Wife likes to watch those Christmas hallmark movies. Last night she wanted to watch a new one Netflix called Best Christmas Ever. I hate these movies… but it had Heather Graham in it….. so sure, I’ll take a bullet.
Seriously…. The worst movie I have ever watched. With the added benefit that it hit every woke bullet point. I mean…. It had a solar powered hot air balloon that worked at night.
I told my wife I hope it was worth it, because it’ll be years before I let her pick another movie
“They Were Expendable”. John Ford movie, 1945. John Wayne, Robt Montgomery, Donna Reed, Ward Bond. US sailors & soldiers fighting in the Philippines, overwhelmed by Japs after Pearl Harbor. Great flick. See it.
I've always been a big follower of what was the Whitbread RTWR and this is a documentary about the life story of Tracy Edwards, who put together the first all-female team to race in the Whitbread in 1989.
It's not a "woke story about women." It's really f'ing good and I get really emotional 3 or 4 times, EVERY time I watch it. I've probably watched it 6 or 7 times in the last 18 months, including on Wednesday night, then the last half of it again last night.
Incredible story and worth the watch. If you don't know anything about the Whitbread, and what it was like back then vs. today, it's probably in the top 2 most incredible races on the planet, and I'm not sure what #1 would have been... people literally died, including in the '89 race.
@Zambo I know it's about sailing, but I think you'd like this one a lot.
Reviewed earlier. Son wanted to watch the 2021 version as we weren't sure he'd seen it. When I mentioned the 2016, he was much more interested in giving that a go (less likely he'd seen it already). Afterward, he said he definitely preferred the 2016 over 2021 for sevearl factors.
IMDB: A secret government agency recruits some of the most dangerous incarcerated super-villains to form a defensive task force. Their first mission: save the world from the apocalypse.
TLB: Snake Plisken as a team - bunch of bad guys get nano explosives inserted into their necks and forced to do a mission they wouldn't otherwise do. Rewatching for myself, I still love Diablo, he's just my favorite character. Overall better than I remembered, but maybe because I am now comparing it to the 2021 version. I get why Margot Robbie was upset about everyone staring at her in skimpy outfits, but I also forgot how heavy her and Joker (Jared Leto) were in the storyline for this one. Will Smith as Deadshot is the obvious lead and does decent. Robie as a second lead is the thread to carry us to the 2021 version and her spin off. The rest are ... meh. While they fight other meta-humans, the 'villain' of the film is the gov't officer who hatched this team and keeps her thumb on the neck'splode button, and while she is a recognizable face, the character just isn't up there.
Final: 7/10 worth the watch if you need to kill time.
Took a night away from the kids' slumber parties in my house and ducked out for Star Trek. Per forum suggestion, I watched it in 3D. Good flick, and definitely the best 3D I've seen to date. Recommend it for sure, even for non-Trekkies.
Then snuck across the hall for Suicide Squad, 3D as well just because I'm lucky. I'll admit I don't know the back story, nor much about the characters, but aside from flash-boom-bang the movie felt very much like B actors performing as B characters. Even the star of Will Smith couldn't pull this up much from being very meh. I'll admit, when Diablo finally kicked in and fought, that was pretty cool. I'll admit, the Croc dude....aside from being able to swim and fight underwater, was a total wtf-is-he-here-for type character easily forgotten. I'll admit, Will Smith did well with Deadshot. I was torn between the sexy enchantress and her archologist alter-ego that was not so sexy....but I kept watching. The military leader was a complete dork. I really wanted to like Harley Quinn a bit more, or find her more attractive, but she was an uninteresting type of crazy and the scenes of her with some guy portraying joker were a joke. The Joker actor was C at best, and even as someone with limited DC awareness beyond Batman/Superman/Wonderwoman/Flash.....the writing for Joker was crap, performed as crap.
IMDB: Supervillains Harley Quinn, Bloodsport, Peacemaker, and a collection of nutty cons at Belle Reve prison join the super-secret, super-shady Task Force X as they are dropped off at the remote, enemy-infused island of Corto Maltese.
