What have you watched recently: Electric Boogaloo

crazygeryy

pixelburp wrote: »

The whole point of this thread is to give our thoughts on recent films, nothing more; some people choose to do this in one line, some prefer to expand their thoughts and give overall critiques. Personally I prefer to read peoples extended feelings on a film rather than a glib 3 or 4 words as the short one-liner doesn't really tell a whole lot; I'm interested to know the why of peoples thoughts, hell I even enjoy hearing the stories of the when and where. Either way those who choose the longer format don't deserve to be insulted for trying to make this forum an expansive, interesting place

I agree i was actually trying! to be funny because the review two posts above me was so long.
But some of the reviewers in here one in particular just bores the pants off me.goes way over the top.barry Normans brother etc
But you are right each to their own. Ill write a more detailed but not boring review in future.

johnny_ultimate

Cop on, people, seriously.

If you think a post is too long or dull, you can browse straight past it, keep quiet about it or simply do not read the forum at all. At the very least respond to it in a friendly, worthwhile manner. People are going to give in-depth responses from time to time, and as ever myself and the other mods actively encourage it as it makes the film forum a more interesting place. I hate seeing someone who actually posts up a detailed response getting childishly insulted or dismissed for doing so.

For what its worth, I think this whole 'TLDR' culture is basically killing the potential for good, detailed discussion and debate online. A couple of paragraphs is not 'too long'.

Baked.noodle

Puncture (2011)
An independent thriller/drama based in a true story that delves into the murky world of drugs, medical corporations and anti trust. Well put together and engaging right through to the end. 8/10.

Stone (2010)
An arsonist looks for parole using anything he can to manipulate his fate. Milla Jovovich, De Niro and Norton give solid performances, and its worth seeing. 7/10.

old hippy

Spanking the Monkey - an early role for Jeremy Davies (Lost, Justified). A medical student with an opportunity in Washington, has to look after his injured and depressed mother. It's an unhealthy scenario, without giving too much away. Excellent soundtrack from Morphine.

Birneybau

I'm apologising about my flippant remark r.e. length of posts and leaving it on the record so the posts following it make sense.

Now, on with what you have watched recently.

ButtersSuki

The Lincoln Lawyer last night (recorded from tv at the w/end). Credited by many as being the start of the McConaghy-aisance (or however it's being described) it features a stellar cast including William H. Macy, Marisa Tomei, Ryan Phillipe (and his smirk), Michael Pena (all to briefly), Bryan Cranston (again, all too briefly), John Leguizamo and Shea Whigham amonst others. It's grand, but parts of it are rushed

like Phillipe's admission

and overall has the feel being something that ws pitched as a 10+ episode of a legal drama that was subsequently shoe-horned into a 2 hour movie. It's grand though for a Tuesday night's veiwing. MMcC is quite good in it in fairness. Crantson fans will eb disappointed though as he has nothing to work with and basically just dials in his on-screen time. I hear a sequel is in the works too.

6.5/10.

mike65

The Manchurian Candidate (1962)

A semi regular on ITV4 on a weekend afternoon, this is worth seeing for the three lead performances - Angela Lansbury, Laurence Harvey and Frank Sinatra who are all terrific in this Cold War conspiracy thriller about

a plot to stage a political coup using an unwitting assassin

. Full of cracking dialogue and snappy direction this film was pulled from distribution for 24 years in an argument with the studio by Sinatra (he bought the film from UA outright). John Frankenheimer was at his peak in the early to mid 60s making a string a top notch films. This along with The Train may be his best.

The Skin I Live In/La piel que habito (2011)

Pedro Almodóvar psycho-drama about a brilliant if rogue plastic surgeon, his daughter, a young man and a young woman. Won't say any more than that cos knowing the plot will spoil it. Just stick with it.

mike65

karma_ wrote: »

The Hill directed by Sidney Lumet with a pretty amazing cast including Connery himself with an great performance. Not seen this before tonight and it completely blew me away, A little over 2hr long but it hooks you from the start and doesn't let go and I never noticed the time go by. Set in a Prison camp in North Africa for military personnel and ran by a by the book sergeant major heavy on discipline and a new sadistic screw out to prove himself, 5 new prisoners arrive and don't make a good first impression.

