What was the last movie you watched?

[Russoguru]

Black Panther - This was fantastic! Rich vibrant world, great performances, complex character motivations, this movie was so much more than just a dumb summer blockbuster.

And BATTLE RHINOS!!!!!!!!!!

I know right? I thought that was a little weird but at least interesting. I had no idea you could train, let alone tame a Rhino.

[Darth Geek]

Black Panther - This was fantastic! Rich vibrant world, great performances, complex character motivations, this movie was so much more than just a dumb summer blockbuster.

And BATTLE RHINOS!!!!!!!!!!

I know right? I thought that was a little weird but at least interesting. I had no idea you could train, let alone tame a Rhino.

I was laughing at it in the first scene, because the rhinos were just in a rickety wooden fence that wouldn't stop them for a second. But it was totally worth it for the BATTLE fucking RHINOS!
I heard in a review they mentioned rhino and I thought they meant that The Rhino was in this. I love The Rhino in the comics, and I was really looking forward to seeing him in this.

[Russoguru]

Just as long as they don't show... THAT Rhino from that one movie whose name I will not whisper here.

[Darth Geek]

Just as long as they don't show... THAT Rhino from that one movie whose name I will not whisper here.

Yeah, that's another reason I wanted to see him done properly in a Marvel movie

[wihogfan]

The Ritual (2018)
British horror flick picked up by Netflix.
First 2/3s doesn't really break any new ground but starts as an above average bunch of people in the woods getting picked off by an unseen force in the woods flick. It gets corny and even more unoriginal in the last 1/3 after the unseen force is seen despite the creature effects being pretty good. Not good enough to recommend, but still 100 times better than It!

[stethacantus]

Infernal Affairs 3 ( 2003 )
Did Andrew Lau, Alan Mak and Felix Chong know Infernal Affairs would be a trilogy, and did they have an outline for all three films? Or was it just a matter of the first film making so much money at the Hong Kong box office that they decided to cash in by turning it into a franchise? They did kill off all but a couple major characters in the first film, leaving no other option but for a prequel as the second film. The third film shows signs of the script being tailored to accommodate how much screen time each returning actor was willing to contribute. Promoted as the entire cast from both films returning, some characters are only in a few scenes, and some only on screen for less than a minute. One major actor, who sat out the prequel, is only on screen for a few seconds, in what is most likely cut footage from the first film. Meanwhile, actor willing to spend more time on the film saw their characters screen time expanded, sometimes turning minor characters into leading ones.

The third film takes place ten months after the events of the first film, but then frequently cuts back to a time period in between where the prequel ended and the first film began. Things get briefly disoriented as the surviving mole from the first film begins to have a psychotic break and imagine himself in the past time line, eventually leaving the viewer confused as to what is real and what is a hallucination. For a while there I could not tell if one of the on characters in the climactic shootout was in the room, or imagined to be in the room.

I wish I could say more, but saying any more would be a spoiler for the first two films. It is certainly a lesser film to the first two, but still quality entertainment. Although, I couldn't help but feel this movie was unnecessary.


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This week Saturday Night Live is once again preempted by the Olympics, which means there is time for a
DOUBLE FEATURE

The biggest comic book character  to be in the public domain is Thor. That's what you get when you base a comic book on mythology thousands of years old. You can't own it. The only thing Marvel could copyright was whatever was invented by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby for the comic, such as Thor's alter identity ( which isn't being used in the current MCU version of Thor. ) So basically, there is nothing to prevent any studio from producing their own Thor movie. At first I worried that there would be dozens of Thor films made over the past seven years. And since any Thor mockbuster would need to be included in my superhero collection, I could have ended up spending month after agonizing month getting through them. Fortunately, only two seem to exist. One from TomCat, of course, and the other from Asylum. So with only two Thor films, I may as well get through both in the same evening.

Thunderstorm: The Return of Thor ( 2011 ) 
This is TomCat Studio's Thor movie, directed once again by Brett Kelly, with all the bells and whistles you would expect would be missing from one of his films. What isn't missing is Kelly's signature snail paced ten minute ending credits to pad the film. Or a script where the hero does hardly anything, and take almost the entire film getting to it.

