Movie opinions thread (what have you seen, what did you think?)

[LoneSage]

Heavy Metal is supposed to be watched for the first time in middle school. It's like a coming-of-age thing.

The cast was a real who's who in the early 80s comedy scene. John Candy, Harold Ramis, Eugene Levy were among the bigger names, while smaller players were also present. The goofy counselor from Meatballs who woke up on the lake, for example, was also in it. I would really like to watch some interviews about the making of but I get the feeling no one would be honest on camera. There is no doubt in my mind everyone involved was on cocaine. Hell, the segment with the aliens who abducted the woman from the White House even joked about cocaine.

The opening with the guy dropping down to Earth in his convertible is still really slick. An excellent anthology movie all-around. Haven't watched it in close to 15 years.

edit: speaking of cocaine and great early 80s comedies, here's a very good interview with Dan Aykroyd about The Blues Brothers: https://www.msn.com/en-us/music/new...tha-franklin-s-iconic-performance/ar-BB16jNu8

 

[terry.330]

Heavy Metal is supposed to be watched for the first time in middle school. It's like a coming-of-age thing.

Agreed. I think I watched it in 6th or 7th grade when a friend brought it over and we got stoned. It was amazing.

The late 70s and early 80s had a ton of stuff that was made by guys that were super high and into D&D, LOTR, Conan and cheese rock/metal who made wacky shit.

 

[LoneSage]

Smoking weed in middle school? Terry that wasn't good.

 

[sylvie]

I have Heavy Metal on VHS. One of my favorite movies to watch on drugs as a teen. Still love it.

 

[DaisyAge]

I have Heavy Metal on VHS. One of my favorite movies to watch on drugs as a teen. Still love it.

How much for the VHS

 

[sylvie]

Not for sale. It's probably $5 on eBay though

 

[DaisyAge]

Not for sale. It's probably $5 on eBay though

Fair enough, just trying to get you to the post office fasterer

 

[sylvie]

Don't poke the magic bird or it will get pissed off and take longer to lay the egg

 

[DaisyAge]

Birds are gross, one hole for everything. Fucking wrong.

 

[SouthtownKid]

Heavy Metal is supposed to be watched for the first time in middle school. It's like a coming-of-age thing.

This. It's an okay movie for what it is. Although they fucked up Den pretty badly. That's a great comic that gets a joke of an adaptation in the movie.

 

[sylvie]

Birds are gross, one hole for everything. Fucking wrong.

One hole and a pecker, that's me bitch

 

[@M]

I think the Heavy Metal DVD was only $5 at Walmart when I bought it. And I agree, that Heavy Metal parody cat piss huffing episode of South Park is awesome.

 

[DaisyAge]

One hole and a pecker, that's me bitch

Maybe there was a reason I said those things after all

 

[fake]

I tried watching The Omega Man. I couldn't get 20 mins into it. Charleton Heston might be one of the worst successful actors I've ever seen.

I then tried to watch In the Tall Grass, which was even worse.

I therefore did not watch any movies this weekend. I did pre-order La Piscene from Criterion, though, and also ordered the bluray of Fantastic Planet as an upgrade from the DVD.

 

[Robert]

watched the shining some days ago. Never seen it before and I ordered a Blu Ray version.
I didn't know what to except.
It remains an polished work of art filming wise with some questions that still stand answerless.

P.S: the scene with the old chap fucking with the pig disguised person let me speechless

 

[sylvie]

watched the shining some days ago. Never seen it before and I ordered a Blu Ray version.
I didn't know what to except.
It remains an polished work of art filming wise with some questions that still stand answerless.

P.S: the scene with the old chap fucking with the pig disguised person let me speechless

I made a very funny photoshop job of that scene and posted it here nearly a decade ago, replacing the costumed actor with Barf from Space Balls . I'll post it sometime, I still have it somewhere

 

[Robert]

I made a very funny photoshop job of that scene and posted it here nearly a decade ago, replacing the costumed actor with Barf from Space Balls . I'll post it sometime, I still have it somewhere

Would like to see that

 

[SouthtownKid]

I tried watching The Omega Man. I couldn't get 20 mins into it. Charleton Heston might be one of the worst successful actors I've ever seen.

You should give it another chance; it's pretty good. Not saying your take on Heston is wrong, though. It's definitely a different style of acting, which doesn't really hold up today. It's like saying John Wayne or Edward G Robinson are bad actors. They were considered good for their time, but if you put those performances in a modern movie, you'd think wtf.

 

[fake]

You should give it another chance; it's pretty good. Not saying your take on Heston is wrong, though. It's definitely a different style of acting, which doesn't really hold up today. It's like saying John Wayne or Edward G Robinson are bad actors. They were considered good for their time, but if you put those performances in a modern movie, you'd think wtf.