Absolutely gripping from start to finish.

Brilliant film. Ian Hendry is the real star though! Also check out the other British made Sidney Lumet/Sean Connery drama - The Offence (1973)

Tony EH

Starring another great "Ian"...Bannen this time. Who's also in 'The Hill'.

johnny_ultimate

Jia Zhangke's 'Hometown Trilogy' is a trilogy in the loosest sense of the word, but undoubtedly these three films - his first features - connect and contrast in many ways (not least the playful direct allusion to the first two films in the last). Pickpocket / Xiao Wu, Zhangke's debut, is the product of severely limited resources, and can across as a little rough. But it's a bold debut, reflecting a dilapidated small town China not often seen on our screens. In the background, there's major social changes taking place, but above all this is a character study - of one lowly pickpocket, struggling to find a comfortable place in society as his friends and family move in different directions. As raw and unromantic as cinema gets.

Platform, meanwhile, is the product of a director truly expanding their ambitions (with the help of increased resources). It's a decade long tale of a 'culture group', traveling from town to town. Again, it's a character study, albeit with several protagonists instead of just the one. But the film's scope is much vaster, and it's a more thorough and provocative look at the way Chinese society transformed in the 80s and 90s. The creep of Western influences, changing government policies, radically shifting trends and styles - it's all captured in this one epic and beautiful film. The characters find themselves struggling to adapt, and over the course of 150 minutes Zhangke takes them in multiple different directions. It's a slow and sombre film, favouring long takes and gritty, crumbling locales. But few films offer such a vast, enlightening scope.

Unknown Pleasures, finally, is a film of apathy and disillusionment, even beyond its often grim predecessors. It's a slicker film, and in some ways more accessible (there's a more familiar 'plot' driving it forward, even if it is emotionally elusive and doesn't provide many easy conclusions). But it's an intriguing companion piece to the above two films, and is stylistically perhaps the most confident (particularly the unusual use of repetition throughout, indicating a sense of sad stasis). One of the most interesting things about it is how it encompasses Western cinematic influence - Pulp Fiction is referenced a number of times throughout the film, and even bleeds into the way Zhangke stages his story (particularly one startling jump cut).

All three are well worth a watch, although Platform is probably the richest and most complex of the three. Be prepared for their sedate pacing, but Zhangke's chronicles of life in contemporary China are incredibly powerful and evocative. They're available in a handy boxset, although as ever with Artificial Eye the quality of the transfer isn't great (although certainly working with pretty rough source material). The subtitles on Platform are particularly poor though - translation seems fine, but the font type inconsistent and the letters 'b', 'i' and 'u' often disappearing at the start of sentences due to some seriously shoddy formatting. How does that kind of stuff get through testing?!

The Kings of Summer - for some reason, I kept grouping this with The Spectacular Now and The Way Way Back, since they were all 'buzzed' around the same time. And actually they're all coming of age stories that try to reflect the experience of being a teenager I possibly preferred this a little to Spectacular (which was brilliantly acted but overearnest), and significantly over Way Way..., which I sort of hated. It is 'Sundance friendly' to a fault, favouring relatively shallow triumphalism over genuine insight. Most of the main characters are fairly bland, their relationships not that interesting. But it's well made (visually the most interesting of the barely connected trio, if a little over-reliant on indie rock montages) and has an endearingly oddball tone about it that kept me interested and entertained. It can be very funny at times too. Nick Offerman, offering a more depressed take on Ron Swanson, is a big part of that - it's his character, actually, that's the most interesting, much more so than the main story of his son Joe (Nick Robinson) who runs away from home to live in the woods with two friends. But the star of the show is Moises Arias as Biaggio. It's undoubtedly a contrived comic relief role, but the sheer wild eccentricity and commitment Arias brings along is remarkable. His character gives the otherwise fairly standard film an unpredictable edge.

Uwasa no Onna / The Woman in the Rumour - I always love watching a MoC Mizoguchi Blu-Ray, thinking the film is utterly fantastic, and then have Tony Rayns tell you in his video essay on the film that Mizoguchi was fairly apathetic about the whole thing Anyway, I loved it - even if the great director wasn't 100% committed, his mastery rings through in the way he draws his characters and is able to tell the story so elegantly. I always find Mizoguchi's 'geisha' films some of his most fascinating, and the mother/daughter relationship at the centre of this is full of beautiful nuances and emotional resonances. A highlight is a scene where the main characters visit a Noh theatre, and Mizoguchi uses the play they see to highlight some of the film's themes, as well as providing an important, unspoken turning point for one of our protagonists.

