Recently Watched Movies 2023 | Page 6 | The Boneyard

Recently Watched Movies 2023

"Mousehunt" (1997). Never saw it before. Nathan Lane and Christopher Walken were the biggest names, a few character actors who looked familiar. I realized while watching it, at some point they stopped making slapstick comedies. A shame really. It was all very silly, but entertaining. Two brothers inherit a house their father acquired. It's run down, but they come to find out it is the long lost last project of a famous architect, and is worth millions. But it is inhabited by the smartest mouse who ever lived, and proceeds to run circles around everyone trying to get rid of it. The brothers, a devilish cat, an exterminator. Some of it was animatronic but some was a real mouse. Well trained it appears. Pretty cute too.

edit--on Amazon Prime
 
Fiishermen's Friends. 2020, streaming on Prime. This tells the true story of a bunch of fishermen in Cornwall, UK. Four younger wealthy guys visit the area on a stag party (one's dad owns a manor home there). They encounter the locals, lead by Jim (James Purefoy) and at one point a group of these fishermen who sing sea shanties while at sea and for the locals. Two are in the music business and one Danny (Daniel Mays) tries to sign them as a music act. Danny is also attracted to Jim's daughter Alwyn (Tuppence Middleton). Alwyn is rather enchanting. The locals don't trust outsiders, but Danny tries to prove his worth and is transformed by the reality of Cornish life. It's quite humorous at times, and just a fantastic warm-hearted tale. The music is excellent. One of the better movie experiences I've had in recent years.
 
HuskyHawk said:
Fiishermen's Friends. 2020, streaming on Prime. This tells the true story of a bunch of fishermen in Cornwall, UK. Four younger wealthy guys visit the area on a stag party (one's dad owns a manor home there). They encounter the locals, lead by Jim (James Purefoy) and at one point a group of these fishermen who sing sea shanties while at sea and for the locals. Two are in the music business and one Danny (Daniel Mays) tries to sign them as a music act. Danny is also attracted to Jim's daughter Alwyn (Tuppence Middleton). Alwyn is rather enchanting. The locals don't trust outsiders, but Danny tries to prove his worth and is transformed by the reality of Cornish life. It's quite humorous at times, and just a fantastic warm-hearted tale. The music is excellent. One of the better movie experiences I've had in recent years.
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My wife and have been regularly attending the Connecticut Sea Music Festival (formerly the Mystic Seaport Sea Music Festival) since 1996, a festival where you are likely to hear a goodly number of sea chanties among other songs of the sea. To say the least, this film was a very good fit for us when we saw it a few years ago, we quite enjoyed it.
 
Have you ever watched a movie you were certain you'd never seen before, only to find out you'd given it a rating on Netflix? That just happened to me. At no point did any of it seem at all familiar to me. It was around 15 years ago though.

Anyway it was the 2003 (mostly) live action version of Peter Pan. I enjoyed it. Rachel Hurd-Wood was great as Wendy. At that age she kinda looked like a young Sissy Spacek. Jason Isaacs was perfect as Capt. Hook. Ludivine Sagnier played an impish, petty, jealous and kinda mean spirited Tink, which was fairly funny. The actor portraying Peter was so-so. The Saint Bernard dog/nanny stole every scene she was in. Some scenes were fairly intense for younger viewers. Hook had a tendency to shoot his underlings when they annoyed him, with fatal consequences.

There have been many versions of this done of course. I'm sure I saw the original Disney animated film at some point, but I don't remember anything about it. The Robin Williams/Dustin Hoffman take on it was pretty classic, but it's been a long time since I've seen that. There was a more recent one with Hugh Jackman, Garrett Hedlund and Rooney Mara where they tried to make Hook a good guy. It wasn't very good. Disney has yet another version coming out (maybe streaming only on their premium service) with Milla Jovovich's daughter as Wendy. Peter Pan will never grow up, and they will never stop making movie versions about him.
 
Mario Bros. Was decent but the systemic racism and stereotypes of Italian Americans is criminal.
 
"Tale of Tales (2015)." An oddity. 3 interwoven, barely connected fairly tales. Like the Grimm's version, not Disneyfied. Dark and at times macabre. Italian production. A few well known actors like Salmar Hayek, John C. Reilly, Toby Jones and Vincent Cassel. My attention waned at times, but it closed strong. Like I said odd. This is all about the law of unintended consequences. Or, be very very careful what you wish for.
 
Murder Mystery 2 (2023)

The first one was really fun and enjoyable, but the sequel was boring. Some minor chuckles but not as funny as the first. Too much of an absurd action film, especially when it's really hard picturing Adam Sandler beating the crap out of professional killers.
 
