DSL's Movie/TV Reviews and Discussion

[Cody_Russell]

All Warner Bros movies coming out in 2021 are being released on HBO Max too. Who needs movie theaters?
Bittersweet because I don’t want to see the theater business die off, but at the same time selfishly like this because of my HBO membership.

Eastern Promises and A History of Violence were pretty decent, but yeah, they lacked the "strangeness" that nobody does better than Cronenberg. Ultimately, I would really like to see him tackle one of Lovecraft's better stories.

I saw both of those films in the year they were released, but don’t remember ANYTHING about them outside of a Viggo.
Add mediocre “Hildago” to that group.

Viggo Mortensen films were somewhat popular in the mid-2000s after his role in The Lord of the Rings...

[Hannibal]

LOOKER (1981)
d. Michael Crichton
Starring: Albert Finney, Susan Dey, James Coburn, Leigh Taylor-Young

This movie is awesome. Awesomely bad. It is a great mixture of Michael Crichton's typical warnings to us about the dangers of technology, hardcore 80s cheese, a decent sampling of T&A, and a scary hypnosis gun that causes you to freeze in place and completely lose track of time. Albert Finney plays a plastic surgeon who is making tiny little adjustments to supermodels' faces because they want to not just be hot, but perfect. But then these models start to mysteriously turn up dead. And so, one of his former patients comes in one day and begs him to change her face back to how it used to be. Why? Because "they're killing all the girls who are perfect!".

Who is "they"? It's the evil Digital Matrix Corp, helmed by CEO James Coburn. Digital Matrix is digitizing the hottest women in the world so that they can use their likenesses for deepfake CGI commercials. But that's not all! In those commercials, they also embed hypnotic light patterns that hypnotize you into buying stuff. Imagine a dystopia where one day you are watching TV and then the next thing you know, you find yourself at the apple store with a new iphone and no memory of how you got it.

Also, the company murders the models for some reason after they digitize them. Why? Who knows? The plot is a total mess. But who cares? The movie has a half-naked 1980 Playboy Playmate of the year and cool technology.

Their assassin is none other than former NFL-er Tim Rossovich, who is speechless the whole movie and who only shows up in the credits as "Mustache Man". He has a scary light gun (also invented by the company) that, if you look at it when it's fired at you, turns you into a catatonic zombie until you somehow get woken up. There are actually some great scenes where this happens to the main character, like when he is driving and he suddenly finds himself crashed in a fountain.

The movie actually does have some interesting stuff, like the concept that one day people can be replaced by their digitized likenesses -- we're pretty close to that level of technology today. The sound effects of the light gun are cool as hell too. It also has an excellent synthesized soundtrack in some spots and a theme song that's straight out of the early 1980s. Best of all, is a piss-in-pants funny scene at the end of the movie where Rossovich ends up accidentally in a breakfast cereal ad, dead on the kitchen table, with a bullet wound in his head. Did Michael Crichton mean to put a gigantic slapstick joke right in the middle of the suspenseful climax? Who knows? But it's entertaining.

[froot loops]

Lately I have been watching old Magnum PI reruns and they hold up. Most old 80s TV shows are really bad when you look back. The writing had a little more depth and Higgins never disappoints.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Heh, Looker looks like fun

[THE_WIZARD_]

STFU

[Hannibal]

Heh, Looker looks like fun

It is.

You haven't seen it? It was an early 80s staple on HBO.

[iam416]

This thread remains invalid absent a review of Congo. Hannibal doing a Michael Crighton film is brazen sass and disregard of Laura Linney's crowning achievement.

JFC.

[Cody_Russell]

wtf. Thats really weird because I had the movie “Congo” on in the background last night. Literally. It’s on HBO Max...

Kind of meh because the killer apes don’t make an appearance until the last 20 minutes of the film. (Excluding the short opening scene)
Not a good performance by Tim Curry too.

[AlabamAlum]

Congo is one of the worst movies of all time. That and Battlefield Earth (that I suffered through again recently) are def on my list. The thing is people knew Congo (22% on RT - which is high) and Battlefield Earth (3%) were bad.

But “Signs” was the worst movie of all time with a big name cast that people thought was good (74%). And they were fucking wrong.

[THE_WIZARD_]

shaddup

[Hannibal]

Signs is terrible.

I never saw Congo.

I have seen worse movies than Battlefield Earth.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Never seen Signs. Have seen Congo and most of Battlefield Earth. Battlefield Earth is so stupid and badly acted that it has weird enjoyable moments. They totally sold me that Harrier jets sitting around for 1,000 years would still be functional. And that their jet fuel would still be good. And that after a couple hours in a flight simulator, even a caveman could fly one.

[AlabamAlum]

Yeah, it’s bad. I am harder on big budget films with horseshit like that. You expect that from the low budget, straight to DVD films.

[WingsFan]

Viggo Mortensen films were somewhat popular in the mid-2000s after his role in The Lord of the Rings..

I like his 90s films starting with his best performance in 'The Indian Runner' he was brutal

Lately I have been watching old Magnum PI reruns and they hold up.

I never watch one episode, but with Covid I looked it up yesterday, but its not on Amazon/Netflix or Direct TV

[Hannibal]

The best Bond movie since the Sean Connery era.

Fight me.