The Second mrbasehart Film Challenge!

[goflyblind]

"I crush your head!"

"there's nobody home."

[mrbasehart]

Okay! Christmas and New Years are out of the way, and now I have some weeks to kill before Mass Effect 2 dominates my free time, so here's what I've watched over the past couple of days:

Trog is a Science-Fiction movie starring Joan Crawford (looking a little ropey) trying to rehabilitate a found "missing link" in the human evolutionary chain, which she calls Trog (looking even ropier than Ms Crawford).  Under enormous pressure from the local community (rather, one man who's a bit of a dick and who no one listens to) because of Trog's predisposition to killing people, she finally manages to teach Trog how to become a little more civilized.  Until someone breaks him out and he goes on a murderous rampage before stealing a little girl.  Laughable stuff, which would've have been beautifully pulled apart with precision on MST3k.

Patlabor is a movie version of the supposedly popular anime series, set in the not too distant future and concerns a team of robot operators whose job it is is to capture and destroy malfunctioning robots, which the world seems to use a lot of and has lots of problems with.  I think that's the set-up, because there's really no quarter given for non-fans of the show, and for about two-thirds of it I was furrowing my brow in confusion.  It also has the problem of horrible voice dubbing, which late 80s non-Ghibli work seems to suffer for.  However, the animation is pretty neat, and some of the set-pieces are pretty decent.  Even if I didn't understand what the hell was going on.

Left Behind II: Tribulation Force is the second in the more recent Left Behind trilogy, which is based on the story of the rapture and what happens when all the good little boys and girls get snatched by God and leave the heathens to burn with Satan.  What they've done with a trippy few passages in the bible is turn it into a dull conspiracy thriller with added preaching.  And God, how I hate the preaching.  Here's a paraphrased example of what I'm talking about:

Guy leaves preachy church because he thinks they're all crazy.  Kirk Cameron follows.

Kirk: Where are you going, guy?
Guy: I don't believe in any of this stuff.  I'm a good person and I didn't go to heaven.
Kirk: Who says you're a good person? By what standards are you judging yourself? Are you a good person by the ten commandments?
Guy: I...don't know what you're talking about.
Kirk: Have you ever lied, guy? Even once, about something small?
Guy: Yeah, but everyone does.
Kirk: And have you ever taken something that wasn't yours, no matter how trivial?
Guy: I guess...
Kirk: And have you ever looked at another woman, and commited adultery in your heart?
Guy: Ha! Who hasn't?
Kirk: Then by God's standards, you're a lying, thieving adulterer and you need Jesus to help you take away your sins.

And my response to that is, fuck God for being such a little pissy bitch.  And fuck Kirk Cameron too.  Onto the plot, it actually has the gaul to write in it that the Jewish people have finally come around to the belief that Jesus was the messiah and that by announcing it on TV across the world, they can spur a new religious fervour that will counteract the secular beliefs of world leader and Euro-Satan, Nicolai Carpathia.  Can't wait for the third one where all gay people are magically straightened, less they burn in hell.

Carry On Screaming! is a far more serious movie than any of the Left Behind ones, but still manages to eek out more intentional laughs than any of the above films combined.  Taking the bare bones of a typical Hammer horror movie - mad doctor and accomplices kidnap beautiful women for nefarious means - and twists it in the Carry On tradition.  That is, to load it up with bonking jokes and Kenneth Williams' wild gesticulations.  It's pretty hit and miss, as is usual with these kinds of films, but there's more to like than not, and it boasts perfect recreations of Hammer in setting and atmosphere. 

[Tripe]

Carry On Screaming! is a far more serious movie than any of the Left Behind ones, but still manages to eek out more intentional laughs than any of the above films combined.  Taking the bare bones of a typical Hammer horror movie - mad doctor and accomplices kidnap beautiful women for nefarious means - and twists it in the Carry On tradition.  That is, to load it up with bonking jokes and Kenneth Williams' wild gesticulations.  It's pretty hit and miss, as is usual with these kinds of films, but there's more to like than not, and it boasts perfect recreations of Hammer in setting and atmosphere. 

Foul Feet Smell Something Awful

Frying tonight!!!!

[Johnny Unusual]

If the series was anything like the movie, I'd find it slightly bizarre, occasionally insipred, but ultimately disappointing. 

I found that to be an apt description of the movie when compared to the show. It sort of lost steam while the show tended to be much better, I think because the conceits only had to last a few minutes rather than the length of a movie.

The movie isn't bad but the show is much, much better.   So if you like the inspired parts, then watch cause there is more of that.

Yeah. I like the movie, but it's not great. The show was just brilliant, though.
"I crush your head!"

Just got season one for Christmas.  Lots of great stuff, but I have to say my favourite sketch of season one is SKOORA!

[mrbasehart]

Stroker Ace is basically Burt Reynolds doing his overplayed Smokey and the Bandit crap that gets pretty tiring after the first time you see it.  He plays the titular character, Stroker Ace (which sounds like the winner of the World's Mastubatory Championship) who's a rogueish Indy 500 driver who wants to get out of his restrictive sponsorship contract, which sees him dress as a chicken for commercials and open up podunk Chicken restaurants everday.  Along for the ride is Jim Nabors and Loni Anderson (woo?).  I like Burt Reynolds usually, but the movie comes across as a little desperate, with lots of unfunny jokes and smarmy asides by the lead.  Apparently he turned down the role left for Jack Nicholson in Terms of Endearment for this movie.  Whoops.

