Re: What Did You Watch? 2024-04-20 (Saturday)

On 4/21/2024 8:18 AM, Ian J. Ball wrote:

Saturday I pivoted more to getting stuff done (generally successful!), but I still did manage to get through a movie.
 Anyway, on Sat., I watched:
 soaps: GH - Fri's ep. Nina sells her half of the hotel to Jason, who immediately signs it back to Carly, but when Sonny finds out he accuses all three of them of being "traitors", which Nina hears, and Nina immediately realizes that Ava lied to/betrayed her about selling the hospital to Jason. Ava keeps quiet about Sonny's meds being underdosed, and doesn't try very hard in trying to talk Sonny out of whacking Dex for trying to be a cop. A frantic Josslyn goes to Anna, to beg her to not hire Dex as a cop, but Anna refuses. Later, Anna calls Molly in, and presents Molly with the evidence against Sonny - Molly feels she has a conflict of interest on the case (she clearly does!!), but Anna insists that Molly be the one to prosecute!
 golf - [sigh...] By the end of Day 3, Scottie Scheffler was leading the RBC Heritage in Hilton Head, SC. For most of the day Collin Morikawa was a strong second (sound familiar?...), but at the end of Day 3 Sepp Straka vaulted into second, with Morikawa third, and Theegala and Aberg just behind them.
 Fallout (Prime) - "The Head" (ep. #1.3). Lucy takes Wilzig's head deeper into Los Angeles(?), but it is taken by an "abomination" in some water there. Then she is captured by The Ghoul, who is devoid of humanity by this point and tortures Lucy. Maximus has to repair the suit but gets jumped by some thugs and has to eliminate a couple of them to get the suit back and repaired. Then the Brotherhood sends Maximus' former bully, Thaddeus, to be his new squire. Maximus and Thaddeus eventually get the head back from the abomination. By this point, the Ghoul seemed to have abandoned the head and is taking captive Lucy somewhere. Meanwhile, in the Vault, Norm (Moises Arias) believes the captive raiders should be executed (he's right), and now-one-eyed Stephanie agrees with him - it's looking like Norm may be heading towards a coup in the Vault!
 Night Swim (Peacock) - In glorious 4k!
    Oh my God! The swimming pool is EVOL!! THE SWIMMING POOL IS EEVVVOOOOLLLLLL!!!!1!11!!!
    This was OK, but was firmly in the milieu of "PG-13 horror". If this had been "hard-R" horror, somebody would have been sucked into the pool drain a la Stephen King!
    Arthur correctly "prophesied" that the family was *almost* smart in this, intending to blow doors after figuring out that the pool was haunted/EVOL!/whatever. But, of course, there's a contrivance, and they can't leave!
    The ending was actually appropriate, I guess. At least, it didn't piss me off, and was at least somewhat satisfying.
    I know who Wyatt Russell and Karry Condon are. But I have no idea who Amelie Hoeferle, who played the daughter, is - she seems to have come out of nowhere (and apparently has a hideous tattoo IRL!).
    Anyway, I guess this gets a very, very mild "recommend" from me, though there are certainly many better, more gripping horror flicks out there!
  What did you watch?
 

I watched:
Magic (TCM) 1978 movie starring Anthony Hopkins as a magician / ventriloquist who lets his dummy talk him into killing people.  I'm pretty sure I never saw this before now, although I'm also pretty sure I remember previously watching the scene where Hopkins manager (Burgess Meredith) sees if he can keep the dummy silent for 5 minutes and Hopkins fails miserably.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rr3y5Q5vr8g
Penn & Teller Get Killed (TCM) 1989 comedy starring Penn & Teller as themselves and sort of depicts them in their daily life doing their routines and pulling tricks on each other.  At the start of the movie Penn does an interview where he casually mentions someone should kill him and the movie is spent with various people trying to murder Penn. Or is that part of the trick?  This was my first time watching this movie.  It was a mediocre movie.  But maybe I would have liked it more if I saw in in 1989 when it first came out.
Now You See Me (Blu-ray) 2013 movie about 4 shady street magicians  who are mysteriously brought together to form a Vegas act that fronts for various heists they disguise as magic tricks.  Mark Ruffalo costars as an FBI agent hot on their trail and Morgan Freeman plays a magician debunker who is helping the FBI (and himself) to figure out how they pull off their heists.
Now You See Me 2 (4K disc) 2016 sequel which finds everyone from the first movie returning for round 2 of payback and revenge with some magical heists thrown in for good measure.
Rebel Moon (Netflix) parts 1 and 2.  To recap in the first half an evil galactic empire is waging war in the stars.  They land on a planet, bringing a droid with them of course, and start causing trouble with farmers.  One of the farmers leaves her village to get help from an alliance of rebels.  First, she makes a stop at a nearby cantina where she hires a solo smuggler to fly her off world to recruit fighters including one person who wields a saber made of light.  There is new hope because the good guys win at the end.  There's even an awards ceremony where the newly recruited heroes get prizes, but that takes place in part two.
In the second half the Empire Strikes back against the alliance of rebels.  A new plot point has the evil henchman tasked with finding one of the rebels who happens to be the (adopted) child of one of the villains.  Perhaps if they can find this child, they can be turned to the evil side?  Anyway, they show up at the rebel's moon and along with their imperial walking machines launch an attack.  The Battle of in-door is what you could say about one of the fights that takes place inside a building.  Anyway, the rebel who has a saber made of light fights bad guys leading to someone having a limb cut off during the fight.  The alliance of rebels organizes the people that live on the moon into a fighting force capable of going up against a technologically more advanced galactic empire.  It's a trap!  Is what you will say at one point watching the sequel.  But I did not expect to see an epic battle between the hero and villain using their sabers made of lights in the villain's headquarters during an attack by the alliance of rebels as the headquarters falls apart around them.  Speaking of the alliance of rebel's attack, it was really cool how some of them piloted single seat attack ships and the camera would zoom in on their face as they talked to each other during the space dog fight.  Overall, I have to say this was probably the most original sci-fi series ever, and unlike any other sci-fi movie ever conceived of with their alien filled cantinas, droids, solo smugglers, alliance of rebels, imperial walking machines, and wielders of sabers made of light, I just don't know where Snyder gets his ideas!