/tv/ - Movies and Television

>>342820
>Insecure midwits love to tout the movie's trite "anti-consumerism" message like it's something profound, but George Romero's leftist views on racial matters definitely bled into the movie too.

Sadly the whole film is filled with leftist crap, still some enjoyable scenes like the ebil hwite biker army, again another leftist fear. Screwdriver kill will always be iconic and my me feel uncomfortable.
>>340902
Love this film, sadly doug walker's zodd impression from to boldly flee is the only thing I think of when I watched this film last. Ever since to boldly flee came out 12 years ago its all I can think of in general and I don't know why.

>>342820
Anon this is just sad. How are you going to enjoy anything when you insist on bringing all your emotional baggage into the cinema?

>>342820
For me even at a young age the way Peter was built up as being so impressive as a man only to later offer to perform an abortion left a strong impression. That the mother wasn't the one it was offered to as a service and her reaction to overhearing the conversation tells me he would have done it against her will and with no compunction. That's the kind of person Peter is, the embodiment of why the dead returned to haunt the living and turn their realm into hell.

To those of us that don't see humans as being made up of simple atoms and various biochemical reactions or pregnancy as a disease to be prevented or treated Peter was the main villain of the movie.

>>342860
>Sadly the whole film is filled with leftist crap, still some enjoyable scenes like the ebil hwite biker army, again another leftist fear.
Agreed.
>Screwdriver kill will always be iconic and my me feel uncomfortable.
My favorite kill is the one that involves Flyboy at the end of the movie. I can't recall any that make me very uncomfortable, unlike the eyeball scene from Zombi 2.
>>342862
Like I said, the movie definitely has redeeming features and a lot of my issues have to do with things other than the left-wing messaging. I don't even hate the movie or anything. I just don't like it as much as I used to anymore, and the political baggage it brings in is part of that. And despite thinking the movie is overrated by a lot of people, I still wouldn't recommend against seeing it for anyone interested.
>>342864
>That the mother wasn't the one it was offered to as a service and her reaction to overhearing the conversation tells me he would have done it against her will and with no compunction.
I don't see him as a villain at all. The movie makes him come across as such a swell guy that I think Romero's intent was that he would have only done it with Fran's permission.

Speaking of Fran, I only just learned yesterday that Gaylen Ross is Jewish. Her birth name is Gail Rosenblum according to IMDB. Her features look Jewier to me in later pictures, but I didn't suspect her from how she appeared in Dawn of the Dead.

>>342909
>Speaking of Fran, I only just learned yesterday that Gaylen Ross is Jewish. Her birth name is Gail Rosenblum according to IMDB. Her features look Jewier to me in later pictures, but I didn't suspect her from how she appeared in Dawn of the Dead.

Based as hell you have a jewdar that good anon.

>>342912
I can't take credit since I only found out by accident. I read that she had Israeli citizenship and started looking into it figuring it must be through marriage. She has gotten a bit of that reptilian look as she's gotten older but never struck me as Jewish in Dawn of the Dead. I did see her in Creepshow too but can't remember much about that movie.

>>342909
>I don't see him as a villain at all. The movie makes him come across as such a swell guy that I think Romero's intent was that he would have only done it with Fran's permission.
In the longer cuts of the movie when he's asks 'do you want to get rid of it' there's a short discussion prior which makes it clear that if the pregnancy was to risk their survival or mobility it would be ended for their convenience. She even asks if the decision to abort it was made and doesn't expect to be asked what she wants having no answer.

>>342927
>In the longer cuts of the movie when he's asks 'do you want to get rid of it' there's a short discussion prior which makes it clear that if the pregnancy was to risk their survival or mobility it would be ended for their convenience.
I missed how the talk about chopping off her head if it came down to it segued into the abortion conversation.

I don't have much to say about this one other than that I thought it was a decent little low-budget movie. I wouldn't call it an overlooked classic or anything, but I found it to be worth my time. It was interesting seeing Richard France in a bigger role, since to me he's basically Millard Rausch. This might actually be the biggest acting role he's had in a movie as far as screen time goes if his IMDB credits are any indication. The central concept of the military quarantining a small town due to a bio weapon accident spreading a plague that turns people into insane killers and townspeople resisting their occupiers makes for a bit of distinction from the usual type of zombie movie Romero is known for.

Kino. I thought neo-noir was a meme, but I can see it now. The setting felt small scale but it was still dynamic when things lulled steadily.

