On 10/27/2024 10:18 AM, Ian J. Ball wrote:
On 10/27/24 1:30 AM, Ubiquitous wrote:
What did you watch?
I did work and/or grading, and chores for much of the day. But I managed
to get through soaps, a (dour!) Lifetime flick, and a Tubi original flick!:
soaps: DOOL - Fri's ep. Meh - so I've figured out that they're going to
write out Stefan by having his mom Vivian kidnap him. Worse, in a
pukeworthy display, both Stefan and NuGabi were having second thoughts
about divorcing each other before Stefan's budding kidnapping happened. [blech] Meanwhile, Sarah pleads with Xander not to sign over the company
to Kristen. But, before Xander can, NuPhilip shows up back in town with
an injunction to prevent Xander from doing so. Fiona's lawyer is Melinda Trask (why would Melinda even want to take this case on?!) and manages
to get Fiona sprung from jail (this would never happen!!) to Sarah's shock.
  GH - Thur's ep. This must be Sam's (Kelly Monaco's) last episode, as she says a bunch of good-byes, and then they wheel her off to surgery. Meanwhile, Jack Brennan goes to Carly to get Jason to tell Brennan what
Holly Sutton was up to with the EVOL! war lord dude (Carlo Rota);
earlier Sonny tells Jason about Holly's "raw diamond" offer. And Heather Webber needs a place to stay after being released from prison - Heather
calls Lizzie, but Curtis tries to get Heather's son, Steven Webber
(Scott Reeves), to take Heather out of town.
Mormon Mom Gone Wrong: The Ruby Franke Story (Lifetime) - Of course,
Anim hated this, and this flick turned out be be exactly what I expecting.
  Basically, as I said to Anim, this was a "real life" tale of: An incredibly stupid woman (Emilie Ullerup) being preyed upon by a batshit
crazy evil one (Heather Locklear). The one frustrating element is that
the husband (Josh Blacker) was such a wimp – he could have put a stop to this madness early on if he had just put his foot down and stopped
deferring to the idiot wife.
  I did wonder if the letter they had Ullerup's character read at the court hearing at the end was actually real or fictitious. In any case,
the idiot deserves to be sent away for a long time, and Locklear's
character deserves to be sent away for even longer. They never did land
on whether Locklear's character was an evil con, or just batshit crazy
evil. The answer is probably both.
  Of course, being Lifetime, this was also implicitly a 'hit piece' against the Mormon Church (it's just too easy), and actually shared some elements in common with "Doomsday Mom: The Lori Vallow Story" (with
Lauren Lee Smith!!).
  But this was another "true life" Lifetime flick that was a tough
slog for 2 hours. It's why I don't care for most of Lifetime's "true
crime" flicks.
Killer Nurses (Tubi) - A 2024 Tubi original film!
  If you are wondering, the title is actually a total misnomer! (The
plot outline on IMDb was also totally misleading/wrong - I had to fix it
last night!)
  This was actually decent, though something tells me that this one
will not be ending up on Lifetime.
  As a "mystery" film, it mostly fails as it's pretty clear who the killer has to be - it basically really could only be one of two people
(and guess what they go that?!).
  But, as a thriller, this was pretty good:
  Two long-time travelling nurses, played Jonetta Kaiser and Mia
Challis, get assigned to a hospital in Lexington, Kentucky, along with a sweet new travelling nurse (the always lovely Kabby Borders!).
  At first I thought this might have been filmed in Vancouver, but end credits confirm it was actually filmed in Lexington, Kentucky!
  As for the credits, I'm going to assume that they're alphabetical - Kaiser has arguably the bigger filmography than Challis, but I guess
they both have about the same amount of screen time, and Challis is
listed first. Challis is very tall - I'm going to assume she is a former model (IMDb appears to verify).
  Anyway, when Border's character is brutally murdered by foot
amputation (something we see happen to another cutie nurse, played by
Brianna Abruzzo - I wish she'd been in this film more! - in the film's
open), Challis and Kaiser's character are desperate to find out who
killed her, esp. as the cops seem to be flailing on the case (as they
usually do!).
  Like I said, the ultimate culprit was pretty much obvious, but I enjoyed the two plucky travelling nurses trying to investigate and snoop around the hospital and staff in order to solve this case.
What did you watch?
I watched:
Moonstruck (Showtime) 1987 movie starring Cher as a superstitious woman
engaged to marry Danny Aiello. When Aiello leaves town to care for his
dying mother, he asks Cher to invite his estranged brother (Nicolas
Cage) to their pending wedding. However, Cher and Cage wind up sleeping together and then falling in love. I think about a year ago I casually mentioned I never saw this movie before and someone in this group
recommended I watch it. I've had it saved on my DVR for almost a year.
