Last movie you watched......

The latest Indiana Jones movie. Harrison Ford and Phoebe Waller-Bridge were great (loved her card magic sequence) and a strong supporting cast....but very disappointing to see Nazis and Arabic baddies again.

 

Caught La Dolce Vita (Fellini, 1960) on the big screen. Fun watch, lots going on, easier to follow than I anticipated. Would gladly watch again and I’m sure get more out of it.

At the very least, it made me feel cultured. An attractive Italian woman I know was mildly impressed, no small feat for me.

 

Ghostbusters Afterlife was a waste. Paul Rudd is always great, why not make him the focus instead of the kid characters (there weren't any kid characters in the first one)? Carrie Coon is way too talented for this type of flick. The best performance of the OG.....Ernie Hudson.

 

Hudson's still a working actor, and doesn't have "go away" money and residuals like the other two, so that's not too surprising.

 

Friday night, we saw Find Me Falling, an instantly forgettable romcom on Netflix starring Harry Connick, Jr. It looks like it was written and cast in about 2 days.

Last night, we watched That Thing You Do. I somehow missed the movie when it was in theaters and never caught it on cable. Just a fun movie with an incredible cast.

 

Wife and I went to see this last night. It was OK. It was fun. Buuuttt ....
• I hate disaster movies where the goal is to somehow stop a literal force of nature from occurring. I'm willing to suspend disbelief, but expecting me to think a utility trailer full of chemicals can dissipate a half-mile wide EF-4 or EF-5 tornado in a matter of moments is a bit too much.

• Similarly, when characters ascribe malevolent human intentions to these massive forces of nature it's more than cringeworthy. The scene at the beginning when Javi convinces Kate to join his team by saying, "They're coming for the ones we love" made me want to scream. That's some "Jaws: The Revenge" level of nonsense.
"That tornader killed muh paw and now it's comin' for me!"
Ye gods. It's weather. Not a serial killer.

• In my head, I kept calling Kate "The Tornado Whisperer."

• People kept getting sucked up by the tornado, which certainly happens, but I always thought debris was the bigger risk. Guess they didn't want to risk an R-rating by having someone decapitated by a tree branch going 150 mph, but it seems like a miss not to have one or two of those deaths be people getting absolutely clobbered. IIRC, even the original had the cocky chaser get impaled before he was sucked away.

• Glen Powell really does do the cocky asshole with a heart of gold character pretty well. First in Maverick and now here.

• The secondary villain of the land developer buying people out is a thing. I just don't know that it's as evil a thing as they wanted us to think. Maybe it's a little scummy, but for people in small towns who are facing a long and difficult rebuild — sometimes in their older age — it's a realistic option to consider.

• Here in the South, in 2024, when a big tornado outbreak is coming it is not a surprise. We typically have a good idea several days in advance and life shuts down. It's our version of a blizzard. Schools close, people stay home from work, and everybody is aware that things could get hairy. The TV stations switch to storm coverage pretty quickly. They certainly aren't out in a field playing baseball until the last possible moment — especially on the third day of a "once in a generation" outbreak. Hell, we cancel high school basketball games because of the threat of tornadoes.
Is Oklahoma really that oblivious or numb to it? Even in a small town like El Reno, which is close enough to be a rural suburb of OKC and gets their TV stations, you think they'd be more weather aware.

• Are you telling me that people in El Reno, Oklahoma, have never seen a tornado before and don't know what to do when one approaches? The heroic storm chasers who rush into town as the only line of defense between the clueless rural townsfolk and the evil monster tornado was a bit much.

• I'm surprised there weren't more callbacks to the original. The only one I noticed was the Dorothy sensors in the opening sequence. I thought for sure Kate's mom would be Helen Hunt, or they'd have a picture of her in the house revealing she was an aunt or something.

• The scene with the brief fire tornado was a missed opportunity. Those are actually things. I think they could've let that go a little longer.

• I was also surprised one of the tornadoes didn't hit an aquarium and scatter sharks into the storm. Would've worked for this movie.

 

Operation Fortune was a halfway-decent action flick with some intentional laughs. I am a Jason Statham fan and he was his usual self. Aubrey Plaza was funny and sexy. Above par cast (Hugh Grant as the villain, Josh Hartnett as a dim-witted action star, plus stalwarts Cary Elwes and Eddie Marsan). Stay through the closing credits for a hilarious impression of one of the cast members.

 

1 and 2 were fun. Peter McNichol stole the second movie from the original crew. I was all-in for the sentimentality of Afterlife, beyond that, it doesn't hold up. Garrow is right. Rudd would have made an excellent heir to the arch fun of the first team. Instead, we have Afterlife and Frozen Empire, which scan like the dreary outcome of contracting Guillermo Del Toro to reboot Ghostbusters for Teen Disney.

I'm sorry for every negative thing I said about Paul Feig's gender-flipped redux. At least it was funny.

"I'll take 'How to make a PhD scream at giggling undergraduates for 300, Alex.'"

I agree with so much of this. However, watching them blow through buildings while taking shelter at an underpass on Briley Parkway, hearing and feeling them roar by your house, seeing them churn over stretcces of prairie while you're trying to put your horse somewhere safe makes a person feel like prey. Personification is bound to happen.

Signed,
You can take the girl out of Lubbock only to have those mofos follow her to Nashville

 

Wicked Little Letters a fun little comedy mystery based on a true story. Set in 1920s England, it is a tale about people being targeted with poison pen letters, most of which sent to Olivia Colman's character. Jessie Buckley plays the main suspect, a sexy single mom from Ireland.

 

I just want to watch the movie about what it's like to live in this doom-ridden hellscape vision of Oklahoma.

 

I was both impressed with how much more serious they took the movie and disappointed the same camp wasn’t there.

I also call massive bull on the chasers running in to save the day. Everyone in that town would know where storm shelters are or where the best places to take shelter are. They wouldn’t wait for a handful of dilwads to tell them where to hide. And not one of those chasers asked a native if the theater had a basement.

That aside, it was a fun popcorn flick. I’ll never willingly watch it again.

 

Watched for free (to my surprise) on YT, Lone Star. I'd watch a John Sayles cooking show, but this was scrubby, authentic Texas years before Cormac McCarthy and the Coen brothers, and with a fraction of the homicides. Intertwining stories wrapped in a murder mystery that reveal competing generational struggles in a small town told with depth, sensitivity and a marked lack of mawkish melodrama. Wonderful cast and I've seen little of Chris Cooper, who was excellent; a terrifying Kris Kristofferson; the late Elizabeth Pena, and early McConaughey and McDormand. Like more movies to be like this.