The Most Recent Movie You've Seen on Streaming, Broadcast TV, or Movie Theater?

It was fine.

I get the Delroy Lindo Oscar buzz that's starting to percolate. That's fair.

Some of the scoring choices were a bit off. EG: the first battle flashback was a bit too much and too-on-the-nose Saving Private adjacent.

Some of the scene blocking was noticeable awkward and pretty amateurish. It still had some really authentic emotional moments.

Definitely 30 to 40 minutes too long.

I rated it a 7/10.

I saw the latest “Spike Lee Joint”. Not very impressed. I’ve seen most of Lee’s films, and for me they run the whole gamut from ridiculous to excellent. He has done much better story telling. Even in my favorites of his (Inside Man, Malcolm X, Do the Right Thing...) he has little things he does that I find grating - like the obligatory scene with a character rolling on some kind of track to indicate quickly moving toward the action, or the eerie background music that sounds like some warped fusion of gospel choir and jazz troupe. Both of those gimmicks are in 5 Bloods.
I think his ‘Da 5 Bloods’ tries to do way too much, and ends up doing it half-assed. Tries to tell the whole black American experience in two hours and change. Half-assed character exposition, fakey battle scenes with guys wielding weapons like it’s their first time, and never reloading but endless automatic firing anyway. The relationships are melodramatic, and the dialogue feels forced.

I hope this doesn’t mean that Spike’s out of ideas, because I think when he’s on his game, it can be greatly entertaining and even inspiring. Maybe next time...

I tried to watch Uncut Gems the other day.

Too much yelling and stress.

Not really re Sandler, as I know he yells a lot.

The whole thing was just an environment of people that I quite pitied.

Plus the story as much I watched or make out, really didn't appeal to me.

Saw the original 1954 Godzilla and its Americanized edited version on HBO MAX.

The original film is much more serious than what I thought. There are very explicit parallels between Godzilla's attack on Tokyo and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which happened 9 years before. Godzilla actually looked and sounded frightening. It was not obviously a guy in a monster suit ala Power Rangers.

The American edit, Godzilla: King of the Monsters!, follows the same plot, except it added scenes with an American journalist acting as the audience surrogate and narrator. This version is ok, except it does downplay the original film's dialogue that Godzilla was the result of nuclear weapons testing.

Have you seen Shin Godzilla from 2016?

I haven't yet. I have been meaning to watch it as I have heard good things about it.

Not sure if it counts as a movie, but the 9 part series "The Watchmen" was free to stream this weekend so I binge watched the entire thing. Excellent! It helps if you read the graphic novel of the same name or saw the 2009 movie since it takes place in a parallel world after the events in the movie/book.

I haven't seen the movie in years. Should I rewatch the movie? Watch the director's cut? Or just go ahead and watch the series?

To be clear, the HBO series is a follow up to the original graphic novel and not the film.

The director's cut is good, just remember that the ending changed from the graphic novel (and the HBO series is based on the original ending).

Watched The Man in the Iron Mask again. Loved it again.

Which version? The DiCaprio and Irons? The straaaange t.v. version with Richard Chamberlain? 1939s run with Louis Hayward?

From what I’ve read about them, the 1939 and ‘77 versions were a bit different in the telling of the story - but I’ve only seen the one with DiCaprio, Malkovich, Irons et al. John Malkovich is just utterly watchable in everything he does, but his Athos is a real gem full of fury and pathos. I’ve watched DiCaprio just get better with every decade of experience. The movie is rich to me - very entertaining.

They’re all quite good, as is the TV series shown on BBC a few years’ back. Peter Capaldi played Cardinal Richlieu before going on to play Dr Who.

I think it ran for four seasons but Capaldi is only in the first two.

Also worth mentioning.

The Watchmen series has supplemental material for each episode on HBO's website, similar to how each chapter of the graphic novel had additional pages with memos and prose novel chapters.

https://www.hbo.com/peteypedia
Note: each link is a PDF.

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016), rewatch. Downgraded to a 7/10.
Finally got around to watching it with the very rare all-star Rifftrax commentary track. 9/10 for the Rifftrax spiel. Bought it two years ago. Thanks HBO Max for the BvS streaming opportunity.

