Movies you saw in August

Double Down (aka "Zigs") (2000). just happened to catch this gambling degenerates comedy the other night and it was pretty much non-stop laughs from a bunch of "no name" actors. ending was kind of lame BUT overall I think most Covers members would enjoy it   

Flight (2012) doesn't seem to be any "in between" for this Denzel Washington movie about an alcohol and drug addicted airline captain that saves a plane full of passengers when the aircraft has a massive control failure. people either love it or hate it. I think it is well acted by Washington (Best Actor nomination) and the supporting cast of Kelly Reilly (the female lead), Don Cheadle, Bruce Greenwood, and John Goodman. ending is pretty lame with Washington's character admitting to being drunk while flying at the NTSB investigation and ending up in prison. I doubt that would happen in the real world. I am an aviation movie nut and former MD-80 Captain SO it's   for me even with the obvious flaws.

the "tail plane failure" depicted in the movie is based on the real life Jan 31st, 2000 crash of Alaska Airlines Flight 261, also am MD-80 aircraft, in the Pacific Ocean off Los Angeles. unfortunately in that accident everyone was killed.

just happened to watch Driving Miss Daisy (1989) late last night on Starz Encore. forgot just how well acted a movie it was. real "tour de force" by both Morgan Freeman as Hoke and Jessica Tandy as Daisy. it won the 1989 Best Picture Oscar with Tandy winning Best Actress. at 81 years old she became the oldest actress to ever win that award. Oscar nominations for Freeman for Best Actor and Dan Aykroyd, as Daisy's grown son, Boolie for Best Supporting Actor. also won the Golden Globe Best Picture and both Best Actor and Best Actress for Freeman and Tandy.

GREAT movie that is well worth viewing IF you have never seen it. definite     

Saw Anonymous on cable flipping around and one of the better movies I've seen in quite some time.  I don't believe 90% of the film though, I didn't like how they made Shakespeare look like a fraud.  Maybe de Vere wrote a story or two or helped but not what the film suggested.  Still a great movie.

one of my favorite "period pieces" set in that era of English history. VERY well acted by all involved. IF you liked Anonymous, check out the two Cate Blanchett movies about Queen Elizabeth I, Elizabeth (1998) about the court intrigues early in her reign and the 2007 sequel Elizabeth: The Golden Age about the war with Spain. both take great "liberties" with history BUT are VERY well acted by all involved.   

btw, my favorite line from Anonymous is near the end of the movie where Ben Jonson is removing  de Vere's "Shakespeare" manuscripts and De Vere's wife berates him that her husbands writings have "brought nothing but ruin and dishonor to her family", he says "Ruin? Dishonor? My lady, you, your family, even I, even Queen Elizabeth herself will be remembered solely because we had the honor to live whilst your husband put ink to paper." 

Skyfall (2012) the "50th Anniversary" of James Bond and the 3rd film for Daniel Craig in the roll. like all Bond films, starts off with a GREAT 15 minute chase action sequence and has oodles of stunts throughout. thought that both Javier Bardem as the films villain Raoul Silva and Berenice Marlohe as "Bond Girl" Severine were kind of lame in their rolls BUT Ben Whishaw as a somewhat nerdy Q is maybe the best in the roll since the longest running Q Desmond Llewelyn. Judi Dench plays M for the 6th (and last) time. I personally think she was the BEST of ALL the Bond M's. although Adele's "title music" for the movie won the Academy Award for Best Original Song, I don't think it's going to make people forget either Paul McCartney's "Live and Let Die" title music or Carly Simon's "Nobody Does It Better" from The Spy Who Loved Me

plays again in EPIX2 again Thursday Aug 15th @7:00 pm, Friday Aug 16th @ 5:35 am & 2:30 pm, Saturday Aug 17th @ 7:15 pm and Sunday Aug 18th @ 6:40 am & 2:30 pm pacific times. definite "must view" for action fans in general and Bond fans in particular. I think Daniel Craig's Bond is the closest to the original Sean Connery "stone cold killer" interpretation that Ian Fleming intended in his novels   

btw, the EPIX channels been running just about ALL the James Bond films for the last few weeks

