One of the kicks about having the new Triton Ones and moving the Twos to the sides, Threes to the rear is to go back and watch old standards again, and enjoy the surround sound in my revamped HT.
Recently watched "I am Legend" and last night, "War of the Worlds". Some awesome LFE in that one!!!!
Just having family fun together!!!
Loving my system, thank you GEt!!!
I am sooooo blessed,
God bless you,
Wayne

OK, finally got to watch "Magnificent Seven" last night.
And it has already been well reported. Just to add my two cents, I did not find it all that Magnificent.
It MIGHT have been more so except for the recent "Revenant" and "Hateful Eight" movies which set the standard for recent westerns REALLY HIGH!!!! I mean, don't get me wrong, Haley Bennett was magnificent and her town really needed to be saved. The bad guy was truly bad, alright. There was some good acting, and a solid recommendation for entertainment/story/acting. Though I did see the gatlin gun coming.
I liked the cast, thought it was a little funny and PC, rather anachronistic to have so many races, even my Bro Native American included in the "seven", but I liked it, could suspend my belief to include that in our new perfect West.
Yeah, worth the watch, but PQ was nowhere near as good as Hateful Eight and the sound, use of surround could have been MUCH better IMHO.
Did I mention Haley Bennett?????
OK then, God Bless,
Wayne

Hey, Wayne

Goes to show ya', just like with music, we all react some differently to specific movies. I just ordered Hateful Eight.... when you put it in Revenant's class, well, that's pretty special, and so it's on it's way here. I'll have to see how much better a higher number (Eight) is than Seven....

Thanks!

Rick

Oh, yeah, Bro Rick,
BUT BEWARE, it is Q Tarentino and is nasty, violent, rough!!!!
He shot it in BEAUTIFUL wide a** 70mm. Gorgeous BLOOD and gore. Yet it is ridiculously well done.
I hope you enjoy it.
God Bless,
Wayne

I've been in "catch up mode" too. Hopefully no one objects to my posting these all in one post.

I struggled to write this review and debated whether to do so at all.

I wanted to like The Hateful Eight more than I did. The cinematography and score are pure works of art. Absolutely fantastic. Although, approximately 2/3 of the film takes place in a cramped cabin, which is a crying shame given the effort Tarantino went through to film this in 70mm. It still works even on the indoor scenes but I wished for more movement in this film.

I'm a big fan of Tarantino but I don't lap up everything he does with no discretion like some of his fans. I find Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, Kill Bill, and Inglorious Basterds, to be truly excellent films. The rest fall somewhere between forgettable and overcooked. The Hateful Eight falls into the latter category in my opinion.

Anyone going into a Tarantino film not expecting over the top language and violence is just poorly informed. But TH8 pushes the limits even of this crass and jaded viewer. This is violence for violence sake in many cases and I legitimately ponder the psychological effect when someone getting their teeth knocked out in hyper-realistic, gory fashion is supposed to elicit laughter.

Don't get me wrong, it was hardly the violence that turned me off of this film, see my list of Tarantino films that I DO like. But it felt like this one was a bit of a chore to watch. That probably is owed more to the pacing and overall length. Additionally, while avoiding spoilers, the manner in which the film ends makes everything that transpires feel a bit pointless.

All that said, I didn't hate the film. I would still give it a 6.5/10. None of what I described completely ruined it for me, I just had this nagging feeling of an opportunity squandered. If you love Tarantino, you'll probably enjoy this film but I would not choose it as your entry point into his anachronistic dialogue, fetish filled world. Similarly, if you just watched this for cinematography and score, I wouldn't blame you.

A few weeks back I stumbled across a list something like, "The most underrated sci-fi movies of the last decade" or something to that effect. I had seen and enjoyed a few of the entries and added several of them to my Netflix queue. One of them was the 2009 film Moon, staring Sam Rockwell. Moon scored an 89% on Rotten Tomatoes on both the critic and audience scoring. However, the movie pulled in a paltry $10M at the global box office per Box Office Mojo.

The premise of the film is simple but some suspension of disbelief is required. Rockwell plays an astronaut / moon radiation energy farmer (also named Sam). He is finishing up a three year solo stint in this job. Why sending a person to the moon alone was the logical setup for this energy harvesting scheme is the film's largest problem, but it is arguably no more problematic than why the eagles couldn't have flown the one ring into Mordor and and destroyed it, saving us 9+ hours of extended edition cinema. Especially since there is an eagles ex machina in almost every film in the series. Because... shut up.

We see that Sam may be starting to go a bit insane after all the years of isolation. He can't even get a live connection back to earth due to some radio equipment failures that will be serviced when his replacement arrives. But quickly we start to see that something more than meets the eye is going on. Its not difficult to spot that there will be a twist at some point, but figuring out what it will be is the fun of the film.

I would classify the movie as sci-fi suspense. It is not scary, but there is some mystery and plot twists. I personally have mixed feelings about Rockwell. I think he's a great character actor but I appreciate him in small doses. That said, I think he did good in this role. But I wonder if they had cast an A-list actor if this could have been much more financially successful.

I highly recommend this film if you're a fan of the genre. Its a little quirky and off the beaten path so if you loathe the trend of big budget Hollywood hollowness, give this one a chance. Solid 8/10 for me.

