Keyser Corleone's Movie Memoirs

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KEYSER CORLEONE'S ROCKY WEEK!

Rocky IV
(1985) - Directed by Sylvester Stallone
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Boxing / Drama
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“If I can change and you can change, everybody can change. “



Four down. Rocky IV is where the franchise begins digging for different ideas in order to keep the masses coming. Maybe Rocky was getting too many sequels, but what mattered was whether or not the people kept coming for more of the world's most famous underdog who isn't Underdog. Stallone made a name for himself as an actor, a writer and a director. So could he keep it up?

Rocky IV sees a new challenger from out of town, and country, coming to America to fight the best of the best. The Russian Ivan Drago, played by Dolph Lundgren, is a machine in body, mind and soul. And he's so powerful that he can take down Apollo Creed, as seen by the match that changed the world. Unsure of his own talent, Rocky leaves for Russia to train in the harsh snow and wilderness in order to prepare for the match of a lifetime.

AAAAAAAAND you can sense the sequelitis, can't you? It's pretty obvious that the Rocky franchise is being more influence by its 80's surroundings. I mean, we literally get a robot butler. If one more robot butler comes out...

I mean this movie was kinda dorky. We get a musical number where Creed is taunting our villain Drago with a bunch of funk musicians singing about America before the big fight. I mean, when were the Globetrotters coming, huh? And then we get another musical number of clips from the previous movies, or more accurately a music video with a lame-o AOR song that pails in comparison to Rocky III's “Eye of the Tiger.” In fact, the middle act is more devoted to playing potential hit AOR than it is telling the story.

It starts out with some promise and another charismatic performance by Carl Weathers. But once his character arc ends, Rocky just goes on another training montage and the montages and light bursts of story last until we actually get to the fight. Then the fight show Stallone as a director trying his best to outdo the fights of the first three movies with more flashy cinematography and direction. But pounding on a lacking so-called villain like Drago does nothing for the story. This is coming right off the back of a movie with Mr. T as the main bad boy, so it feels kinda lame, despite still having heart and soul.

Rocky had run its course by then. IV was a disappointment with some good direction. I hear the director's cut had more story, but this was the only cut I could find online, and for whatever reason, people said the original was better. I'm really starting to doubt that. This was only slightly more entertaining than Space Jam.

= 49/100


Sylvester Stallone's Score (3 Good vs. 1 Bad)

Rocky III: 75
The Expendables: 73
Rocky II: 73
Rocky IV: 49

67.5 / 4



KEYSER CORLEONE'S ROCKY WEEK!

Rocky V
(1990) - Directed by John G. Avildsen
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Boxing / Drama
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“All those beatings you took in the ring, I took them with you!“



I was aware that Rocky V was the lowest rated rocky movie of the series. However, I didn't think it could be any worse than the overly comedic and under-written Rocky IV, which I didn't like much. So there were two options: either people are on crack about this movie, or everything this movie touches, it destroys.

Rocky just beat Ivan Drago, but returns to find that Paulie botched an investment, and the Balboa's were scammed out of all their money. All hope seems lost, but Rocky finds that his late trainer Mick left his gym to Rocky's son. Fixing it up, he ends up taking on a new hopeful as an assistant while neglecting the needs of his family. Things get worse when a boxing promoter who bothered Rocky takes his protege away from him.

There's already one strong edge this movie has on Rocky IV (at least the original cut, as the story-based director's cut still evades me). The edge is simple: the story. there's already much more of it just from the synopsis I gave, and that means the movie has more meat and worth. But how does the story pan out? Not as well as you might think, but not very bad.

At first I thought to myself that it would be really cool to see Rocky taking Mick's shoes and becoming the new trainer. But this Tommy Gunn isn't much of a character other than another young and attitudinal hopeful. Rocky even mentions that agents and salesman are dirty and suck you dry, going as far as to say that MICK KEPT HIM FROM ALL THAT. When did this happen? Now it's getting into subplots that the first four movies didn't cover, and this movie's hardly covering that.

There's also the matter of a very wasted opportunity: Rocky's signature character growth from the first movie. We have a new cast of characters and an older son worth diving into for the future, but every turn in the story leads to a predictable subplot, so among the fresh meat are some major setbacks. And John G. Avildsen doesn't fully recreate the heart of the sport here, so the heart and character feel lost. In fact, the actor for our our "villain" Duke is just trying to hide his lacking development under an overactive and annoying performance. I really miss Mr. T.

The story picks up in the third act as people get mad that Tommy Gunn never fully won the championship title from Rocky. The climax plays out how we expect again, but it continues a trend of some decent lines, many of which I would rather save for you. Rocky's got one of his best lines during the climax. And after this, things get exciting again.

Avildsen failed to deliver the first movie's sweet goods, as while he's working hard in the story department, he doesn't have very many original ideas past the first act. Stallone and Rocky were smart to make so many movies for the money, but as I had said in my review for the fourth movie, the series had run its course. Rocky V is better than the original cut of Rocky IV in the story department, but in my opinion, IV and V are filler movies just to get to Rocky Balboa, the sixth movie, and of course, the iconic Creed films. They honestly excite me more than Rocky 6.

