THE ESCAPE OF PRISONER 614

i can't tell if they were going for comedy or not, but whatever they were going for, it failed in my opinion. I made it 16 minutes

THE KILL TEAM

Great war movie that is sadly based on true story

NOWHERE IN THE UNIVERSE

Funny Sci-Fi short that many of use here can relate to, no doubt.

JUNCTURE
Somewhat realistic take on vigilante type story. A bit better editing on perhaps a bit better writing and it would be great

WASTERS

Apocalyptic short. I made it 3 minutes before I stopped wasting my time

Did a deep dive into movie history today as the public access TV streaming service was about to remove some old classics.

First, we watched The Phantom Carriage with the kid. A full century old, but I think it held up well. Apparently it was named "Best movie ever" by both Charlie Chaplin and Ingmar Bergman. It was the first time the kid saw a silent movie, so we had to explain a bit what was going on at times. He thought it would have been better with spoken lines...

After the kid went to bed the wife and I turned to something a little more modern - A night in Casablanca is only 75 years old. Haven't watched a whole lot of the Marx brothers, but a lot of the stuff held up surprisingly well. Will definitely try to watch more of them when the opportunity arises.

Heh... that isn't the next one of the Marx Brothers films I had planned to watch, but maybe I will skip ahead.

Last night I treated myself to a detective double-feature, rewatching..

The Maltese Falcon

and

The Nice Guys

I do love a clever detective movie.

I have no idea how it holds up against other Marx brothers movies. It did however exceed my expectations for a movie made in 1946. It felt a bit like a cabaret movie - the Marx brothers did their various bits and then fit the rest of the film around that.

Marx Brothers films would usually include musical interludes (Chico at piano, Harpo at harp) and when at MGM there would be typical "MGM productions" including staged dance numbers (that had very little to do with the brothers) and the like. I skipped out on watching a Marx Brothers movie this weekend; the last one I watched was the final one MGM's Thalberg was involved with.

SINGULARITY PRINCIPLE

Worth Watching. Once.

Now I want to watch Johnny Dangerously.

THE CORE

Typical run of the mill adventure movie. Implausible but fun ride.

DARKNESS FALLS

If you like serial killer movies, it's a good watch. But also a little implausible here and there.

POLAR STORM

Run of the mill implausible disaster movie. Mostly worth watching.

YURI LENNON'S LANDING ON ALPHA 46

Short film with a paradox. Sort of charmingly silly. Reminded me somewhat of a short story in a sci-fi anthology comic.

ZERO HOUR

Short Film. Good take on familiar ground.

SMOKE BREAK

Nice short film. I liked it.

I sat down last night to watch another Marx Brothers' film: Room Service (1938). It could have been the movie, it could have been the company, it could have been the snow shoveling after a day of work... but I fell asleep about half-way through. I woke up to catch the last 10 minutes or so, and if the movie was great it was in the parts I slept through.

This film was originally a stage show, and it was not written for the Marx Brothers. This could explain my lethargic response to it.

I remember it having a lot of great bits but falling flat as a whole movie for me.

I watched the 90-minute film of Derek DelGaudio's stage production of In & Of Itself on Hulu. Because of the film, this is getting a lot of buzz in certain quarters although to be fair it was getting the same buzz years ago, just in smaller circles. May reviews are extremely careful about avoiding spoilers. I will go a little further than most reviews I've read but I won't give the details.

The stage show is roughly divided into six pieces, combining different elements: legerdemain (including manipulating a deck of cards), storytelling, audience participation, and mentalism.The show itself is (mostly, no spoilers here) confined to a rather simple set, but there are a couple of 'set' tricks as well.

The part of the show that most reviews tend to avoid mentioning are the mentalism aspects. There are two bits of rather classic mentalism, but each is pulled of very well. The first one snuck up on me, the second is much more obvious in its arrival. I will spoil this about the show, which if you are paying careful attention (and you have a broad knowledge of celebrities of certain circles) you would have noticed that the audience(s) being filmed contain a wide variety of celebrities. One in particular that has the peculiar affect of simultaneously underlining and undermining the show is David Blaine... you'll know what I mean if you watch the show (and recognize Blaine). EDIT: I should mention that I'm not super-informed about all of the personalities in the audience, and that I didn't recognize another person who would have had a similar immersion-breaking effect on me had I recognized her and her role in performance theater: Marina Abramović.

Personally, I found the inclusion of the celebrities to be distracting, although I can't fault DelGaudio (and Frank Oz, who directed) for including them all. It's good for hype, it adds a dimension of "Where's Waldo" to repeated viewings and there are a lot of very pretty people in the audience.

I recommend the show specifically for folks with an interest in mentalism. It takes a while to get to those parts, but they are very well done (alternating in scale and depth). The non-mentalist elements are also well done, but a couple of them feel more like they they are doing something very visually simple but technically hard... so as a non-professional I'm not as impressed as I would be if I knew what went into making a specific trick work.

We've watched a handful of movies the past couple weeks.

Promising Young Woman
I've been waiting for this movie for over a year. Did not disappoint. Carey Mulligan does a fantastic job as Cassandra. Strong recommend.

Aquaman
I loved the Black Manta suit, don't really care about the rest.

Superman: Red Son
I think it does a good job adapting Millar's Elseworlds comic, was very happy with the result.

Batman Ninja
I was hoping this was going to be similar to Marvel's 5 Ronin comics from a few years back. This isn't that. I had wished this was going to be "Ninja Scroll" with Batman characters. Instead what we received was...ugh.

The Little Things
A crime thriller taking place in 1990 starring Denzel Washington, Rami Malek and Jared Leto. It's fine. Jared Leto's performance is the only thing that stands out.

THE LETTER

Short film. thought provoking.

FREE

Short film about how Frederick Douglas gained his freedom. not sure what to make of it, in part because I don't know how much is true and how much is under the "inspired by true events" banner

ONE UNDER THE SUN

Lots of good stuff. But as a whole, it seemed to me like a lot of stuff we needed to see must have ended up on the cutting room floor

I recently watched J-Men Forever. This is a 1979 comedy film by some of the Firesign Theatre which consists almost entirely of clips from Republic Serials overdubbed with new dialogue. It's ostensibly an action story of the villainous Lightning Bug's plans to conquer Earth: first with Rock and Roll and later drugs!

I found it to be reasonably funny, and at just over an hour it didn't have time to drag too much.