Highlander (1986), rewatch 3/10 (keeping my earlier rating). 9/10 for the Rifftrax commentary. I forgot I must have seen this one already but apparently it was already rated on IMDb.

How in the Hell didn't Christopher Lambert, Sean Connery, Clancy Brown all get Razzie nominations?

My daughter and I watched the Man in the Iron Mask at the theater when it came out. She was 9. When the de Caprio character is forced to wear the iron mask again towards the end of the movie, she shouted NOOOOOOOO! at the top of her lungs and cried and cried...

So yeah, it was well done. It's also a very entertaining book of course. Here is the author:



Notice something?

The kinky hair? Father was Haitian, right?

Yes, Dumas'father was from Haiti. He was the son of the Marquis Alexandre Antoine Davy de la Pailleterie, a white French nobleman and Marie-Cessette Dumas, a slave of African descent. His father took the boy with him to France in 1776 and had him educated; he then helped Thomas-Alexandre enter the French military.

These were the revolutionary years. Slavery was abolished (until Napoleon decided otherwise), Jews were emancipated, etc. The whole of Europe raised armies against the new French republic. The new national conscription army needed talent, and Dumas's father had tons of it. He rose fast and was appointed general in chief at some point, in charge of the army of the Alps fighting the Austrians, who nicknamed him "the Black Devil" because he gave them so much trouble.

Part of Dumas' work can be seen as an ode to his glorious father. He also chose as his pen name "Dumas", his enslaved grandmother's name, and wrote a anti-slavery book (Le Capitaine Pamphile).

Dumas wrote hundreds of novels. He is the most widely translated French author after Jules Verne, according to UNESCO. I read dozens of his books as a child, as did generations of French children... and yet I didn't know until a few years ago that he was a mulato and the grand son of a slave...

Funny how these things work. It was not hidden, but it wasn't said either. And the memory of his father, who did so much to protect our fledgling republic, had vanished from school books... The only statue of him in Paris was taken down by the Vichy regime in the 40's.

Thanks to Chirac and others, this shame has been partially repaired in the 2000's. A sculpture called "Fers" (irons) now stand in a Parisian park in his honor between the statue his son and grand-son (Alexandre Dumas fils, also a writer). But I'd love to see him rendered in a classic equestrian statue, or to see the old one of him reconstructed and re-erected somewhere.



A similar case is Brazilian arch-classic author Machado de Assis.


A widely known image of Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, left, that appears on his books, compared with the one that has gone viral on Brazilian social media in recent months, right.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/14/books/brazil-machado-de-assis.html

Arrival (2016)

A 1500 foot alien ship arrives on Earth, in fact 12 of them. A professional linguist is drafted to try to communicate with the aliens inside the ship. The aliens are heptapods, very octopus-like but with seven arms, and the tip of the arm can form 7 finger-like appendages that expel image-forming ink, their written language. The images are always variations on a circle, something like the Japanese enso in ink.

It's interestinging that they would use an octopus-like figure for the alien because it's considered that the octopus has an almost alien-like intelligence with its brain spread throughout its appendages.

The movie has a positive and intelligent message. It's not just another cowboys and indians shoot-'em up soap opera, though there is a violent act committed against the aliens. Though the cause isn't made clear, I later found out that it was caused by some rogue soldiers. Also there was an important message made by the protagonist to a Chinese General which was, "War makes widows, not winners". This was really the central theme, but I missed it in entirely in the movie.

Almost the whole movie is made with very low light. Outdoor scenes are either at night or about 15 minutes after sunset or before sunrise. Indoor scenes are dark also as if they just don't have enough lights.

The movie is very slow going, but it's worthwhile watching. It's sort of a sequel to "Close Encounters of a Third Kind".

Palm Springs (2020), 8/10.

The chemistry between Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti is perfect. Cristin gives an awardable noteworthy performance. Seriously. She's damn good in this. Rachel Getting Married (2008) worthy.

Tons of fun and a fair bit of heart.
Streaming free on Hulu.