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What have you watched recently: Electric Boogaloo
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"Fatherland" (1994) on YouTube. Another from the alternative history genre. WW.II. ended with the defeat of the Allies and a greater Germany ('Germania") now has been created in the defeated countries of Western Europe. The film is set in 1965 and Hitler's 85th birthday celebrations are underway. Somehow the extermination of the Jews has been kept a secret and Hitler now wishes to conclude a formal peace deal with the USA in order to help him finish off the USSR. Can't say much more without giving away the whole plot. I had memories of watching it years ago and thinking it was a pile of crap but I gave it another whirl last night and was pleasantly surprised!
Rutger Hauer, Miranda Richardson, Peter Vaughan, Michael Kitchen and Jean Marsh star.
Rutger Hauer (an SS policeman just doing his job) and Miranda Richardson (a US journalist who gets caught up in the crossfire).
A gripping, realistic portrayal of how the 3rd Reich could have turned outbut with no happy ending- and one I will watch again. 9/100 -
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"Virus" aka "Day of Resurrection" (1980) On YouTube. Japanese made disaster movie with a capital D! An international cast (including George Kennedy, Glenn Ford, Robert Vaughan..) lifts this above the ordinary doomsday movie. A man-made virus is stolen from a laboratory but is accidentally released into the environment with catastrophic global effect. Can't say more without giving away the plot but it's well worth watching and the 2.5 hours passes quickly. 9/10
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The Lord of the Rings trilogy at the Light House yesterday.
One word, EPIC!!!! really enjoyed it, but I really prefer the extended versions.
Have the extended versions at home myself, love them. It takes a good weekend to get through them though, worth every minute
Are u getting The Hobbit Extended edition?0 -
Believe it or bot, I only saw the hobbit once, so I think I'd have to see it again before I go get it.loveBBhate wrote: »Have the extended versions at home myself, love them. It takes a good weekend to get through them though, worth every minute
Are u getting The Hobbit Extended edition?0 -
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Bad Grandpa, Jackass offshoot starring Johnny Knoxville. It's just bad. If you've seen the trailer you've seen all the good parts. Waste of money and time getting to and from the cinema! Avoid - and I say this as someone who likes gross-out comedy. 1/10.
Arbitrage on BR. Richard Gere, Susan Sarandon and a barely recognisable Tim Roth (complete with a little chubbiness and a beard!) star in the tale of a billionaire whose life and empire are potentially falling apart in front of him and his attempts to save everything. Tense and suspenseful throughout, it's an above average thriller set amongst the backdrop of high-end finance. I found it surprisingly engaging and way better than my expectations. Gere is managing the transition from "film star" to "actor" very well
, whilst Nate Parker (who I hadn't seen before) is very good in his scenes. A strong 7.5/10. 0 -
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Saw two over the weekend there
Spring Breakers Well. I mean. I don't know. Saw it described as an "art-sploitation" flick somewhere which pretty much nails it. It's an absolutely gorgeous film; the colour is amazing and there's T&A everywhere
James Franco
is more or less forced to simulate oral sex on a loaded gun by a girl who used to be on the Disney Channel, that actually happens and sums up the whole film to be honest. It's sticking with me though I must say, one of the strangest films I've seen in a long time, certainly for how "mainstream" it is. Right at this moment I think I really like it, but ask me again in an hour 8/10
Prisoners First of all, oooooooh mama this is a long one, just over two and a half hours. It's also the second super-long film I've seen this year starring Hugh Jackman where the opening 45-60 mins are very strong and then it just keeps going for another 90. There's about five different films happening in it.
Good points
Hugh Jackman. He's in so much fluff, and seems such an affable chap IRL that I frequently forget how good he can be in the right kind of serious role. He does a good line in traumatised, screamy men. Perfect casting here, you need someone who's a credible physical threat but you also need a lot of likeability to avoid alienating your audience whenyou beat a mentally disabled man half to death, lock him in a tiny closet and scald him. You need to stay mostly on this guy's side for 153 minutes, it's a lot to do and Jackman carries it well.
The violence. There's a lot of it, the most shocking stuff is what you only see the aftermath of. The threat of it is handled really well, Jackman's physical prowess is needed for this. I actually had my hands ready to clamp over my eyes for one scene, and then the worst thing that happened wasa sink got the **** beaten out of it.
