For my money, the crew of the Betty are dirtier and nastier prototypes of the crew of the Serenity from Firefly. Elgin, Johner and Call are the obvious ones being Mal, Jayne and River, and Christie shares no small amount of characterisation with Zoe. Vriess and Hillard are the only ones without obvious analogues.
A ★★½ review of Alien Resurrection (1997)
“I thought you were dead.” “I get that a lot.” Unlike the other Alien films, this one actually had a fairly smooth production. The biggest issue was a clash in styles between director Jean-Pierre Jeunet and writer Joss Whedon, but even then, Whedon had Buffy fish to fry and couldn't really be...letterboxd.com
Discuss and Rate the Last Film You Watched
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A View to a Kill
Roger Moore's last turn as 007. Yeah, there's something off around the eyes - I'm assuming he'd had a facelift or something. He's got that deranged, unblinking Leslie Nielsen look half the time. And fittingly it's a very Naked Gun plot this time around, involving a nazi experiment turned psychotic industrialist who hops racehorses on steroids for profit during the first half of the movie, then spends the second half trying to flood Silicon Valley (also for profit?). I must've missed the part where any of this makes sense. Fortunately he's played by a supremely entertaining Christopher Walken, and he's seconded by an equally scene-stealing Grace Jones. They're great at playing weirdos and being weird with each other.
So like I said, the plot feels like it restarts halfway into the movie. Bit of a buzzkill since nothing that happens in the first half carries over and the secondary cast basically hits refresh. I don't think the settings are very entertaining either. Most of the movie takes place in a French manor and the Bay Area, which are relatively mundane settings for a Bond adventure. And the set-pieces are all fairly silly or standard. There's one good surrealistic chase that starts at the Eiffel tower (with murder by fishing rod) and ends in the Seine and that's about it. You've seen Bond ski away from bad guys a million times. You've seen patrol cars clutter stupidly as they chase Bond. You've seen the same underground facility shake and collapse over and over.
So here's my final ranking of the Moore movies:
1. The Spy Who Loved Me
2. Octopussy (fight me)
3. For Your Eyes Only
4. Live and Let Die
5. The Man with the Golden Gun
6. Moonraker
7. A View to a Kill
Roger Moore's last turn as 007. Yeah, there's something off around the eyes - I'm assuming he'd had a facelift or something. He's got that deranged, unblinking Leslie Nielsen look half the time. And fittingly it's a very Naked Gun plot this time around, involving a nazi experiment turned psychotic industrialist who hops racehorses on steroids for profit during the first half of the movie, then spends the second half trying to flood Silicon Valley (also for profit?). I must've missed the part where any of this makes sense. Fortunately he's played by a supremely entertaining Christopher Walken, and he's seconded by an equally scene-stealing Grace Jones. They're great at playing weirdos and being weird with each other.
So like I said, the plot feels like it restarts halfway into the movie. Bit of a buzzkill since nothing that happens in the first half carries over and the secondary cast basically hits refresh. I don't think the settings are very entertaining either. Most of the movie takes place in a French manor and the Bay Area, which are relatively mundane settings for a Bond adventure. And the set-pieces are all fairly silly or standard. There's one good surrealistic chase that starts at the Eiffel tower (with murder by fishing rod) and ends in the Seine and that's about it. You've seen Bond ski away from bad guys a million times. You've seen patrol cars clutter stupidly as they chase Bond. You've seen the same underground facility shake and collapse over and over.
So here's my final ranking of the Moore movies:
1. The Spy Who Loved Me
2. Octopussy (fight me)
3. For Your Eyes Only
4. Live and Let Die
5. The Man with the Golden Gun
6. Moonraker
7. A View to a Kill
A ★★★ review of Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth (1992)
"Oh, how uncomfortable those words must feel on your lips. Good. Evil. There is no good, there is no evil, there is only flesh. And the patterns to which we submit it." This film had a bit of a troubled production. It took a while to get made because Clive Barker's next film after the second...
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This was very close to getting a 2.5 from me, but I ultimately felt like the nightclub scene just barely bumped it up a notch.
Yeah, Zorin's plan in this movie makes literally no sense. Trying to monopolize on the microchip market by flooding Silicon Valley is...somewhat akin to trying to corner the beef market by giving cows mad cow disease. You are literally destroying your own product. Then again, Zorin is completely batshit.
