Robo Watch: M3GAN (2022)

Watched:  06/21/2024

Format:  Peacock

Viewing:  First

Director:  Gerard Johnstone

I don't jump on too many new horror movies.  If they're still in the zeitgeist a couple years out, sure.  

M3GAN (2022) did a very respectable box office of $180 million, bringing in a younger crowd with a PG-13 rating and a premise I think would appeal to a wide age range.  As pal Michael would point out, not bad for a movie that cost about $12 million before marketing.

If I had any spark of interest, it was to see how the performer(s) handled M3GAN as a character, and how they'd think about robots, AI, logic leading to mayhem, etc...  Things handled pretty well in Ex Machina and Westworld in recent memory.  As a product of Blumhouse,* this was going to need to fit a certain mold, so we know where it's headed to a degree before we even flip the movie on.

I'll start at the end - and that's to say, this movie's last third is exactly what you expect.  The AI goes crazy, gets quippy, and mayhem ensues.  For your kid's first horror movie, it's good stuff.  For everyone else, it's a bit of a letdown, even if it's well executed.  But we've also seen it before.  And that's a bummer because the first half or more of this movie is really pretty interesting.  

SPOILERS

Sci-Fi Shrug Watch: Atlas (2024)

Watched:  05/28/2024

Format:  Netflix

Viewing:  First

Director:  Who knows?  I bet he's named "Brad".  That seems like the name of a schmo who would make this

When I saw the trailer for Atlas (2024), I sent it to Jamie with the comment "this looks like they actually made a movie that would have been discussed in cut scenes on 30 Rock.".  Like, Jenna would have missed out on being in the AI robot movie because JLo stole the part from her, and she really wanted to be in the movie to meet Simu Liu (who would cameo).

Right now, this movie is at a 17% on Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic has it at a 38.  So it's not wildly critically adored.  But someone liked it.  

I watched this movie for a few reasons.

• I don't watch many straight-to-Netflix movies and, given the algorithmically driven nature of their business, I was curious what a Netflix movie looks like in 2024.  
• I like stories about robots and AI.  Probably because I came up on Asimov and Blade Runner, but I have genuine concerns about how we'll deploy robots when and if artificial intelligence makes them useful.
• I like Simu Liu and think Hollywood has sidelined him in ways I don't understand.  He's a charismatic, handsome guy who works as a lead in action, comedy and drama.*  And I want the algorithm to point producers to Simu Liu as a reason I will watch a movie.  And Sterling K Brown.  That dude is great.
• I am not angry about a movie's runtime spent with JLo.  There are worse fates in this world.

Ape Watch: King Kong Escapes (1967)

Watched:  05/06/2024

Format:  BluRay

Viewing:  First

Director:  Ishiro Honda

I tend to think of myself as someone who would like nothing better than a movie about a giant ape and a robot in the shape of a giant ape duking it out in Tokyo.  Literally, this should check all the boxes for me, but I think I hit the wall as far as Kaiju-tainment for a minute, or else this movie was as dull as it felt.

Honestly, the production history of this movie is more interesting than the final product, which seems impossible when this if your villain.  

he's got panache and joie de vivre!

But the movie has too much plot for it's own good, and I think the editing needs some help.  At just over 90 minutes, it feels like 180 minutes at times.  

My reading tells me that this was some oddball effort fired off by none other than Rudolph-wranglers Rankin-Bass, who were making a King Kong cartoon at the time, that when I saw stills, I think I recall seeing as a small child.  I guess Rankin-Bass - who were outsourcing some animation efforts to Japan - went to Toho, after Toho made the 1962 film King Kong vs. Godzilla.  RB and Toho jointly went to Universal, and since everyone likes money, they went ahead and made the movie.

I've only seen the US cut released by Universal - Toho has a slightly longer cut they released in Japan - and of course this version is dubbed, with one of our two American-born performers overdubbed by someone not them.  I assume real US kaiju aficionados have their Toho copies, but not I.

Anyway, the plot is that an un-named Eastern-hemisphere country has sent Madame X to work with Dr. Who (yeah, I know) whom she has hired to mine for the mysterious Element X (which I think is probably super-uranium).  Who has stolen plans from a clever... submarine leadership team? to build a giant replica of the legendary King Kong in order to perform the mining.  This is not a sequel to the prior King Kong vs. Godzilla film, but hints that the 1933 OG Kong film was inspired by a real gorilla-guy, and that's OUR guy here.  

