One of my favorites.

Doggone but if Sam Elliot can't grow about the best mustache I've ever seen.

I wasn't prepared to like Jack Reacher at all but despite the fact that Tom Cruise irritated me during the whole movie I still enjoyed it.

I'm thinking that maybe it should have been played by The Rock or somebody more suited to a role requiring a big guy.

Certainly a guy movie. Cassandra didn't see it but I can't imagine her liking it.

If The Impossible were just a movie it'd be pretty good but with it being based on a true story it's pretty doggone good.

The fact that it's based on a true story works against it just as well, it's pretty doggone hard to watch in places. Heck, I can watch slasher stuff and it doesn't bother me at all, I know it's fake but knowing this happened just broke my heart.

But certainly worth it. I doubt if I will ever watch it again but it'll certainly stay with me.

I'm gonna be walking around all day muttering "I'm a meat popsicle".

The scary part is that I probably am. Whatever that is.

My pick for last night as The Fifth Element.

I just love that piece of mess!

I really enjoyed the original Red Dawn and I really wanted to like the remake.

And I can suspend disbelief pretty good when it comes to movies.

But between the concept of DPRK taking over the west coast and various other aspects to the Red Dawn remake I just can't do it.

Not to say that some of the battle scenes weren't fun but still....

Dark Zero Thirty is based on a real story but I think the movie got it wrong. We all know that Hussein shot bin Laden. Actually it was the documentary style (to me) that kind of put me off. I knew it wasn't a documentary and that what I was watching probably wasn't true and just a story but the conflict kept arising and distracting me. 

Or maybe it was just me.

Have never seen any of those, usually avoid network shows but I'll give NCIS a shot, looks like it could be interesting, thanks.

Fortunately we have two of them fairly close (about 8 miles one way) and they usually are fairly well stocked.

Hehe, just to show how cheap I am I'll wait for a .50 off email from Redbox and get it for $1.50.

At least Expendables 2 was better than the first one....

I'm a big Dredd fan. Very bloody however.

Haven't seen The Last Stand.

Of the two new DVD releases I saw last week; Argo and Dark Zero Thirty I enjoyed the former a bit more. The latter didn't do much for me at all, not sure what all the buzz was about.

I'm probably a bit biased because I'm a huge fan of Brit spy stuff, especially John le Carré era and this really felt like a worthy modern follow on to Smiley and that crew:

Page Eight

It's a BBC production and the production quality is excellent as are all the actors including Bill Nighy who I've gained a lot of respect for lately, seems just about everything I've seen him in is good. No, excellent (add The Exotic Marigold Hotel to the list).

No Bond type shoot 'em up, not a single killing, not even a gun shown, just deception and the like.

This was so predictable you could set your watch by it. I enjoyed it immensely.

Here Comes the Boom

What a hoot.

Excellent, didn't even think of A Prime.

About the most risque part is one character developing some gastric unease. 

Entirely predictable but entirely enjoyable.

The Game Plan

Caught this on TCM a few nights ago:

The Prisoner

It's on Netflix here (there are several movies/series with the same title).

Very bleak but still worth checking out.

Another one in a _somewhat_ similar vein is The Ultimate Gift if you haven't seen it.

I think I like it most because liberals see it as "right wing propaganda" when it's about character.

But it makes sense that they would object to it on those grounds.

Indeed it is a dusty movie for me too.

I liked the alternate as well although I have no argument with the one they ended up using.

After watching a good movie that had a semi-depressing ending we fired up an old fave Secondhand Lions.

Wow, but do I love that movie.

If you've seen the move here's a 9 minute alternative ending. 

The recent DVD release of The Bourne Legacy, which isn't all that bad, not great mind you but not bad, to rewatch all the Bourne movies.

Ya know, I wasn't a _huge_ fan the first time through, probably because they deviated so much from the book but upon rewatching I kinda like them.