TLB: This is a sequel? Reboot? Idunno for the 2016 version. Same bad gov't official doing same neck'splode on some convicts. We have Margot Robbie (Harely Quinn) and Joker (Jared Leto) return in their roles, and we bring back the team leader Col. Flagg. Will Smith's "Deadeye" is replaced by Idris Elba's "Bloodsport" (both sharpshooters). Add in John Cena (Peacemaker, gets his own spin off film. There are a handful of others, but this film takes a wholly different approach to the team. For example, Cena described his character as "douchebag Captain America" and plays it as such, meanwhile there is a man-eating land shark on the team, voiced by Sly Stallone.
This time, they hired James Gunn to write&direct (Guardians of the Galaxy series, Slither, etc) which was a very smart move. He worked to remain true to DC, but it brought a lot more levity and humor to the film. It took itself less seriously, and you could lower your expectations and still kinda ride along. It's not great, given the mixed bag of random DC characters they pulled off the shelf, but it works well enough to be entertaining. It did not, and should not, win any awards. Still plenty of action and interesting characters, but you don't get too deep and things pivot back to mayhem and humour.
IMBD: A beautiful woman is abducted and initiated into a live sex act on a private stage, participating in lesbianism, interracial sex and a public orgy.
TLB: No idea what to expect beyond 70's porn, expectations were set low. We open with two guys meeting up at some remote diner, and the cook comes out as a friend of theirs and asks to hear the story of the green door they've teased earlier...and they give in, starting with a flashback following a young woman travelling alone, then in the evening a car pulls up and kidnaps her. Then she's dumped in a room with a woman trying to calm her, then she's brought out through a green door and things start rolling. Everything up to this point is disconnected scenes, clearly done on a real low budget.
Entering the room thru the green door puts you on a stage, there were a few random performers (a mime?) in the room beforehand, but this is the main attraction. The masked audience is viewed and presents a random smattering of people - one really fat woman, a few guys on their own, a man dressed up in a woman's dress, etc. Act 1 has 6 female attendants touching and licking her, Act 2 has a black man wearing only white pants with the crotch ripped out and a zulu african necklace come out and have sex with her. At this point, I pondered if this was symbolic - the randoms of the audience being Americans of all walks of life, the young woman our youth and naivete learning the basics of sensual excitement with the attendants, and finally bringing the black rape mindset to reality and ravaging our innocent youth while the rest of America watches along silently. I'm afraid I thought way too much on this. Moving to Act 3 our central actress sits astride a man penetrating her as she rides up and down, meanwhile 3 more men are on trapeze surrounding her head wearing the white pants and ripped crotches. The black man in the middle gets a bj while the side kick white guys get hand jobs. As this carries on for awhile, the crowd is aroused and starts getting into it as we have an on stage orgy as well as a crowd orgy off-stage. Everyone's getting it on with everyone else in what appears to be an uncoordinated sex scene - just keep the cameras rolling and everyone do what ya want. We conclude with a semi-psychadelic bukake slow-mo'd out for about 5 minutes.
We jump back to Moe&Joe at the diner and the cook asked what happened after that and the two guys refuse to say. Then we watch one of them drive off - the scenes of his car intermixed with him have sex with our main actress. All in all, very graphic closeups of sex organs and activities, all in full 70's hairdom. Interesting in the way only porn can be, but otherwise, shows how very dated the film is overall.
Final Verdict: Maybe watch if you just want to say you've seen it. But if you are going for pr0n there are a million better things to see on the internet these days. 4/10
IMDB: Woman is kidnapped by people who want to have sex with her
TLB: Read that line again, I'll wait. That is correct, absolutely no attempt to do anything different....except now it's 1980's version. And worse. I'll avoid the graphic part - if you care, yes it had the same plethora of hair and interracial sex as the last one with nearly as many close-ups, but they did spare us the slow-mo scene near the end.
Now, what's different?
