Rate the latest movie you've seen.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

never heard of it. Is it any good? I'll Google it and check it out.

It's a sub-culture study, and I was interested going in. It's not for the squeamish.

[SGOS]

Did not care for Elvis.  It's was more of a music video of flashing images of the things we know about Elvis.  Maybe there is nothing more to know.  Probably not, now that I think about it.  I did like Elvis, just not the movie.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

John Wick IV, March 2023.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10366206/

[Hydra009]

For Spooktober, I've decided to watch a bunch of old scary movies.  First on my list, Demon Knight

Fun fact: Billy Zane stuffed an actual sponge in his mouth for this scene.  (It's this movie's equivalent of Viggo Mortensen breaking his toe, you just have to tell everyone)

Let me just tell ya, I love everything about this movie.  The tone is all over the place, heart-attack serious one moment to comedic, downright silly the next.  And the tonal whiplash just makes the gore that much more disturbing, since it mostly comes when you least expect it.  And the pacing is mostly pretty good, you never have too much downtime, something is always happening.

Billy Zane is an incredibly memorable villain - so incredibly evil and yet so charming!  He's the kind of guy you just want to have a drink with, you know?  Affably evil!  He really kills it in every scene.

And this movie is just a plain ol' baddass action movie with explosions and gunshots and face-punching and surprisingly good practical effects.  Remember those?  Such talent!

There's a religious message throughout and it's about as subtle as a 2x4 that the characters are literally protected by the blood of Jesus (and latter day saints), yet it's somehow not overly preachy about it.  And I find the "rules" of how this stuff works to be fascinating, with a lot left open to the imagination.  And really, the religious message here can be summed up as just "don't be selfish and help protect other people, even if it requires sacrifice" with is pretty much almost every Marvel movie's message, so there's not much I can object to.

Funny dialogue, fantastic action, genuinely horrifying moments, enough worldbuilding that you could make several Film Theory videos out of, and all in a scant 90 minutes.  What's not to like?

[the_antithesis]

Demon Night was fun, but there's a reason the Tales From the Crypt stopped at two. It's been thirty years since I've seen... hold on... *checks google*... Bordello of Blood, but I remember not liking it at the time. IMDb says it bombed and scrapped plans for a third film in the trilogy, although the film Ritual had Cryptkeeper scenes added on video to complete the trilogy.

[Hydra009]

Bordello of Blood was pretty bad.  So bad that it was pretty much the end of the Tales from the Crypt movies.  It coulda been a franchise, with a new movie every couple of years, but no...

[Gawdzilla Sama]

The Giant Claw, Ray Harryhausen's worst movie.

[Cassia]

If you are a sucker for romantic period movies like me....IDK, maybe it's the music?
Reeve was a superman in real life, and as a bonus he was atheist. This link works for me.
https://tubitv.com/movies/641581/somewhere-in-time

[Mike Cl]

If you are a sucker for romantic period movies like me....IDK, maybe it's the music?
Reeve was a superman in real life, and as a bonus he was atheist. This link works for me.
https://tubitv.com/movies/641581/somewhere-in-time

Wow!  One of my favorite movies of all time.  When I first saw it, I shocked myself that I liked it--no, loved it!  The written description of it leaves me neutral and would not have bothered with it; I was sort of trapped into watching it.   Don't exactly know what grabs me; I don't try to analyze and just watch it!

I put it in the same category of Fried Green Tomatoes--love it; don't analyze it and just watch it (many times). 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Saw AVATAR again in the theater, 3D and all. Can't wait for the sequel.

[Mike Cl]

Saw AVATAR again in the theater, 3D and all. Can't wait for the sequel.

I thought the movie was great--and the way it handled 3D was perfect.  Hurt Locker--hated that it beat out Avatar for picture of the year. 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Couldn't watch "Hurt Locker", lost a couple of cousins doing that shit.

[the_antithesis]

There's a trailer for the new Super Mario movie with Chris Pratt's Mario voice.

I can't even imagine wanting to see that.

