What was the last movie you watched?

"Little Odessa" (1995) Stars Tim Roth, Edward Furlong, Moira Kelly, and Vanessa Redgrave

Set in the Brighton Beach section of Brooklyn, the story follows a family of Soviet Jews, in which one of the sons, Joshua, (Roth) is a hit man for the Russian mob.
Joshua has a price on his head, and must protect his younger brother (Furlong) from the oncoming danger. Bleak, yet rather intriguing. Worth watching, just for the locale settings.
 
Jeremiah Johnson (1972). I'm on a Western kick. This one's a straight narrative with some great wilderness backgrounds and occasionally questionable musical montages. Lots of the same themes as Josie Wales, but not as good. Still, I enjoyed watching Redford in a role that was originally meant for Eastwood. Eastwood bagged and went on to do Dirty Harry.
 
Manchester by the Sea. Casey Affleck was superb. I've never seen an actor with ability to express sadness so well....... but hold it in as a lot of us men are prone to do. He was on a real knife edge.
 
Last night I watched these back to back. The first time I had watched the original from 1982. I really don't know what all the hype was about as both struggled to keep my attention. Not a total waste of time but nothing memorable besides maybe a 22 year old Sean Young.

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"Bright" a Netflix original.

Basically a 'cop-buddy' movie with the twist being that one of the partners is a non-human, an Orc (Joel Edgerton), and the other a reluctant human participant (Will Smith). This Orc is the first to break the 'species barrier' in the police department and is hated/mistrusted by all, including his partner. In this reality, and unfortunately in ours, "blue" doesn't automatically remove biases and suspicions about those who don't look like us, save the uniform (20 yrs in the cop-biz, I have seen it firsthand). Hundreds of years ago there was war between humans and Orcs, ultimately we prevailed and Orcs assimilated as best they could, or more correctly, as humans and elves allowed.

In their reality, for hundreds of years, magic does, or at least did at one time, exist in the world, but has been for all intents and purposes been eliminated, tho there is an underground network of practitioners waiting for a second coming of magical rule. Anyway, there are plenty of non-human creatures besides the Orcs (working class, somewhat despised and held down societally). There are Elves (equivalent to the financial 1%ers of our time we have come to know and loathe, with the added ability to control/influence their natural surroundings) and Fairies (winged creatures that apparently are nothing more than nuisances & pests, like mosquitos or gnats, and despite them looking like 7inch humans with wings they are routinely dispensed with as we do actual mosquitos and other 'bugs'; early on Will Smith's character swats one to death with a corn-broom outside his house). There may be others, but I didn't take notice.

The plot revolves around a "wand" of the magic kind that EVERYONE wants possession of; the street gangs, to enhance their criminal enterprises; the government, to keep magic and its temptations under wraps; the aforementioned underground magic worshippers, of which some 'bad' elves (Noomi Rapace, whose character crafted the wand from her own arm but lost it only to be found by a good elf) are a part of, who can hasten the return of the Dark Lord with the wand so evil-magic may once again rule the land.

The cops get involved when they come into possession of said wand, and a 'good' elf after responding to a routine call. The remainder of the movie is the the partners trying to: 1. stay alive, 2. keep the good elf alive, 3. protect the wand and 4. overcome bias/prejudice and accept, at least in Smiths case. So, as they race around LA, they get involved in car chases, car crashes, gun battles, and two G-Men from the Magic Control Division or some such. One of those guys is an Elf, btw. As a footnote, apparently as the GOP is doing in the here and now, Elves push the levers and pull the strings there. Interesting.

Overall, it was watchable, but somewhat derivative and reminiscent of many other movies that came before it;
Harry Potter- magic and wand
District 9- racial bias/segregation
16 Blocks- danger filled city journey against friend 'n foe
Lord of the Rings/Warcraft- orc & elves & fairies, oh my!
Snowpiercer- hard societal divisions

So, if you are a Netflixer, have at least a moderate interest in sci-if / fantasy, 2 hours to spare and some good snax, go ahead give it a go. It's no "After Earth" (pea-yoo!) but it ain't no "Blade Runner" (shazam!) neither! Oh, in case you are wondering, "Bright" refers to a being with magical abilities, 99.9999999999% of the time non-human, so you figure it out!
 
"Detroit"

In light of my just posted manifesto about "Bright", I'll TRY to keep this short.

This movie is based on actual events that took place in, duh, Detroit, during the riots of 1967. The National Guard, State Police and Detroit PD were patrolling the streets together, tho there appears to have been little or no coordination/communicatin between them, but I suppose they all had different priorities, I dunno as I have never worked a riot, tho the Economic Conference we hosted in NYC was a full-alert kinda event. (I was retired by the time all that Occupy nonsense went down).

The focus of this movie is on an incident that involved a group of Detroit policemen, a squad of Guardsmen and a group of civilians. The officers & soldiers believed they were being fired upon by a sniper from a building. Indeed, there WERE verified sniper incidents during the riots, whether this was one I cannot say. Without getting into too much detail, what transpired between those men and the people they found in the building they thought the shots came from was never verified as de-facto. The filmmakers relied on whatever documentation was available from those involved, civilian and non-civilian, and I would suppose some anecdotal sources. What is undisputed is the fact that 3 persons were killed during that encounter in the building, but the how and why is what still remains unproven. There was a trial that ended with those accused of murder, including a square-badge security guard in the wrong place at the wrong time, being found not guilty, but some would say the truth still has not been revealed.

I would urge everyone to see this movie but be forewarned, it's a hard-see. That there is some creative license used by the makers doesn't, nor should it, diminish the fact that this is a story about REAL people, some of which are six-feet under by the hand of another, whether justly or not.
 
I really need to go see that. Maybe this week at some point.

We saw this last week. Might move a little slowly for people use to the frantic pace of most of today's movies, but I thought it was very good. Subtle, one of those that might surprise you as it's not terribly predictable.
 
Atomic Blonde - Spy vs Spy in Berlin on the verge of the wall coming down. Great soundtrack (if you like that era of music) a bit brutal and bloody, good fight and car sequences - kind of a nice spin on the usual east vs West stories ...
reminds its time to watch The Third Man again ...
 
All the money in the world.
Somewhat dramatized, but well done. The nightmare of every wealthy person in an insecure divided world, the division is relative but real.
 
The Sun Shines Bright. A little picture with a modest cast that John Ford made for his own amusement. Aging Civil War veteran Judge Billy Priest runs for re-election in very early 20th Century Kentucky and deals with a dying whore and her funeral, the illegitimate granddaughter of a reclusive ex Confederate general, an attempted lynching, the GAR and a changing time in which the bloody shirt and “an empty sleeve or a gimpy knee” no longer matter to voters. Melancholy yet optimistic. Much quiet emotion. Nice photography by Archie Stout.

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Slugs (1988)

Classic '80s B movie cheese.:D Giant mutated flesh eating slugs grow in the sewer and come up through the toilets and sinks and attack people and whatever else gets in their way.:rflmao: Complete with bad acting, dumb dialog, gratuitous nudity, and LOTS of fake blood. Amazingly, I just read that it was actually based on a novel.:eek: Fairly entertaining and far from the worst thing I've ever seen. I vaguely remember seeing it as a little kid, probably on USA Up All Night.
 
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