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Mystery Science Theater 3000: "Hobgoblins" (1998)

I watched the movie Hobgoblins a few years ago in its original format, and it was an incredibly painful experience, to say the least. Watching it this way, on the other hand, was a complete joy.

8/10

The Stand (1994)

I really liked the first three thirds of this miniseries. However, once this guy

turned into this,

the whole thing quickly degenerated into a poor, unfunny joke. In the end, I felt like I wasted my time and any desire I had to read the novel has been all but smothered.

Parts 1-3 (8/10)

Part 4 (5.5/10)

What is it with Steven King Mini-series starting out good and then somewhere around the half way point turning into a joke? I swear that is what happens to ever single one I have ever watched.  It's like he starts out with a good idea but then doesn't know what to do with it so he drags things out and then pulls some insane twist that the only reason you don't see it coming is that it is so stupid.

I think King just isn't very good at endings. That's probably why I like his short stories more than his novels -- there's fewer loose ends for him to tie up and you get more bang for your buck as a result.

Yeah that could be it.  When you put as many things as he does up in the air it's hard to explain them when you reach the end of the story.  Still it has given us some very silly scenes on the TV versions.

SilverWook said:

DrCrowTStarwars said:

What is it with Steven King Mini-series starting out good and then somewhere around the half way point turning into a joke? I swear that is what happens to ever single one I have ever watched.  It's like he starts out with a good idea but then doesn't know what to do with it so he drags things out and then pulls some insane twist that the only reason you don't see it coming is that it is so stupid.

 King still bitches about Kubrick's adaptation of The Shining after all these years. It must suck to cash the royalty checks for sales of the novel with Jack Nicholson's face on the cover.

Nobody constructs elaborate theories or conspiracies about the tv miniseries version. ;)

 Yeah I never understood that.  I mean does he really think anyone would care about the sequel he wrote if the movie wasn't out there?  That is the version of the story people remember. Does he really think the movie would have been better with bad stop motion hedge monsters and a badly foreshadowed explosion at the end? Where would the tension come from that? The Shinning is my favorite horror movie of all time and the fact that King still bad mouths Kubrick almost two decades after his death combined with the fact that King himself has yet to make a good miniseries doesn't make me think much of him.

Been awhile since I posted here, so this is actually everything I watched this December. I will try to be brief.

The Imitation Game (2014) - A pretty fantastic film. A great example of how to make a fresh and engaging biopic, though, like many biopics, I feel like there was more that could be explored. Still, commendable filmmaking all around. A-

Foxcatcher (2014) - Another great and unconventional biopic, this time even more so. Haunting and heavy, though perhaps too much so. We're supposed to be disconnected from the characters, but sometimes that leads to being disconnected from the movie and drifting out of it. Still an exceptional film. A-

Whiplash (2014) - This is a wow, a real revelation. In a great year for thrillers, who would guess the best one was about a drummer and his instructor? An incredibly well made and tense and taut and insightful film about dedication determination and ambition. Scary, exciting, and highly recommended. A

Starcrash (1978) - How can I review a movie such as this? It is startlingly bad, and yet, I love it. Just about everything in this film left me scratching my head, but with a big smile on my face. A very strange delight. Hard to give a grade - if I was being objective it would be an F - but I kind of loved it so B-

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012) - It's been kind of sad to see this trilogy get so much flak, though I'll admit a lot of the criticism is well founded. Still, I think these films are an absolute delight, the first installment especially. This is the one with all the adventurous spirit, and it's somewhat unfortunate that the following installments dropped that. It's what made AUJ so fun. When I look back, it's strange, but, despite it's shortcomings, this might be the best of the three. B+

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013) - If not, this is the best. The adventure is gone but the fun is still there, perhaps even more so. This is probably the most exciting and downright enjoyable of the whole trilogy. After watching the behind the scenes on this one, I have to say I am really impressed with what was accomplished in such a short amount of time, after they decided to split two films into three. I wish more people would appreciate this marvelous movie. B+

