The Latest Movie/TV show You Watched Topic 2.0

For the discussion of movies and TV shows not distributed by Toho.
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Re: The Latest Movie/TV show You Watched Topic 2.0

Post by JAGzilla »

I'm working on The Curse of Frankenstein right now. Peter Cushing is quickly becoming one of my favorite actors. Christopher Lee hasn't shown up yet, but he really has his work cut out for him if he wants to be taken seriously as a monster. Cushing's got that role locked down so far.
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JAGzilla wrote: Thu Sep 09, 2021 8:11 am I'm working on The Curse of Frankenstein right now. Peter Cushing is quickly becoming one of my favorite actors. Christopher Lee hasn't shown up yet, but he really has his work cut out for him if he wants to be taken seriously as a monster. Cushing's got that role locked down so far.
The Hammer Frankenstein movies are an interesting and varied collection, but even when they fumble them (as with the well-photographed but generally bland Evil of Frankenstein), Cushing still keeps them engaging - the man always brought his A game. The only Hammer Frankenstein I may never rewatch is Horror of Frankenstein, because Ralph Bates - effective though he could be in the right role - is just no substitute for Cushing.
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Re: The Latest Movie/TV show You Watched Topic 2.0

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eabaker wrote: Thu Sep 09, 2021 8:18 am
JAGzilla wrote: Thu Sep 09, 2021 8:11 am I'm working on The Curse of Frankenstein right now. Peter Cushing is quickly becoming one of my favorite actors. Christopher Lee hasn't shown up yet, but he really has his work cut out for him if he wants to be taken seriously as a monster. Cushing's got that role locked down so far.
The Hammer Frankenstein movies are an interesting and varied collection, but even when they fumble them (as with the well-photographed but generally bland Evil of Frankenstein), Cushing still keeps them engaging - the man always brought his A game. The only Hammer Frankenstein I may never rewatch is Horror of Frankenstein, because Ralph Bates - effective though he could be in the right role - is just no substitute for Cushing.
Speaking of that series, I really wish that someone would release Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell in its unedited version instead of that edited TV print they always bring out. The only home video release that ever did this was the out-of-print Japanese laserdisc.

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Re: The Latest Movie/TV show You Watched Topic 2.0

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Terasawa wrote: Tue Sep 07, 2021 2:34 pm
JAGzilla wrote: Fri Aug 13, 2021 5:09 am
Terasawa wrote: Thu Aug 12, 2021 7:05 pm Also, if you have TCM (or know someone who does), keep in mind that they tend to play Hammer films around Halloween, particularly the dozen or so WB-owned films.
I think we do still have TCM available through Hulu TV, which I never actually watch. I had no idea it ever played Hammer films, though, so I'll have to take a look at its schedule now. Thanks!
Bump because I'm looking over TCM's October schedule; it's not completely listed just yet, but so far, the Hammer yield looks like this:

10-21: The Nanny (1965); Dracula, Prince of Darkness (1966); Frankenstein Created Woman (1967); Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (1969); Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970); Crescendo (1970); Dracula A.D. 1972 (1972)
10-23: The Mummy's Shroud (1967)
10-30: The Devil's Own (1966); The Curse of Frankenstein (1957)

I'd bet a few more of the usual suspects turn up on Halloween itself.
It turns out I don't have Hulu TV anymore, but I probably would've passed on these, anyway. I'm most likely going to watch Brides of Dracula next month, and then take a break from Hammer movies for a while, just so I don't burn through them too fast. Thanks for the info, though!

And I'm done with The Curse of Frankenstein. Cushing did his job, as noted, and Christopher Lee did end up playing the monster well, though much like with Dracula, he had surprisingly little screentime to work with. Clearly the filmmakers wanted to emphasize that Frankenstein himself was the real monster here, and the twisted thing he stitched together was just one of the products of his mad obsession. It didn't need to be a character, just an abomination, so mission accomplished.

Another thing the movie did well was the color. The lab was very visually interesting with all the bright reds, greens, and purples lighting up the background. The budget obviously didn't allow for elaborate sets and flashy special effects, so they just made what they had stand out by being nice and colorful. :lol: I like it. There were a lot of nice, bright colors in the outfits, too, and then even the monster had a striking combination of pale skin and black clothing.

