Most Recent Non Horror Movie Watched

[RustedChainsaw]

Coming 2 America

[Necromancer]

Assault on Precinct 13 (remake)
Wildcats
Argo

[DarkSuperman]

Adventureland.

[Lon of the Dead]

Robocop (1987). Hundred millionth re-watch. I was pleasantly surprised to find that though Prime lists it as Rated R, it's actually the extra-splattery uncut version.

[RustedChainsaw]

Dog Day Afternoon

[DarkSuperman]

Batman vs Superman.

[The Mutilated]

John Wick 3: Parabellum, (2019). 7/10
AKA, Keanu kills a thousand stupid henchmen.

The gun-fu, and the sheer bodycount is simply outrageous --- im not complaining, the action is good, but the whole thing feels kinda silly. I mean Wick is just unstoppable.

[Lon of the Dead]

^^^ I really liked the first John Wick flick. I thought the second was better in some ways, not as good in others. But Parabellum -- and I know how silly this will sound considering we're talking about an over-the-top action series -- I felt had too much action. It was non-stop, with hardly any downtime between sequences. There was so much action that I actually got bored with it. It reminded me of white water rafting: the first ten minutes are a blast, but eventually you get tired of the waves constantly hitting you in the face and all you want to do is kick back and drift.

[The Mutilated]

...I felt it had too much action. It was non-stop, with hardly any downtime between sequences.

Yeah, I get it. The first time I saw Wicks gun-fu in the first movie it was awesome, by the third film you have pretty much seen all his tricks before...

[Lon of the Dead]

VFW (2019). Though it's currently streaming on Shudder, this isn't horror at all, but an action/splatter flick. Imagine Assault on Precinct 13, but with a lot more severed limbs and geysers of blood. Starring a host of aged B-movie veterans (including Stephen Lange, Fred Williamson and William Sadler, among others) as a bunch of 'Nam vets fending off a violent drug gang. I really wanted to like this more than I did, but the simple matter is that once you've seen the first dozen gang members skewered and splattered, it just gets repetitive. And the story offers no surprises; you pretty much know who's going to live and die. And a lot of the gore is lost in the dark photography. It's set inside a low-lit bar, at night, so it's often too dark to really see what's going on. The somewhat grainy photography gives the movie a nice pseudo-80s look, though, and the geriatric cast prove they're more than game for their roles -- even if the characters are paper thin. None of this is to say that the movie doesn't have its moments -- it does, just not a lot of them. 4.5/10

[Necromancer]

The Whole Nine Yards
The Whole Ten Yards

[Necromancer]

Anger Management

[The Mutilated]

VFW, (2019). 6/10

...once you've seen the first dozen gang members skewered and splattered, it just gets repetitive.

...the deaths weren't overly creative, but I enjoyed the splatter all the way through. I did have a few beers, which probably didn't hurt the viewing experince... the dark photography was a bit of a problem tho.

[The Mutilated]

A Clockwork Orange, (1971). 9/10

The film is one of my favorites from Kubrick, and the book by Anthony Burgess is one of my favorites as well.

[DarkSuperman]

Grownups 2.

[Lon of the Dead]

Justice League - The Snyder Cut, on HBOMax. A marked improvement over the Whedon-skewered version in just about every conceivable way, but also ridiculously self-indulgent. There are a lot of things to appreciate about Snyder's full and unrestrained version, but I'd say there are just as many things it could have done without (and those things are almost entirely stylistic choices). I won't go into a ton of detail, so I'll just give a couple good and bad points.

The good: the characterizations are all better. Particularly Wonder Woman, who's full-on bad-ass here as opposed to the den mother Whedon made her. And especially Cyborg, who is fully fleshed out here in a way that I feel justifies Ray Fisher's vocal antipathy toward Whedon over the last several months. You really see just how much of his performance and the character was erased in the 2017 film, so maybe fanboys who've ragged on Fisher for all his complaining will now see that he had every reason to do so. There's a ton of new footage, a LOT more battle scenes and the heroes are all given multiple moments to shine (with the exception of Superman who, like in Whedon's version, only really shows up near the end).

The bad: the story is all over the place, there are scenes that go on way too long and for no good reason, there are some scenes that are completely pointless and serve no purpose, and the excessive slo-mo often throttles the action to the point where it becomes an annoyance. It's clear that Snyder was aiming for an epic of mythological proportions here, but fuck, man, you can be epic while still being precise and without dragging every shot out with slow-motion. I'm not kidding, there were some shots where the slo-mo was so excessive that I would tune out and look at my laptop for several seconds, then look back up at the TV and the shot was STILL going. This could just as easily have been a 2.5 hour movie instead of 4 and been just as effective, if not even more effective.

Anyway, as I said, a lot of stuff to appreciate in this new version, but also a lot of stuff it could have done without. Still, as a whole, it's much better than Whedon's schizophrenic 2017 version. I would give Whedon's take a flat 4/10. This one, I'll go 6.5/10.

[DarkSuperman]

White Chicks.

[Primetimeloser]

Enter the Dragon (1973)*
Snatched (1973)*
Strange New World (1975)*
Shadows in an Empty Room (1976)*
The Glove (1979)*
Battle Beyond the Stars (1980)*

[Solo]

Battle Beyond the Stars (1980)*

Me and a best friend actually saw that in the theater growning up. Hey, it was a cheap Star Wars knock off of course, but still a pretty fun experience to see scifi on the bigscreen back in those days when cable wasn't around, and movies i'd actually want to see were few and far between.

[DarkSuperman]

Dumb and Dumber.