Last Movie Watched.... The Xenforo Edition

Tubi is great. Old noir? Got it. Old westerns? Got it. Trashy movies? Got it.

 

Tubi turned a profit last quarter.

 

Christmas on Duty - 2025 (Hallmark)

Bad actors (Janel Parrish & Parker Young) participate in a convoluted plot that is 95% complete lack of understanding about how the military works and 5% ridiculous USAA commercial.

At least, that's my guess. There's 65 minutes left in this thing and they're making me wish the ending of Red Dawn was that the Russians had won in 84.

F

 

I liked it when everyone threw up. That was awesome.

I haven't posted here for about 20 years. But I do remember there were some decent movie buffs.

Good times. I remember particularly enjoying when we would do those best director drafts and best movie drafts.

 

This you?

Anyhow, it’s great to have more around.
@spejic and @Belgian guy are still killing it, and @TheJoeGreene is doing his best Sisyphus impression with the Xmas movies.

 

I have finished watching all of MacGyver (7 seasons + 2 movies, 1987-1992) and I have to say it's impossible to have the show as it was on TV now. It's just so incredibly woke. Young people of any stripe would think it's a joke at their expense. But you could be earnest in the 1980's and I like that about the show. Murdoc was just the best enemy, I cried when Mac's grandpa died, and it ended in an excellent way.

MacGyver also had an incredibly unlikely history after high school. He traveled Europe for a year with Mike and Jack, served a year in Vietnam, went to college, raced a season in Formula 1, and spent a while in China, all while coming close to marrying a half dozen women. I just can't square it all.

 

Strangely enough, I was just browsing through the posts of that era last night looking for my review of Troy which it turns out I never did.
There were clearly a lot of love of movies back then, although I wish I nagged even harder about typing the movie titles out because a lot of it is incomprehensible now.

I would say I enjoy writing and I watch movies to have something to write about.

 

Yeah, that is me - I guess I did make a quick entry just to praise that great flick. I'm getting old. The memory isn't what it used to be.

 

I learned a lot from lots of people. Gringo Tex in particular, but all of you guys.

I'm actually having some vision problems these days, and I haven't found a good solution in terms of foreign films/subtitles. I also haven't figured out a good way to do director binges like I used to when I would get two netflix mailers and all the DVDs I could get from the Dallas Public Library.

 

IIRC, he only ever uses a gun once, as a make-shift wrench? In my mind's eye it's like an Uzi or something?

And I agree that MacGyver's ultra-positive humanism would jar in these super-cynical times, though the counterargument might be that the culture desperately need such a type of hero.

 

Exactly right, to open a fire hydrant.

 

The MacGyver discussion has reminded me of one of the stranger aspects of recollection.
For the longest time I was convinced that Carrie-Anne Moss was a guest star in an episode of MacGyver, namely The Lost Amedeus.
The actual actress who stars in that episode is Tamsin Kelsey, but in my recollection she had been replaced by Carrie-Anne Moss in a way that made those memories appear totally authentic.
I was floored when I caught a re-run of that episode years later and it was revealed to me that wasn't Carrie-Anne Moss.
Moss was already a working actress back then though, mostly for TV, but she never did an episode of MacGyver.

 

Black Phone 2 (2025)
Dir. Scott Derrickson



Three years after the events of the first movie, we meet Finn, Gwen and their father again. Finn is still dealing with the aftermath of being the sole survivor of the serial killer known as The Grabber. This trauma manifests itself in his isolation at school and occasional outbursts of anger and violence. Gwen worries about her older brother, and she herself is confronted with ever more vivid dreams during sleepwalking episodes. Gwen and Finn's widower father at least has a handle on his alcoholism, making their home life somewhat better than it was before. When Gwen's sleepwalking episodes escalate, she communicates with a younger version of her mother in one of those dreams. She tracks the communication she had with her mom down to a lake-side camp her mother was a councilor at in the late 1950s. When she has disturbing imagery of young boys being murdered at the same site in her dreams, she insists on going down there to investigate. Finn is reluctant to agree, having had his share of danger in dealing with the Grabber. Not wanting Gwen to face potential danger on her own, he eventually agrees to come along, alongside Gwen and Ernesto, a boy from school who is not so secretly in love with Gwen. When they arrive at the camp and are snowed in, they soon find out there is reason to believe that the Grabber might not be completely gone after all.

Sequel to the Black Phone, which was itself adapted from a Joe Hill short story. This second film is an original story written by the director and the screenwriter who adapted the story for the first movie's screenplay. I am not sure if the Black Phone warranted or needed a sequel. It was a solid genre exercise, but I did not come out of it thinking there was a lot of story left to tell. So this was actually better than I thought it might be, with the first hour especially very enjoyable. The ultimate showdown with the 'sort of' reanimated Grabber was a bit of a flat note climax. This sequel's plot is much more Gwen's story than Finn's, which isn't a bad thing, since young actress Madeleine McGraw is pretty good.
As a side-note, I could not help but wonder how many days Ethan Hawke actually worked on this film. I'm pretty sure it's another guy wearing that mask for most of the film. Apart from maybe two scenes. If I had to guess, I would wager he did maybe a couple of days of on-set work, and then another few days of in-studio ADR.

