Yes, I own both Nosferatu and Shadow Of A Vampire. I loved Shadow - Dafoe was excellent and I loved the twist they tossed in. Also, I am not a fan of Malcovich but I actually liked him in it as well. It may be one of my favorite films.

I also agree that Christopher Lee was a far better Dracula than Lugosi. There is another Dracula movie I saw as a kid that I cannot for the life of me remember and I look for it every year around Halloween time but have never run across is - I remember at the end Dracula falls down a pit onto the stake that does him in. Whatever this movie is, it is my favorite Dracula after Nosferatu. I'm not much on horror flicks but the few I like I do like a lot.

I heard that "The Stranger" was a good movie and I like Sean Harris so I gave it a shot today.

What a piece of trash. It was 2 hours of mumbling instead of dialog. I had to turn on subtitles and read the thing to pay attention.

Most of the scenes were darkly lit to give that "edge" and for me, this got boring right away.

Apparently the movie is based on a true story but there was nothing there that was interesting. All the characters were dark and dull. I felt like I had gone to a biker bar and everyone in the bar was on thorazine.

it was just another typical slow waste of time that seems to be what people like these days.

Certainly not my cup of tea and for full disclosure, I did not make it to the end because I felt like watching the carpet grow had more possibility.

I just watched "Where The Crawdads Sing". I enjoyed it. There were a few spots where I questioned the plot but over all it was a most enjoyable flick. I did figure out the whodunnit part but for me, that was not what the movie was about so it did not bother me. It is a slow paced film but that was as it should have been. Definitely a thumbs up for me.

Oddly enough, I thought Prisoner was the best Harry Potter movie. Don't really care for Mr Yates' takes.

I loved Azkaban just because it was a much darker tone than the Chris Columbus movies. The first two are hard to touch though just because they were so close to the books and had an almost epic-movie feel whereas Azkaban was like a horror movie with magic. I agree though that the David Yates movies were garbage. He openly admits that he didn't read the books, and so his movies felt half-finished. The whole reason I started reading the books was because I had no idea what I had just watched after seeing Goblet of Fire.

I watched Onward in two chunks separated by a few months. Maybe it's because I took so long to finish the movie, but this just didn't live up to teh standards we've come to expect from Pixar. It's kind of a generic movie. Neat ideas and cool visuals, but I didn't get the warm and fuzzies from this one like I did with Wall-E and Inside Out.

I watched "Solace" with Anthony Hopkins today. This was another complete waste of time. The storyline had so many holes and the dialog was perhaps the worst dialog I've ever come across. It was as if this movie was made by someone in 7th grade. I felt like whoever wrote it had a bunch of ideas and just slapped them together. And because it was supposed to be a thriller, lots of really loud music and sound effects were used to try to make it thrilling when there was nothing thrilling about it.

It amazes me the crap that gets funded in Hollywood. Avoid this movie.

"A dog is so loyal that you don't even believe that a person deserves that kind of love."©
Hachiko: The Most Loyal Friend is a drama directed by Lasse Hallström. The film had a budget of $16 million. And with such a small budget, it was possible to make a really strong drama! I just cried after watching this movie. The plot is based on a true story that happened in Japan and shook the whole world! I will not describe it, because it is a spoiler of the whole movie. The plot is simple, mostly banal. But, despite all the simplicity, this story takes hold of the soul!

I watched "Bullet Train" with Brad Pitt.

I think this may be the worst movie I've ever seen. It is ridiculous non stop violence with dialog trying to out "[email protected]@k" Sacrface.

What is bothersome to me is that the movie got good reviews. It was also depicted as a dark comedy. To me, a dark comedy requires some sense of cleverness. This picture had none.

In a time where violence is running amok in this country and elsewhere, it saddens me that a movie company would make such a picture.

I think Brad Pitt and the folks that made this piece of flotsam should all be embarrassed to the hilt. Surely he could have found a better movie to invest himself in.

Just watched Slumberland on Netflix and really enjoyed it. Visually stunning, it also has a great story with proper development and great use of motifs, weaving the conscious and subconscious worlds together brilliantly. Great entertainment.

I watched "Prisoners" which came out in 2013. Overall this would have been a decent movie however there was a huge flaw in the storyline such that a suspect involved would have been reported missing by is aunt and the cops would have been following up on that by tailing the lead character who would have been a prime suspect for the individual having gone missing. For me, that is just too big a hole to make the rest of the movie work. I just do not understand how the makers of this film allowed such a big hole to exist in their story.

I have to whole heartedly agree. It's laughable how often "fluff" movies, TV, etc. snag big name actors to get us to click and it's just a game of how long we can watch before abandoning the pick. How have you (or anyone reading) filtered choices on "movie night"?

