What wuz the most recent movie(s) you have seen?

[j7wild]

Jigsaw (2017)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3348730/





I won't give the plot and its twists away:

once you've watch this yourself, you will agree with me that not only is this latest entry, 7 years since the last movie, unnecessary because it doesn't bring anything new to the franchise but also because the trailer was misleading and deceitful.

1/5

[j7wild]

Acts of Violence (2018)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt6684714/



1/5

Another entry in a recent long strings of low budget movies that Bruce Willis has been starring in:

they all will get a theatrical release in a couple of cities and then they goes to DVD and VOD.

I checked my local listings and there is only one theater in this city of millions and 600 square miles showing it.

If you look at Bruce Willis' IMDB info,

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000246

All these are low budget junk:

First Kill (2017) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5884234

Once Upon A Time In Venice (2017) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4694544

Marauders (2016) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3963816

Precious Cargo (2016) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4651410

Extraction (2015) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4382872

Vice (2015) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3480796

The Prince (2014) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1085492

Fire with Fire (2012) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1925431

If you go deeper and look at the long list of the many producers listed under each movie, they are mostly all the same ones and they also involved in this Acts Of Violence movie.

Bruce Willis couldn't be that hard up for money to make these low budget direct to video crap?

How much does he get for starring in each one of these movies?

$200,000? $500,000? I doubt he even gets that much considering $500,000 will be a large chunk of the entire budget for each one of these movies.

Looks like if Bruce Willis is not making a Die Hard movie and getting a multi-million dollars paycheck, he doesn't have much else to do.

Outside of the last 2 Die Hard films in 2007 and 2013, he made two RED movies which were good and then he had a few starring roles, major and minor in films such as The Expendables series, Planet Terror, G.I. Joe and the rest were nothing to write home about.

Must sucks to be forever typecast in the same role.

[j7wild]

Winter War (2017)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt6353716/



French film about the events surrounding the battle for the French Alsace region during World War 2, where the First French Paratroopers regiment along with American infantry units were assigned the task to hold the town of Jebsheim and take the neighboring forest.

Failure to do so will result in German units using the forest to bypass the region and encircling advancing French and Allied units and cutting them in half.

https://standwheretheyfought.jimdo.c...-then-and-now/

This battle was part of a larger 4 months long campaign referred by the French as the "Alsatian Stalingrad".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colmar...e_for_Jebsheim

It also involved French young men who were conscripted into the German Wermacht and SS units against their will and forced to fight against French and American units.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malgré-nous

Historically accurate, bloody, violent and realistic without the chest thumping glorification and the constant in your face lecturing of Allied are good and here to save the world and German forces are all evil madmen that are too often found in many of today's Hollywood World War II films.



4/5

[j7wild]

Murder On The Orient Express (2017)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3402236/







If you read the book or have seen the 1974 excellent movie adaptation, you already know how this movie ends.

But like most things in life, it's not the destination, it's the journey and in both the book and the 1974 movie, the journey is filled with suspense and tension accompanying a great build up prior to the big reveal.

In this 2017 remake, nothing like that.

This could had been a made for TV/Cable TV/NetFlix movie.

All the characters [or suspects] if you will, are not given much to do, and seeing that the movie is produced and directed by Kenneth Branagh, with him starring in the main role of Hercule Poirot,

I think this was a case where the producer/director/main star was given too much Carte Blanche to do everything he wanted:

the opportunity to show himself off and make the entire movie about him while forgetting the source material and neglecting the rest of the cast.

It's a damn shame too because the cast is composed of some great actresses and actors including Dame Judi Dench, Michelle Pfeiffer, Daisy Ridley, Willem Dafoe, Derek Jacobi and many others.

I had high hopes for this movie when I saw the first trailer for it months ago.

Now I can't find words to describe how disappointed I am by this final product without venturing into 4 and 8 and 13 letters profane words.

I will leave it to my friend to put my disappointment into words for me:



Agatha Christie has got to be rolling in her grave!!

2/5

[j7wild]

The Final Girls (2015)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2118624/





Well made PG-13 horror movie paying great homage to the 80's slasher films, featuring a nostalgic 80's soundtrack, and several cute girls: Taissa Farmiga, Malin Akerman, Nina Dobrev, Chloe Bridges, and the cutest one of them all whom strangely I have never seen or heard of prior to watching this film,

Angela Trimbur http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1640326

They left the ending open for a sequel and I hope there will be one.

4/5

[j7wild]

Chasing The Dragon (2017)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt6015328/



Fact based crime epic about the rise and fall of a ruthless drug lord in the Kowloon Walled City of Hong Kong from the 60's to the 70's.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kowloon_Walled_City (can't believe people lived in there )

It was alright!

Despite being one of the top 5 Hong Kong films of 2017, this was not one of Donnie Yen's and Andy Lau's best films.

3.5/5

[j7wild]

Altitude (2017)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4556370



I've seen 1000's of movies in my life including many direct to video titles and many of them were bad, but this one takes the cake!

Being able to enjoy a movie requires being able to defy some belief but with this particular film, you also have to forget that you have a brain while at the same time, being insulted by how stupid and laughable this movie is.

That's Kelsey Grammer's daughter by the way.



Guess having the Grammer name is not helping her acting career move up faster and she has to take whatever roles that comes her way including being in crappy movies like this one.

0.25/5

[j7wild]

Crooked House (2017)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1869347



This film adaptation of Agatha Christie's 49th book, which is considered by many as one of her 7 best books, fails miserably.

