Last Movie You Saw & Your Recommendations II

[Namcot]

Watching Hotel Artemis

http://imdb.com/title/tt5834262/

Is this a rip-off of John Wick movies' Continental hotel?

A woman known as The Nurse (Jodie Foster) runs a high-security, members-only hospital for high-rolling criminals in Los Angeles.

[Namcot]

Hotel Artemis (2018)



http://imdb.com/title/tt5834262/

In the two John Wick movies, there is the Continental Hotel where criminals, mostly hired hitmen, hitwomen and murderers, have a neutral place to go to recover and heal from their wounds.

It has its own set of very strict rules and any violation of them by any members will result in revocation of membership and possible death.

The Hotel Artemis is also like the Continental Hotel and it also has its own strict rules and any violation of them will also result in revocation of membership.

The concierge of the Hotel Artermis also doubles as a nurse.

She has all the medical training, equipment and medicine necessary in each room to treat whatever wounds the criminals might have incurred on the outside world prior to checking into the hotel.

There is nothing good about this movie that makes you want to write home about.

It seems like the writers and producers watched the John Wick movies, thought they could take the basic premise and concept of the Continental Hotel and give it its own separate film and that's where their creativity ends.

Wait, I regress:

their creativity never even began since they stole the premise of their movie from another movie.

Jodie Foster plays the nurse who runs Hotel Artemis and she is a great actress who has given us many great performances in many movies in the last 40+ years:

first as a child actress (The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane, Taxi Driver, Freaky Friday) and then as an adult (The Silence of the Lambs, The Accused, Nell, Foxes, Panic Room).

But in this film, her acting is very wooden.

Her delivery of her lines of dialogue just comes across as if she is disinterested and reading directly from a cue card somewhere off screen; as if she doesn't want to be in this film and she is only doing it because maybe she needed a paycheck to buy a new wardrobe or a new car or something.

The rest of the cast, the ones who play the criminals who are the guests of the Hotel Artemis, are just paper thin including Jeff Goldblum who usually always has a great character written for him regardless of the movie, giving his 110% to the role every time but not this time!!

1.5/5

[Namcot]

Currently watching:

Operation Finale, the story about the hunt for Adolf Eichmann by the Israeli Mossad.

http://imdb.com/title/tt5208252/

Eichmann was one of the masterminds of the Holocaust who eluded capture at the end of World War II and was able to flee to another country and live there for a few years before the Israelis caught up with him.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Eichmann

[Namcot]

No one wants to make a decent Predator sequel worthy of the 1987 original.

So there was only one thing left for me to do.

I went back and watched the 1987 original again for the umpteenth time.

Each viewing is as good [or better] as the very first viewing in the theater in 1987 and it's always a renewed pleasure.



5/5

[Namcot]

By the 4th time they did the 4 beats of the drum, I was irritated already.

You Tube

You Tube

The 1989 movie sucked.

It was nowhere close to the novel.

I doubt this one is any better:

directed by 2 guys you never heard of and written by 2 other guys you also never heard of.

[virkole9]

Originally Posted by Namcot

No one wants to make a decent Predator sequel worthy of the 1987 original.

So there was only one thing left for me to do.

I went back and watched the 1987 original again for the umpteenth time.

Each viewing is as good [or better] as the very first viewing in the theater in 1987 and it's always a renewed pleasure.



5/5

Predator is definitely my favorite Arnie movie and probably my favorite American action film and the only one that'd make it to my top 10-20, which is dominated by Hong Kong and Japan. McTiernan is one of the very, very few consistently excellent action directors we've had - though I haven't seen his Rollerball remake which is supposed to be awful.

[Namcot]

^^^ if you like McTiernan, then Die Hard (the first one) should also be on your list next to Predator, both sharing the #1 spot.

[virkole9]

Nah, Die Hard has more problems, still a fine film overall but there are plenty of films I'd put above it. The whole FBI-local police subplot is really poor for one thing, and the horror-movie like moment at the very end with Godunov is also pretty dumb - and something that way too many action films are prone to doing. And none of the sequels are worth much though the 2nd and 3rd are at least watchable. I'd actually pick The 13th Warrior as McTiernan's 2nd-best film.

