BiffMan

Have watched Hercules, actually enjoyed that a fair amount. Still had an old VHS recording of Scavenger Hunt and he's pretty fun in his bit with the gym and medicine ball. For now, I'm just sticking with the theatrical releases, but no, I haven't yet watched Stay Hungry, The Villain, or The Long Goodbye yet, but they're on the list. I keep meaning to go back and fill in those few gaps for the old ones, especially Stay Hungry where he won his one and only major award, but I keep getting distracted by the next one on the list. :)Interesting thing is that up through True Lies, the only movie I really didn't like him in so far was Raw Deal. It's the only one up to this point that I hadn't seen before and it was such a straight-up ordinary movie (aside from the last 20 minutes) that it really didn't give him a chance to shine or do any of his Ahnold stuff. He's so good in the fish-out-of-water situations, that being in a vanilla mob/cop movie was an unfortunate choice. Especially odd coming right in between Commando and Predator.

Quickly, before I've come to my senses after Hercules in New York, let's try to cram in Red Sonja. This is not a good movie. My memories of this movie are... unpleasant. Bridgite is not just a bad actress, she is a breathtakingly bad actress. She was crazy-hot back then, there's no getting around that, but this is what happens when you base your casting choice for lead actress on a magazine ad. At least this makes Conan the Destroyer seem pretty solid by comparison. Arnold is decent in this, and it's one of his first opportunities to really turn on the charm, but the movie is such a black hole of despair, he can't really carry it on strength of personality alone. He's got a great smile though, and he's starting to look far more comfortable on screen compared to his previous outings. Who knows, this guy may even turn into some kind of Hollywood star some day... I can't help but wonder if this is the quality of movie the first Conan would have turned into with anyone less skilled and passionate than John Milius at the helm. Richard Fleischer may have had his day and turned out some good work in the 50s-70s, but IMDB confirms my suspicion that his career had to be over after the back to back body blows of Conan the Destroyer and Red Sonja. Milius took completely green actors and made magic with them. Fleischer... not so much. I'm not sure how many times he would have had to shoot a scene to get a marginally acceptable performance out of Bridgite, but it really doesn't look like he tried. I can't believe I just watched Hercules and Red Sonja in the same day. Mama always said I was "special" Ahnold Quotient - 7 He's hamming it up quite nicely through most of this and there some wonderfully goofy expressions during the battle sequences in particular. The "mating ritual" in the forest was a little much, but still not going completely over-the-top just yet. Rewatchability - No way It was brave of me to give it another go to see if I had misjudged this all these years and perhaps it's actually a diamond in the rough. It. Is. Not. Good. I'll can't say I'll never watch it again, but it's hard to imagine the circumstances under which that would happen. I would presume alcohol, betting, and/or memory loss would have to be involved.

If I had nothing but great memories of the first Conan movie, I have the exact opposite of this one. I really don't know why I tried this one again other than I had just watched the first one 3 times and still wanted more Conan. I'm not certain how long it's been since I saw this, I know I watched it quite a few times on cable in the late 80s, but pretty certain I've not seen it in it's entirety since then. It felt more like a straight-to-video movie compared to the original, although I notice IMDB has the budget listed at just slightly less than the first one. Wilt Chamberlin continues to be one of the more horrible casting choices in any movie I've seen, but the rest of the cast didn't annoy me nearly as much as I remember. And lo and behold, Arnold's actually quite good in this. If anything, he's acting better in this than the first and he's actually showing some subtlety in his performance. Between this and the first Conan, it's apparent that Arnold really does put in the training and practice time to get ready for the stunts and swordplay/horse riding/etc he'll need. He moved well in the first one and was very believable as a swordsman, but now he has some moves that just look flat-out cool. That goes a long way to masking acting issues and keep the cool factor high. Even the goofy drunk scene in the middle of the film didn't jar me as it used to and was actually pretty funny and well done. Grace Jones wasn't the horrible actress I remembered. Not saying she's good or anything, but she's consistently in character ("Take him! And grab him!") and has some good screen presence. Then there's Wilt. Ugh. Just ugh. Even the irritating rat-faced dude is fun to watch compared to Wilt. He seems to be trying, and there are some decent moments, but there wasn't a single moment where I saw him as anything other than Wilt trying to be an actor and that really breaks the immersion. What happened with Mako? Mako is a complete bad-ass, a hell of an actor, and was utilized wonderfully in the first one, but here he's an after-thought with very few lines and crap-all to contribute to the story. Such a waste. Then there's the total failure of a script, complete crap directing, and an impressively bad decision to not keep it R-rated. I still wonder what we could have had if Milius had stayed around to direct another one or two of these. Without Milius at the helm, we have characters with little to no motivation, a groaner of a story, and completely uninspired action and cinematography. I'm not saying Richard Fleishcer wasn't a good director at one point (Fantastic Voyage, Soylent Green, Tora! Tora! Tora!, 20,000 Leagues), but he's not hungry or at all invested in the material here and it shows. All in all this was actually pretty fun upon rewatch. I don't think I'm going to watch this often or anything, but I could sit down and see it again. It certainly scratches the Conan itch and I now have to re-rank this ahead of the 2011 Conan remake. Ahnold Quotient - 9 While not treading new ground, on par with the previous for large amounts of Arnold. Might have taken it down a notch if not for the drunk scene which pushes it right back up there. Rewatchability - Rarely I could see myself occasionally coming back to this after watching Conan, but wouldn't ever go directly to it. While there's a lot to like, there's an awful lot of ugh here and there are many other Arnold movies I'd go to first to scratch the itch.