Eden (aka:The abduction of Eden) (2013). based on a supposed true story of Chong Kim, who claims that she was kidnapped and sold into a prostitution ring in the mid 1990's that operated in and around Las Vegas. my BS alarm went off almost from the very start with this story because I have lived in Las Vegas since 1990 and any story like this would have been huge news

does have some very tasty girls in the cast including Jamie Chung as Eden (the Chong Kim character) and Jeanine Monterroza as her friend Priscilla. can't believe that Beau Bridges would get roped into playing crooked Sheriff Bob Gault who runs the human trafficking ring. the guy must be hurting for money to take this obviously BS roll. at least the villains get there's near the end of the movie.

was on The Movie Channel recently IF your interested. it's OK BUT  it's pretty much

The Warriors (1979) cult action-thriller which was shown as a "midnight picture show" in the early 1980's much like The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) with fans showing up in gang costume. pretty good action with plenty of gang fights as The Warriors from Coney Island try to "bop" their way back to their home turf after they are accused of killing a charismatic gang leader, Cyrus, leader of the Gramercy Riffs at a meeting trying to unite the New York gangs. he is really shot by Luther leader of the Rogues, played by David Patrick Kelly who later played the Irish mob leader Doyle in the 1996 Bruce Willis movie Last Man Standing. has always been a GREAT "psycho villain".

kind of "corny" in the modern age of gang drive by shootings BUT still a fun movie with pretty much non-stop fights and action. used to sell out smaller New York theaters. plays on the Sundance movie channel again Sunday Aug 18th @ 3:00 pm pacific time  

Oblivion - ended up liking this quite a bit..interesting sci fi flick

have some free pay-per-views from Dish so will check it out. it's on their PPV lineup this month.

just watched The Conspirator (2010) about the trial of Mary Surratt, the only female conspirator charged in the Abraham Lincoln assassination. very well acted by all involved and should be a warning about what can happen when the federal government suspends  constitutional rights in a time of crisis. was on EPIX last night and definitely worth watching IF your into courtroom dramas.

btw, the EPIX channels been running just about ALL the James Bond films for the last few weeks

with EPIX premiering Skyfall, they are still running Bond films almost non-stop. last few days watched "old favorites" Doctor No (1962), Goldfinger (1964) with Sean Connery as James Bond, Live and Let Die (1973), Moonraker (1979), A View To a Kill (1985) with Roger Moore and Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) with Pierce Brosnan. I am hoping they will run the Daniel Craig 2006 Casino Royale (his first as Bond) which I think is one of the BEST Bond films EVER

just finished watching The World Is Not Enough (1999) which was Pierce Brosnan's third movie as Bond. I am sure everyone has seen the speedboat chase thru London BUT I had never seen the whole movie. was also Judi Dench's third time as "M". it is Desmond Llewelyn's last movie as "Q" and introduced John Cleese as his replacement called "R" in the movie because Bond says that "doesn't R follow Q"? Cleese was Q in only one other Bond movie, Die Another Day which was also Brosnan's last

I thought that Robert Carlyle as Renard was kind of a lame villain. Sophie Marceau as Elektra King who goes from "Bond Girl" to villain in a "plot twist" is much more interesting although her death (just shot by Bond) is not really befitting a Bond villain. Denise Richards as Christmas Jones is VERY tasty as a Bond Girl

overall GREAT gadgets and action stunts throughout the movie. it's plays on EPIX2 again Saturday Aug 17th @ 5:10 am pacific IF you want to record  

R. Lee Ermey as crabby old Manfred Salisbury doing his best "Gunnery Sergeant Hartman" rip job on The Watch guys when they show up at his house is the funniest scene in the movie

watched the Brazilian crime drama City of God (2002) last night on the Indie movie channel. IF you like non-stop gang war murder and mayhem, you will love this movie. the subtitles are a pain BUT it's pretty much non-stop action and somewhat interesting plot of how the main character and narrator "Rocket" goes from street kid to photojournalist covering the gangs. "Crips" and "Bloods" in America got nothing on these Brazilian "favela" (slum) kids when it comes to violence

just watched Tim Burton's "stop-motion" (upgraded "claymation") cartoon Frankenweenie (2012) and it's pretty much a waste of DVR space. it's even worse than Hotel Transylvania (2012) and I think scenes in it would scare the hell out of little kids 

just a "heads up", two of Daniel Day-Lewis's BEST villain rolls are on movie channels next few days. he plays the murderous 19th century NYC gangster "Bill the Butcher" Cutting in Gangs of New York (2002) on The Movie Channel - East (HD) Tuesday Aug 20th @ 12:00 pm noon pacific time. also has his roll as ruthless early 20th century oil man who will murder people that have crossed him Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood (2007) for which he won the Best Actor Oscar. it plays on the Sundance HD channel Sunday Aug 18th @ 10:30 am pacific time. BOTH are definite   