I decided to go back and watch the original Star Wars trilogy for the first time in over a decade (theatrical versions of course). Started with A New Hope last night. It really is a good movie that I feel has been unjustly caricatured as mindless spectacle, not only by its critics but by its fans as well. The discourse surrounding this film seems to center around a handful of aspects and ignore everything else, and now people think those aspects are all there is to it. I think that's a big part of why the Disney Star Wars movies failed. They thought those elements were the only things anyone cared about, so they focused only on those and nothing else, except their political agenda.
>visuals
This is the film's biggest strength. Yes, the special effects are famous, but the actual directing, cinematography, and lighting are even more impressive. Almost every shot is composed brilliantly. Even quick shots of fairly mundane things look incredible. I don't know if Lucas deserves the praise for that, or his cinematographer.
The visual storytelling is also quite good. The first 10-20 minutes is mostly watching two robots wandering around a desert, and the one we spend the most time with has no face and no intelligible speech, and yet there's just as much emotion as if it were two humans.
>writing
The story is simple without being flat. It's exactly what it needs to be. I remembered Star Wars as being little more than a Saturday morning cartoon story, but there is actually a fair bit of subtlety and nuance to the world and its characters; even if they're not exactly on the level of Dostoevsky.
Lots of people have talked about how Star Wars' plot was inspired by Flash Gordon and The Hidden Fortress, but there's so much more to it than that. The whole thing is like one big homage to the Golden Age of Hollywood. You've got bits of westerns, spy movies, samurai movies, war movies, swashbucklers, fantasy and, or course, science fiction all rolled into one. Star Wars is like to live action 30's-50's movies what Roger Rabbit was to cartoons of the same era.
The plot does feel a bit rushed towards the end, after they escape from the Death Star. I think a few more scenes to flesh out the characters at the rebel base, before the final battle, would have been a good addition to the story.
>acting
This is the film's weakest aspect. Some of the performances are great, like Alec Guinness as Obi=Wan, but others aren't so good. Carrie Fischer as Princess Leia is noticeably weaker than the other actors. I remember hearing once that Jodie Foster (or maybe it was Cybele Shepherd; one of the actresses from Taxi Driver, I don't remember which) was also considered for the role, and I can't help but wonder if either of those wouldn't have been a better choice.
>sound
The music and sound effects contribute a lot to the movie's atmosphere, and I'm sure the score sounded amazing to the original audience back in the 70's, but I've heard all too many times in lesser movies, video games, and fast food commercials for it to have much of an effect on my anymore.
>final thoughts/autism
Overall, a very good movie. It's easy to see why it was and still is so popular. In retrospect, Star Wars is quite a reactionary movie. Not only it a homage to the films of the 30's-50's, but homage might by too weak of a word. It's more like a revival of that style of filmmaking, a rebellion against the New Hollywood approach that, by the late 70's, was starting to become a caricature of itself. Not only that, but the way the story glorifies the old fashioned republic, the religion of the Jedi, and their fight against a vast centralizing, atheistic empire that seeks to destroy the traditional culture of the galaxy was also very much at odds with the spirit of other films of the time. I'm surprised there wasn't more of a backlash against it by the infamous activist-film critics of the era. Remember, these were the same people who said Dirty Harry was fascist propaganda and that Blue Velvet was misogynistic filth.
I don't mean to imply that Lucas was some kind of based traditionalist reading Guenon and Evola. I think he, and most people in America at the time, simply had a subconscious yearning for the time all hell broke loose in the 60's and early 70's, and that Star Wars was the ultimate expression of that yearning, even more so than American Graffiti.

>The Amityville Horror
The real horror is how much this movie sucks. It feels like someone spent millions on a B movie to prevent as little low-budget charm as possible from coming through.
>Conquest
An interesting little Conan the Barbarian knockoff from Lucio Fulci. I have to admit that the hazy visuals really turned me off at first, but as the movie started going along I really started to enjoy it and its weird touches. The villainess is a topless masked sorceress with an army of wolf men who spends her spare time writhing around moaning with a fat snake on top of her, there are swamp zombies, and also a bow that shoots magical heat-seeking energy spread shots. I can definitely see myself coming back to this one.
>The Abominable Dr. Phibes
I liked the art deco stuff and the '20s setting, but overall it's just another horror comedy that I can't connect with.
>The Fog
Like a lot of John Carpenter movies, I enjoyed the premise of this one but not the film itself. The way the plot progressed didn't make sense to me (how exactly does Adrienne Barbeau's character know so much about what's going on?), and it didn't feel schlocky enough to get away with dream logic. I also didn't like the theme of ancestral guilt either. Out of the three Carpenter movies I watched recently, this is still probably the one I liked the best.
>Dark Star
Read some positive opinions about this one, but I didn't care for it at all. While it's impressive for a student film, I didn't find it funny at all. I guess I kind of liked the "Benson, Arizona" country song and the ending though.
>Starman
I've seen this described as E.T. for adults, and that sounds pretty accurate to me. I'd rather just watch E.T. I have zero interest in hunting, but the holier-than-thou anti-hunter propaganda really killed any affection I might have felt for the movie, and I was considering just turning it off at that point. E.T. to me was a much more appealing character than the alien played by Jeff Bridges, and I think the movie's treacly tone is unjustified. I didn't feel very invested in him getting away from the military either. That aspect of the plot actually made the movie feel like a predecessor of the first Short Circuit to me.

At this point, the only movie from the '70s and '80s John Carpenter directed that I haven't seen outside of his TV work is Christine. And out of all those, Halloween is the only one I truly liked. His movies get so much praise from horror and science fiction fans that I really feel like I'm missing something. I was actually hoping I'd be impressed by one of these ones, but unfortunately I was let down again.
>Zombie Holocaust
A slapdash combination of a cannibal movie and a zombie movie. It was filmed at the same time as Zombi 2 and uses some of the same sets and actors (Ian McCulloch and Dakar). It's no surprise it feels like a ripoff of it. It was even released with the title Zombie 3 in some places. There are way more zombies than cannibals, so if you're looking mainly for a followup to Zombi 2 or a typical zombie movie at all you're probably going to be pretty disappointed.

