Movie Thread

[spork]

Does anyone have stay-at-home movie recommendations? We have access to Netflix, YouTube, and Red Box. We recently watched The Other Guys, which we both thought was very funny. I tried watching The Old Guard on my own, but it was so bad I only lasted 20 minutes.

[monarda]

Does anyone have stay-at-home movie recommendations? We have access to Netflix, YouTube, and Red Box. We recently watched The Other Guys, which we both thought was very funny. I tried watching The Old Guard on my own, but it was so bad I only lasted 20 minutes.

Last couple of good things we watched:

Hamilton - ($7 on Disney plus for one month, does anyone have other suggestions for things to watch on Disney+ this month?)

13th

We watch a lot on PBS Passport. Our local theater troupe (American Player's Theater, APT) has been doing play readings on Zoom. Really quite good. So far we've seen three Chekov one act plays, Shakespeare's "As you Like it" and Shaw's "Arms and the Man"  Next up is Julius Caesar.

In the theater before the virus, we saw Knives Out, that should be on Netflix by now.

[ab_grp]

The ones I've recently listed have been on DVD, but they may also be available for streaming.  I'll +1 to the recommendation for Knives Out, which we saw in the theater and then again on DVD more recently.

We watched Parasite last night and thought it was excellent.  In some ways it was similar to Get Out, in that there is an obvious surface message, but in both cases we felt that the directors also managed to build up an undercurrent throughout.  It was particularly powerful in Parasite, and there was a bit of trivia on IMDB about one of the final credits songs that just got me all over again. 

[sprout]

Does anyone have stay-at-home movie recommendations? We have access to Netflix, YouTube, and Red Box. We recently watched The Other Guys, which we both thought was very funny. I tried watching The Old Guard on my own, but it was so bad I only lasted 20 minutes.

Watched Eurovision on Netflix today and loved it.  But I also really liked The Old Guard, so you might not want to take my word.

[spork]

Does anyone have stay-at-home movie recommendations? We have access to Netflix, YouTube, and Red Box. We recently watched The Other Guys, which we both thought was very funny. I tried watching The Old Guard on my own, but it was so bad I only lasted 20 minutes.

Watched Eurovision on Netflix today and loved it.  But I also really liked The Old Guard, so you might not want to take my word.

We ended up watching Ben Affleck's The Town. I thought it was engaging enough. The cast is great. My wife was fascinated by the Charlestown "crabs in a bucket" theme (she's not from the USA originally). For me it was "Eh. Used to be Irish mob and housing project white trash. Then it gentrified. Like Dorchester. Or Southie." It was fun trying to identify from the dialogue which of the bit players were local. Jeremy Renner is definitely not and could have used a better vocal coach. My wife kept asking me to mimic lines, and I can't do a proper Boston accent on command.

[mamselle]

"Mystik River" has some good examples.

You hafta have fokes frum Revieere.....

M.

[Sun_Worshiper]

Hamilton

The music is great, the story is captivating, and the performance itself is amazing.  The plot is engaging in its own right, and works well as a refresher on US history as well as a commentary on the various faces of politics (back-room deals, power-hungry politicians, and a few principled individuals).  It was an inspired choice to use mostly Black actors and to tell the story through rap music, as this made everything feel relevant and fresh.  The play is also very hip-hop literate, so there are lots of little nuggets that fans of the genre will pick up on.  Some liberties were taken with the history, but they got the gist of it right. 

My only complaint is about is the length (about 2 hours and 45 minutes).  When you go to the theater at a price of ~$100 per ticket, I suppose you want and expect a 3 hour show, but that makes for a long film.  Some of the content about his family life could have been cut without losing anything of substance, but on the other hand the point is to give you the whole play from home, so i can't complain too much.

Overall, great watch! 

Grade: A

[ab_grp]

We watched a couple older movies this weekend that husband had seen but I hadn't.  First was Blue Chips, about college basketball dealings that go on as schools compete to recruit the students who will turn their programs around (or continue their success).  I miss college basketball a lot, so I enjoyed it for that reason (even though there really wasn't that much basketball, and it was mostly discrete action rather than any kind of coherent game play).  I was also glad that they focused on issues beyond the most obvious type of violations.  Nice to see some basketball stars, too! I'm not a big fan of Mary McDonnell, but she wasn't too bad in this.  The movie didn't get awesome ratings, but I enjoyed it.

