All Things Movie/Documentary Reviews/Recommendations Thread

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This is not a joke - this is an actual story I saw on the internet.


Blazing Saddles Is Being Remade as an Animated Samurai Movie About Cats and Dogs.

Mel Brooks' Blazing Saddles is considered a film classic, even though it's stirred up some controversy over the years. Now the film is being retold in an entirely new medium, as well as an entirely new genre.

The Los Angeles film company Align is helping develop an animated film titled Blazing Samurai. The film takes the basic premise of Blazing Saddles and transplants it to the Samurai era. The story follows a dog named Hank who dreams of becoming a Samurai. When he becomes in charge of protecting Kakamucho, he learns that the town is populated entirely by cats.

whoever came up with this idea should be severely punished.
 

GophersInIowa said:
I’m assuming most everyone is watching The Last Dance? I’d also recommend the E60 that just came out about Alex Smith. It’s very good.
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For those that haven’t seen the Alex Smith E60 yet, please watch it. He was just cleared to return to football. Incredible story.

 

GophersInIowa said:
For those that haven’t seen the Alex Smith E60 yet, please watch it. He was just cleared to return to football. Incredible story.

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Good for him and a great story. It's interesting, when talking about the Redskins QB situation, I have only heard one or two different sources/outlets that have acknowledged that Smith is in the running; listening to others, they don't even mention him. I know it was unlikely that he ever played again and maybe he doesn't but I think he's in the running for the starting spot there.

Rivera isn't married to Haskins by any stretch so I would assume the starting gig is a wide open race with Haskins, Allen and Smith? Rivera is a defensive coach, he's going to lean towards someone that will protect the football and let his defense keep them in games. If Smith is 100% full go, I'd almost lean towards him being the favorite
 


saw the trailer for the new version of "Dune."

Looks good. from what they showed in a 3-minute trailer, it appears to be fairly faithful to the book.

Only got a very short look at a sandworm. they're big.

This is being done as a two-parter, so they are basically taking the original novel and splitting it in half.

The David Lynch version has its moments, but also took a lot of liberties with the book. The Sy-Fy Channel mini-series was well-done, but on a lower budget with a largely no-name cast.

We'll see how this new version turns out.
 


The trailer for "Clouds" on Minnesota's own Zach Sobiech who many of us followed his story a few years back. This looks very well done:

 

thought id list some good movies currently on currently on netflix

red dragon
bad teacher
end of watch
drive

give me some movies i should put in mu queue
 

KD6-3.7 said:
thought id list some good movies currently on currently on netflix

red dragon
bad teacher
end of watch
drive

give me some movies i should put in mu queue
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I don't have any movies for you right now, but I want to give you props for your Officer K profile pic. Great movie!
 

Watched Good Boys the other, it was pretty good, not classic but funny
 




Extraction on Netflix. Starring Chris Hemmy.

The action scenes are awesome. But that doesn't change the fact that it's not good as a whole. Lots of potential wasted. Oh well.

 

stocker08 said:
Extraction on Netflix. Starring Chris Hemmy.

The action scenes are awesome. But that doesn't change the fact that it's not good as a whole. Lots of potential wasted. Oh well.

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Yeah, it was ok. He kind of goes all John Wick, but I agree, the action was good.
Others on Netflix with some action, The Old Guard and 6 Underground. They're ok.
 

I ventured into an actual movie theater for the first time since February to see On the Rocks. Even though Bill Murray is in the film, I was not expecting a laugh-fest given Sofia Coppola's track record as a director. Saying that, I did expect a little more humor to be involved.

I give the film a solid rating. Rashida Jones is really good in this, and there is nice screen chemistry with Murray who plays her father. In short if one like's Coppola's previous films, I think this is worth seeing.
 



Mostly watched Clooney's new sci-fi/space movie The Midnight Sky on Netflix couple nights ago. I clicked through a decent chunk of it, and just watched the action-y parts, after about the first half-ish. Didn't want to invest a full two hours of my time, I knew it wasn't going to be worth it.

I'd give it a 7/10. The plot and particularly the background, is very half-baked. Acting performances are fine. Spaceship parts are very cool and well done/conceived. Some good scenes where the characters need to fight through adversity. Science stuff seems reasonable. Just not highly compelling. For me
 

Bad Blood on Netflix?

Anyone have any thoughts?

Loved Mindhunter and bummer they are on hiatus for the foreseeable future.
 

I watched a couple of movies the last few nights. The first was "Molly's Game" - a true story about a former Olympic athlete and she ended up running an underground poker game with high stakes. The story itself was pretty interesting but the movie was way too long. This would have been better if Ben Mezrich had written the original book and movie script.

We also watched Ava (starring Jessica Chastain, who also starred in Molly's Game). This was solid, albeit you have to disregard a bit of reality on some of the action scenes.

Go Gophers!!
 

This is an odd little movie note:

I watch a lot of old movies on TCM. Was watching a film noir from the 40's called "Cover Up."
In the movie, an insurance investigator is looking into the alleged suicide of a man who lived in a small town. (spoiler alert - it turns out to have been a murder with multiple suspects)

at one point, the local sheriff says "You just don't understand small-town people."

and the investigator responds, "actually, I was born in a small town - Glenwood, Minnesota."

that left me wondering how they happened to pick Glenwood, of all towns.