Hey Adrien! said:
Murder Mystery 2 (2023)

The first one was really fun and enjoyable, but the sequel was boring. Some minor chuckles but not as funny as the first. Too much of an absurd action film, especially when it's really hard picturing Adam Sandler beating the crap out of professional killers.
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Bad guys getting hit by busses seems to be a thing this year. Agree the sequel had its moments but first was better. The end certainly hinted at a third. I enjoy Mark Strong in most of his films but he was fairly humorless here. I did enjoy seeing Enrique Arce (Arturo in Money Heist) as the playboy.
 
“Tetris” on Apple TV is fascinating. Amazing story of how the rights to the video game came out of Russia. Insane that this is based on a true story
 
HuskyHawk said:
Fiishermen's Friends. 2020, streaming on Prime. This tells the true story of a bunch of fishermen in Cornwall, UK. Four younger wealthy guys visit the area on a stag party (one's dad owns a manor home there). They encounter the locals, lead by Jim (James Purefoy) and at one point a group of these fishermen who sing sea shanties while at sea and for the locals. Two are in the music business and one Danny (Daniel Mays) tries to sign them as a music act. Danny is also attracted to Jim's daughter Alwyn (Tuppence Middleton). Alwyn is rather enchanting. The locals don't trust outsiders, but Danny tries to prove his worth and is transformed by the reality of Cornish life. It's quite humorous at times, and just a fantastic warm-hearted tale. The music is excellent. One of the better movie experiences I've had in recent years.
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Very enjoyable. Thanks for the rec.
 
At some point I thought I wanted to see "Babylon." Then I got it, and it sat around unwatched for several weeks. Probably the 3 hour run time scared me off. I knew for sure it was going to be self indulgent, with a lot of material that should've been edited out, and wasn't. No movie ever needs to be 3 hours long. I finally watched it. I was right. Pretty meh. A few good moments here and there. The performances were fine, especially Margot Robbie. But it just didn't seem to have much to say, which is bad for a very long movie. And as much as the Roaring 20s had a reputation as a wild time, I think they injected quite a bit of late 20th or early 21st century anachronisms into the mix, which was pretty dumb I thought. There was some pretty crazy and gross stuff going on, which added absolutely nothing. Huge cast, many of which had almost nothing to do, they were just there for a scene or two.
 
nwhoopfan said:
At some point I thought I wanted to see "Babylon." Then I got it, and it sat around unwatched for several weeks. Probably the 3 hour run time scared me off. I knew for sure it was going to be self indulgent, with a lot of material that should've been edited out, and wasn't. No movie ever needs to be 3 hours long. I finally watched it. I was right. Pretty meh. A few good moments here and there. The performances were fine, especially Margot Robbie. But it just didn't seem to have much to say, which is bad for a very long movie. And as much as the Roaring 20s had a reputation as a wild time, I think they injected quite a bit of late 20th or early 21st century anachronisms into the mix, which was pretty dumb I thought. There was some pretty crazy and gross stuff going on, which added absolutely nothing. Huge cast, many of which had almost nothing to do, they were just there for a scene or two.
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I saw it was free on HBOMax. Wife and I put it on. 15 minutes in we turned it off.

Maybe I'm getting old, but life is too short to spend 2-3 hours watching miserable awful people being miserable and awful.
 
Babylon (2022)- Damien Chazelle is putting together an impressive body of work, Whiplash, La La Land, First Man are a pretty good start to a career. He has a lot of juice in Hollywood right now. Babylon has the look and feel of the young hot director losing his ability to edit himself and throwing himself into a passion project that is a steaming pile of hot garbage.

Babylon is a self indulgent, over the top look at silent film Hollywood as the talkies change the town. This is been done to death. Chazelle sticks a pitch fork in it but not before he he gets his fill of golden showers, elephant dung and rat eating. Yes, rat eating. In some ways (bad ways) it is a homage to Singing in the Rain.

Some of it is entertaining. The guy is a great director with "A" list stars, Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, great cinematography, score etc. But it felt like Babylon was edited with a hack saw and that Chazelle was incapable of turning off the camera until the debauchery was turned up to eleven.
 
This is 40 (2012)

My wife is 40, it was on Netflix, we like Paul Rudd, so we gave it a try.

I didn't like it. Like most Judd Apatow movies, This is 40 minutes too long and most of the fluff is filled with Rudd and Leslie Mann bickering. Apatow movies like having a moral: I guess this one was to be more honest? Meh.

A highlight: Mann's kids (who is married to Apatow) were pretty hilarious.
 
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Watched Smile on Prime last night. What an awful piece of stereotypical garbage. A “thriller” about some curse/ghost/being that travels from person to person making them kill themselves within a week. I could have eaten a bowl of scripts and crapped out a better ending.
 
