What did you watch this week chums? (01/27-02/02)

My ratings of what you watched:

Batman 8/10
Batman and Robin 7/10

My ratings of what I watched:
Green Book 8/10
Murder Party 6/10
The Diary of a Teenage Girl 7/10
The Faculty 8/10
The Incubus 4/10
Just One of the Guys 7/10
Solaris 6/10
Kin 7/10
The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing 6/10
The Late Bloomer 6/10

Ratings for your stuff:

Mom and Dad (2018) - Mildly entertaining junk food. 6/10

Batman (1989) - Visually intriguing with some good performances in a movie that completely misses the point of Batman. Not a poorly made film by any means, but it misses the point of the Batman character. Definitely not the best Batman movie, although my opinion has softened over the years. Generous 6/10

Batman and Robin (1997) - It's campy, it's over the top, overstuffed with cheesy one-liners, and it's a colorful big budget recreation of the original 1960s Adam West series, so by all those criteria it succeeds. It also falls short of a successful Batman depiction, but at least it presents itself in a lighthearted way. 6.5-7/10

Polar (2019) - It weren't bad, and I appreciated the visual style along with some of the crazier moments. 7/10

Here's what I watched:

Glass (2019) - Another movie mostly maligned by critics. It went in a direction I didn't anticipate, but it held up despite not meeting my expectations. The last act contains some questionable creative choices, I will admit. Ultimately, though, it manages to scale down the plot while expanding its own lore, so I have to give credit where it's due. 8/10

Dave Made a Maze (2017) - I was waiting for it to go completely off the wall, but it remained fairly average throughout. 5/10

A Star is Born (2018) - Nicely photographed and decently acted version of a story we've seen before. It'll probably win a ton of Oscars. 6/10

Widows (2018) - How can a director so skilled keep picking astonishingly dumbed-down scripts? This movie has several scenes that had me asking what was the point of it all. 5/10

Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) - While I enjoy the additional scenes from the special edition, the original theatrical cut is just as poignant and to this day maintains an constant pace with escalating tension that I haven't seen in any recent action movie aside from Fury Road. 9.5/10

Sorry, no movie this week!

TV Shows:

-Breaker High - marathon

-The Love Boat - marathon
Last episode of season 3. I already saw season 4, so I'm quitting.

-The Flying Doctors - marathon
Last episode of season 6. They're not continuing with season 7, but I have no interest anymore anyway since Dr. Chris and other characters have left.

-The New Detectives - marathon

-The Bold and the Beautiful - marathon of very old episodes

-The Sopranos - "Rat Pack" and "Where's Johnny?"

Bohemian Rhapsody

Let's see.....

- Love Boat (pilot episode)
- Cheers
- Jeopardy
- Wheel of Fortune
- Troll Hunters
- a little bit of National Geographic's Mars show

Not a bad week, considering I was under a lot of stress to catch up with my studies. I spent a week on a cruise and missed a week of school, so it took some extra work to catch up. Oh yeah, the cruise was why we chose to watch "The Love Boat" and "Cheers," because they were available on the tv in our staterooms.

Mom and Dad N/S
Batman 6/10
Batman and Robin 4/10
Polar N/S
Travelers N/S

King of Thieves (2018)https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5789976/?ref_=nv_sr_1
"A true crime film about a crew of retired crooks who pull off a major heist in London's jewelry district. What starts off as their last criminal hurrah quickly turns into a brutal nightmare due to greed. Based on infamous true events"

Even Michael Caine couldn't save this, It was a bit shit. There was a lower budget film made about the robbery which was much better. 4/10

The Terminator (1984) - A seemingly indestructible android is sent from 2029 to 1984 to assassinate a waitress, whose unborn son will lead humanity in a war against the machines, while a soldier from that war is sent to protect her at all costs. Good effects and great action scenes. Well paced. 8.5/10

Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) - A cyborg, identical to the one who failed to kill Sarah Connor, must now protect her teenage son, John Connor, from a more advanced and powerful cyborg. First time view for this one. Just as good as the first one. One of the few sequels which actually worked. Loved the ending. 8.5/10

The Magnificent Seven (1960) - An oppressed Mexican peasant village hires seven gunfighters to help defend their homes. This holds up well. Great cast and a great story. Amazing to see how little dialogue some of the big stars had esp Steve McQueen. Eli Wallach was great as the villian as usual. 8.5/10

L.A. Confidential (1997) - As corruption grows in 1950s Los Angeles, three policemen -- one strait-laced, one brutal, and one sleazy -- investigate a series of murders with their own brand of justice. There's a million stories out there should be the name of this film. A very well done police drama with some solid performances all around. DeVito was great and is overlooked in this film. 8/10