City of God is one of the greatest movies of all time.

watched the sci-fi horror movie Supernova (2000) on MGM movie channel last night. got bad ratings BUT thought it was very well acted by the cast of James Spader, Angela Bassett, Robert Forster, Lou Diamond Phillips, Peter Facinelli, Robin Tunney, and Wilson Cruz.

Facinelli is excellent as the insain Karl Larson who has morphed into a "super human" who's body can regenerate from injury from being in contact with an alien artifact and is damn near impossible to kill. one of the better "menacing villains" I have seen in a Sci-Fi movie. the most interesting member of the crew is probably the ships wise cracking computer which has develop human emotions for her technician Benjamin (Cruz) named "Sweetie". I don't know what movie the critics were watching because I thought it was excellent action and suspense throughout with some good "Alien" style "startle" scenes. also excellent CGI and a fast moving plot that doesn't take too long (90 minutes)   

looking forward to viewing Robert Mitchum as phony preacher Reverend Harry Powell in Night of the Hunter (1955) to see IF he really lives up to his  #29 on AFI's 50 Villains list. it's on MGM movie channel Sunday Aug 18th @ 10:55 pm pacific time

I thought Skyfall was the least sucky of the last 3 Bond movies.

All 3 get talked about like they were awesome tho'. And none were that great.

I didn't like Quantam of Solace at all. And in Casino, I didn't think Eva Green (Vesper) was up to snuff as a bond girl. 

Robert Mitchum as Reverend Harry Powell was even more menacing wicked than I expected. the character definitely deserves it spot on the AFI Villains list. nothing more scary than some religious nut who thinks the Lord justifies his actions. excellent acting by all involved including a young Peter Graves and former silent film star Lillian Gish. I will give one plus for Powell. anyone who cuts a characters throat played by Shelley Winters can't be ALL bad   

just happened to watch L.A. Confidential  (1997) last night after Night of the Hunter. excellent "police story" mystery in a "film-noir" style with plenty of "plot twists" and somewhat unexpected ending. early Hollywood work by Australian actors Guy Pearce and Russell Crowe who were both relatively unknown at the time. others in a pretty much "All-Star" the cast include Kevin Spacey, Danny DeVito, David Strathairn, James Cromwell and Kim Basinger who won that years Best Supporting Actress Oscar as the "whor with a heart of gold" Lynn Bracken.

VERY well acted by all involved and I would say a "must see" IF your into "police story" type mysteries. similar style movie to Jack Nicholson's  Chinatown (1974) and The Two Jakes  (1990) but with more violence. it's plays on HBO-Signature again Thursday Aug 22nd @ 8:05 am and Friday Aug 23rd @ 1:00 am IF you want to record   

watched the movie about Truman Capote writing "In Cold Blood" Infamous (2006) again last night on Cinemax and think that IF this movie had come out before Philip Seymour Hoffman's Capote (2005) it would have been Toby Jones winning an Oscar instead of Hoffman. I remember seeing interviews with Capote on TV and I thought that Jones just caught his mannerisms and rather "affected" style and speech better.

also think the movie has a better supporting cast with Daniel Craig as Perry Smith and Sandra Bullock as Nelle Harper Lee. also delves into Capote's New York City circle of "arty-smarty" friends with Peter Bogdanovich as Bennett Cerf, Michael Panes as Gore Vidal, Sigourney Weaver as "Babe" (wife of CBS President William) Paley and Isabella Rossellini as Marella Agnelli. the Hoffman movie hardly covers his New York life and how it effected his writing of the book. film critic Rex Reed of The New York Observer opined, "They gave the Oscar to the wrong Truman Capote" and I agree. excellent drama and definite