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014) - Right now his is easily my least favorite of the three. I will reserve serious judgement until the extended, as I've found both the previous movies to be improved by their additions. This surely (hopefully) will be too. At present, the film is far too short. Gone is the epic scope and pacing. The dwarf company has been given the shaft as well as Bilbo and any sort of satisfying ending. Jackson listens to his fans too much. People complain that these movies are too long and that Return of the King has too many endings (a complaint that never ceases to anger me), so he's cut this down so much that it's basically just an action movie. Not what I want from a Middle Earth film. B-

Top Five (2014) - Chris Rock does Stardust Memories and it works pretty well. However, I kind of wish and expected that this would be funnier/have more jokes, but it spends a lot of time with people just talking and talking. This gives insight into their characters, of course, but it just isn't all that compelling. It's clear this film is more than just a comedy, and there's a lot in it that feels real and dramatic, but it's not really powerful enough. Which is fine, but it needed to be funnier to better hold my interest. B

The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958) - A fine grand old fantastical adventure film with some great Harryhausen effects. Unfortunately, like many effects driven films, new and old, the characters are lost in the shuffle, but it's still good fun. B

Locke (2014) - Another atypical, but terrific, thriller. Major props to the writer/director Steven Knight and to Tom Hardy for making a film based entirely in a car so captivating. I wish there was some way that the camera could have an arc of its own to increase the tension, but since their in one location the editing necessitated a constant cycling through of shots to keep things visually interesting. The important moments have shots that match, of course, but the camera just isn't as important as usually here. Anyway, rant over, very well made film. B+

Enemy (2014) - A very strange but arresting picture. Yet another good thriller. Everything's top notch here, though it's probably too ambiguous for it's own good. There's a lot of interesting ideas swirling, and they're all kind of just left up in the air. Wish they were explored further. B+

Team America: World Police (2004) - How have I gone so long without watching this? It's hilarious, and a perfect parody of dumb action movies (and a nice satire too). I really love the attention to detail and the care that was put into filming this. Most would just say, "hey a movie with dirty mouthed puppets? It can be done shittily and no one will care." But no, everything looks fantastic, and all (I believe) of the effects are done practically. Hats off. A-

Pootie Tang (2001) - I'm glad my friends made me watch this one because I fear I never would have otherwise. This film is absolutely hilarious and brilliant in the best way. Why does it get so much flak? Is it because people don't get absurdist humor? Who knows. I read up a bit on this and it is unfortunate to know that Louis C.K. (i.e. Pootie Tang writer/director and all around funniest man on the planet) didn't oversee the final cut, as I'm sure his vision would have been better. It's not a perfect film, and things do lose a bit of steam in the second half. I'm curious what his cut would have been and it's sad we'll probably never see it. But what we do have is still pretty dang funny and it's too bad more people don't appreciate that. If you disagree with me let me know and I'll sine your pitty on the runny kine. B

Ida (2014) - A rather beautiful and somber film. Fascinating story and characters and some good, old fashioned style. Sad, but worth watching. A-

Blue Ruin (2014) - Not your typical revenge flick. The hero's not a superhero, and the revenge is messy. Very messy. A stark and incredibly tense thriller. Great filmmaking on a small budget. A-

Her (2013) - Just as beautiful on second viewing. This is a film with exceptional emotional depth. I can for sure say now that this will go down as one of my all time favorites. A+

The Sinbad movies are always good fun, and a great place to spot classic Doctors:)

I agree that the Hobbit films get unfairly slammed, I have completely enjoyed the first two and given that it was the end of a ten hour epic I did not think the ending of The Return of the King went on to long, it had a lot of loose ends to tie up.

Mr.Peabody and Sherman

The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends is my favorite cartoon of all time so while I didn't much care for the big heads on all the characters and I found the plot to be predictable I am pleased to report that this movie did capture the spirit and style of humor of the show and the characters felt and sounded right.  Over all I enjoyed this movie a lot more then I was expecting to.  7.5/10

Dawn of the planet of the Apes

This movie is smarter then your average summer blockbuster and it is well directed and very well acted and some of the special effects are very impressive.  Still I could not get past the fact that this is just a beat for beat remake of Battle for the Planet of the Apes with one hundred times that films budget and a longer running time.  All of this film's strengths and weaknesses are the same as that film's, to the point where it seems pointless to review this film as it's own film.  Now I liked BFTPOTA so I don't think there is anything wrong with this film, it's just a straight up remake, nothing more nothing less.