It's not very good or anything, but I also got what I expected. I wouldn't mind revisiting it at some point down the line if I can find the original Italian version. I saw the Dr. Butcher M.D. release that has a different soundtrack from the original and a tacked-on intro scene. I wouldn't recommend it at all if you aren't into cheesy Italian splatter flicks.
>>344000
A New Hope is by far my favorite of the theatrical Star Wars movies. I don't know what its detractors expect out of it. It's a great space adventure movie that works perfectly fine outside of the context of the whole Star Wars franchise. It's absolutely true that the Star Wars movies have been put on a pedestal, but I think A New Hope holds up the best.

>>344004
>I think A New Hope holds up the best
Just finished The Empire Strikes Back, and I'm inclined to agree. The writing and acting is better than A New Hope, but the directing is a clear step down. It's still very good, but not on the level of Lucas in his prime. I seriously think he could have been one of the great American directors if hadn't given up on it to just be a producer after A New Hope.
One thing I noticed is that some of the things in Return of the Jedi that people say were changed at the last minute are already present here. I'm mostly thinking of the rumor that Leia being Luke's sister was something George came up with to resolve the Han-Leia-Luke love triangle, rather than killing Han off like he originally planned. Maybe that was true at some point very early on in Lucas' conception of the trilogy, but I think it's clear that, by the time Empire was being written, the changes to the story had already been made.
First, there isn't really much of a love triangle to begin with. There's Luke saying Leia is beautiful when he first sees a hologram of her at the beginning of A New Hope, and there's the scene where she kisses him solely to spite Han at the beginning of Empire. Aside from that, there's no hint that their relationship was anything other than Platonic unless I have some kind of autism and aren't picking up on it. There were only ever sparks between Leia and Han.
Secondly, it's already hinted at that Leia is, if not Luke's sister, is somehow connected to him in the Force. There's the line where Obi-Wan tells Yoda that Luke is their last hope, to which Yoda responds with "No, there is another." Then, at the end of the movie, Leia senses that Luke is in trouble after he loses his hand, and tells Lando to go back and rescue him. Since Luke's Force sensitivity is implied, at least in part, to be something he inherited from his father, it follows that Leia is somehow related as well.
Like I said, maybe this aspect of the story was very different early on in the conceptual stage, but so were a hundred others. Remember, Luke was originally supposed to be an old man named Starkiller. I don't get why so many people get hung up on this one point.

>>344004
Carpenter is revered because he mastered a very specific niche: silly b movies with relatively high production values. Those don't appeal to most people, but the people who like them think they're best thing ever and will never shut about them. Zach was right again.

>>344004
*more cannibals than zombies
>>344020
The Empire Strikes Back has always been my least favorite of the Star Wars movies that I care about. There are definitely parts that I like (like the battle on Hoth, the Millennium Falcon weaving through the asteroid field, the Imperial March scene, and Darth Vader's motley assembly of bounty hunters), but overall I don't find it anywhere near as exciting as the other two movies in the trilogy. I imagine the Darth Vader revelation was an interesting twist (although it really does mean Obi-Wan lied), but it's not really something beneficial for repeat viewings. People rave about the way it put more emphasis on the characters, but I've never found the characters to be much to write home about in the first place. I'm not saying that a movie should aim to be filled with a cast of cardboard cutouts, but I think that focusing so much on the characters in a movie of this type is barking up the wrong tree. We're talking about a series that started off taking on the mantle of Flash Gordon, after all. I've always thought the "it's darker and therefore more betterer!" claim from its devotees to be silly too. A dark tone doesn't make something inherently good or bad. It strikes me as the kind of thing you'd hear from someone who feels insecure about loving a movie series made for kids. On balance The Empire Strikes Back feels spotty to me in comparison to its two sibling movies. I think it also suffers from being made with the "saga" concept in mind, and I don't think the ending helps anything in that regard. It just doesn't feel like much is resolved. Would the movie really work on its own merits for someone who'd never seen another Star Wars movie? I'm not really sure.

Not to sound even more contrarian, but I'd seriously take Ewoks: The Battle for Endor over The Empire Strikes Back.
>>344051
>Carpenter is revered because he mastered a very specific niche: silly b movies with relatively high production values
You hit the nail right on the head, and that's probably part of the reason they don't appeal to me. They don't quite have the same cheesy draw of B movie filmmakers who either had lower budgets to work with or were less skilled at stretching out the money they had. But they also didn't have tons of money to throw around on expensive set pieces or lavish eye candy. Nothing in Escape from New York looks as cool to me as the poster with the Statue of Liberty's gargantuan severed head lying in the New York streets, for example. The faked wire-frame computer animation was an impressive bit of budget filmmaking, but I've never found the movie to be all that interesting to look at otherwise. While I typically find the concepts behind his movies interesting, they usually just feel empty to me in terms of actual content. It's not like you have to spend much money to come up with interesting material if you're creative enough. George Romero was spending a fraction of what John Carpenter did on his most respected movies, and yet I still find his body of work during his heyday to be more compelling than what Carpenter came up with. Carpenter's works falls in such an unsatisfying no-man's-land for me. I guess his middle-ground position between more polished Hollywood productions and the usual B-movie flicks might be why he's basically become such a major entry point for Redditors looking to dip their toes into the pool of cheesy B movies from the '70s and '80s.

