Last movie you watched......

Watched Hoosiers with my wife. First time she’d seen it. She wanted to know why they didn’t foul Hickory with 15 seconds left

 

Especially since under the rules of the day, a non-shooting foul was simply one shot (no bonus or one-and-one). Even figuring Jimmy would probably make the FT, that gives Central the ball down one with 10-12 seconds left.

The next quibble, of course, is why did Jimmy burn the clock all the way down before taking the shot; ideally you want to take the shot with 3-4 seconds left, so if you miss you have a chance at the tip-in, but Central doesn't have time for a shot.

 

I'm guessing "The Last Tycoon" was meant as an ode to "Old Hollywood" - Harold Pinter screenplay based on a F. Scott Fitzgerald unfinished novel. Elia Kazan directng. Im hoping people got paid because it features some of the most wooden acting - terrible pacing - one of those movies you think might be more profound than it actually is, but really is just a terrible film.

 

I've never watched a Netflix movie and wondered why studios passed on it. They look like regular movies, they star big name actors and attract first-rate talent - but they always seem to lack the "why should I give a crud" about the people depicted. Don't know if Netflix greenlighters are just more forgiving and easily starstruck when they can get Ben Affleck and JC Chandor and Mark Boals together on a project or what. The movie is "Triple Frontier" - This is the kind of movie that would have starred Wings Hauser in the '80s or Brian Bosworth in the '90s that you could pick up at Blockbuster with five or six other copies at 8 p.m. on a Saturday night.
The resolution at the end is one you wonder why the supposedly highly trained and competent soldiers didn't think of 45 minutes into the movie.

This really could have been more interesting if they leaned further into a Deliverance/Treasure of the Sierra Madre theme.

 

The only one I can think of off the top of my head that I've watched was "The Cloverfield Paradox," which was so patently stupid, I was stunned David Oyelowo agreed to be in it for any size paycheck. It clearly was just a terrible sci-fi movie that they added in a scene to try to tie it into the Cloverfield universe. Granted, the ploy worked. I watched it. But, man, that movie was shit. What a letdown from 10 Cloverfield Lane.

 

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind. Chiwetel Ejiofor directs and stars as a farmer whose 12-year-old son builds a windmill-water pump to save his drought-stricken village in Malawi. Very good.

 

Watched “Reality Bites” for the first time, which is sort of amazing in that it came out in 1994, when I was a junior in college and it would have seemed like one of those films that everyone of that age wound have seen. I don’t regret not having seen it earlier; it’s a poor man’s Singles, right down to the second-rate soundtrack. Ethan Hawke’s character is beyond obnoxious. Winona Ryder is probably the cutest she’s ever been, but her character is grating too.

 

Spoiler alert for a trailer that dropped today...

A couple of folks seem very hard to kill.

 

Approves:

 

Dead on. Big stars, awful script. I think the scenery was ok. Wife and I were chanting cannabilism is coming. Netflix had got to do better.

 

Apollo 11. Awe-inspiring. Great original score too.