What have you watched recently: Electric Boogaloo

TICKLE_ME_ELMO

limnam wrote: »

Oslo, August 31st.

Beautifully shot film showing of Norway.
24 hours in the life of a recovering drug addict anders who has been drug and drink free for 10 months but is struggling to find meaning in life.

One of the better films to cover this topic.

I really liked how this film showed that addiction is a life long illness. The most you can hope for is to be able to control it, and it's fairly easy to do that when you're in a protected environment like a clinic. Completely different story when you return to the real world.

limnam

TICKLE_ME_ELMO wrote: »

I really liked how this film showed that addiction is a life long illness. The most you can hope for is to be able to control it, and it's fairly easy to do that when you're in a protected environment like a clinic. Completely different story when you return to the real world.

I had a slightly different take on it. I felt that the "norms" were no better of than he was. In fact, the illness, was life itself.

Take his friend with the job, the wife, the baby.
The highlight of his life was playing battlefield with his wife who he rarely talked with and or had sex with. Pretty sad.

The harsh reality that despite the drugs the best he could hope for was a sexless marriage a kid who gets sick and the odd game of battlefield with someone who can't play.

Great film.

Harry Palmr

Harlequin (1980) Dir Simon Wincer

Part of a Aussie double bill on BBC2 on Sunday, I recorded this mainly as it such a rare visitor to our screens. I knew its reputation was poor going right back to its release (Starburst was scathing) but sometimes you take a chance and hope its got something. There is a decent concept about manipulation buried within this dull 100 minutes about a Senator who is being groomed for high office and the mysterious central figure who appears in his families life but what we get is a fairly shoddy uncertain melange of soap opera, spooks and magic tricks. The only point of interest is Robert Powells performance as the title character and who seems to be performing the close up illusion tricks himself.

TICKLE_ME_ELMO

limnam wrote: »

I had a slightly different take on it. I felt that the "norms" were no better of than he was. In fact, the illness, was life itself.

Take his friend with the job, the wife, the baby.
The highlight of his life was playing battlefield with his wife who he rarely talked with and or had sex with. Pretty sad.

The harsh reality that despite the drugs the best he could hope for was a sexless marriage a kid who gets sick and the odd game of battlefield with someone who can't play.

Great film.

Yes, that's one way of looking at it. I do agree with that, to a point.

I felt like Andres spent his day looking for something worth returning to. His friends all had "better" lives than his but none of them seemed to be actually all that happy and none of them could offer Andres that glimmer of hope that his struggle to get off drugs was worth it.

It's as much about modern society and how we judge success and what is deemed as acceptable lives worth aspiring to.

I just thought it was also an interesting look at how getting clean in a controlled and protected environment is a completely different thing to staying clean once you've returned to the environment that your problems/issues/addictions stemmed from.

But yes, great film

Arghus

The Last Detail- Jack Nicholson, in his pomp, plays Badass Buddusky, a Naval officer, who, along with a fellow navy comrade, is assigned by the top brass with the seemingly thankless task of delivering a poor young schmuck of a sailor across country, all the way to military prison, where the poor young bugger will have to serve an overly harsh sentence of many, many years. With a few days journey to kill and mischief on their mind, the two older and supposedly wiser sea hands decide to show the greenhorn a few days of mayhem. All this serving as his education into the ways of the world and probably the last bit of freedom he's going to taste for a hell of a long while.

Another seventies classic. Anchored by a great performance by Nicholson. He plays Buddusky just the right side of full on JACK mode. The character's a semi-reprobate sleaze, but not without some barely concealed softer, more honourable elements. The type of guy you'd like to have around for that one crazy night on the tiles and then never see him again in your life. Great support comes from Otis Young, as Buddusky's more stoic and world weary partner in crime. A shockingly young Randy Quaid is very affecting as the poor misfortunate who's going to have his freedom snapped away real soon for next to nothing. He really tugs at the heartstrings as an innocent giant of a man child.

The film was criticised at the time of it's release from its supposed over abundance of vulgarity. I can't really understand this, it's to the films credit that it realistically portrays sailors cursing like, well... sailors. Any other way would be to take away from the edge of realism that it contains. By today's standards it's nothing too shocking, but the films emotional power hasn't been diluted over time. It's raw, harsh and raucous but, it's really at its core a kind hearted and sad view of the lives of men who have no control over their own destinies and whose small degrees of freedom, if they exist at all, are to be found in juvenile bitching and goofing off in the shadier parts of town.

