What did you watch this week daddy-o? (09/06-15/06)

Happy Father's Day, pops!

My rating of what you watched:
Collateral 7/10
The House 7/10 (I thought it had some funny parts.)
Mission Impossible 2 6/10

My ratings of what I watched:
Rock of Ages (2012) 7/10
What’s New Pussycat? (1965) 5/10
Death Wish 3 (1985) 6/10
The Bride of Frankenstein (1935) 9/10
You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (2010) 7/10
Audrey Rose (1977) 7/10
Amityville: The Awakening (2017) 6/10
Buffalo ’66 (1998) 7/10
Wicked Stepmother (1989) 6/10
How to Talk to Girls at Parties (2017) 7/10
New Year’s Evil (1980) 6/10
Rocky II (1979) 7/10
Murder Mystery (2019) 8/10
Rocketman (2019) 9/10
Thoroughbreds (2017) 8/10
Wish Upon (2017) 6/10
Alpha (2018) 6/10

I'm all wrapped up in this show called Bad Blood about the Montreal Mob back in the 90s
It's very good!

I'm going to have to reply as I go along, or as I remember what I watched. This is always the problem for me with your Watched This Week threads -- can't remember what I watched for the entire previous week.

Of yours, the only one is Collateral, which I loved. I agree it was slightly far-fetched towards the end, but seeing Tom Cruise in a part where he actually acted, and did a great job, was fun. I completely bought him as a sociopath. (Hmm.) Interesting premise, one I hadn't seen before. So for me it's an 8.5.

Last night I watched The Gift (2000), which looked very promising because of the cast. I love Cait Blanchett, who did her usual great job in this. Also starring Greg Kinnear, Katie Holmes, Hilary Swank, and Keanu Reeves. Written by Billy Bob Thornton (co-written). Bonus points for being set in the South, which always intrigues me for some reason. I thought it was Louisiana, but apparently it was George, or that's where it was filmed. Anyway, sounded great, but aside from Cait, I didn't like it. It just didn't hang together, and some of the performances were meh. 6/10

Started watching Mozart in the Jungle, a show from 2014 that only faintly rings a bell. It's very good! Plot summary: "Love, money, ambition and music intertwine in Mozart in the Jungle, a half hour comedic drama that looks at finding yourself and finding love while conquering New York City. A brash new maestro Rodrigo stirs up the New York Symphony as young oboist Hailey hopes for her big chance." 8.5/10

Movies:

-Kucch To Hai (2003)
Bollywood horror movie that's a rip-off of pretty much every teen slasher movie from the late 90s/early 2000s. Scenes were almost directly copied from Scream 1+2, I (Still) Know What You Did Last Summer and Urban Legend. The combination of a musical rom com and slasher clearly doesn't work. Too many songs, too little suspense, too much misplaced humour and 90% of the kills took place in the last 10 minutes.

-Jurassic Park (1993)
A classic adventure movie. One of few Spielberg movies I like.

TV Shows:

-Batman - marathon

-Relic Hunter - marathon

-The Bold and the Beautiful - marathon of very old episodes

-Twilight Zone (1959) - marathon

-Baywatch - marathon
I forgot to mention this one last week. They're showing this from the very beginning on some channel. It's something to have on in the background while making dinner. The first season is very different from the show we all know (and love?)

The Butterfly Effect (2004) - Evan Treborn suffers blackouts during significant events of his life. As he grows up, he finds a way to remember these lost memories and a supernatural way to alter his life by reading his journal. I am not a big fan of time travel movies but this one got better as it went along. Might be Kutcher's best movie. 7.5/10

Fences (2016) - A working-class African-American father tries to raise his family in the 1950s, while coming to terms with the events of his life. Great acting from Washington Davis but the movie was sort of pointless I thought. The Troy character was terrible. 6.5/10

Two series I finished up:

Mystery Road (2018) - Detective Jay Swan is assigned to investigate a mysterious disappearance on an outback cattle station. Soon, Jay's investigation uncovers a past injustice that threatens the fabric of the whole community. I watched the previous two movies so watching the series was a no brainer. I love the Jay Swan the lead detective. Great scenery of the Australian outback. A good crime show all around. 7.5/10

Trapped (2019) - An Icelandic crime/thriller series. Season 1 was very good. I thought the writing on Season was a bit weak as I saw the killer coming from a mile away. Still worth a 7/10 however.

