What Movies Did You Watch in October 2021?

1917 (2019)- this movie follows two British soldiers in their mission to deliver a message to from a general to a colonel to call off a doomed attack. Very suspenseful without a lot of dialogue. At times it is a little strained in the dangers that are escaped. 6/8.
 
Frankenstein (1931) - I have seen this a dozen times and I still cannot get over Karloff's performance. An incredible film.

7/8
 
Halloween Kills 4/8. The first 45 mins were great then it just hit a wall and the pacing got very slow. Abrupt ending as well. I did like that they didn’t try to force humor on us like the 2018 version.
 
Crank 2 : High Voltage a 1 of 8 : just weird, if wasn't for the T&A it would slide to 0.

P.S. I never saw Crank and I only payed 45 cents for the DVD at a thrift store (1/2 price sale)
The film made money at the box office.

:>---

EGA
 
Army of Frankensteins (2013 or 2014 (?)) - I was so hoping for a witty and funny film like Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter (2012) but I was very disappointed. Bad, bad, bad bad, bad. Take a couple hot African-American nurses with modern hair styles serving in the Union army during the Civil War, then add a convoluted story without any reasonable explanation for the reanimation of a "frankenstein monster" that opens a portal to a multiverse and a time warp at the same time. It is just a mess. No one involved with this should ever work again.

0/8
 
Purplemojo said:
Army of Frankensteins (2013 or 2014 (?)) - I was so hoping for a witty and funny film like Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter (2012) but I was very disappointed. Bad, bad, bad bad, bad. Take a couple hot African-American nurses with modern hair styles serving in the Union army during the Civil War, then add a convoluted story without any reasonable explanation for the reanimation of a "frankenstein monster" that opens a portal to a multiverse and a time warp at the same time. It is just a mess. No one involved with this should ever work again.

0/8
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Harsh grade. Not even 1/8 for the hot nurses?
 
BlackHawk said:
Harsh grade. Not even 1/8 for the hot nurses?
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Yeah, I thought about that but I had to take off for all of the anachronisms and silly mistakes. They should have hired a military consultant and a historian. A brigadier general walking around with a canteen over his shoulder? Never would have happened. A captain leading, what was supposed to be a company with about 20 soldiers? Silly. The fact that they showed soldiers firing time and time again, without showing anyone reloading? Intolerable. Worst line of the movie: "you can't go around sewing cannons to people!". Worst moment: one of the nurses making a non-sensical move that was completely contrary to her own interest and everyone she cared about and would have returned her and her sister to slavery.

Bad, bad, bad, baaaaaaaaaad!
 
Ratu Ilmu Hitam (Indonesia-1981)

Horror: "The Queen of Black Magic" ... when a woman was wronged and left for dead she is saved by one who teaches her the art of Black Magic so she can seek revenge. This one had it's moments but not enough for me..... 3.5/8
 
From a House on Willow Street (South Africa-2016)

Horror: Be careful who you kidnapped as they just might be possessed by an evil spirit. This one was a bit interesting but they had to go ahead and do that Hollywood crap jump scares.... Shame, Shame, Shame!!!!! I'll forgive it.... did not care for the ending either but for some reason as a whole I kind of liked it.... 4.0/8
 
The Stranger (Chile-2014)

Horror: This one has Eli Roth's name on it but I doubt he had anything to do with it. A stranger shows up in a small town that some town folk thugs don't care for which leads to a whole series of bloody events..... The story was pretty sweet, the acting was OK but why in the heck did they dub the voices which at times really was a distraction. I mean, they were speaking English so what was the point of it????? .... Anyhow... this was a pretty decent find.... 5.5/8
 
12 Mighty Orphans 6/8 not the highest rated and the story has been done better but I liked it. The bad guys were a bit to snidely. The setting was new and fun. I think it did teenaged boys better than a lot of movies in the genre, even better than Friday Night Lights and Remember the Titans.

I'll watch it again, particularly after seeing the end credits.
 
eastisbest said:
12 Mighty Orphans 6/8 not the highest rated and the story has been done better but I liked it. The bad guys were a bit to snidely. The setting was new and fun. I think it did teenaged boys better than a lot of movies in the genre, even better than Friday Night Lights and Remember the Titans.