The stellar cast of Christina Hendricks, Gillian Anderson, Glenn Close, Terence Stamp, Max Irons, Julian Sands and Stefanie Martini are not given much to do with their paper thin characters from a very shallow script.

The story revolves around the mysterious death of the Patriarch of a wealthy family and possible foul play is suspected. The granddaughter of the deceased hires a private investigator, a young man she once had a brief affair with, to help her look into her grandfather's death.

She doesn't want to call the Police because that will involve Scotland Yard and draw unwanted attention to the family by the press.

The suspects are all family members of the deceased: his mother, his grandchildren, his daughter in laws, his ex-wife, his 2 sons, etc, etc.

They all have one thing in common: they are fighting for the family fortune.

But the story doesn't really go anywhere and doesn't do much build up. In the nearly 2 hours running time, the viewer is not really enticed to care about any of the characters.

When I was watching this, my thoughts should had been on which one of them may be a murderer and which one of them should I be rooting for to be innocent.

But there was on the screen narrative that made me care for any of them. The director didn't develop the characters to establish a connection between them and the viewer.

When the killer is finally revealed and the movie abruptly ends and I don't say that lightly, my immediate thought, when I saw the final frame fade to the "Directed By" credit, was:

that's it? It's over?

This is the 2nd film adaptation in 2017 of an Agatha Christie's novel that fails to deliver.

3/5

[j7wild]

Double Indemnity (1944)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0036775/

Insurance agent gets involved with a woman who plans to kill her husband to collect on a $100,000 insurance claim.

Intelligent, well written, well acted, suspenseful and there is no special effects, foul language, violence, blood and gore.

Nominated for 7 Awards Awards including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor.

Deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the U.S. Library of Congress in 1992, Double Indemnity was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. In 1998, it was ranked #38 on the American Film Institute's list of the 100 best American films of all time, and in 2007 it placed 29th on their 10th Anniversary list.

I did some research.

$100,000 ($1.7 million by today's money) is a lot of money for 1938, the year the story of this movie is set in.

A lb of sirloin steak was 40 cents, a lb of bread was 8 cents (guess they didn't sell sliced loaves yet?), a gallon of gasoline was 21 cents, a basic small 4 cylinder car was $1,000, the cost of a median home in Houston was about $5,100, one night stay in a hospital was $7, a high school teacher with 4 years of post high school education earned $1,912 a year average.

The murderous wife's home used in the movie for the exterior scenes is still there





According to Zillow it's now worth over $2,100,000.

It was built in 1927, 4 bedrooms, 3 bath, over 3,000 square feet and sold for around $28,000 brand new.

So considering that the average home was in 1938 was $5,100; this house being $28,000 in 1927, it was considered a mansion then.

the current owner bought it in 1996 for $585,000.

The apartment complex the insurance agent lived at is also still there





4.5/5

[j7wild]

Darkest Hour (2017)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4555426/







Nominated for Best Picture, this is a good movie in its own right but I still think out of all the other Best Picture nominations:

Call Me by Your Name, Dunkirk, Get Out, Lady Bird, Phantom Thread, The Post, The Shape of Water, and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, the latter is still the best movie of them all.

4/5

[j7wild]

Triple 9 (2016)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1712261/

A horrible movie!!

Confusingly structured story, poorly paced with some dialogue that makes you think a child wrote the screenplay.

A waste of a talented cast with several of them being nothing but wallflowers, all of them could had been better served in a movie with an intelligent script and a capable director.

2/5

[j7wild]

The Satan Bug (1965)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059678/




Based on another Alistair MacLean's (The Guns Of Navarone, Ice Station Zebra, Where Eagles Dare) novel, with a screenplay by James Clavell (The Great Escape), and directed by John Sturges (The Great Escape, The Magnificent Seven 1960, Ice Station Zebra, The Eagle Has Landed), this was a good movie.

A former intelligence agent is brought out of retirement by the U.S. Government to catch the thieves who stole a top secret biological weapon and are threatening to unleash it on the world. A weapon that is capable of wiping out every living thing on Earth within months.

Suspenseful, intense, thrilling, intelligent without any violence, blood and gore, foul language - there were scenes that had me grinding my teeth and gripping the sofa cushion.

4.5/5

[j7wild]

Alice Through The Looking Glass (2016)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2567026/





Not sure why this sequel to the 2010 Disney's Alice In Wonderland did not receive the good reviews its predecessor did.

It is not bad!

3.75/5

[j7wild]

Perfetti Aconosciuti (2016) aka Perfect Strangers
(in Italian with English subtitles)

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4901306/





7 long time friends: 3 husbands and wives couples (including one newlyweds) and a single man get together for dinner.

They decide to play a game while eating their meal: put all their cell phones on the dining table and share with each other every text message, every email and every phone call, by putting it on speaker phone for all to hear, that they receive during the course of the meal.

What happens next in this well written, well acted, intelligent adult themed oriented Italian cinema film - you will have to find out for yourself.

5/5

[j7wild]

The Body (2012) aka El Cuerpo

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1937149/





A detective investigates the husband whose wife's body is missing from the morgue after she dies of a heart attack.

Sound simple enough, isn't it?

It isn't!!

By the time this made in Spain movie reaches the final frame, I didn't correctly predict any of the final revelations and twists that were shown.

A chilling thriller very worthy of Alfred Hitchcock.

4.5/5