The Red Balloon- 1956 French short that follows the adventures of a little boy around the streets of Paris and the places of his day to day life, accompanied all the while by a extra large and vibrant sentient red balloon.

When I say adventures, I'm over egging what you could honestly call the travels of the main character. He gets the bus, he goes to school, he comes home, he gets the bus, he goes to school....The whole experience is very slight and fleeting. The story which won an Oscar, unbelievably, for Best Original Screenplay, is kept deliberately simple in order to be enjoyed by everyone young and old and across cultural divides.

It's reckoned that the movie has been seen here there and everywhere by millions of kids around the globe. Maybe I had a deprived childhood, but I didn't see it up until yesterday and it did manage to move my jaded, adult self a little. There's some great moments as the balloon toys with the familiar figures of childhood oppression- the headmaster, the parent, the childhood bullies. Also it's very moving to see the contrast between the vibrancy of the balloon and childish wonder with the run down, drab and grey world in which the majority of the film takes place. It's a simple tale, with a bit of Christian symbolism thrown in there for depth. It probably won't knock your cynical socks off but it would be recommended viewing for the youngsters or anyone who still wants to hold on to a smidgen of childhood fantasy.

Harry Palmr

I'd quite forgotten I'd ever seen the Red Balloon Winner of Palme d'or and Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay (thus setting a record as the only short film to win a major Oscar)

D'Agger

Enemy: Saw this last night and wasn't a fan. The ending was bizarre and actually drew laughter from those around me. I do think Gyllenhall and his supporting cast did a decent job. But overall I just didn't enjoy the movie, barring some individual moments.

charlie_says

Interstellar.

Good but flawed. Better than most blockbusters.

bnt

Finally got to see Elysium this evening. Looks amazing, but some interesting concepts in there aren't fully explored, and I had a couple of major problems with the film.

First of all: too much shaky-cam! Action scenes were very hard to follow. Then there was Kruger (Sharlto Copley), who gave me acid flashbacks to all the numb-skulled Afrikaners I met when I lived in Sarf Efrica. (He even sings an Afrikaans lullaby to Frey's daughter at one point.)

Trivia:

this was the first time Jodie Foster played a character who died during the film.

The Black Oil

Robocop remake - saw it listed on Netflix. Gave it a try.

I don't want to pass much comment. Samuel L. Jackson is the film's more mocking and political voice. We're thrown into the mix pretty much right from the off with the cold open. Gary Oldman looked a little lost initially. He's the more moral aspect, whilst Michael Keaton's the egomaniac, Sellars. Elements of the key relationships (well, Murphy's partner) don't feel anchored enough, though the Oldman/Murphy stuff is solid. Appropriate tune at the end.

'Robophobic'? Jaysus.

OldeCinemaSoz

FURY

The best war film since the legendary Sam Peckinpah's CROSS OF IRON. God is a sadist. Indeed.

The ending maybe OTT but who cares? FURY delivers in spades. It's sorta like SAVING PRIVATE RYAN with
the tedious middle section CUT OUT.

8/10

Harry Palmr

Just a pity the tank crew are middled aged. Still that's usually been the case in war films, even the good ones.

OldeCinemaSoz

Harry Palmr wrote: »

Just a pity the tank crew are middled aged. Still that's usually been the case in war films, even the good ones.

I thought THE BOYS IN COMPANY C was pretty good. Even if it was CLICHED.

Schadenfreudia

Godzilla (2013)

A pale shadow on the 1998 version, in every respect - not even the Digital animation matches the earlier version - some failure after 16 years of rapid progress in the area.

The lead character is one of the most wooden I've ever seem in a Hollywood movie...I could on......just give this a miss unless you've already wasted the time :rolleyes:

Tindie

Miracle On 34th Street 1973

I have seen the other two movies, never saw this movie before , this was not as good as the original or 1994 remake

I just could not get into this movie at all, This movie was missing something, I can not put my finger on it!

I just didn't enjoy it, while i was watching, it took me while to get into the movie, as most of the movie scene from scene remake but scenes felt empty and still

the acting was okay from the cast

4/10

SarahBM

Just watched Defiance, starring Daniel Craig and Liev Schreiber. Excellent film based on the true story of how the Bielski brothers managers to hide Jews in the forests of Belo-Russia during the Nazi invasion in WWII.
Highly recommend it.

bcklschaps

Watched two DVD movies over the weekend.

"Two faces of January" - 7 stars out of 10. Thriller, very high quality cast (Viggo Mortensen, Kirsten Dunst, Oscar Isaac) and beautiful cinematography (Greek islands in the 1960's), good story but needed a good ending ... it didn't really get it.