I think another factor is his musical contributions to a lot of his movies. And while he's done some good work (I like the Escape from New York soundtrack the most), I get the impression that a lot of the people who praise him so much aren't familiar with similar composers of low-budget movies like Fabio Frizzi or Riz Ortolani. And even then it's not like he didn't have Alan Howarth lending him a hand on a decent amount of his work, although I'm not sure who did what.
>Those don't appeal to most people, but the people who like them think they're best thing ever and will never shut about them. Zach was right again.
Say what you want about the president of HAPA, but I've always respected the way he'd gainsay the Carpenter cult.

>>344059
>A dark tone doesn't make something inherently good or bad. It strikes me as the kind of thing you'd hear from someone who feels insecure about loving a movie series made for kids.
Star Wars isn't really for kids. I mean, it's marketed to them, but it's not really appropriate for under 13s, hence the rating change. People get killed left and right.

>>344062
There's definitely violence, but it's the kind of violence that's considered fine for general audiences. Like what you'd see in an old serial or adventure movie.

>>344020
I never liked the B-plot about the millenoum falcon's unfixable warp speed thing, after a while the fact that it took all the way to the end to fix it got kinda annoying. Also Han and Leia's romance wasn't interesting. It was carried by Harrison Ford's charisma but besides that, it wasn't very well done in my opinion. All of Luke's scenes, especially at Dagobah and Hoth were the best and made the film great. The ending scene, the shot is beautiful though, possibly my favourite shot in the series. The fact that the heroes lost but Luke and Leia still look smile at each other and look hopefully as they see Lando fly off, it really was a great way to end the dark tone of the film with hope for the next one.

>>344059
Watched Return of the Jedi last night. It is the weakest of the original three in my opinion, but it's a very good end to the trilogy. The final act is as good anything else in the franchise.
It's not as strong as Empire visually, though not so much because of inferior direction or cinematography, but because the environments aren't quite as interesting. Having most of the film taking place in a North American-looking forest makes it feel less exotic, less fantastical. There are still some beautiful shots here and there
The whole story has a feeling of "This is it, this is the end" that runs throughout film that I think is what makes it both weaker as a standalone film and a very satisfying conclusion. It flows at a slower pace than the first two, almost like it's reflecting on everything that happened in them. A lot of people say Lucas rehashed ideas from A New Hope because he got lazy, but I think he deliberately wanted to evoke the memory of the original as sort of book end.
Also, having the Ewoks defeat the man-made horror of the empire with primitive technology is based and Tedpilled.
>>344059
>I imagine the Darth Vader revelation was an interesting twist (although it really does mean Obi-Wan lied), but it's not really something beneficial for repeat viewings.
Knowing it beforehand did add another dimension to the scene where Vader talks the Emperor via hologram. The Emperor tells him to kill Luke, but Vader persuades him to try to win Luke over to the dark side instead. I assume he did that to save Luke's life.
>I've always thought the "it's darker and therefore more betterer!" claim from its devotees to be silly too.
I wouldn't even agree that it's darker than A New Hope. That movie had a planet blowing up and a close up shot of the charred corpses of Luke's aunt and uncle. Empire ends with the good guys losing, but that's it. No one is dead, nothing is lost forever, and you know they're going to win in the end.

>Inferno
Forgot about this one. I thought it was interesting but I'm not sure I thought it measured up to Suspiria. The rat scene definitely got a laugh out of me.
>Manhattan Baby
The first Fulci movie I've seen that I haven't liked. There were some interesting elements, but it feels pretty carelessly thrown together. I even thought The House by the Cemetery was pretty decent, but I didn't find much to like with this one. Even the music is just reused bits from other Fulci-Frizzi collaborations.
>Zone Troopers
A good-natured tribute to both WWII movies and old-school sci-fi flicks. It involves a squad of American soldiers getting involved with interstellar visitors while btfoing nazidups. It doesn't take itself seriously, but it also avoids the pitfall of intentionally trying (and therefore failing) to make a so-bad-it's-good movie. This trailer is pretty cool, but it's also tonally misleading. There's really little horror to be found. And if you're expecting blood and guts, you're not going to find any. It's on par with an old WWII movies like To Hell and Back.