That same submarine team, made up of actor Rhodes Reason and his more handsome counterpart, Akira Takarada, hang out a lot with Lt. Susan, the ship nurse, played by Linda Miller (who has some fun interviews online).  

CINEMA

Anyway, there's some stuff that echoes OG Kong, way too much espionage/ James Bond inspired stuff.  Madame X is up to no good.  There's ape hypnosis.  I dunno.  It just goes on and on before we finally get to the big ape fight, which is pretty good, tbh.  Who doesn't want to see that?

The budget on this film seems high.  The detail on the Kong suit is good (if goofy) and the sets are many and highly details, for man and kaiju alike.  And Dr. Who's capes couldn't have been cheap.  And Madame X's couture was excellent. 

I think this one demanded to be watched with other people, and I watched it solo.  This was a mistake.  I may make Jamie watch it with me later this year.  

Goji Watch: Godzilla against Mechagodzilla (2002)

Watched:  01/18/2023

Format:  BluRay

Viewing:  Second

Director:  Masaaki Tezuka

Selection:  definitely me

Mostly, I watched this movie because, for Christmas, my brother gave me a MechaGodzilla which has been staring at me all day, every day, from below my work monitor since Jan. 2.

also, his lil' friend Gad gave me, and the Super 7 Shogun G

Anyway, somehow, inexplicably, I'd had MechaGodzilla on the brain of late.  

At the start of the COVID lockdown, Jamie and I settled into watching Godzilla movies on a regular basis.  We blasted through them in no particular order, and with minimal context.  Back in May of 2020, we checked out Godzilla against Mechagodzilla (2002).  My memory, without re-reading the post first, was that we'd liked it a lot.  And, upon a revisit, that was still true.

There's an oddly mournful tone to the movie.  As part of the Millennium series, it ignored the prior films except Gojira from 1954, an events that had taken place decades prior and was remembered well in Japan, especially as Mothra and other films were in continuity - the Japanese privately feeling that perhaps Japan was cursed.  

Our focal characters are a member of the military who is being held responsible for the deaths of multiple people during a Godzilla's first re-appearance in 45 years despite the fact she is actually not responsible anymore than she's responsible for Godzilla at all - oh, and she's a friendless orphan.  The other two are a widowed scientist and his charming, precocious daughter who lugs around a houseplant she thinks carries her mother's spirit.  

Well, clearly this blog is getting crawled for AI purposes

 

So, I rarely look at the stats on The Signal Watch.  I kind of just do what I do, and if readers want to be here, great.  I'm not looking to monetize the site, and I don't expect here in my 20th year of blogging I'll suddenly be an internet sensation.  

One thing I've joked about for years is that there will be enough written by me and posted at this blog that when I go, you won't have to miss me.  Just train an AI on this site and you'll get a robot version of me that has plenty to say and occasionally ponders Kim Cattrall.

But in the past year, suddenly...  that whole AI business seemed oddly way more likely.  I don't need to tell you about how AI's are being trained against the internet, novels, movies, etc...  And, I assume, just crawling the internet.

Well, I was looking at my stats and something was off.  I suddenly had a lot of hits.  Like... a lot.

And so I backed it out to the past year.

And, to be sure it hadn't been just a slow year at The Signal Watch, I checked "all time" for stats.

Huh.

As much as I'd like to think my podcast and various musings have drawn the eye of Planet Earth, somehow I don't think blogging about Babylon for 10,000 words has suddenly made me a superstar.

Similarly, I doubt the mostly dormant League of Melbotis blog is suddenly wildly popular.

So.  It's possible Google wandered into their basement, found a trove of disheveled devs working in obscurity, remembered it owns Blogger.com, and is now pushing content from their platform higher up in search results.  But you and I know that's not true.  Nor does it seem to be what's happening.  I'm getting no additional comments, and - per post, I'm not really seeing a huge jump.  My guess is, with almost 4700 posts, every crawl adds 1 or two hits. Do that a few times, and it adds up.

Yes, I have Google Analytics.  No, I have no idea how to read it.  It seems tuned to make sure you aren't making any money, and it's all about money, so I largely ignore it.

That said, Google Analytics is far more steady over the past month or so, so whatever it's measuring seems more accurate.  I assume Google Analytics' numbers filter out all the robots reading my stuff. 

Robots, yes.  But at least *someone* is reading my stuff and processing it.  And those robots are no more or less soulless than Randy.

