Throwbacks

I was wondering what everyone's opinion of a throwback movie is?

Advice for taking a baby to the movies?

Hey everyone, I have been away for a long times, and currently do not watch movies anymore. I cannot even remember the last movie I watched. I had a question for the parents on here. Or a couple.

So I had a son this past October, he is a very chill baby, but I still haven't taken him to a theater. Im super nervous about taking him the first time. He loves watching the tv when its on.

He is 4 months old, 5 months on the 11th. Im taking my grandma to watch the new scream movie when it comes out, and I will he taking my son. We will be going to an earlier movie on a weekday as I dont know how he will react. Do the parents on here have any tips? My dad apparently took me all the time, but cant seem to give me any helpful tips.

Also, as a first time mom, would the sound system be too loud? Should I look for baby ear muffs? Any help appreciated. Because I really miss going to the movies.

Creed III 2023

When I went to see Michael B. Jordan's Creed III in theaters, I saw a trailer for some crap Damon/Affleck movie about original Michael Jordan...'s shoes. A movie about a shoe doesn't seem interesting to me. Especially with those guys in it. I hope those two actually have sex with each other in their next movie, because the sexual tension is unbearable.

Creed 3 is okay. At least they didn't kill Rocky off or some stupid shit. They simply ignore mention of him almost entirely. It's LA set instead of Philly and I guess I can't fault them for wanting to let go of the old characters, but Stallone was sorely missed. Jonathan Majors has been on a role though. I don't hate him. Yet.

#Review

Tammy and the T-Rex 1994

Aka "Tanny and the Teenage T-Rex", even though everybody still calls her Tammy. Featuring George 'Buck' Flower as a sheriff trying to stop the mad scientist's murderous robot T-Rex that has Paul Walker's brain inside of it.

Denise Richards and Paul Walker only ever wanted to fuck each other, but he just had to go comatose after brawling with mountain lions, didn't he?! The computers aren't good enough to run that animatronic. We need a human brain in there, and Paul Walker was born for this role.

I watched the uncut version, because I needed a gore point. The effects are almost good. It's a stupid movie. A true clusterfuck of a screenplay with a moderate success rate. I've certainly seen worse. Terry Kiser always played a great asshole. I hope he's an asshole in real life. That would be cool.

#Review

M3GAN 2023

The plot is reminiscent of Child's Play 2019. Megan is a prototype designed to bond with a child, and it's always expected that the robots will go haywire and ignore morality. Does that make this movie a derivative waste of time? No, it's actually pretty legit. Don't let kids spend too much time with their devices, or those devices will remove you from the equation.

Obviously, there will be some dickhead businessman trying to rush an unfinished project onto the market, but shouldn't we do some more tests? You know, to prevent some Skynet type of shit?

The doll itself is pretty cool. There is a human acting under there, so it isn't some green-screen cgi garbage. Played by some child dancer, the movements are pretty interesting, and I guess some people are weirded out by seeing that "thing" dance, but by then, I think M3GAN actually won me over. I wish I had a psycho humanoid robot toy when I was growing up.

#Review

SubUrbia 1996

From the director of Dazed and Confused is another coming-of-age story about young adults who loiter outside of a convenience store as they try to figure out what to do with their post high school lives.

I liked it. It was thoughtful, albeit aimless, and the setting was relatable. Small town in Texas, pretty boring, but real. You got your conflicted cynic (Giovanni Ribisi), his activist punky artist girlfriend, the immature annoying sidekick (Steve Zahn), the jaded drunk nihilist (Nicky Katt), the timid girl with drug and domestic issues, the newfound rockstar who made it big because he left this shitty town, and the rock star's handler (Parker Posey). All these characters hang out in the lot of a convenience store, much to the dismay of the Indian store owner.

It's a surprisingly engaging story about nothing that takes a dark turn. Then there's another twist that will blow your mind on account of it being so unrealistic: the annoying dumbass gets the girl?!

