Things we watch in the cinema or on tape, DVD, and streaming
“Do you believe in UFOs, astral projections, mental telepathy, ESP, clairvoyance, spirit photography, telekinetic movement, full trance mediums, the Loch Ness monster and the theory of Atlantis?”
Janine (Annie Potts), “Ghostbusters”
This is a great list of movies!
Some for kids. Some for adults. Some for horror fans. Some for non-horror fans. It's got it all.
Time to crank up the scare factor and check out a few of these.
http://moviemorlocks.com/2012/10/26/the-horrordads-2012-halloween-triple-dip-shockapalooza/
Under the guise of reviewing the latest Paranormal Activity, Zach Baron bravely expresses his fear at watching horror movies. Whenever he watches a horror film, he inevitably flinches at the cat that jumps out of the closet, because thousands of years of evolution made him. He hides behind his hands, squirms in his chair, and squeals in fear at the frights on screen. And then he blames the movies for making him do this.
I can sympathize. I hate how horror movies make me squirm and hide under my hat. Yet, I can't get enough of it.
I think I want to catch the latest Paranormal Activity just to feel the chills on my arm.
Except I'll watch it in the daylight.
Hopefully, with a full theatre.
http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/8519048/paranormal-activity-4-state-horror-movies
When did Ben Affleck become a decent director? He competently directed Gone, Baby, Gone and The Town. Now with Argo he’s directed a nice 70’s period piece of the Iranian Hostage Crisis.
Argo is about the incredibly incredulous story of how the US got six US Iranian Embassy workers out of Iran during the Hostage Crisis in 1979. Ben Affleck as a CIA agent who specializes in extraditing US people from harrowing situations. He comes up with the craziest way to get these hostages out: a Canadian Star Wars ripoff movie, Argo. He’s going to go into Iran, scout out locations using the hostages as his “crew,” and walk right out of there. Just like Ocean’s 11.
Not a bad flick. It had me on the edge of my seat in the final third of the movie as I waited with bated breath on the escapees being busted. Except I knew that they escaped. It would’ve been known better as part of the Iranian Hostage Crisis. Sort of like the crash and burn helicopter rescue. They made it and it receded from my memory until this move brought it back in glorious 70’s moustaches.
One final note, the CIA agent, Tony Mendez, is the father of Toby Mendez, the sculptor of the statues at Camden Yards.
4 of 5 stars.
Looper, with or without the Quint voice, is a perfectly serviceable time travel movie. There’s holes in the loop if you think about it, but like every other time travel movie, there is always that problem. If you had to send one actor back to the past, Bruce Willis is your man. If you had to have one actor be a young Bruce Willis, it would’ve been better with a CGI young Bruce Willis rather than the prosthetic laden Joseph Gordon-Levitt.
3 of 5 stars
The Words
The Words reminded me of Atonement. It’s a story told by a writer writing at a keyboard. Yet, it’s about three writers. The first one we see is the main character, followed by the actual author of the main character’s novel, followed by the author of the book from which the main character is from. It’s 3 stories, but it could be one.
The Words is about a writer who finds a manuscript and gets it published under his own name. Then the writer of the manuscript shows up. It is all told through the point of view of the author writing the story of the writer and the actual writer.
It is like Inception, a story within a story within a story. Who’s story it is is left up to you the audience.
I thought it was the main writer who was writing about himself. But then the movie ended and I had to write this lame review up. Anyhow, it’s not so good of a movie as it tries to make it’s appeal through the interplay of stories, but falls short. Especially, in the end.
2 of 5 stars.
I never saw the first one, because I believe that with a movie like The Expendables 2 you don’t need the first to know what’ll happen with the second. Of course, with big bangs and explosions, that’s all you really need to know about The Expendables 2.
The plot was also expendable. It had something to do with stolen Russian radioactive material. These terrorists need to be stopped. They will be stopped by Stallone and company. Van Damme was the baddy. There was a cameo by Chuck Norris. Schwarzenegger and Willis reprise their roles from the first one (at least that’s what I got from watching the first movie’s trailer on YouTube).
I turned off my mind and watched the pretty explosions. Although, there was a lot of CGI blood spurts and bad CGI head asplosions. It was all so funny. So very, very funny.
2 of 5 stars.
You never knew that there were so many secret super soldier programs in the US military industrial complex until you see The Bourne Legacy. Every branch of the service has their own not to mention the 3 letter agencies. Jason Bourne was just a tip of the iceberg; there’s plenty more where he came from. Just go down the block. You’ll find another.
The Bourne Legacy is all about Jason Bourne, and what he means to all the super soldier programs that have not been revealed. It takes place alongside the final two films of the previous trilogy as the secret of Treadstone/Black Briar is revealed. It means that Jeremy Renner’s super soldier program is compromised, and it’s showrunners, Ed Norton and Stacy Keach, have to shut it down before it, too, is brought before a Senate committee. They’ll shut it down by killing everything associated with it, as if you didn’t know. Never work on a secret super soldier program or be a secret super soldier, because they’ll terminate your contract with extreme prejudice.
Renner, in my opinion, is the perfect next Bourne. Every time I see him, I expect something drastic to happen, something bad. He’s always on edge. You know something bad was coming. Something like a heat seeking missile! Boom! There goes the super soldiers!
And they also had to eliminate the other workers, too. What a job. So Rachel Weisz had to run like Lola; and her story arc was similar. Is there a chance that she’ll make it through the next Bourne movie alive? Repeat. At least we know that they’ll have a decent life in the PI.
3 of 5 stars.
Toshiro Mifune day on Turner Classic Movies (TCM). Wake up. Watch samurai. Go to work. Watch samurai. Come home. Watch samurai. You can’t miss out on this.
Samurai! Mifune!
Also, that website is crazy. Built for touch.
Sight and Sound magazine’s latest compilation list of the “greatest films of all time.”
Agree or disagree?
Discuss.