Let's start with the budget, none of which went into paying for anyone who could act. TomCat did pony up the money for a single CGI monster. That is, if they didn't just use a sample character given to them for free from a CGI company. It is a dragon. But all the dragon is capable of doing is flying in a straight line. Even though the dragon had been summoned to bring about Ragnarok ( the Norse mythology version of the apocalypse, ) and is supposed to be causing mass destruction, you only see it flying by in the sky with no actual interaction with the characters. As for the rest of the budget, here is TomCat's version of Asgard.......



That's it. This establishing shot is all of Asgard you see during this film. Which brings us to the misleading title. Thor does not return, and is barely even in the film. Thor and Odin are close ups head shots of both from a painting, blurred on screen, and accompanied with voice overs of each character. Odin explains to Thor that on Earth a cult is about to summons the goddess Hel and with the use of an ancient cross ( wait a second! Isn't this suppose to be Norse mythology and not Christian? ) is about to bring about Ragnarok. Convenient for the budget, Odin then tells Thor that the Norse God's are prevented from returning to Earth due to a lack of believers in modern times. Thor will have to find a champion on Earth to stop Ragnarok from happening.

That champion is a scientist working on some sort of electricity suit for the government. While working late at his lab, Thor sends a lightning bolt to Earth that gives the scientist the power to shoot electricity from his hands. Thor then telepathy tells the scientist about Ragnarok, and he agrees to stop it. He then puts on the electric suit which looks exactly like a superhero costume and becomes Thunderstorm. Apparently Thunderstorm is supposed to be another public domain golden age superhero, but I couldn't find anything about him on the internet. Needless to say, Thunderstorm does a hell of a lot of talking and very little actual superhero stuff, all leading up to a Brett Kelly signature anticlimactic ending. Not the worst Brett Kelly film I have seen, but still mind numbingly bad.



Thor Almighty ( 2011 )
One of the few things about Thor Marvel does own is the copyright to the title "The Mighty Thor".  You can publish as many Thor comic books you want and Marvel can do squat about it. But stick the word "mighty" in front of his name and you will end up in court. Asylum found a way around that with the title of their Thor movie. Remember, the whole point of the mockbuster was the box it came in, and how effective it was in fooling someone at the video store into believing he was renting an actual hit movie. If you were in a hurry, drunk or someone's mom picking up the film your kids asked for, then you just may have rented a mockbuster by mistake. Having words on a box that look a lot like "Mighty Thor" helps pull that scam off.

As you all know from watching Syfy, Asylum makes awful films. The Sharknado films are as good as Asylum gets. And yet, compared to the previous Thor film....

At least Asylum casts actors. At least their CGI monsters are in the same shot with characters. At least their Asgard is some sort of medieval city set with actors walking about and not just a stock picture of some sort of wall. I mean, Thor Almighty is one of the worst Asylum films I have ever seen, but it is a hundred times better than Thunderstorm: The Return of Thor.

This is essentially an origin story of Thor, where he does not become the hammer wielding hero until the final ten minutes. Loki, ( Richard Grieco ) who is not Thor's brother or Odin's son in this film, shows up in Asgard demanding that Odin turn over the Hammer of Invincibility so that he may use it to kill the tree of life and bring about Ragnarok. Loki is very powerful, and has an army of giant CGI monsters. When Odin is defeated by Loki, he tosses the hammer into a vortex, then tells his son Thor to find it before Loki does. The problem is that Thor is still young and immature, and would rather fight Loki for revenge than protect the hammer. What follows is a repeating loop of Thor confronting Loki, getting his ass kicked in a fight, having to be rescued by the Valkyrie Jarnsaxa who then convinces Thor that he is no match for Loki and should hide, only for Thor to sneak off again and fight Loki again. Eventually Loki gets the hammer from Thor and casts him into Hell. There Thor forges a new hammer from Hell's lava, and suddenly becoming mature and obtaining the power to control thunder and lightning, escapes from Hell for a final confrontation with Loki.

