Re: What Did You Watch? 2024-06-01 (Saturday)

On 6/2/24 11:27 AM, Arthur Lipscomb wrote:

On 6/2/2024 9:28 AM, Ian J. Ball wrote:

On 6/2/24 1:30 AM, Ubiquitous wrote:
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What did you watch?

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I took it really easy yesterday. I only managed to get through a soap, some golf, and two movies:
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Blumhouse's Fantasy Island (Hulu) - In glorious 4k!

 Hulu has it in 4K?!?  The movie was released on disc only on blu-ray.  :-/

Yes. I was surprised - I noticed after watching that it had apparently been in 4k, and double-checked that Hulu indicated that it was.

    I think I liked this 2020 flick quite a bit more than Anim did. Yeah, the ending was a little too all over the place, and "too cute". And this was unfortunately "PG-13 horror" when I was expecting(/hoping for) "hard R horror" out of this,

 Well...if you watched it on disc you could have watched the unrated version.  :-)
 Here is a comparison of theatrical vs unrated cut:
https://www.movie-censorship.com/report.php?ID=246728

OK.

which was disappointing, and which
also made for a much *less dark* film that I was anticipating.
    But, such as it was, this was an OK "twisty" take on "Fantasy Island".
    And, hey - at least they got it right that Lucifer Hale is *pure EVOL*!!1!11!!  ;)
    It's a little annoying that Portia Doubleday's character also didn't suffer a horrific fate.
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Fun fact: Before I went to bed last night, LMN was playing 2009's "Sorority Wars" starring... Lucifer Hale! 15 years ago, when Hale was about... what? 19? (so this was pre-PLL (bitches!!)), she was adorable. By 2020?... Not so much!  :p
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Blacklight (Hulu) - Also in glorious 4k!
    Honestly, it kind of blows me away that even relatively "low-budget" flicks like this one (though, I guess USD$43 mil isn't exactly "low-budget"...) are now getting 4k presentations on the streamers.
    Anyway, this was just OK - it's kind of like "The Parallax View" but without Warren Beatty, the pervasive 1970s pessimism, or the hopeless ending.
    Liam Neeson plays Travis Block - a man with a "particular set of skills" - which in this flick involves getting deep-undercover FBI agents out before they get into "too deep"!! The flick makes clear that Block is not an actual FBI agent, but an independent contractor. He works for the "head" of the FBI (Aidan Quinn - which means you just *know* he's EVOL!!1!).
    First problem, though, is that this was filmed in Australia (Neeson and Quinn may be the only non-Aus actors in the cast), with Canberra and Melbourne very, very unconvincingly standing in for Washington DC. (I've only been through DC once, and even I could easily tell this was not filmed in DC!).
    Neeson has a perennially disappointed and slightly hostile adult daughter (Aussie actress Claire van der Boom), and an adorable 6(?)-year old granddaugther (one-time child actress Gabriella Sengos) whom Block teaches all of his paranoia too!
    Anyway, when one of the people Block pulls in from undercover (Taylor John Smith) starts spouting conspiracy nonsense about the FBI eliminating domestic political "agitators", you know the guy is actually on to something. Eventually, a plucky guttersnipe reporter (Emmy Raver-Lampman) is dragged into this.
    This is nothing we haven't seen before, either more generally, or specifically from Neeson, and a number of the other Neeson films in the same vein are probably better than this one.
    But "Blacklight" sure does look pretty in 4k!!  ;p

 I don't think I've heard of this one.  Is Neeson in the Bruce Willis phase of his career where he's cranking out low budget direct to video movies faster than people have time to watch?

Yes, sort of.
But, "Blacklight", as I said, actually had $43 million budget, so it was actually meant to be a theatrical release. (It bombed theatrically.)

I watched:
 Confess, Fletch (Showtime) 2022 movie (which has been sitting on my DVR since 2022) starring John Hamm as "Fletch," who gets caught up in a convoluted plot involving a stolen painting and a murder.  Beyond that I really didn't follow the plot of this movie at all.  I've been working my way through this for the past few days and finally finished it.  The movie was just sort of on as I watched Fletch make wise cracks and annoy the police.  Maybe fans of the character will like it more, but I was just waiting for it to be over.

I strongly dislike the Chevy Chase films, but have been meaning to get to this one for John Hamm.

I also watched some  M. Night Shyamalan movies. There *will* be spoilers!  Stop reading now if you don't want to know the twists...
 SPOILER SPACE
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 Unbreakable (4K disc) 2000 movie written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan.

Not a fan - too slow.

Split (4K disc) 2016 movie written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan. James McAvoy stars a a man with split personalities several of which decided to kidnap three teenage girls including Anya Taylor-Joy.

This is a tough watch, and I even really like Taylor-Joy.

Glass (4K disc) 2019 movie written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan.

I remember being disappointed with this one.

Knock at the Cabin (4K disc) 2023 movie written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan based on a 2018 novel.  The plot follows a family vacationing at an isolated cabin who are visited by four people who show up predicting the end of the world if the family doesn't do what they say, and what they say will have deadly consequences.  This was my first time watching it since seeing it in the theater.  The movie holds up very well.

I think I mostly liked this one, except for the ending. But I recall BTR saying that the ending of the film was actually much better than the book it is based on, so...  [shrug]