With the possible exception of the first one which was still kinda lame but it's necessary to get the backstory for everything that follows.

I thought every character was just perfect. Right dialog, right acting, right look.

I was also very pleased that Gary Oldman was featured more in this one than previous episodes. One of the more interesting characters.

I also appreciate that it is a very conservative trilogy, especially this one. Yep, that's what would happen if the the occupy people were in charge.

Wow but I sure enjoyed Dark Knight Rising last night. Enjoyed every element of it; the effects, story, actors, you name it.

This is one that's on the eventual permanent library list if the price ever comes down.

Shook up the Christmas playlist today with a viewing of It's A Wonderful Life.

Doggone but that movies kicks up my allergies something fierce.

I still chuckle over that movie. Seems kinda funny that some of the best movies these days are coming from comic books....

Premium Rush was probably the best new release I've seen lately. Not a great story or acting but I really enjoyed the scenes of a bicycle rider in New York City.

Will Penny and the original Monte Walsh but both good with the latter probably being the best. I think the original Monte Walsh was even better than the remake with Tom Selleck I'd seen recently. IMO the best work ever of Marvin and Palance. 

Even so I don't think either made it to my top 5 westerns list.

Philip K. Dick short story called "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale". As I mentioned only about 10 pages.

PKD was prolific but wasn't well regarded when he was alive but since his death he's had more of his stuff turned into movies than any other author other than Stephen King. Perhaps 10 or 12?

None of them have really touched the essence of his work IMO with the possible exception of A Scanner Darkly.

Anywho PKD was an interesting guy and while I was a fan early on back in the 60s I find my appreciation has somewhat wained over the years but I still re-read his stuff from time to time. I do always appreciate his take on the nature of reality and entropy.

I liked the remake of Total Recall a lot, can't say if I liked it more or less than the original, most people seem to like the original more but the 2nd had plenty of eye popping special effects.

Neither captures what I consider to be the elements of the original story but then that was only 10 pages long and, I would imagine, hard to pad into a 2 hour entertaining movie without taking a lot of liberties.

My disappointment was The Amazing Spiderman. Firstly way too soon for a reboot and this one wasn't very true to the original comic book nor did the guy playing Spiderman have the sappy nerdiness that could be irritating at times nonetheless added some charm.

As far as I was concerned the whole lot of them could have been finished off in the last reel and it wouldn't have bothered me. In fact I might have liked it more.

The thing I like about Mamet con movies is that I have never been able to figure them out. Pretty doggone clever.

Plus the style drove me crazy on first viewing. The dialog tempo in House of Games was even worse than SP and just about killed me on first viewing but it was like a car wreck, watched it a couple of times and then it finally struck a favorable spot.

That picture is funny. That must have been a scary ride.

Or at least mute.

I need one of those controls that work in real life.

Thought I'd swing by Blockbuster and pick up a few things that Netflix doesn't have.

It was closed.

I knew of another about 10 miles north. It was closed.

Check the locations on the BB site and the closest is now 17 miles away.

They're sliding fast.

Instead of watching pols I watched one of the great paranoid movies from the 70s last night:

Capricorn One

As good as I remember even if a bit slow in places. Not a bad yarn.

Oh, and the other paranoia movies from the 70s? The ultimate is probably The Parallax View and to a lesser level of paranoia The Conversation.

I had 2016 in my queue but I decided to pass, I was afraid that I just couldn't handle it. My imagination is scary enough. Seriously.

We watched The Verdict last night. Had seen it before, but it had been many years. Of course it was slanted in a particular direction but not one that was impossible.

It reminded me that Sidney Lumet had made more than a couple of movies that I liked. Of those Running on Empty was one I hadn't seen in a long time but it sure looks like the DVD was a very early DVD release (fullscreen only) and has never been updated. Shame.

I expect they have some deals but even so I read somewhere that Netflix pays them $600m a year.

