Last movie you watched......

Karen Allen had me at "Animal House." Ever since, anything she's in, I give it a chance.

 

Saw MI7(?) in IMAX Sun; kinda meh to me. Some fun parts but stunts were ok.

 

Scrooged!

 

I still haven't watched any of those movies. I should be the target audience, but I've never bothered. One attribute this one has that its predecessors lacked is Haley Atwell.

 

Really interesting series with a bunch of different directors. You want to see two really different movies? 1 and 2, directed by DePalma and John Woo, are that. (2 > 1)

4, 5 and 6 are one hell of a good time.

 

Haven't seen the latest, but Ghost Protocol is still my favorite. Rogue Nation is underrated and Fallout is overrated.

 

My god, QT, what more are you asking for from Tom for stunts where you'll give him more than an okay rating?!

Last night I spent 20 minutes trying to get a ticket to the 70 MM IMAX screening of Oppenheimer in New York, on the largest IMAX screen in the country. They're doing four screenings a day and finally, 10:30 a.m. on August 9, I got a seat that isn't something in the front row. Every other screening is basically packed already other than the stuff up front.

 

Dead For a Dollar. Very boring western. Wastes strong cast (Christoph Waltz, Rachel Brosnahan, Willem Dafoe) and good score. From Walter Hill.

 

I went and saw "Sound of Freedom" -- should I duck? -- because I was curious, and I think a lot of people have been talking about it in presumptuous, negative ways who haven't actually seen it. I didn't want to be one of those people.

And I won't be. It was a good movie, given the subject matter -- tough, not pleasant, and very sobering. It's something that, frankly, should not be being politicized at all, and I don't really see why that's happening. It's a shame because it shouldn't be.

The movie itself was a little longer than it should've been, and the length impacted the pacing of the story a bit. But other than that, it was eminently watchable. Unlike Jim Caviezel's other well-known effort -- "The Passion of the Christ," -- this film was more muted in its horror at the events being depicted. Thank goodness for that, as parts of "The Passion of the Christ" were so bad/hard as to be literally unwatchable; viewers were known to be sitting in their seats with their eyes closed at times because they just couldn't stand the three hours of torture that was being shown.

But "Sound of Freedom" was still a hard-hitting movie, based on the real-life career of Timothy Ballard, a former Homeland Security agent who started Operation Underground Railroad in 2013 to combat child sex trafficking and slavery.

Oh, and to add something I thought of when I was in the theater but didn't initially post: I did not view the movie in a sold-out, but-empty, theater. I stopped counting people coming in at about 32. In all, I'd guess there wound up being at least 40 people, maybe 45, who watched it with me.

 

Eleven years ago today, The Dark Knight Rises was released. Which I'm mentioning just as an excuse to post this for probably the 30th time. I've watched it at least twice that many times over the years and it still is one of the funniest damn things I've ever seen.

 

Oppenheimer is extraordinary.

Spoiler

It requires patience, but when Einstein drops the proverbial bomb — the sad truth of aging and experience and weariness — in the end, a chill like few I’ve experienced in a theater.

 

Heading into Oppenheimer in 45 minutes. I’ve been looking forward to this since I saw the first trailer.