What have you watched recently: Electric Boogaloo

old hippy

The World's End - Last of the "Cornetto Trilogy" from Messrs Pegg, Wright & Frost. Darker than the previous installments and the ending is a bit silly but, it satisfies.

Yojimbo - Kurosawa epic featuring a man with no name who arrives in town and plays off two rival gangs against each other. Can't make my mind up which version of the tale I like, this or Leone's remake.

Man on Wire - marvellous documentary on a Frenchman's mission to walk between the WTC towers in '74. Stunning and strangely life affirming.

The Raid - Indonesian martial arts cop drama. Die Hard meets Dredd meets Ong Bak. Edge of your seat stuff & not for the feint hearted.

ThirdMan

Back To The Future

What can be said that hasn't been said already. It's just great. I love how the first 40 minutes is full of tiny plot details that are eventually touched upon in the rest of the movie. There's too many to mention but it's one thing after another. It's glorious to see it all coming together. At one stage Doc makes a throwaway reference to travelling into the future and finding out who won the next 100 World Series'. And of course an entire second movie is built around that very idea! I love it.

mike65

Welcome to Collinwood 2002

An amusing and poignant tale of (non) working class low lifes who attempt to rob a safe. Nicely drawn characters and well acted also at just 80 mins pleasingly short.

The only thing that didn't work was a fairly basic plot error - the (correct) wall was only a glorified sand mix and I reckon they would have had time but I suppose the whole point of this story was that they were not going to get rich

Bipolar Joe

Goodbye World

A computer virus wipes out all technology, and a group of 30-somethings live it out in the wilderness.

Basically, entitled rich yuppies live out their every day drama during the techocalypse. I hated all but one of the characters. There seemed to be a real thread of "You should all live this way! Look at them care for the planet and live off the fat of the land!" Never mind that it's expensive as balls to get off the ground like that. The only time it got good was when there appeared to be a real threat, which soon disappeared after someone shot a person in the head and quoted George Washington. This had the potential to be a slowly creeping movie, instead it's Singles in a forest. 3 / 10.

kryogen

Independance Day

Still a brilliant film, enjoyed it as much today as the first time I saw it all those years ago and the CGI not being absolutely everywhere is great! Has everything, love it once every few years

upstairs for coffee

12 Monkeys

Loved it. I found Brad Pitt's performance to be giddy, over the top, immature even. Not quite sure he deserved a nomination for the Oscar supporting role. Anyone agree/disagree?

hefferboi

TT Closer to the Edge

Wow, probably the best documentary I've ever seen. I wouldn't have any interest in bike racing but this is worth watching for the visuals alone. Really makes you think that these lads are the bravest sports people in the world.

NyOmnishambles

Went to see Captain America yesterday

Very much enjoyed it, it had a much different tone to previous Marvel movies as has been mentioned elsewhere it was kind of a 70's espionage thriller with added Super heroes
Getting Robert Redford in was a masterstroke in this regard as he makes this seem legit and is am all round excellent actor

The action was excellent, brutal in parts and it was so refreshing to see practical stunts on screen again, when a car really does smash into another car it adds an awful lot

We get to see more in this movie of how much the serum has transformed Cap into a Super Human and his phyisicality is really well brough across in this movie

All in all if you aren't a fan of the Marvel movies this probably wont change your mind but it might be more acceptable than some others, I really enjoyed it and think it works quite well as a stand alone movie

bnt

Hanna, with Saiorse Ronan as a 16-year-old assassin. What a weird film. Hanna herself is a solution looking for a problem, and the only problem seems to be that

the people who created her (rogue CIA dept.) want to kill her and her dad to tie up their loose ends

.

I read the main thread on Hanna, and thought that many of the criticisms were valid. One I didn't get, though (spoiler alert) was the idea that Hanna left her new friend Sophie and her family to die. I saw the opposite - that Hanna drew the hitmen away from the family in to the container yard. We know Sophie was unharmed, because she was free to follow Hanna (despite being warned not to), was shocked to see Hanna kicking the crap out of the hitmen, and was then able to run away back to her family. That was the last we saw of them in the film, but the implication was that Hanna would go back to them after the situation was resolved, since they seemed very bohemian and welcoming to strangers.

ricero

Raf32 wrote: »

Fargo

Absolutely brilliant film, cant believe i have never seen it before. Masterpiece by the Coen Brothers and leaves me excited for next weeks tv show debut.

i only watched fargo last night but wow brilliant film it left me feeling uneasy and the soundtrack i thought was perfection. really looking forward to the tv show now myself

Judgement Day

"Things to Come" (1936) on YouTube.