= 56/100


John G. Avildsen's Score (5 Good vs. 0 Bad)

Rocky: 92
The Karate Kid: 85
The Karate Kid Prt 2: 77
Rocky V: 56
Inferno: 53


Average Score: 72.6 / 5



KEYSER CORLEONE'S ROCKY WEEK!

Rocky Balboa
(2006) - Directed by Sylvester Stallone
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Boxing / Drama
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“What's crazy about standin' toe-to-toe sayin' 'I am?'”



Number 6 is here, and I've been pretty excited about finishing this. I finally got all the Rocky movies featured on Tubi out of the way, while Creed I and II are on Prime Video. I'm definitely gonna finish as much as I can, although depending on the outcome of the Creed's I may or may not see the third in theaters. I hear that Rocky Balboa was one of the best sequels. Is this rumor true?

The final Rocky film directed by Sylvester Stallone is a reboot centering on a depressed Rocky trying to cope with the lose of his wife, Adrian. His son is estranged and trying to make a living without being tagged as Rocky's son, and Paulie is up to his usual bull. But things look up when he befriends Marie, that girl he walked home in the first movie, now grown up with a kid. And now a new challenger wants to fight Rocky in an exhibit to prove that he's good enough to be the champ.

One thing that bothered me about past Rocky sequels was the lack of Rocky's odd but lovable personality traits, especially his childlike and kind-hearted outlook on life. This movie feeds us plenty of that, thank god. We get to see some of Rocky's old personality traits displayed once again, such as his conversation about whether or not this one dog is ugly or cute and what it's name should be. Rocky's speech about life is one of the best moments in the entire series.

Nevertheless, this is a Rocky movie. We can expect this to get formulaic. Once again, there isn't much heart-to-heart growth from the characters relating to Rocky, and our villain is even less interesting than Tommy Gunn. So while our climax is well-directed and worked around modern day spectacle and cinematography, the end result is the same. It creates this strange reverse effect where the real bulk and tension of the movie comes from Rocky's dialogue throughout the first two acts rather than in the boxing match itself. The movie works hard to create tension and drama based on Rocky's age and whether or not he can keep it up. But... let's be honest. He's ROCKY. He's gonna do it. You know it. So there's not really any tension.

Well, Rocky six is definitely something nostalgic fans will wanna see for its truth to tradition. This is both a pro and a con, but as a Rocky movie, it certainly succeeds and satisfies more than the last two did. Only half original, Rocky is not tainted by modern tropes of storytelling, and so the sportsman will likely enjoy this.

= 64/100

Sylvester Stallone's Score (4 Good vs. 1 Bad)

Rocky III: 75
The Expendables: 73
Rocky II: 73
Rocky Balboa: 64
Rocky IV: 49

Average Score: 66.8 / 5



KEYSER CORLEONE'S ROCKY WEEK!

Creed
(2015) - Directed by Ryan Coogler
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Boxing / Drama
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"A great fighter once said, 'It ain't about how hard you can hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward.'"



I've been pretty excited about watching this for a while. Diving into the next era of the Rocky saga, I expected the movie to live up to the ratings and bring us something really great, if not making that rare chance of surpassing the original. Considering that I found ways to prove upon the original, it was likely. 95% on Rotten Tomatoes, 7.6 on Imdb, what could go wrong?

Adonis Johnson's dad died before he was born, and his mom died shortly after. And he's been sent from place to place without a family due to his violent behavior. Finally, the true wife of his father who had an affair reveals the truth: her husband, and his father was boxing legend Apollo Creed. As an adult, he quits his job to fight full time, and seeks out Creed's greatest rival and good friend: Rocky Balboa, who's reluctant to train him at first, but soon decides to become the new Rocky's Mick.

I have very specific standards for comparing any Rocky sequel to the first. These standards were decided on the second time I had watched Rthe first Rocky, having done it specifically for this week. And since then, I have given every sequel less positive reviews than the first for good reasons. Let's see how this movie stacks up against the standards of the first movie.

First: Protagonist's interactions and growth with others, or Rocky's interactions. We get the latter here, as Donnie's doing most of the growing while Stallone gets into character yet again.

Second: Rival as interesting and likable as Creed. We do NOT get that. Conlan is about to go to prison and he wants his last fight to be memorable. Big whoop, he hardly has any screen time.

Third: Adrian. Since Adrian ain't here, we have Tessa Thompson's Bianca. But despite being a likable character with a head on her shoulders, she didn't really wow me. So the Adrian factor is not recreated or justified.

Fourth: The training philosophy. We had a little bit of that in the first movie, but the third movie really built it up with Mick's scenes. We get A LOT OF IT here in Creed, and I am more than happy about that. But Rocky isn't just being Mick, he's Rocky delivering his own way of passing Mick's lessons on. Stallone outdid himself, and fixed the wasted opportunity of failing to capture this subplot properly in Rocky V. So this is the best thing about the movie.

Fifth: Are all the subplots lived up to? This has been a problem for multiple Rocky movies. The first movie flat-out abandoned the loan shark thing with no real resolution, Paulie's abusive behavior in 3 never got resolved, and 6 barely did much with the father-son relationship except continue the subplot of 5. But there wasn't much of that forgotten resolution here, largely becuase the movie plays out how you expect the movie to go. The movie is complete, but predictable. I'll even add that this justifies the extra length, being the longest Rocky film so far.

