Rate the last film with your terrible opinions

Twenty years ago, the second ever episode of The Venture Bros began setting up a mythos of in-universe lore that would not come full circle, albeit in a manner not without some retconning along the way, until some fourteen years later with the opening trilogy of episodes of the shows' seventh season.

Central to that mythos, was the question of what fate ultimately befell self-styled and world reknowned hero but actually more of a villain Jonas Venture Senior, genius super-scientist, womaniser, terrible friend, toxic narcissist, and depending on the day of the week, the kind of father who was dangerously neglectful¹ or just plain outright abusive to his young son Rusty, either dragging him around the world facing certain death and situations of pure horror as a pre-teen², or more often than not leaving him in the care of his equally irresponsible friends.³,⁴

One of Jonas' final accomplishments was the construction of the orbital space station Gargantua 1, visited in said episode 1x02 by Rusty and co, having been invited by one of only two remaining crewmembers Bud Manstrong, to investigate why a mysterious light labelled "PROBLEM" had suddenly come on for the first time in thirty years. Manstrong, it would later be revealed, was one of the only known survivors of what the show would go on to refer to as "The Movie Night Massacre". All that was known for many years after that to viewers of the show, was that Rusty didn't know what had ultimately happened to his father, only that the last time he was seen alive was shortly before Movie Night.


The show would occasionally drop in hints that another fate might have befallen Jonas, revolving around a centuries old directive to not let a powerful device fall into the wrong hands. Original Team Venture member Kano was said to have embarked on a vow of silence after "Taking a great man from the world." When asked point-blank if he killed Jonas Venture, he remains silent, the audience left to speculate.

Fourteen years later in episode 7x01, when computer systems at VenTech Tower go haywire, Billy Quizboy casually mentions to the surviving members of Jonas' original Team Venture that "The screens just totally went nuts and started blasting the theme from Sharky's Machine" despite the fact that the song in question wasn't one to be found in Ventech's song library. This news is met with a stunned silence, the implications clear to them.

In 7x02, the villain Red Death would produce from his wallet a ticket stub he had kept as a treasured posession, and in a manner of which Quint from Jaws would be proud, began to gradually unpeel the layers of what actually happened during The Movie Night Massacre. "No one knew who did it."






Fourteen years of sly references, implications and questions, all underpinned by a background of Burt Reynolds' 1981 movie "Sharky's Machine".

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So anyway, that's why I watched Sharky's Machine today.






Based on a novel by William Diehl, Reynolds ended up directing the movie himself at the suggestion of John Boorman, who declined the job.

Burt Reynolds plays Tom Sharky, a police sergeant in the narcotics division who gets busted down to the Vice Squad after an opening scene involving a drug bust gone wrong. Sharky and his team of downtrodden Vice burn-outs soon accidentally stumble on a high class prostitution ring, and while surveilling the $1000 a night Dominoe, Sharky begins to develop feelings for her despite them never having met.

The team themselves are all pretty good, but it's Arch in particular, played by Bernie Casey, who is the real standout and the one who seems to develop a proper partner relationship with Sharky.

A drugged up to his tits assassin played by Henry Silva is a standout character, looking not unlike a sweaty, crazed young Chevy Chase. (Bit of a continuity breaking cock-up where Silva's character has close cropped hair or bigger hair from one scene to the next, and vice versa.)

There is a corrupt politician named Donald who pays women for sex. Had to suspend my disbelief there.

I genuinely cannot understand how Rachel Ward didn't become a more prolific actress. There's a quote from Reynolds about casting her:


The film does need to take a bit of criticism for a scene where an angry Sharky assaults Dominoe while demanding information from her, and then the next morning the film acts like they are great friends and it never happened.

There is some pretty neat camera work for a movie from 1981. Early on, there's an establishing shot of the Atlanta skyline at night that seemed to be going on way too long, until it zoomed in on one particular building with a glass elevator travelling up the side, in which we see some characters we are then following.

It's pretty violent. There was a moment involving a shotgun that made me sit up and go "Holy shit", while a torture scene towards the end is quite grim.

Bullet wounds actually seem to have a real weight and physical impact to them in a way that other films from this era didn't seem to. People don't die instantly from one shot or just shrug off the wound instantly.

This movie actually set a world record that still stands, for "highest free-fall stunt ever performed from a building for a commercially released film", at 220 feet. Must have been pretty galling to the stuntman when they edited the shot down and also used a dummy for the final version.

