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I liked Black Swan without really being blown away.

Also, I watched The Lost World: Jurassic Park today when I saw it coming on TV, if that counts as a "horror" movie. Spielberg's direction is at least as good as it was for the first film if not better, and the dinosaurs look a good deal more convincing too. The T. Rex scenes were also even better than the ones in the first Jurassic Park, and I liked Malcolm better here too. Past that, I'm afraid I don't have much of anything good to say about this movie. It's well-paced I guess, but the plot just feels so threadbare and perfunctory, the characters are even less fleshed-out than the ones in the first movie, Goldblum and Moore have no chemistry whatsoever with each other, Moore's character Sarah Harding is handled in all the worst ways possible (save for maybe being a sexist stereotype I guess), the family drama between Malcolm and Kelly is consistently groan-inducing even if Kelly is somehow one of the least dumb characters in the movie, the movie brings up the dinosaurs having formed their own ecosystem on the island and then never bothers to show it, there's none of the sense of awe and wonder of the first film, wow. Almost the epitome of the '90s blockbuster in terms of getting the production right and almost everything else wrong as well as trying to pass shout-outs and homages to other works as enough substance in the same fashion as the likes of Independence Day. Not an awful movie by any means and I feel like a lot of the stuff people make fun about regarding the movie at least make sense in context (the infamous "plot hole" of the T. Rex killing the people aboard the Venture despite being in its cage, for instance, the dead hand on the cage controls implies someone let it out and then lured it back in), but as a sequel it is one heck of a letdown.

Rating: 5.9/10

There have been a lot of Jurassic Park games recently for obvious reasons.

Saw Dead Meat's kill count for Halloween Kills, do not think I would like it at all.

Moon Knight episode 2 down, feels like spinning its wheels. The impressive production values and performances by Isaac and Hawke were the only things I really liked about the previous episode that carried over. Boo.

Started Moon Knight, liked the first episode but wow this is crazy. In a good way so far, but apparently this series struggles with pacing? Don't have a hard time buying that at all.

Seginustemple posted...

Glad I'm not the only one who was put off by Once Upon a Time in America. Between the rape scenes, dick lineup, and the camera ogling a 12-year-old Jennifer Connelly I came out of it side-eyeing Sergio Leone a bit. The whole movie was too horny in the worst way.

I'll pick L.A. Confidential, no way it should have lasted this long

To be fair the way I understand it Once Upon a Time in America is more about setting than people. I know it was the director's passion project he had wanted to get off the ground for decades.

Suprak_the_Stud posted...

That's the movie that made me quit the project! It isn't the one that I struggled with at the beginning (that hasn't dropped yet), but it was the first one I was going to watch from the films I hadn't seen at all before just because of how outrageously long it was. I could never motivate myself to start, and I kept procrastinating to the point where I basically skipped an entire month.

Fully understand why it was included, but a 4+ hour long movie that I'm not particularly interested in watching is just brutal. Again, I know literally nothing about it and watched zero of it so it might be the best movie of all time.

This just reminds me of how I wasn't bored for one minute of Lawrence of Arabia. I get the whole deal of 4-hour movies being intimidating but that and Gone with the Wind are masterworks.

One of the best movies of the '80s they said. Needless to say, Siskel & Ebert were over the moon for the non-theatrical cut (the film was initially released to US theaters in a shorter version with every scene in chronological order). Also available on Disney+ where I live.

Yeah, but that's not quite the same as being a big movie star. Point taken though, I only know about that show because of Bob Chipman.

I've been watching a lot of Siskel & Ebert lately, so it's kind of interesting how some of us seemed to have the same issues with The Untouchables & Miller's Crossing that Ebert did since Gene liked both films way more - for one thing Siskel was struggling to think of anything wrong with Miller's Crossing only for Ebert to point out at least one massive logical fallacy (Ebert still gave the movie a recommendation though, but more as an exercise in style and a treat for fans of mob movies). I have not actually seen the film, but it is on Disney+ where I live.