Sixth: THE MATCH AT THE CLIMAX. How well does it fit into the plot, and how exciting is it? It had its excitement level, and it was very well directed. However, it played out how I imagined it would play out.

Creed is the best possible step for the Rocky franchise to continue, as the legend of Rocky and Creed needs to go on for those die-hard sports movie lovers. But Creed confirms something that the sequels excused with their lower quality: Rocky is much more about spirit than story, so even Creed falls victim to this occasionally. But because there's a but more character to this movie than 2, 4 and 5, it stands out as one of the best in the series, specifically the best sequel for improving on the strengths of III. So I won't give this as high of a rating as I was hopingf to give (between 80-90), but it's still a good movie, especially if you're a Rocky fan.

= 77/100



Ryan Coogler needs 1 more for average score



When you wouldn't go pay to see something in theaters unless your best friends are going too. Can't deny that part of me wanted to.

The Super Mario Bros. Movie
(2023) - Directed by Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic
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Family / Action-Adventure / Portal Fantasy / Comedy
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"We're the Mario Brothers, and plumbing's our game!
We're not like the others who get all the fame!
If your sink is in trouble, you can call us on the double!
We're faster than the others, you'll be hooked on the Brothers!

UH!"


Should I run some research and statistics here on MoFo on how many people here grew up with at least one Mario game, or should I just pull a random high percentage out of my butt? Because what we're dealing with here is not necessarily a unique case for the art of adaptation, but very unique for a video game movie adaptation. Why? Because, big surprise, the adaptations haven't been so faithful up to this point. Alice? Tom Wachowski? These characters are thrown in the movies with cheap "bring the video game to our logical world" crap all the time. So how does the Mario movie handle it?

So, Mario and Luigi are Italian-Americans who used to work for a guy called Foreman Spike who has his own wrecking crew. During a flood, they try to go to the sewers to fix it and find a warp pipe into the Mushroom Kingdom... at least Mario does. Luigi ends up in Bowser's kingdom, and is held hostage. Mario teams up with our badass but still underdeveloped Princess Peach to gather the Kong army against Bowser and his army of koopas, goombas, spinies, shy guys and bullet bills before Bowser uses the power star to force Peaches to marry him.

Which brings me to something I've never done before. I'm gonna quote a movie twice in my review.

"Peaches, peaches, peaches peaches peaches..."

So we're looking at a pretty damn thin plot here. There isn't a lot of character development, as most of the characters pretty much just give us what we know. Mario heads into danger heroically, Luigi's a chicken, Bowser's... essentially evil Jack Black (let's be honest), and Peach is just inches away from being a blatant Mary Sue with her skills being justified by living in the Mushroom Kingdom her whole life and living a life of high-jumping action. So not quite Rey, thankfully. She DID have her own game where she rescued Mario, so it's still faithful.

Now that the biggest flaws are out of the way. I legit think you should BUY THIS MOVIE! Like freakin' Cheat Commandos, buy all its playsets and toys for cryin' out loud! THIS MOVIE IS WAY TOO MUCH FUN! I have acquired a very serious respect for this movie for finally reversing the video game film situation, and doing so seemingly effortlessly. This is a love letter to Mario fans, and it deserves to be seen and even owned by Mario fans. This movies feels like... a compliment from Nintendo to its fans.

The Mario Movie is certainly not here to give you a thick plot with a lot of emotional subtext. That might be a moviemaking flaw in its own right, but it's certainly not Mario to do that. You want an adaptation with heavy emotional subtext? Go find the brilliant Ian Flynn and actually convince him to stop working on Sonic (if he wrote a Sonic movie I would have an eternal boner). But this is MARIO. We're here to stomp on some goombas, collect a few power-ups and meet some nostalgic characters. And this movie delivers in quite literal full force.

The Mario movie doesn't give a rat's hairy ass about logic. This is a video game world. There's as much logic in the Mushroom Kingdom as there is in Wonderland, and the movie rolls with that logic so hard it's a freakin' pastry. Mario's hitting boxes and collecting power-ups from all over the franchise, even going back into the NES days, which isn't a surprise but still highly appreciated and very well directed. Certain power-up and music combinations punched me with Dragon Ball Z waves of nostalgia.

This brings me to my next point. Don't let marketing and genre-tagging fool you. This is an ACTION movie. They made a perfectly kiddy and fun action movie with some of the finest choreography I have ever seen, partially due to its video-game logic and direction combined with action spectacle to create sequences that are both perfectly faithful to the games and respectful to the legacy. This action is incredible.

One mixed bag is the casting choices. I wasn't really amazed by Chriss Pratt's Mario or Charlie Day's Luigi. Keegan-Michael Key did his best with Toad, but the character himself was too simple. And Anna-Taylor Joy is just playing an average strong woman in the movies. I found nothing unique about Peach or amazing about her simple and easy performance.

But there are some clear-cut gems. I repeat, Jack Black and Bowser are very much the same person, so this was extremely impressive, especially when paired with the brilliant handling of his facial expressions. Black and Bowser were flawless in all respects. And still, Fred Armisen and Seth Rogen were able to effortlessly bring out the best in Cranky Kong and Donkey Kong to the point where I am hyped for the potential Donkey Kong Country movie (placing all bets, will Donkey and Funky have a pec dancing competition?) And for the short time he had, I really liked Kevin Michael Richardson's performance as the scraggly and weak Kamek. I mean, half this guy's roles are Captain Gantu, and he nails this without even trying.