I haven't watched any movies in quite a while but as for series:

I've been watching Shingeki no Kyojin (Attack on Titan) every week. Magnificent show and it just keeps getting better.

Also last night I watched the entirety of Elfen Lied from beginning to end. Once I started, I couldn't stop. Pretty disturbing and sad series, but very good.

i gave collateral a re-watch about a year ago. michael mann always has style to spare in his films, but i found it a bit uninvolving as i recall.

my week:

rocketman (2019) 3.5 elton john is the exact opposite of the music i generally enjoy.

but i still enjoyed this quite a bit. i don't think it's the triumph i've heard it described as, & it certainly never came close to really moving me, but it bopped along nicely, & had some very exciting & (i think) imaginative moments.

my only real frustration with it is that most of the songs were truncated, & could have been given a few more minutes to really climax.

still, as someone who doesn't care about his music & generally kinda despises flamboyance, i was mostly entertained & occasionally dazzled. worth seeing, i'd say.

the rover (2014) 4 extra 1/2 star for tortoise on the soundtrack around the 27 minute mark.

extremely grim & bleak and only the slightest hint of a story, but it benefits from that, bypassing pointless plot shenanigans to focus on its unrelenting tone of crushing morosity.

only god forgives (2013) 3.5 divisive film, i've heard it said. put me down on the pro side of the ledger.
there were a few moments where i did feel a bit lost, honestly, where i was thinking 'well why is he doing that?'
maybe i'm simple, but for a move that didn't have a ton of plot, i did feel a bit lost.
but i liked the style, loved the score, liked the way it moved at its own glacial pace yet never made me impatient.

i was a bit nervous going in cuz i'd heard it said that this was the closest film of his in style to valhalla rising, & that one absolutely bored me to death. but this didn't. i had what i can only describe as a pretty good time while watching it.

i am also in love with kristin scott thomas's character.

plank face (2016) 3 asks you to accept one hell of a character change, & i feel it has to lose a few points on that, but it's so completely earnest that i can't help but love it a little. the actors give it their best shot, & manage to keep their cool doing things that could have looked very silly. in that way it's quite a bit like harvest lake, another film from this director that i think i liked a bit more than this.

still, i give this guy credit: he's making low budget horror that's quite a bit unlike the other films you'll have seen a billion times. a bit of fresh air, almost.

drive (2011) 5 i love every single thing about this movie.

the quenn of hollywood blvd (2018) 3 very appropriate that i gave this a random watch after going on a little nicolas winding refn marathon recently. this is quite a bit like what a refn movie would be like minus about 90% of its atmosphere, a generic plodding score where the cliff martinez soundtrack usually sits & a general lack of drive, tension & sense-making.

still, it has its qualities, has a bit of a sense of trashy fun, & also has quite a few attractive women in secondary roles, including the very fetching porn star asphyixia noir.

if you go in thinking of it as refn fan fiction, you might have a good time.

phantom thread (2017) 5 i support this man's campaign against noisy breakfasts.

crushed (2009) 3 deeply silly but enormously fun low budget fatal attraction/audition knock-off. could have been a little sleazier, but i had a very good time watching it.

cemetery of splendor (2015) 5 like uncle boonmee, this puts me in the awkward position of trying to explain why i like a film that i didn't understand.

while this one doesn't seem to be quite so steeped in thai folklore & buddhism, it is every bit as spacey & languid, and i honestly can't say i knew what was going on at any given moment. certainly if someone was to ask me what this was about, i wouldn't know what to say.

& if i can't say what a movie was about, does it mean much to say that i loved it? this may be nothing more than the film adaptation of a meditation app, but i loved zoning out to it, loved the weird amoeba thing, loved the weird subtly changing lighting.

best movie i've seen this year. maybe. but don't ask me why.

playing with dolls: blood lust (2016) 1.5 this is really bad. not just 'no budget b-movie' bad. it's awful, no scares, no tension, no pacing.

it does have some genuinely good gore effects work though, which seems like a real puzzle to me. they clearly put a good amount of work into the effects, but none into creating atmosphere or providing any even modestly frightening scenes.

also, actress elonda seawood seems to be very, very proud of her boobs. i don't like to encourage anyone's vanity & obsession with their own looks, but she's not wrong.