It is the constant repetitiveness of the plot which dooms this film. All padding before the climax where Thor has to fight Loki and reverse Ragnarok ( which is basically just Loki's CGI monsters destroying part of the industrial section of Los Angeles. Something he really didn't need a hammer to do. ) Like I said, a dull bad movie which is Citizen Kane compared to the other film.

[RoninFox]

Got to the theater to use our MoviePass cards, since we can't use them to pick up tickets too far in advance we did not a chance to get into Black Panther (have NEVER seen that AMC so packed), so we caught The Shape of Water instead. Not dissapointed at all, Erica and I both loved it. The style was exactly what you would hope for from Del Toro, Doug Jones gives his usual incredible performance, Micheal Shannon is one of the absolute most hatable villains I've seen in a movie in years.

[Kete]

Got to the theater to use our MoviePass cards, since we can't use them to pick up tickets too far in advance we did not a chance to get into Black Panther (have NEVER seen that AMC so packed), so we caught The Shape of Water instead. Not dissapointed at all, Erica and I both loved it. The style was exactly what you would hope for from Del Toro, Doug Jones gives his usual incredible performance, Micheal Shannon is one of the absolute most hatable villains I've seen in a movie in years.

I usually go ahead and pay for the tickets in advance, then when I get to the theater, I use the MoviePass to buy a gift card for next time or use it to buy popcorn.  Some theaters may give you a hard time for that; I just go to the theaters that are chill with it.

[Pak-Man]

Yeah, Fandango used to be an entirely unnecessary way to get your tickets for anything but the biggest releases. Oh, you might have to show up an hour early and wait in line if you wanted the good seats, but you'd get your ticket. Worst case, you'd get a show a half-hour later.

But now that more theaters are going to assigned seating with wider rows and recliner seats, you almost have to pay in advance if you want to be sure to see your movie and not have to sit in some neck-straining seat in row 1.

[Johnny Unusual]

Last night I watched Splendor in the Grass, a mostly good teen angst movie from the 60's.  My one complaint is that the madness that transpires within Natalie Woods has some largely implausible catalysts.  Of course, that could be because it apparently was heavily re-edited by the director, much to the writer's chagrin, as I understand it.  Still, it is a really good film about accepting the fact that parents are just (often very flawed) people.  It's also nice to see Pat Hingle in a role like this, playing the loving but aggressively controlling and browbeating dad.

[wihogfan]

Homo Sapiens (2016)
Arthouse documentary flick with no narration or people. Just a still movie camera filming scene after scene of abandoned,
overgrown, and decaying buildings/cities/roads/etc. Kind of a slide show with sound that changes scenes every 15 to 60 seconds.
Beautiful and haunting. Would have loved for some titles of the locations being filmed, but still enjoyed it/found it hauntingly disturbing.

[Darth Geek]

EARLY MAN (2018) - The new Aardman movie. I enjoyed it. It's similar to Pirates in that I didn't laugh out loud as much as at their Wallace & Gromit or Chicken Run movies, but it still has all the distinct Aardman charm. Hogknob the pig (wild boar?) was my favorite character. He definitely had heavy influence from Gromit.

[stethacantus]

Born to Fight ( 2004 )
So why did Dragon Dynasty release this Thai film? Because it was directed by Panna Rittikrai, the genius who choreographed the fights in Ong Bak. My only problem with this film is it barely has any fighting. It is mostly gun battles. The police arrest a drug Lord in a raid. But he also happens to be a general of some sort of mercenary army. They capture a village near the border and hold the villagers hostage, demanding the Thai government set the drug Lord free or they will execute everyone in the village. Among the hostages is the police detective who arrested the drug lord, who was there helping his sister an the Thai Athletic League she belonged to hand out food to the poor villagers. When the detective finds out the mercenaries have a nuclear missile that they are going to fire at Bangkok once the drug lord has been freed, he encourages the villagers to brave the machine guns of their captors and fight back.