Based on the H.G.Wells 1933 sci-fi novel "The Shape of Things to Come" and scripted by the author. A'bleak' new world is the best way to describe this movie. The movie differs slightly from the book and covers the years 1940 - 2036. World War.II. starts in 1940 and rumbles on for the best part of three decades leaving the world in ruins, followed by plague, followed by the coming to power of a world scientific elite - truly depressing stuff! Ahead of it's time in terms of sci-fi movies - think Flash Gordon but nothing like as poorly made and tacky. 8/10


The fictional English town "Everytown" at the end of WW.II. bears an eerie resemblance to many an actual town in Europe at the end of the War.

Judgement Day

I'm on something of a roll, two good movies on successive nights! Last night, a forgotten classic "Decision Before Dawn" (1951) on YouTube.



Based on the novel "Call it Treason" by George Howe. Towards the closing stages of WW.II. American forces recruit German POWs to spy for them inside Germany but can they be trusted....After a slow build-up the movie cracks along at a great pace, never flagging, with excellent acting and superb realism plus enough genuine German and US military hardware to shake a big stick at - it was after all shot in Europe a mere five years after the war ended. Amongst the ruins of the crumbling Reich a massive manhunt is launched for one of the spies while the war rages on all sides. Will he be caught, will he go through with his mission or will he revert to type and give himself up to his Nazi masters....
Runs to 2 hours and is well worth watching - I'll be buying the DVD. 10/10

tunguska

Iron Man 3

Didnt bother with this when it came out initially, friends had seen it and said it was awful, so gave it a wide berth. But Decided to give it a go at the weekend with expectations rock bottom. Pleasantly surprised..........well for about 3/4s of it. Shane Black must have a hard on for christmas, thats at least 3 of his movies set at crimbo. Thats fine by me though. Script was tight enough and the interplay between Tony Stark and Jarvis is magic. Guy Pearce was terrible though. He was just this cartoon-like villain, straight off the Marvel production line. The best Villain's are the most ordinary looking guys who dont chew on the scenery, like PSH in Mission Impossible III, he was brilliant and believable. Too many references to new york and the avengers movie aswell. I know they wanna keep continuity and all that but at times it was like they felt obliged to throw some references in there, it was just a bit too contrived and clunky.
But overall not as bad as I thought it'd be and definitely better than the 2nd one.

Gamayun

The Grudge 2 (2006)

Ugh... awful, lacks both tension and 'shock' scares. The ghouls are used to death (terrible pun not intended) so you just accept them as part of the background like "oh, it's the boy again, where's the girl, oh, there she is...".
Utter crud.

Shimotsuma monogatari AKA Kamikaze Girls (2004)

Ultra stylised semi-surreal fare. The fun visuals and general OTT-ness of this kept it interesting. Enjoyable fluff.

RayCon

The Raid (2011) ....

Don't get the love for this at all. I was bored after about 60mins and fast forwarded to see how it ends (just from an OCD point of view).

Sleepy

Made a double - show of Jobs and Pirates of Sillicon Valley.

While the former clearly looks every bit like it had the higher budget that it did, it very much plays into the lionizing of Steve Jobs that happened after his death and is very, very forgiving of the mans failings while also failing to tell much of his story (how did he become the family man we see in later shots? what happened his relationship with Woz? Where the hell is Bill Gates? Why ignore his theft of Xerox's GUI?). The latter suffers in comparison in terms of the acting, production budget and direction and while it glosses over the boardroom maneuverings that resulted in Jobs being ousted at Apple which are covered in Jobs, it brings in the much more of the context of the world in which he operated and certainly tells more of the story.