I'm usually drawn to the actor/actresses pictured, then I read the description, if I like, I'll watch the trailer, if I'm still not sold, I'll check out the critic and audience ratings. Otherwise, It's still a toss up these days.

I tried watching "Blackout"-Josh Duhamel on Netflix but realized I was wasting my time with the immediately cheap feeling of the burn-n-turn style production.

It is really hard to find good things to watch on the streaming apps these days. As more companies try to get a cut of the business, the selections get more and more divided as there are more companies vying for content.

I spend more time searching than watching which sort of annoys me.

I read the blurbs to get a sense of what the movie is about and then I'll try one - if after 15 minutes (often less) I am not liking it, I usually abandon it and move on.

Sadly, I almost always ignore a title if it is a Netflix studio production because 99% of their stuff is way out my taste range. Soon I will drop Netlix and go back to Amazon Prime for a while. I juggle between these two. I have tried to be loyal to Netflix since they were the first but their lack of content leaves me with no choice but to look elsewhere now. I dislike Jeff Bazos but any other streaming app other than PBS is a company that has jumped on the bandwagon and helped to ruin the selections available to Netflix so I won't give them my business. With Amazon I at least get a discount on shipping if I purchase from them (which I seldom do).

I live alone so TV is my background noise as well as a portion of my "distraction techniques" so I have to have something without commercials or I'd go nuts.

I just finished watching "Emily The Criminal" which I liked. It is a bit dark but with a bit of a twist that worked for me. It has a decent pace and I liked the lead actress. A little violence but not in a gratutitous sense. For the most part the storyline and characters were believable so it passed my litmus tests.

Master and Commander (2004)

Not sure how I missed this Russel Crowe film, as I am a big fan...but I feel grateful for the opportunity to see something many years later that I had no idea existed.

A naval battle adventure film set in the early 1800's, when men often were at sea for months at a time and endured agonizing conditions, just like the deadliest catch

What I enjoyed were the tactics used by the Commander (Crowe) when he was clearly outsized, outgunned and what they lacked in speed they tried to make up for in cunningness and wit. A good watch with some plot holes and less than stellar acting at times. A solid B

B is fair I think. Maybe even B+.

The cannon sound effects are some of the best I've ever heard. Unfortunately I've only heard this in stereo...

Yes, the cannon fire scenes were awesome.

Yup - very enjoyable watch.

My recent viewing:

TCM stuff:
-I saw a really good doc about Max Steiner. I had never heard of him; shame on me. He was fundamental in elevating the role of music in film and wrote the music for several classic films (King Kong, Gone With The Wind, Casablanca, etc).

-I also saw 49th Parallel, from 1941. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0033627/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0 From imdb: "A World War II U-boat crew are stranded in northern Canada. To avoid internment, they must make their way to the border and get into the still-neutral U.S."

It was pretty much a propaganda film made by the British to sway the opinion of then-neutral U.S. to get into W.W. II. I've seen it before and as a Canadian I loved it- lots of shots in various parts of the country. Mostly British actors it seems. Laurence Olivier playing the French-Canadian trapper was actually really good; when the Germans enter the Hudson's Bay outpost and take control, he said "my fawder was in da Great War and licked you good, and we lick you again". Classic!

Local Japanese film festival: this was the first time in three years it was in person, and there's always a real gem. Not this time. Bear in mind most people who go are from mid-20s and up; mostly 40+.

Day one had the Japanese ambassador say a few words- even a few in French- and they had awesome cookies in the lobby and I had several. The show started with a performance by a Québecois J-pop dance crew called Ice Qream. A couple of the girls sang in Japanese to back tracks while all the others danced. A weird cultural mélange. Seeing several middle-aged people waving glo-sticks to the beat of the music was the icing on the cake.

Then they showed a short animated kiddy thing. The main feature was called Pop In Q https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5585826/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0 It was an animated thing, starting with five Japanese teenage girls going through their angst. They were then transported to a world on a different time dimension that was kind of like a Pokemon episode, complete with weird creatures and a herculean task the girls had to accomplish, with a smattering of anime J-pop dance scenes. Not my thing at all, and likely not for most people there. Cookies were really good though.

Day two started with another short kiddy thing. The feature was a comedy called Uso happyaku (We Make Antiques!) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7268388/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0
Not funny at all. A bit weird in the last ten minutes, but no one laughed in the theatre.

Disappointing. Good cookies though. Hopefully next year will be much much better.

This movie is an attempt to make a Southeast Asian style anime to real life video game flick. It's essentially a live action cartoon and is meant to be watched as such. No filler just bang bang.

Not excusing it. Just sayin, it is what it intends to be.