BTW, not a great movie, but some fun character bits. a little more comedy and romance than most film noirs.
 

short ornery norwegian said:
This is an odd little movie note:

I watch a lot of old movies on TCM. Was watching a film noir from the 40's called "Cover Up."
In the movie, an insurance investigator is looking into the alleged suicide of a man who lived in a small town. (spoiler alert - it turns out to have been a murder with multiple suspects)

at one point, the local sheriff says "You just don't understand small-town people."

and the investigator responds, "actually, I was born in a small town - Glenwood, Minnesota."

that left me wondering how they happened to pick Glenwood, of all towns.

BTW, not a great movie, but some fun character bits. a little more comedy and romance than most film noirs.
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Well SON, you sent me investigating (great thing about the week between Christmas and New Year's, I've got the time to do so). While I don't have the definitive answer to why Glenwood was chosen, one of the screenwriters was Jerome Odlum, who was born in Minneapolis in 1905, was the managing editor of the Minneapolis News for a time, before turning to crime fiction and screenplays. He died at his home in L.A. at the age of 48. If you're so compelled, you can find a mass market paperback copy of his book, The Mirabilis Diamond, on Amazon for $1.75. I wasn't able to find more info (cause of death, Minnesota roots, etc.)

As with you, I'm a big fan of the TCM/AMC channels. Just this morning, I was watching Humphrey Bogart's last movie, The Harder They Fall, which was a pretty engaging tale about the corrupt world of boxing and the mob.
 

On the Documentary side -
was looking for something on YouTube and came across an older edition of "American Masters" from PBS.

This was a profile of Rod Serling. a lot of interesting stuff about his career. Started out in the days of live TV dramas, where he won several Emmys but also battled constantly with sponsors and censors to tell the stories he wanted.

then, he created "Twilight Zone" and found out he could tell his stories by disguising them as sci-fi or fantasy.

Serling was only 50 when he died.

if you're a Twilight Zone fan, definitely worth looking at. (New Year's Eve Twilight Zone marathon coming up on Sy Fy network).
 

Ope3 said:
I ventured into an actual movie theater for the first time since February to see On the Rocks. Even though Bill Murray is in the film, I was not expecting a laugh-fest given Sofia Coppola's track record as a director. Saying that, I did expect a little more humor to be involved.

I give the film a solid rating. Rashida Jones is really good in this, and there is nice screen chemistry with Murray who plays her father. In short if one like's Coppola's previous films, I think this is worth seeing.
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This movie is on Apple TV + for those that have it. It was a pretty good movie, reminded me of an old-school Woody Allen movie. Also on Apple is the Tom Hanks movie Greyhound. This was good, the bigger the screen and audio set-up you have, the better.

The most recent movie I saw that I really enjoyed is The Gentlemen. Good story telling and solid cast led by Matthew McConaughey.
 

Donovan said:
The most recent movie I saw that I really enjoyed is The Gentlemen. Good story telling and solid cast led by Matthew McConaughey.
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I really liked that as well. Guy Ritchie is definitely not for everyone but MOST of his movies I have really really liked, not all.

Wanted to get into the theater again this weekend and the wife was pushing for Wonder Woman 84, which I would be okay with but heard it wasn't as good as the first one, so I looked at a few others and convinced her to go with "Promising Young Woman".

Definitely a different kind of show. Wow. The performance by the lead character, Carey Mulligan, was really really good. It was just a really dark plot line and it was most definitely served up with a HEAPING helping of "MeToo". Wowzers. I would imagine femi-nazis around the country thought it was one of the best movies ever produced.

It got really outstanding reviews, like 92-93% on Rotten Tomatoes, and I really WANT to recommend it but I'm not 100% sure. I maybe give it 1 or 1.5 thumbs up, not the full two thumbs up. One of those movies where the story had really good potential but they probably took it 3-4 steps too far. This woman was seriously off the deep end, probably detracted from the story a little bit.
 

Watched this last night. If you like history, highly recommended
 

Donovan said:
Watched this last night. If you like history, highly recommended
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I have this in my queue to watch but waiting for the right time. I'm not sure the wife would be as interested in this as I would be. Glad you liked it!
 

Anyone that has seen Wonder Woman 84, is it necessary to have seen the previous movies or would one be completely lost?
 

Ope3 said:
Anyone that has seen Wonder Woman 84, is it necessary to have seen the previous movies or would one be completely lost?
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I think you'll be lost and think it stinks either way. If you haven't seen the first one, just watch that and stop.
 

WilliamsArenaGuy said:
I think you'll be lost and think it stinks either way. If you haven't seen the first one, just watch that and stop.
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Good to know, I was going to take a flier due to Kristen Wiig. Thanks.
 

WilliamsArenaGuy said:
I think you'll be lost and think it stinks either way. If you haven't seen the first one, just watch that and stop.
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I liked the first one well enough but man, after reading reviews of 84 there is no way I'm watching that. She's hung up on a guy she knew for 2 weeks 70 YEARS ago, then get's him back by raping another guy? WTF? Sounds like the way they dealt with Kristen Wiig's character is really bad as well.
 

have not see WW84 - but it is interesting how the reviews changed. Early reviews were very positive - then the movie started getting less positive reviews, and in a short time, the movie went from positive to negative on Rotten Tomatoes. Some of the on-line and YouTube critics who posted early reviews were also very positive.

so, something happened to shift the popular consensus on the movie.

A lot of what I have read generally came down to - not a great movie, but entertaining if you ignore some of the plot holes or odd choices. For me, sounds like a "wait till Redbox" kind of deal. I would say "wait till TV," but it drives me nuts trying to watch those movies on TV where they take a 2-hr movie and show it in a 3-hour window by cramming in commercials every 5 minutes.
 


Couple years old, Bombshell is a superb telling of the end of Roger Ailes at Fox News, and how that went down. Really well done, some really great performances, great cast all around.
 

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