@tromafreak is absolutely right about Steve Zahn in this. I understand why a group would want to include a character like him. He makes everyone look better by contrast. What an obnoxious fucking twat. Why didn't Samir^Nazeer blast him into oblivion? Or at least shoot him in the nuts RoboCop style to prevent him from procreating? Then we wouldn't have that unbelievable ending, and I would give this movie 5 stars instead of 4.

Richard Linklater is pretty good.

#Review

Discussion on Q. Tarantino films?

The past couple of weeks I've been rewatching his films which started by bumping into Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. I thought it was good the 1st time I viewed it but appreciated it much more this 2nd time around. So I started digging out old DVDS and searching out what I didn't own, I even watched films he doesn't consider his but either co-wrote, co-directred or produced like Killing Zoe, Four Rooms and Dusk til Dawn. I didn't bother rewatching Reservoir Dogs or Pulp Fiction cause I can practically recite them while watching, I've seen them so many times. After viewing just about his whole filmography I've come to this...The Hateful Eight is his most underrated film. We will never again see a film like this, not only for it's content but the way it's filmed. Not only was it not shot digitally but he filmed it in 70mm, something at the time not done for over a decade or 2. The panoramic widescreen is just unbelievable when and if noticed. Jennifer Jason Leigh was nominated for an Oscar even though those awards have been irrelevant since 2000 imo. You will never again see a performance like the one she gives simply cause it's not allowed anymore. Anyways, so if I think The Hateful Eight is his most underrated which of his films do I think is his most overrated?... IMO it's a coin toss between Death Proof and Inglorious Bastards. Debate me, leave your thoughts or ignore me...it's fine.

The Believers (1987)

Not everyone likes this movie, but I think it gets a lot of things right, somehow. I don't think I completely understand why or how, but I'm going to just say what my thoughts are.

If you don't instantly remember what it is... it's that 80's Santeria run amok in NYC movie, with Martin Sheen, Helen Shaver, and Jimmy Smits. And Robert Loggia! Quite a cast, really.

Apparently it's not exactly a Santeria movie. It's about some very dark, evil form of witchcraft that has some common ground with Santeria, but is different. Just from Googling around, I get the sense that a lot of people of Caribbean and/or Latino heritage really disliked the movie because it portrayed Santeria negatively. I'm not sure what to think about that... I know that people's feelings about these things are real, and just because I personally don't understand what the hell kind of problem people have with the movie, doesn't mean that people might not have a legitimate gripe. So, I'm sorry if i pisses anyone off that I like the movie. I'm not making any kind of political statement in liking it, I just think it's a pretty effective scary movie in some ways.

Right at the beginning, there's a really scary scene where a woman gets electrocuted. Yeesh. And, relatedly (I think), there are several scenes throughout the movie where we see a kid's little 80's plastic toy robots getting turned on, and making their funny little noises and moving around. There is also at least one scene in a thunderstorm. I think these things are supposed to make us think about electricity, a force that most of us don't exactly understand, but which is present in our lives at all times, whether as a force for good or for evil. I think the director probably wanted us to feel like ths supernatural world is sort of like electricity in that way. It is around us all the time, and it can be harnessed in some ways, but it can really fuck you up bad if you don't treat it appropriately. I don't know, that's just how I interpret the electicity stuff in the movie.

There are also a LOT of scenes that involve food preparation, in kitchens and in restaurants. I am having a harder time stating clearly exactly what they intended by including so many of these scenes. Maybe it's the idea that we are constantly taking different life forms into our bodies? Like, to draw a parallel with being possessed, and making possession seem less outlandish, and similar to things we do and experience every day?? There are scenes where people go into a sort of trance, and I think they are supposed to be possessed.

What else could the food preparation scenes mean.... I feel like they must mean something. Maybe to bring up the idea that we are all part of a web of life, or a chain of being, and that there are other lifeforms below us that we know of... just to raise the possibility that there could be other lifeforms ABOVE us, tthat we don't ordinarily percieve but which could exert power over us if they chose? I bet I'm close here, even if that's not exactly right.

