What Movies Did You Watch in January 2023?

Avatar 2: lol All this inflation and the world still has 2 billion to spend on this? They really reached for the bottom trope shelf didn't they. Seen this movie many times. Plot taken from Disney, dialogue written by a 14 year old for an 8 year old. Ooh rah, lol. Eh, I imagine it looked good on the big screen. I saw the version with the bad parent letting their kid talk during the beginning and end of the movie. I think he slept through the rest.

I did expect more of a cliff-hanger to lead to the next movie.
 
Babylon - The last time I saw Brad Pitt in a film, it was about the movie industry at the end of an era, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019). This film also documents the end of an era, the silent era. There have been other films about this period, The Artist (2011), Sunset Boulevard (1950) and Singing in the Rain (1952), among others, one of which plays an important part in this film. Margot Robbie personifies the crazy, anything goes, character of precensorship Hollywood. All of the actors turned in good performances. The ending was poetic and very satisfying. What was lost was mourned, but the vision of what might and would be, was illuminating.

All of the old Hollywood figures are represented in some manner. A decadent party at a grand old Hollywood mansion, which was meant to represent the Hearst Castle, opens the film. Although real names are not used and their stories fictionized, someone like Randolph Hearst himself, Fatty Arbuckle, the ingenue straight from the farm and the generic leading man are all present. Tobie Maguire's decent into a Dante's Inferno vision of Hell was a surprise as he represented the rise of organized crime during the prohibition era.

Will this picture win the Oscar for best film? Hollywood loves films about themselves, even when they are depicted in a less than flattering light. All in all, this is a great film, albeit a bit too long.

7/8
 
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Four Days in Naples (1962) - I had family members in Italy in 1943. Questions to one of them about the liberation of his village resulted in several nights of flashbacks and nightmares. That being the case, I had only a sketchy idea of what it must have been like. This film cleared all of that up for me. The opening scene of the film is summed up in a statement made by a young woman to some Italian soldiers. She joyfully calls out to them "soldiers come celebrate we lost the war". That was what the people of Naples were prepared to do. That is until the Germans move in, occupy the town and make moves to punish the people of Naples for what they perceive as a betrayal by the Italian government.

This is a gritty, and realistic telling of the story of the people of Naples rising up against their occupiers. It is a story ignored, for the most part (Captain Corelli's Mandolin (2001) being the exception), by Hollywood.

Italian with English subtitles.

6/8
 
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Last Flag Flying 7.5/8

Bryan Cranston, Laurence Fishburne, & Steve Carell are all outstanding in this movie.

If you haven't seen it, you should.
 
Plane (2023) 4.5/8 Gerard Butler plays an airline pilot who's New Year's Eve flight goes down on a war torn island in East Asia. With the help of a convicted murderer being transported on the flight, he fights off the rebels who attempt to kidnap the passengers for ransom. Plenty of action and was pretty promising at the start with the crash scene, but a bit of a letdown as the movie went on.

Violent Night (2022) 2/8 A drunken, fed up Santa drops in on a family Christmas as the family is taken hostage in a robbery attempt. Santa decides to save the day. I had high hopes for this one, but was not impressed. It won't be making my Christmas watch list.
 
Saturn 3 (UK-1980)

SciFi Horror: What???? Farrah Fawcett and Kirk Douglas star in this imitation B-Movie..... This movie is bad but anyhow Kirk and Farrah play these secluded characters on one of Saturn's moons when they get a visitor and his 8 foot robot. Well, something goes very wrong ..... it is what it is.... 3.0/8
 
El Vampiro Negro (Argentina-1953)

Horror Noir: This was a misleading title as there are no vampires in this movie. This is actually a re-imagined version of the movie "M" where we have a serial child murderer named the Black Vampire on the loose with a detective hot on the trail. This one focuses more on the women than the original...... This one was long gone but TCM got a hold of it and restored it...... 4.0/8
 
Roh (Malaysia-2019)

Horror: A mother and her two young children live secluded at the edge of the jungle. A strange little girl arrives which triggers horrifying events. This is a slow burn that may be hard to understand. There was just something about this one that I really liked.... oh yeah, none of those Hollywood scare gimmicks that ruin films...... this was is bare knuckled.... 5.5/8
 
Devotion - I very much enjoyed this film. The aerial segments were well done and, I understand, that they were filmed with the use of real aircraft and minimal CGI. The story is compelling and depicted true heroes. I would have liked to have heard more about the situation on both sides of the Chosin Reservoir, but, I am a bit of a history nerd. The level of Korean War knowledge by your average American is a shame.

