On 4/24/2022 8:01 AM, Ian J. Ball wrote:
> On 2022-04-24 08:30:41 +0000, Ubiquitous said:
>
>> What did you watch?
>
> I got nothing done yesterday, even though I should have! Instead, I
> watched:
>
> Killer Rivalry (recorded off LMN the night before) - This was twisty,
> but I didn't like the final "twist" - maybe they did establish it, I
> dunno, but it felt like it was an *unearned* "twist". But one thing was
> for sure - as Anna Marie Dobbins was the headliner, but not one of the
> volleyball "stars", you knew going in that she was the villain!... But,
> again, here, the motives established for her character were incredibly
> weak.
>   Anyway, a "rivalry" between the two college "beach volleyball" (the
> film kept calling it "sand volleyball" - is "beach volleyball" a
> trademark, or something?!!) teams seems to get out of hand when players
> start turning up murdered!

Perhaps this was made by some foreign country where they don't speak
English, you know, like Canada. ;-)

>   Newcomer B Hale was a cutie (too bad she's somewhat "tatted up"), and
> other second leads Alexandra Harris and redhead Kaci Fullinwider weren't
> bad either - they were all better looking than the lead actresses.
>   The ending to this felt somewhat unresolved.
>
>snip
>
> Implanted (Vudu(!)) - I guess I should "thank" Adam for turning me on to
> this 2021 film.  ;p
>   Weirdly, as Anim pointed out, this is "double-listed" on
> JustWatch.com - I have tried E-mailing JustWatch about correcting this.
> We'll see if anything comes of it...
>   This was OK, though not near as good as the somewhat similarly themed
> 2018 film "Upgrade" with Logan Marshall-Green.
>   Adam covered the synopsis, but the gist is that "in 2023"(!) a woman
> is given an implanted "bio-monitoring" chip with an A.I. called L.E.X.X.
> (L.E.X.X. is given separate billing in the credits!!) that has very
> different ideas beyond just "bio-monitoring" its "clients".
>   I have no idea if this is accurate or not, but in casting the lead
> for this film, which looks like it was actually mostly filmed in NYC, it
> felt like they looked for a veteran off-off!-Broadway actress - in this
> case, that's Michelle Girolami (what kind of surname is this?!) who
> plays Sarah.
>   This is low-budget minimalism, though it looks like they somehow
> sprung for some filming in Nevada/California(?), and also Paris,
> France(!?!!), as well as NYC.
>   One thing I didn't like is that they didn't really establish why our
> lead "heroine", Sarah, was homeless at the film's start - obviously this
> explains why Sarah was in such desperate straits as to agree to get paid
> for the chip implanting, but it really doesn't explain why she wasn't
> living with her declining mom, or her uncle. They also never really
> explained why/how Sarah broke up with her former boyfriend, which seemed
> like another plot hole.
>   I didn't care for the post-ending - if they had ended with Sarah's
> "solution" to the dilemna, that would have been a decent ending. The
> post-ending "tacked on" after that was unnecessary, and actually
> detracted from the proceedings.
>   This is very mild sci-fi - I'm not sure I can "recommend" it, though
> it's not so bad that I would say "stay away!" either. I would recommend
> "Upgrade" over this film, though.
>
>

Already on the watch list. I liked Upgrade.

On day one of my Stanley Kubrickathon I watched:

Spartacus (4K disc) 1960 historical epic directed by Stanley Kubrick and
starring Kirk Douglas as Spartacus, who leaves a slave revolt against
the Romans. I'm not sure if I noticed before or not but Gladiator
pretty much rips off this movie. Anyway it's a great epic and looks
great in 4K.

A Clockwork Orange (4K disc) 1971 classic directed by Stanley Kubrick
and starring Malcolm McDowell as a young man who just wants to engage in
a bit of ultra-violence with his droogs. I think I might like this
movie a little bit more every time I watch it. Or a least I appreciate
it more now than I did when I was younger. And the new 4K prints looks
great.

2001: A Space Odyssey (4K disc) Stanley Kubrick's 1968 sci-fi classic
about a doomed mission to Jupiter to investigate an alien signal. The
movie holds up great and I really can't praise enough just how beautiful
the 4K transfer looks. Just stunning beyond words.

2010: The Year We Make Contact (blu-ray) Sequel to 2001 which stars Roy
Scheider and picks up 9 years later with a joint American / Russian
mission to Jupiter to find out what happened to the first mission. The
movie holds up very well. I like it a lot, but I'm not sure if I ever
noticed before just how rushed the ending is. Scheider gets a message
from the aliens that the American and Russian spaceships must leave
orbit in two days or else. Both sides are under orders to stay, they
don't have the fuel to leave early, and only Scheider gets the message.
Yet after one scene of him saying to the Russian captain they need to
leave and he can't explain why, suddenly they are disobeying orders and
hightailing it back to Earth. When you are watching the movie and they
are making their escape there's obvious danger. But that danger masks
the fact that the escape is two days later after the message. They
completely gloss over the Scheider had no proof of the danger ahead of
time. There should have at least been a scene of Scheider asking Hal to
partially back up his story of alien communication since Hal was the one
to relay the messages.

Blue Thunder (blu-ray) 1983 police action movie starring Roy Scheider as
a cop who flies a police chopper, but gets a military stealth copter
upgrade. I picked this up many years back in the dollar bin. I only
just got around to watching it because it also starred Roy Scheider. I
was well into the movie when Malcolm McDowell showed up as the villain.
I had *no* idea he was in the movie. It was an OK movie I guess, but
I had to beat my disbelief into total submission to accept that the
government would launch two fighter jets to take out a police chopper in
a U.S. city or that the chopper could defeat two fighter jets in combat.
And let's not even talk about the buildings the fighter jets took out
while trying to shoot down Scheider!

On 5/8/2022 8:23 PM, Micky DuPree wrote:
> Arthur Lipscomb <arthur@alum.calberkeley.org> writes:
>
>> Blue Thunder (blu-ray) 1983 police action movie starring Roy Scheider
>> as a cop who flies a police chopper, but gets a military stealth
>> copter upgrade. I picked this up many years back in the dollar bin.
>> I only just got around to watching it because it also starred Roy
>> Scheider. I was well into the movie when Malcolm McDowell showed up
>> as the villain.
>> I had *no* idea he was in the movie.
>
> I was expecting a mindless movie of explosions, but there was an actual
> story inside.
>
> "But sir! He checks his sanity with a stopwatch!"
> "What do you use? A dipstick?"
>
>> It was an OK movie I guess, but I had to beat my disbelief into total
>> submission to accept that the government would launch two fighter jets
>> to take out a police chopper in a U.S. city or that the chopper could
>> defeat two fighter jets in combat.
>
> I no longer remember exactly what was so important that they were
> chasing him about (he overheard talk of corruption with the chopper's
> super-duper sypware?),

Yes. He was flying the copter outside the villain's high rise window in
stealth mode and recorded them confessing to murder and other crimes.

but the fact that this was an extra special
> chopper was the whole premise of the movie.
>
> -Micky
>