A V A

All i can say is jesus christ

pixelburp

Enders Game (2013)
I added more detailed thoughts to the thread itself, but in summary I thought this a poor, watered-down adaptation of a novel, and utterly symptomatic of the kind of 'Young Adult' goldrush studios are going through; they're all so eager to produce the next Twilight or Hunger Games they'll greenlight anything, at the same time demanding too many concessions to the multiplex demographic to make it memorable or genuinely faithful to the original text.

Almost all the bite from the novel is missing and with it the emotional & personal development of its characters - particularly Ender. This film is a straight Hero's Journey, and a poor one at that. There's a hamfisted & rushed coda to try and reach for the same levels of emotional resonance as the book, but it just felt like too little, too late

e_e

A V A wrote: »

All i can say is jesus christ

I thought "Jesus Christ" by the end of both Oldboys but for complete opposite reasons.

A V A

e_e wrote: »

I thought "Jesus Christ" by the end of both Oldboys but for complete opposite reasons.

really? how come? i can understand the th point of remakes and originals bein better :P

Gamayun

Ice Queen (2005)
Straight to video horror I caught on Movies4Men about a re-awakened ice-age humanoid female running about a ski resort causing hassle.
"How bad can it be?" I thought, naively.

Where to start? The film opens with our wooden male protagonist at a wet T-shirt competition with a large chested female, who remains in a braless state throughout the movie.
The next half hour is taken up by people skiing away from stock footage of avalanches.
Finally the Ice Queen is getting up to mischief, and the make-up/prosthetics are actually OK(!), but then the actress playing the Queen ruins it by snarling and hobbling around like a Power Rangers baddie.
I was just on IMDB and there and apparently there was a mild sex scene in a hot tub which was taken out for some reason, despite being on late and on Movies4Men, also the one goof on IMDB is:

Revealing mistakes: The power lines were taken out by the avalanche. When the queen claws the black guy in the bathroom and he knocks her into the hand drier it comes on.

Yeah, the black guy, whose character and actor's names are on the same IMDB page FFS!

So, cheaply made (looks like it's from 1995), with awful CGI smoke (?) crap acting, stock footage and terrible dialogue. Did I enjoy it, YES! It's really terrible but I got a laugh from it, worth checking out with a few pals/beers if bored.

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

werckmeister harmonies

not sure about this one. I liked satantago, really liked the turin horse but this one kinda left me feeling cold.

towards end I just wanted to see the credits and while I can forgive satantango for making me feel the same way, werckmeister harmonies is only 2 and a bit hours long. I shouldn't have been sick of it yet.

e_e

A V A wrote: »

really? how come? i can understand the th point of remakes and originals bein better :P

With the original it was because it was such a profoundly shocking and overwhelming experience, with the remake it was from seeing just how badly they fumbled in telling such a good story. Sharlto Copley is terrible and they made his justification and backstory totally unbelievable. Not to mention the direction not even being on par with Spike Lee's other work, let alone Park's film. I was surprised at how bad it was tbh. Only part that worked for me was the imprisonment scenes again, and at least Brolin does good work too.

Bipolar Joe

The Iceman

Richard Kuklinski is a contract killer with a wife and kids who don't know about his profession. Can he balance the two? Hijinx ensue.

Leaving biographical inaccuracies aside, this was still a pretty disappointing movie. Sub plots move along and then fizzle out to nothing, Ross from Friends gives an uninspired performance as Ross from Friends with a moustache, Winona Ryder is from some place with an accent sometimes I guess, badly paced, characters appear without introduction and then just never show up again.

All of that said, Liotta and Shannon give amazing performances. I really enjoy watching those two dudes act. If it wasn't for those two, it would have been a straight up bland, boring assed movie. Not a whole lot to say, seeing as I'm probably the last one here to have seen it. 5 / 10.

baldshin

Finally got around to watching Threads....what an extremely terrifying, unsettling film!

