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From: "Ian J. Ball" <ijball@mac.invalid>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.tv
Subject: Re: What Did You Watch? 2024-06-01 (Saturday)
Date: Sun, 2 Jun 2024 14:09:59 -0700
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On 6/2/24 11:27 AM, Arthur Lipscomb wrote:

> On 6/2/2024 9:28 AM, Ian J. Ball wrote:
>> On 6/2/24 1:30 AM, Ubiquitous wrote:
>>
>>> What did you watch?
>>
>> I took it really easy yesterday. I only managed to get through a soap, 
>> some golf, and two movies:
>>
>> Blumhouse's Fantasy Island (Hulu) - In glorious 4k!
> 
> Hulu has it in 4K?!?  The movie was released on disc only on blu-ray.  :-/

Yes. I was surprised - I noticed after watching that it had apparently 
been in 4k, and double-checked that Hulu indicated that it was.

>>     I think I liked this 2020 flick quite a bit more than Anim did. 
>> Yeah, the ending was a little too all over the place, and "too cute". 
>> And this was unfortunately "PG-13 horror" when I was expecting(/hoping 
>> for) "hard R horror" out of this, 
> 
> Well...if you watched it on disc you could have watched the unrated 
> version.  :-)
> 
> Here is a comparison of theatrical vs unrated cut:
> https://www.movie-censorship.com/report.php?ID=246728

OK.

>> which was disappointing, and which
>> also made for a much *less dark* film that I was anticipating.
>>     But, such as it was, this was an OK "twisty" take on "Fantasy 
>> Island".
>>     And, hey - at least they got it right that Lucifer Hale is *pure 
>> EVOL*!!1!11!!  ;)
>>     It's a little annoying that Portia Doubleday's character also 
>> didn't suffer a horrific fate.
>>
>> Fun fact: Before I went to bed last night, LMN was playing 2009's 
>> "Sorority Wars" starring... Lucifer Hale! 15 years ago, when Hale was 
>> about... what? 19? (so this was pre-PLL (bitches!!)), she was 
>> adorable. By 2020?... Not so much!  :p
>>
>> Blacklight (Hulu) - Also in glorious 4k!
>>     Honestly, it kind of blows me away that even relatively 
>> "low-budget" flicks like this one (though, I guess USD$43 mil isn't 
>> exactly "low-budget"...) are now getting 4k presentations on the 
>> streamers.
>>     Anyway, this was just OK - it's kind of like "The Parallax View" 
>> but without Warren Beatty, the pervasive 1970s pessimism, or the 
>> hopeless ending.
>>     Liam Neeson plays Travis Block - a man with a "particular set of 
>> skills" - which in this flick involves getting deep-undercover FBI 
>> agents out before they get into "too deep"!! The flick makes clear 
>> that Block is not an actual FBI agent, but an independent contractor. 
>> He works for the "head" of the FBI (Aidan Quinn - which means you just 
>> *know* he's EVOL!!1!).
>>     First problem, though, is that this was filmed in Australia 
>> (Neeson and Quinn may be the only non-Aus actors in the cast), with 
>> Canberra and Melbourne very, very unconvincingly standing in for 
>> Washington DC. (I've only been through DC once, and even I could 
>> easily tell this was not filmed in DC!).
>>     Neeson has a perennially disappointed and slightly hostile adult 
>> daughter (Aussie actress Claire van der Boom), and an adorable 
>> 6(?)-year old granddaugther (one-time child actress Gabriella Sengos) 
>> whom Block teaches all of his paranoia too!
>>     Anyway, when one of the people Block pulls in from undercover 
>> (Taylor John Smith) starts spouting conspiracy nonsense about the FBI 
>> eliminating domestic political "agitators", you know the guy is 
>> actually on to something. Eventually, a plucky guttersnipe reporter 
>> (Emmy Raver-Lampman) is dragged into this.
>>     This is nothing we haven't seen before, either more generally, or 
>> specifically from Neeson, and a number of the other Neeson films in 
>> the same vein are probably better than this one.
>>     But "Blacklight" sure does look pretty in 4k!!  ;p
> 
> I don't think I've heard of this one.  Is Neeson in the Bruce Willis 
> phase of his career where he's cranking out low budget direct to video 
> movies faster than people have time to watch?

Yes, sort of.

But, "Blacklight", as I said, actually had $43 million budget, so it was 
actually meant to be a theatrical release. (It bombed theatrically.)

> I watched:
> 
> Confess, Fletch (Showtime) 2022 movie (which has been sitting on my DVR 
> since 2022) starring John Hamm as "Fletch," who gets caught up in a 
> convoluted plot involving a stolen painting and a murder.  Beyond that I 
> really didn't follow the plot of this movie at all.  I've been working 
> my way through this for the past few days and finally finished it.  The 
> movie was just sort of on as I watched Fletch make wise cracks and annoy 
> the police.  Maybe fans of the character will like it more, but I was 
> just waiting for it to be over.

I strongly dislike the Chevy Chase films, but have been meaning to get 
to this one for John Hamm.

> I also watched some  M. Night Shyamalan movies. There *will* be 
> spoilers!  Stop reading now if you don't want to know the twists...
> 
> SPOILER SPACE
> P
> O
> I
> L
> E
> R
> 
> S
> P
> A
> C
> E
> 
> Unbreakable (4K disc) 2000 movie written and directed by M. Night 
> Shyamalan.

Not a fan - too slow.

> Split (4K disc) 2016 movie written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan. 
> James McAvoy stars a a man with split personalities several of which 
> decided to kidnap three teenage girls including Anya Taylor-Joy.

This is a tough watch, and I even really like Taylor-Joy.

> Glass (4K disc) 2019 movie written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan. 

I remember being disappointed with this one.

> Knock at the Cabin (4K disc) 2023 movie written and directed by M. Night 
> Shyamalan based on a 2018 novel.  The plot follows a family vacationing 
> at an isolated cabin who are visited by four people who show up 
> predicting the end of the world if the family doesn't do what they say, 
> and what they say will have deadly consequences.  This was my first time 
> watching it since seeing it in the theater.  The movie holds up very well.

I think I mostly liked this one, except for the ending. But I recall BTR 
saying that the ending of the film was actually much better than the 
book it is based on, so...  [shrug]