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I'm so excited!!!

Directors cut of the 1986.version is on HBO or HBO MAX, with a fully restored ending. I will try to watch this and Stop Making Sense this week—I’ve been tied up with work drama that is thankfully resolved.

Just finished the Rifftrax version. I'm good if I never see the original again.

Has John Travolta silently snuck his way into becoming the new Nick Cage? Considering some of his roles that I've seen recently...I'm kind of enjoying the unbridled insanity. And what is his most unfortunate facial hair + head hair combination? Battlefield Earth Swordfish Killing Season The Fanatic something else?

I rewatched this movie and have questions. 1. Why wasn't Hugh Jackman charged with murder at the end. Just because he was a hostage, which the police may not believe since he did not have a C4 vest and went to the coffee shop with Travolta, but that does not give him the right to commit murder. Is that the best course of action for him to get his daughter back, by killing criminals. Further we saw the rush of people and cops in the building the bus landed one. I speculate there is a a good chance Hugh Jackman took out at least one innocent bystander when the helicopter comes crashing down into the side of a building and/or on the street below. 2. When John Travolta's goons kill Torvalds (the original hired hacker) at the airport police station how come they never got caught. A secure area of the airport and the goons kill him in cold blood but we never see anyone attempt to find and arrest the goons responsible. They were literally less than 50 feet away from Don Cheadle! For the record I own this movie on bluray. It was part of an offer when I bought my PS3 and got 5 movies for free. Of the r choices this may have been the most entertaining. I also got Stir of Echoes, Wild Hogs (with Travolta), Flight of the Phoenix, and The Patriot.

So with all of the talk about the writer of this movie Skip Woods and his lone directorial outing with the Tarantino knockoff, Thursday, I looked up that movie to get a refresher of what it was as it sounded so familiar and then looked up Woods on Wikipedia. I was surprised at the cast in Thursday as you had a lot of known names in it such as Thomas Jane and Aaron Eckhart, who I still contend are the same person just wearing different wigs depending on the role, as well as Mickey Rourke as as corrupt cop. I mention this as when I saw the picture of Skip Woods I couldn't help but wonder if this is just Mickey Rourke wearing a bad late 90s/early 2000s wig. Am I losing my mind or does Rourke have a side gig as a screenwriter?

TubiTV has the original in English & Spanish, and the Rifftrax, all free with ads. https://tubitv.com/search/Little shop

I'm thinking the lifestyle is only really coming from the guys that he's killing and posing as, since they appear to be high level mercenaries/terrorists for hire/criminals. So it plays up the trope of action movies where the top guy criminal lives this uber crazy luxurious life while the lower end guys and cops chasing them are down in the dirt wearing cheap suits. Plus I am also guessing that any guy he's taking over he is also liquidating the assets of, so say you're replacing a drug kingpin, you're looking at an easy 7-8 figure amount of money coming in along with whatever is turn into cash to help fund the cause. The heist for the 9 billion is just a nice buffer to pad the budget while also giving you the ability to properly kickstart your war.

Cage, Travolta, John Cusack and Bruce Willis are the Mt. Rushmore of direct to video movies of the 2000s.

I can't believe I'm going to do this but I have to defend the blow job scene. Wait, hear me out, I'm not defending their choice to test him under pressure with a gun to his head and a mouth on his penis. No. Rather, from a writer stand point I get what they were trying to establish. So the writer of this movie wants you to think that John Travolta is a mastermind on a complete other level. He's got plans on plans on plans, he's got you check mated before you know you're playing chess. To that end he needed a plan for if Stanley was to turn on them or not deliver the cash at some point. Why else would he fake Ginger being an undercover agent and have Stanley think she was an innocent victim if not for it to work to their advantage later. Their plan was if Stanley turned on them threaten Ginger because he will help her which is exactly what happens in the movie. However, part of this plan was stringing her up by her neck and have her life actually be in danger. As we know from the end of the movie she was in on it the entire time so they never wanted her to die so why would they hang her? They only did it because they knew she would be safe. When they meet Stanley they test his ability to perform under pressure and in a panicked state. When they see he was able to do something so fast they know that they have a 30 second window they could threaten Ginger's life during. That scene, as gross and uncomfortable as it was in service of them knowing Stanley could perform later on with Ginger's life in danger and her suffering no permanent damage. That is why that scene is there. As to why sex had to be involved? I can not defend that.

MECHASHIVA! MECHASHIVA!

Two questions: 1. Where is Sam Shepherd's security detail at the moment that he is shot while fly-fishing? I know that his personal bodyguard/lackey is busy getting himself blown up (again with a ball-bearing shrapnel body, which for a solo-target car bomb -- why?) but if he's really a senator, shouldn't he have Secret Service on him too? Seems like someone at Homeland Security dropped the ball. 2. Why does Hugh Jackman have to be American in this film? Why can't Stan be Australian so that Hugh Jackman doesn't have to put on a fake accent? Vinnie Jones is there speaking with his normal cockney voice, which I'd argue makes even less sense because why would a British man care about American homeland security interests ... but there is nothing in the script that demands Stan be American. Sure he has an American child but she's barely ever been around him so she wouldn't have picked up his jargon. That kind of thing get explained away all the time in movies: Why is Sandy Australian in Grease? Because her family moved to the states last summer for her dad's work. Easy -- one line explains it away and it never has to be brought up again.