[mrbasehart]

The Adventures of Milo and Otis is a live-action animal movie, in the style of something like Homeward Bound, just without any of the voice-overs and the story told totally through the narration of Dudley Moore.  The story's very simple: Milo and Otis are cat and dog respectively, best friends since birth who romp around their farm until an accident splits them up and sends them far away from home.  Everything is delivered in a super-cutesy style, with a big and bright primary colour pallette that makes it clear that this movie is for kids.  Is it wrong to say I hated this movie? While the animal action is well directed and captured (including one seqeuence where a housecat jumps off a sizeable cliff into the sea) it feels more like a rambling collection of scenes than a narrative that makes any real sense.  Moore's narration also feels a little improvisory, and adds nothing of note to proceedings.  I think kids might love it, but adults might prefer the more mature approach of something like Two Brothers. 

[Relaxing Dragon]

The Adventures of Milo and Otis is a live-action animal movie, in the style of something like Homeward Bound, just without any of the voice-overs and the story told totally through the narration of Dudley Moore.  The story's very simple: Milo and Otis are cat and dog respectively, best friends since birth who romp around their farm until an accident splits them up and sends them far away from home.  Everything is delivered in a super-cutesy style, with a big and bright primary colour pallette that makes it clear that this movie is for kids.  Is it wrong to say I hated this movie? While the animal action is well directed and captured (including one seqeuence where a housecat jumps off a sizeable cliff into the sea) it feels more like a rambling collection of scenes than a narrative that makes any real sense.  Moore's narration also feels a little improvisory, and adds nothing of note to proceedings.  I think kids might love it, but adults might prefer the more mature approach of something like Two Brothers. 

Yeah, kids dig that movie. I know, because I loved watching it at my Grandparents house back when I was somewhere in the single digits.

[THE QUEEN!!!]

The Adventures of Milo and Otis is a live-action animal movie, in the style of something like Homeward Bound, just without any of the voice-overs and the story told totally through the narration of Dudley Moore.  The story's very simple: Milo and Otis are cat and dog respectively, best friends since birth who romp around their farm until an accident splits them up and sends them far away from home.  Everything is delivered in a super-cutesy style, with a big and bright primary colour pallette that makes it clear that this movie is for kids.  Is it wrong to say I hated this movie? While the animal action is well directed and captured (including one seqeuence where a housecat jumps off a sizeable cliff into the sea) it feels more like a rambling collection of scenes than a narrative that makes any real sense.  Moore's narration also feels a little improvisory, and adds nothing of note to proceedings.  I think kids might love it, but adults might prefer the more mature approach of something like Two Brothers. 

I loved this as a kid and enjoy it now because of the nostalgia, but I would say it's one of those movies you has to see as a kid to enjoy as an adult, or at least watch it with your kids as they enjoyed it.

[mrbasehart]

Lili is a romantic semi-musical starring Leslie Caron as a 16 year old girl who falls in love with an irresponsible magician and manages to get a job at the carnival he works at to be near him.  Her job is to play a sort of actress too, and to interact with a little puppet show where they improvise based on her reactions, and the puppeteer behind it all falls in love with the girl, though he's only able to express himself through the characters he plays.  I really liked it, mostly based on Caron's charming performance and the scenes in which she speaks to the puppets, which carry a magic that's hard to find in any kind of movie nowadays. 

[mrbasehart]

Left Behind III - World at War is the third and seemingly last in the series of Christian movies that detail the events recounted in the Book of Revelations, though given a modern spin and dressed up like a thriller to make it a little more palatable to non-Christians.  Though it's the best of the three, it still fails pretty miserably.  The main events here is the American President's (played with admirable conviction by Louis Gossett Jnr) involvement with the Big Beastie and his realisation that what Satan wants isn't what's best for the American people.  Circling around the main thrust of the movie is all the characters in the last couple, who are given absolutely squat to do: Kirk Cameron spends 95% of the movie on his cellphone in his apartment while the third world war starts.  Perhaps the most infuriating thing is that the story's not complete and doesn't seem like it will be now.  I would've loved to have seen how they ended it.  Probably something namby-pamby like the end of Ghost or something.

[THE QUEEN!!!]

Lili is a romantic semi-musical starring Leslie Caron as a 16 year old girl who falls in love with an irresponsible magician and manages to get a job at the carnival he works at to be near him.  Her job is to play a sort of actress too, and to interact with a little puppet show where they improvise based on her reactions, and the puppeteer behind it all falls in love with the girl, though he's only able to express himself through the characters he plays.  I really liked it, mostly based on Caron's charming performance and the scenes in which she speaks to the puppets, which carry a magic that's hard to find in any kind of movie nowadays. 

So glad you liked it. This is one of the movies that makes me feel better no matter what. I too love Caron's performance and think it makes the film.

[mrbasehart]

I think when I wrote about the movie Daddy Long Legs, I mentioned that she reminded me of a French Audrey Hepburn, but I think she's more like Judy Garland in her ability to show vulnerability and wonder onscreen in a convinving fashion.  And off the top of my head, I can't think of any actress around now that can do that.

[Nekrose]

Brotherhood/Taegukgi hwinalrimyeo?
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0386064/

[Johnny Unusual]

So... did you take a break?  Just wondering if you made it through any more movies.

[mrbasehart]

On hold for a little while.  Don't really want to do any serious thinking at the moment.