The Invisible Man 2019 - 8/10

A very well done movie. The acting and camera work was superb.

 

Pirates of The Caribbean: The Curse of The Black Pearl

9.5/10

 

Stay Tuned - 8/10
From 1992 starring John Ritter, Pam Dawber and everyone's favorite pedophile Jeffrey Jones. Ritter is a tv obsessed couch potato and his wife are sucked into a Hell TV where they must survive 24 hours jumping from show to show. Tons of great little parody commercials and shows. Some are blink and you miss it jokes. One has a 1-2 second channel flip of Frankenstein monster doing stand up. Credits say it is Frankensteinfeld. Fun movie i haven't seen in 15-20 years at least.

 

Mortal Kombat (1995):
Went back to this movie after watching Scorpion's Revenge recently, and I still think it's one of the best live action video game adaptations it's almost hard to believe it was made by the same Paul S W Anderson who gave us the worst live action video game adaptations ever second only to Uwe Boll.

For years I heard fans say otherwise just because it lacked the signature MK violence, but in term of the plot, cast, cinematography and fighting choreography, this was very good to the point of having several of its elements integrated to the main games and other future adaptations.

Even without the violence, the martial arts displayed here were very good and almost authentic with few wire works here and there. Liu Kang vs Reptile is still the best fight in the entire movie just for its duration and the raw rage displayed by the characters.

Are there drawbacks? Certainly. The biggest of them is how they reduced the two most famous characters of the franchise: Scorpion and Sub-Zero to Shang Tsung's slaves instead of being their own characters. Scorpion got his spotlight in the recent movie, but Bi-Han was still wasted anyway.

The other drawback was the pacing during the tournament itself. Once it started then all there was fights after fights with no breathing room or character buildup until Goro's display of strength when Raiden told everyone about their fears and JC decided to challenge Goro head on.

The visual effects didn't age that well. While Goro still stood the time, but the puppet head wasn't that perfect and there were shots where you can see the seems. The CGI effects were the worst as they were so terrible including Reptile's lizard form and locations.

But it still a great movie. Even when you ignore that it's based on a video game, it's still an excellent martial arts movie.

8.5/10

 

It's crazy how much nostalgia everyone (including me) now has for this movie. To the point that seeing a skin in MK11 based on the actor who played Shang's appearance is one of the biggest draws of the game for me.

I like the movie, other than the Scorpion/Sub Zero thing you point out, along with Scorpion's chain spear thing being alive and coming out of his hand. I always hated that. But otherwise, it's a fun dumb movie. Not as fun or as dumb as the sequel for me, but worth periodic rewatches.

 

Plus that theme song was baller. Although I preferred the Liu Kang vs. Sub Zero fight personally.

 

Johnny Cage Vs Scorpion for me. All the Easter eggs were there from signature movies; fatalities and of course the Friendship.

 

Linden Ashby was the perfect Johnny Cage and made him so great that I prefer this version over the games. I don't like how recent games and even Scorpion's Revenge focused on the "idiot actor who is too oblivious to realize he's not in a movie" part of the character too much instead of the "actor who realized how serious things were and to set his ego aside for the greater good" part.

Also Ashby's version focused on the part of him being a talented martial artist trying to prove his skills and the movie showed us how good of a fighter he is, unlike Scorpion's Revenge that made him a big wuss who can't fight the entire movie until the power of boner awakened his skills to save Sonya in a cheap attempt at surprising the audience.

Linden Ashby is the real Johnny Cage... and then Annihilation happened...

 

Totally agree. Ashby WAS that character. Frankly, I think a lot of what makes the MK movie a tolerable video-game adaptation is the quality of the actors. Cage, Liu Kang, Kitana, Kano, and especially Shang Tsung are well-cast. I'm honestly not a fan of Christopher Lambert as Raiden, though.

It pissed me off that Cage was immediately killed off in the sequel, but then again I like to pretend that movie (and the next one too) never happened.

 

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest 8.5/10

This one surprised me, I hated it the first time I watched it but now I love it. The music is great! Although the Kraken fight is a bit underwhelming.

My current ranking one being the best.


3 Dead Man's Chest
2 The Curse of the Black Pearl
1 On Stranger Tides

TBD (I haven't rewatched these recently.)
At World's End
Dead Men Tell No Tales

 

Mortal Kombat: Annihilation:
I saw the reviews, I heard the horror stories, but man was it worse than what I expected.