6/8
 
The Judge (2014) 6/8 Star studded cast including Robert Downey, Jr., Robert Duvall, Vincent D'Onofrio, Billy Bob Thorton and more. Downey plays a defense lawyer who returns to his hometown after his mother passes unexpectedly. His father (Duvall) has served as the local judge for 40 plus years and their relationship is strained to say the least. Downey ends up defending his father in a murder trial and in the process digs up the past he's been avoiding. A little too much melodrama for my taste but a good story. Not sure how I missed this one when it originally came out.
 
Sick (2022) 5/8 Vamps reviewed this one and didn't like it much. I thought it was a solid suspense/horror movie that was somewhat poking fun of those that lost it over Covid at the beginning of the pandemic.
 
Willy's Wonderland: 4.75/8

Well that was interesting. I'm not sure I can do it justice to describe. I'll let Wikipedia try:

"It follows a quiet drifter who is tricked into cleaning up an abandoned family entertainment center as he is stalked by eight murderous animatronic characters possessed by the souls of a cannibalistic killer and his seven psychotic acolytes. "


Essentially, Nicholas Cage is trapped inside an abandoned Chuck E Cheese type restaurant where the animatronic characters have been possessed by a punch of psycho killers that I believe had died in the restaurant.


Fun fact, Cage, the main character, doesn't have a single word of dialogue in the entire movie.
 
"A Ghost Story" (2017): 3/8

I'd seen a promo pic of this when it came out, kept thinking it was a bad takeoff on "Scream" or one of the old "Halloween" flicks. Watched it on cable the other night. Very un-satisfying. Kept thinking of Fellini's "8 1/2".

To be honest, this movie had a lot of potential. The bit about the "neighbor" ghost could have been explored more fully, and taken the place of those long drawn out scenes of the widow walking back and forth with zero expression on her face.

In the the end I felt like I'd taken a chance on an art film at the old University Flick at OSU, and chose poorly. Interesting effort, just not my cup of tea.
 
NewOldBlood said:
The Judge (2014) 6/8 Star studded cast including Robert Downey, Jr., Robert Duvall, Vincent D'Onofrio, Billy Bob Thorton and more. Downey plays a defense lawyer who returns to his hometown after his mother passes unexpectedly. His father (Duvall) has served as the local judge for 40 plus years and their relationship is strained to say the least. Downey ends up defending his father in a murder trial and in the process digs up the past he's been avoiding. A little too much melodrama for my taste but a good story. Not sure how I missed this one when it originally came out.
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I stumbled into that one in a hotel room one night on a trip recently. I probably started watching about 10 minutes into it, so I had to IMDB it to figure out what the movie was, but I agree with you. Good story, although a little drawn out and melodramatic.
 
A Man Called Otto (2022) 6.5/8 A little on the mushy side, but a good story nonetheless and Tom Hanks kills it like usual. A true family affair, as his actual son plays a younger Otto and his wife is one of the producers.
 
NewOldBlood said:
The Judge (2014) 6/8 Star studded cast including Robert Downey, Jr., Robert Duvall, Vincent D'Onofrio, Billy Bob Thorton and more. Downey plays a defense lawyer who returns to his hometown after his mother passes unexpectedly. His father (Duvall) has served as the local judge for 40 plus years and their relationship is strained to say the least. Downey ends up defending his father in a murder trial and in the process digs up the past he's been avoiding. A little too much melodrama for my taste but a good story. Not sure how I missed this one when it originally came out.
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This movie doesn't get nearly enough love.
 
Nightmare Weekend (UK-1986)

Horror: oh boy........ so we have some puppet named George, silver balls that change people, hot women that have a hard time keeping their clothes on, some biker arcade where the Pinball Wizard has intercourse while playing as others dance to 80's music, A scientist trying to do good but a vicious b***h that takes advantage of it to do bad..... this one was bad, very bad but was it bad enough to be good? Well, not for me..... 2.0/8

I was going to post the trailer so you can share in my pain but every trailer has nudity in it... lol, ... The version I watched was the uncut version with all the goodies in it and the only reason for an immature adult to watch but I cannot imagine trying to watch the cut version which makes up the majority of the copies out there.....

ok, I did find this one scene to give you some idea....
 
Hell to Eternity (1961) Somewhat dissapointed in this WWII film. If I had watched just the first and last fifteen minutes, I would have been happier.
Notably, the actor who played the Japanese commander who commited harikari was the same actor who had the same demise in Bridge Over the River Kwai. Talk about being type-cast! I'll be nice and give it 5/8.

Sausage Party (2016) I watched about fifteen minutes of this and decided I could not watch another two hours. Anyone seen this?

 
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