There were problems, of course. The love triangle was very... perfunctory. The maid seemed to have little reason to be in the story, other than to add to the body count, and Elizabeth was basically just there to end up as a damsel in distress. They helped showcase Frankenstein's lack of empathy, but there was nothing particularly engaging about them or their non-relationships with him.

The blind man and his grandson shouldn't have been in the movie. Again, they were something for the monster to kill, but then no repercussions were felt. If anyone noticed they went missing, we never heard about it. No torch-wielding mob turned up at the castle looking for revenge. They weren't even mentioned as reasons that Frankenstein was in jail; apparently it was just the maid's murder that got him arrested.

And it's a smaller thing, but I was really looking forward to seeing Peter Cushing yell, "IT'S ALIVE!" :( You make the movie squarely focused on Frankenstein himself, and then omit his most iconic line?
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JAGzilla wrote: Thu Sep 09, 2021 8:11 am I'm working on The Curse of Frankenstein right now. Peter Cushing is quickly becoming one of my favorite actors. Christopher Lee hasn't shown up yet, but he really has his work cut out for him if he wants to be taken seriously as a monster. Cushing's got that role locked down so far.
I'm taking my first ever dive into Hammer Horror this coming October, as part of my annual horror marathon. I'm rather excited.
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The Lighthorsemen, a 1987 Australian war film depicting the first world war. It’s got charm, and I liked it. The action was very good!
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In the theater waiting for Shang Chi to start.
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Batman (1989). I saw bits and pieces of it as a kid in the early 2000s, and since I was strictly interested in flashy, over-the-top action back then, it mostly bored me. It held up a lot better this time around. Tim Burton and Batman were made for each other. Jack Nicholson's legitimately insane take on the Joker worked pretty well, too; nothing on Heath Ledger, of course, but he does 'theatrical, cackling maniac' as well as anyone.
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Paths of Glory - 1957, directed by Stanley Kubrick. Didn't really blow my mind the way I thought it would (maybe I was just over hyping it in my head all these years). Still a great film through and through. It's a war movie where you never see the enemy, and there's only one major action sequence (a brilliant one at that, Kubrick's tracking shots are beautiful). The true antagonists are the higher ups in the chain of command, those who are willing to sacrifice their men for the sake of their careers/public perception. A important, timeless theme.

Rebirth of Mothra - hooooo boy. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, though most scenes went on for far too long. The special effects are a mixed bag - Fairy Mothra looks god-awful, with Mothra and Rainbow Mothra fairing a bit better. Most of the compositing is bad, they definitely bit off more than they can chew with those miniature fight scenes in the house. Desghidorah, on the other hand, is downright AWESOME. Great design and execution, and I would argue Kawakita's second greatest achievement behind Biollante. The environmental theme, while heavy-handed and a bit simplistic, is handled better than in Godzilla vs Mothra. Lots of babes in this film, a nice little bonus.

Gonna check out ROM2 tonight.
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Rando Yaguchi wrote: Wed Sep 22, 2021 12:01 pm they definitely bit off more than they can chew with those miniature fight scenes in the house.

Gonna check out ROM2 tonight.
They did, but I can respect that they gave it a try. It's a fun, ambitious sequence unlike anything else in the genre.

RoM2... be prepared to deactivate your brain and have fun. It's bad, but entertainingly so, and not without its small redeeming qualities.
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Malignant 2021

Honestly the trailers did this movie dirty, I didn't have much interest in seeing this because it basically looked like another ''Conjuring'' movie. Which when it starts and for probably the first hour it feels like one but a good one. As the film was ending it's second act I figured okay this was a decent watch but once you hit the 3rd act it turns into an entirely different beast. An while I knew there was some twist coming what actually came I def didn't see coming.

It reminded me a lot of my feelings towards ''Cabin in the Woods'' with the first two acts basically being Evil Dead until you hit that third act... In my opinion the third act is what saved Cabin in the Woods and is what also saved Malignant. It was campy action horror at its finest. It was just like ''what the hell am I watching?'' but in a enjoyable sense.