It's amazing how one of the best live action video game movies gets a sequel that ends up as one of the worst live action video game movies. There are not enough words to describe how awful this is.

Everything in it was a huge downgrade. The narrative is dumber, all the new casting choices are awful, especially Brian Thompson as Shao Kahn that I despise with a passion. The music was boring, the fighting choreography switched from natural raw martial arts to excessive wire-fu, pointless jumps and twirls, and heavy reliance on CGI special effects, and these effects, good God the effects were total sh!t! Even by 1997 standards they were crap from the unnecessary chroma key used in the sky to the most disgusting CGI creatures I've ever seen in my life.

Everything in the movie was so cheap one wonders if this was meant to be a Straight-To-Video movie instead of on the big screen. Unless there's a better explanation, that's what I'll believe for now.

Some fans may take the first MK movie as a "So Bad It's Good" movie, but Annihilation is a "So Bad It's Awful" movie. It's an irredeemable piece of garbage and I'm thankful Midway/NetherRealm Studios never took anything from it to their future games.

2/10

 

I don't play or watch Mortal Kombat but man I enjoy reading these.

 

Titanic - 9/10
If Rose and Jack got on the door together they'd fucking drown, okay?

 

I see it the complete opposite. Annihilation is so bad it's good, while the first movie is middle of the road, which is the worst place to be. The same reason I can rewatch Batman & Robin endlessly, while Batman Forever is difficult for me to sit through.

But yeah, the Annihilation effects are literally laugh out loud bad. A friend and I watched it in the theater, and when they fought Motaro, we both were laughing so hard there were tears rolling down our faces and it was difficult to breathe. I've only laughed that hard in a theater maybe two or three times in my entire life. The fact the Motaro fight wasn't intended to be funny is completely beside the point.

And I thought Shao Khan was perfectly cast. He was the best choice of all working actors at the time which this production could afford. Love the Sindel actress, too.

 

The one single moment that made me unintentionally laugh out for real was Raiden's death moment. Here we have Raiden and Shinnok trading "epic speeches" at one another building up this epic fight of the 2 brothers, then Not-Shao Kahn shoots one energy ball at Raiden sending him flying and and falls to the ground while everybody else around him are not bothering helping him or even reacting to what happened in front of them as if they were all fell asleep during the speeches and Raiden's fall woke them up.

 

Give the movie another try in a couple years. Now that you know not to really expect anything out of it, you might be able to just enjoy the ridiculousness of it.

That's kind of how it was for me and the JCVD Street Fighter movie, which I absolutely hated the first time I saw it. I mean, talk about a movie that takes a giant, messy dump all over a franchise from a great height -- that is the one. MK Annihilation at least is roughly true to the mythology of the game, despite falling down in almost every way. But Street Fighter is pure invention by people who didn't know and cared even less about what the games actually were. But over the years, I've softened on it and now can enjoy it as another Batman & Robin-type spectacular trainwreck that is hilarious from beginning to end.

 

Cowboy Bebop movie 8/10 good, but not a good as the series.

 

@SHINOBI03
It’s always fun hearing about someone’s first time watching MKA. It’s absolutely one of the worst trainwrecks I’ve ever seen.

 

The Blob (1988) - 8.5/10
Great remake of old classic. This, like 1980s The Thing, is how you do a remake right. Sadly this bombed back in 88, but now people see it for how good it is. Plenty of great gore. Solid film.

The Day After (1983) - 7/10
Tv movie where USA and Soviet Union nuke each other and people around Kansas City deal with the fallout.

pumpkinhead (1988) -7/10
Decent horror film. Lance Hendrickson's son is accidentally killed so he summons a demon to hunt the killers down.

-- one thing that always bugs me is kids ages according to IMDB. In this film There is Hendrickson as a kid who looks about 9 or so. IMDB had the child actor at around 12. Then there is the son. He looks about 6-7. Very small, looks like he has all his baby teeth. IMDB has him about 11-12 during filming. A grave stone for Hendrickson's dead wife has death of 78. So that put him about 9-10 with film delays. Stuff like that confuses me. The kid acts very young. I can't get a date on when filming took place.