6.5/10.

X-MEN

This is a strange movie now. At the time it helped save the comic book movie but now it feels small scale and like something that would be done on TV.  Still that isn't a bad thing, the focus is kept on the characters and the situation and that is done so well that it makes up for the lack of action scenes.  The casting is good across the board and apart from that one line the writing is good and solid.  I like the dark look of this movie and Wolverine and Rouge work well as POV characters. There is a tension running through this movie that you don't feel in most modern Superhero movies and the problem facing the characters is shown as being so complex that Magneto isn't without a point and you can understand where he is coming from.

While it's small scale and late 90s CGi may not hold up for some people I found that returning to this movie after all these years I was sucked in from minute one and enjoyed every minute, that's pretty good for a popcorn movie this old.

8.0/10.

X-Men 2:X-Men United

This movie ups the ante from the last entry in every way.  The characters are taken to a much darker place and the raid on the mansion complete with children being shot is still one of the most intense and disturbing scenes ever put in a PG13 rated comic book movie, i can see how a cut of this movie was rate R.  Still unlike a lot of Hollywood films this all serves a purpose and it shows that there are villains on both sides, this reinforces the theme that Mutants are not better then humans and should be treated no differently. The villain from the last movie steps forward as the leader of the team in this movie and it doesn't feel forced or out or character, now that is good writing.  There is only one complaint I have and that is that the love triangle feels forced, and since it was never really resolved in this series it just feels pointless.  my other problem with these films is that they want us to be invested in the relationship between Scott and Jean and yet we don't get any real scenes between them that show us why they love each other.  I don't know if it is a failure of the script or if the scenes were shot and then cut for time but we are given no reason to care about the relationship.  Still I do give the actor who plays Scott credit, if you look in the background of a lot of the scenes he is doing a lot of emotional reaction in response to everything Jean says and does and he does it well and all without his eyes, he is clearly trying to give viewers some reason to care but it is not enough and when Jean dies I don't really feel anything because there is nothing at stake that I care about. Still compared to everything this movie does right that is a small price to pay and over all it still holds up today.

8.5/10

X-Men:First Class

I only saw this movie once on opening weekend and I thought it was average at best.  I don't know what I was thinking, I must have been in a bad mood or too caught up in the MCU to enjoy this movie at the time.  This movie is amazing.  it injects the X-Men movies with all new energy and it again does a great job of exploring complex issues. I like the use of the old style suits and the whole thing does a great job of bringing the world of 1960s spy movies to life and I love those things so I can't figure out why I wasn't blown away by it at the time.  This is not only one of the most fun Superhero movies of all time but also one of the best and darkest.  It really a credit to the writers and the director that all these pieces work together and don't clash, all the characters are rich and have texture to them and you care about them on.  Seeing the friendship of Charles and Eric build up only to be destroyed is heartbreaking and it doesn't feel rushed at all.  Towards the end of the movie I said "This is what the relationship between Anikin and Obiwan should have been in the prequels." and I still think it's true.  I was so invested in it despite knowing that is was doomed and I like Eric a little more then Charles and could completely understand why people would choose to follow him.  This movie did more with it's characters in one film that most modern film series do in their whole run, and it still had plenty of action and dealt with a complex problem for which there were now easy answers.  If the people behind this movie were put in charge of the Star Trek films I would line up to see the next movie on day one.  I can't believe I was so wrong about this film when I first saw it, it is not only one of my favorite Superhero films but one of my favorite action films of all time, great job by all involved and I wish we would get more Xmen prequels with these characters and this setting.

9.5/10

Now that would be fun, if I had all the programs needed to pull it off I would give it a shot:)

DrCrowTStarwars said:

Dawn of the planet of the Apes

6.5/10.