I use them... sometimes.

Can't fault the formatting.

7/10

This weekend I watched:

Dune Part 1 - Apple TV
Dune Part 2 - Cinema

So I saw pt 1 in the cinema when it came out and I wasn't too taken with it. I've been over this a few times since and I actually have come to the conclusion that there was no real reason for me NOT to like it. The screening I saw was very dark. To the point that big chunks of the film were indiscernable. It was only after catching the odd scene from it after the fact that I realised what was wrong with my showing, and I think that severely impacted my patience and comprehension with it.

A few months back part 1 was on sale on apple for a few quid and I grabbed it thinking I would give it another shot, particularly with part 2 on the horizon. My son made a few comments recently indicating that, as he was a massive fan of Bladerunner 2049, he really fancied seeing it seing as how it was a similarly slow burning film by the same director. Saturday night we popped it on and he absolutely loved it. As I thought I would, I reapparaised it and enjoyed it a hell of a lot more this time around as well. We were planning on seeing Ghostbusters in the cinema yesterday but after loving Dune, I checked to see if there was a decent sized screen that part 2 was still showing on and bingo. So that was what we saw instead.

Well, all I can say is we loved part 1 but part 2 was something else. When the credits rolled he turned to me with the biggest grin on his face I'd seen in aeons and gave it two thumbs up. I thought it was fucking brilliant as well. So glad we managed to see it on the big screen. I'm not overly familiar with the book so I wasn't entirely sure how it would play out (or, as usual, how faithful it is to the source material), but bloody hell did it not look and sound absolutely fantastic.

Part 1 - 9/10
Part 2 - 10/10

Robbins is your film for tonight.

Yeah, Baskin is pretty bonkers, which usually makes for an entertaining watch, but the final product wasn't particularly great. Memorable film though, so that's something.

To add to peacemaker's review of Monkey Man it really is very good, a huge name check to Mr Wick on a low rent version of a scene from JW2 but it's more melee weapons (actual and improvised) and fists/feet than guns.

Dev Patel is great in front of the camera, behind it and sitting at his computer writing it, he's also seriously jacked too.

Great stuff and there's a hell of a lot of politics in this which John Wick never touches, I'm sceptical it'll get a wide release in India and maybe not even streaming as Patel is clearly not a Modi fan.

It also features the daftest escape vehicle in a chase.

Dune Part Two - Part One (obtained on the high seas)

Watching this in two sittings as it's bloody long, so these are just my thoughts on the first half. Pretty great so far, though it does feel a bit rushed in places. The visuals and atmosphere are just stunning, Villeneuve has such a great visual sci-fi language, almost minimalist. Honestly it pretty much gets a 10/10 from me for that aspect alone. Otherwise it's quite Monty Python in places with the silly walks and the he's-not-the-messiah plot. Not sure about the conversations with the unborn fetus, seems a bit silly even for a magic space sci-fi movie. The baddies are quite silly too. I've heard people refer to these movies as Star Wars for grown ups and that sounds about right (not throwing shade there, this is a good thing). Looking forward to Dune Part Two - Part Two.

Nope there are proper good quality versions floating around now.

Poor Things

First of all the good.... Emma Stone is great fun in it and performances in general are very strong. It also looks beautiful and at times got "bioshock infinate" vibes.

However, as a story I thought it was a bit pants, really interesting concept that seemed to be reduced to over used sex scenes, slapstick and a real missed opportunity to explore the consequences and complexities of what happened to her.

Got frustrated with it as I thought it was going to go somewhere quite clever and it just didn't in my opinion.

In regards to stone getting the Oscar I personally feel Sandra Huller was robbed.

Furious jumping/10

Poor Things 3/10

Awful. It’s really not my thing and felt like self indulgent arty wank that wasn’t entertaining, fun or interesting.

You're being quite subtle here.

I Am Number Four

Seen this before but watched it with the kids today. It's mostly teeny lovey twilighty bollocks for the most part, with only Timothy Olyphant and Kevin Durant as the snarling bad guy really doing *anything* to lift proceedings.

Then the final 30 minutes kick in and it out X-Men's most of the X-Men films. It's a genuinely decent slice of action. Good enough to make you sad that a bigger, balls to the wall sequel was never greenlit. Shame.

6/10 (Mostly for the final act)