It was ages ago but when I worked for the bank there was a deal if you had more than xx pieces if you had them presorted by zip code you got x discount. Works for both parties.

I get very good service for my Netflix as well, two day turnaround (one to get there, shipped and delivered the following).

I will share something my carrier told me; cut any sticky stuff off the right edge as well as any remainders of the paper tab. Both can get caught in the automated sorting machine and might introduce a delay.

I don't buy anything new any longer unless there's a big shipping charge, otherwise used is about half the price. Never been burned.

I've also sold a few going through Amazon as you know how much you're going to get and they supply the shipping label. Couldn't be easier. And I use the credit to...buy more used DVDs.

Wow, that's some pricey popcorn, must be the drought....

It was new release double feature night and the other was Battleship. I honestly tried my best to dislike it, yeah, sure, it was about aliens attacking earth so you had to suspend a lot just to get in the door but there was a lot of detail that just bugged me.

But at the end of the day the effects were tremendous and I got into it to the point where the silly stuff just didn't bother me.

I still liked The Avengers a lot more.

I watched an older Marvin movie a while back, Point Blank, and while I liked him in the Dirty Dozen I just wasn't taken with him at all in Point Blank. I've put it in my queue anyway but I'm dubious.

Agree about Quigley, a fave of mine as well.

Some of those people should be in movies....

And while not a resident that thin lady with white hair was Matthew McConaughey's mother.

Oh rats, just read where the guy that described parts of Texas was a real actor but apparently that was it for the townspeople, they were real townspeople that live there and were around when the real events happened.

It was the resident's comments that made Bernie IMO.

Love that parts of the state description as well as the more tats than teeth comment.

Thorax isn't running a bell....

DOH!! RINGING a bell.

Sheesh.

I understand that the book is much better or at least from some of the comments the book goes into a lot of background not covered in the movie.

I was kind of interested in it from a conservative perspective but the movie didn't go into that aspect.

Hehe, I kinda prefer Running Man.

Oh, nothing serious, just "fixed" plus a hernia repair.

No way we wanted to go through that heat cycle.

Watched the Hunger Games last night. It wasn't terrible but I expect that, like Titanic, a lot of the popularity is coming from young women or at least I was expecting more.

But then trying to keep the dog from bouncing off the walls and ripping her stitches I might not have given it the attention it deserved.

I could use a robot like that to do some of my chores. 

It'd sure be a lot more effective than some skinny Ukrainian chick.

I think that exploitation was one of the issues some had with this movie but it didn't strike me that way; it happened, a lot of people suffered a loss, there are stories there.

Another 9/11 based we saw recently was Reign Over Me which has a higher rating and we enjoyed it, but I didn't enjoy it was much as Incredibly.

In fact Reign Over Me reminded me a lot of Fisher King with just a few twists.

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close. Only a 6.7 at IMDB but I thought it was much better than that.

It is an extremely slow starter but I think the payoff is well worth it.

I could be wrong but I think it was nominated for best film this last time around.

Anywho it moved me.

It's very hard to get it on the ground floor but you can usually pick some up on opening day though rarely at the IPO price as it's usually jumps a bit for a hot IPO. I _think_ the exception to that to some degree was Google. IIRC they sold some shares directly to the market. I wouldn't trust my memory on that.

Even so I've never dipped my toes in, far too speculative for me, I go for more solid stuff but an IPO can certainly pay off big time.

Or kill you.

Yep, the market has pretty much decided that Netflix has hit the wall. Their stock was down a buck plus at 83 yesterday but their 52 week high: $304.79.

Ouch.

Lots of good lessons in that one.

In a somewhat similar values vein you might want to check out Courageous. I'm pretty sure it's from the same folks that did Facing the Giants and even if not I have some of the same problems with it that I did with that but still a good values movie.

And maybe it's because I don't have a daughter but I found the "date" with the father/daughter and ring thing kinda creepy.