I'll watch it again, particularly after seeing the end credits.
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I wondered about this one. It got very little pub but looked like it might be decent.
 
irish_buffalo said:
I wondered about this one. It got very little pub but looked like it might be decent.
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It's an evening's watch at the least. On the laptop, tv movie of the week. On a big screen, the football scenes would have been fun for sure. I'm not sure why so little pub. You can tell it was a Texan labor of love as not only is it about texas football but the cast is heavily laiden with Texans. Dent is the writer, who worked with Pizzo on My All American, which I posted about last month. Pizzo of Rudy and Hoosier fame, so "genre."

Dune (2021) 5/8. I'm not a HUGE Dune fane so to me, it was a slow build just like the books. Even at 2 and a half hours, seems the spent little building the relationships and politics, which were the parts I liked best. Still, there wasn't a lot of wasted scenery. Minute here, minute there wasted IMO.
 
Guilty: 5.75/8


For A Netflix movie, I found this riveting and entertaining. One of their best films to date IMO (not that this is saying too much).

Jake Gyllenhaal plays a beat cop stuck on dispatch duty as discipline for something he did. He gets a call from a woman saying she's been abducted, and the story evolves from there. The entire movie takes place in the Dispatch center. He's a bit of a jerk, but trying to do the right thing in a situation that he feels a connection to.

I happened to see the cast list, and it's got quite a good cast even though most of them you only hear from over the phone. Riley Keough, Peter Sarsgaard, Ethan Hawke, Bill Burr, and Paul Dano all play roles that Jake speaks to over the phone.
 
Dune: 6/8 - it's a solid sci-fi film worth seeing on the big screen.

The film proved to me what I thought while reading the novel: this story would work best as a 2-3 season show. As a show, it could afford the time necessary for proper world building and allow the audience a complete sense of the politics and scheming.

Even at 2.5 hours, the film feels like it was forced to make cuts. We barely get to know the characters, the different houses, the various factions, how the universe functions, etc.. The story is not explained in great depth aside from what's going on with Paul and the Bene Gesserit. Given how passionate the director is about the story, I suspect there was enough filmed to make a huge director’s cut/extended edition. The director has never done one before, but this feels like the right project for it.
 
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for those who have seen Dune, this is Part 1 of a planned 2 movie story.

I don't know much about the story other than the bad previous version from like the 70's, but I know this is intended to be a two parter like IT Chapter 1 & Chapter 2.
 
Crusaders said:
It literally say "Part One" in the opening credits and ends without a conclusion lol
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I don't even recall that. People not dune nerds knew this is a multi-parter no more than anyone watching Star Wars knew it was the first of three fourth of ... so many. It wasn't even a very eventful first parter. It should have been able to stand on it's own legs and it doesn't.

That's not me saying it's bad. That's me saying it's not good in and of it's ownself as Star Wars was. It's a good first part maybe. I don't think little kiddies are going to leave this movie enchanted. They didn't have enough that part of the story that would have attracted teens. I think they were stupid to not film both parts, hedging their bets whether it would make money. It's going to cover costs just off of starvation for movies. The question is did the first one wet appetites enough that people will want the second part.

Brolin sucked balls as Gurney. Momoa was good as Duncan (though a bit slow fighting). Bautista couldn't not come off comical to me. Didn't much care for Bardem either at first. The rest of the casting was solid for me.
 
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Momoa is better than I expected, but he also has more to do than Brolin or Bardem, who I think do well with the few scenes they have and what Villenueve asks them to do with their roles. There aren’t any bad performances.
 
Brolin just seemed out of sync to me, as if he were acting a different role or really, not acting at all. Just reading lines. Who knows, could be memories of a different role working on my head. I think more time on relationships was a must. To someone not familiar with the story (or where it's headed) those deaths must have seemed a "who cares." But where to make cuts? Taking the story to where they did would seem the only fitting place and there wasn't a lot of waste to get it there.
 
Halloween Kills. 3/8 Awful. I feel like the story went a completely different direction from what we saw in 2018. Violence exchanged for suspense as well. Dumb.
Addams Family 2. 4/8 Disappointed. But, the time w my daughter is what counts on this one. She’s happy, I’m happy.
 
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PantherProud said:
Guilty: 5.75/8


For A Netflix movie, I found this riveting and entertaining. One of their best films to date IMO (not that this is saying too much).