This is an excellent movie and one of my dearest favorites. It's a perfect storm of obsessive director, ambitious young stars, and one of the greatest film scores ever written. I've loved this movie since I first saw it in the theaters at the tender young age of 13, it's one of only 6 movies I own the soundtrack to, and it still works for me today. There's something charming in how eager this movie is to please and how every piece of it pulls together tell you a tale of high adventure. Above all else, this is storytelling at it's finest, an important element all too often overlooked these days. I was struck by how good Arnold is in this. Sure his accent is thick, some of his expressions are downright goofy, and he's not exactly showing any range, but he's perfect for the role. I think 95% of that is Milius's doing, but he did such a thorough job explaining the character and the scenes and really working out the dialogue that Arnold *is* Conan. You never doubt that for a moment, so the occasional oddity seems part of the charm of Conan himself, and it doesn't disrupt the immersion as can happen with Arnold's later work. Our heroes are a bodybuilder, a surfer, and a dancer... with effectively zero acting experience? Milius proved to be the best coach and mentor the main trio of actors could have hoped for. Special nod to Basil Poledouris and his epic score. As Millius has noted, with so many stretches with little to no dialogue, the music really had to tell the story. Without the music, no one's watching this 30 years later and you don't have to look any further than the 2011 reboot for proof. It isn't just excellent background music, it reaches out to you in a way few other than John Williams can do, and drives the emotional pace of the film. It's two days later and I still have many of the themes stuck in my head. If only he could have kept up that pace in the sequel. Ahnold Quotient - 9 No argument this movie is completely over the top with all the classic elements other than gunplay, but Arnold's not yet doing "Arnold" so that keeps this from pegging the meter Rewatchability - Yes please One of those films that I want to start up again the moment the credits end. Heavy rotation on this one to be sure.

A fun thread for all things Ahnold... For reasons best left unexplored, I have taken it upon myself to watch all of Arnold Schwarzenegger's theatrical releases, in more or less chronological order. Having had my formative movie watching years in the 80s to early 90s, I've always had a soft spot for Arnold and, although he's never exactly been a role model, he makes consistently entertaining movies. Watching his movies smacks of a guilty pleasure, the sort you're not really supposed to be enjoying. Just as I have come to terms with the fact that I like Duran Duran and am now okay with that, I also must own up to genuinely enjoying the majority of Arnold's movies. I've been trying to watch these with as fresh a perspective as possible, which is aided by the fact that I haven't seen several of these for 20+ years and have never seen a few of them. Oddly enough, I'm finding that the frequent flaws in his movies are less directly the result of Arnold's acting chops, but more often the craft of the movie itself. I'm sure that many concessions had to be made to keep them within Arnold's performance envelope, but I'm trying to cut him some slack where the script or director seem to be as much to blame. Given that, I also can think of several movies where he really phoned it in and I'll not shy away from calling that out when I see it. It'll be fun to see if I can pick out any actual progression in his acting ability over 40+ years of movies. Thus far, with the exception of Stay Hungry and The Villain, I've made it up through True Lies (saw that 2 weeks ago at the Alamo Drafthouse in 35mm!) and the common theme throughout is that Arnold is a considerably better actor than I was giving him credit for. I don't think we're going to see him win an Oscar in his career to go with his Golden Globe, but he's actually quite good. I've been blogging this for my own use since I started (and I'm trying to catch up and post the individual movie reviews over in the RtM forum), but thought it might be fun to open up a discussion here about Arnold and what have been your favorite highs and lows of his.