Anyway, this means there probably now may be an AI of me out there somewhere.  Some creaky, confused AI that is absolutely furious it's been brought into being.

In a way, that's fine.  I don't really care that much if robots are learning from this blog.  It's better than when people used to literally just swipe my content and claim it as their own.  

If it's NOT for A.I. purposes, I have no idea why the internet is suddenly so interested.  If you have an idea, lemme know.

In the meantime, I have some robots to train up on Kim Cattrall.

PodCast 228: "Terminator 3" (2003) - A Movies of Doom/ ArnieFest/ SimonUK Cinema Selection w/ Ryan

Watched:  01/08/2023

Format:  HBOmax

Viewing: Second

Decade:  2000's

Director:  Jonathan Mostow

For more ways to listen

Si and Ryan are doomed to a fate they can't escape, It's time for more robots from the future. Kind of dumb robots, but robots nonetheless. It's the first post-Cameron sequel and maybe it cooked too long or something. But it has its good spots! But. Anyway.

SoundCloud 

The Signal Watch PodCast · 228: "Terminator 3" (2003) - A Movies of Doom/ ArnieFest SimonUK Cinema Selection w/ Ryan

YouTube

Music:

Terminator 3 Theme - Marco Beltrami

Terminator Posts and PodCasts:

• Terminator 2: Judgment Day - blog post 2019
• Terminator 2: Judgment Day - podcast
• Terminator: Salvation
• Terminator: Dark Fate

Simon UK Cinema Series

The Signal Watch PodCast · SimonUK Cinema Series

Arnie Fest Playlist

The Signal Watch PodCast · Arnie Fest

Watch Party Watch: Futureworld (1976)

Behold - Paltrow's mom getting with a Robo-Brynner

Watched:  07/15/2022

Format:  Amazon Watch Party

Viewing:  First

Decade:  1970's

Director:  Richard T. Heffron

When I was in maybe 8th grade, my brother and I rented the original Westworld, declared it "rad as hell" and pondered renting the 1976 follow-up Futureworld.  If a movie about robots going berserk in the old west was cool, wouldn't the follow up be even better - in a sci-fi playland?

Well, I remember us telling my dad we were going to rent Futureworld, and my dad saying "Sometimes sequels aren't as good as the original.  Like this one."  In retrospect, I realize this means sometime my dad had tried to watch Futureworld.  

For Houstonians, this movie provides an extra treat as a bunch of it was filmed around town.  Thrill to seeing the underground tram at G. Bush International!  Say "isn't that Jones Hall?" as the leads enter Delos.  Wonder where they are in the Johnson Space Center for great stretches of the film, and why NASA agreed to this shit!

Animation Watch: The Mitchells vs the Machines (2021)

Watched:  05/01/2021

Format:  Netflix

Viewing:  First

Decade:  2020's

Director:  Michael Rianda, Jeff Rowe 

I'm not going to bother writing this up.  Another terrific Lord & Miller produced animation with a terrific voice cast.  Hysterical, moving, gorgeously animated...  very glad this is out there.  

But I figure everyone with a Netflix account will have seen it, so just go nuts on your own on this one.

I don't have kids, and I got this one.  I imagine a lot of you parents were choking back some feelings watching this one.

PODCAST: "Blade Runner" (1982) - a Signal Watch Canon episode w/ Ryan and SimonUK

Watched:  04/19/2021

Format:  BluRay - version - The Final Cut

Viewing:  Unknown

Decade:  1980's

Director:  Ridley Scott

For more ways to listen

More PodCast than PodCast, that's our motto! Ryan and SimonUK sit down and check our emotional response to this 1980's favorite of design and theme! There's nothing artificial about how we chase down one of the best of the sci-fi genre that defined an aesthetic, crossed genres, and asked the big questions.

The Signal Watch PodCast · 146: "Blade Runner" (1982) - a Signal Watch Canon episode w/ Ryan & SimonUK

Music:  

Blade Runner Main Theme - Vangelis, Blade Runner OST

Tears in Rain - Vangelis, Blade Runner OST

Signal Watch Canon:

The Signal Watch PodCast · The Signal Watch Canon

Interaction watch - RoboCop (1987)

Watched:  11/03/2020

Format:  Amazon Watch Party

Viewing:  let's not talk about it

Decade:  1980's

Director:  Paul Verhoeven

I think we'll be podcasting this at some point in 2021, so we're gonna take a pass on writing it up.

