Re: What Did You Watch? 2024-11-27 (Wednesday)

On 11/28/2024 8:17 AM, shawn wrote:

On Thu, 28 Nov 2024 07:43:57 -0800, "Ian J. Ball" <ijball@mac.invalid>
wrote:
 

Finished cleaning my place yesterday morning, and then had family come
to town, so I didn't get through much yesterday:
>
I(We) watched a couple of the Pierce Brosnan-Bond movies off Pluto TV's
"007" channel. (Sidenote: When I first discovered Pluto TV, years ago,
it had a Bond channel. But it quickly disappeared back then. I'm
expecting the same again - I'll bet Pluto will have a "007" channel for
the holidays, but I bet it's gone by the New Year).
>
I'm quite sure I saw "Die Another Day" in the theater.

I remember when "Golden Eye" came out I was in college and we were all so excited that there was finally a new Bond movie.  As a group we went to see it in the theater.
I can't remember

if I saw "The World Is Not Enough" in the theater - I'm sure I must
have, but I don't remember it... Anyway, these were a fine way to pass
the time.
>

Many years ago I did a Bond marathon of all the movies.  Then a few years back I was thinking there are so many Bond movies now, I could never marathon them again.  Then it occurred to me, if I plan far enough out into the future, all I have to do is set aside enough days, and I can watch them all.  So that's what I did for next year.  And they just announced the other day, that all of the Sean Connery Bond movies are getting a 4K upgrade.  I don't even have all the Connery movies on blu-ray; so I am definitely looking forward to getting them on 4K and watching all next year.

In the evening, I did get home and watch:
>
Cruel Intentions 3 (Tubi) - This 2004 third and final film in the series
is also leaving Tubi in mere days, so I decided to get to it now.
    FTR, this one is a true, though kind of tangential, "sequel" to the
original film - Kathryn is explicitly referenced (she's the main
character's cousin), and Sebastian is indirectly referenced as being dead.
    As I remembered, it is generally underwhelming, and also off-putting
(this one includes a rape from a genuine psychopath which I thought
generally ruined the whole thing).
    The best part is probably Kristina Anapau, playing the lead(?),
Kathryn Merteuil's cousin, Cassidy - she at least brings some evol!
gusto to the role.
    The top-billed lead is Kerr Smith who brings his usual brand of
sleepy smarminess to the role.
    The third lead, Nathan J. Wetherington, looked familiar, though I'm
not sure what else I've seen him in. He plays the true psychopath.
    The secondary cast includes several people I've never seen before,
but does include Natalie Ramsey (from "Beyond the Break") as one of
Kerr's budding conquests, and Tom Parker as her boyfriend.
    This includes what I'd call "incidental" naked nudity, and none from
the leads or main secondary cast.
    As per usual, I especially didn't like the ending of this one, which
basically serves as one giant reset button, and shows the characters
(esp. Anapau's) had learned nothing after ostensibly doing a good dead.
    It's little wonder that this film series ended here.
>

I'm sure I watched this before, but I don't remember it.  I'll try to get to it before it leaves, but I have other priorities.

>
What did you watch?

 I finished up THE LINCOLN LAWYER that I had been watching over a
couple of days. In this movie Matthew McConaughey plays a lawyer who
does much of his work out of the back of his car as he is driven
around. A rich kid gets arrested for supposedly beating up a
prostitute and hires McConaughey's character to defend him. 

I'm sure I saw this movie when it first came out, but I had no memory of that being the plot.  For some reason I assumed he was going up against some big corporate defendant.
Things

begin to go off the rails as it appears that the kid has not been
completely truthful "Trust me. I'm innocent. Oh, yeah... That's my
knife. I forgot to mention that." Things get worse when it seems the
kid actually did the deed but MM's character still has to defend him
even though it seems the kid may have made a habit of beating up
prostitutes.
 Over all a good flick with a satisfactory ending. It doesn't hurt that
the lovely Marisa Tomei is in the flick as MM's ex-wife.
  I also watched a great episode of SURVIVOR

Saved for later.  I need to check my DVR.  I have no idea what it recorded yesterday.