I just finished watching "Gypsy" on Netflix with Naomi Watts and Billy Crudup. I watched it because of these two actors who are among my favorite actors.

The acting was great but that was the only positive I came away with.

The plot was ridiculous with holes one could drive a C130 through. Also, there was no ending. Nothing was concluded so I felt like I'd been ripped off. I do not believe this is because they hope to get another season out of it - I believe it was deliberate and if that is true, in my opinion it shows a complete lack of creativity.

I have to wonder why Watts and Crudup agreed to make this series. Clearly they would have had to have read the script before signing on. It could have been a great plot had it not been so over the top with inappropriate behavior by the main characters - especially Watt's character.

I would not recommend this to anyone.

I just watched "Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery". The only good thing about it was when it played the Beatle's "Glass Onion" during the closing credits.

I found this incredibly dull and uninventive. It was mostly a rehash of any Agatha Christie mystery for the most part only with a different storyline. The characters were uninteresting. Daniel Craig did a poor southern accent at least to my ears. The majority of the film was done using flashbacks of the various scenarios that provided motives for all the characters.

I'm sure the masses will like this film but I think it was dead on arrival. The real mystery for me is, why was this movie made in the first place? I would expect better from Edward Norton. I saw an interview with him on Amanpour and he really seemed excited about it. Oh wait, he is an actor.

Oh, and the ending was ridiculous. It wasn't even clever although they did their best to make it explosive. Nothing about this film worked. And to think, I'm sure it cost millions.

Why was it made? Because they got former James Bond and a director that made a movie that pulled in 1,333,000,000 dollars at the box office?

The Last Jedi sucked.
The Force Awakens sucked.
The Rise of Skywalker sucked more than most movies ever sucked.

But to be fair to people we should remember that there are a lot of things that go into making a movie. What Norton was told initially and what the script he signed up for was could have been different from how actual production turned out. And then you have editing on top of that. I think it's fully possible to end up with something quite different in the end and for the actor to maybe not even have seen the final cut before doing some press for it.

Not saying any of that is the case here, just saying that we have to cut actors a bit of slack.

I agree. it is possible the movie ended up being different from what was used to cast the production. Regardless, it was total crap like almost everything that gets made these days. It gets old trying to find decent entertainment these days. Sigh...

Kind of why I watch old movies, though there's always been crap. Just like music.

Aint that the truth...? :-)

So I watched it and I agree that it wasn't particularly 'fresh'. I mean, I suppose that's 'fine' in the sense that younger generations won't watch a Christie mystery because it's old news so they might watch something like this. Perhaps they'll find it new enough.

Also agree that the accent was... well, it took a while to get over it.

Probably my biggest annoyance was the flashbacks. I've never been a big fan of it. To me it always plays a bit like exposition in lieu of good writing.

I thought Norton was ok. He's pretty much always ok. But yeah, on the other hand a waste of his talent in that movie.

And the ending was unsatisfying, mostly because of the reason they couldn't go with plan A by losing the evidence in the dumbest way possible.

Yeah, not ranking this one particularly high...

I agree about the flashback thing. I've always thought it was a cheap shortcut when better writing would have improved the movie.

I guess I am a harsh critic but it is tough to find anything good these days. So many holes in plots and one dimensional characters with dull dialog. I'm afraid the streaming app production companies are really lowering the bar and sadly, the good actors are being lured into working on projects that at least for me tend to disappoint. I am not one for movies built around special effects and I also hate hate hate most soundtracks because volume levels fluctuate way too much and then there are all the sound effects to make the movie exciting. Arrrrggggg....!!!! :-)

I dunno. I used to be more critical of modern movies, and I suppose often I still am, but every now and then I see a "classic" thriller or suspense movie from say the 50's-70's, and there are a lot out there that really aren't that great in terms of writing. I mean they have the retro vibe to them, but to me there was a surprising amount of average acting and silly plots.

I think part of the problem today is that we just have so much content out there that odds are high we run into something mediocre.

As much as I dislike some of what streaming platforms put out, I think the same can be said of some TV networks. I mean, certainly some of them have put out garbage - or even worse, put out something pretty good which they then canceled.

So I guess I both agree and also don't..

I'm a big fan of dynamics in movies, but I also live alone in a space where I can play as loud as I want. So it doesn't bother me. I'll take that any day over 'flatline' mixes.

Yes, there are a lot of mediocre old movies as well and often I'll rewatch something I loved 30 years ago and realize it is not so good these days. I also agree about TV. I watch a lot of PBS and they have now become Americanized so even their content has started to disappoint. I live alone so TV is my companion much of the time and it becomes harder and harder to find anything worth watching and during the pandemic I went through my collection of DVD's so times are tough now. I keep searching....