[Namcot]

Eighth Grade (2018)

http://imdb.com/title/tt7014006/

During the final week of 8th grade, a girl named Kayla realizes that she has no friends, she is not popular, she has no self confidence, boys her age might as well be extra-terrestrial aliens to her.

She loves her dad but at the same time she doesn't want him around asking her a lot of questions when she is trying to have a social life on the internet and in school and to make things even more complicated and worse, high school is just around the corner.

A sincere and sadly at times brutally honest and harsh look at the state of today's middle schoolers and their culture today:

where most of them have cell phones and their own accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube;

and their personal struggles to survive in a digital world where every day for them is an online popularity contest among their peers.

There were even 2 scenes showing how the middle schoolers were being drilled by the police and by their teachers on what to do during an active shooter situation: it's sad that the world has come to this where an innocent child can't even be safe in school.

If 15 year old actress Elsie Fisher, who played 13 year old character Kayla, doesn't get nominated for an Academy Awards, everyone at the Academy can go to fucking hell!!

This movie was rated 99% Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes and for once, I agree with them.

I give it a very enthusiastic:

5/5

[Namcot]

The Best Years Of Our Lives (1946)

http://imdb.com/title/tt0036868/





After the end of World War II, 3 U.S. servicemen from the same small town return home to find irreparably changes in the families and loved ones they left behind 3-4 years prior.

There is Fred: a U.S. Army Air Corps B-17 Bombardier and decorated Captain who is married to Marie, a woman who no longer loves him. She has also become a very materialistic gold digger while working in shady night clubs during the years of his absence.

Fred also can't find a decent paying job and he is forced to go back to his low paying pre-war time job of soda jerk:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soda_jerk

which causes financial difficulties and disagreement with his wife who wants to go out every night to nice restaurants and night clubs and party all night.

There is Homer: a U.S. Navy Petty Officer. He is in love with his childhood friend and neighbor Wilma and she is in love with him too. He told her he will marry her when he returns home after the war but that was before he lost both hands from burns suffered when his ship was sunk in the Pacific, and now uses mechanical hook prostheses. She still wants to marry him no matter what but he is pushing her away: he doesn't want her to end up with him - a disabled helpless man.

There is Al: a U.S. Army platoon Sergeant and a banker by trade before the war. After returning home, he is offered the job of Vice President in charge of small loans by his old employer, a bank President who doesn't want his bank to make G.I. Bills loans to veterans.

Al's 20's something daughter Peggy is also in love with the still married Fred.

Al doesn't approve because no young woman her age should go around making a man divorce his wife even if they no longer love each other.

Clocking in at almost 3 hours, this is a very moving story about how not all of the 16 plus million American men and women who served in World War II returned home to happy lives after the war.

The movie was quite controversial at the time for 2 reasons:

1. it didn’t fit the Government and Media narrative of the victorious heroes coming home from the war to continue life the American way, happily ever after;

and

2. it was also one of the first times a Hollywood movie dealt emotionally and deeply with what was then the controversial and forbidden topic of Divorce.

Intelligently written with smart dialogues, strong characters and many tear jerking scenes, this film won an Academy Awards Oscar for Best Picture of 1947.

It also won 7 other Oscars including Best Director, Best Actor and a never before done nor repeated since:

2 Oscars for Best Supporting Role and Honorary Award to Harold Russell, the only actor to have received two Academy Awards for the same performance.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Russell

Russell is a real life World War 2 veteran who lost both of his hands in a training accident and had them replaced with hooks.

This film was also the highest grossing film of the time since 1939's Gone With The Wind, selling over 55 million tickets in the USA and over 20 million tickets in the UK and other countries, which equaled to a gross of over $44,309,982.

Adjusted by inflation, that will be the equivalent of over $573,618,848 today and it still remains one of the top 100 grossing films in U.S. history.

5/5