I have actually seen The Untouchables and went into it mostly as a fan of De Niro and Connery as well as the same director's Scarface. I didn't like it as much as Scarface, but I still greatly enjoyed it - I particularly enjoyed the interactions between the characters and the attention to period detail in addition to the train station shootout being pure win. On air Roger Ebert gave the film a marginal thumbs down for finding the film to be filled with lifeless characters, which I don't agree with, but I get why since none of the characters really rise above their archetypes. I thought they were enjoyable archetypes though and felt they were well-done within the film itself, however. As for Costner, I think he passed that "handsome young-ish leading man" test in the late '80s and early '90s before notorious flops like Wyatt Earp, Waterworld, and The Postman did in his career as a leading man, although he has kept working as a character actor and filmmaker. Costner was basically a precursor of sorts to the likes of Keanu Reeves and Ben Affleck who used to be pushed heavily as handsome young leading men before finally finding their footing when they were much older.

I also remember the end recap on the episode of Siskel & Ebert where they discussed The Untouchables to end with the former saying he thought it was the best gangster movie since The Godfather and Once Upon a Time in America and deserved to be spoken of in the same breadth. Curiously the duo split the exact opposite way on Scarface (and later Carlito's Way), which might have colored Ebert's perception on The Untouchables.

And then the 2019 film happened.

Didn't like Hocus Pocus at all when I saw it for the first time two years ago, but it was bizarre enough I have no problems getting how the film has a cult following and I'm glad I saw it just to be in the know.

Also, fun fact: one of Crowe's first American movies was 1995's Virtuosity which had him playing the villain to a hero played by...Denzel Washington!

Haven't seen it in almost a decade, but I get the feeling I would not be fond of it if I watched it now. Was...okay with Alien: Covenant, I guess?

This is totally on-topic guys, we just did a Ridley Scott movie so we're just discussing Ridley Scott!

They were honorable mentions for what it's worth. That countdown was done in 2017 in the lead-up to Alien: Covenant's release. He also did a Top 5 Worst Ridley Scott Movies countdown, where The Counsellor was #1 and other entries included Hannibal, Prometheus, and Black Rain.

There were basically two reasons I checked out American Gangster in the first place:

1) Walter Banasiak of Channel Awesome named it Ridley Scott's third-best movie, behind only Alien and Matchstick Men (with Gladiator and The Martian rounding out the rest of the top 5)

2) Roger Ebert gave it 4 stars.

Considering that I wasn't disappointed in the least, even if I wouldn't necessarily say it quite lived up to THOSE expectations (better than Blade Runner, in my dreams).

Nightmare 5's director would go on to unleash films like Predator 2, The Ghost and the Darkness, and Lost in Space on the world.

Remember liking American Gangster a lot. Great visuals and two excellent performances.

Looks like Harrison Ford is taking over from William Hurt as General Ross.

Dustin Hoffman has starred in three Best Picture winners. I consider myself a fairly big fan of Kramer vs. Kramer.

I saw the Italian Job remake with family and enjoyed it fine enough without being blown away.

The only two movies I've ever seen released in 1969 are True Grit and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. I liked both movies about equally.

Lopen posted...

Gorr the God Butcher isn't who I'd call a superhero but he was pretty good.

Good catch lol. If the movie had like one or two additional scenes with him that weren't comedic, I would have probably actually liked it instead of being just off the fence. Anyway, that Batman is in heaven while the other got warped into another universe somehow. Guess it had something to do with Spider-Man.

Fun thing: Once Upon a Time in America is on Disney+ where I live, due to Disney holding a 20% stake on Regency Enterprises.

I did tie it into the MCU though! I explained why comparing Thor: Love & Thunder to Batman & Robin is a massive false equivalency IMO.

Though there are two ways to tie Batman & Robin into the MCU:

1) John Glover was in both that movie and an episode of Agent Carter.

2) It was reported before the release of the new Thor movie that people were comparing it to Batman & Robin based on the trailers. I personally think, especially after watching both movies that such comparisons are a load of hogwash and are based entirely on Thor 4 being "campy" - even though it's a completely different kind of camp than Batman & Robin and if anything is more comparable to something like Flash Gordon or even Big Trouble in Little China. And not to get too off-topic, but I personally had no problem whatsoever with the Schumacher Batman movies being campy. Their scripts were awful, camp in and of itself was not the problem. Also, IMO Forever wasn't any campier than the Burton films - only less blatantly grotesque. I also watched the '89 Batman last year in addition to the Schumacher ones. I've seen Returns before, but I remember not liking it so I'm not really looking forward to re-visiting it.

