TODAY I WATCHED... (Movies, TV) 2018

"Ms. .45" (1981)


A mousy NYC garment district worker is raped twice in the same day (Ouch! What are the odds?), which understandably causes her to have a mental breakdown. Eventually she becomes a vigilante by night, blowing away random punks, pimps, and hustlers.
Abel Ferrara's artsy, gory female "Death Wish" variant was pretty strong stuff for 1981 but nowadays it's almost quaint. Still, it's worth a look if you're a grindhouse completist, especially for the old-school downtown New York locations, which are so grimy you can almost smell the garbage and the hobo urine.

Be My Valentine,Charlie Brown

Stargate SG-1; Season 7, Disc 1 (aka, "The Return Of Daniel Jackson")

"Resident Evil" (2002)

A security team has to fight its way out of a secret corporate facility that's crawling with zombie-fied employees and flesh munching mutations -- the result of a lab accident with a top secret virus.
Based on the long running series of video games, this loud, chaotic slab of high tech sci-fi/horror nonsense was directed by Paul W.S. Anderson of "Event Horizon" and "Alien vs Predator" fame (and stars his wife, Milla Jovovich). It also launched an equally long running film franchise. I doubt I'll bother to watch any of the half dozen or so sequels that have followed this one, but "R.E." was an entertainingly silly time killer on a rainy day.

Metal Mania on MTV Classic

"Top Dog" (1995)

A tough San Diego cop (Chuck Norris) is saddled with a scruffy new canine partner and together the mismatched pair must solve a series of bombings. Lots of car crashes, shootouts, and explosions follow. Imagine "K-9" or "Turner & Hooch" with way more slow motion roundhouse kicking.
This cheap looking flick tried to mesh a standard Chuck Norris butt-kicking action plot with some cute animal hi-jinks in order to pass itself off as a "family" film, but its story is too dark and violent for kids (the bad guys are home-grown Neo-Nazi terrorists!) and too silly for grown-ups.
In a classic example of bad timing, "Top Dog" opened a week after the Oklahoma City bombing... and when it tanked, it took the remnants of Norris' declining film career with it. Fortunately he already had "Walker: Texas Ranger" up and running by the time this movie crashed and burned.

"Cherry 2000" (1987)

In the desolate future of 2017 (ha!), a yuppie from the city hires a female "tracker" (Melanie Griffith) to guide him through the desert wastelands so he can find a replacement model for his beloved robot wife.
This quirky cult action comedy is an entertainingly weird mash up of genres (cyberpunk sci-fi, Western, post-apocalypse, and yes, even romance) but somehow it manages to make all the clashing ideas and styles work.
I had seen this flick once before on HBO but that was dog years ago, and I remembered next to nothing about it. I'm glad I revisited it cuz this "Cherry" was cool stuff. Recommended.

"The Founder" (2016)

Michael Keaton stars in this entertaining period piece as Ray Kroc, the struggling restaurant-supply salesman whose chance meeting with two California brothers with a unique twist on the standard '50s burgers-and-fries drive-in eventually becomes McDonald's, the biggest fast-food chain in the world. Dryly funny and well written with great performances all around, esp. by Keaton and Nick "Parks and Recreation" Offerman as the tightly-wound Richard McDonald. Good stuff.

Tarantulas : The Deadly Cargo

A 1977 TV movie about a plane (piloted by Tom Atkins and Howard Hesseman) carrying coffee beans from Ecuador crash landing in a small Californian town. Unfortunately, the plane also carries a horde of deadly banana spiders which spread throughout the countryside as they make their way to an orange packing plant. Decent enough movie that took a while to get going, but once it did, I thought it did it's job.

Fat Freddy wrote:

"Cherry 2000" (1987)

In the desolate future of 2017 (ha!), a yuppie from the city hires a female "tracker" (Melanie Griffith) to guide him through the desert wastelands so he can find a replacement model for his beloved robot wife.
This quirky cult action comedy is an entertainingly weird mash up of genres (cyberpunk sci-fi, Western, post-apocalypse, and yes, even romance) but somehow it manages to make all the clashing ideas and styles work.
I had seen this flick once before on HBO but that was dog years ago, and I remembered next to nothing about it. I'm glad I revisited it cuz this "Cherry" was cool stuff. Recommended.

I remember a Mustang being hoisted on a crane and maybe something to do with a damn. Also, maybe Vegas swallowed by the desert?

Witchfinder wrote:

I remember a Mustang being hoisted on a crane and maybe something to do with a damn.  Also, maybe Vegas swallowed by the desert?

Yep, you remember correctly... and then Melanie Griffith (or at least, her stunt double popped out of the sun roof with a rocket launcher and started blowing bad guys away with it. Very random.