[Blackleaf]

I saw the trailer. Went into it expecting a train wreck. Now, I think it will be...fine. I was actually impressed with Jack Black's Bowser voice. I couldn't even tell it was him. Keegan Michael Key's Toad was also decent. Definitely prefer his version over listening the shrill voice of the games' Toad for a full length movie.

Chris Pratt, though... No. His voice just doesn't fit. And since he's a main character, that's a bit of an issue.

I'm also annoyed that they seem to be implying that Mario isn't from the Mushroom Kingdom, and he was somehow teleported there. In Yoshi's Island, it was confirmed that Mario and Luigi were from the area. They were raised there by their unseen parents.

[the_antithesis]

So, here's what happened. I recently learned of filmmaker Jack M Sell. Never heard of him? Me either. I'm into rock bottom cinema, so I went and found all three of his films on Youtube. I could post the videos or links here, but you don't deserve that.

Oh
My.
Fucking.
GAWD.

These movies are terrible. Truth be told, I've only "watched" one while fiddling with Minecraft so far. His Spy thriller/Bond parody Deadly Spygames. This one stars Sell as a super secret agent who.. does shit. I'm not completely sure what the plot is, but it eventually had something to do with finding a short film Sell had made previously (!) Once our hero got it, the film stopped cold dead while "Tippi" Hedron (?!?) shows the film to a boardroom full of guys or something. She's also not in the room with them. That is, she's in the room in close ups, but in wide shots, she simply disappears. Almost like the biggish star they got for the film shot all of her footage separately.

The short film is called Black Christmas and is not, not, NOT to be confused with the movie by Bob Clark or either of the remakes. It involves a small boy who sees his mommy kissing Santa Claus and he snaps and goes crazy and stabs them to death in a POV shot before being apprehended by the police. And if that sounds like the opening to John Carpenter's Halloween, by golly, you're right. There are probably several such "homages" in this film, but the only other one I noticed was as the killer, now grown and dressed like Santa Claus, stumbles to the apartment to kill the teenagers, we hear "...ho...ho...ho...ho..." that is similar to the "...ki...ki...ki...ki... ...ma...ma...ma...ma..." from Friday the 13th.

This horror short is not very good. Several of the kills are in slow motion and I'm not sure if that's how the original short was released or if they added this effect in post for it's inclusion in this spy movie. Probably the former, though.

The quality of the short is hard to judge because it's been shoehorned into a spy movie under the weak, weak, weak retcon of the killer being the grandson of a Soviet general and this information leaking out would be very bad for the Ruskies or something. But "Tippi" keeps interrupting the film to smug opine on it and restate shit she'd already said, mostly crap about the Russian general and whatnot.

This was a slog, people. A goddamned slog and I have two more film to plow through.

One is called Outtakes, which had a trailer before this movie. It's a "comedy" in the vein of the Groove Tube and Kentucky Fried Movie. KFM is a classic, but Groove Tube was lame and Outtakes is an even worse version of the Groove Tube based on the trailer. I had started watching it a little, which opens with the premiere of the film Outtakes(?). Celebrity impersonators start showing up and it just goes on forever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever...

They had an Asian woman, possibly a transvestite, as Dolly Parton although the name is slightly changed to be "funny." Then a black guy in a leather suit pretends to act like Eddie Murphy. A guy trying to be Prince arrives and then gets back into his limo and leaves the movie-- so far the closest portrayal of a celebrity thus far. And then another transvestite pretends to be Liza Minnelli after a mind concussion and can only communicate through song.

That's where I stopped and if I'm smart, I will not go back.

Jack M Sell has one other credit. It's another vanity project, but not necessarily his. It's called The Psychotronic Man and, unlike the above two, does not appear to be a comedy. Star Peter Spelson is also credited as a writer. So this was probably his idea and Sell was just for hire or a friend helping him live the dream or whatever. It seems to be the only Sell movie with any presence online, mostly because Rifftrax lampooned it in 2017. It's probably the best of the bunch. I don't have very high hopes, but I'm still saving it for last.