My favorite part of the movie was the reason those guys left the restroom. It was because " I can't pee in front of an audience ". I love how supportive his buddy was of that. Like of course you can't bro!

Oh, and regarding a Finnish guy named Torvalds who is apparently "the world's greatest hacker", did somebody on the writing staff actually do a tiny bit of research? (Sure, the character didn't curse as much as Linus, but it sure felt like a shoutout.) Though I will add, just stuffing in a reference like that, much like conveniently panning over a copy of Neuromancer in the little girl's bedroom (?), does not automatically give your shitty movie any credibility by association.

When Stanley is forced to hack into the Department of Defense’s system with a gun to his head, he is simultaneously being fellated by one of Soul Patch’s bimbos, apparently to completion. The only problem with this is that men only achieve an erection when the parasympathetic nervous system is activated, the branch of the autonomic nervous system associated with relaxation. The sympathetic nervous system is responsible for the “fight or flight” response which would be activated when the gun was put to his head. These two branches of the autonomic nervous system cannot be activated simultaneously and, therefore, I must conclude that Stanley has to be either faking an orgasm or faking his fear. I like to think he was somehow in cohoots with the blonde bimbo whom he met in the yet-to-be-made prequel, ‘Hammerhead’, which focuses on his obsessive investigation into Holly’s step-father, the porn producer. Also, why did wardrobe dress Holly like she was the understudy for Rhoda?

This is the third hacker-based movie featured on HDTGM after Johnny Mnemonic and Hackers, and I'm noticing a trend with these films: high-adrenaline techno music. As enjoyable and absolutely timeless as these soundtracks are, maybe next time can we get a movie about hacking set against ragtime music? "Hello my baby/Hello my darlin'/Hackin' the mainframe... !" For a scene that netted Halle Berry an additional $500,000, the reveal of her breast (triumphant as they are) seems a bit... gratuitous? They aren't revealed during a sex scene or even when Stan stumbles in on Ginger wearing the wire, but rather while she's sitting poolside reading a book. Stan walks up to Ginger, she lowers her books and is just like, "Yep, these are my tits." And good for her. But in this scene, the director might as well have added arrows pointing to Berry's breasts and boinging noises. Much was made about Travolta's Tarantino-esque movie trivia monologue at the beginning of the movie, but I'm surprised no one mentioned his character's obvious Vince Vega haircut à la Pulp Fiction. After discovering his ex-wife and her husband dead in their home while looking for his daughter, how did Stan know to go to the World Banc? It seems like there's a beat missing between these scenes. So, Travolta's plan here is to steal money to combat terrorism. Sounds simple and noble enough, I guess. But in the course of doing so, he and his mercenaries (which includes cuddly freedom fighter Vinnie Jones) excessively cause the same level of terrorism, chaos and mayhem they are supposedly fighting against. They take hostages, load them up with collar-bombs, use a lift helicopter to ferry a passenger bus over a city, have access to Stinger missiles and rocket launchers, etc. At one point during the movie, Travolta swings around a Rambo machine gun in a downtown setting, killing and maiming dozens. It would have saved time, money and especially lives if the CIA simple gave Travolta the Swordfish cash and wished him luck in his anti-terrorism endeavors. And I have to point this out because I'm a Psyche fan: the cop taking his time telling the chief that the bus they're chasing is airborne is Timothy Omundson. Omundson, a recent stroke survivor, played Carlton Lassiter on Psyche and was even once a guest on April Richardson's podcast, Go Bayside! He's a funny dude and reportedly incredibly nice.

Jackman was awfully fortunate that he got to see his daughter after school. She has clearly been waiting awhile for her mom. There’s no one else left at the school and she is to the point that she is contemplating calling a cab when he finally rolls up. If her mom had been responsible or if the porn king had a driver who had picked her up on time, Jackman would have arrived to an empty school. For someone so concerned with seeing his child, you would think he would be more prompt. Also did anyone else think that it was going to turn out that Travolta was the porn king his ex-wife was with?

This movie isn't really good with money. When Ginger gives the hacker the cash, we can clearly see there is only 4 packs of bills each marker $10,000, yet Ginger says it's $100,000. At the other extreme, in order for $400 million to grow to $9.5 billion in 15 years, it would have to collect interest at an average annual rate of 23%. If it grew at the actual rate of inflation, it would have ended out around $650 million.

That bank at the end was pretty lax with their password security. "Just say it out loud. Hope no one hears it." Also, that is a really obvious password to use especially considering how famous the heist must have been afterward. Why was the bank spelled World Banc? If you didn't want to copy "World Bank" for legal reasons, why not use something other than "World"? Other point about the horrible choice for Dog Day Afternoon. The reason Pacino's character is so memorable is because he is so nice to the hostages. Kind of changes the dynamic of the movie if he starts killing all the hostages.

Regarding Travolta's little bikini wax goatee. They were hip in the early 2000s, plenty of dudes had them, I called it the Nu-Metal goatee.

The better page would be the thread on the episode of the main part of the HDTGM forums.