What I've Been Watching: The Catch-All Film Thread

You should never need to justify watching / listening / playing things based on what critics say. Doesn't mean it is all that great, but that often has little to do with whether or not you will like something.
QUOTE]

You're absolutely correct. It just felt good to say that:)

I actually have no interest in 300, but thought that this was interesting given how film critics are using a video-game comparison as a put-down:

300 is a vacuous film filled with bad dialog, stiff acting, a pointless one-dimensional plot and interchangeable characters that hardly deserve to be named in the script. The film barely has a first act and does nothing but drive to a preposterous conclusion led along by a sequence of ridiculous events. The Visuals are nothing more than technical masturbation.

Simply put, 300 is the best damn film I've seen all year. I haven't had this much fun watching a movie in a long time. It's nice to see Hollywood is finally striving to be more likes games.
 
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My brother came over last night and we watched DragonSlayer. I have a dedicated HT with a projector - so it was like 1981 all over again! Suprisingly the effects hold up pretty well. This I could not say for Sword and the Sorcerer which we watched a few months back. It was a turd in 1982 and has aged accordingly!
 
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I really love those old fantasy flicks, Krull, Beastmaster, Conan and Sonja one and all. Strangely enough tho, I dont remember Dragonslayer, like at all.

This cannot stand, I just ordered a copy off Amazon for 5.95!
 
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I really love those old fantasy flicks, Krull, Beastmaster, Conan and Sonja one and all. Strangely enough tho, I dont remember Dragonslayer, like at all.

This cannot stand, I just ordered a copy off Amazon for 5.95!

You'll be shocked how much better it is than anything you listed (other than Conan that is!)

Red Sonja LOL!
 
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Recently pulled Eraserhead out of my collection and watched it again.

To this day, that is the most disturbing movie I have ever seen.

If you've never watched it and you're prepared to sit through a movie and wonder at the end of it "What the he!! just happened to me", you should watch it.

The atmosphere, the tension, the unfathomable dread, and even the comedy are all incredible.

Many will disagree with me on all of that... but that's the way I feel about it.

It's the only movie that I've ever seen that I can't tell you if I hated it, liked it, or loved it. I simply don't know... it is just disturbing, but you can't help but watch it.
 
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I really love those old fantasy flicks, Krull, Beastmaster, Conan and Sonja one and all. Strangely enough tho, I dont remember Dragonslayer, like at all.

This cannot stand, I just ordered a copy off Amazon for 5.95!
Dragonslayer? Oh yes, i remember. And don't forget Deathstalker ("Deathstalker? Is that your first or your last name?") and Circle of Iron... very entertaining flicks. Oh, and The Archer...
 
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Isnt Circle of Iron a Kung Fu movie? I'm drawing a big blank on The Archer.

Does anyone remember Fire and Ice? I think Ralph Bakshi wanted desperately to finish his Lord of the Rings movies and out of frustration made that instead. I actually liked the animated LoTR quite a bit. In fact I thought Bakshi handled the Nazgul scenes better than Jackson.
 
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Recently pulled Eraserhead out of my collection and watched it again.

To this day, that is the most disturbing movie I have ever seen.

If you've never watched it and you're prepared to sit through a movie and wonder at the end of it "What the he!! just happened to me", you should watch it.

The atmosphere, the tension, the unfathomable dread, and even the comedy are all incredible.

Many will disagree with me on all of that... but that's the way I feel about it.

It's the only movie that I've ever seen that I can't tell you if I hated it, liked it, or loved it. I simply don't know... it is just disturbing, but you can't help but watch it.
One of my all time faves ... but since I can't get my wife all the way through Blue Velvet I've not even *tried* this yet ... she'd have nightmares for decades ...
 
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Isnt Circle of Iron a Kung Fu movie? I'm drawing a big blank on The Archer.

Does anyone remember Fire and Ice? I think Ralph Bakshi wanted desperately to finish his Lord of the Rings movies and out of frustration made that instead. I actually liked the animated LoTR quite a bit. In fact I thought Bakshi handled the Nazgul scenes better than Jackson.
Circle of Iron was a rather absurd western Fantasy/Kung Fu movie with David Carradine and Christopher Lee. The Archer was supposed to be the pilot of a series that was never produced; it was also known as 'Fugitive from the Empire', with Belinda Bauer and Kabir Bedi. Ridiculous special effects :).