Last night we watched Deep Impact.  I was surprised at how much that movie got at my emotions.  It is similar to other stories of a comet on approach with Earth (e.g., the novel Lucifer's Hammer).  Aside from one story arc that I think could have been largely cut out of the movie, the decisions, actions, and consequences were more realistic than I have seen or read before in these types of stories.  Morgan Freeman was very believable, and seeing Maximilian Schell reminded me to rewatch Judgment at Nuremburg, which he was fantastic in.  This was a surprisingly touching movie and (I think) well done despite lower ratings that I would have expected.  Oh, and quite contrary, this movie had my favorite Mary (McCormack).  Oh my gosh.  I just looked at her page on IMDB and was today years old when I learned that she is Will McCormack's sister.  Never even occurred to me.

[kaysixteen]

You are right.  Deep Impact was by far the best space object hurtling towards Earth disaster movie of 1997 (cf. 'Armageddon'), and much better than 1979's 'Meteor', which sadly helped essentially kill the great 70s disaster movie genre, still one of my all-time favorites.   Today's disaster flicks are either way way over the top, such as The Rock's 'San Andreas', or silly, like the funny but impossible to take seriously efforts the SyFy channel makes.  Bring back the star-studded seventies sagas, I say!

[ab_grp]

Kay, if you have any suggestions along the lines of Deep Impact, please post them!

We watched Demolition Man last night.  It was definitely a bit cheesy, and Stallone's acting leaves a bit to be desired, but it didn't seem to take itself too seriously and was enjoyable overall.  Denis Leary was pretty much wasted in it (I mean I would have liked to see more of him, though he was fun to watch while he was in it).  Sandra Bullock's character was not too bad and provided some humor.  Wesley Snipes was a little wacky and over the top, but he played a good villain.  Again, there are other movies with a similar premise (having to unfreeze someone to go after a criminal), but it was fine enough for what it was trying to be.

[kaysixteen]

Great disaster films include:

The Towering Inferno (probably the best ever)
The Poseidon Adventure
Airport
Airport '75
Earthquake
Unstoppable (Denzel Washington runaway train flick)
Volcano
Dante's Peak (better of the two volcano movies)
Twister
Flood
Gray Lady Down (sub sinking, more Charlton Heston)
Black Sunday
Rollercoaster (psycho blackmails amusement parks)
Two Minute Warning
The Hindenburg
The Omega Man
The Andromeda Strain
Soylent Green

I could probably find more.  The precursor to this genre is probably B-movies from the 50s and 60s, and heck, Japanese monster movies are often pretty good, too.  Many of these are almost certainly viewable for free on the net, too.

[Vkw10]

I agree with most of kaysixteen's recommendations and am looking forward to watching the few I haven't seen. They should be great distractions.

The Poseidon Adventure from 1972 is dangerous. I find "The Morning After" stuck in my head every time I watch it. I highly recommend having a playlist ready for after the movie, to reduce the risk.

[ab_grp]

Thanks for all the recommendations! I've only seen Twister and part of Soylent Green when it was on TV one time.  I did read Andromeda Strain and thought that was a pretty clever story.

And thanks for the tip on the possible ear worm! Sounds intriguing.

[kaysixteen]

I am almost tempted to cancel cable and just go with what I can stream on the net, but I do want some local tv access, some stuff that cannot be streamed.  But my own listing efforts are probably motivating me to find some of these flicks online to stream now, nonetheless.  I really do love the 70s disaster flicks, and the B-movies from the 50s and 60s are not too far behind, as well.  They really do not make stuff like this any more.

[ab_grp]

I sometimes wish we kept some of our streaming capabilities. 

Last night we watched Chappie, the third and final of a pack we had by Neill Blomkamp.  The other two were District 9, Elysium.  There is something really quirky about his movies, and they can have some very strange characters, but they often seem to have a lot of heart.  In some ways, it reminded me of Robocop, with the mechanization or partial mechanization of the police force (and the manipulators who try to use the technological advances for their own bad intentions).  I was also reminded a bit about all the GPT-3 news going around, and the fact that it and similar create based on their training sets.  The generated text can end up highlighting social and cultural disparities and biases.  Here, Chappie the AI learns from those who teach him, with funny, sad, and sometimes disastrous consequences.   I guess the movie wasn't very well received, but it had some good ideas, and I found it very touching at times.