Our favorite Marvel superhero, Batman!

The only reason I brought up Batman & Robin was that we were briefly discussing the worst films we've ever seen. All I mentioned is that I highly doubt I'd actually find it one of the worst movies ever made, except that I have no desire to watch movies that I think I might like less. Heck, last year I watched the thriller Ava starring Jessica Chastain with my family and I think I found it worse than Batman & Robin, albeit not in any interesting way. I didn't mean to get across that I'm a special unicorn for watching Batman & Robin, more that the movie itself is one because I rarely actively seek out movies that are so notoriously bad (do like watching the Nostalgia Critic and Cinematic Excrement destroy them though), but I watched the Schumacher Batman movies because of their casts, the man himself passing away, and that people still talk about them after more than two decades for better or worse.

I wanted to avoid derailing the thread too much, so I'm only clearing up why I brought up Batman & Robin earlier.

I kind of want to talk about James A. Janisse's kill counts on the Halloween, Friday the 13th, and Nightmare on Elm Street movies but I kind of fear people making jokes about me not actually watching the films. Between those three franchises I've only seen the first Halloween anyway, which I loved. I'm not generally interested in slasher movies though and I don't feel like counting Halloween as one so much as a Hitchcock-esque thriller about a high school student being stalked by a merciless killer. That's also why I was somewhat irked by someone in a recent horror ranking topic trashing the original Halloween by saying everything it's credited for introducing to the horror genre can be attributed to Black Christmas - even having not seen Black Christmas, it's pretty clearly Halloween that inspired all the knockoffs and it's not terribly hard to see why IMO.

While watching the kill count for Nightmare 5 I was left dumbstruck by how Freddy didn't even try to be scary in the film, and that seems to be the consensus on it anyways. The idea of Freddy trapping someone in a video game to kill them sounds like it could be scary, but not when Freddy is acting like a Nintendo kid quipping about the Power Glove!

I realized only this month that there seemed to be a lot of "creature feature" type movies in the late '90s, e.g. The Ghost and the Darkness, Anaconda, Mimic, Deep Blue Sea to say nothing of another Jurassic Park, another Alien, and a Godzilla remake. Wonder if Jurassic Park had anything to do with it.

I was 4 by the time the '90s ended. I somehow knew the Titanic was real before I knew about the 1997 movie.

I'm a dummy who has actually seen Batman & Robin fully and still doesn't think it's QUITE one of the worst movies ever, but I also refuse to watch movies I think I might like less.

CassandraCain posted...

You just typed out three sentences that effectively say nothing, LMS. I have no idea what you were trying to get at there.

I more meant that none of the Phase 4 movies have incited the heated debates something like the Star Wars sequel trilogy was subject to. I was specifically trying to dance around bringing up Star Wars because I knew I'd get ribbed for it.

Also in the previous thread, someone (Lopen I think? Don't mean to call names) was asking why Jennifer Garner kept getting cast in action movie roles in the 2000s IIRC. Almost certainly a result of hype she got from Alias.

CassandraCain posted...

Think of the worst movie you've ever seen, one that is so irredeemable that you wish to erase the memory of it. There is a 100% chance that at least one person on this planet considers that to be their favorite movie.

Perspective is important.

Yeah, that's the reason I brought up She-Hulk in the previous thread. It seems like the actual movies just came and went at worst. I've probably explained my position here enough times though.

Are the Disney+ shows generally more controversial than the films in Phase 4?

I also find it fairly interesting how A Nightmare on Elm Street 3's director Chuck Russell went on to direct The Mask, A Nightmare on Elm Street 4's director Renny Harlin did Die Hard 2 right after, and A Nightmare on Elm Street 5's director did Predator 2 right after. Good on that series for keeping New Line long enough to get to stuff like Blade and LOTR lol.

The last Hollywood effort from the director of RoboCop and Total Recall, before he withdrew back to his native Netherlands.

Recently I binge-watched every episode of Netflix's "The Movies That Made Us". The first three episodes I saw were about Halloween, Friday the 13th, and A Nightmare on Elm Street. Out of those three I have only actually seen the first of them, but I have been checking out Dead Meat's kill counts of the films lately.

Stupid question: Does Jurassic Park count as a horror movie? I say no but it definitely has scary moments.