OK, for such a thin plot, my jaw has never dropped so much in one movie. The Mario Movie might not have broken the video game curse to a few movie goers, but it certainly reversed the problem, and capitalized on the strengths of faithfulness. I guarentee you'll have at least one wave of nostalgia punch you in this movie. Even if you don't see it in theaters, you gotta see it.

= 81/100

Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic need 2 movies for an average score.



Tyler Perry's Acrimony
(2018) - Directed by Tyler Perry
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Drama / Thriller
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"I don't need controlled, I'm not some type of animal."



Another Tubi marathon comes along in the grand adventures of Keyser's total boredom. And this time the movies are all jumbled with one connecting theme: they're all movies that are directed by people I've experienced before. I chose two Tyler Perry movies, but then decided that the Madea one would have to wait until after I see the first. So, Acrimony it was.

Melinda has an anger issue, and she has worked hard to keep it under control as she lets her crush and eventual husband bleed her dry of her inheritance, all for the purpose of a lost dream. But after the divorce, his life starts to get better and better, and he's sharing it with a woman she caught with her husband long ago. Eventually, she goes crazy to right the wrongs of betrayal.

Do any of you remember when I had my little Spike Lee binge, and I watched all of his earliest movies, including his college thesis? Well, I don't really think I'll be doing the same with Tyler Perry.

This is my first ever Tyler Perry movie, so I admit that while I'm aware of his status as a comedy director, I am not necessarily familiar with his works. With Tyler Perry's attempt at breaking from his comedic style a full tonal 180, I applaud that move on its own. And did it really pan out? I suppose it would've panned out if Hitchcock didn't already exist. By this point, we've seen so many movies about people going insane with love that it's hardly original anymore.

But much of that is because the movie's plot is realistic. The kinda of things that these two characters go through is so familiar to the average human being that it's also familiar to those who haven't been through it. I always consider realism for dramas a plus. However, it's so familiar that it's familiar. Predictable. On that note, the psychological meat of the movie is only an occasional venture until the very end, so the movie's meat doesn't live up to the realism.

Acrimony is probably gonna be forgotten by much of the population overtime, devolving into a niche outsider movie that Tyler Perry fans would possibly know. It's a perfectly average movie with some decent direction and dialogue, but its major flaws are blatant.

= 61/100


Tyler Perry needs 2 more films for an average score.



OK, get ready for a review unlike anything you've ever read on my board. This is a movie that is ans isn't meant to be watched, a satirization of art and one of the most unfunny and least insulting things on Earth.

Empire
(1965) - Directed by Andy Warhol
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Drama / Thriller
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Andy Warhol is mostly known for his "art," but he also took part in the mockery thereof, in his short-lived "anti-film" scene is a notable part of that mockery. One of these pieces is a 6 hour recording slowed down to eight hours, taking only one shot of the Empire State Building and watching the sky change to night, This is literally it. There are film scholars who write theory after theory concerning this movie, but most don't fall for it. Others say that Warhol's just being a pretentious bitch and this movie doesn't qualify as art just because it's "unique" and "freedom of speech." Not every new artistic idea is a good one. The delivery of the idea is what matters, and not the delivery itself.

Keep in mind, Warhol stated that the purpose of the movie was to see time go by, but I don't think he was being honest with the critics. You'll find out why I believe he was mocking criticism at the end of this review.

So, yes. I watched an eight-hour movie, but over three days. Since this movie was pretty much for stargazers and cloud watchers, I did what I'd normally do if I was watching the sky: listen to some music albums. I know the movie has no audio, so listening to a few albums while watching this is no different to me than watching any other movie with the background noise of the ceiling fan or dogs barking. It's not like I'm pairing the memory of the albums with the movie; separating the two are easy as hell. And I won't tolerate a purist telling me I have to watch it without any background sound. This is an ANTI-FILM, so I won't treat it like a normal film.

Nevetheless, I will still judge by my typical criteria:

1. What is the purpose of this film?
2. Does it succeed at its purpose?
3. What did it sacrifice to meet this goal?
4. Were the sacrifices made up for?

The purpose is to mock us with the ever-controversial subject of "statement." Warhol was indeed making a criticism against the critics and the art hounds.

The movie does in fact succeed. We can tell who the art hounds and fanatics are through online reviews.

The sacrifice is FILMMAKING.

But the ability to tell the phonies from the free thinkers through this movie's reputation doesn't mean this is a successful movie. In fact, the purpose of this movie was to be practically unwatchable. I'll admit that this purpose is not fully lived up to as the sky-changing scenes are a little bit soothing.