Seven Kings Must Die (2023 - Netflix) - This movie closes the loop on the Netflix/BBC series the Last Kingdom. If you like historical swords and sandles fare, you will like this a lot. It is really good. It is based on the buildup to the Battle of Brunanburh, one of the more important battles in English history and essentially the final battle in the unification of England's disparate, early middle-ages kingdoms. The movie's plot if complicated, and there are a lot of characters, but it is a good story and the motivations are interesting and credible, leading to the inevitable and very bloody climax at Brunanburh. The historical record is muddled, so no one knows for sure why the events happened, and some things, like King Aethelstan's homosexuality are not known for sure but are pretty likely, but the artistic license taken is well within reasonable bounds and makes the story more interesting. You may need to have IMDB or Wikipedia open to follow the characters, because it gets a bit hard to follow, especially in the beginning.

The lead character, Uhtred of Bebbanburg, is fictional, which he has to be because the show and this movie cover events that occur between 866 (when Uhtred is 10) and 937 (Brunanburh), which would make Uhtred 81 years old at the Battle of Brunanburh. The character in the movie was definitely not 81. That is a small quibble with what is a good and historically accurate movie.
 
Richard Jewell (2019-Hulu) - Clint Eastwood made this movie as an anti-media and anti-FBI homage about the events of the Centennial Park bombing in 1996. The real-life Richard Jewell was kind of a hapless cop-wannabe that discovered a suspicious package at a concert at the Olympics, and saved dozens or possibly hundreds of lives in moving people away from it minutes before it exploded. Within days, several rogue FBI agents tried to railroad Jewell into responsibility for the Centennial Park bombing. The movie accurately portrays a lot of abominable behavior by the FBI agents on the case, and Jon Hamm is the perfect actor to play the role that was an amalgamation of several real-life agents. The movie sticks to the facts with the FBI agents, and they still come out looking really awful. Something does not quite hold together about their motivations though. The movie was already getting legal heat as it was about to be released, so maybe Eastwood didn't want to venture down that road, but it feels like the movie wanted to say more about why the FBI agents tried to destroy Richard Jewell, but it didn't make it into the final version.

I don't think Eastwood handled the Atlanta Journal's reporter's motivations well at all. The real life reporter was named Kathy Scruggs, and she is played by Olivia Wilde, who is OK in the role. Early in the movie, there is an implication that she traded s e x for information, which was just a stupid thing for Eastwood to do as a Director given that they can not prove the real Scruggs ever did that and it became a focus in a lot of the movie publicity at the time it was released. On the other hand, an exploration of what a mess the real Scruggs was, including many volatile and sketchy boyfriends, and what appears to have been a drug addiction given she died from an overdose in 2001, would have been much more interesting. She had a reputation for pushing boundaries in personal and professional life, and made a lot of mistakes. How did the Atlanta Journal editor ever go along on such an explosive story on the Centennial Park bombing, that ultimately wrecked Jewell's life, when the reporter was such a mess? None of that is covered in the movie, but it seems like such an interesting story.
 
nelsonmuntz said:
Seven Kings Must Die (2023 - Netflix) - This movie closes the loop on the Netflix/BBC series the Last Kingdom. If you like historical swords and sandles fare, you will like this a lot. It is really good. It is based on the buildup to the Battle of Brunanburh, one of the more important battles in English history and essentially the final battle in the unification of England's disparate, early middle-ages kingdoms. The movie's plot if complicated, and there are a lot of characters, but it is a good story and the motivations are interesting and credible, leading to the inevitable and very bloody climax at Brunanburh. The historical record is muddled, so no one knows for sure why the events happened, and some things, like King Aethelstan's homosexuality are not known for sure but are pretty likely, but the artistic license taken is well within reasonable bounds and makes the story more interesting. You may need to have IMDB or Wikipedia open to follow the characters, because it gets a bit hard to follow, especially in the beginning.

The lead character, Uhtred of Bebbanburg, is fictional, which he has to be because the show and this movie cover events that occur between 866 (when Uhtred is 10) and 937 (Brunanburh), which would make Uhtred 81 years old at the Battle of Brunanburh. The character in the movie was definitely not 81. That is a small quibble with what is a good and historically accurate movie.
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I watched this a couple nights ago. Never saw the TV series, so I was a bit behind, but it was still enjoyable as a stand alone.
 
Tried watching the new "Willow" series on Disney+. Didn't make it thru the first episode. So I decided to go back to the source and watch the film. A bit silly, but quite entertaining still many years later. I was fairly dumbfounded when I figured out Kevin Pollack was one of the tiny comic relief side kick characters. He came a long way from that early role.
 

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