Double checked and the original TTSS was 6 episodes so almost 6 hours.

After thinking about it, and it could be a case of nothing having seen the original for 2-3 years I think I have a slight preference for the original.

Either way I can recommend both and as I mentioned previously a lot of what I imagine the real spy business to be like.

Plus I find the whole Philby thing to be fascinating. How someone like that could betray his country is a mystery to me and especially to betray it to the stinkin' commies. Being in intel it sure seems to me that he had a good feeling for what was going on with them but he sure thought it was a better system. Go figure.

Not that TTSS goes into any of that but I figure since the author was all part of it he put a lot of Philby's personality into the fictional traitor and it's probably as close as I'm going to get.

I can highly recommend both version of TTSS. The original version has a lot of sentimental value and with it being a TV mini-series it had more time to tell the story.

Plus I'm an Alec Guinness fan and he was Smiley in the original.

My best this week was "The Spy Who Came In From the Cold". I had not previously known that it was based on a story by John le Carré. No car chases, no babes in skimpy outfits, just a gritty spy drama.

I was also pleased that "Smiley" was a character in this book/movie. Getting all het up for the Netflix release of the remake of Tinker, Tailor on 4/17.

Thin the last couple of weeks. I think we probably enjoyed School of Rock more than anything. Stupid and silly but the kids were cute.

Should also mention that it looks like John Carter is a dud. At least Tinker, Tailor will be released on DVD next month, probably looking forward to that more than anything else I can think of.

I fully expect to be disappointed.

I'm not pessimistic, just realistic (sigh).

Under Siege is one of our semi-go to movies. Kinda a lower level Die Hard if you will.

Tommy Lee Jones is just insane in it, very funny.

I think it was Bob that mentioned We Are Marshall a long while ago, finally watched it and it's great, very, very inspiring.

We always enjoyed one we've previously seen; Gridiron Gang.

Dunno what it is about sport movies, almost always like them.

Killer Elite was a pretty good movie. Okay plot but the fight scenes with Jason Statham were just excellent as they usually are. With the exception of The Mechanic I've always enjoyed his tough guy roles.

Absolutely a guy movie.

A Life Less Ordinary

I take it from the comments that you either love or hate this and I fall into the former camp. Quite a pleasant surprise.

Double feature of two new releases last night.

Drive was somewhat disappointing. Not nearly as good as I expected, mostly a retelling of a million westerns set in present day LA. It was okay, but given the chatter I was expecting more.

Contagion turned out better than I expected and I probably liked it because it felt like how I think a replay of the 1918 pandemic would roll out.

Real Steel was what I expected it to be but still very enjoyable and well done. The CGI was great. 

50/50 was very crude in spots as seems to be the case with any movie about young adults these days but still a very touching and somewhat inspiring story, especially considering that from what I gather is mostly based on the fellas real life experience. Plus the actor that played the main character was very good. I knew I'd seen him before but just couldn't put my finger on it and then looked him up and low and behold he was that very young kid on (you look it up, I'm not giving it away if you want to see it). My but what a great actor he's turned out to be. Very impressive.

I'm sure much of it was fictionalized but I certainly admire any 27 year old that went through that, I wouldn't have handled it nearly that well at that age...or any age for that matter.

Too bad about the Scorpion King. I really enjoyed the first one.

Speaking of uplifting movies I'm looking forward to tonights showing:

Tucker and Dale vs Evil

I read where it cost $10m and has returned about $5m. I expect that it didn't get on too many screens and thus it was doomed from the start short of a grass roots explosion.

OTOH The Passion apparently did well. $35m in production and advertising with a $610m gross (don't know how much of that is profit).

It's "interesting".

The guy who funded 1 said that if 1 made back his money they'd do 2 and then 3. The status of 2 is, at best, uncertain.

Yup, got it from Netflix with no wait.

Don't get me wrong, it's not one of those where after it was over I wanted my 90 minutes back.