And at that, I risk being subject to mockery at the hands of Andy Warhol's ghost when I say that there is a glimmer of potential that he wasted: the charm of watching the sky. And why do I say that? Simple. THERE ARE PEOPLE WHO WATCH THE CLOUDS PASS. There are people who watch the stars. The movie isn't just filming the Empire State Building, but the surrounding areas. There are a couple other buildings, passing helicopters, and of course, the sky. For the first hour and forty-five minutes, the sky changes to some pretty nice looking black-and-white imagery from afternoon to night. But once it strikes night, it's completely black. And it stays that way for six hours. So if the purpose was to see time go by, shouldn't he have chosen an earlier time of the day so the sky wouldn't be ****ing black for six hours? He's smart enough to know that.

I'm sorry, but making a movie that's only supposed to be a prank against the snobs and getting away with it doesn't make you a genius. It means you did a niche thing for niche people, and only a few people are going to understand the true motives unless someone figures it out and that someone's commentary becomes a popular "theory." So Warhol wasted time and preserved something with his name attached to it, and has a private laugh with himself. That is the purpose of Empire.

So do I feel pranked? No. Because I never took this movie seriously to begin with. I only watched it because I saw a couple shorter (much shorter) movies by Warhol, and figured this was popular enough with the diehards to watch. But I never expected this to be a serious piece of art.

So after three days of this, I can safely say that Warhol could've made the joke or purpose a lot more clear if he did a little more with it, and by that I mean less black sky and more statement. But the problem is that the movie is so against the idea of criticism that it caves in on itself, because 99.99999% of the human race is not going to watch this kind of movie. A statement should be more public than that. So if he planned on saying something to the people, from a popularity perspective he did a crappy job. So this movie almost completely fails at its purpose. All it has is a scene where a cloud forms and deteriorates shortly before we get to six hours of blackness. But at least I can say "challenge completed."

Maybe Chelsea Girls and Poor Little Rich Girl will be better...

= 0.5/100. Yes, a half of one point for the cloud scene.


Andy Warhol's Directorial Score (0 Good vs. 4 Bad)

Vinyl: 0
Eat: 0
Empire: 0.5
Kiss: 30

Average Score: 7.625 / 4

Andy Warhol is currently #9 on my worst directors list, right between Larry Buchanan (8) and Ted V. Mikels (10).



Even as someone who loves Andy Warhol,what's with people watching Empire recently?


Are you people mental?


And as for Chelsea Girls.....you will like it more than this, because how could you not?


I don't know anything about Poor Little Rich Girl



Even as someone who loves Andy Warhol,what's with people watching Empire recently?


Are you people mental?


And as for Chelsea Girls.....you will like it more than this, because how could you not?


I don't know anything about Poor Little Rich Girl
I was in the mood for a challenge. And when I challenge myself, I succeed.



Tarzan the Ape Man
(1932) - Directed by W.S. Van Dyhe
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Adventure
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"AAAH-A-A-A-A-AAAAAAAAAA-A-A-A-A-AAAAAH!"



Remember my long and thorough review of Disney's Tarzan? I plan on bringing that same dissection here. I've decided to take a small break from the "one war movie a day" chain for the upcoming countdown, and decided it as finally time for me to stop putting this movie off. If I'm a movie buff and a fan of the book, then if other skinny asses can do it I'ma ****in' do it.

Jane Parker surprises her father by joining his expedition to Africa, where he and his partner Harry Holt are hoping to find an elephant graveyard to extract it for the ivory. But after escaping from a bunch of crocodiles, Jane is snatched up by Tarzan, and slowly they begin to develop a relationship. But once Jane and her father reunite, other dangers will be found along the way.

Alright, this was one of the very first REAL adventure movies of the sound era, and the scope of its adventure status is impressive. We all known that Olympic swimmer Johnny Weissmuller is the most famous actor to play Tarzan, as that yell is his (albeit manipulated). And we see the full tough guy side of him as Tarzan's wrestling various animals, keeping the jungle adventure alive with the help of some good epic shots of the wild.

And that's about all I can say about the good.

The story is half-written. Throughout most of the movie, we forget about the very reason Jane and her father are in the jungle because most of the movie is Tarzan being Tarzan and humorously "charming" Jane, which doesn't really feel romantic at all. I mean, these plot twists can other be so generic or just come across as soapy, especially towards the end. This especially sucks because the characters are not very well handled. There's one side to each of them, except Jane who shows a shred of tough girl at the beginning and immediately degrades into a complete damsel in distress. Her father and Harry Holt have no development at all except for practically being the same person: doesn't like Africa but does research there anyway.

On this note, Tarzan is just a plain old jungle boy. Where's the genius shown in the novel? He just grunts and wrestles and yells. As an adaptation, we get NONE of Tarzan's backstory at all. This is a huge no no as this means that the people behind the movie just assume that everyone already read the book. So instead we're left with a mishmash of cute scenes and thrilling scenes to hide the fact that Tarzan himself was poorly handled.

I'm not very impressed with this early Tarzan movie. Maybe the scope of it at the time helps it age more well than it deserves, but I really can't say that this is the Tarzan movie people deserve. Apparently, Burroughs created his own serial version as soon as he saw this because he hated the way Tarzan was handled. That's what I would've done. This Tarzan movie has fun moments as an adventure movie, but as an adaptation of a romantic adventure novel, it fails pretty hard.

= 53/100

W.S. Van Dyke needs 2 more films for an average score.