Judgement Day

"Derelict' (2012) - on YouTube.

A dark tale of a 'tiger' kidnapping by a gang of amateurs that goes badly wrong.

Shot in just one week, at a derelict mill in Slane, Co.Meath the movie keeps you guessing right to the end. At just under two hours it never drags and the standard of acting would put many big budget features to shame. Seems to have had a DVD release but I couldn't find online. The director has now released the full movie for FREE on Vimeo and YouTube - and it's well worth watching.

Tindie

e_e wrote: »

I thought "Jesus Christ" by the end of both Oldboys but for complete opposite reasons.

If seen US remake , you might want to see Zinda (2006) bollywood remake of Oldboy

It might make the US remake look like a masterpiece


Tattoo (2002)

What a crazy movie, the movie start of with a lady who is naked walking in the rain, her back as just been skinned off, then she gets hit by a bus that crash and blows up.

Then police are investigation that body at morgue and find out that there finger in side her, she as bit of the attack shallowed!

That was just first 4 minutes of the movie , the action packed for the first hour so, fast moving,

it gets little slower just after hour into movie but it dose not last long, as pick up speed again for last 20 minutes.

I did not get the ending at all, I wish it was bit was clear.

Really good movie and great acting in the movie.

7 out of 10

Tipsy McSwagger

Enders Game - I enjoyed it but quickly forgot about it.
Frozen - Loved it, best Disney film I have seen in years.
Rush - Awful apart from Daniel Bruhl's performance
12 Years a Slave - Good film but slightly overrated, performances are outstanding though.
American Hustle - It was ok, thank god it didn't win any oscars especially for the overrated Jennifer Lawrence (Amy Adams is a way better actress)

Josey Wales

A Fist Full of Dollars - Pretty sure I saw this years ago but I barely remembered anything from it. Great film. Going to watch For a Few Dollars More tonight.

mewe

Josey Wales wrote: »

A Fist Full of Dollars - Pretty sure I saw this years ago but I barely remembered anything from it. Great film. Going to watch For a Few Dollars More tonight.

Fits with your name too....."don't piss down my back and tell me it's rainin" :pac:

tusk

Josey Wales wrote: »

A Fist Full of Dollars - Pretty sure I saw this years ago but I barely remembered anything from it. Great film. Going to watch For a Few Dollars More tonight.

Brilliant film! Definitely one of my all-time favorites. Gotta love the man with no name

cursai

Derlict....2012.....Vimeo....Frank Kelly......Irish film.

on a recommendation by a previous poster. All i can say is too much dubious hype by a previous poster and too much AMBIENT music.
An Irish B Movie. Although not bad at that.
Defintiely youtube full movie potential but not for a full release.
Love Hate did it better.

The Pheasant2

Josey Wales wrote: »

A Fist Full of Dollars - Pretty sure I saw this years ago but I barely remembered anything from it. Great film. Going to watch For a Few Dollars More tonight.

Nice one - the "Dollars" trilogy has gotta be one of the most underrated trilogies out there. Really like Lee VanCleef's character in FaFDM

Bozo Skeleton

Bipolar Joe wrote: »

The Iceman

Richard Kuklinski is a contract killer with a wife and kids who don't know about his profession. Can he balance the two? Hijinx ensue.

I haven't seen this film, but I have seen two documentaries based on interviews with Kuklinski when he was in prison. I can't see how the movie could emulate them.
The first one is from 1992, I think, and the second one is a follow up interview 10 years later, both bundled together here. Fascinating and appalling in equal measures. He was one cold motherf*cker.

Judgement Day

cursai wrote: »

Derlict....2012.....Vimeo....Frank Kelly......Irish film.

on a recommendation by a previous poster. All i can say is too much dubious hype by a previous poster and too much AMBIENT music.
An Irish B Movie. Although not bad at that.
Defintiely youtube full movie potential but not for a full release.
Love Hate did it better.

Glad you gave it a whirl anyway. I haven't seen and have no intention of watching "Love Hate" anytime soon - I can switch the news on any day and it's the same mayhem.

Barna77

The Conjuring.
Much hype about it. I thought it was alright, but mostly many films we've seen before all thrown together into one. Some bumpy moments though, but nothing too serious.