But it was fun to watch as a Prime Party, as some hadn't seen it or hadn't seen it in a while.

Watch of the Damned: Creation of the Humanoids (1962)

Watched:  09/18/2020

Format:  Watch Party

Viewing:  First (and last!)

Decade:  1960's

Director:  Wesley Barry

...R.O.T.O.R.

...Santa with Muscles

...Monster a Go-Go...  

Sure, we watch a lot of not-great movies, but some feel as if they exist to test your very sanity.  Some movies are so insanely bad, so weirdly made and uncomfortable to watch - made and released with what appears to be utter sincerity on the part of the filmmakers - sincerity that serves no one and seems like a hallucination more than a delusion...  

These films join our personal canon of Movies of the Damned.  

We've had a wild ride this summer as we've enjoyed our Friday night Amazon Watch Parties, but Jenifer found an amazing entry this week with Creation of the Humanoids (1962).  

It's the movie that dares to ask:  but what if a movie was 96% exposition?  

and

What if everyone just stood on their marks with a minimum of motion for the runtime of a film?

In some ways, I give it credit.  It does nothing but propose a few sci-fi premises and then builds on those premises, asking questions no one asked and providing a sea of answers that no one cares about, only to ask more questions.  And it does it over and over and over for what I am pretty sure was a full calendar year, but you will find to be a neat 75 minute or so runtime.  

It's a post-nuclear-holocaust future and man is barely hanging in there despite shiny outfits, women with rocket bras, nifty architecture and the help of our robot friends.  

People seem to be on their way out, as robots seem to be figuring out self-replication.  There's a herd of guys running around yelling MAGA dressing in shiny Confederate uniforms and harassing robots.  They have a cute clubhouse and everything.  Meanwhile, Robots are, in fact, secretly rising up to replace humans.  

All of this is told, not shown, in lengthy, lengthy speeches which would make a high school forensics teacher proud.  

The make-up on the humanoids/ robots is weirdly excellent - the work of Jack "Universal Monsters" Pierce himself, apparently slumming by 1962.  

I can't do this movie justice.  I hate it so much I like it.  It's mind-bogglingly inept, except that... the cinematography, sets, and make-up all work fine.  It's just that there's only 4 sets, and long, long scenes that will not end containing nothing but nonsense sci-fi talk that can and should have been SHOWN.  Just when you think this might be an allegory for something - NO.  We move right on past that and it's right back to a very concrete story about the concrete problems of robots.  It's like the mad ramblings of the worst nerd in your class who gets why robots are interesting, but not at all how a story works.  And was given money to make a movie.  

I... I'm worn out just thinking about it.

Cyborg Watch: Running Delilah (1993)

Watched:  08/16/2020
Format:  DVD
Viewing:  First
Decade:  1990's
Director:  Richard Franklin

So, I was scanning the sale items on the Kino Lorber page and was like "Kim Cattrall in a spy movie?" so I read the description and was like "Kim Cattrall as a CYBORG in a spy movie?"  And promptly hit "buy".*

I think this was intended to be a pilot for a very 1990's TV show, probably in syndication.  What's weird about it is that all the pieces are there for what could have been a serviceable stand-alone movie.  In 1993, stars Kim Cattrall and Billy Zane weren't huge stars, but I knew who they were.  The director, Richard Franklin, had handled a couple of mid to low-cost films I'd similarly seen - FX/2 and Cloak and Dagger.   This came out in the wake of La Femme Nikita and multiple RoboCop films.  Instead, it's a reminder of what telefilm and a lot of television looked at during a certain window, and that sci-fi was not always well-served by this sort of production.

Cattrall plays Delilah, an undercover agent for a US law-enforcement agency (I never caught who), , collecting evidence against a Greek arms dealer (who seems to really want to see her eat Greek food for some reason).  Her handler, who is "running" her, is played by Billy Zane.  And the two spend about 7x more time talking about the fact they aren't going to bonetown than they do the case at hand.

Delilah is found out and the baddies take a flying attempt at killing her with lots of bullets.  Zane retrieves the almost-dead agent, and because he loves her (but phrases it as wanting to go to bonetown, because 90's), does as you do and brings her to a French cybernetics guy who happens to work in his building.  There's a bit where she, of course, believes she's a monster.  Remarkably, she gets over it really fast when she finds out she's now the Bionic Woman and can do all kinds of things within budget.  This is one chipper cyborg!