The two guys who wrote this movie later ended up working on The Rocketeer, which was an appropriate fit for them considering their work on Zone Troopers.
>>344092
>but because the environments aren't quite as interesting. Having most of the film taking place in a North American-looking forest makes it feel less exotic, less fantastical. There are still some beautiful shots here and there
I always found the scenery to be more interesting. As a kid, I was always under the impression that they packed a lot into the movie. I don't think they did at all, but I found what they did have to be more exciting than The Empire Strikes Back. I guess that might be because I've never been that into the early Hoth scenes before the battle or found the Cloud City stuff all that interesting to look at. The Return of the Jedi had the Tatooine scenes with Jabba the Hutt, the Ewoks and the big land battle on Endor, the destruction of the second Death Star, and still had some Yoda (I liked Yoda more when I was a kid). Return of the Jedi was my favorite of the three back then.
>Also, having the Ewoks defeat the man-made horror of the empire with primitive technology is based and Tedpilled.
I'm not one of those people who have a problem with the Ewoks, but the way the situation was portrayed doesn't feel believable to me. You've got a primitive tribe with weapons made of wood and stone taking on armored soldiers with laser weapons and even vehicles.
>That movie had a planet blowing up and a close up shot of the charred corpses of Luke's aunt and uncle.
There's also the shot of Pondo Baba's bloody arm lying on the floor. I forgot about that when I made this post: >>344066

That also reminded me of how they use the word "damn" in A New Hope. I guess those might be examples of what the TV Tropes spergs would call "Early Installment Weirdness."

>Trancers
I really liked this one for what it is. It might be pulling from movies like Blade Runner and The Terminator, but it took things in its own direction. Like its fellow Empire Pictures release Zone Troopers (with whom it shares a decent chunk of its cast and crew), it has a sense of humor without coming across like it's insecure about its own existence. That seems to be something lost with movies that attempt something similar to this nowadays. It made me think of the contrast with that Space Cop movie Red Letter Media did, which from what I remember had a similar premise and even a similar title (Trancers also went by the name "Future Cop"). Since I haven't seen that I could be wrong, but it apparently was a complete failure that hid behind smugness and irony instead of sincerely trying to get the best results out of a low budget and limited resources.

I have some objections to the way time travel works, but that seems to be par for the course when it comes to these types of movies. The Trancers version of time travel uses Back to the Future logic (although it was released the year before Back to the Future), where the past being changed has the potential to kill off characters in the future. I feel like they kind of applied their logic inconsistently with the end of the movie though. Or at least ignored the butterfly effect like most time travel stories do.

It's a movie I should have watched sooner.
>Trancers 2
While it was nice to see so much of the cast from the first movie returning (as well as appearances from actors like Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton) and had some interesting ideas, it's not exactly a worthy successor. It was a direct-to-video movie, and it feels like one. While the characters do feel fleshed out a bit more, the movie's pretty light on both plot and on good action scenes. The shootout at the end was really bad.

The whole Trancer farm concept feels pretty inconsistent with the first movie too.

Even though it's not very good, I might still end up watching some of the sequels. I've come to like Tim Thomerson's presence. I saw Cherry 2000 years ago, but I wasn't familiar with him until I viewing Zone Troopers recently.
>The Dungeonmaster
It's definitely cheesy and retarded, but I can't say I wasn't reasonably entertained. It's supposedly an anthology film, but it's only one in the loosest sense. There are sections of the movie written and directed by different people, but it follows one continuous plot line.

Of the sections, I felt there were too many scenes involving caves. I didn't think the concert scene was a good idea either. It didn't feel all that threatening and just came across like a way to shoehorn W.A.S.P. into the movie. My favorite parts were the serial killer sequence and the Mad Max bit at the end. The one with the giant stone statue has some nice stop-motion effects from David W. Allen.

I think The Dungeonmaster could have made for a fun MST3K episode. They already had Laserblast. That was another cheeseball Charles Band production with David W. Allen animation, so it would have fit right in.

>Damnation Alley
I should have mentioned this one earlier. It's way too skimpy on the plot. It's basically a bunch of things happening during a post-apocalyptic road trip to Albany, New York (California). I'm really forgiving when it comes to this type of special effects, but the ones in Damnation Alley tend to be pretty awful. I did think the red sky effects were pretty memorable. As cool as the Landmaster idea was, I didn't like the way it articulated in the middle on an aesthetic level. I guess that helped make it more functional though.

I didn't hate it or anything, but I think most people would just find it boring. If you're like me and would be interested in the prospect of seeing George Peppard sporting a moustache, speaking with a bad Southern drawl, and driving an armored vehicle around, you might not mind it.

Apparently Damnation Alley premiered in Japan before it did in the U.S., which is kind of interesting.
>Dollman
I thought the movies had a lot of promise before the setting shifts to Earth. It had a neat, Robocop-like feeling to it. Unfortunately, I started losing interest after that. I really disliked the "urban" turn the movie took in terms of feel, both in terms of setting and soundtrack choices. It has a real "How do you do, fellow Bronx Chicano youths?" flavor to it.

Other than that, the movie's pretty generic. It's unfortunate, because the concept of the movie is an interesting one. It's like someone took the plot of a Twilight Zone episode and turned it into an action movie.
>Adventures in Babysitting
This one was something I only had on my radar from the Thor clip someone posted on here a long time ago. I didn't really know much else going in. It ended up reminding me of a John Hughes movie. It's set in the Chicago area, and the idea of the young main characters going on an unauthorized trip into the city is similar to Ferris Bueller's Day off. Fittingly, Chris Columbus would later work with John Hughes on Home Alone. Some of the scenes with Sarah toward the end of Adventures in Babysitting felt sort of like a proto-Home Alone to me at times.