 

I watched one scene and had to rewatch the entire thing.



Hard Target (1993)

Fouchon does not have respect for the rich people who give him a large amount of money to hunt humans. The whole movie is about how the poorest have hopes and loves and and struggles and most of all lives. The rich people who buy a hunt are invariably soft, dwarfed by the guns that they hope give them masculinity, strength, power, maybe even self-respect. Some try to have a style or the airs of a killer, but they are all found wanting. And I don't mean by Jean Claude Van Damme - I mean by a Fouchon that has to constantly cajole and flatter and berate and physically push to get them to act.

Does that mean Fouchon is a different class of man? I don't think so. He thinks he is harder, he thinks he is so skilled he can fight with the handicap of a sightless single-shot pistol. But deep down he needs this game. He tells one of his participants that the hunt is to find out if they were alive or dead. Fouchon himself doesn't have a life of any sort outside the hunt and could have either fled or killed Van Damme in a easy way, but he chose to feed his ego. He needed to prove to himself he was a man, just like all those he looked down on.

 

Was he not man?

No.

He was DEVO.


You somehow made this terrible movie, in the silly group of men-hunting-men genre that all came out around the same time, actually sound kinda cool. Kudos!

 

The Great Christmas Snow-In - 2025 (UPtv)

Justin (Joey Lawrence) decides to keep the reservation for a cabin in the mountains that was originally booked for his honeymoon around Christmas, after being left at the alter by former singing partner Addy (Melina Alves). While he's there Addy's cousin and bridesmaid Jane (Amanda Fuller) shows up, thinking she had booked the cabin, only to find out the owner had double booked it. They hit it off with him encouraging her to keep writing her cheesy romance novels while she convinces him to start writing music again. This is disrupted by Addy arriving with Alejandro (Ricardo Chavez), the former manager of Justin and Addy and all are snowed in together for several days.

Lawrence and Fuller (who had a long run on Last Man Standing) work well on screen while Alves and Chavez provide a nice counter balance. Chavez plays much younger than his age (60).

The movie knows what it is, calls out several tropes while leaning into them, and doesn't try to do too much.

B+

 

This was John Woo's first American film, released just a year after his stone cold classic, Hard Boiled. It's also one of the best JCVD performances imho (mullet included).
I think it's great. I think Woo also kind of nails marrying the specific JCVD qualities first revealed in Cannon productions like Bloodsport, Cyborg, Death Warrant or even more indie stuff like Lionheart and the more polished big studio Hollywood production values better than any director before or after him.
Universal Soldier, Timecop, Sudden Death, ... all share a big studio foundation but the extra polish takes a tiny bit away from the purity of their JCVD-ness. John Woo's Hard Target is the gourmet burger version of those 1980s and early 1990s indie JCVD flicks, in the way that it maintains the specific qualities of its star. It doesn't take anything away from the table. Probably helped by the fact that Woo was reared in the more guerilla Hong Kong movie industry.

 

I was going to make a post like this but you did it better than I could.

 

I just remember about 5-6 of these “most dangerous game” type movies come out within a few years of each other. It’s like everyone saw the script and gave it a shot.

The ice cube one was… something.
I liked the JCVD one the most, for sure.

I was commenting more on the fad than the merits of the movie itself.

 

A Newport Christmas - 2025 (Hallmark Channel)

Ella (Ginna Claire Mason) finds out that her father is giving her away in an arranged marriage and sets out on a late night boat ride from Newport, Rhode Island on December 18, 1905. She sees a comet and wishes for a different life, suddenly finding herself 120 years in the future. She meets Nick (Wes Brown) who helps run the museum dedicated to all benevolent work that Ella did in the "future" of the past she no longer lives in. The leads start working on a plan to get Ella back to her time only to be hit with a twist that is, at least by Hallmark standards, unexpected and well handled.

Mason is very good in her role and you can see where her theater background helps play the fish out of water character. Brown is his typical above average Hallmark male lead self. Talia Robinson and Evan Alexander Smith are good as museum workers who help keep things moving with their own enjoyable subplot.

A-

 

That’s my wife’s hometown. Two friends have recommended it to her. My guess is it won’t actually be about the Newport where she lived (year round).

 

While there's copious green screen work, the filming locations are Newport, RI and Buffalo, NY. There may be some authenticity about the area, or at least the locations used.

 

The Big Sleep ~ H. Hawks

Watched this on my phone on a plane, so not ideal viewing conditions, but a good noir all the same. Enjoyed the parts that clearly inspired The Big Lebowski.