We open with passengers on a flight unlike any I've ever seen. This sequence is shot from first person perspective, you are 'Gloria' (same lead name as the original) our air stewardess. We go thru collecting trash from a bunch of passengers riding like it's a bus - sideways seats, all seat materials making 70's statements, each passenger has a few words of dialogue that mean nothing to anyone and aren't even close to the plot. Some really shtty special effects of a plane flying then landing in a storm and blowing out all the wheels (not reflected with interior shots, of course). One note with the flight is newspaper headlines are dropping ovious hints of "Still no cure of AIDS" and "SF has gone to safe sex".
Next we follow the stewardesses thru the airport for 5 min. This sequence was shot from 20' in front of them walking and no room for a boom mike so the entire sequence has badly dubbed audio put in for their walk. Again, no connection to anything relevant at all.
Gloria gets home to her apartment and settles in with a bath and an alcholic drink (of airplane bottles). Meanwhile, a man in a wheelchair who lives in her apartment psies on her from his window just across from hers. He's got all kinds of cameras and lenses and such, and watches as she exits the shower, slaps in a VHS of the original Green Door film and whips out a massive massage tool (NOT a dildo, but used as such). Meanhwile, homeboy is watching all this and pleasuring his wheelchair ass unseen.
It shifts to Gloria being brought out on stage, having the Act 1 of 6 female attendants, Act 2 of trapeze work, but for Act 3 the crowd has gone to do their thing but she is sitting alone on the stage wishing she had someone/somemore. Out comes a guy dressed as Pan with the flute, horns, and furry legs to finish her for Act 3.
We quickly flip out of her fantasy and Gloria is still on her bed with VHS and massager. Wheels then has his fantasy of getting it on with her.
Then we flip to a random sex scene between Gloria and a male steward who asked her out. Why? Because pr0n. Maybe because she's getting closer to acting on her sensual fantasies? Don't thimk this hard.
Then we close with a quick scenewhere she is finished, gets up and goes to open her window in the sunrise, and discovers she is being watched naked and shrieks and throws her hands over herself.
Semi-Graphic Spoiler - because it's mid-80's EVERY penis is wearing a condom, many female anatomy's get a rubber napkin thrown over them for oral, and many hands wear rubber gloves if they are going internal on someone. There's your foreshadowing from the newspaper headlines in the airplane.
Final: Awful. Just gawd awful. Nobody kidnapped her, nobody wanted to have sex with her - the unattractive crowd was just into each other. Same writers/directers of Mitchell Brothers, but after several years they could only come up with this? It was all a dream? 1.5/10
PS - yes, I've gotten ahold of Debbie Does Dallas just to say I've seen it. I'm now becoming afraid. But I'll soldier thru for ya'll. Just not now. I can't watch anymore of this.
IMBD: A beautiful woman is abducted and initiated into a live sex act on a private stage, participating in lesbianism, interracial sex and a public orgy.
TLB: No idea what to expect beyond 70's porn, expectations were set low. We open with two guys meeting up at some remote diner, and the cook comes out as a friend of theirs and asks to hear the story of the green door they've teased earlier...and they give in, starting with a flashback following a young woman travelling alone, then in the evening a car pulls up and kidnaps her. Then she's dumped in a room with a woman trying to calm her, then she's brought out through a green door and things start rolling. Everything up to this point is disconnected scenes, clearly done on a real low budget.
Entering the room thru the green door puts you on a stage, there were a few random performers (a mime?) in the room beforehand, but this is the main attraction. The masked audience is viewed and presents a random smattering of people - one really fat woman, a few guys on their own, a man dressed up in a woman's dress, etc. Act 1 has 6 female attendants touching and licking her, Act 2 has a black man wearing only white pants with the crotch ripped out and a zulu african necklace come out and have sex with her. At this point, I pondered if this was symbolic - the randoms of the audience being Americans of all walks of life, the young woman our youth and naivete learning the basics of sensual excitement with the attendants, and finally bringing the black rape mindset to reality and ravaging our innocent youth while the rest of America watches along silently. I'm afraid I thought way too much on this. Moving to Act 3 our central actress sits astride a man penetrating her as she rides up and down, meanwhile 3 more men are on trapeze surrounding her head wearing the white pants and ripped crotches. The black man in the middle gets a bj while the side kick white guys get hand jobs. As this carries on for awhile, the crowd is aroused and starts getting into it as we have an on stage orgy as well as a crowd orgy off-stage. Everyone's getting it on with everyone else in what appears to be an uncoordinated sex scene - just keep the cameras rolling and everyone do what ya want. We conclude with a semi-psychadelic bukake slow-mo'd out for about 5 minutes.