Elisabeth Shue also looked better to me in this than she did in the Back to the Future sequels. I always thought she was kind of ugly in those, but maybe that's got something to do with me hating the way they suddenly had another actress playing Jennifer instead of Claudia Wells.

I don't really have anything very meaningful to say, but I thought it was pretty good.

>>344548
just the car looks cool as hell.

>>344549
It seems like it was built well. There were two of them in the movie, but they actually only made one.

After years of ironically shilling this movie as a masterpiece because I heard it was a very dumb action movie, I finally watched Commando, and I have to say, it isn't that dumb at all. It's at least more intelligent than other action flicks of the era. The creators were clearly aware of how over the top the action scenes are, and there are several points where the film parodies typical cliches of the genre. I guess the concept of an affectionate parody that can also work as a straightforward example of the thing its parodying is foreign to modern audiences. But movies like that were quite common in the 20th century.
The only thing that seems genuinely dumb was the Australian villain. They try to portray him as this threatening fighter who can stand toe to toe with Arnold, but he's chubby and is dressed like a gay biker. And his emotional outbursts before the final duel don't land like their supposed to. Maybe that was another joke that just went over my head. I don't know.

>>344614
>Australian villain
He was also in Mad Max: The Road Warrior. Wonder how much they were going for that.

>>344646
I had no idea that was the same guy. Why didn't they at least give him a similar haircut if that's what they were going for instead of the Tom Selleck look?

>Some Kind of Wonderful
I had this one on my mental backlog after hearing the March Violets songs from the soundtrack years ago. To me it did a pretty good job of capturing how cringeworthy teenage boys often act when they're mindlessly infatuated with a girl. I didn't understand why Keith was so into Amanda Jones when Watts was a much better match for him, but I guess these things aren't really rational. Maybe it's because she styled herself like a dyke.

I liked the character of Keith's father. He was well played and written to be more than just a two-dimensional "stern father who just doesn't understand, man" role.

A few things I didn't like are the way Keith aiming to blow so much money on a girl he barely knows is treated so casually and thinking the ending should have felt more natural.

I'm glad it wasn't quite the usual "persona non grata gets the popular girl" movie, but it also got me thinking about how it would be a breath of fresh air for a movie like this to feature the unpopular male failing in his attempt and having to do some serious introspection.
>Night of the Comet
It felt like the movie didn't know what it wanted to be. The idea of valley girls living through a The Last Man on Earth scenario sounded like it could make for an intriguing movie, but there's really not much going on. It's supposed to be a mix of post-apocalyptic horror and comedy and a story element involving surviving scientists hiding out in an underground base, but I didn't think it did anything very satisfying with those elements. It's not very funny, not very horrifying, and it felt like a lot more could have been done with the plot.

I also didn't care for the beaner love interest or the theme of teenage girls beating up grown men, which seems like something a male feminist would come up with. I did like the ending though.
>Hell of the Living Dead
I was actually enjoying this one well enough until the stock footage started taking over the movie. The stock footage they used seems almost like it was intentionally comedic at times. The movie mostly takes place in New Guinea, but they used clips of African wildlife like elephants and what looked like jerboas. They also tried to pass off black Africans as New Guineans. There were apparently an awful lot of whites in New Guinea tool. I thought it started getting boring once the stuff with the ooga-booga tribesmen started before picking up a bit again. I thought the concept of the zombie plague being created in a lab as a depopulation agent was kind of neat.
>>344614
Arnold Braunschweiger's character being named John Matrix always gave me a chuckle. Names like Douglas Quaid and Howard Langston might be funny because they're implausibly all-American names for a guy with an accent like his, but having "Matrix" as a last name is just implausible period. It's not even the kind of ridiculous name you'd think the hero of an action movie might have, like Dirk Fightmaster or Biff Rockwell. It's completely out of left field.
>They try to portray him as this threatening fighter who can stand toe to toe with Arnold, but he's chubby and is dressed like a gay biker.
Yeah, I thought he came across like a homo.

>>344656
The main purpose of Bennett's portrayal was to contrast the exaggerated all-Americanism of John with Bennett's Eurofat Freddie Mercury aesthetic. There's also a ton of gay jokes in there, hence the way the fight went on and especially how he died.

>>344785
>Australia
>Europe
>Freddy Mercury
>European
Americans are a big fat mistake

>>344762
I figured Matrix was supposed to be an alias of some kind. He talks to his daughter about growing up in East Germany at the beginning of the movie.

