Recently Watched Movies 2023

[HuskyHawk]

Crazy Heart (2009) - This film about a country music musician stars Jeff Bridges and was directed by Scott Cooper. Bridges plays a guy who was once a big country music star. However, for many years he has been horribly alcoholic, and that has contributed to the downward spiral of his career. He is now reduced to performing in small town bars and similar places. He is now reduced to just trying to get by with life.

The music in this film is probably the best thing in this movie, it is very good, and Jeff Bridges does well with it. This film also features a number of other actors who do well in this film, including Maggie Gyllenhaal (playing a woman who he is trying to develop a relationship with), Colin Farrell (as another country music singer who the Bridges character was once a mentor to), and Robert Duvall.

I thought this was a very solid film, and as I mentioned before, thought the music is quite good. I suspect that T. Bone Burnett, a music producer who produced many solid music albums, also made a very nice contribution to the music in this film as well.

It's good, other than suspending disbelief in a few instances with Maggie & Jeff. Collin Farrel was particularly good. Ryan Bingham is responsible for some of the music. The movie is dedicated to Stephen Bruton, the legendary Texas musician, and a lifelong friend of Burnett's, wrote or co-wrote most of the original music performed by Bridges and Ryan Bingham. Collin Farrel is also actually singing here. The best song is "Fallin' & Flying" which shows up twice, once with Farrel and Bridges, once just Bridges.

 

[dbmill]

It's good, other than suspending disbelief in a few instances with Maggie & Jeff. Collin Farrel was particularly good. Ryan Bingham is responsible for some of the music. The movie is dedicated to Stephen Bruton, the legendary Texas musician, and a lifelong friend of Burnett's, wrote or co-wrote most of the original music performed by Bridges and Ryan Bingham. Collin Farrel is also actually singing here. The best song is "Fallin' & Flying" which shows up twice, once with Farrel and Bridges, once just Bridges.

Certainly agree with you on the disbelief on Maggie/Jeff. Of course, it's hard to imagine after a while why anyone would want to associate with the Bridges character given the affects of his alcoholism on him.

 

[nwhoopfan]

Finally saw Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. Wow, that was really good. I guess Marvel can still make a quality movie.

 

[dbmill]

Confess, Fletch (2022) - This movie stars Jon Hamm and is directed by Greg Mottola. Hamm plays Fletch, who is a former investigative reporter who is trying to find a multimillion dollar art collection. However, when Fletch arrives in Boston, who finds a dead woman when he arrives at a town house that he is renting and about to move into. He reports this death to the police. However, the police make Fletch the primary suspect in their investigation into this death. So the movie basically has Fletch trying to find out who killed this woman, in addition to trying to track down the art collection. This is not a great movie, but it is ok, and certainly watchable and entertaining. However while this movie is billed as a crime comedy, I found it entertaining, but not all that humorous.

 

[HuskyHawk]

The Covenant. Guy Richie movie, stars Jake Gyllenhaal as a Spec Ops Seargent and squad leader in Afghanistan. The story revolves around an interpreter who is assigned to his squad, and relates to the promises the U.S. made to such people and the risks they were taking. I don't want to say more, but it's really good. Definitely watch this. It just moved from rental status to free on Prime.

 

[HuskyHawk]

Two movies on flights this week.
M3GAN - story of a robot toy that goes a bit out of control. This isn't bad really. It's not a gore fest horror movie and most of it is more about people and how they relate to this android doll and to each other. Don't want to spoil it with detail. It's pretty decent, much more intelligent than I expected.

Jumanji-The next level. Same crew, The Rock, Karen Gillan, Kevin Hart, Jack Black and adds Awkwafina. Danny Devito and Danny Glover have key parts and add a lot of humor. The kids have gone their separate ways, and one of them feels a bit inadequate. Trying to get that feeling back, he inadvertently goes back in the game. I honestly laughed quite a bit in this one, it's a pretty funny cast. Karen Gillan in a Ruby Roundhouse outfit remains a 10/10 for me.

 

[nwhoopfan]

"Knights of the Zodiac" was largely hated I gather. It was based on a manga, I guess not a particularly faithful adaptation? I had no familiarity with the source material, so didn't have the weight of that going into it. It was fairly entertaining, but somewhat mediocre. Veteran actors Sean Bean, Famke Janssen and Mark Dacascos did what they could with the material. I like Madison Iseman. I'd totally lost track of Nick Stahl, I remember him being a skinny kid in a few movies way back when. He's not a kid and he's not skinny now, he played a good tough guy. Anyway there were some good fight scenes. Some of the CGI was good and some not as much. It was a bit slow paced. Had a lot of mythology/back story to fill in.