I'd rate it similarly. My biggest problem with it was how predictable it was. Not just that, but they threw out the social and political commentary that makes the PotA films (aside from the Burton remake) so endearing to me, and instead replaced it with a cliched and tired plot that disguised itself as 'political'. Rise had the annoying references, but at least that film had a 'heart' to it , and it had some ideas of its own. I'm still kind of baffled that people ate this up, the same kind of people that criticized Avatar for being unoriginal, while this is almost as bad in that regard. And the less said about the bland characters, the better (...not that you can say a lot of things about bland characters, but whatever). 

Then again, I thought Boyhood was just okay, so maybe (i.e. clearly) I'm the crazy one.

Nightcrawler - A good film that becomes a not-quite-great film thanks to Gyllenhaal's performance. It's worth seeing just for his performance alone. Everything else - direction, screenplay, other characters - was fairly standard stuff, although not necessarily bad. Cinematography was really good. The score was really out of place, it sounded like it belonged in an inspirational sports film. Maybe it was the point to sound like that, but if it was, I thought it was a failed experiment. 

7.6 out of 10 Taxi Driver Diets.

Spider-Man 3 - Better than The Amazing Spider-Man...both of 'em. It has plenty of issues, but it's still pretty entertaining thanks to Raimi's direction. He nails the tone that a Spider-Man film should have. While it may have some of the same issues as The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (too many subplots, too many villains, a nonsensical romance), at least you can tell that there went some care into this, whether you look at the Sandman introduction or the action scenes. It's not the bland commercial dreck that was The Amazing Spider-Man 2. The CGI also holds up really well, especially if compare it to the newest film.

6.1 out of 10 Sony products.

Black Christmas (1974)- Some people argue day and night about what the first slasher film is...and I think it's this one. It's not as well made as something like Halloween, but it's also much more stylish and moody than Friday the 13th. There's some hokey acting here and there, but overall, it's a slasher flick worth seeing. 

7.1 out of 10 glass unicorn figures.

Mondess122 said:

Black Christmas (1974)- Some people argue day and night about what the first slasher film is...and I think it's this one. It's not as well made as something like Halloween, but it's also much more stylish and moody than Friday the 13th.

I'd disagree with you in regards to Halloween. I think Black Christmas is a much more engaging film with more interesting characters and a far scarier murderer.

I do agree with your point on Friday the 13th, though. Of course, the entire Friday the 13th franchise is an exercise in derivative mediocrity, so it's hard not to.

Mondess122 said:

DrCrowTStarwars said:

Dawn of the planet of the Apes

6.5/10.

I'd rate it similarly. My biggest problem with it was how predictable it was. Not just that, but they threw out the social and political commentary that makes the PotA films (aside from the Burton remake) so endearing to me, and instead replaced it with a cliched and tired plot that disguised itself as 'political'. Rise had the annoying references, but at least that film had a 'heart' to it , and it had some ideas of its own. I'm still kind of baffled that people ate this up, the same kind of people that criticized Avatar for being unoriginal, while this is almost as bad in that regard. And the less said about the bland characters, the better (...not that you can say a lot of things about bland characters, but whatever). 

Then again, I thought Boyhood was just okay, so maybe (i.e. clearly) I'm the crazy one.

Nightcrawler - A good film that becomes a not-quite-great film thanks to Gyllenhaal's performance. It's worth seeing just for his performance alone. Everything else - direction, screenplay, other characters - was fairly standard stuff, although not necessarily bad. Cinematography was really good. The score was really out of place, it sounded like it belonged in an inspirational sports film. Maybe it was the point to sound like that, but if it was, I thought it was a failed experiment. 

7.6 out of 10 Taxi Driver Diets.

Spider-Man 3 - Better than The Amazing Spider-Man...both of 'em. It has plenty of issues, but it's still pretty entertaining thanks to Raimi's direction. He nails the tone that a Spider-Man film should have. While it may have some of the same issues as The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (too many subplots, too many villains, a nonsensical romance), at least you can tell that there went some care into this, whether you look at the Sandman introduction or the action scenes. It's not the bland commercial dreck that was The Amazing Spider-Man 2. The CGI also holds up really well, especially if compare it to the newest film.