>>344788
>strayans are not european stock
>freddie mercury is not a shitskin emulating the typical member of the 70s britbong faggot scene
Autism

I decided to watch Planes, Trains, and Automobiles since it's almost Thanksgiving. Amazingly, I never seen this before.
I was a little bored for the first half hour or so, but I came to like it as the characters started to grow on me. This scene and the ending were kino.
It is kind of odd in that everything about it-from the premise, to the gags, to the overall tone-seems like a family movie, and yet it's rated R. Maybe it just seems odd to me because I grew up in an era where R rated comedy exclusively meant stoner comedy, with lots of cartoonish violence and gratuitous nudity. Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, in contrast, probably could have gotten a PG rating if not for the scene at the car rental place where Steve Martin says "fuck" over and over. The idea that a studio would make a movie like this exclusively for adults seems almost quaint.

>>344815
>The idea that a studio would make a movie like this exclusively for adults seems almost quaint.
R-rated films aren't exclusively for adults. It's just so young kids can't access them without parental approval.

>>344816
Sure, but it's not very common for parents to take their kids to R rated movies. The majority of the people who saw this in theaters were adults.

>>344829
>Sure, but it's not very common for parents to take their kids to R rated movies.
It's more common than you think. I'm sure there were lots of kids who went to see Deadpool and Wolverine, for example. I went to plenty of R-rated movies with my family from like 12 on. Then there's the home video/streaming aspect. If mom and dad feel their son is at a stage where he's mature enough, they will disable parental controls.

>Sixteen Candles
It might be cliche to say, but there's no way that a movie like this would get released by a major studio nowadays. It's not even just the Chinaman Long Duk Dong. There are also the "bohunk" comments and Molly Ringworm's friend being in disbelief after misinterpreting a remark she made about a dream boyfriend and a black car and thinking she wanted to date a negro. There's no way treating the idea of dating a groid as something humorously unthinkable would fly these days. On top of that, you have a geek driving around with a heavily inebriated Stacy and then having drunk sex with her. A woman who willingly gets drunk and has sex with a man is now considered a rape victim.

Like he would go on to do in The Breakfast Club, Anthony Michael Hell did an admirable job playing a nerd that's a lot more believable than the typical cartoon-level portrayal of a pocket protector enthusiast with taped-up Buddy Holly glasses.

Going in I wasn't expecting it to be as much of a boner comedy as it is, but I liked it.
>Nightmare City
I don't care what anyone says. This movie kicks ass. It's described as a zombie movie, but it doesn't feature zombies in the traditional sense. You won't find any brainless undead hordes shuffling around here. What Nightmare City has are superhuman poo-faced mutant maniacs who chase their victims down in a vampiric frenzy, use weapons, and are even capable of acts of sabotage. Umbero Lenzi would even get mad when people would call the monsters zombies. Regardless of what you'd call them, I thought they were actually pretty cool even if I'm basically a purist and prefer more traditional creatures if you're going to call them zombies (which I don't think they do in the movie). They're basically in between something like the vampires from The Last Man on Earth and what you'd find in Romero's Dead trilogy. I've read that The Crazies was a bigger influence on Nightmare City than either of the Dead movies that had been released at the time were, and it wouldn't surprise me if that was the case.

There's some of the preachy messaging that movies like this are prone to having, but overall I thought it was a fun schlockfest.
>Trancers III
Completely forgettable. I'd definitely take Trancers II over this. Trancers III has even less plot. At least the second movie's got the soap-opera drama and some depth added to the characters. I at least enjoyed seeing the principal cast members from the original movie coming back for that, but outside of one scene with Helen Hunt, there's not much of that here. You've got Tim Thomerson and Telma Hopkins back from the first two, but I think that's it (Megan Ward was only in Trancers II). There's also much less of the leftover '80s atmosphere in Trancers III.

I wouldn't advise anyone to watch this unless they're masochists like me or feel the need to watch the entire series.
>Radioactive Dreams
There's definitely some creativity on display with this one, but despite its uniqueness I found it to be pretty dull. The idea of two young fish out of water who were raised as living time capsules of the midcentury having to navigate a post-apocalyptic world full of distinctly themed gangs could have made for something much better. I liked the early scenes, but the whole thing lost steam for me once it became once the story just became about the two dicks running through dark environments trying to escape their pursuers.

The movie contains a prominent soundtrack mostly consisting of original New Wave songs, but they came across as pretty generic to me.

Radioactive Dreams is also out of print for some reason. It had a VHS release in North America, but outside of Germany it was never even released on DVD. You'd think with all the obscure movies getting the Blu-ray or even 4K Blu-ray treatment that this would be among them, especially considering it was apparently really influential on the Fallout games. But as far as an HD home video release goes, it looks like it's been left to languish for the time being.

One tidbit I thought was interesting was that the name "Brick Bardo" was used. That name would later be reused in Dollman, among other Albert Pyun flicks I haven't seen.
>>344794
That could definitely be, but you'd think he'd have chosen a more inconspicuous name. I guess it just adds to the goofiness of Commando.
>>344815
I watched that and Uncle Buck a while ago. John Candy was really good at imbuing his characters with warmth and likability. I always thought of him and Chris Farley as being the two big fat-guy comedic actors who died in the '90s, but any similarities between the two are pretty superficial from what I can tell given that my familiarity with their bodies of work has always been spotty.

>>345012
>Anthony Michael Hell
I didn't write that on purpose, but I kind of wish I did.

