Movie Roll Call: What have you seen lately?

Thanks for the reminder. I wanted to see this movie but never had the time. Will try and check it out during the holidays.

Before forewarned, this is not a movie for the faint of heart... absolutely not a movie for kids or anyone that has an adverse reaction to violence. It is extraordinarily graphic.
 
Just watched High Life. A space movie, with a morally questionable storyline. More experiments in space. Interesting film..some graphic scenes and strong sexual underlying theme.
 
Just watched High Life. A space movie, with a morally questionable storyline. More experiments in space. Interesting film..some graphic scenes and strong sexual underlying theme.
What’s hilarious is we just finished Ad Astra, and as soon as we raised the lights at the end, I said “at least it wasn’t slow and rapey like that other space movie” (couldn’t remember the name).
 
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Randle, his new establishment and Ms Ratched, the system. Superb writing and character interaction!
 
Watched John Wick 3 and Hunter Killer last night.
 
Yesterday - I liked this one.
 
The Aeronauts on Amazon Prime. Trailer looked awesome. The film itself, meh, it was okay. Not great, certainly not bad, worth watching when you have nothing better to do.
 
Die Hard and Lethal Weapon of course, being Christmas time.
 
Die Hard 1-4. Skipped 5 because it's terrible.
 
Saw the latest Star Wars in theaters. We enjoyed it. Overall, I think it is a good conclusion to the ongoing skywalker saga.
 
Zombieland: Double Tap - if you enjoyed the first one, this one won't disappoint.
 
Star Wars: Episode II Attack of the Clones and the 4K77 version of Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope

I’m probably as big a Star Wars fan as anybody but it just shocks me sometimes at how poor the acting is in these movies and how far it’s gone. Granted, when I was a young elementary school kid I didn’t go to the theater to view acting prowess. I wanted to see action. It took several years for me to realize that the acting in these movies was sub par. Thankfully the series has gotten better over time. Which is debatable since Episodes 5&6 are loads better than 1-3 even though they were shot well beforehand. And 4? Well it was the first.

Which brings me to the 4K77 project of Episode 4. This is supposedly a 4K scan of an original 1977 35mm Technicolor print. Thus creating a 4K or UHD version. I won’t delve into it further other than to say that most of the time it was enjoyable to watch. However there were several portions that video noise seemed to get the better of the 4K77 crew. There are several flavors of the 4K77 scan available and I cannot recall if I grabbed one that took advantage of Dolby Noise Reduction or not. But there were several scenes that had an over abundance of noise. I won’t delve into the audio side of things as I’m no audio guru, but I found a lot of it a bit flat. My subwoofer seemed underutilized. IMO - wait for the professionals to do this properly.
 
Star Wars: Episode II Attack of the Clones and the 4K77 version of Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope

I’m probably as big a Star Wars fan as anybody but it just shocks me sometimes at how poor the acting is in these movies and how far it’s gone. Granted, when I was a young elementary school kid I didn’t go to the theater to view acting prowess. I wanted to see action. It took several years for me to realize that the acting in these movies was sub par. Thankfully the series has gotten better over time. Which is debatable since Episodes 5&6 are loads better than 1-3 even though they were shot well beforehand. And 4? Well it was the first.

Which brings me to the 4K77 project of Episode 4. This is supposedly a 4K scan of an original 1977 35mm Technicolor print. Thus creating a 4K or UHD version. I won’t delve into it further other than to say that most of the time it was enjoyable to watch. However there were several portions that video noise seemed to get the better of the 4K77 crew. There are several flavors of the 4K77 scan available and I cannot recall if I grabbed one that took advantage of Dolby Noise Reduction or not. But there were several scenes that had an over abundance of noise. I won’t delve into the audio side of things as I’m no audio guru, but I found a lot of it a bit flat. My subwoofer seemed underutilized. IMO - wait for the professionals to do this properly.

Lucas is a visionary, and created a wonderful universe and characters, but when it comes to writing dialog and directing human actors, he is not very good.

4k77’s audio is straight from the laserdisc box set that was released just before the special editions added all the pointless sugar.

As for the noise, that’s how it looked in theaters. The shots on Tatooine with R2 and C3PO wandering around are very noisy because the film stock was literally melting. Theatrically, this is how it looked. It wasn’t until years later they tried cleaning it up and adding all kinds of mattes and masks to hide the film damage.

I’ll take celluloid noise and authenticity over Atmos any day if it means no sugar added.
 
I went and grabbed my DVD and watched the Tatooine scene again last night when that came up. It was void of the noise from the 4K77 version. While I’m sure there was noise in the original theatrical release, I doubt it was anywhere near what I was seeing. That was awful! Luckily there are very few scenes with this issue.

Next up will be the 4K83 version of Episode VI - Return of the Jedi. Supposedly this one required much less work.
 
Addendum: The video noise was very prevalent on my 100" screen with an Epson 5050 PJ. I just checked it out on my 65" LG C7 OLED and it was not very prevalent at all. You can see it but it doesn't distract from the image. It must be because I have my home theater set up for 4K viewing on my 100" screen. The first row is 10' back which is a lot closer than my living room.

You can't argue with the added level of detail though!
 
4K83 version of Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi

I found this version of the 4K project to be a bit better than the Episode IV version on the big screen.

Also rewatched Shazam with my kids who are home from college.
 
I saw Amazon Prime movie "Aeronauts". Worth checking out if you have amazon prime.
 
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Classic Tarantino flick and quite enjoyable if you’re into his style.
 
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

While I enjoyed the movie I'm happy that they're done with the storyline. It was getting old from all the recycling they've done. I do wish I would have saved the $100+ (IMAX) it cost for the four of us to see it and just waited for it to come out on disc. If you have not seen it in the theater, I'd wait.
 
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