Jake Gyllenhaal plays a beat cop stuck on dispatch duty as discipline for something he did. He gets a call from a woman saying she's been abducted, and the story evolves from there. The entire movie takes place in the Dispatch center. He's a bit of a jerk, but trying to do the right thing in a situation that he feels a connection to.

I happened to see the cast list, and it's got quite a good cast even though most of them you only hear from over the phone. Riley Keough, Peter Sarsgaard, Ethan Hawke, Bill Burr, and Paul Dano all play roles that Jake speaks to over the phone.
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Halfway through. Holds the tension pretty well.
 
Dune: 6.75/8

A part of me wants to rewatch the previous version to see how they possibly fit both parts into one movie, but at the same time I also remember watching the previous version and really have no desire to see it ever again.

As for this version, I’m so glad I didn’t watch it on HBO max. The scope and scale and score all need to be experienced in theater if it all possible. It is beautifully shot in as others have said there’s not a bad performance in the movie. My knowledge of the story is pretty much relegated to the previous version (much of which I forget) and the trailers for the new version, so I can’t really speak to how fleshed out some characters are in the book. I would say for the movie though Josh Brolin and Jason Momoa‘s characters serves their purpose well. Sure there could’ve been more character development for them, but I don’t think the story suffers because of the lack of it. Overall I think it is wonderfully cast and they were smart to cast it with a lot of famous people that would draw in various types of audiences. I saw it with my daughter and she was intrigued by the trailer when we saw it months ago, but I also think what drew her to wanting to see it was that Timothée Chalamet and Zendaya were in it. That helps draw in a younger crowd. She ended up loving the movie for what it was not just who was in it, but she also said “it didn’t hurt that everybody in it was hot.”

As for being the next Star Wars or Lord of the rings as the commercial suggest, I think it’s a near miss. It’s a great story but it doesn’t have the magic of those two stories. Also, while this is the first part of a two-parter, this one does a good job of standing on its own feet without needing to know what happens next.
 
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eastisbest said:
Brolin just seemed out of sync to me, as if he were acting a different role or really, not acting at all. Just reading lines. Who knows, could be memories of a different role working on my head. I think more time on relationships was a must. To someone not familiar with the story (or where it's headed) those deaths must have seemed a "who cares." But where to make cuts? Taking the story to where they did would seem the only fitting place and there wasn't a lot of waste to get it there.
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I thought Brolin was fine. I feel like we probably wouldn’t bat an eye if it was in nobody actor playing the role. I suspect some people are probably reacting the way you are because it was a small role for such a famous actor. As for Javier Bardem, without knowing more I would guess he has a bigger role in part two.
 
Gurney doesn’t have a huge role overall in the story. He does important things but isn’t seen a whole bunch. Seems like they got all these big name actors because they could get all their scenes done in a week or two and still cash a decent check.

Stilgar will have a bigger role in part 2.

WB/HBO has all but confirmed they’re going to make the second part. I know Villenueve also wants to do the second book as a third movie. It’s much smaller in scale so I could see it happening even if part 2 isn’t a huge success just because it won’t need half the budget. But the way they’ve glossed over the politics and scheming of the universe, I’m not sure if it was make much sense to do it.
 
Crusaders said:
Gurney doesn’t have a huge role overall in the story. He does important things but isn’t seen a whole bunch. Seems like they got all these big name actors because they could get all their scenes done in a week or two and still cash a decent check.

Stilgar will have a bigger role in part 2.

WB/HBO has all but confirmed they’re going to make the second part. I know Villenueve also wants to do the second book as a third movie. It’s much smaller in scale so I could see it happening even if part 2 isn’t a huge success just because it won’t need half the budget. But the way they’ve glossed over the politics and scheming of the universe, I’m not sure if it was make much sense to do it.
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I guess it depends on how they handle it. Neither Yoda or the Emperor were in A New Hope and look how important they ended up being.
 
PantherProud said:
I thought Brolin was fine. I feel like we probably wouldn’t bat an eye if it was in nobody actor playing the role. I suspect some people are probably reacting the way you are because it was a small role for such a famous actor. As for Javier Bardem, without knowing more I would guess he has a bigger role in part two.
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I suspect you're not able to understand how other people think.

As for me, I never considered Brolin a famous actor in the sense I think "famous." I just thought he sucked. Nothing more than that.
 
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