Sean’s movie thoughts

Director Don Siegel and Clint Eastwood made this film together before Dirty Harry. It is about a deputy Sheriff from Arizona going to New York to take a prisoner back to Arizona. It is pretty good. Lee J. Cobb has a supporting role as a New York cop who doesn’t like Coogan (Eastwood). I am going to see Avengers Endgame next week. I don’t feel up to the crowds. I have heard good things. Now I just have to avoid reviews and podcasts about the film. (Heh.) Seth Rogen has a new romantic comedy, Longshot, with Charlize Theron coming coming out next week. Previews looked decent. I might go see it. Rogen was making a lot of movies for a while and I got a bit burned out on him.

The original Fright Night holds up. I am not sure if it is the best vampire movie of the 1980s but I think it would have to be in the top ten. The story is simple, a teenage boy discovers his new neighbor is a vampire, and the vampire tries to kill him. Some of his friends and an old horror film star get involved.  This is after Charlie goes to the police but that did not turn out well. Chris Sarandon is Jerry Dangeridge, the vampire. He is mysterious and sexy. He also has a sense of humor and sometimes hides threats behind jokes.  Jerry is not a complete monster, for one thing he did offer Charlie a chance to forget. Roddy McDowell is Peter Vincent, the horror film star. He is great. He gets scared and at one point doesn’t want to be involved. The scene with Charlie and him in his apartment is really good and McDowell really plays well off William Ragsdale. William Ragsdale was Charlie. He is really good, especially in the scene where he knows Dangeidge is threading him while

Big Brother is Donnie Yen’s movie where he plays a high school teacher teaching a class of misfits. It is not as action packed as I hoped, so maybe he is branching out a little from action films. (Good for him.) There are 2 really good action sequences.  I liked it. It is not quite the movie I thought it would be but it is still fun. (I saw a trailer that emphasized the action sequences.)Yen has a likable screen presence and some of the students are likable too.  I like this movie and I might re-watch it someday but it is not among Donnie Yen’s best films (according to me). Donnie Yen’s 5 best movies (according to me) Ip Man Ip Man 2 Flashpoint Legend of the Fist Kung Fu Killer

https://www.cbr.com/stephen-king-salems-lot-james-wan/ James Wan is set to produce a big screen adaptation of Salem’s Lot. Salem’s Lost is Steven King’s second novel, and it has been adapted twice on TV(in 1979 and 2004). I liked both and will probably re-watch the original before the year is out. There was also a BBC radio show adaption. Right now no director is attached and no star is either. One of the writers of It, Gary Dauberman, is going to write it. That sounds promising. I liked It and I am looking forward to the second part. Dauberman is scheduled to direct the third Annabelle movie. I will probably write more about this project as things develop. I am curious to see how the novel will be adapted on the big screen. I think Salem’s Lot is my favorite Stephen King story.

Shazam holds up on repeat viewing. The scene with Billy and his mother still got to me even though I knew it was coming. I could have gone to the animated movie about the Missing Link but I heard it was not good. Avengers Endgame opens this week. I hope it is good. I might not see it opening weekend, I might want to avoid the crowds. Thor the Dark World was on cable yesterday. It might be a little better than I remembered. However I think it might be in the second tier of Marvel movies. It might be interesting to re-watch this again in the next month or so. (I find it hard to watch a movie on basic cable.) and  Making Hellboy was reportedly not pleasant. The producers and the director clashed according to an article on the Wrap. Star David Harbour walked off set a few times according to the same article. Having seen the film, I might have been able to guess those things.

I own over 800 movies digitally. (I don’t know the exact number.) I have being buying movies digitally since 2014. Some of the new movies I buy on Blu-ray or DVD also have digital codes. Sometimes I buy just the movie digitally. I like digital movies. They are convenient and portable. So far I have not lost any of my digital movies but I have heard that it can happen. However it is nice to still have some physical media because sometimes the internet connection does not allow for streaming.  Also not everything is available to own digitally. Also it is nice to be able to loan your DVDs or Blu-Rays to friends or family. I only own 1 Terminator movie but I own all 3 Pitch Perfect movies. This is just something I noticed after going through my digital movies. I am not sure if it means anything.

