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From: Arthur Lipscomb <arthur@alum.calberkeley.org>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.tv
Subject: Re: What Did You Watch? 2025-07-04 (Friday - The 4th of July!!)
Date: Sun, 6 Jul 2025 10:45:34 -0700
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On 7/5/2025 11:22 PM, anim8rfsk wrote:
> Ian J. Ball <ijball@mac.invalid> wrote:
>> I guess I should do one of these before it's too late.
>>
>>
>> What did you watch?
> 
> Hey, thanks for asking.
> 
> I finally finished Ironheart. It wasn’t easy. I kept falling asleep and the
> Disney+ app which has turned to total shit would restart in the wrong place
> or the wrong episode and showed episode three with the video and audio and
> closed captioning, all completely out of sync.
> 
> How bad was it? Well it’s still better than Marvels 

I liked "The Marvels."  The musical number may have been a bit too 
jokey, along with some of the stuff at the end, but otherwise it was an 
OK movie.


but it’s Stargate
> Origins SGO (the “O” stands for: Origins!) bad.
> 
> Since I think I am the only one that sat all the way through SGO you might
> ask “how bad is that?“
> 
> Really really really really really really really really bad. Try to picture
> the sound made by a sheep exploding. It’s Ssss BOOM baaah bad.
> 
> And the end was absolutely the worst part of it.
> 
> Without significant spoilers, let me say I’m completely perplexed that this
> little idiot doesn’t just call for help. Like Doctor Strange or somebody.
> 

Why would Dr. Strange come and save The Hood from Ironheart?  Oh, did 
you mean, the supervillain known as Ironheart should have called Dr. 
Strange?  They already explained why that wouldn't work when another 
character asked and Ironheart listed all the evil deeds that she had 
been doing.  I'm pretty sure this series is a villain origin story. 
LOL.  Especially since, and I didn't notice this myself, but others have 
said that there is a brief shot where Vebaurneg vf jrnevat gur ubbq'f 
pybnx bire ure Vebaurneg fhvg.


This is a multi-day catch up.  Over the last few days I watched:


Independence Day (4K disc) 1996 sci-fi movie where Will Smith and Jeff 
Goldblum save the Earth from aliens by giving them a cold.  Holds up 
very well (more or less). And I still love the speech Bill Pullman gives 
at the end.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_QSJyJaeD4


Skyline (4K disc) 2011 sci-fi movie about a group of people in a Los 
Angeles apartment trying to survive an alien invasion of Earth.  The 
only good bits of the movie are the few scenes where we get to see the 
military fighting the aliens.  The first dog fight where they nuke the 
alien ship is particular good, but I'll bite my tongue on what happens 
next.  But whenever the movie focuses on the civilians it tends to get 
dumb.  One scene I noticed had the civilians watching as fighter jets 
were battling the aliens.  One of the fighters went down and crash so 
close that they literally had to duck to keep from getting hit, then the 
plane blew up a few feet from them.  This is a military fighter jet 
exploding a few feet from two people standing out in the open, and 
immediately after they stood up without a scratch on them.  If only the 
movie had focused on the military fighting the aliens instead of the 
people in the high rise building, it would have been so much better.


Battle: Los Angeles (blu-ray) 2011 Sci-fi movie about an alien invasion 
of Earth that focuses on a platoon of Marines lead by Aaron Eckhart, who 
must battle their way through the streets of Los Angeles fighting the 
invading aliens.  The movie holds up well enough.


Battleship (4K disc) 2012 sci-fi movie based on the board game.  A group 
of young sailors must battle an alien invasion force at sea.  I know 
this movie has a bad reputation, but I actually like it a lot.  I 
especially like towards the end when in order to get back into the fight 
they retrofit the USS Missouri and set sail with it along with some old 
timers who still knew how to operate the ship.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iGp8D9832Y

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YDkBrWEOhM


9 (blu-ray) 2009 CGI movie produced by Time Burton and Timur 
Bekmambetov.  Set in a post apocalyptic world where humanity has been 
wiped out by machines, Elijah Woods voices "9" a rag doll that has been 
brought to life with a human soul and must navigate the post apocalyptic 
world.  I'm not describing it very well, but it's actually a very good 
movie.


The Darkest Hour (3D blu-ray) 2011 sci-fi movie produced by Timur 
Bekmambetov.  A group of Americans lead by Emile Hirsch are visiting 
Russia when aliens invade.  The characters basically spend the movie 
trying not to get killed by aliens which is complicated by being in a 
foreign country where they don't really speak or read the language.


Guardians (blu-ray) 2017 Russian science fiction movie.  An evil super 
villain launches an attack against the Russian military, and is plotting 
to take over Russian, and or destroy the world.  To defeat the bad guy 
the military sends out a woman to recruit Russians with eXtraordinary 
and Fantastic abilities to Avenge the fallen soldiers and stop the 
villain from doing whatever it was the villain was planning to do.  Of 
the Four Russians with Fantastic abilities assembled, One is a woman who 
can turn invisible, one is a man who can control rocks (even covering 
himself in rocks like some sort of Thing), one is a man who can run 
really fast, and a man who can transform into a bear, while wielding a 
minigun.  But is it any good?  Well, by definition any movie that has a 
giant half man half bear, wielding a mini gun is good.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7Idy8LSdQo


Attraction (blu-ray) 2017 Russian science fiction movie.  When the movie 
opens an alien spaceship flying near Earth gets damaged during a meteor 
shower and enters Earth orbit and is shot down by the Russian military. 
It crash-lands in downtown Moscow and kills several hundred people 
during the crash landing.  The Russian government decides to leave the 
aliens alone so they can rebuild their ship and leave, but the locals 
are out for blood due to the deaths caused during the crash landing.  A 
group of locals including "Yulia" (Irina Starshenbaum) the daughter of a 
Russian general break into the restricted area where they encounter and 
attack one of the aliens.  From there the movie sort of turns into a 
slightly more action version of John Carpenter's "Starman" with Yulia 
reluctantly helping the alien "Hekon" (Rinal Mukhametov) and the two 
eventually fall in love.  There is also a bit of "The Day the Earth 
Stood Still" in the plot as the aliens follow the Prime Directive and 
consider Earth too primitive to visit, but the ship has an advanced AI 
that could pose a danger to humanity if humans cause too much trouble. 
But the whole AI threat doesn't really impact this movie, it's more of a 
setup for the sequel.