It's not spoiling anything to say that the plot revolves around missing children. The families are central characters here and it's very common for films to take cheap emotional shots at the audience, you don't have to work hard to get a big emotional reaction from showing parents break down on screen. Mostly this takes the high-road, it doesn't gild the lily and just leave you feeling used at the end but by god it still gets those reactions without having to show children in distress or have people talk endlessly about how horrible it is. One of the best moments here, and the one when I finally gave up and started crying was very simple:police photographs of the bloodstained clothes of small children, I don't know if I can recommend this to anybody with small children, I don't have any myself and I'm getting emotional again just thinking of it.
Melissa Leo: she needs to be in more things
The Bad
Long is fine, having to be long because you have a plot like this is NOT OK. It's overly complicated, it takes too long to emerge, and too much stuff happens tbh, you get plot fatigue. By the timea man bleeding from a head injury is racing a recently poisoned child to hospital through bad traffic and pouring rainI didn't have the energy left to care.
Could have been just a lucky fluke for me, but a visual clue which I thought was blindingly bloody obvious not only took the characters ages to cop on to but apparently wasn't meant to have been completely apparent to me for the 45 minutes it took them.the necklace/maze
Don't have your villain stop to explain their motivations, especially when they're that stupid.
If there hadn't been such big problems with all the above the ending would have been great, I think. As it was, when itfaded to black and you didn't know if stupid Jake Gyllenhal was going to investigate the stupid whistle sound in time, there was an audible "ah for ****'s sake" from the row behind me, and I knew how they felt.
Stupid Jake Gyllenhal, I just don't like him.
Edit: If you suffer from herpetophobia/ophidiaphobia, I'd give this one a miss. Figure by using the technical terms those who don't won't get a spoiler and those who do will get a warning, you don't expect it in this kind of film, and it comes out of nowhere
6.5/100 -
Join Date:Posts: 10297
johnny_ultimate wrote: »Drinking Buddies - another mumblecore director graduates to the relative big time in Joe Swanberg's relationship drama. If you've been anticipating the film set in the world of craft beer (aka if you're a hipster) this is a good start. A relationship drama/comedy focused on two couples, both seemingly destined to break up and pair off with the others. Nothing major happens - a misjudged, awkward kiss is the film's most dramatic incident - but nothing happens well: subtle direction and acting ensuring sexual tension and underlying lusts are implied through glances and seemingly innocent interactions. Everything is boiling underneath the surface, and things don't exactly go as formula would traditionally dictate, opting for something a tad more ambiguous.
Worth watching primarily to finally see Olivia Wilde give the sort of charismatic performance Hollywood has consistently denied her. Equally impressive work from Jake Johnson and Anna Kendrick, the latter of whom further proves she deserves better roles. One of the supporting roles is played by Ti West of House of the Devil fame, which is the kind of geeky detail that is always fun to discover. Nothing remarkable, but a very watchable, well crafted little film.
I finally got to see this today and was quite happy with it - I was reminded lot of Sideways, this has a similarly gentle tone and good, unforced humour throughout. Wilde wasn't exactly amazing, but leaps and bounds better than she has been in the other films in which I've seen her (though to be fair, thus far that's only Tron: Legacy and Cowboys & Aliens); Anna Kendrick and Jake Johnson were both good and had strong on-screen chemistry.
I liked the fact that it played against type and didn't ignore the fact that all the characters were flawed in some fashion or another. In a way it reminded me of Adrian Tomine or Dan Clowes' comics, which are frequently about people who aren't particularly happy or likeable because they have no idea what they actually want from their lives. You wouldn't want to be them or to know them, but they can be fascinating to watch.
I also caught a couple of films at the Korean Film Festival in London - namely Pluto and The Flu. Pluto was a decent thriller, with some lovely visuals and appalling science - cleverly structured and plotted, though still a touch too reminiscent of another film I'll put in spoilers (because the comparison gives away quite a lot)2010's Confession. The Flu was a fun disaster movie about a mutated flu epidemic hitting a large town on the outskirts of Seoul - it has several very silly moments and is as contrived as any disaster movie, but it also has several great lead performances (including a stellar turn from the child) and a number of very powerful shots. It's OTT in a "go big or go home" sort of way, but the sequence in the middle wherewe discover that the infected are being killed and burned in mass firepitsis still shocking, for example. And there are some very impressive set pieces. Subtle it is not, but it's deftly-made fun that still incorporates a few thought-provoking moments.