Superman had a brief cameo in Shazam but he was not played by Henry Cavil. If Henry Cavill is done being Superman, I wish him well. Whatever problems I have with Man of Steel or Batman v. Superman, I don’t blame him. I think with a better script and a director who actually liked the character, Cavill could be a really good Superman. Cavill was really good in Man from UNCLE. I probably need to re-watch it that in the next month or so. (It might be nice to see him and Armie Hammer work together again. There is not going to be a sequel.) He was also good in Mission Impossible Fallout. I also wish Ben Affleck well if he is done playing Batman.

I might be fine with the X-men franchise going away. I feel like might be being unfair to X-men Dark Phoenix but I just feel no interest in it. It does look like Nightcrawler might get a bit more to do than he did in the last film, so that is something. Marvel studio head Kevin Feige says there are no plans for the X-men in Marvel Cinematic Universe. I guess that could change now that the Disney/Fox merger is complete. A podcast I listen to mentioned Glass. I now wonder if Glass is worse then Hellboy. They are both bad films but I think they are bad in different ways. I think Glass is good up to a point but I hate the last act. Hellboy exists but it doesn’t need to according to film critic/podcaster Jeff Bayer.  I guess if I am not careful I might have a bottom five list this year. I want to avoid a bottom ten though.

Sharon Tate was an actress who was killed by the Manson family. This movie is supposed to be really bad and distasteful.  I have seen the trailer, and based off the trailer I have no interest in the film. Is this movie exploiting the Manson murders and Sharon Tate’s death? Some critics think it is. Sometimes I find it questionable making a movie about a real life tragedy. If you don’t have a point to make, why use the real life event? There have been good movies about real tragic events over the years. There is line between exploiting a tragedy and exploring it. Quentin Tarantino’s next movie “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” will also feature the death of Sharon Tate. Maybe that movie will not feel or seem like it is exploiting her death. https://www.indiewire.com/2019/04/the-haunting-of-sharon-tate-review-hilary-duff-1202055535/ This is an interesting review. https://www.thewrap.com/the-haunting-of-sharon-tate-film-review-sleazy-thriller-exploits-manson-murders/ So is this on

The new Hellboy movie is bad. Maybe it is below average at best. I am okay with never seeing it again. This is a reboot to the previous franchise. David Harbour (best known for Stranger Things) takes over the role from Ron Pearlman and Harbour is fine. Ian McShane plays the head of the secret organization that Hellboy works for and he is okay, I guess. Hellboy has two assistants or sidekicks that I did not really care about. One is a British agent with a secret and the other is a twenty something year woman with psychic powers. I did not hate them but the supporting cast in the original movies was better. (I won’t spend too much time mentioning the original films.) The movie is pretty violent. At times I am not sure if the movie wants to be a superhero movie with horror elements or a horror movie with superhero elements. Maybe those two things are not very different but they are different. There are two main villains, one is better than the other. The better villain has a histo

Apparently there a plans for a Grease prequel called Summer Loving. I guess this news broke Tuesday. That movie would cover Danny and Sandy’s meeting at the beach. You know the events that the original movie explained in a song. I am not sure why this is a good idea. I guess it could work. Any movie can potentially work but I have seen (and own) Grease, and Grease Live and I never really wondered about that summer. (Grease 2 had different characters. I do own it though.) Not all movies need prequels. We will see what happens. A lot of movies are planned or announced but later never happen. The Remo Williams remake is one example.