It was a pretty cool stunt to watch (no CGI in those days!) although as plot devices go it seemed like an awfully complicated way to get them across a river.

Fat Freddy wrote:

"The Founder" (2016)

Michael Keaton stars in this entertaining period piece as Ray Kroc, the struggling restaurant-supply salesman whose chance meeting with two California brothers with a unique twist on the standard '50s burgers-and-fries drive-in eventually becomes McDonald's, the biggest fast-food chain in the world. Dryly funny and well written with great performances all around, esp. by Keaton and Nick "Parks and Recreation" Offerman as the tightly-wound Richard McDonald. Good stuff.

Maybe it was just me, but I thought that movie (which was a decent enough watch) did a terrible job of making Ray Kroc look like some kind of genius. He was portrayed as a bit of a hustler looking for the next get-rich-quick scheme, stole the McDonald brothers formula, exploited it, shafting them out of millions, cheated on and eventually divorced his wife that stood by him through all the tough times. And he's the "good guy/hero" of the movie?

I couldn't help but think that Wendy's and Burger King financed this movie to discredit Ray.

Witchfinder wrote:

Fat Freddy wrote:

"Cherry 2000" (1987)

In the desolate future of 2017 (ha!), a yuppie from the city hires a female "tracker" (Melanie Griffith) to guide him through the desert wastelands so he can find a replacement model for his beloved robot wife.
This quirky cult action comedy is an entertainingly weird mash up of genres (cyberpunk sci-fi, Western, post-apocalypse, and yes, even romance) but somehow it manages to make all the clashing ideas and styles work.
I had seen this flick once before on HBO but that was dog years ago, and I remembered next to nothing about it. I'm glad I revisited it cuz this "Cherry" was cool stuff. Recommended.

I remember a Mustang being hoisted on a crane and maybe something to do with a damn.  Also, maybe Vegas swallowed by the desert?

My only real memory of this movie was that it was HBO constantly and you had to keep the remote handy to immediately switch channels when mom walked in to the room.

MetalGuy71 wrote:

Maybe it was just me, but I thought that movie (which was a decent enough watch) did a terrible job of making Ray Kroc look like some kind of genius. He was portrayed as a bit of a hustler looking for the next get-rich-quick scheme, stole the McDonald brothers formula, exploited it, shafting them out of millions, cheated on and eventually divorced his wife that stood by him through all the tough times. And he's the "good guy/hero" of the movie?

I couldn't help but think that Wendy's and Burger King financed this movie to discredit Ray.

The film obviously was not intended to make Ray Kroc look good. Yeah, he was a smart cookie and a big thinker, but otherwise he was not a very nice guy. Haha. When he called the McDonald brothers to buy them out and called them "yokels" who were getting in his way, I was like "Daaaamn."  

Even the title of the movie "The Founder" comes off as sarcastic, cuz technically Ray didn't "found" anything. He just took the McDonald bros.' ideas (and their name!) and ran off with them.

Keaton's performance was great though. At the beginning of the movie when he was a struggling salesman you felt sorry for him, but then when McDonalds' starts taking off and he gets a taste of success (which is usually the part of this kind of movie where you're supposed to go "Yay!" and root for the guy) you're like "Man, what a dick!" Haha

Yea, it's not a bad film. We just kinda laughed it off at the end. I said if this was financed by the McDonald's corporation, they either did a very poor job representing their founder or have a very skewed perspective on what a "good businessman" is.

Which I guess is indicative of how corporate America sees success...
"Crush your enemies. See them driven before you. And to hear the lamentations of their women."

The Alienist. This is a really good crime series on TNT.

The Goldbergs
Jeopardy

X Files season 7,episode 22 & season 8,episode 1

Bad Taste
Ring Of Honor

Spiderman- Homecoming

Altered Carbon - Episodes 1-3

Becker
Benson
Wings

X Files season 8 episode 4

Stargate SG-1 - Season 7 episode 5

You can tell Richard Dean Anderson is getting more and more disinterested in this project because his role in these episodes keeps getting smaller and smaller.

Tarantula (1955)

I saw this flick on a "sleepover" at my grandmother's house when I was about 7 years old and I'm convinced it's why I'm a certifiable arachnaphobe all these years later.

I've been looking for this film on DVD for a decent price for a while now but this week I found a "sci-fi classics" collection on Amazon that included Tarantula and 4 other films for less than I've seen Tarantula listed for by itself.  Since the collection had 5 films on 3 discs I figured the film transfer would be better than those dime-store collections FF is fond of and sure enough it is.  This transfer of Tarantula is probably as good as it's going to look.

And it still creeps me out.  Between the horrific "acromegalia" makeup FX on the humans and the nearly flawless superimposition of a real tarantula against various backgrounds it's no wonder this film stuck with me more than 50 years after I first saw it.