 

[nwhoopfan]

I wanted to like "Robots." Seemed like an interesting concept. Two people both have a robot duplicate of themselves that they use pretty much as a slave, and to deal with all of the mundane stuff in life they don't want to bother with. Unfortunately the execution was horrible, it was just a terrible movie. It wasn't funny at all. Both main characters were so detestable you couldn't root for them or identify with them. Shailene Woodley at least threw herself into the role, but the male lead (never heard of him before) was just so bland. He's a player, she's a gold digger. They end up crossing paths, their doubles fall madly in love and run off together. The two originals have to try to track down the surrogates. Nothing particularly interesting happens.

 

[Kolumbo]

The Old Guard - 2020
Charlize Theron, KiKi Layne, Chiwetel Ejiofor
A pretty good action flick with the interesting comic book storyline. You got your shooting and whatnot. The ending leaves you anticipating the sequal. Charlize is always entertaining enough.

 

[Palatine]

The Old Guard - 2020
Charlize Theron, KiKi Layne, Chiwetel Ejiofor
A pretty good action flick with the interesting comic book storyline. You got your shooting and whatnot. The ending leaves you anticipating the sequal. Charlize is always entertaining enough.

Yes, it is always entaining to watch Charlize.

 

[Waquoit]

The Seventh Seal - My first Bergman movie, someone I had avoided for years. My loss, it was nothing what I expected. It moved, it was funny and thought-provoking. I think I'm going to go through his list. Wild Strawberries next.

 

[dbmill]

The Seventh Seal - My first Bergman movie, someone I had avoided for years. My loss, it was nothing what I expected. It moved, it was funny and thought-provoking. I think I'm going to go through his list. Wild Strawberries next.

The Seventh Seal is one of my favorite foreign movies.

 

[NEforceUConn]

The Covenant. Guy Richie movie, stars Jake Gyllenhaal as a Spec Ops Seargent and squad leader in Afghanistan. The story revolves around an interpreter who is assigned to his squad, and relates to the promises the U.S. made to such people and the risks they were taking. I don't want to say more, but it's really good. Definitely watch this. It just moved from rental status to free on Prime.

I second this recommendation

 

[nwhoopfan]

A few days ago watched "What's Love Got To Do With It?" on Hulu (not to be confused w/ the biopic about Tina Turner with the same title, minus the question mark). With Lily James and Emma Thompson, and a bunch of others I didn't know. I really liked it. Reviews on imdb are wildly all over the place. Thompson and James are mother/daughter, they live in London next door to a Pakistani family they became close with over several decades. James is totally jaded in regards to love, and she's a documentary filmmaker. One of the adult sons of the neighbors agrees to an arranged marriage (or assisted marriage in the new lingo apparently). She convinces him to let her make a documentary about his journey through this process. That's the basic set up. I thought it was a well done examination of family, love, culture, etc.

 

[nwhoopfan]

Rant mode: on. So Netflix is now officially out of the DVD rental business (as of yesterday). When that was announced, I thought Redbox might step in to fill the void, but it appears the opposite. They hardly get any new releases anymore, and several kiosks near me have disappeared recently. So I guess the obvious conclusion is that the whole idea of watching movies on DVD is dying. That must be what the majority have shown they want by their viewing preferences, but not me man! I'm pretty irked. Streaming is really not that good of a replacement, at least not the way it has worked out. I check out what's coming to Netflix and Amazon Prime streaming each month...and it's usually not much. Not enough to bother subscribing. Maybe if I subscribed to about 6 different streaming services I could catch most of the movies I want to see, but there's no way I'm doing that. I think the days of Blockbuster and Hollywood Video w/ brick and mortar locations that had most of the movies I wanted to see was far better than what we have now. Progress sucks!

 

[Deepster]

Rant mode: on. So Netflix is now officially out of the DVD rental business (as of yesterday). When that was announced, I thought Redbox might step in to fill the void, but it appears the opposite. They hardly get any new releases anymore, and several kiosks near me have disappeared recently. So I guess the obvious conclusion is that the whole idea of watching movies on DVD is dying. That must be what the majority have shown they want by their viewing preferences, but not me man! I'm pretty irked. Streaming is really not that good of a replacement, at least not the way it has worked out. I check out what's coming to Netflix and Amazon Prime streaming each month...and it's usually not much. Not enough to bother subscribing. Maybe if I subscribed to about 6 different streaming services I could catch most of the movies I want to see, but there's no way I'm doing that. I think the days of Blockbuster and Hollywood Video w/ brick and mortar locations that had most of the movies I wanted to see was far better than what we have now. Progress sucks!

