Entertainment As I See It I am a big fan of science fiction movies, good dramas, westerns and action films. Sometimes the categories get mixed when you see them listed on streaming services. You might see science fiction movies listed in action films, or westerns listed in drama. This is all minor and doesn’t matter much in the scheme of things, it is just that I find it slightly annoying when I want to do a search on a streaming service for a particular type of movie. I like movies in general and I watch one whenever I can, and I have been finding some really good foreign movies to look at in the action category. I try not to ever look at a movie that is not in English because I find the subtitles very annoying. Some have said they don’t mind them, but I think they take away from the action on the screen when your eyes have to shift down to see what is being said. I will admit I made two exceptions to this rule in the last five years or so because the movies were so brilliant, I had to see them. One of them still stands out in my mind. I am not sure what country made it, but I think it might have been Indonesia, but could be wrong. It had to do with a lone policeman entering an apartment building about 12 stories or more high and getting trapped by drug dealers trying to kill him. It was a great movie and as you can imagine the dialog was limited anyway. Western movies seem to have fallen out of favor with what I believe is less being made than other types. There have been some great ones in the past which I look at again when they come on such as Shane, which I believe is the greatest western ever made. Only old timers like me will have ever heard of it or the actors who were in it. Its realism of the old west has yet to be beat, but there were other great westerns such as the Magnificent Seven, The Professionals, The Bravados, Fort Apache and so many more. When certain actors starred in a western you knew it was going to be good even before you looked at it. I am talking about actors such as Burt Lancaster, Gregory Peck, Alan Ladd, Henry Fonda, Lee Marvin, John Wayne and a few others. Then Clint Eastwood came along and knocked the genre out of the park with A Fistful of Dollars, For A Few Dollars More, The Good The Bad And The Ugly, and many more westerns, and while still making an occasional western, proved he was great in many other types of movies. In my younger years there was an actor who seemed to like making biblical movies and made a couple of great ones. His name was Charlton Heston. He made Ben Hur, The Ten Commandments, and The Greatest Story Ever Told. His version of Ben Hur was so good it shamed the remake. He was an action hero who would make any type of movie he thought would be entertaining. He made the original Planet of the Apes, Soylent Green, which were science fiction movies along with the Omega Man and also made westerns and dramas. He was another actor who if in a movie, made you want to watch it. Today I try and avoid most comedy movies, I just don’t find them funny, but years ago I loved movies with Peter Sellers in them, they always made me laugh if they were comedies. Who could ever forget Sellers playing Inspector Clouseau bumbling his way to solving all those crimes at the cost of driving the Chief Inspector crazy, literally. He was truly one of a kind and when they made a couple of Clouseau movies with other comedians in them, it just was not the same. No offense to Steve Martin, but he just couldn’t fill Seller’s shoes. Another comedian, a man who had been a villain in many movies before his transition to Lieutenant Frank Drebin in the movies, turned out to be very funny. His name was Leslie Nielsen and he appeared in The Naked Gun, and The Naked Gun 2 ½ . He was also in a science fiction movie which many say was the idea behind Star Trek. He played the captain of a spacecraft in the movie Forbidden Planet. He made many other movies some funny and some very serious. One of the trends on the streaming services in trying to keep enough movies in their inventories is to make movies themselves. These movies are not always successful, but there have been a few good ones. Some of them seem to feature actors and actresses which are not widely known. Others have put lesser known actors in leading parts, sometimes with success and sometimes not so successful. This is not only true for movies, but also for series. One actor who seem to be getting more work as a star of streaming movies is Frank Grillo. I like his movies. He seemed to have a lot of parts in the Marvel Universe Movies. Titus Welliver proved he was more than a bit actor when he starred in the police show Bosch on Amazon Prime. Many have said he looked familiar, but I could not recall him ever having a starring role before, but perhaps I am in error. Anyway, the show was great. There are so many streaming services out there they have rendered cable anemic. What I mean is the price of cable has gotten so high many people have taken the option of only keeping the internet and no longer subscribing to the entertainment part of cable, but instead buying access to a couple of streaming services, which works out to be much cheaper in the long run. My cable service had risen to over 400 dollars a month before I did something about it. I found several services which fit my bill. For about 80 dollars a month you can get Netflix, HBO Max, Paramount and Hulu. If you are getting free mailing with Amazon, you get their streaming service for free. On the other hand, if you need sports, you can get a service like FUBU for 65 dollars a month which gives you movies and sports. You also can record shows. To me the important thing is to get hockey, and movies without commercials. I have come to hate commercials in movies and series. The entertainment choices have become huge and a far cry for when television only had a few channels.
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