the vynsane asylum

Watched the last half of the 1990 Total Recall. I haven't seen the remake, but I now understand why they did it.

Got on a 90s action film kick last week.

Face/Off. The gimmick is preposterous, but it's a fine fucking action film by John Woo and Cage and Travolta balance each other perfectly with their ham performances.

Broken Arrow. Watching one Woo movie made me want to see more, so I dug out this little gem with Travolta and Christian Slater. Travolta is a Stealth pilot stealing a nuke and Slater is his co-pilot trying to stop him.

Under Seige. Probably Steven Seagal's best (only?) movie. Helped considerably by the co-villains Tommy Lee Jones and Gary Busey. And Erika Eleniak's glorious melons helped an entire generation of boys hit puberty in 1992.

Under Seige 2:Dark Territory. Only because the DVD is a double feature, so what they hey. This is a mediocre action flick, but the bad guys is a list of character actors known for being villains. Johnathan Banks from Breaking Bad was one of them. You can tell this is when Seagal started wearing a girdle...and never stopped.

Free HBO/Cinemax on DirecTV this weekend. There really wasn't much on that interested me. But, they did show 2 Mel Brooks movies: High Anxiety and To Be or Not To Be. I've seen the first, but never the second. Also watched part of Men In Black 2.

Watched both Rise and Dawn of the Apes in anticipation of seeing the third one this weekend. The kids decided we are going to see Valerian instead. Oh well.

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. A visually striking film with plenty of fun sci-fi moments. I think Dane DeHaan was woefully miscast as Valerian sadly. He lacks the charisma to play the character. The chemistry between him and Cara Delvigne(?) didn't play either. But other than that it was a good fun vibrant film. But apparently no one else much cared for it, based on the box office.

I watched the last 2 Dr Who specials which are somewhere between shows & movies, but likely more towards shows. I only mention it because one of them was a bit of a superman send up, and it was pretty fun.

Kong:Skull Island. Fairly decent monster flick set in the 70s. Kong was badass. I really want Tom Hiddleston to play 007 when Daniel Craig gets tired of it.

Independence Day II. People forget the original film was just a big budget b-flick. This was more of the same. I was entertained. I feel like this movie was unfortunately released in the wrong time period. If it had come out a couple years after the first one, it would've been a big hit, instead of unfairly being a punchline.

La La Land. What started out as a promising musical kinda petered out and had a real downer ending. Certainly didn't deserve it's fake Steve Harvey Best Picture win.

Moana - Fucking terrible

War for the Planet of the Apes - Phenomenal finale to the trilogy. Andy Serkis deserves an Oscar nod for Caesar.

Supergirl/The Flash/Arrow - Finished up the latest seasons of each on Netflix. All good shit.

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets - or Valerian and Movie of a Thousand Influences. Seriously. You can spot something (an "influence") taken from damn near every major sci-fi movie since 1977. And don't hand me that "Actually, Valerian influenced every thing else" bullshit.
Visually appealing, but it really did suck.

Caught the last 2/3rds of Batman Forever. I forced myself to sit through it just to see how bad it was.

And still Citizen Kane compared to Batman and Robin.

B&R and Spider-Man3 are neck and neck for which induces the most rage for me.

Grease.

Again. This time with a group. My kids and I were the only people not singing along. Though it turns out the kids were only not singing because they didn't know the words.

I've never understood the hypnotic appeal of this extremely overrated movie. It's not horrible; I don't hate it. But it's a weak movie held together by some solid actors (all doing laughably bad work) and one or two catchy songs. And the worst fucking moral of any film.

As musicals go, I'd take Singing in the Rain or Tangled any fucking day of the year. Even Frozen, for all its utter shit-ton of flaws, is more enjoyable. At least Olaf and Kristoff aren't irritating dickweeds who gleefully sing about abuse.

The Grease soundtrack was a staple around our house growing up. I didn't actually see the entirety of the movie for a good number of years - I would theorize that the slutty transformation kept people coming back to the theatre. She looked great in that outfit.

jjreason wrote:The Grease soundtrack was a staple around our house growing up. I didn't actually see the entirety of the movie for a good number of years - I would theorize that the slutty transformation kept people coming back to the theatre. She looked great in that outfit.

Tell me about it. Stud.

I'm watching the French Connection in 15 min increments (mainly because I keep getting interrupted). I'm sure I watched during my 70's binge during university after seeing Reservoir Dogs the first time, but it's basically new all over again (I was drinking a lot back then). It's not bad so far, not quite halfway done. I might go revisit Mean Streets & Taxi Driver as well.