It has reached the rental stage?  I've been looking forward to watching that one.  I'll go check.

I have War Horse in my queue.

Watched Part 1 of Atlas Shrugged last night. It wasn't nearly as dreadful as the critics (and Rand hating lefties) carried on about but it wasn't a masterful effort either. Firstly I doubt if it's a book that could really be made into a movie and secondly it's low budget appeared in places and unlike Facing The Giants it wasn't easy to overlook as $10 million should get you a lot more than $100k.

Ya know, I can't think of too many political movies other than the ones mentioned and another with Gary Oldman that I can't recall the name of.

Oh well.

OTOH Moneyball was much, much better.

Gads but if The Ides Of March wasn't a dreary bit of fluff I don't know what is. I expected the lefty stuff but I also expected a bit of an interesting story and it turned out it was nothing more than something I could have come up with....on a bad day. Not nearly as clever as other political pot boilers such as Primary Colors.

A contender in the Golden Globe best picture category and plenty of chatter for an Oscar nomination.

I guess that's pretty much Hollywood politics, as long as it's about a lefty it's popular but wow, it was a flat story.

It's a rewatch but probably just every couple of years for me.

I am now convinced that human actors are pretty much a thing of the past. Given them 5-7 years and all actors will be virtual.

I never read a synopsis of Cowboys And Aliens and I expected something quite different and in reading the trivia apparently I wasn't alone but I still liked it.

I still think it would have been fun to play it for laughs.

It was one of the very first things I recorded while trying to edit out the commercials in real time using the wired (!) remote pause/resume. That VCR was a real splurge back then, I shutter when I think of what I paid for it.

I think I got carpel tunnel from that exercise.

Haha, I wouldn't have thought to put Die Hard on our Christmas movie list but I've seen it on others and it's one of Cassandra's favorites so we watched it last night. The first year of a new tradition I guess. I think she likes it so much because she's knows how it ends and, well, she usually doesn't make it to the ending...(grin).

We like Bruce in most anything he's in. Off hand I can only think of one clunker (Breakfast of Champions).

New ones on me. We went with another of our "Christmas" movies last night; Die Hard with Christmas Vacation and A Christmas Story to follow.

Funny reading trivia about Die Hard and the number of actors who were offered the Bruce Willis role before he got it. About 10 or 12 of them from Arnold to Stallone to Sinatra (more of a contract requirement than anything else as he was 72). Funny it turned into such a Willis franchise.

Hehe, lots of rounds fired in that one. I liked the bus part but my favorite is when they opened fire on the house and caused it to collapse.

I've always wanted to do that.

A ripping good yarn.

Sanctum

I'm encouraged to go track down the real story just to see how much it deviates from the movie as if only 10% of the movie is fact based just wow.

Ignore the IMDB 5.7 rating, it's a 7.

I don't think we have any other horror fans here but Fright Night is by far the best remark of any horror movie I can think of. Far, far better than the original and certainly a vampires are really, really bad things vs. those sappy vampires are just misunderstood movies. Just a hoot.

Looking forward to Cowboys and Aliens but it's not on Netflix until after the first of the year.

Yeah, they're still the only player. Blockbuster is okay, especially if you can use their in-store trade in thing but they don't process/ship on Saturday and that one day really cuts into rentals if you're a high turnover watcher like me.

You'd think it'd be easy, blood, more blood, lots of blood, muscles, women in skimpy attire, etc. but the guy who played Conan didn't have any of the "charm" that Arnold brought to the original and the story just didn't do anything at all to make the characters someone that I wanted to root for.

On the other hand I liked just about every character in Super 8.

I think a large chunk of it is shoddy products in the first place that Netflix is dragging their heals on replacing. When a disc has rot and starts to delaminate it's much easier for it to break.

When leads me to believe their big push to go streaming. That's got to be a huge inventory of discs, many of which are probably past their replacement time.