Cinematic perfection. One of only a handful of movies I feel that way about. The acting, script, and voice over work by the author all combine to make this easily one of the most enjoyable movies ever made. If you've not seen this, it's absolutely worth a try.A+

I'm sure I must have seen bits and pieces of this back on HBO in the early 80s, but I've certainly never sat down and watched all of it before. I was pleasantly surprised and genuinely enjoyed this. It's hardly an objective documentary, but the glimpse into the bodybuilding world and the personalities involved is highly entertaining. Found the majority of it very compelling and I now completely understand what all the fuss was about. These guys seem larger than life and just so vibrant and above all else, interesting. 35 years later and this movie still really works and I can see why it started a craze and launched the fitness industry that we take for granted these days. Found it interesting that Arnold is again completely easy to understand when he's just talking and not having to recite lines. Sure the accent is there, but I find it adds flavor rather than becoming a distraction. Very cool to see Arnold in his prime with all his ambitions straining to get out. He really is at his best when he's just being himself, or at least acting out a stylized version of himself. Arnold has this unique combination of arrogance, self-assurance, and sweetness that I really enjoy when it comes out on screen. Loved the sequence at the end when he's riding back to the airport with Lou since it's many years until he's this open and relaxed on screen again. This is one of those rare movies that I strongly recommend everyone give a try. Whether you like the subject matter or the people themselves or not, it's one of the best sports docudramas I've ever seen and this one will find a slot in my movie rotation in the future. Ahnold Quotient - 8 It's awesome to see him in his prime before his huge public success starts going to his head. Rewatchability - Every now and again It's not something that I want to watch once a week or anything, but I could definitely see coming back to this every couple of years at least. Particularly fun to watch it in the context of recently watching another of his movies.

My favorite "Vacation" movie and very well done. Also one of Chevy's last solid performances on film.A

Had never seen this before, and didn't know whether to expect complete camp & cheese, or something far more sinister like a Steve Reeves Herc movie that tries to take itself too seriously. That thankfully turns out to not be a concern at all, and I'm quite flabbergasted to find that Arnold is not the worst actor in this. Heck, he's easily in the upper half of the actors here, as there are some seriously wooden performances being turned in left and right. Yes, I'm looking at you, Gods of Olympus... Some moderately amusing action scenes in this one, although I'd be hard pressed to say which was better of the drawn-out-gangfight-with-long-wooden-plank, Central Park fight-a-dude-in-a-bear-suit, or the chariot-pursued-by-mobsters-in-a-stationwagon chase scene through downtown Manhattan. Why pick just one when you can have all that and more! I watched the version with Arnold's audio intact and I apparently should turn pro as an Arnold interpreter since I found him perfectly understandable. Not saying he's particularly well-spoken, but I can at least clearly understand him and it's so much more palatable than the 70 year old English professor they got to do the dubbed audio. All in all, this wasn't as horrible as I feared and you can already see the charisma of Arnold showing through. Let's just give him a quick 12+ year time-out from acting for the weightlifting scene reaction shots (ugh) and then let's try him out again. Ahnold Quotient - 5 While there's no denying he's about as big as we ever see him, there's very little Ahnold-ness going on here. Accent is crazy, looks are goofy, but nothing really over the top. Fun to see how eager to please he is as an actor though. Rewatchability - Very, very rarely I won't say I'll never watch this again, because it could be fun on a lark every now and again just to see how far he came, but I can't see regularly watching this. It's not really Arnold's fault, it's just seriously not a good film.

Incredibly compelling idea, tossed into a completely bland movie. Fascinating sci-fi angle, pretty good performances particularly from Murphy, but found myself repeatedly irritated throughout. Movies for me are all about storytelling and this missed the mark.C

Odd, since the first thing that struck me was how much more like a proper Bond film the credits and title song were this time around. Much more on point than the previous two Craig films. They were funky, but they're supposed to be. As nice a nod to the early movies as having the old Aston Martin put in an appearance.

Caught it 3 times in IMAX this past week with different groups of friends. Great to see it back on the big screen again and no matter how many times I've seen it, watching it in a theater can still sweep me away and make me feel like I'm 11 years old all over again. It really struck me just how well everything works in the movie. In any other film, the amount of time and dialogue spent in the Ark explanation scene could really drag a film down, but here it's so well paced and the dialogue so well written that it's every bit as gripping as the action sequences. We're blown away by what Indy can do in the opening sequence, but it's the Ark discussion scene that gives us a glimpse into who Indy is and gives us a reason to care about the Ark. Instead of having to be told Marion is a force to be reckoned with, we see her drink a guy under the table and punch Indy for something he did 10 years ago. Damn, but Lawrence Kasdan could write back in the day. It's also great to see old-school stunts hold up so well. These days you'd be trying to figure out where the wires were or bemoaning the CGI, but back then when Terry Leonard jumps from horse to truck and pulls himself along under the truck, you know it's real and that really adds to the immersion. Cinematic perfection: A+

You could join a monasteryDid you ever see a monk get wildly fucked by some teenage girls?Never.So much for the monastery.Such an awesome movie.