Panna Rittikrai died in 2014 leaving behind an impressive body of work that included the Ong Bak trilogy and Chocolate, ranking him among cinemas  legendary fight choreographers. Usually when those legends were given the opportunity to direct, the results were martial arts classics. Yuen Woo Ping gave us Drunken Master ( 1978 ) and Iron Monkey ( 1993 ). Sammo Hung, The Prodigal Son ( 1981 ) and Pedicab Driver ( 1989 ). Lau Kar Leung, 36th Chamber of Shaolin ( 1978 ) and Legendary Weapons of China ( 1982 ). But what did Rittikrai give us? A film with not that much martial arts, and endless machine gun battles. A missed opportunity for Rittikrai to give us a martial arts classic, made even more frustrating knowing his untimely death left us with a limited body of work. That is not to say this movie does not have fantastic action. There are a lot of unbelievable stunts involving moving vehicles. And while the gun battles are not as good as John Woo, they are pretty decent. So it is a really good action film. But it could have been better if there were no guns.

Metal Man ( 2009 )
Once again, with Saturday Night Live on hiatus for the Olympics broadcast I have enough time for more than one movie, and am going to use the extra free time to watch two more superhero mockbusters, get that all out of the way as soon as possible. This film, a rip-off of Iron Man, stars Reggie Bannister, who plays a character  in one of my favorite horror films, Phantasm. At least that is something.  And it is not another Brett Kelly monstrosity. The director this time is Ron Karkosa, the only film he directed. Otherwise most of his film career has been costumes and special effects in mostly low budget films. ( He did the costumes for Sky High ( 2005 ) and effects for Starship Troopers 3 as career highlights. )

Much like the TomCat films, this was a no budget film shoot on video. The Metal Man costume is actually a plastic Iron Man costume, the kind found in any costume shop, with a few minor alterations. The production was extremely flawed with sound problems ( actors not properly miked; outside noises heard on the set; Metal Man is often unintelligible ) and continuity problems ( the clothing characters are wearing changing back and fourth during the same scene ). Even the DVD itself was flawed. The anamorphic didn't work, resulting in a full screen picture that was compressed, and needed to be fixed by changing the picture dimensions on the  television itself. The acting just bordered on good, because unlike TomCat, the producers of this film sprung for actual actors. Not that they were paid enough to deliver a good performance. Effects were kept to a minimum, so basically all Metal Man could do was mostly martial arts. A cheap effect to make Metal Man look partially invisible ( like a ghost ) was ruined by not locking the camera down. Amazingly thought, during the ending credits footage is shown of Metal Man flying through the air via repulsor rays ( as Iron Man does ) over a city, and taking down a jet fighter. Why the director didn't incorporate this footage into the film is a mystery.

The plot is a mishmash of ideas ripped off from various films, including Max Steel and Star Kid and I am sure a bunch of other films I haven't seen yet. A teenaged lab assistant is helping his college professor ( Bannister ) test Iron Man style armor he is developing. When the film's villain and his thugs invade the lab, the professor does something that fuses the armor permanently to his assistant ( without his permission ) so the villain can't get his hands on it. The professor is killed, but he has uploaded a computer program with his intelligence into the armor's helmet so the assistant can continue talking to him. The AI professor instructs his assistant as to how to use the armor, as well as leading him on a mission to stop the film's villain from building his own armor.

Metal Man is another bad film, but nowhere as bad as any of the TomCat films. It is not a torture to watch.


Avengers Grimm ( 2015 )
Another mockbuster from The Asylum, with a cast that includes Casper Van Dien and Lou Ferrigno. Four princesses, Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and Rapunzel, along with Little Red Riding Hood, travel to from magical Storybook Land to Earth to stop Rumplestiltskin and his zombified hoards from conquering it. Each princess has her own superpower. Snow White the power to freeze things, Sleeping Beauty the power to point at people and put them to sleep, Rapunzel the ability to use her hair as a weapon, and Cinderella the power to use white magic. Little Red Riding Hood doesn't have any powers, but is a master in martial arts who is an expert in archery.

I wasn't expecting it, but this movie was actually pretty good. Something unusually for an Asylum production. At best their films are bad but goofy enough to be entertaining. My only real problem with the movie is it fails to set up the characters. Only Snow White and Rapunzel are mentioned by name. The only reason I knew the other two princesses we're Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella was by reading the back of the DVD box. Little Red Riding Hood is only called Red, but her costume is iconic enough that you know exactly which character she is the moment she is on screen. The movie is supposed to be Avengers with fairytale characters, but aside from the film's title is nothing like The Avengers.