It holds up. Hailee Steinfeild is really good in this movie. Her character Charlie finds Bumblebee (and names him) after he flees Cyberton. She is having a tough time adjusting after the death of her father. There is a boy who is interested in her, even if she doesn’t know it yet. Bumblebee is suffering a form of amnesia. Meanwhile the Decepticons are looking for Bumblebee and enlisting the help of the military. John Cena plays a military man named agent Burns, who naturally doesn’t trust them. (John Cena is a better actor than he was in the Marine.) I liked this one. Bumblebee is very likable in this film. The action sequences are good. You can tell what is happening. (I’ve heard that in some of the other Transformers movies the action is not clear and the sound effects are really loud.) The soundtrack is good. I think it is getting a sequel. Hopefully Hailee Steinfeild has a new project lined up.

This is a very fun b movie from 1992. Jeffery Combs stars as Doctor Mordrid, a sorcerer devoted to protecting mankind. It was a different role for him, he played a fair amount of villains over the years and might be best known for his role as Hubert West in Re-Animator. Combs is very likable as Mordrid. Brian Thompson played the villain Kabal. This was not a different role for Thompson. Thompson played a lot of villains in movies and TV shows over the years. He had roles on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Star Trek Deep Space Nine. He also played Hercules in a mini-series. I saw this when it first came out in the 1990s, and I enjoyed rewatching it. Maybe people watching it for the first time might not like it as much as I do. The dinosaur skeleton fight was fun. I thought the romantic subplot was good.

I don’t do grades for my movie thoughts postings. I don’t consider the thoughts a formal review, so I decided not to do grades. I figure if I say the movie is worth seeing or re-watching that should be enough. I don’t go to every movie and I don’t watch all the big cable movies. I go to movies that I expect to enjoy and if I were giving grades I might be giving a lot of As, Bs, and some Cs. Also I remember Roger Ebert saying that he came to dislike grades in his reviews because some people took the grades too seriously. He meant the grades to be relative but it seemed to him that people were taking them as absolutes. He felt that grades were relative to genre but some readers did not understand that. So, I don’t give movies grades.

People seem excited about the new Terminator movie coming out this year. Photos from the film hit websites today or yesterday (as I type this). People seem excited. (I guess film websites think there is a lot of interest in the franchise.) I am not excited. The last three Terminator movies were not that good.  (Anyone see Terminator 3 recently? I remember it being average.) The last one had some nice moments but  it has been 4 years since the movie came out that and I am okay not seeing it again Maybe it is okay if the character is retired from the big screen.  There were 2 really good movies in the franchise but it has been 28 years since the second of those films. Don't listen to James Cameron (who produced the new film) because he might have lied about how good Terminator Gensys was. (I cannot find the article that said he lied but I remember it saying he lied because that he wanted to support Arnold Schwarzenegger.)Also no producer will admit the movie did not work out un

This is a mostly spoiler free collection of thoughts. Mark Strong is a national treasure. It has to be said. He is not an American treasure but I guess the American film industry is borrowing him. He plays the villain, Dr.Sivana, in this movie. This is a different take on the classic villain who is a mad scientist in comics. Billy Batson (Asher Angel) is a foster kid who is given superpowers by the wizard Shazam. Billy wants to find his mother. Freddie Freeman (Jack Dylan Grazer) is his foster brother and together they try to figure what powers Billy has. These scenes are fun. Zachary Levi is perfect in his role of Shazam (although he is not called Shazam in the movie). He really does seem like a kid in an adult’s body.  I guess someone else could have taken the role but Levi is just really good in it. This is a lot of fun. There are some nods to other movies but a couple are pretty subtle. I might have missed one if I did not see an article about the film. I think this was r

Shazam looks really good and the reviews are good. I am going either today or tomorrow. I am looking forward to it. The New Mutants movie might actually come out. I heard the movie needed re-shoots but the re-shoots were not scheduled and even the actors involved were not sure if the re-shoots would happen. There will be a third Bad Moms movie. This will feature the bad grandmothers from A Bad Moms Christmas and the reported title is Bad Mom's Moms. (I don't like that title.)  I guess A Bad Moms Christmas was more successful than Daddy's Home 2. I might re-watch the original Pet Semetary before seeing the new one. I have heard good things about the remake, so maybe I catch up with the remake next week.