Let me guess. You still get the newspaper delivered because you like the “feel of it”. LOL

 

[storrsroars]

Rant mode: on. So Netflix is now officially out of the DVD rental business (as of yesterday). When that was announced, I thought Redbox might step in to fill the void, but it appears the opposite. They hardly get any new releases anymore, and several kiosks near me have disappeared recently. So I guess the obvious conclusion is that the whole idea of watching movies on DVD is dying. That must be what the majority have shown they want by their viewing preferences, but not me man! I'm pretty irked. Streaming is really not that good of a replacement, at least not the way it has worked out. I check out what's coming to Netflix and Amazon Prime streaming each month...and it's usually not much. Not enough to bother subscribing. Maybe if I subscribed to about 6 different streaming services I could catch most of the movies I want to see, but there's no way I'm doing that. I think the days of Blockbuster and Hollywood Video w/ brick and mortar locations that had most of the movies I wanted to see was far better than what we have now. Progress sucks!

Netflix and Amazon have nothing new of interest for me at the moment. I'm not one for superhero or fantasy BS aimed at the maturity-stunted, so pickings are relatively slim everywhere. What I do is basically keep 3 services going at once (one of which is Prime since I'm a member, so that's always there) and cancel the ones I'm not using. I've gone thru Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, Peacock, Disney, and Paramount. Right now Paramount is my hot one due to 1883 and 1923. Hulu usually has something I've yet to see, but the others are skippable until they release a new thing I want to see. Basically spend around $18/mo on streaming. Cancelling is easy, so is re-upping when the time comes.

About the only thing that DVDs offered - and certainly not all of them - were the extras. Some DVDs had extras that were as good as the main movie. Others skipped it or did perfunctory garbage. But the good ones are missed.

 

[nwhoopfan]

Let me guess. You still get the newspaper delivered because you like the “feel of it”. LOL

Newspapers and magazines went down the toilet years ago, haven't bothered with either in a long time.

I do like actual books though. No kindle or whatever for me.

 

[nwhoopfan]

Netflix and Amazon have nothing new of interest for me at the moment. I'm not one for superhero or fantasy BS aimed at the maturity-stunted, so pickings are relatively slim everywhere. What I do is basically keep 3 services going at once (one of which is Prime since I'm a member, so that's always there) and cancel the ones I'm not using. I've gone thru Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, Peacock, Disney, and Paramount. Right now Paramount is my hot one due to 1883 and 1923. Hulu usually has something I've yet to see, but the others are skippable until they release a new thing I want to see. Basically spend around $18/mo on streaming. Cancelling is easy, so is re-upping when the time comes.

About the only thing that DVDs offered - and certainly not all of them - were the extras. Some DVDs had extras that were as good as the main movie. Others skipped it or did perfunctory garbage. But the good ones are missed.

I have Hulu. I've subscribed/unsubscribed to Amazon and Netlix numerous times over the years.

 

[CL82]

Netflix and Amazon have nothing new of interest for me at the moment. I'm not one for superhero or fantasy BS aimed at the maturity-stunted, so pickings are relatively slim everywhere. What I do is basically keep 3 services going at once (one of which is Prime since I'm a member, so that's always there) and cancel the ones I'm not using. I've gone thru Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, Peacock, Disney, and Paramount. Right now Paramount is my hot one due to 1883 and 1923. Hulu usually has something I've yet to see, but the others are skippable until they release a new thing I want to see. Basically spend around $18/mo on streaming. Cancelling is easy, so is re-upping when the time comes.

About the only thing that DVDs offered - and certainly not all of them - were the extras. Some DVDs had extras that were as good as the main movie. Others skipped it or did perfunctory garbage. But the good ones are missed.

Have you considered supplementing with library streaming services like a hoopla? I have been using it to download a British detective series of novels that aren't available locally in paper. I noticed that they had a movie based on the book "The Lost City of Z". I download it but have not watched it yet. I haven't looked at the movie titles but I presume that it would be similar to what you would find in a library.