We jump back to Moe&Joe at the diner and the cook asked what happened after that and the two guys refuse to say. Then we watch one of them drive off - the scenes of his car intermixed with him have sex with our main actress. All in all, very graphic closeups of sex organs and activities, all in full 70's hairdom. Interesting in the way only porn can be, but otherwise, shows how very dated the film is overall.
Final Verdict: Maybe watch if you just want to say you've seen it. But if you are going for pr0n there are a million better things to see on the internet these days. 4/10
ARE YOU FUKKING KIDDING ME?!?!?!? You are an adult RETARD!!!! You CANNOT look backwards on stuff like this... I'm 56... the first time I saw this was probably in about 1983 when I was on Lake Superior filming a PBS documentary (@bradgator2 has seen it)... Marilyn Chambers... Ms. 100% Pure... is a national treasure...
BEST summer of my life for the adult males I was privileged to spend the summer with.
ARE YOU FUKKING KIDDING ME?!?!?!? You are an adult RETARD!!!! You CANNOT look backwards on stuff like this... I'm 56... the first time I saw this was probably in about 1983 when I was on Lake Superior filming a PBS documentary (@bradgator2 has seen it)... Marilyn Chambers... Ms. 100% Pure... is a national treasure...
BEST summer of my life for the adult males I was privileged to spend the summer with.
“They Were Expendable”. John Ford movie, 1945. John Wayne, Robt Montgomery, Donna Reed, Ward Bond. US sailors & soldiers fighting in the Philippines, overwhelmed by Japs after Pearl Harbor. Great flick. See it.
Saw a movie called reptile . It’s on Netflix . Benicio del toro is a cagey detective investigating a woman’s murder . It drags on a bit and probably should’ve been an hour and a half versus just over 2. Sort of a poor man’s version of Copland . B-
IMDB: When a pill that gives its users unpredictable superpowers for five minutes hits the streets of New Orleans, a teenage dealer and a local cop must team with an ex-soldier to take down the group responsible for its creation.
TLB: I have commented on this before, following @gingerlover 's take on it. For me, it felt like a gamble to rewatch, but I did, and liked it more than I originally did. It's still a somewhat novel concept, and Jamie Foxx (father of a kid related to the drug's origin, also he was tested with it while in the military) & Joseph Gordon-Levitt (cop & user of this drug) carry their roles fairly well. When a person takes one of these pills, they get a super power for 5 minutes, but you don't know what super power you will get - some just explode. JG-L becomes unkillable, and has a fun scene chasing a guy who becomes like a see-thru chameleon. Others have some good special effects for their inherent power (you have one, the pill unlocks it, but anytime you take the pill your constant power comes out). I won't speak to Foxx, as it's the boss fight unveiling. Ok story, annoying soundtrack - but if you check the IMDB trivia there is a background to this as well, and it kinda fits the film.
IMDB: Robert McCall finds himself at home in Southern Italy but he discovers his friends are under the control of local crime bosses. As events turn deadly, McCall knows what he has to do: become his friends' protector by taking on the mafia.
TLB: Stars Denzel Washington, and while Dakota Fanning also gets headline her role is supporting (she is the only other well known name). If you know the core story line and come here looking for another cool guy kicking ass flick...meh. If you find watching subtitles for a half-in-Italian movie is a nice change of pace, they have you covered (I'm fine with subs). I did not realize until afterwards that this was intended to be a trilogy, and this the final chapter. I was a bit put off throughout by Denzel being older, slower, facial expression of a post-stroke victim. I wasn't sure if that was the actor getting old, or him portraying an aging McCall character - either way, it detracted from the desired kick ass role. Along those lines, fight sequences and any action are much more muted than they would be for a standard film, much less for an 'action' film.