Lilies of the Field (1963) - A travelling handyman becomes the answer to the prayers of nuns who wish to build a chapel in the desert. Just didn't think this movie was very realistic. Poiter won an Oscar for this dud when he had better performances in better movies. 6/10


Stage Fright (1950) - A struggling actress tries to help a friend prove his innocence when he's accused of murdering the husband of a high society entertainer. I can see why this is considered one of Hitchcock's lesser movies. I figured out what was going on early in the film. Just was not that captivating and everyone was going through the motions. 6/10

Young Frankenstein (1974) - An American grandson of the infamous scientist, struggling to prove that his grandfather was not as insane as people believe, is invited to Transylvania, where he discovers the process that reanimates a dead body. Love this movie. Marty Feldman steals the show as Igor. Some of the laughs may be considered corny today but this is just funny. 8.5/10

i liked mom & dad a lot, though i wish that camera wouldn't have done all that shaking.
i haven't watched batman in many years. i honestly always have found it a bit of a bore, tbh. i've never seen b&r, but i'm open to the experience. i might give it a watch tomorrow, because...why not?!

my week:
deadgirl (2008) 3/5 i think this might be pretty poor in a few spots - bad acting, hackneyed script, unclear motivations, all that stuff - but criminy this does manage to be a bit unsettling at times. and it's oddly relaxed in its tone & atmosphere, not the kind of grindcore brutal violence you'd expect, which adds to that offputting feel.

i have to think of something i heard jay nordlinger, one of my favourite writers, say some time back: lots of men do a lot of terrible things, and it's likely the case that many, many more would do terrible things, worse than we can imagine, if they knew they could get away with it.

this is not a great movie, & in some ways it's not a very good one, but it is definitely different from the stock horror films i'm used to, and if you're on the fence, i'd say give it a try.

grace of my heart (1996) 4/5 rambling, shambolic & loosely based on carole king, i guess. it's not going to bowl you over with its tight, clock-work plotting, but i loved going along for the ride, even when it headed into the ditch. lots of very nice, period-accurate music.

river's edge (1986) 3.5/5 there are definitely things in this movie that don't quite work. the teacher is awful, & crispin glover, as the movie cliche goes, seems to be in another film entirely. but everything else is pretty great: naturalistic, alternately disturbing & comic. i think this is one of the more memorable indies of the 80s. far from perfect, but it's a film that's stayed with me since the day i saw it over 30 years ago.

hollywood boulevard (1976) 3/5 mostly fun no-budget satire. runs out of steam in the 2nd half. it's made all the jokes it had to make by that point, i'd say. dick miller was a god damned treasure, though.

alphaville (1965) 3/5 i didn't enjoy watching alphaville too much, i guess. there were neat moments, isolated things to enjoy in it, but nothing that gave me any satisfaction or pleasure. i can go along with incoherent jumbled films, but there was just not much here for me to latch onto.

i did think that several moments seemed to directly inspire some of terry gilliam's films, brazil & 12 monkeys in particular - feel free to correct me, anyone, but i think gilliam had mentioned being inspired by this film for elements of 12 monkeys.

birdman (2014) 4/5 there were moments that felt a bit too on the nose & self-important, & this maybe felt a bit too much like a director writing a letter to himself about how important his endeavor is. maybe. perhaps that's just me trying to congratulate myself for my knowing cynicism.

but mostly, i thought birdman was a ton of fun. it's showy & fancy & has lots of energy & was never close to being boring. nothing this enjoyable should be judged too harshly, & nothing in this is as insufferable as the hot air i noticed coming out of a few of the reviews for this thing.

in a glass cage (1986) 3.5/5 an ex-nazi doctor & child molester, now confined to an iron lung, hires a nurse who's aware of his secrets.

well, this is quite a movie.
i'm slightly surprised that i've gone my entire life without even having heard of it until today. it seems like it ought to belong on any respectable (ha ha) list of transgressive, extreme films, in there with your salos & angsts & what have you.
i won't give it a rating, but if this is the kind of film you think you'd like to see, then you probably ought to watch it i suppose. it's fairly well made as far as i can tell, mostly moves along at a good pace, though it does bog down here & there.

the guy who made it was trying to make a bleak, ugly film, & he succeeded.

the unborn (1991) 3.5/5 mostly fun, pleasantly silly, larry cohen-ish affair. the baby effect at the end is pretty awesome & bears more than a passing resemblance to black sabbath's born again album cover.

also, if you kinda hate kathy griffin, please take note of the following (spoilers below):


a woman tells kathy griffin to 'suck my dick' at about the 22 minute mark, in case that's something you'd like to see.

at the 58 minutes, griffin & her lesbian partner have a bloody fight, ending with griffin getting bludgeoned to death with a hammer (off-screen unfortunately).