It's an OK movie, I guess. It's an 80s movie but the script could have
easily been written in the 70s or even 60s.
The Withes of Eastwick (blu-ray) 1987 movie starring Cher, Susan
Sarandon, and Michelle Pfeiffer as three friends who don't know they are witches and accidentally summon a man (Jack Nicholson) who is their
dreams until he becomes their nightmare. The movie also stars Veronica Cartwright as a local woman who notices there's an unwanted alien, or um
demon, in town that she wants to get rid of. Holds up well enough I guess.
The Witches (blu-ray) 1990 movie based on a Roald Dahl novel about a boy
who stumbles upon a convention of evil witches lead by Angelica Huston,
who plan to turn all the children of England into mice. When they catch
the boy eavesdropping on them, they turn him into a mouse first. This
movie has a definite dark streak in it you don't find in a lot of movies
now days. Starting out with a story of how the witches caught one young
girl and trapped her in a painting where she grew old and died, to the
body horror of the kids being turned into mice, this is a bit darker of
a movie than you might expect. And one of the things I was thinking
about while watching the kid straight out said, "How long do mice live?"
Stardust (4K disc) 2007 movie based on a Neil Gaiman novel and directed
by Matthew Vaugn. The plot of this movie is very convoluted! But
basically, there's this town in England that has a wall that separates
the town from a magical town that the rest of the world can't perceive.
One day a young English man sneaks pass the guard and enters the
magical town where he meets a princess being held prisoner by a witch.
He has a one-night stand with the princess and heads home. 9 months
later a baby is left for him. He raises the baby to a young man, and
that young man (Charlie Cox) falls for a local woman. He sees a fallen
star land behind the wall, and to woo the local woman Cox promises to
enter the magical land and retrieve the fallen star for her. While on
the magical side of the wall there is a king (Peer O'Toole) who is dying
and by tradition he expects his sons to murder each other for the
throne. He also has a daughter, but she mysteriously disappeared many
years ago and no one knows what happened to her (you can see where this
is heading). The king says whoever of royal blood can retrieve his
magical amulet will be the new king. The magical amulet flies off into
the sky and just so happens to hit a star causing the star to fall to
Earth. The same star that Charlie Cox saw fell from the sky and went to retrieve. But there is also a trio of evil witches lead by Michelle
Pfeiffer. They see the fallen star and they want it because the fallen
star has the ability to restore youth and power to witches. So now you
have the King's sons (include Mark Strong, Jason Flemyng, and Rupert
Everett), Charlie Cox, and Michelle Pfeiffer all searching for the same
fallen star. And as it happens when the star fell to Earth it took
human form in the form of Claire Danes. And she's not happy about being knocked from the sky or being pursued by all of these people. It's an
OK fantasy movie. I originally planned to pair it in a few weeks with Ladyhawke, but thought it might go better now. I think that was the
right choice.
Venom: The Last Dance (theatrical) Third, and maybe final, movie in the
Venom trilogy. Picking up where Venom 2 (and Spider-Man: No Way Home)
ended Eddie Brock/Venom (Tom Hardy) are back in Mexico and now wanted
for the murder of Detective Mulligan (Stephen Graham reprising his role
from part 2). Except Mulligan is not dead, and I must have missed how
they pinned the murder on Brock seeing as how there's obviously no body.
Apparently Venon's travels through the multiverse has awaken Knull
(Andy Serkis) and thanks to another bit of plot Venom holds the key to
Knull's freedom. Knull sends out a hunter to retrieve Venom. But Eddie
and Venom are already on the run from the U.S. military, with a team
lead by Chiwetel Eliofor hot on their trail. And unlike the first two
movies, this team is well aware of symbiotes and how to deal with them.
Rhys Ifans also pops up as a hippie who along with his family gives
Eddie a helping hand.
One huge annoyance for me, and maybe it wouldn't bother other people,
but both Chiwetel and Rhys had prominent roles in other Marvel movies,
but their alternate characters are never acknowledged. Now obviously
none of the human characters in the this movie would have any knowledge
of their multiverse counterparts, but I really would have appreciated it
if Venom at least said something about the multiverse. His character
does after all brag about being aware of the multiverse so he could have
had some sort of wink and nod acknowledgement. Anyway, overall this was probably a bit better than the second movie, maybe even better than the
first one, but it's a pretty low bar. So being better than the first
two isn't much of an accomplishment. But if you liked the first two,
you should definitely like this one. And it has much better action and
a *lot* more symbiotes.
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