what was the last movie you watched?

Took in Tron: Ares this morning. If you liked the other Tron movies, you probably will like this one too. I do like sci fi quite a bit so it worked for me.
Saw Tron: Ares today in IMAX with a couple of friends. All 3 of us thought it was very well done. Not a "great" movie, but definitely good, especially if you liked Tron: Legacy. I thought it was better than that one overall, but they are a bit different. The NIN score was excellent as well. The IMAX sound was excellent.

Cast is good and pretty well acted. I'm not the biggest Jared Leto fan, but he does a pretty good job here.

There is one mid-credit scene (happens pretty quick after the credits start). Also, if you go in IMAX (not sure about others?), there is a Q&A after the credits with NIN and Jeff Bridges. Short, a few interesting tidbits, but nothing earth-shattering. Jeff Bridges is a funny dude.
 
Watched House of Dynamite (Netflix) while donating blood this morning. Well acted, with a great cast. It follows several people’s storylines during a missile launch threatening a US city. I don’t particularly care for the approach (playing each story sequentially instead of concurrently), but otherwise a good flick.
 
I finally got around to watching the Ben+Matt vehicle Air (2023) about Nike's pursuit of a Michael Jordan endorsement deal...

Matt Damon and Ben Affleck are both in their comfort zone as "the smartest guy in the room" and "the guy who thinks he's smarter than he is" respectively, so neither is really stretching their range here but it still makes for an enjoyable if predictable dynamic. There's also a lot to like here as a basketball fan as one humorous scene early on in the movie hinges on our knowledge of the players in the 1984 draft and how their NBA careers turned out and our protagonist is a basketball junkie who feels that his player evaluation skills are underappreciated by his employer but ultimately is vindicated in the end. Call it wish fulfillment.

I think Viola Davis steals the movie in the role of Deloris Jordan (Michael's mom) despite only appearing in 3 scenes. And I was surprised how much I was moved emotionally by the final scene when she pleads to Sonny Vacarro (Damon) that her son deserves to share in the profits from his likeness. I was too young at the time to appreciate Michael as a basketball player -- he was already a legend by the time I started dipping my toes in NBA fandom and without cable my opportunities to watch 'outside-of-market' NBA games in the 1990s were almost non-existent. But I certainly could and did appreciate him as a cultural icon and seeing it spelled out in the movie how much this one contract changed the lives of so many athletes was pretty powerful.

There was one head-scratching decision that I did not like which was the intercutting of a monologue delivered by Matt Damon during the Nike pitch to the Jordan family with newspaper clippings from Jordan's NBA career -- most shockingly the murder of his father in 1993. I didn't see the need for that and absent any kind of context, it came across as tone-deaf to me in what was otherwise a feel-good story about one of the most pivotal events in the history of sports marketing. But aside from that one quibble, I was pleasantly surprised. This was a cut above what I usually expect from a streaming service financed exclusive and worth the watch.
 
Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair is set to hit theaters nationwide on December 5th.

Kill Bill Vol 1 and 2 with additional footage including an extended anime sequence played as one film as was always intended.

Has only ever been screened in private session with Tarantino previously.

This is not a drill.
 
I finally got around to watching Repo Man (1984) last night -- a Blu Ray I picked up super cheap secondhand after Criterion announced the 4K re-release and then sat on for months, not really knowing what I had.

Wow! This is one crazy carnival ride of a historical artifact. It's got the gritty look of 70s film courtesy of legendary cinematographer Robby Müller, who absolutely made the best possible use of Los Angeles as a backdrop with gorgeous shots of the LA river and the original 6th street viaduct throughout. It's got baby-faced (and ear-pierced) Emilio Estevez playing a punk teenager who "goes straight" when Harry Dean Stanton tricks him into aiding with a car repossession. From there we get side-plots about an FBI conspiracy, aliens, a mysterious 1964 Chevy Malibu toting a nuclear payload, and a dash of street-level social commentary in the vein of The Outsiders.

I thought Fight Club was a totally original artistic statement when I first watched it as a teenager in 1999 yet here we have a movie released 15 years earlier which strikes the same chords of satirical dark comedy crossed with a bitingly cynical take on the reality of economic inequality lurking just below the surface of the American dream. It just keeps coming at you in waves as seemingly insignificant side-characters pass in and out of the frame repeatedly until the ebb and flow of subtext rises above the main plot to become the plot. I'm probably going to have to watch this another half dozen times just to be able to unpack it all. In a lot of ways this movie felt like it predicted the indie movie boom of the 1990s, much like Easy Rider (1969) presaged the turn toward ambiguity and deconstruction in the films of the 1970s.
 
Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair is set to hit theaters nationwide on December 5th.

Kill Bill Vol 1 and 2 with additional footage including an extended anime sequence played as one film as was always intended.

Has only ever been screened in private session with Tarantino previously.

This is not a drill.
Is it going to be like 5 hours long?
 
I finally got around to watching Repo Man (1984) last night -- a Blu Ray I picked up super cheap secondhand after Criterion announced the 4K re-release and then sat on for months, not really knowing what I had.

Wow! This is one crazy carnival ride of a historical artifact. It's got the gritty look of 70s film courtesy of legendary cinematographer Robby Müller, who absolutely made the best possible use of Los Angeles as a backdrop with gorgeous shots of the LA river and the original 6th street viaduct throughout. It's got baby-faced (and ear-pierced) Emilio Estevez playing a punk teenager who "goes straight" when Harry Dean Stanton tricks him into aiding with a car repossession. From there we get side-plots about an FBI conspiracy, aliens, a mysterious 1964 Chevy Malibu toting a nuclear payload, and a dash of street-level social commentary in the vein of The Outsiders.

I thought Fight Club was a totally original artistic statement when I first watched it as a teenager in 1999 yet here we have a movie released 15 years earlier which strikes the same chords of satirical dark comedy crossed with a bitingly cynical take on the reality of economic inequality lurking just below the surface of the American dream. It just keeps coming at you in waves as seemingly insignificant side-characters pass in and out of the frame repeatedly until the ebb and flow of subtext rises above the main plot to become the plot. I'm probably going to have to watch this another half dozen times just to be able to unpack it all. In a lot of ways this movie felt like it predicted the indie movie boom of the 1990s, much like Easy Rider (1969) presaged the turn toward ambiguity and deconstruction in the films of the 1970s.

I watched Repo Man and Stalker back-to-back not long ago. That was a trippy Saturday.

Very different vibes obviously, but both were mesmerizingly weird and I loved them for it.
 
Watched Guillermo Del Toro’s version of Frankenstein on Netflix last night. I liked it quite a bit. GDT told the story from multiple perspectives. Well worth a watch
Oscar Isaac delivers his usual solid performance as Viktor Frankenstein
Jacob Elordi was excellent as the monster, played him with some heart
Christopher Walz and Mia Goth also contributed a great deal to the movie.
 
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