Guess what? I'm coming up on my 2,500th movie. And this time I didn't forget any like I did when I said Gone With the Wind was my 1,000th. I've seen an ass-ton of movies since I said that back in late 2020. in those 2 1/2 years I've seen another 1500 movies, making about 600 per year. And I want to make my 2500th movie special. So I'm gonna spend the weekend watching some shorter movies on Friday and Saturday (specifically between to 30's and 50's because I need it), so that on Sunday I can watch a special movie I've been putting off for the war countdown: Dances With Wolves. I've seen the other two Costner-directed movies anyway, and I should prepare for his upcoming fourth effort. Right now I'm watching Gun Grit (1936), and after that I'll blow through Tarzan and His Mate. Turns out, the other silent Tarzan movies are either long serials or lost...



Rebecca
(1940) - Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
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Romance / Mystery / Psychological Thriller / Gothic
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"You thought you could be Mrs. de Winter, live in her house, walk in her steps, take the things that were hers!"



After watching the incredible Strangers on a Train, I got back in the mood for Hitchcock, which is conflicting with my current obligation to watch war movies for the war countdown. But I don't mind as long as I can post this review on MoFo. Why is this one so important? Because this is my 2,500th movie! And this time I didn't remember forgotten movies immediately after claiming it was a milestone like I did when I said that Gone With the Wind was my 1000th. Plus, I really need to watch more pre-60's movies from each of the decades, even the 1910's if I can help it.

By this morning I had seen 2496 movies already. Today I watched three William Berke movies (because of their shortness) and decided to detour with the short film (I don't count those toward my feature films count) A Trip to the Moon. I started Rope at first, but quickly quit because I thought the intro music was already too syrupy for the plot. So I switched to Rebecca, hoping for perfection.

Rich and lonely Maxim de Winter is stopped from jumping off of cliff into the see by an unnamed woman who passes by. The two meet on multiple occasions and develop a relationship that blossoms into marriage. She soon feels intrigued and nervous by the mystique of her new surroundings and her husband's friends and servants, especially since many of them are comparing her to Rebecca de Winter, the wife who died a year before. Eventually, she convinces herself that her marriage will never be happy unless she starts to act like Rebecca. But the more she digs into the history of the ghost of the late wife, the more disturbing secrets she uncovers. Nevertheless, she will try anything and face the worst odds to preserve her estranged relationship.

I was pretty awestruck with the sophistication of the slow-moving walk through the forest as our heroine narrated the beginning. Total far cry from Evil Dead, right? The camera continues to do this as we explore the mansion. The mystique of the film is improved whenever a problem seems to arise, as anything could be about Rebecca. Thanks to the movie's status as a Hitchcockian classic, I couldn't help desperately waiting for whatever really happened to the woman. Is there really a solace to be taken when the husband can explode at any moment in a house where the memory of Rebecca lingers on? Until the question is answered, the most spectral presence we get is the perfect lighting of each tender and unsettling moment, glistening on the faces of the cast in their most expressive places.

The creepiest individual we have to deal with is the housekeeper Mrs. Danvers, played by Judith Anderson, an incredible actress letting out a reserved but powerful little witch who's entire presence is based on the less-is-more factor. One learns to hate her really quickly but admire Anderson's onscreen presence at the same time. But once we get behind the history of Rebecca, the romance merges with Hitchcock's sense of thrills and conspiracies like strawberries and bananas, or more like raspberry and dark chocolate. This is when the romantic charisma of Joan Fontaine and Laurence Olivier is truly tested along the characters' relationship. This is also an excellent example of carefully switching a genre and an aesthetic over a slow but noticeable pace as it goes from a sentimental romance into whodunit territory. And this territory evolves into multiple plot twists in the third act with various kinds of impact, all of which connect perffectly.

And I gotta say it: Joan Fontaine has one of the prettiest smiles ever! She's already gorgeous enough, but her smile is just so incredible. Joan is a constant treat onscreen, and I enjoyed literally every second of her presence. Her delivery of a woman going through both marital and psychological is phenomenal, almost as if she has known so many people going through that in her life that she would have no problem doing it herself. Olivier does his absolute best, and it shows, but it's Fontaine who really shines.

God, I can't believe it took me this long to see it. This is better than Rear Window to me. Rebecca is pure Hitchcock and flawless Gothic romance of the highest caliber. It might be a classic, but in comparison to Hitchcock's 50's works, this is horrifically understanted. Hitchcock is at maximum power as a director and a storyteller, and I'd easily watch this again soon if I didn't have scheduled movies to watch. This was an excellent choice for my 2,500th film.

= 100/100

Alfred Hitchcock's Directorial Score (11 Good vs. 1 Bad)

Vertigo: 100
Rebecca: 100
Rear Window: 100
Strangers on a Train 99.5
North by Northwest: 99

Average Score: 99.7

For making three perfect movies, Hitchcock will obtain a permanent 100 score. However, his average will still be used for ordering. This puts him at number 2 on my top directors list under Coppola and above Kurosawa.



Time for another Tubi Run. This time I only have a week to get through a few movies on my Tubi watchlist, and I'm starting today with a movie that is leaving in a week with its remake, despite the fact that all the countless sequels to the original are staying. Well, this means I don't really have to focus on the sequels yet. This also gives me an excuse to eventually get through Emmerich's 2012. I'll start this movie once I finish Paisan on ok.ru.