Very pleased with how this film turned out, Hopefully we get more weird horror films like this and less of the Conjuring jump scares style. This def has a 80's style written all over it and glad James Wan went a different direction because after the extremely disappointing Conjuring 3 (I know its from a different director) I don't think i can stomach another one.

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JAGzilla wrote: Wed Sep 22, 2021 12:17 pmThey did, but I can respect that they gave it a try. It's a fun, ambitious sequence unlike anything else in the genre.
True, and some shots actually looked pretty good. They should have cut the sequence in half for both pacing and for the quality of the effects.
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JAGzilla wrote: Wed Sep 22, 2021 12:17 pm
Rando Yaguchi wrote: Wed Sep 22, 2021 12:01 pm they definitely bit off more than they can chew with those miniature fight scenes in the house.

Gonna check out ROM2 tonight.
They did, but I can respect that they gave it a try. It's a fun, ambitious sequence unlike anything else in the genre.

RoM2... be prepared to deactivate your brain and have fun. It's bad, but entertainingly so, and not without its small redeeming qualities.
I would like the miniature fight scene a lot more if it only went on for about 1/3 as long as it does. Like Rando said, almost every scene in the movie drags on too long.

RoM2 is quite the chore to get through, at least for most adult viewers, but at least you have the relative improvement of RoM3 to look forward to!
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I think the indoor tiny monster dogfight in RoM might be an homage to a sorta-similar scene in Samurai Pirate, which incidentally is much, much shorter.
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Yojimbo. My only prior experience with Akira Kurosawa was Seven Samurai, probably five years ago or so. I'd been operating under the assumption that his films were all on the serious, dramatic side, so this one being a comedy was unexpected. Very welcome, though; this was exactly what I was looking for in a movie, today, and I enjoyed the heck out of it. Toshiro Mifune played this role at least as well as Clint Eastwood, and I loved the cast of really over the top, eccentric side characters, like Wild Boar guy and the constable. The music was top-tier, and basically everything was outstanding.
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JAGzilla wrote: Thu Sep 23, 2021 2:34 pm Yojimbo. My only prior experience with Akira Kurosawa was Seven Samurai, probably five years ago or so. I'd been operating under the assumption that his films were all on the serious, dramatic side, so this one being a comedy was unexpected. Very welcome, though; this was exactly what I was looking for in a movie, today, and I enjoyed the heck out of it. Toshiro Mifune played this role at least as well as Clint Eastwood, and I loved the cast of really over the top, eccentric side characters, like Wild Boar guy and the constable. The music was top-tier, and basically everything was outstanding.
Yeah, Yojimbo is really fantastic. And while it's certainly true that the majority of Kurosawa's films skew toward the heavy, dramatic side, he was able to lighten things up a few times, while still maintaining his recurring themes of personal responsibility, class conflicts, and the distinction between reality and illusion. I'd highly recommend checking out the sequel, Sanjuro. It's a little more low-key than Yojimbo, and a little warmer and more humanistic without giving up any of the irony that pervades the first film (plus it's got Akira Kubo and Akihiko Hirata).
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Yojimbo is so damn good. I really need to rewatch it and finally check out Sanjuro.

What Kurosawa film are you thinking next, JAG?
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Well, Sanjuro is definitely high on the list. I'll probably go with The Hidden Fortress, though. I've always wanted to see just how badly George Lucas ripped it off. I would've watched it today, instead, but I was short on time. Very glad things worked out that way, though.
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JAGzilla wrote: Thu Sep 23, 2021 4:15 pm Well, Sanjuro is definitely high on the list. I'll probably go with The Hidden Fortress, though. I've always wanted to see just how badly George Lucas ripped it off. I would've watched it today, instead, but I was short on time. Very glad things worked out that way, though.
Don't expect anything like a beat-for-beat prediction of Star Wars. The major parallels will mostly leap out at you early on, but as it progresses its story and themes turn out to be pretty different.
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Apparently Toshiro Mifune was Lucas' first choice for Obi-Wan. That would have been wild.
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