Tomorrow I'm watching An Awful Lot Of Koreans Getting PunchedFists Of Legend at the festival's closing night, and am rather looking forward to it. Hopefully it'll make the wait for The Raid 2 feel shorter.0 -
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poundapunnet wrote: »Saw two over the weekend there
Spring Breakers Well. I mean. I don't know. Saw it described as an "art-sploitation" flick somewhere which pretty much nails it. It's an absolutely gorgeous film; the colour is amazing and there's T&A everywhere James Franco
is more or less forced to simulate oral sex on a loaded gun by a girl who used to be on the Disney Channel, that actually happens and sums up the whole film to be honest. It's sticking with me though I must say, one of the strangest films I've seen in a long time, certainly for how "mainstream" it is. Right at this moment I think I really like it, but ask me again in an hour 8/10
Prisoners First of all, oooooooh mama this is a long one, just over two and a half hours. It's also the second super-long film I've seen this year starring Hugh Jackman where the opening 45-60 mins are very strong and then it just keeps going for another 90. There's about five different films happening in it.
Good points
Hugh Jackman. He's in so much fluff, and seems such an affable chap IRL that I frequently forget how good he can be in the right kind of serious role. He does a good line in traumatised, screamy men. Perfect casting here, you need someone who's a credible physical threat but you also need a lot of likeability to avoid alienating your audience whenyou beat a mentally disabled man half to death, lock him in a tiny closet and scald him. You need to stay mostly on this guy's side for 153 minutes, it's a lot to do and Jackman carries it well.
The violence. There's a lot of it, the most shocking stuff is what you only see the aftermath of. The threat of it is handled really well, Jackman's physical prowess is needed for this. I actually had my hands ready to clamp over my eyes for one scene, and then the worst thing that happened wasa sink got the **** beaten out of it.
It's not spoiling anything to say that the plot revolves around missing children. The families are central characters here and it's very common for films to take cheap emotional shots at the audience, you don't have to work hard to get a big emotional reaction from showing parents break down on screen. Mostly this takes the high-road, it doesn't gild the lily and just leave you feeling used at the end but by god it still gets those reactions without having to show children in distress or have people talk endlessly about how horrible it is. One of the best moments here, and the one when I finally gave up and started crying was very simple:police photographs of the bloodstained clothes of small children, I don't know if I can recommend this to anybody with small children, I don't have any myself and I'm getting emotional again just thinking of it.
Melissa Leo: she needs to be in more things
The Bad
Long is fine, having to be long because you have a plot like this is NOT OK. It's overly complicated, it takes too long to emerge, and too much stuff happens tbh, you get plot fatigue. By the timea man bleeding from a head injury is racing a recently poisoned child to hospital through bad traffic and pouring rainI didn't have the energy left to care.
Could have been just a lucky fluke for me, but a visual clue which I thought was blindingly bloody obvious not only took the characters ages to cop on to but apparently wasn't meant to have been completely apparent to me for the 45 minutes it took them.the necklace/maze
Don't have your villain stop to explain their motivations, especially when they're that stupid.
If there hadn't been such big problems with all the above the ending would have been great, I think. As it was, when itfaded to black and you didn't know if stupid Jake Gyllenhal was going to investigate the stupid whistle sound, there was an audible "ah for ****'s sake" from the row behind me, and I knew how they felt.
Stupid Jake Gyllenhal, I just don't like him.
Edit: If you suffer from herpetophobia/ophidiaphobia, I'd give this one a miss. Figure by using the technical terms those who don't won't get a spoiler and those who do will get a warning, you don't expect it in this kind of film, and it comes out of nowhere
6.5/10
I really liked prisoners, one of the better films I've seen in a while. I can see your points about the plot being overly complicated, they kinda tried to do too much with it.