For what it's worth, The Lost City of Z is a book about an actual expedition to somewhere in South America, I'll say Ecuador, but I actually don't remember anymore. They used LiDAR to locate some previously undiscovered ruins. The ruins are remote and extremely inhospitable. It is amazing that a civilization could have grown up there. There even is a curse, of a sort, that follows members home after the expedition. It's a good read.

While we're talking about good books, I'm pleased to see they have made a movie of "Killers of the Flower Moon". Yes I read that book a while ago but I remember it being a fascinating story of how the Osage Indians became fabulously wealthy when oil was discovered on the reservation that they had been forced onto. Suddenly, they began to die off increasingly mysteriously. this story also talks about the birth of the FBI who had to step in to investigate the murders. It's a good book, I'm a little wary of the movie because it doesn't seem to me like it would be a good property for Scorsese, De Niro and DiCaprio, but it is apparently getting good pre-reviews.

 

[HuskyHawk]

Have you considered supplementing with library streaming services like a hoopla? I have been using it to download a British detective series of novels that aren't available locally in paper. I noticed that they had a movie based on the book "The Lost City of Z". I download it but have not watched it yet. I haven't looked at the movie titles but I presume that it would be similar to what you would find in a library.

For what it's worth, The Lost City of Z is a book about an actual expedition to somewhere in South America, I'll say Ecuador, but I actually don't remember anymore. They used LiDAR to locate some previously undiscovered ruins. The ruins are remote and extremely inhospitable. It is amazing that a civilization could have grown up there. There even is a curse, of a sort, that follows members home after the expedition. It's a good read.

Also, Vudu does more or less the same.

 

[HuskyHawk]

Last Voyage of the Demeter. Based on a few chapters of Dracula. The voyage from Romania to London. It's not bad. Not overly scary more than tense, but it wasn't a stretch to turn it into a full film. It's not hard to imagine being stuck on a ship from that era, with a vampire, would be bad. Liam Cunningham from GOT is the one actor you'd know, he's the captain who is determined to get there on time and collect the bonus so he can retire.

Haunting of the Queen Mary. Had never heard of this. Stars Alice Eve (Anne) and Joel Fry (Patrick). This is not a low budget effort, so I'm not sure why it wasn't in theaters long. The premise is quite interesting really. The film moves back and forth showing some historical events, horrible ones, on the Queen Mary. There's also some backstory on the ship's history and eventually, how it came to be permanently docked at Long Beach as an attraction. Anne and Patrick visit, with Anne's son, and encounter some of the ghosts of its past, permanently stuck on the ship. It's pretty good except for an ending that falls rather flat and lack of clear narrative direction.

 

[storrsroars]

Have you considered supplementing with library streaming services like a hoopla? I have been using it to download a British detective series of novels that aren't available locally in paper. I noticed that they had a movie based on the book "The Lost City of Z". I download it but have not watched it yet. I haven't looked at the movie titles but I presume that it would be similar to what you would find in a library.

For what it's worth, The Lost City of Z is a book about an actual expedition to somewhere in South America, I'll say Ecuador, but I actually don't remember anymore. They used LiDAR to locate some previously undiscovered ruins. The ruins are remote and extremely inhospitable. It is amazing that a civilization could have grown up there. There even is a curse, of a sort, that follows members home after the expedition. It's a good read.

While we're talking about good books, I'm pleased to see they have made a movie of "Killers of the Flower Moon". Yes I read that book a while ago but I remember it being a fascinating story of how the Osage Indians became fabulously wealthy when oil was discovered on the reservation that they had been forced onto. Suddenly, they began to die off increasingly mysteriously. this story also talks about the birth of the FBI who had to step in to investigate the murders. It's a good book, I'm a little wary of the movie because it doesn't seem to me like it would be a good property for Scorsese, De Niro and DiCaprio, but it is apparently getting good pre-reviews.

I use Hoopla, but hadn't really thought about movies. Will check out what they've got.

 

[CL82]

I use Hoopla, but hadn't really thought about movies. Will check out what they've got.

Let me know how it is. I have thought about doing it but haven't yet. Mostly because casting from my phone to my TV can sometimes be cumbersome depending on the app but also because I'm still making my way through various watchlists.

 

[HuskyHawk]

Let me know how it is. I have thought about doing it but haven't yet. Mostly because casting from my phone to my TV can sometimes be cumbersome depending on the app but also because I'm still making my way through various watchlists.

I haven't used Hoopla. How does it work? Vudu is essentially exactly what @nwhoopfan wanted. It streams everything just like a streaming version of what was Blockbuster. I can also find most things either free or for rent, on Prime.