With the addition of Rossellini, I've totaled up 250 directors on an OpenOffice document for all directors with an average score of 50 or higher, depending on their top 3-5 based on how many movies of their I've seen or how many they've done.


  1. Francis Ford Coppola
  2. Alfred Hitchcock
  3. Akira Kurosawa
  4. Andrey Tarkovsky
  5. Hayao Miyazaki
  6. Federico Fellini
  7. Steven Spielberg
  8. Sam Raimi
  9. Orson Welles
  10. Billy Wilder
  11. Christopher Nolan
  12. Martin Scorsese
  13. James Cameron
  14. Stanley Kubrick
  15. David Fincher
  16. Ingmar Bergman
  17. Ethan Coen
  18. Joel Coen
  19. David Lynch
  20. Sergio Leone
  21. Peter Jackson
  22. Wes Craven
  23. Quentin Tarantino
  24. Carl Dreyer
  25. Jon Watts
  26. David Lean
  27. Park Chan-Wook
  28. Fritz Lang
  29. Bryan Singer
  30. Charlie Chaplin
  31. Pete Docter
  32. Bela Tarr
  33. Henry Selick
  34. Bong Joon-Ho
  35. Ridley Scott
  36. Tim Burton
  37. Denis Villeneuve
  38. Michael Curtiz
  39. Robert Zemeckis
  40. John Carpenter
  41. Chad Stahelski
  42. George Roy Hill
  43. Edgar Wright
  44. Spike Jonze
  45. Anthony Russo
  46. Joe Russo
  47. Clint Eastwood
  48. Sam Mendes
  49. Asghar Farhadi
  50. John Musker
  51. Ron Clements
  52. John Ford
  53. Richard Donner
  54. Stephen Chow
  55. Damien Chazelle
  56. Clyde Geronimi
  57. David Cronenberg
  58. David Yates
  59. John Lasseter
  60. Edward Yang
  61. Dean DeBlois
  62. Ang Lee
  63. James Wan
  64. Agnes Varda
  65. Chris Columbus
  66. Guillermo del Toro
  67. Robert Altman
  68. Wes Anderson
  69. Hamilton Luske
  70. Terry Gilliam
  71. Robert Rodriguez
  72. Gore Verbinski
  73. Andrew Adamson
  74. David Zucker
  75. John Sturges
  76. Frank Capra
  77. Jon Favreau
  78. Byron Howard
  79. Emeric Pressburger
  80. Adrian Lyne
  81. Mel Brooks
  82. Richard Linklater
  83. George Lucas
  84. Robert Wise
  85. Alfonso Cuaron
  86. Rob Reiner
  87. Preston Sturges
  88. Mike Newell
  89. Don Bluth
  90. J.J. Abrams
  91. Wolfgang Reitherman
  92. Ron Howard
  93. Paul Verhoeven
  94. Roman Polanski
  95. Sidney Lumet
  96. James Gunn
  97. Peter Shin
  98. Andrew Stanton
  99. Victor Fleming
  100. Darren Aronofsky
  101. Danny Boyle
  102. Woody Allen
  103. Masaki Kobayashi
  104. Gary Trousdale
  105. Kirk Wise
  106. George Miller
  107. Sergio Corbucci
  108. Wolfgang Petersen
  109. Brian De Palma
  110. George A. Romero
  111. Simon Wells
  112. Roger Corman
  113. Terence Young
  114. Vittorio De Sica
  115. Dominic Polcino
  116. Spike Lee
  117. John Woo
  118. Tobe Hooper
  119. Peyton Reed
  120. Frank Oz
  121. John Landis
  122. John Huston
  123. Satyajit Ray
  124. Shane Black
  125. Louis LeTerrier
  126. Guy Ritchie
  127. Howard Hanks
  128. Mikhail Kalatozov
  129. Butch Hartman
  130. Rob Marshall
  131. Gary Goldman
  132. Chuck Russell
  133. Michael Powell
  134. Doug Liman
  135. Gavin O'Connor
  136. Jared Hess
  137. Martin Campbell
  138. Joe Johnston
  139. Stephen Sommers
  140. Kihachi Okamoto
  141. Clive Barker
  142. Jonathan Frakes
  143. Stuart Gordon
  144. Kenji Mizoguchi
  145. Yeon Sang-Ho
  146. Peter Weir
  147. Roland Emmerich
  148. Kelly Asbury
  149. Brett Ratner
  150. Zack Snyder
  151. Peter Farrelly
  152. Shawn Levy
  153. Lana Wachowski
  154. Lilly Wachowski
  155. Walter Hill
  156. John G. Avildsen
  157. Joe Dante
  158. Barry Sonnenfeld
  159. Charles Crichton
  160. Josef von Sternberg
  161. John McTiernan
  162. Cecil B. DeMille
  163. Donald Petrie
  164. Lewis Milestone
  165. Allan Dwan
  166. Kevin Lima
  167. Roberto Rossellini
  168. Corey Yuen
  169. Scott Derrickson
  170. M. Night Shyamalan
  171. Gianfranco Parolini
  172. Paul W.S. Anderson
  173. Jeff Tremaine
  174. Amy Heckerling
  175. Dennis Dugan
  176. Rob Cohen
  177. Dennis Widmyer
  178. Kevin Kolsch
  179. Tod Browning
  180. Ronny Yu
  181. Sylvester Stallone
  182. Shinya Tsukamoto
  183. Joel Schumacher
  184. Michael Bay
  185. Rob Minkoff
  186. George Sherman
  187. James Wong
  188. Brad Silberling
  189. Richard Thorpe
  190. Tad Stones
  191. Giorgio Ferroni
  192. Kunihiko Yuyama
  193. Renny Harlin
  194. Alberto De Martino
  195. Roy Ward Baker
  196. Don Coscarelli
  197. Ron Underwood
  198. Fred M. Wilcox
  199. James Tinling
  200. Curtis Hanson
  201. David Molina
  202. Terry Shakespeare
  203. Tom Shadyac
  204. George P. Cosmatos
  205. Lee Tamahori
  206. Robin Hardy
  207. Jon Turteltaub
  208. John McNaughton
  209. Keenan Ivory Wayans
  210. Simon West
  211. Steve Miner
  212. Andrew V. McLaglen
  213. Dominic Sena
  214. William Nigh
  215. William Berke
  216. Joseph Zito
  217. Gene Fowler, Jr.
  218. Samuel Fuller
  219. Peter Berg
  220. Ivan Reitman
  221. Russell Mulcahy
  222. Tony Randel
  223. Charles Grosvenor
  224. Albert Magnoli
  225. Tim Hill
  226. Anthony C. Ferrante
  227. Rick Rosenthal
  228. Luis Llosa
  229. Juan Piquer Simon
  230. Larry Cohen
  231. Aleksander Ptushko
  232. Andrzej Bartkowiak
  233. Pietro Francisci
  234. Dwight H. Little
  235. Ted Nicolaou
  236. Rob Zombie
  237. Vittorio Cottafavi
  238. J.S. Cardone
  239. Joseph Kane
  240. Lewis Teague
  241. Fred F. Sears
  242. Scott Sidney
  243. Roy Allen Smith
  244. Ben Rock
  245. Harold F. Kress
  246. Mark L. Lester
  247. Jack Perez
  248. Michael Schroeder
  249. Brad Peyton
  250. Lee Sholem