I'll give it another shot. I think part of my issue was that I was expecting nuclear zombies, not albino cultists.

 

[evil wasabi]

Watched Undergods last night, and it was a waste of $5. Felt like a Lynchian attempt that falls apart on Black Mirror dystopic tragedy. No hope. Just a lot of wtfs and horrible people. The backdrop appears Soviet, by design, and it was filmed in Estonia and Serbia I believe.

I think Undergods was Chino Moya’s idea of Eastern Europe.

it could be a success as a 90 minute music video, but to be honest, not enough Warmsley or Thierry Durbet.

 

[racecar]

ran across good will hunting enjoyed more the second time for nostalgic reasons. First time watch it, when it came out in theatres didnt really care for it or understand it, i think at the time we 5-6 kids from school would scrunge up $4 and buy 2 tickets on $2 tuesday and sneak all of us in stay inside the theatre and watch like 3-4 movies . few years later my friend got a job as the ticket checker at the front entrance. we would be walking in for free when ever he was working . i remember goodwill hunting and starshiptrooper .

 

[Taiso]

Heavy Metal

Saw it when I was ten years old in the theater. My uncle Gregory was over from Greece and I begged him to take me. I had no idea what was in it. The commercials showed it was a Rated R cartoon and my child brain just wanted to see lasers and spaceships.

After the movie, my uncle said 'You tricked me'. I legitimately did not. To his credit, he did not make us leave early and he never told my parents. Later that week, I asked my sister to take me to it. My sister took me to a shit ton of Rated R movies: Excalibur, Mad Max, the Road Warrior, Conan the Barbarian....that's a good big sister. She saw how in love I was with escapism and figured I could take it.

One last anecdote about Heavy Metal.

I used to track when that movie would play on cable. We got the print weekly cable guides in the mail and there was a section that said which movies were playing that month and when. So it would list the movie, a brief description and then the page where it was listed on the schedule. Many times, the movie would have multiple reference points in the description, meaning it was playing multiple times that month.

The first time, I found Heavy Metal playing a SINGLE day, two showings. One at 7 P.M. and one at 2:30 A.M. My folks didn't let me stay home to watch it the first time. I think I was attending Greek School. I was really bitter about that. So I stayed up all night to watch it again. I even recorded it on AUDIO CASSETTE (didn't own a VCR yet back then) and listened to that thing over and over and over.

A few years later, in high school, I was at a friend's house where we were all gathering for a night of D&D. They also subscribed to cable and I saw that week's TV guide on the table. Flipped it open and holy shit it was playing again, and several times! I'd waited YEARS to see it again, and this was not back in the day when things just happened to be on a home video format. Heavy Metal was further plagued by massive copyright issues due to the soundtrack (which is spectacular) so a home video release would not come for many, many years after that.

By this time, we had a VCR in the home and you can bet your ass I taped it. And I taped it a SECOND time overnight, setting the timer to autorecord, just in case something was wrong with one tape or the other. Recorded it in 2 hour speed for better quality, too. Eventually, I ended up bootlegging that thing (for free) for all of my friends, who eventually came to recognize it's 'artifact' status as the animated film version of a van with Frazetta art on the side, usurping Bakshi's Lord of the Rings of that honorific. Bakshi's Tolkien adaptation is simultaneously the coolest and most nerdy thing ever made by man. Even more nerdy than Dungeons & Dragons.

The film is a 2 out of 5. Much like the completely inauthentic D&D streaming series Critical Role (Matt Mercer has been super nice and accommodating both times I've met him, even making him and his wife late for dinner just so he could take some pics with me after a panel at Gen Con, so no matter how tiresome I find his Twitter account, I will never say a truly bad thing about him), I thin Heavy Metal's making is FAR more interesting than the end result itself. I have a book called The Making of Heavy Metal (both editions, the original squarish pink covered edition and the later larger black cover edition) and it is one of the best books on film I've ever consumed.

It is a 'cool' film. It's 'cool' to be in the know on it. Harry Canyon and B-17 are the best sequences in it. Den, So Beautiful & So Dangerous and Captain Stern were all horribly mangled but there was no way they weren't going to be adapted for the film.

Charlton Heston made a pretty great Moses, sorry fam.

 

[LoneSage]

Does Uncle Gregory still live in Greece?

 

[Taiso]

Does Uncle Gregory still live in Greece?

He's gone now. Went back at the end of that month. I never saw him again, but more because I haven't been back to Greece since 1979 and he never came back to Illinois. And one day, time caught up to him.

 

[SouthtownKid]

Everybody's watching Heavy Metal again all of a sudden.

The movie I'd like to watch again if I ever come across it is Bakshi's Wizards. I haven't seen it since I was 12, but I loved it then. Almost the only thing I remember about it now is the name Necron-99. And the poster, I guess. I don't know if it ever got a dvd release, but fat chance of finding it in Japan.