Fire and Ice was the animated movie with the bikini bimbo, right? About the animated LotR - I saw it a a movie theater when it came out, and I own the DVD. I liked it then, and I still like it.
 
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I watched Casino Royale yesterday evening and was pleasantly surprised. I've never been a huge Bond fan, and found most of the movies rather stupid, the later ones with Pierce Brosnan being more comedy than anything else.
The new Casino Royale is for me the best Bond movie I've seen so far since the plot is not quite as stupid (it's still not quite believable, but anyway). Also the action is just more believable. I loved the chase at the beginning of the movie (when Bond tries to catch the guy with the bomb), it's fairly awsome I think.
I'm still not a huge Bond fan, but I'll definetly watch the next one, in hope the producers will stick to the new Bond concept.
 
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Mrs dte rented "The Return" for us last night. There's a bit of a lull going at Blockbuster right now, so it's sort of thin pickin's, but we had high hopes for this one. I must say I was rather disappointed. While the story is pretty straight-forward (can't tell much without venturing into spoiler territory), the presentation is pretty muddled. I think the idea was to convey some frantic energy of the protaganist's breakdown, but it ended up chopping up the story to the point where I never developed any sympathy for the heroine. I really didn't care that she was wigging out nor why. 3 stars of 5 at best.
 
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Well, I just watched "The guardian" (it's raining outside and I wanted to see something with water). Safe to say that movie is a total waste of time. Costner is playing a member of the national coast guard, and has to safe every single life on the west or east coast himself - who cares? - the plot is complete crap anyway.
I watched the trailer and thought, "cool, they got flipper in the movie," but as it turned out later on it's just Ashton Cutcher.
 
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Watched "Shriek of the Mutilated" again.

Really is quite an unintentionally hilarious film. Basically, one of those Bigfoot-sploitation films of the 70's. The title leads one to believe that it's far gorier than it actually is, as this genre of crazy film from this era sold themselves to a great degree by their insane titles. "Bloody Pit of Horror" comes to mind, an entirely PG at most film in which not a single drop of blood is ever shed onscreen.

This one does have quite a bit of blood in it tho, and seemingly random bits of nastiness thrown in for good measure. Like when the distraught nutcase cuts his harridan wife's throat with an electric carving knife (offscreen), or her hilarious last-breath revenge, when she crawls across the floor barely alive, and throws a toaster in the tub while he's bathing! The "Yeti" looks like the Shaggy DA, it's one of the funniest things Ive ever seen on film, and I just cant help but bust out laughing when I get a glimpse of his tennis shoes beneath his outfit.

This film is truly insane, I love every minute of it
 
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Sometimes you're a sick puppy Sammy!! :)
 
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Pan's Labyrinth was great by the way, I forgot to mention that I saw, and thoroughly enjoyed it. What a great film, I'm definitely getting it on DVD.
 
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The Mad Miss Manton (1938)

The glory of Turner Classic Movies is not so much in the honored classics they show, you can theoretically see those anywhere. It's in these type of relatively unknown films that are actually quite good, that you catch purely by chance. This is another of those un-detective murder mysteries that were common to this era, where an unlikely high school student, husband and wife team, socialite, or some other unlikely person with no "detective skills" gets wrapped up in a murder and finds their inner detective, for the win. It casts one of my favorites, Babs Stanwyck, as a socialite and her gaggle of somewhat lovable (if yet totally stereotypical) rich bitch friends as amateur sleuths, aided by a young Henry Fonda as a news reporter out for the quintessential "scoop".

It's all too predictable, you know that Babs and Peter will fight like cats and dogs, then fall in love, mystery solved, and everything will be hunky dory. It's how it's portrayed that matters, the "configuration" of this particular system that will make it rise above or sink below the bar. This movie made me laugh good a few times, and the humor is very time-specific, with little anti-communism barbs here and there that really clue you in to what the general attitudes of the time were.

I loved it, and am glad I decided to see what was on that late, even tho it kept me up far too long after my bedtime!
 
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Unfortunately, TCM is no longer in my cable package and I'd have to pay an extra $30 a month to upgrade to the one it's now in!! Stupid Aussie cable TV system!!!!
 
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Hey, need some opinions on Terabithia. I know Mike can offer an opinion, but perhaps some others can as well. Appropriate for 6 and 9 year old girls? They enjoyed Narnia but got a little freaked out by the Willie Wonka remake.
 
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