 What did you watch?

I watched:
El Mariachi (blu-ray) 1992 low budget movie produced, written, and directed by Robert Rodriguez.  The plot follows "El Mariachi" (Carlos Gallardo) who is mistaken for a hitman while trying to bum a job at a local bar for tips.  I watched with a really good commentary track from Rodriguez.  This was his first movie, and extremely low budget (according to Wikipedia $7,225).  On the commentary he talks at length about all the corners he had to cut to get the movie made with lots of very interesting stories.  One thing I was surprised by was that he constantly referred to the lead actor as his character name, "El Mariachi."  But he also talked about how involved he was in day-to-day decision making and production. Then I quickly realized it's because he was also a co-producer.  Much of the movie was made up on the spot based on whatever random person they could get to agree to be in the movie, and if they could bring their own props and costumes that was a definite plus!  For example the guy they hired to play a musician got the part because he was the only guy in town with a portable keyboard.  This is a Spanish language movie, but the lead bad guy doesn't speak Spanish, which is why he wears sunglasses to hide the fact he's phonetically reading a script.  The movie was designed to be a direct to video for the Spanish language market and they were all shocked when it suddenly became a huge hit.  He points out tons of errors and mistake in the movie that they realized existed at the time of making, but didn't care because they didn't think anyone would actually see the movie outside of a tiny Spanish language direct to video market.  Rodriguez said when the studio wanted to dub the movie into English, it cost more to dub the film than the entire cost to make it.
Desperado (4K disc) 1995 Sequel written and directed by Robert Rodriguez.  Antonio Banderas takes over the role of El Mariachi who this time around is out for revenge against a Mexican drug dealer.  Salma Hayek turns up as the love interest.  And Danny Trejo shows up as a killer who uses blades.  Is the movie good?  Any movie that has a guy carrying a rocket launcher hidden in a guitar case is by definition a good movie.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVjfmgr2cf0
Once Upon a Time in Mexico (blu-ray) Final movie in Robert Rodiguez's "Mexico Trilogy."  Antonio Banderas returns as "El Mariachi," Salma Hayek  returns as the love interest, Danny Trejo returns as a different killer.  And they are joined by Johnny Depp as a murderous CIA agent plotting something involving the overthrow of the Mexican president and a local cartel run by Willem Dafoe.  And Beyond that, I don't think anybody can explain the plot of this movie!  But I can tell you what happens in it.  A *lot* of people in Mexico get shot!  And this may be the best one in the trilogy.
Death Proof (blu-ray) 2007 movie written and directed by Quentin Tarantino and the second half of "Grindhouse."  Kurt Russell stars as a psycho stuntman who likes to murder young women using his "Death proof" car.  Rosario Dawson, Zoë Bell, and Tracie Thoms play three women who give him a run for his money when they turn out to be more than he bargained for.  There is a bit of overlap with "Planet Terror" by having some of the same characters cameo, although obviously before things take a turn for the worse in that movie.  Rose McGowan also pops up, but playing a different character.  The movie holds up very well.  One of the main reasons I even bothered to watch "Grindhouse" was the fake movie commercials that were included during the original theatrical release.  "Planet Terror" had a couple, but none were included with "Death Proof" not even as an extra on the disc.  I *wanted* to see the fake trailer for Eli Roth's "Thanksgiving."  :-/  To my surprise, Roth is actually in Death Proof playing a minor character.
Silo (AppleTV+) - "Solo" - Season 2, episode 3.  This episode alternates between Juliette interacting with the sole survivor of the Silo she found in the premier.  While back at her silo the two sides are secretly and not so secretly preparing for war.  This was another good one.
Star Trek: Lower Decks season (Paramount+) - "Fully Dilated" - Thanks to Boimler's poorly written screw up, Mariner's away team gets stranded on a planet with a time dilation.  I guess it was OK, but this episode had too many dumb things trying to pass for funny.