I think Gyllenhal is very good in it, but I am a fan so maybe bias. 6.5 seems a bit low to me, solid 8 in my book with the ending being particularly satisfying.
also I don't see anything ambiguous about the ending especially given the inquisitive nature of our god damn hero cop.0 -
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poundapunnet wrote: »Saw two over the weekend there
Spring Breakers Well. I mean. I don't know. Saw it described as an "art-sploitation" flick somewhere which pretty much nails it. It's an absolutely gorgeous film; the colour is amazing and there's T&A everywhere James Franco
is more or less forced to simulate oral sex on a loaded gun by a girl who used to be on the Disney Channel, that actually happens and sums up the whole film to be honest. It's sticking with me though I must say, one of the strangest films I've seen in a long time, certainly for how "mainstream" it is. Right at this moment I think I really like it, but ask me again in an hour 8/10
Prisoners First of all, oooooooh mama this is a long one, just over two and a half hours. It's also the second super-long film I've seen this year starring Hugh Jackman where the opening 45-60 mins are very strong and then it just keeps going for another 90. There's about five different films happening in it.
Good points
Hugh Jackman. He's in so much fluff, and seems such an affable chap IRL that I frequently forget how good he can be in the right kind of serious role. He does a good line in traumatised, screamy men. Perfect casting here, you need someone who's a credible physical threat but you also need a lot of likeability to avoid alienating your audience whenyou beat a mentally disabled man half to death, lock him in a tiny closet and scald him. You need to stay mostly on this guy's side for 153 minutes, it's a lot to do and Jackman carries it well.
The violence. There's a lot of it, the most shocking stuff is what you only see the aftermath of. The threat of it is handled really well, Jackman's physical prowess is needed for this. I actually had my hands ready to clamp over my eyes for one scene, and then the worst thing that happened wasa sink got the **** beaten out of it.
It's not spoiling anything to say that the plot revolves around missing children. The families are central characters here and it's very common for films to take cheap emotional shots at the audience, you don't have to work hard to get a big emotional reaction from showing parents break down on screen. Mostly this takes the high-road, it doesn't gild the lily and just leave you feeling used at the end but by god it still gets those reactions without having to show children in distress or have people talk endlessly about how horrible it is. One of the best moments here, and the one when I finally gave up and started crying was very simple:police photographs of the bloodstained clothes of small children, I don't know if I can recommend this to anybody with small children, I don't have any myself and I'm getting emotional again just thinking of it.
Melissa Leo: she needs to be in more things
The Bad
Long is fine, having to be long because you have a plot like this is NOT OK. It's overly complicated, it takes too long to emerge, and too much stuff happens tbh, you get plot fatigue. By the timea man bleeding from a head injury is racing a recently poisoned child to hospital through bad traffic and pouring rainI didn't have the energy left to care.
Could have been just a lucky fluke for me, but a visual clue which I thought was blindingly bloody obvious not only took the characters ages to cop on to but apparently wasn't meant to have been completely apparent to me for the 45 minutes it took them.the necklace/maze
Don't have your villain stop to explain their motivations, especially when they're that stupid.
If there hadn't been such big problems with all the above the ending would have been great, I think. As it was, when itfaded to black and you didn't know if stupid Jake Gyllenhal was going to investigate the stupid whistle sound, there was an audible "ah for ****'s sake" from the row behind me, and I knew how they felt.
Stupid Jake Gyllenhal, I just don't like him.
Edit: If you suffer from herpetophobia/ophidiaphobia, I'd give this one a miss. Figure by using the technical terms those who don't won't get a spoiler and those who do will get a warning, you don't expect it in this kind of film, and it comes out of nowhere
6.5/10
I thought Prisoners was good but not great. I thought Jackman was a bit ott. Dano, better than he was in there will be blood, was great. Nice review but calling Gyllenhal "stupid" just because you don't like him makes you sound like a 13 year old. His character did some stupid things. You may not like him as an actor but he is recognised as a talented actor. I would say way ahead of Jackman. Anyway each to their own.
If you do mean his character was stupid about the whistle thing rewatch the film. Its obvious what happens.0 -
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"We'll Support you Evermore" (1985) on DVD. Made for TV movie starring John Thaw as a father whose son (a British soldier) is shot dead in Belfast but refuses to accept the official version of events. In a desperate attempt to establish the truth - for his own piece of mind - he travels to Belfast to attend the trial of the man accused of his son's murder.
One of the most realistic dramas that I've watched about "The Troubles" and filmed on location in Belfast in dangerous times. Everything from the dereliction, ever present helicopters, soldiers, RUC/Army landrovers, control zones - it's the Belfast that I remember. Available from Amazon. 8/10
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