SaitoRyo

Love Lies Bleeding is on the list. Heard good things. I didn't mind Drive-Away Dolls, but I think it benefitted from being one of the few times I got to the cinema that year (as well as being a rare date night with the wife). I have no desire to ever watch it again, however.

Honey Don't Yeah, not great, this. I remember somewhat enjoying Drive-Away Dolls that one time I saw it in the cinema and held out hope that I would similarly enjoy this, the second of a supoosed (loose) trilogy from Ethan Coen and his wife Tricia Cooke. But for a small-town noir with dark comedy elements and a modern western vibe, this should have been much better. There's obvious talent there both on screen and behind the camera, but the film just never adds up. Not much happens, which I don't actually mind in films as I'm rarely watching for the plot, and it just kind of meanders, never really going anywhere. It felt like something that the filmmakers enjoyed writing and directing and the actors enjoyed acting in, but there's not much there for an audience to latch onto. It's not very funny, even if there are a couple of cute exchanges of dialogue here and there. Margarey Qualley is good, mind, and she does have it off with Aubrey Plaza, so that's a bonus. And it was a touch under 90 minutes, which always helps.

The Wraith File this one under 'things I enjoyed a lot more than I thought I would'. I'm really not big on sci-fi and stuck this one on not expecting to get much out of it. But it's not really a sci-fi. Well, it is. But it's a million other things, too, including a car chase film, a neo-western and a high school romance drama. Don't worry about the plot and just appreciate the aesthetic and the iconography and the vibes of it all. It's so incredibly 80s, has a belting soundtrack (and score) and features Sherilyn Fenn wearing cowgirl clothes. Lots to love, basically.

Night Game Detective/slasher film with Roy Scheider as a burnt-out cop investigating a serial killer targetting young, pretty women. Which is bad news for him, as he's engaged to a pretty, young woman (too young for him to be honest). I'd seen this once before absolutely ages ago and just wanted something that was 90 minutes and available on Tubi (the best streaming service). It's alright. Nothing really new here, but it has its moments and the plot revolving around some baseball playoffs is a little bit different. It's nowhere near as bad as reviews at the time made out, anyway. The main issue is the shifts in tone, as it goes from police procedural, to slasher, to romance and back again. Besides that, it's a perfectly serviceable late-80s thriller and I feel like Scheider is always worth watching, even when he's not giving it 100%.

I think Malenko is someone who, because of his style, rarely looked like he got out of third gear in the ring. Everything was always a little too smooth with him. A little sterile. Felt better suited to Japan. In saying that, he was someone who could work with just about anyone, regardless of their style. He had many good matches (and some very good matches), but few 'great' ones. I really liked his '96 series with Mysterio. Oh, and I still get a chuckle out of this from the '97 PWI 500...

See, I really don't get on with the modern style at all and concede that the Eddies, Reys and Malenkos helped inspire it, but I feel like there's a big difference and that, at Halloween Havoc '97, Rey and Eddie hit the sweet spot. If you watch the match, yes it's full of spectacular moves and sequences, but there's a psychology behind them and they genuinely do tell a story out there. Plus, the match has real stakes and you can tell the primary objective of both men is to win the thing. I'm not trying to convince you to like it, because people can like what they like, but I just personally feel what they did back then is a lot better than what most are trying to do today with a somewhat similar style. Of course, these days I'd rather watch Tully Blanchard take on Ron Garvin in a Taped Fist match over some supposed five-star cruiserweight moves fest, but I think Rey/Eddie at Havoc still holds up and is, in fact, a cut above.

I think he was on the gas from pretty much the start of his career, as the Guerreros were naturally smaller and not tremendously muscular. He definitely got more into it in '97. I think that, combined with fanatical diet and exercise, contributed to him getting so ridiculously cut around that time. As for your second point, it's pretty much my favourite combination of wrestlers ever (the HH '97 match is my all-time favourite). Eddie is such a good base and is so vicious and crisp with his offense, while Rey is so good at fighting from underneath and hitting spectacular comebacks. I really liked the WWE matches they had together, too, but they were on another level during this era of WCW.