Nope. Robo walking suits are a mandatory part of immortality. How ya gonna do that from a hypersleep bed?

Thank god it's a sequel. Thread title had me worried it was a reboot.

Although you'd think if Weyland is so uber concerned about living forever that he's come all this way to talk to his maker, that he might have at least flinched at the blood-covered person walking into the room and whether or not he might have a safety concern related to her.

Agreed, discussion is always fun and any movie that gives you that spark is an experience to be treasured. That's why we go to the movies in the first place afterall. I think a lot of the perceived plot holes wouldn't have existed if they hadn't tried to explain a little too much. Leave something totally open ended (backstory of the original Alien) then it feels like you've been tossed into a world with a full history that went on and we have fun inventing our version. Leave part of it open ended and then try to explain part of it and you can wind up with people that don't find the given explanation jived well with their interpretation of the unexplained parts.

I think it's great that you did. Overall I had a good time at it and I didn't find anything disruptive during the movie. I seem to have this thing where I can selectively ignore things that bother me during a movie so it doesn't generally spoil my immersion ("That was unnecessary" (shrug it off) "Oooh, that was cool", etc) so I came out of it having enjoyed it overall. The lack of leaving more things unexplained and mysterious just robbed me of some additional slack-jawed wonder is all. So that's not a bad thing, just a missed opportunity.I think the fascinating thing about this movie is the range of people finding it too ambiguous, not mysterious enough, or a mix of both. Films usually go full-tilt one way or the other.

Love teasing and being vague in the backstory in a film as long as the story does something, or is at least a hell of a ride as was the case with Alien. It surprised me given how interested I was in learning more backstory that the more they explained, the less interested I became. The scenes I seemed to enjoy most were of the "less is more" variety. Take the first hologram recording scene of the Engineers running and the one getting beheaded and we then catch up and see it in reality. That was cool and a nice tension moment and a good tease of what's going on. Pretty much every other holo recording after that felt like fluff and unnecessary. I would have found the final sequence where the Engineer sits down in the navigation chair and you see the trajectory path to Earth vastly more compelling ("Oh no! Earth!") if we hadn't have spent all that time with David playing around in there and watching the bridge holo recording. That was cool to watch, but it robbed the payoff scene of some of its punch.Please note I'm not at all knocking those who really connected with the movie (it's so cool when that happens in any movie), I enjoyed quite a bit of the show, I just found that I was much more engaged when Scott was teasing us and much less so when he was explaining things to us.The first 20-30 mins had me near slack-jawed in awe at the majesty and hard-sci fi and trying to read between the lines of what was and wasn't being said, that it had me hungry for more of that. Awesome to see that Scott still has that in him, I just wished he'd have been able to carry that through the whole film.

Fun thought and I'm sure something suitably bleak will eventually happen to them, but unless she somehow grows 4 feet taller, she's not the Space Jockey from Alien.

I felt the movie was at it's strongest when they make you draw your own conclusions. I just wanted way more of that. They did a great job at the beginning just unabashedly tossing things out there without much exposition in very much a 2001 style, but by the end they're spelling things out to us a little much for my tastes. Part of what worked so well with Alien and had me interested in exploring the backstory in Prometheus was that, in Alien, Scott effectively said "Fuck you, I'm not explaining anything" and that's that. Which is awesome. It's what gave us 33 years of theorizing and making up our own versions of how things came to be. Who's the Space Jockey? What kind of ship is that? Why are all these eggs here? Where did the xenos come from? "Fuck you. Doesn't matter." Somehow that all happened and now these poor people are going to just try to stay alive. And I love that.

Little late to the discussion (been avoiding spoilers) and it's 2:30am local and I just got home from it, so short version:First 20 minutes & Michael Fastbender: OMG, OMG, holy shit, wow.Rest of movie: Meh

Seems like it might have a shot at getting there by Sunday. Should be at $399 by Thursday.

Most schools in TX have been out since last Friday.

It's impressive that TA didn't just open stronger than TDK, it's managed to extend the margin. Wonder when it'll finally fall behind Avatar. Possibly by week 7? Certainly by week 8. Also fun that at 12 weeks, Titanic still had ~25% of it's gross yet to come. Never see that again, but still neat to compare to.