I am guessing this was originally meant to be a rip-off of the series once Upon A Time but then had the Avengers name tagged on. But the women in this movie do have powers and do fight a supervillain, so by a thin margin this mockbuster actually counts as a superhero film. And a good one too. But wait, the worst is yet to come. ( That is a hint as to next week's scheduled mockbuster. )


The Gorilla ( 1939 )
It was the early 90s ( or perhaps the late 80s ) when I saw the interview with Billy Crystal on Entertainment Tonight. He was talking about the comedians who influenced him, and mentioned his biggest influence was The Ritz Brothers. The who? I had never heard of them before. And yet Billy was talking about how he would watch their films all the time on television as a kid.

How come I didn't know about the Ritz Brothers? I knew all the other screen comedians from that era. Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, The Marx Brothers, The Three Stooges, W. C. Fields, Mae West, Our Gang, The Bowers Boys/East Side Kids, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, Mable Normand, Harry Langdon, Charlie Chase, Zazu Pitts, Bob Hope and Bing Crosby, Lewis and Martin, Burns and Allen, and many others. But that was the first time I ever heard anyone mention The Ritz Brothers, and the way Billy talked about them, they sounded like major screen comedians.

Now that The Ritz Brothers were on my radar, I began to notice when others mentioned them. As a Laurel and Hardy fan, I began buying books about the duo. A couple talked about the later films L&H did for the B movie division of 20th Century Fox. The films that most L&H fans detest to the point of accusing Fox of deliberately sabotaging their careers with the worst scripts they could find. A couple of the books mentioned that The Ritz Brothers had made comedies for Fox just a year earlier, and attributed a quote to Harry Ritz about working for Fox that to this day still cracks me up. But more on that quote in a moment.

The reason I never heard of The Ritz Brothers was simple. 20th Century Fox withdrew their films from television in the mid 70s and didn't issue them on home video until recently. The lone exception was The Gorilla which appears to have been allowed to become public domain. This resulted in the movie being released by numerous budget video companies ( including the one that released the Sons of Kong set ), although most releases of the film don't even mention The Ritz Brothers are in it, opting instead to  feature the name of costar Bela Lugosi on the box.

The Gorilla was a popular Broadway play from the 1920s. Made during the height of the haunted house craze ( the plays that had the characters spending the night in an old creepy house and usually involved a murder mystery, ) and was a parody of the genre. It was first made into a movie in 1927, and two more times in the sound era. The Ritz Brothers were nearing the end of their contract with 20th Century Fox when the studio bought the rights to the play for a fourth adaption. Midway through principal photography the Ritz Brothers staged a well publicized walk out, refusing to return to the set to finish the film. They cited the reason being the poor quality of the script, however the real reason for their revolt was personal. They had worked on the film all through their father's terminal illness, and when he finally passed away, the brothers asked for one day off so they could attend his funeral. But the studio refused to give them the day off. Outraged, they took the day off anyway, and refused to return to the set.

For the studio, each day the Ritz Brothers refused to return to the set lost them hundreds of thousands in production costs. And they had a looming deadline for the film's release. The studio ended up rewriting the script so that other characters would replace the Ritz in the scenes they hadn't yet shot. Some accounts say the Ritz Brothers eventually returned to the set to complete the film, others that the director used the Ritz Brothers footage that was already shot and rearranged it so that they would appear at the beginning, middle and end of the film.

Fox wasn't just going to allow the Ritz Brothers to get away with this. The studio publicly demoted them to the B movie division. At the time it was under the control of producer Sol Wurtzel, notorious in the industry for not having a good sense humor. It was Wurtzel who would go on to produce the Fox Laurel and Hardy films that their fans hate as much as Star Wars fans hate the prequels. It was on the set of their first B film for the studio, Pack Up Your Troubles ( 1939 ) that Harry Ritz said to his brothers: "Gentlemen, things have gone from bad to Wurtzel." And that is the quote that had me laughing. ( I guess you need to be a die hard L&H fan and to have known Wurtzel was one of "those Fox guys" that Stan Laurel held responsible for the quality of the teams final films to truly appreciate it. )

The brothers didn't work for Wurtzel that long. After completing Pack Up Your Troubles they got out of their contract and left the studio. They moved to Universal where they thought they would be the stars of their own movies again, but instead ended up supporting other Universal stars as comedy relief characters. ( Then again, that's also what Universal did with most of the Abbott and Costello movies, but at the least gave them star billing on the films they were in. ) After a few films for Universal, The Ritz Brothers stopped making movies and returned to the stage, only to make brief cameos from that point on.