Have been poorly (flu? covid?) since Wednesday evening, so I have done the normal thing and decided to watch a bunch of erotic thrillers and stuff. Hey, if I don't have the energy to shag I might as well watch other people do it in films! Am I right, lads?!? ...lads? The Bedroom Window Steve Guttenberg is having an affair with his boss's wife (Isabelle Huppert) when she sees an attempted assault take place by looking outside his bedroom window. They think nothing of it, until women start getting murdered in the area. He can't reveal the affair, so he reports that he saw the attempted assault himself. And then his life begins to completely unravel. I liked this. Good performances (Guttenberg is adept at playing a goofy guy who smiles while he's on the stand and not realising how serious the situation is). It is well-directed. A bit like one of De Palma's various Hitchcock homages, but not quite as stylish. Veers into farce, as these things tend to do, but it's a good ride. Body of Evidence Speaking of good rides, how about that Madonna? She's terrible in this, a pretty fucking bad movie full of woeful direction and ridiculous dialogue. I think Willem Dafoe comes out of it with his credibility intact, because he's usually good even in shite, but he's pretty much the only one. The courtroom scenes are sinfully dull, while the sex scenes are nowhere near as sexy as they think they are. Probably only acceptable to watch post-11PM on Channel of a Friday night. Dream Lover Really entertaining yuppie nightmare film, with James Spader getting a divorce and then bouncing back by finding and falling in love with the beautiful Madchen Amick. His seemingly perfect life (and perfect wife) isn't perfect, however, and it turns out he might have gotten married again without really knowing who the bride is. Solid thriller with an excellent performance by The Spade, who was so good in this era. I thought he'd fallen off the face of the earth since I don't watch superhero stuff or The Blacklist, so I'm glad to see he's been working all this time. Never Talk to Strangers Rebecca De Mornay is a successful criminal psychologist whose life begins to fall apart soon after meeting the mysterious Antonio Banderas. It's another early-90s Hitchcock riff with a daft twist ending, but I thought it was alright as something to have on for 80-or-so minutes, considering De Mornay gets her kit off for several of those minutes. Dumb fun. Ready to Rumble Saving the sexiest for last with a re-watch about twenty years in-the-making. I couldn't fully hate it because it was a VHS classic as a kid, but it's pretty fucking bad, isn't it? I mean, it's absolutely class, obviously, but it's a film that seems to hate wrestling and wrestling fans and wants to (justifiably) take the piss out of WCW for its duration. It's a complete mess, but it's the WCW wrestling movie and you simply cannot take that away from it.

Just a wonderful combination of wrestlers having some tremendous matches. Spans PPVs, Nitros, Thunders and 'C' shows like Saturday Night.

Went to see The Waterboys & Steve Earle doing their Fisherman's Blues Revue show last week in Amsterdam. Absolutely. Fucking. Class. I love both The Waterboys and Steve Earle, so a show with both of them built around an all-time album was pretty much the perfect show for me on paper. In practice, it more than lived up to my expectations. The first set was just The Waterboys, and they did some heavy-hitters like The Whole of the Moon and Don't Band the Drum, before there was a twenty-minute intermission. Second set started with Steve Earle playing some of his songs with the band and then Mike Scott came out for them to duet on some Waterboys tunes and covers. All in all, it was three hours long and worth every Euro (about 60 of them iirc). It was all excellent, but Galway Girl, Copperhead Road, Fisherman's Blues and And a Bang on the Ear were definite highlights.

They were an excellent, high-flying babyface tag team in the mid-2000s. I loved watching their stuff as they were one of those teams who could have a decent match with anybody. London, in particular, is very underrated. Even though he wrestled a progressive style back then, it was his timing, selling and all the other stuff that made him stand out (as much as the dives and the SSPs and whatnot). Wouldn't hold your breath for an AEW cameo, mind, as he's been quite outspoken about his dislike of their product in recent times.

So THAT'S how I first discovered wrestling! I have a vague memory of being babysat when I was younger (I think it was probably in '97, when I was five or six) and WCW coming on the TV. It's the first time I can remember watching it and it must have just come on after the cartoons. Me and my brother got proper into wrestling in '99, if I remember correctly, but I definitely saw some Nitro before that! Anyway, I've recently been watching a bunch of old Velocity episodes - well, select Velocity matches - as I always really enjoyed watching it after taping it off Sky Sports. There's a cracking tag match between MNM and Paul London & Brian Kendrick in the main event of this one, several months before they'd work a proper programme against each other. The enthused, sold-out British crowd help a lot, too. Enjoy:

New Drugs.

Fucking love me some Field of Dreams. It's also a great hangover film when you have the beer fear. Anwyway, last night I watched... Jacknife Not a Kevin Nash biopic, sadly, but a 'what happens to them after the horrors of Vietnam?' film starring Robert De Niro and Ed Harris, who are both excellent. It's basically two old war buddies reconnecting as they try to deal with their war trauma, with one of them falling for the other one's sister in the process. Nice blue collar milieu. You can sort of tell it was adapted from a play in parts by some of the dialogue and the way certain scenes are set up, but that's not a major criticism or anything. Something of an underrated gem.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind?

Knock yourself out!

It was really quite an unbelievable thing to witness after sitting through an hour and forty minutes. And yeah, he did get ripped apart for the film at the time, but he did alright for himself in the end! It's not even a terrible film and there's some stuff about it I quite liked, but it was clearly a vanity project and the ending is unforgiveable.

Cobra First time watching this since the first time, which was about twenty years ago. A ludicrous, wonderful film with Sly Stallone at the peak of his powers. I'm glad he turned down all those other roles to make this instead. So 80s. So good. It won't be another twenty years, I can tell you that much. Wisdom Total vanity project written, driected by and starring a then-23-year-old Emilio Estevez. As you'd expect from someone that age being given that much money and that much freddom to make a film, it's a bit all over the place. Of course he stars alongside then-girlfriend Demi Moore. Of course he's trying to say lots of things about America in the mid-80s. Of course he completely fucks everything up with an inexcusably shite ending. There's some decent stuff along the way, but my God...