First let me say that I have an attraction to this kind of movie. I enjoyed this film quite a bit as I enjoyed the similar Lord of War (2005) starring Nicholas Cage and Jared Leto. I think these films offer an escape that make us consider if we could ever get sucked into something like this. Unlike movies such as Scarface, these stories often start with characters doing something technically legal, not blatantly illegal. Of course, inevitably, greed causes them to move from the former to the latter. I question if I could get out while the getting is still good. Could I do the first couple of deals and then walk away or would I get greedy and keep going until I end up in federal prison? I think the answer is ultimately no, because I never feel sympathy when the characters are ultimately hauled off in handcuffs, but I'm attracted to the allure of easy money, fast cars, beautiful women, and knowing that I'm observing from the comfort and safety of my recliner.

War Dogs is a somewhat fictionalized tale, based on the true story about David Packouz (Miles Teller) and Efraim Diveroli (Jonah Hill). Packouz and Diveroli are middle school friends who have drifted apart until they are reunited at a funeral. Packouz is somewhat down on his luck, working as a traveling massage therapist in Miami. There's nothing terribly wrong with his life other than the fact that it just doesn't appear to be going anywhere. Diveroli has already started down the path of arms dealing opperating a shady but apparently legal small business. Predictably, life events soon conspire against Packouz leading him to choose to take a shot at some easy money.

As I said, Diveroli's original business model is arguably shady but legal. As in real life, the Bush administration is forced to open up bidding on government military supply contracts, which inspires Diveroli to scour the government contracts website with the goal of becoming a middleman by cherry picking contracts that are the crumbs too small for large defense contractors to bother with. Of course as these stories, real or fictional, always go it is a short leap from merely being shady to full-on illegal activity. Even if the first steps are possibly just technicalities. If its not obvious from the start and you don't know the real-life story of Packouz and Diveroli, the giant painting of Scarface in Diveroli's office should provide a heaping helping of foreshadowing.

This film is fairly small in scope, focusing very narrowly on Packouz and his girlfriend, Diveroli, and their business partner played wonderfully by Kevin Pollak. The pacing was a little slow for me. A surgical removal of maybe 10 minutes might have benefited the film but that is a minor quibble. The soundtrack was a fun blend of both period appropriate and current music. The anachronism didn't bother me a bit. The cinematography was serviceable with obvious but appropriate themes base on location... over-saturated Miami, washed out and yellowish Iraq, and cool, dark, and de-saturated Albania. It was serviceable but slightly derivative. I thought Teller and Pollack were good in their respective roles. Perhaps Hill has a personal attraction to these types of roles as well, given he might not be the obvious casting decision here or similarly in The Wolf of Wallstreet. Hill integrates several personality affectations, including a very irritating laugh. I guess if they're realistic representations of the real life Diveroli, then kudos, but if not, they were a bit too much in my opinion.

Ultimately the film strikes a good balance. It tells a typical rise and fall tale, it works in the historical accuracy of the Bush / Cheney war economics without being preachy, and it gives some sense of that particulars of the deal that ultimately brought down the real life Packouz and Diveroli.

As I frequently caveat, if you're a fan of the genre, you'll probably enjoy this entry. At the end of the day it was about a 7/10 for me.

This film tells the story of the 2010 explosion of a deepwater oil drilling rig by the same name. It is also the January Blu-Ray give away on the forum I run (see my signature).

The film was really good as a disaster film, with pacing that was tight and good acting. The only thing that prevented me from enjoying the film more was knowing that it really happened. Deepwater Horizon could also be called Assholes: The Movie. I don't know how true to life the portrayal of the decision making was that led up to the deaths of 11 people and serious injury of more than a dozen others but the movie made me want to punch my screen repeatedly. I guess that is a testament to Peter Berg as I have to imagine that was partly his goal.

The movie opens with audio testimony playing under the studio logos. The film then starts by building some backstory of our main character Mike Williams, played by Mark Wahlberg. We meet Mike's family and there is a great scene where the eventual disaster is foreshadowed as his daughter demonstrates drilling a well by stabbing a metal tube into the top of a can of Coke. Naturally, only after the family is distracted in conversation does the 12 ounce can violently explode 3 gallons of Coke all over their kitchen. This foreshadowing might have appeared more ham-fisted if the entire audience didn't already know what was going to happen, but here I thought it worked.

I personally think Wahlberg is a legitimately good actor and coupled with Kurt Russell and John Malkovich, I'd call this film well cast and well acted. The way the story is told, depending on how true to life it is, is a touch formulaic with the Transocean employees played Wahlberg and Russell demanding the appropriate safety protocols be followed and a BP pencil pusher played by John Malkovich overruling them, forcing them to push ahead as they are already 43 days behind schedule. Whether the Transocean employees were partially or even equally complicit in these decisions matters little here. The film never claims to be a documentary.

When the shit hits the fan the cinematography does a great job of making you feel disoriented and helpless without the vomit inducing shenanigans sometimes employed. Wahlberg is a natural to play a disaster movie hero and Malkovich is just fantastic playing the weaselly bureaucrat. He even cuts in line for the lifeboats. Russell does a great job with the "my rig is my family" trope. Sound effects were appropriately bombastic so if you watch this one, turn it up, man.

As with many "based on a true story" films, there was a brief epilogue naming and showing photos of the deceased and mentioning that the two BP executives that were charged with manslaughter were never convicted. The epilogue mainly focused on the Transocean and BP employees portrayed in the film and I wish it had provided a recap and update on the environmental toll this disaster caused. I imagine there are thousands of gulf coast residents who were never truly made whole and may suffer further with health issues down the road. Ultimately it was a bitter reminder how short our attention spans are.

If you are up for the emotional toll this movie may take on you (I admit to actually choking up a few times) I highly recommend it.

Thanks, imahawki!

Deepwater Horizon is in my "not watched yet" pile... guess I need to move it up!

Rick