Margie was off on business all last week, which should have meant it was a perfect time for Katherine and I to binge on movies at night until our eyes bled. Alas, her band camps were running until 8pm, school started on Thursday, Tuesday we had a (quite pleasurable) time conflict, so … our movie-watching was perforce constrained.
Still, we managed to sneak a few in.
Under Siege (1992)
★★☆☆☆ (♥)
Actually I watched this solo. It’s a sort of guilty pleasure video, the equivalent of slightly stale Cracker-Jack you just can’t quite stop nibbling on. Steven Seagal does what he does best on this “hijacked US battleship carrying nuclear cruise missiles” thriller, slightly smothered by huge slabs of patriotism, pro-Navy propaganda, and period disdain for the intelligence community. But, hey, Tommy Lee Jones, too. Full Review
Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)
★★★★☆ (♥)
Remember when the Pirates movies were fresh, fun, and didn’t just focus on how hi-lariously goofy Johnny Depp could play Cap’n Jack? This one still holds up very well, in FX and music, but most of all because all the characters are (as writing school puts it) heroes in their own story. I wish this one didn’t turn into the franchise that it became. Full Review
Kong: Skull Island (2017)
★★★☆☆ (♥)
A sad waste of some potentially interesting characters in a nonsensical plot, it’s still got visually some of the best kaiju fights out there to date, both monster-on-monster and monster-on-people. Worth watching (and maybe even rewatching, if you’re not able to pay attention except during those periodic fights). Full Review
Pulp Fiction (1994)
★★★★☆
A great film full of good actors that established some new storytelling tropes and spawned a ton of quotable lines. I admire the repeated Tarantino conceit of lengthy mundane conversation punctuated by moments of screaming violence, and (slightly less) the seeming gritty realism punctuated by bizarre coincidence. I still find the unresolved nature of the film’s storylines to be personally irksome. Full review
Overall verdict for the week?: good (if violent) times. But always more enjoyable in good company.