American Pie
(1999) - Directed by Chris and Paul Weitz
--------------------------------------------
School Comedy/ Sex Comedy / Teen Comedy / Coming-of-Age
-------------------------------------------------
"From now on, we fight for every man out there who isn't getting laid when he should be!"



I heard about this movie from the live-action Dudley-Do-Right movie when I was five. So, you can pretty much say I knew about it from day one. No, it was not a commercial for a rated-R movie on a kid's movie. There was a sweepstakes about six Universal movies, and this was one of them, Dudley-Do-Right and Mystery Men were two of the others. I'll find the commercial sometime. Anyway, long story short is that I was curious about this movie since before I even heard the word "sex," which, ironically, is the plot (or at least the buried treasure replacement) in the movie.

So after going to a party and either failing to get laid or getting themselves embarrassed before failing, they make a pact with each other to get laid before graduation. And then we pull the school / gross-out comedy out of our asses and there we go. Literally all you need to know. Literally it. Indiana Jones and the Search for a Score.

When the movie started, it was pretty much just a bunch of dumb sex jokes that I've heard before. Some of it was just really ****ing stupid, like the infamous, ahem, titular scenario. I wasn't really awestruck by any of these characters because they just kind of absorbed into each other for the most part. Whatever little differences there were between characters hardly mattered to me, although I admit to being half-amused by Jim's father and his awkwardness, but that was really hit or miss, being more cringe than comedy at times.

But the movie got better halfway through as it was diving into a little more actual philosophy concerning relationships and what not, not that I didn't see where it was already going. I suppose the delivery of these tropes and predictable plotlines was what really saved the movie from being a disaster. I mean, the whole thing with the footall game and the singing competition being on the same day is just so Nickelodeon. You can't tell me they didn't do stuff in at least half the shows I'm about to name: Full House, Degrassi, iCarly, Kenan and Kel, Naked Brothers Band, Drake and Josh, Ned's Declassified, DANNY PHANTOM.

American Pie feels a little pointless to me. I guess the direction and line delivery are technically good on all accounts, but the humor is hit-or-miss and the plot hardly qualifies as interesting. It's a trashy movie for adolescents lucky enough to be 17 or older, and has enough relatable teenage dialogue to hit the souls of the people who made it a hit by actually paying for it. God, the Weitz brothers convinced themselves that the step to success was through following in Tarantino's footsteps, and from a financial standpoint it worked, but from a critical standpoint the internet is mixed, and so am I. I'm not gonna call this the worst thing ever, but I honestly prefer the B-movie Space Truckers. Hell I prefer Captain Underpants books.

= 46/100

Chris Weitz's Directorial Score (1 Good vs. 2 Bad)

Twilight 2: 44
American Pie: 46
The Golden Compass: 64

Average Score: 51.33 / 3

Since two of his movies are bad, Chris Weitz is going on the bad list and given a maximum score of 49.9. However, his actual score will still be used for ordering directors in the same situation. I'll watch other Chris Weitz movies to potentially alleviate the situation.

Paul Weitz needs 2 more movies for an average score.