Watch Party Watch: Cherry 2000 (1980-something)

Watched:  08/07/2020
Format:  Amazon Watch Party
Viewing:  Second
Decade:  1980's
Director:  Steve De Jarnatt

Ugh.

Amazon Watch Party this Friday: Cherry 2000

betting that is not the shirt or physique we see in the film

Day:  08/07/2020
Time:  8:30 Central/ 6:30 Pacific
Amazon Watch Party Link HERE

Jamie has been on about this movie for the near-26 years I've been with her.  So we're watching it, because I did see it was a kid, believing it would have some boobs.  It doesn't.  And that's mostly all I remember:  Premium cable sadness.

Anyway, get ready for some 1980's post-apocalyptic nonsense starring Melanie Griffith, who never had those shoulders in the poster. Nor do those shoulders make any sense in relation to the hips of same Melanie Griffith in that poster.

We're blaming Jamie for this one.

Don't Judge Me Watch: Making Mr. Right (1987)

Watched:  08/02/2020

Format:  TCM on DVR

Viewing:  Unknown.  At least second.

Decade:  late 80's

Director:  Susan Seidelman

I had only vague memories of Making Mr. Right (1987), a movie I watched on cable as a kid.  And this is the part where I talk about women and their appearance and probably get in trouble.  But I essentially had two memories of Making Mr. Right, aside from very, very broad strokes of the plot of a woman getting mixed up with a scientist and the robot who looks just like him and the robot/doctor is John Malkovich in a role you'll be like "what? why?"

RiffTrax Watch: ROTOR (1987)

Watched:  12/24/2019
Format:  Rifftrax
Viewing:  God.  Too many.
Decade:  1980's

For longtime readers of the League of Melbotis and Signal Watch blogs, you will know that the 1987 sci-fi opus, R.O.T.O.R., holds a special place in my heart.  I first stumbled across the movie on late-night basic cable, and every few years I revisit the film, and, like any fine piece of art, find new things to appreciate and enjoy.

This Christmas Eve, Doug and I chose to punish ourselves by re-watching this movie, but this viewing was enhanced with the power of RiffTrax, some of the same fine fellows who you may know from their work on Mystery Science Theater 3000.  And, I am, of course delighted to have the help as I'm watching the movie.

Look, I love a movie that leads to more questions than answers as the thing plugs along, and that's ROTOR in a nutshell.  The movie is a phenomenal collection of odd-ball movie cliches, dialog tics, generic Texas racism, inevitable dashes of pretension, unexplored but tedious romance, and 1980's non-union talent.  The plotting/ pacing is wild, and an amazingly inept filmmaking on a budget.  That the movie was finished seems like an act of sheer will and a sort of bright-eyed Hollywood dream backed by nothing but wantin'-to-put-on-a-show that can make for some of the brightest spots in movie-dom.

RoboCop managed to spawn a *lot* of bad knock-offs.  It's not actually clear this was one of them as both films came out in 1987.  But who knows?  There was just something magical in the air of Dallas, where both were shot!, that produced futuristic policing cyborg movies, I guess.

Linda and Arnie Watch: Terminator - Dark Fate

Watched:  11/09/2019
Format:  Alamo Slaughter Lane
Viewing:  First
Decade:  2010's

Look, I'm on the record going to the mat for the first two Terminator movies.  And way, way less so for T3 and whatever the Christian Bale one was called.  And I never saw Genisys.  I did like the TV show, The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

Rutger Hauer Passes Through The Tannhäuser Gate

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. 

All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. 

Time to die.

This one hit us all hard and never let up.

Outstanding Watch: RoboVampire (1988)

Watched:  06/07/2019
Format:  Amazon Prime (also on YouTube)
Viewing: First but certainly not the last
Decade:  1980's

So, a couple of weeks back JAL DM'd me and deeply recommended a small film from an overseas production company, and as a patron of independent and international cinema, I leaped at the opportunity to use a free Friday evening to finally watch RoboVampire (1988).

PODCAST! "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" (1991) w/ SimonUK and Ryan

For prior blog post on this screening, click here.

SimonUK and Ryan delve into the 1991 sci-fi actioner and talk about the impact of the film on culture, on action film, and maybe ourselves. We also discuss the awesomeness of Linda Hamilton, CGI in 1991, violence then and now and a whole lot more.




Music:

Terminator 2: Judgment Day Theme - Brad Fiedel, T2 OST
You Could Be Mine - Guns N' Roses, T2 OST



SimonUK Cinema Series