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

the addams family and addams family values


the second one is kinda bad but it has enough moments to justify it, particularly wednesday addams trying to smile. Terrifying.


the addams family is brilliant though, I don't think I've watched either of them this millenium so it was a nice little trip down memory lane and i'm pretty sure it wasn't just nostalgia keeping me going.


the godawful 'rap' song over the end credits in both movies is awful though. lucas needs to buy the rights and release a couple of dozen special editions to sort that out.

TICKLE_ME_ELMO

^ I always thought the second one was better than the first one.

Looper007

RayCon wrote: »

The Raid (2011) ....

Don't get the love for this at all. I was bored after about 60mins and fast forwarded to see how it ends (just from an OCD point of view).

how hip are you :rolleyes:

Looper007

TICKLE_ME_ELMO wrote: »

^ I always thought the second one was better than the first one.

It is, Ricci greatest performance to boot, the summer camp stuff is brilliant.

RayCon

Looper007 wrote: »

how hip are you :rolleyes:

well obviously I've a lot of catching up to do *....


*any advice on what Smilie I should insert here ?

TICKLE_ME_ELMO

I re-watched Tangled tonight. I say re-watched, I saw it a few years ago but in the company of 3 kids who had seen it a million times and insisted in acting it out word for word while I was trying to watch it.

Anyway.... I think the songs were better in Frozen and I enjoyed the little twists they threw in, an act of true love not necessarily meaning romantic love and all that but.... all in all I think Tangled is a better film.

Duffy the Vampire Slayer

I watched Dr Strangelove for the first time in 10 years the other night, thoroughly enjoyed it. I'm surprised I hadn't re-watched it more.

I also watched Taegukgi: Brotherhood of War recently. I have mixed feelings about this film. While it's always good to see a war movie from the point of view of a nation other than Britain or America and while certain scenes were excellent, I found it too melodramatic and heavy-handed at times. Still, it's worth a watch.

krudler

TICKLE_ME_ELMO wrote: »

^ I always thought the second one was better than the first one.

Same, the stuff in the summer camp is brilliant and Joan Cusack is hilarious in it

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

TICKLE_ME_ELMO wrote: »

^ I always thought the second one was better than the first one.

Looper007 wrote: »

It is, Ricci greatest performance to boot, the summer camp stuff is brilliant.

krudler wrote: »

Same, the stuff in the summer camp is brilliant and Joan Cusack is hilarious in it

oh you can all go to hell

D'Agger

Finally got around to watching Filth

I thought it was decent. It wasn't predictable and I was engrossed the entire way though. McAvoy was good in it and it was hilarious in parts. I'd give it an 8/10

dark crystal

Labor Day:

It seems this film has been getting some sniffy reviews, but I absolutely loved it.

Sure, there may be a wee bit of nostalgia overload, some suspension of disbelief (it really shouldn't be that hard to withdraw money from your own bank account!) and that most dreaded of critic's bete noirs - sentimentality.

I just loved the story, the characters, the feel of the whole thing. It was like being in some delicious film time warp. One of those films I could have happily watched again straight after it ended.

Bipolar Joe

Asylum

A sexy teenager goes to college, and makes friends with some other sexy teenagers. Turns out, the dorm is a re-purposed mental asylum which an evil doctor now haunts!

Alternative title is Cliche Teen Horror: The Movie. If R.L. Stine had written the script and the Wayans Brothers filmed it, the film would be better. If the film was a butt for nine hours, it would be better. If the film had waited for me to have children, then killed them, it would be better.

Everyone involved in this film should be ashamed (Apart from the evil doctor ghost, he seemed to be having fun). This is nothing but a series of badly written and performed clichés. It feels like they were trying to create a new Kreuger type character. Just terrible. 2 / 10.

charlie_says

Bling Ring

Sofia Coppola's film about LA teenagers stealing from celebrity homes. Emma Watson was superb in it, but in the end boring and had a flat script. I hate all that celebrity nonsense anyway so can't relate to the characters obsession with the lifestyle. It was basically a film about stealing clothes and handbags so you could post them on facebook and look snazzy. Not exactly the smartest of criminal moves.

BigEejit

Das Untergang

really enjoyed it, it did not win the award for best foreign language film ... "The Sea Inside" won it.... must have a look at that one now