and carries her upstairs for sex even though she has made it clear before and IIRC at that time that she never wants to have sex with him again. Afterwards she is shown singing and obviously happy.

But.

There is more than enough time off screen for Scarlett to have consented to sex so I don't think you can simply label Rhetts actions as rape.

I just watched "The Outsiders" (1983), the directors cut that restores a whole bunch of scenes that the studio cut out of the original release, such as a bunch of screen time for Rob Lowe.

It's pretty bad. A lot of the scenes seems wholly fake, with characters breaking down crying for no reason. A lot of the acting seems horrible, even though almost everyone in it became a major star (C Thomas Howell, Patrick Swayze, Matt Dillon, Emilio Estevez, Tom Cruise, Ralph Machio, Rob Lowe, Diane Lane). The fight scenes were pathetic. You could do better action shots with a random collection of high school kids who've never made a movie in their lives.

My conclusion is that it all comes down to directing, and that Francis Ford Coppola is very overrated. Looking at his IMDB director's credits, you could make a pretty good argument that he only had a few major successes, such as The Godfather movies and Apocalypse Now.

So I pulled up all his directing credits (movies only) and checked their star rating on IMDB. The result is

Francis Ford Coppola
3.2 Tonight
4.1 The Bellboy
4.5 Battle Beyond the Sun
4.7 Supernova
4.8 Twixt
5.0 The Terror
5.7 Dementia 13
5.7 Jack
6.2 Finian's Rainbow
6.3 Peggy Sue Got Married
6.3 Youth Without Youth
6.4 You're a Big Boy Now
6.4 Captain EO
6.4 Gardens of Stone
6.4 New York Stories
6.5 One from the Heart
6.5 The Cotton Club
6.9 Tucker: The Man and His Dream
6.9 Tetro
7.0 The Rain People
7.1 The Rainmaker
7.2 The Outsiders
7.3 Rumble Fish
7.5 Dracula
7.6 The Godfather: Part III
7.9 The Conversation
8.5 Apocalypse Now
9.1 The Godfather: Part II
9.2 The Godfather

Median: 6.4
Average: 6.46

If you take away The Godfather movies and Apocalypse Now, the average is 6.1

Well, how does this compare to other A list directors? So I checked two more

Ridley Scott
5.4 The Counselor
5.8 G.I. Jane
6.1 Someone to Watch Over Me
6.1 Exodus: Gods and Kings
6.5 Legend
6.5 1492: Conquest of Paradise
6.6 Black Rain
6.6 White Squall
6.7 Hannibal
6.7 Robin Hood
6.9 A Good Year
7.0 Prometheus
7.1 Body of Lies
7.2 Kingdom of Heaven
7.3 Matchstick Men
7.4 Thelma & Louise
7.5 The Duelists
7.6 All the Invisible Children
7.7 Black Hawk Down
7.8 American Gangster
8.2 Blade Runner
8.3 The Martian
8.5 Alien
8.5 Gladiator

Median: 7.05
Average: 7.08

Clint Eastwood
5.8 The Rookie
5.9 Firefox
6.0 Bronco Billy
6.4 The Eiger Sanction
6.4 The Gauntlet
6.4 Space Cowboys
6.4 Blood Work
6.5 Hereafter
6.6 Honkytonk Man
6.6 Sudden Impact
6.6 Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
6.6 True Crime
6.6 J. Edgar
6.7 White Hunter Black Heart
6.7 Absolute Power
6.8 Heartbreak Ridge
6.9 Jersey Boys
7.0 Play Misty for Me
7.0 Breezy
7.1 Flags of Out Fathers
7.3 Pale Rider
7.3 Bird
7.3 American Sniper
7.4 Invictus
7.5 A Perfect World
7.5 The Bridges of Madison County
7.6 High Plains Drifter
7.8 Changeling
7.9 The Outlaw Josey Wales
7.9 Letters from Iwo Jima
8.0 Mystic River
8.1 Million Dollar Baby
8.2 Gran Torino
8.3 Unforgiven

Median: 6.95
Average: 7.03

Only 10 percent of Eastwood movies and 16 percent of Ridley Scott movies are below the average rating for Coppola films.

Conclusion: The Outsiders probably did suffer from poor directing.

Just saw The Martian at the cinema. Loved it. Much better paced and accessible than recents like Interstellar (which was good, not great) and Gravity (which I found boring).