Final: Ok, if you want to finish the trilogy. Don't watch as a stand-alone - not that you miss much, as the story does mostly stand on it's own, but it kinda sucks as a stand alone film as opposed to being part of the arc. 6.5/10
IMDB: When a peaceful settlement on the edge of a distant moon finds itself threatened by the armies of a tyrannical ruling force, a mysterious stranger living among its villagers becomes their best hope for survival.
TLB: I kicked this off thinking it was from some graphic comic-book series, but apparently not. Let me quickly reference some of the trivia notes on this one:
Zack Snyder first conceived this as a Star Wars movie, and pitched it to Lucasfilm shortly after it was bought by Disney in 2012, but it never got off the ground.
I'll be honest, from the trailer and throughout the film all I could think was "This is a sci-fi take on 7 Samurai"...turns out, it kinda is. Visuals and special effects are on par with modern Star Wars (ie, Mandalorian, Rogue One, etc). Very few of the actors jump out as 'well known' and each bring a fair personalized character to the story. At times, particularly when our main lead of "Kora" is yelling at someone, the dialogue comes across as weak. In the back of my mind, I'm always counting the core group up to 7, but you can tell there is one that is off and it has a payout twist at the end (you see it coming, but it's still played well enough).
Final: Next installment is supposed to drop in April, I'm sure I'll watch it. 7.5/10
IMDB: Robert McCall finds himself at home in Southern Italy but he discovers his friends are under the control of local crime bosses. As events turn deadly, McCall knows what he has to do: become his friends' protector by taking on the mafia.
TLB: Stars Denzel Washington, and while Dakota Fanning also gets headline her role is supporting (she is the only other well known name). If you know the core story line and come here looking for another cool guy kicking ass flick...meh. If you find watching subtitles for a half-in-Italian movie is a nice change of pace, they have you covered (I'm fine with subs). I did not realize until afterwards that this was intended to be a trilogy, and this the final chapter. I was a bit put off throughout by Denzel being older, slower, facial expression of a post-stroke victim. I wasn't sure if that was the actor getting old, or him portraying an aging McCall character - either way, it detracted from the desired kick ass role. Along those lines, fight sequences and any action are much more muted than they would be for a standard film, much less for an 'action' film.
Final: Ok, if you want to finish the trilogy. Don't watch as a stand-alone - not that you miss much, as the story does mostly stand on it's own, but it kinda sucks as a stand alone film as opposed to being part of the arc. 6.5/10
Watched this recently as well. I thought the second was meh as well and crazy they did a third after how good the first one was. I was also bothered in Denzel's portrayal of the character this go around and his mannerisms that were not there in the previous ones.
IMDB: Robert McCall finds himself at home in Southern Italy but he discovers his friends are under the control of local crime bosses. As events turn deadly, McCall knows what he has to do: become his friends' protector by taking on the mafia.
TLB: Stars Denzel Washington, and while Dakota Fanning also gets headline her role is supporting (she is the only other well known name). If you know the core story line and come here looking for another cool guy kicking ass flick...meh. If you find watching subtitles for a half-in-Italian movie is a nice change of pace, they have you covered (I'm fine with subs). I did not realize until afterwards that this was intended to be a trilogy, and this the final chapter. I was a bit put off throughout by Denzel being older, slower, facial expression of a post-stroke victim. I wasn't sure if that was the actor getting old, or him portraying an aging McCall character - either way, it detracted from the desired kick ass role. Along those lines, fight sequences and any action are much more muted than they would be for a standard film, much less for an 'action' film.
Final: Ok, if you want to finish the trilogy. Don't watch as a stand-alone - not that you miss much, as the story does mostly stand on it's own, but it kinda sucks as a stand alone film as opposed to being part of the arc. 6.5/10