>>345028
Did you write Molly Ringworm on purpose?

>>345045
Yeah, that one was actually intentional.

>>345028
That's some transformation, considering those films were only what, 5 years apart?

>>345057
It was six just going off release dates. But yeah, it was a huge transformation. National Lampoon's Vacation and Sixteen Candles were also shot only shot a year apart. The ending to Vacation was shot months after the rest of the movie, and apparently he looked visibly different by that point compared to the rest of the movie.

>>345059
What if the Griswald's were actually just lost in the desert for six months before they finally made it to Wally World?

>Mildred Pierce
I've heard that noir films were simply called melodramas in the days when they were actually being made. Mildred Pierce fits that description better than any other noir I've seen. The murder that the film begins and ends with is typical noir, but everything else is pure melodrama. I don't mean that as an insult, I mean the story something straight out of the literal melodramas from the 19th and early 20th century. Complete with the stock character types: the spoiled, materialistic daughter, the lecherous millionaire playboy, etc. That's not to say it's bad, though. As far as melodramatic movies go, it's probably one of the best. The story never goes too over the top and the acting elevates the parts that would otherwise come off as cheesy.

>The Sea Wolf
Pretty good sea adventure with lots of great black and white cinematography. I liked the story and the characters. Edward G. Robinson plays a sea captain who almost seems like a wannabe Captain Ahab at first, but turns out to be more like the average image board user. The film is obviously a novel adaption that had to condense much of the plot. It feels like it just goes from climax to climax without any room to breath. And some of the events feel like too much of a coincidence. I haven't read the novel, but I assume the screenwriter had to take multiple different events and roll them all into one for the sake of time. Still, it's worth watching if the idea of a psychological drama set in the middle of the pacific ocean sounds interesting to you.

>Pretty in Pink
It's kind of odd how similar Some Kind of Wonderful was to this in terms of plot considering that John Hughes was involved with both and that Some Kind of Wonderful followed only a year after. I consider Some Kind of Wonderful to be the better movie though. Duckie just comes across as an annoying twerp orbiter, which makes him harder to sympathize with. I also felt like the movie was pulling my leg in the scene where Andrew McCarthy's character is introduced like he's some dreamboat. I guess Some Kind of Wonderful is also easier for me to project onto. Putting myself in the shoes of a male lead with this kind of story feels more natural, and that one felt like less of a chick flick because of it.

Pretty in Pink isn't bad, but it's kind of standard.
>Risky Business
I wasn't really sure what to make of it while I was watching it, but I feel more positive about it now. The way Risky Business explores the theme of a straight-laced young man getting corrupted by the love of money distinguishes it from other movies of its type. The plot's not exactly believable, and I found myself thinking what an idiot Joel Goodsen is, but Risky Business is more than a vehicle for wish fulfillment for horny teenage boys.

I'm not really a Tangerine Dream fan, but their music also adds a lot to the experience. I liked how "In the Air Tonight" is used too, which brought to mind the way it was utilized in Miami Vice.

What undermines Risky Business for me is the lack of consequences for any of the shenanigans that occur. The tacked-on theatrical ending also doesn't help in that department, although it does have the better closing line.

Overall I thought it was pretty good.
>Breakfast at Tiffany's
This is the kind of movie I watch just because I feel like I should be familiar with it. It wasn't really my cup of tea. I thought the ending was touching and all, but I guess I feel like a lot of the draw of the movie is Audrey Hepburn being rich, cutesy, and an early '60s fashion icon. Personally speaking, that's not the kind of thing that pulls me in. I also couldn't put myself in Paul Varjak's shoes. Holly Golightly seems like the kind of flaky woman that would just end up breaking your heart down the line, but he's completely smitten with her. I guess I just don't like seeing that kind of relationship start.

It just ended up being another title crossed off a list for me.

>>345059
What's that anime-like movie John Candy is in?

Pretty sure it falls under the isekai category

>>345325
Heavy Metal?

Just finished The Color of Pomegranates. I know very little of Armenian history and even less of Armenian culture, so a lot of this movie went right over my head. I don't understand what the carpets, the chickens, the dances, the gestures, or even the pomegranates are supposed to symbolize. Pomegranate juice, I assume, represents blood. Does that mean the pomegranates themselves are supposed to represent the heart? Or life in general? I assume not every single thing was meant to have a deeper meaning and that some things were just meant to create a certain atmosphere or provoke a particular emotional response, but the movie is still heavily symbolic, and I have no idea what most of the symbols mean because I'm not Armenian. That's a pretty big obstacle for being able to appreciate film.
From what I could piece together, it's about the life of an Armenian poet who grows up in a 18th century (I think; the note at the beginning of the film said it's 18th century, but it also used the term Medieval) Armenia, falls in love with some noblewoman, is forced to become a monk when their affair is found out, then spends the rest of his life living in misery and woe because of all the evil and destruction in the world, and then dies. The film doesn't tell you even that much explicitly, I'm just guessing.
Overall, I think I would have liked it a lot if I understood it.

>>345792
I watched the movie on Skanderbeg and since I knew a bit more about Albanian history I appreciated it more.