6.1 out of 10 Sony products.

Black Christmas (1974)- Some people argue day and night about what the first slasher film is...and I think it's this one. It's not as well made as something like Halloween, but it's also much more stylish and moody than Friday the 13th. There's some hokey acting here and there, but overall, it's a slasher flick worth seeing. 

7.1 out of 10 glass unicorn figures.

 Yeah it didn't have much to say and despite being full of good characters I didn't care about any of them much.  I can understand why some people like this since it is a remake of a good movie but some parts of it were just stupid like apes somehow knowing how to fire guns better then humans without any training and the fact that all the guns were in working order and had plenty of ammo after ten years on the shelf.  Still I can understand why people like it if only for the acting but personally I liked BFTPOTA better. With that film I was impressed by what the film makers did for less then a million bucks, the relationships felt closer so I cared more about what happened to the characters, and the stakes just felt higher somehow, also the original was just around 90 minutes long so it didn't feel as padded as this one did. Maybe I am just missing something that other people saw because I didn't hate the movie, I just liked the low budget film it was a remake of better.

DuracellEnergizer said:

Mondess122 said:

Black Christmas (1974)- Some people argue day and night about what the first slasher film is...and I think it's this one. It's not as well made as something like Halloween, but it's also much more stylish and moody than Friday the 13th.

I'd disagree with you in regards to Halloween. I think Black Christmas is a much more engaging film with more interesting characters and a far scarier murderer.

I do agree with your point on Friday the 13th, though. Of course, the entire Friday the 13th franchise is an exercise in derivative mediocrity, so it's hard not to.

 Granted I don't watch a lot of slasher films so i am not an expert but I always thought psycho was the first slasher film since it was a horror film that was more bloody then anything made up to that point and Norman Bates killed woman with a knife.  Then again I am not an expert.  i will have to track down Black Christmas and give it a shot.

DuracellEnergizer said:

Mondess122 said:

Black Christmas (1974)- Some people argue day and night about what the first slasher film is...and I think it's this one. It's not as well made as something like Halloween, but it's also much more stylish and moody than Friday the 13th.

I'd disagree with you in regards to Halloween. I think Black Christmas is a much more engaging film with more interesting characters and a far scarier murderer.

I do agree with your point on Friday the 13th, though. Of course, the entire Friday the 13th franchise is an exercise in derivative mediocrity, so it's hard not to.

If we're talking about the main character, then yes; the side characters are on the same level for me. The ones in Black Christmas are more realistic and generally less stupid, though. As for the killers, they're different kinds of scary. I was more talking about the films on a technical level; Halloween has the advantage in cinematography by having Dean Cundey behind the camera, and I think John Carpenter perfected the 'killer POV' introduced by Bob Clark. And let's not forget that pulsing theme; that scene where Loomis gets to the insane asylum and the music kicks in still gives me some shivers.

DrCrowTStarwars said:

Granted I don't watch a lot of slasher films so i am not an expert but I always thought psycho was the first slasher film since it was a horror film that was more bloody then anything made up to that point and Norman Bates killed woman with a knife.  Then again I am not an expert.  i will have to track down Black Christmas and give it a shot.

 A lot of people say that, but it doesn't really fit with the slashers of the 1980s. I think it was Black Christmas that got the ball rolling for the genre as we know it, considering that Carpenter was obviously inspired by that film's opening. Black Christmas does have a lot of the elements that later slasher films would imitate (except not from this film, but from Halloween, which was inspired by Black Christmas); POV shot from the killer, characters get killed one by one in usually one location, the killer uses a knife (or a sharp object) and the killer stalks his victims. Not that these elements weren't used before, but Black Christmas was the first to use them all together. James Rolfe made a pretty good video about it:

http://cinemassacre.com/2009/12/17/black-christmas/

Psycho is more of a proto-slasher, really.