Edge of Tomorrow, starring Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt. I thought it was great. Don't ponder the time-travel logic too long, or your brain will start to hurt. But Cruise was great in the role, and Blunt was even better. The movie's a bit different than I thought going in-- much more humorous and less self-important. Recommended.
The Raid 2 - If you enjoyed the first part, you'll love this one. So much awesome action and martial arts. Glad guns are hard to come by in the underworld of Indonesia.
And tonight I've just watched the movie "The Armstrong Lie" It goes a lot deeper than I ever thought. A case of pseudologia fantastica (I looked it up ) as well as a vindictive nature and attacking anyone who challenges him. Whether it was prolonged drug use or the brain surgery or a combination, he still doesn't believe he was wrong. Well worth the watch for one who follows the sport. And talking of that I've just started the thread for the 101st Tour de France on the cycling board. We had a fun group last year.
Which is the difference between him and most of the other riders from his generation who were later disgraced. He actually tried to destroy those people who dared to tell the truth about him.
Infestation (2009) Dir. Kyle Rankin Light-hearted B-horror in the tradition of critters and screamers. Decent though not truly great. Right after getting fired, the office slacker is rendered unconscious by a loud scream. After waking up, he finds out that the city has been overrun by giant bugs and most of his co-workers have been cocooned. After successfully freeing some of them, they start a trek towards his father's home (and well-stocked bomb shelter).
The old Human Popsicle / convenient coma routine http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HumanPopsicle
Tarantula (1955) Dir. Jack Arnold Oldschool B-horror movie. A scientist working on a superior nutrient discovers that the side-effect of his invention is super-growth in his test subjects (mostly rats, rabbits and guinea pigs, but also a couple of tarantulas). Guess what happens next. The visual effects were quite good for a 1950s B-horror flick. Also, Mara Corday, yowsa. Clint Eastwood has a tiny, uncredited role in this flick. Spoiler (Move your mouse to the spoiler area to reveal the content) Show Spoiler Hide Spoiler He plays one of the fighter pilots who takes out the tarantula with a napalm strike I did not notice it was him, and I doubt many would. Corday and Eastwood apparently remained friendly for the rest of their respective careers after this flick, Eastwood even inviting her out of retirement to play a few small roles in his 1980s features. The most famous of these cameos being the sugar scene in Sudden Impact. She plays the waitress.
Good, solid film. Jack Arnold was the best of the 1950s sci-fi directors in Hollywood. Other favorites: Creature From the Black Lagoon; Return of the Creature; It Came From Outer Space; The Incredible Shrinking Man; The Space Children; Monster On the Campus. Also see the Audie Murphy western No Name On the Bullet.
I tried to watch that Superman movie in which Kevin Costner gets eaten by a tornado. Didn't make it to the end.
Want to add The Monolith Monsters to this list. Jack Arnold was only given story credit, but his fingerprints are all over it. Little known, but another good one. Typo correction: In my original post I meant to write Revenge of the Creature. not 'Return'.
I'm a sucker for punishment: It wasn't horrible. $1,50 from Caja Roja. While watching we got a phone call. It was marginally more interesting than the film. Wrong number.
Cannon (season 1 - 1971) Streets of San Francisco (season 1 - 1972) After my time with Banacek I've been getting familiar with some of the other shows of the time period. The style and formula of Cannon is instantly familiar to anyone who watched action dramas of the 1980's (Magnum PI, Riptide, Simon & Simon...). It feels ahead of its time, if a little light weight and fantastic when Cannon starts doing karate or calls on his endless network of connections or suffers yet another gunshot wound/concussion. There is a emphasis on the process of solving mysteries and revelations, with some episodes drawn from pulp detective novels. I was surprised that Streets is so different. In fact, it feels a lot older even though it was filmed a year later. It is centered on the moral drama of the bad guys, sometimes devoting the majority of an episode to their story. There is a strong emphasis on mercy in justice instead of strict adherence to the law. The direction and acting is top notch and the music is epic. But the best, most notable thing about Streets is that it loves San Francisco. Just loves it. Every landmark of the city gets camera time, from the Marina to City Hall to Fisherman's Wharf to the just-finished Transamerica Pyramid, and especially the gone and unlamented Embarcadero Freeway. The cameras are regularly aimed down the line of the street, a frame of San Francisco architecture around a view of the bay or a hill climbing half way to the stars. It is a pretty unique exploitation of the gridlines of the city. Other outside shots have an eye towards the skyline or the bridges or the Marin Headlands. The City is the most important character of the show. "Yes, we frequently meet gambling informants inside the Conservatory of Flowers, why do you ask?" Why are they walking in front of the Saints Peter and Paul cathedral when it has nothing to do with the plot? So they can get in the car and look down Filbert Street to see Coit Tower, of course. "Nice place to blow up a bomb, isn't it?" Oh yeah. San Francisco uses a place like this for bomb disposal. Weep in despair, outlanders.
Some of my earliest childhood memories are of watching reruns (dubbed in French!) of "The Streets of San Francisco" and "Starsky & Hutch" together with my dad.
Funny story. I was in Iraq following the cessation of hostilities in the Iran-Iraq war. The Canadians had been tapped by the UN to provide the communications equipment for the peacekeeping force, but lacking the airlift to get them in-country immediately, the USAF provided the airlift. So, along with a mobile control element, I spent 25 days in Baghdad. We had one plane coming in per day, so we had lots of time to kill. And there was only one TV station. Of course, it was mostly Saddam Hussein all day -- the news footage of him would last for several hours, and when they ran out of footage, the news was over. So, Iraqi TV showed two TV shows: The Streets of San Francisco and Beauty and the Beast. Both feeds must have been bought from the French, because the shows had French subtitles, and then overlaying that, were the Arabic subtitles. Neither language is as economical as English, so frequently the entire screen was covered in subtitles. If this experience was in any way indicative of the rest of the Middle East, no wonder those countries have such "interesting" opinions of the US.
Veronica Mars (2014) Dir. Rob Thomas I enjoyed this quite a bit, but most of its pleasure comes out of the nostalgia of revisiting these characters. Look! It's Dick/Logan/Weevil/Wallace... It does a decent job of capturing the atmosphere which made the TV series so great, even though I thought it was a bit lacking in truly witty dialogue. Also wasn't a huge fan of Sheriff Dan Lamb. He's more of a pure pantomime villain whereas his brother was a heel who occasionally showed flashes of decency.