Well now you’ve got two decent movies from Dalton to watch. Enjoy them.
If not explicitly stated, implicitly Zorin's microchip manufacture must be - in substantial part or fully - somewhere outside Silicon Valley.
This seems plausible, as in the 80s Silicon Valley was absolutely dominant in chip design and manufacture, although there were also many competitors from other areas of the world also trying to get into the market.
The Man From Nowhere 9/10
As I may have mentioned I'll try to be catching up on some Korean action films so I found this one from 2010 on Netflix about a way cooler John Wick who saves a little girl from some baddies. Good stuff. You got all the tropey trope characters for better and worse and misery porn and the best scene is the knife fight at the end.
As I may have mentioned I'll try to be catching up on some Korean action films so I found this one from 2010 on Netflix about a way cooler John Wick who saves a little girl from some baddies. Good stuff. You got all the tropey trope characters for better and worse and misery porn and the best scene is the knife fight at the end.
Is Zorin the first psychotic Bond villain in the series? It's kind of incredible it took them 15 movies to get there.
If Zorin is one, I would suggest a large number of them are potentially psychopaths.
Where none of them necessarily fit easily with psychopathy is that it tends to be associated with high impulsivity and irresponsibility - this is not very consistent with a evil mastermind. Although of course there are always exceptions who may have a lot more control in that regard.
A ★★ review of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018)
"How many times do you have to see the evidence? How many times must the point be made?" The production of this movie wasn't necessarily too troubled, just protracted. Colin Trevorrow decided to not return as director for this one, instead sticking to writing the script with Derek Connolly, as...
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Well in the movie at least he's diagnosed as psychotic. I'm not sure how much of his evil "genius" comes from his own scheming or the nazi apparatus that created him/supports him.
From a performance perspective at least he's the first Bond villain to be played as unhinged. Everyone else is depicted as poised and following some kind of code. Here Zorin gleefully murders his own people and seem to take more pleasure from violence (that one scene with May Day) rather than succeeding or proving his superiority.
Roger Ebert also mentions in his review how flooding Silicon Valley would do away with his consumers rather than kill the competition since most microchips are fabricated in Japan (at least in 1985) but this is surely an oversight of the screenplay.
A ★★★★★ review of A Bucket of Blood (1959)
“Walter has a clear mind. One day, something will enter it, feel lonely, and leave again.” The plot of this film is focused on one Walter Paisley (Dick Miller), a bus boy who aspires to be a grand artist. One day, he accidentally kills his landlady's cat while trying to cut it out of a wall, and...
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Although that would be an error, because psychopathy is not a generally recognised diagnosis. Antisocial personality disorder is a diagnosis - psychopathy might be considered people with this disorder who exhibit certain forms of extreme behaviour. Although, yes, Zorin is probably a psychopath anyway.
This was decades ago and thus maybe they used Cleckley's criteria from 1941 instead of DSM II or III.
The Gangster, the Cop, and the Devil 8/10
The next Korean action flick is less of an action action and more of like a crime thriller. At first I was a little disappointed that it was more plot driven but then I got into it. It helps that the gangster and cop characters are really likeable and fun to watch and it's a pretty cool plot- a serial killer attacks a top gang leader which escalates gang violence while forging an uneasy alliance between the cops and gang. Making the gangster character a large brute who fights really well was key to making everything dynamic.
The next Korean action flick is less of an action action and more of like a crime thriller. At first I was a little disappointed that it was more plot driven but then I got into it. It helps that the gangster and cop characters are really likeable and fun to watch and it's a pretty cool plot- a serial killer attacks a top gang leader which escalates gang violence while forging an uneasy alliance between the cops and gang. Making the gangster character a large brute who fights really well was key to making everything dynamic.
A ★★★★½ review of Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019)
“Slaying dragons is a Western concept. In the East, they are sacred. Divine creatures who brought wisdom, strength. Even redemption.” The plot of this film follows two different groups. On the one hand, you have Mark Russell (Kyle Chandler) working with Dr. Serizawa (Ken Watanabe), Dr. Graham...
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I'll grant you that there are systems to define psychopathy (by the 1980s I'd have thought Hare more likely), but even still this would be at best an informal diagnosis, because I don't think psychopathy has ever been recognised as an official diagnosis in medical and psychological circles. (Well, many psychologists don't necessarily believe in diagnoses anyway.)