Ever since I learned they existed, I have wanted to see a Ritz Brothers film, just to see if I would like them or not. But I never got around to it. The Gorilla will be my first Ritz Brothers film. But will it be a fair representation of the team? After all, it is a film they only partially completed, filmed while their father was dying which should have effected their performance, and on a script they said was terrible. It is also a film 20th Century Fox thought so little of that they never bothered to renew it's copyright.

Actually, it is really not a bad film. It is not the best example of the old dark house genre, but not the worst. The basic plot, a criminal called The Gorilla has been terrorizing the wealthy. His MO is to send his victims a note saying the date and time he intends to kill them, then succeed in doing so even when they are being protected by the police.  ( This sounds a lot like the original MO of The Joker when he debuted in Detective Comics a year later. ) One of The Gorilla's intended victims hires detectives to protect him, and they turn out to be The Ritz Brothers. Things get even more complicated when a real gorilla escapes from it's cage and enters the house.

What follows is your standard old dark house tropes. Creepy butler ( Lugosi ), raging storm outside, secret passageways behind the wall, closets opened to find bodies that proceed to faceplant on the floor. Of course, the big question is are the Ritz Brothers funny? The answer, I did find myself laughing at a few of their one liners. While they may have not had the best material in this film, their timing was excellent. I am sure I would enjoy a Ritz Brothers film with better material. The question is, does it exist?

[NRRork]

Coco

It was okay, I don't think I'm gonna watch it multiple times like other Pixar movies. And like ALL of them, it will leave you visually impressed and sad. Like, remember how sad Inside Out made you about mourning your fleeting childhood? Okay, take that, but now for Grandma and Grandpa!

"But, Nate, you stoned, rambling, manchild, overgrown boy of a FOOL, they ALREADY did that to us with Moana. They're not that cruel."

Oh, sure they are. Know how many people SOLO is gonna make cry? LOADS! They don't care!

[NRRork]

A Futile and Stupid Gesture

Has a lot of the biopic cliches, but it was still really funny and I loved the hell out of the characters and I sensed an immediate kinship with Doug Kenney and his misfits who are only good at being smartasses and finding a way to turn that into something tangible.

One of my favorite scenes is where the first issue sucks and the art director is this hippie who does art for underground magazines and shit. And his partner really pushes hard for bringing in this art director who was working for a straight-laced magazine, it was like Good Housekeeping or something.

But what made it work is the art style was played as straight as possible, it makes the satire seem more real and funnier. And I've seen issues of that magazine before. I found a few in my grandparents basement when I was a kind, probably belonged to one of my uncles... well, it sure as shit wasn't Grandma's! And it was not a bad find for a 14 year old kid who hadn't yet finally gotten his first computer so he could he check out all the porn he's told is there.

It's the stuff about the design is true, it's not like how Mad was basically a comic book reskinned as a magazine. No, this was laid out and designed like a real magazine, like if the Onion had been a print magazine or something.

And all the visual gags were there, but they were all presented as though it wasn't a joke.

And I agree that's the BEST KIND OF SATIRE!

I think that's why I so instantly fell in love with Walk Hard. They followed the same principle. Or America: The Book did it brilliantly, Stephen Colbert, too. Both his show and the books he wrote. Daily Show, too, once Jon Stewart took over, they changed the tone and it was presented as though it wasn't a joke.

Where a lot of satirical movies lost me is when they get too goofy and silly. Nothing WRONG with that kind of comedy, but too much silliness dulls satire. I love Mel Brook's movies, but anytime he goes too into that, he loses me. That's why I could never get as into Blazing Saddles or Spaceballs, but LOVED Young Frankenstein.