What was the last movie you've seen?

[TSTR]

Next year Mortal Kombat will be of legal drinking age. Makes me feel ancient.

https://www.yahoo.com/movies/mortal-kom ... 68532.html

This is the part where you fall down.

[Luke]

My high school buddies and I saw MK at least three times in the theater. All for the Cage vs. Scorpion fight.


STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON

A very well made movie with gifted actors, an incredible soundtrack, phenomenal direction, a story that sends more than one social message... and it's mostly a marketing vehicle to sell NWA Itunes.

Great movie, but I didn't like it.

Compton is so clean, so stylized, so...bright. Again, it is a great movie, but it wasn't for me. It's "Marvel's The Avengers" version of NWA, as where I wanted the "Man of Steel" version where it's grittier and darker. It's definitely made for the masses, and when I say "masses" I mean white people who will download a lot of NWA music to feel "gangsta". Nothing wrong with that, but for a biopic it is severely weak.

Great movie, but as far as a biopic of NWA...


Bye Felicia.

[BigLou]

Next year Mortal Kombat will be of legal drinking age. Makes me feel ancient.

https://www.yahoo.com/movies/mortal-kom ... 68532.html

Damn. I think I was in my mid-20s when that game/film was released, haw.
(Never got the hype, either, but that's a whole other story...)

[Luke]

Damn. I think I was in my mid-20s when that game/film was released, haw.
(Never got the hype, either, but that's a whole other story...)

Here is where my pals and I would see MORTAL KOMBAT. FYI: The theater was segregated between blacks and whites, and people would still obey the rules. Entrances, bathrooms, water fountains, and black people had to sit in the balcony. This was in the mid 90's, but apparently it was "tradition".

You could also smoke in the theater, and more than tobacco was smoked in the Center Theater. The seats had built in ash trays for your convenience.

And now Lenoir has no operating theaters.

[dsheinem]

Compton is so clean, so stylized, so...bright. Again, it is a great movie, but it wasn't for me. It's "Marvel's The Avengers" version of NWA, as where I wanted the "Man of Steel" version where it's grittier and darker. It's definitely made for the masses, and when I say "masses" I mean white people who will download a lot of NWA music to feel "gangsta". Nothing wrong with that, but for a biopic it is severely weak.

Great movie, but as far as a biopic of NWA...


Bye Felicia.

What are you talking about "clean and bright" or not "gritty and dark" enough? The film was plenty dark and the late 1980s Compton/LA on the screen was pretty well reminiscent of what I recall seeing on TV news during the era. And the white "masses" that are seeing the film? The demo breakdown for Compton’s audience was as follows: 46% African American, 23% Caucasian, 21% Hispanic and 4% Asian.

I wonder if you've bought into the romanticized/dramatized "reality" of the gangster life that was presented in hip hop of the era? I think that THAT representation of Compton would have been almost certainly over the top and unbelievable (see: most 1990s inner-city gangster films), especially considering that the protagonists of the film weren't exactly the exact same people they presented themselves to be in their music.

[Luke]

What are you talking about "clean and bright" or not "gritty and dark" enough?

"Clean and bright" concerning the aesthetics of the film. Too polished and I didn't care for the way the light fell on the screen.

[BigLou]

Damn. I think I was in my mid-20s when that game/film was released, haw.
(Never got the hype, either, but that's a whole other story...)

Here is where my pals and I would see MORTAL KOMBAT. FYI: The theater was segregated between blacks and whites, and people would still obey the rules. Entrances, bathrooms, water fountains, and black people had to sit in the balcony. This was in the mid 90's, but apparently it was "tradition".

You could also smoke in the theater, and more than tobacco was smoked in the Center Theater. The seats had built in ash trays for your convenience.

And now Lenoir has no operating theaters.

Segregated theaters? Yikes. Was this the mid 1990s or mid 1890s?


I tried watching the film years ago, but I didn't make it past the first few minutes.

[Pulsar_t]

Avengers Age of Ultron

Marvel has always been camp, but this film has, despite being highly unoriginal, one of the most interesting comic antagonists in years.

[Ack]

1990: The Bronx Warriors

This is like a personal wet dream of a film. Marco Di Gregorio of the Thunder trilogy, Fred Williamson, and George Eastman all star in a movie that cribs heavily from The Warriors, Escape from New York, and the likes of The Exterminator and Mad Max 2, but manages to come across even hokier in the process.

The year is 1990. The Bronx is officially No Man's Land and is ruled over by a variety of gangs under the thumb of the mighty Ogre. Trash is the leader of one of these gangs, a motorcycle outfit with a thing for skulls and Nazi iconography. But he's just gotten a new girl, the future heiress of the Manhattan Corporation, so now the cops, the Manhattan Corporation, a mercenary, treacherous gang members, and rival gangs are all out to get him.

The two leads of this movie, Marco Di Gregorio(Mark Gregory of the Thunder trilogy I watched earlier this year) and Stefania Girolami, have the charisma and chemistry of a pair of wet paper bags. But any time I have doubts, blaxploitation star Fred Williamson shows up in a purple shirt to set me straight. I don't even care that the evil Zombies gang is a bunch of martial artist hockey players on roller skates that run a creepy dojo for European dudes in unitards right next to an open sewer. Or that there is a dance troupe disguised as a gang that thinks face paint is scary. Sure, that baseball team in The Warriors was freaky. But sparkly vests and butterfly wings on your cheeks just don't intimidate in the same way.

This being an Italian exploitation film of the early 1980s, the music is actually quite good. There is a scene early on where Trash's motorcycle gang arrives to find one of their men is impaled on a piece of driftwood, when Ogre's boys roll up in hot rods to reveal the guy was a spy. All of this is set to a steady beat as one lone dude sits on the sideline and plays the drum without a care in the world. Somehow this lone crazy drummer makes the whole situation work and ties the whole thing together, taking it from silly to cool despite the bizarre nature of his situation. Once the scene is over, we never see the little drummer boy again. But it draws attention to the soundtrack, which is heavy on late '70s and early '80s rock stylings. Sure, the dialogue sounds awful, but that music? Man, that music makes it.

This was the first of a trilogy of "post-apocalyptic" Mad Max-inspired gang movies from director Enzo G. Castellari. He would go on to direct Williamson and Eastman again in The New Barbarians before returning to work with Di Gregorio in the sequel to The Bronx Warriors, called Escape from the Bronx or Escape 2000 depending on where you see it. The easiest way to see this sequel is probably to track down the MST3K version.

[REPO Man]

Saw it. Liked it. Not on the same level as The Warriors or Mad Max. But I liked it.