Jimmy Smits had a really cool part, I thought. He played an NYC cop with some kind of Caribbean heritage, and he knew right at the beginning that there was some seriously awful shit going down. The look on his face when he was crying "they know who I am... do you want them to know who you are?" really gives me the willies. He was supposed to basically be an American guy, but maybe he had lived in Cuba or somewhere as a child, and had been exposed to some freaky Santeria-ish cultural stuff that was still in his mind.

Anyway, I coud probably say more about this.... Helen Shaver was a babe, for one thing. Anybody have any thoughts on this movie??

Return to Return to Nuke 'Em High

Tornadoes are in the forecast today. I fear I may perish as I have nothing left to live for, for I have just seen what is probably the the trashiest trash epic ever.

Return to Return to Nuke 'Em High (Vol II) is the dumbest shit ever. Loaded with dicks, dykes, ducks, farts, titties, and toxic waste. Featuring trademark cameos by Lemmy, Joe Fleishaker, Stan Lee, and Ron Jeremy as God. It's sad that we wont see more of them in the next Troma movie, if ever there will be one. Except in archive footage, of course. It wouldn't be a Troma movie without that same ol' car crash from Kabukiman, or blatant references to previous Troma projects like Toxic Crusaders and Return Vol 1.

As usual, there's an evil corporation out to poison everyone with unhealthy foods, and it's run by Lloyd Kaufman. If you'll remember, Lloyd did (not) play the main character in the original Nuke 'Em High film, which is why he is reprising the role here. If you're wondering why Lloyd looks so young, it's because he's been sniffing farts directly out of student's toxic assholes. It's his own personal fountain of (P)youth.

Kaufman's own Troma films are always so hectic. There's so much going in any given scene, you're bound to find something hilarious to fixate on. There's no time for sentimentality here, because there's always something crude going on. I liked when Mark Torgl jerked off into the monster's eye. Then he took a shit. It was a heart-warming scene.

I can't say this movie was lacking in any of the things i look for in a great movie. There were soooo many farts. So many topless women. So much ooze and foaming at the mouth. Highly recommended for the squeamish.

#Review

Phenomena (1985)

Aren't there any posts about Phenomena here? We have definitely discussed it, at least the excellent scene toward the end with the impromptu abrupt beheading.

I just wanted to mention something cool about it. The Wikipedia article on it says Argento intended the film to be set in a world in which the Nazis had (perhaps secretly, I think) actually WON WWII. I guess he ended up deciding not to stress that idea too overtly, and instead spent his energy developing the dreamlike atmosphere of the film. But, if you pay attention, you can definitely see very clearly that that idea was in his mind. First of all, click here, scroll down to the section titled Production, and read the little box of text that appears on the right.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenomena_(film)

Anyway, yeah, if you watch it attentively, I can totally see that that's what he had in mind as he was working on the film. Just look at the headmistress in the school, for one thing. Major Nazi vibes going on there. Bigtime. Also, the school was supposed to be the former home of Richard Wagner, sooooo... yah. Also, the only character who is obviously Jewish does not last long at all, when he shows up (see my comment earlier, concerning abrupt beheadings). This might also apply to Jennifer's roommate at the school, the French girl Sophie, just because she is French. I'm not as sure about that.... also, in the scene in the classroom, the quote they discuss has something to do with remembering the past... if you read the Argento quote in the Wikipedia text box, it makes a lot of sense that he would want to include a discussion somewhere where they talk about memory of the past.

The movie is also completely insane, of course, because of all the bug stuff, and for plenty of other reasons. I like all the shots they have of trees in the dark, at night, with branches blowing in the wind... I have talked about that here before, I think there is something very effective about including shots like that, it just helps set the mood somehow.

Anyway, yeah, I just wanted to share this.