"Some Velvet morning" - 9 out of 10. Relationship drama. A tour-de-force from Stanley Tucci. Not one for the kids or the granny...as its pretty adult content and maybe a tad slow moving ...but thoroughly rewarding for anybody who sticks with it.

Mizu_Ger

OSS117 Lost in Rio:
Wasn't as hilarious as I was expecting, but I suspect that a lot of this film was lost in translation. I would like to know what any French speakers thought of it. There's still a good few laughs though and duJardin is brilliant. The humour is a broad mix. Lots of unPC stuff and Naked Gun type silliness. Worth a watch.

ButtersSuki

The Stag on the insistence of the OH as she heard it was "brilliant". Though in my heart and soul I expected it to be a great stinking pile of shoyte, I was unpleasantly surprised to find it was way, way, wayworse than I had ever possibly imagined. Now before I get hammered by people saying I'm just having a pop at an easy target here I just want to state that up to this point I liked Peter McDonald (Paths to Freedom and Spin the Bottle are right up there for me in terms of Irish work, and I can even tolerate him in Moone Boy) but it's hard to know exactly what he was at here. He took on too much what with writing and starring (amongst other things) in this anyway.

It's hard to know where to start on this - it really is a clusterfück of cliches, bad/woeful acting, happy ending BS, pathetic characters and a story that's at best, crap. Throw in a whole load of SoCoDu cliches and stereotypes that would have been old 10 years ago and you may begin to understand my frustration at it. I think it tries to be all things to all people but fails miserably on all fronts. One thing is does do exceptionally well however is pull off that rare feat of being a comedy without any jokes, laughs or even slapstick moments.

Early in the film we're introduced to Finnán and a grumpy wedding planner and there's this awkward back and forth of attempted pronunciation of his name between the two - the irony being that there is no recognised Irish name Finnán - it's Fionnán, with an "o". So they can't even get that basic element correct. Good start lads. Never mind the focking accent- which is another thing, it's so Ross O'Carroll Kelly like in places it's just lazy.

Later we're introduced to "The Machine", played by McDonald. Now here's an accent that's all over the place - he's so comically & stereotypically exaggerated D4 as he starts to speak I genuinely asked the OH "is he supposed to be American in this?". The accent mellows after a while but also kicks into full yank mode on a number of occasions. But it's McDonald's Yellow-Pack Stifler (from the American Pie movies) that is the dangle berry on this turd. The character is boringly predictable, poorly written, OTT-acted and that's being kind.

Then there's the contrived U2 speech and follow-up link to closing scene (if you've seen it you'll know what I'm referring to) - really? Are you that lazy to put a U2 cliche in a cliche Oirish movie? There's so much more I could criticise about it but I'll try and stop now as I could go on forever on this - I really could.

That's my review now after watching it on Friday. I think I was actually angry on Friday night after wasting my time being insulted by this poor excuse for entertainment. I've never left a cinema or turned off a movie before, but this was the closest I ever came. Avoid at all costs. I've had funnier doses of diarrhea. An appallingly bad 1/10 - and I seriously considered giving it 0.

Judgement Day

ButtersSuki - I've had "The Stag" on my list for a while now and suspected the worst having heard all the rave reviews - now that you confirmed it I'll have to pick up a copy.

Snake Plisken

Guardians of the Galaxy :- having a real hate for all things Marvel outside of Sam Raimi's first two Spider-Man's and Kenneth Brannagh's Take on Thor, I wasn't expecting much from this offering from the Marvel camp but wow was I blown away watching this, James Gunn has mad a fantastic superhero movie, it's funny, has some emotional scenes and some great performances a brilliant soundtrack (which I purchased today) and a major bonus no Robert Downey Jnr or Samual Jackson trying to link in to the rest of the crapoy Marvel universe. It's out on Blu-Ray on Friday and I'll be buying it! 9/10

Harry Palmr

Mizu_Ger wrote: »

OSS117 Lost in Rio:
Wasn't as hilarious as I was expecting, but I suspect that a lot of this film was lost in translation. I would like to know what any French speakers thought of it. There's still a good few laughs though and duJardin is brilliant. The humour is a broad mix. Lots of unPC stuff and Naked Gun type silliness. Worth a watch.

I saw OSS117 Cairo, Nest of Spies on BBC Four last year, and loved it I have to say as you say Dujardin is a hoot - perfect pitch and timing. The fight between the two increasingly naked females was also top notch

Mizu_Ger

Harry Palmr wrote: »

I saw OSS117 Cairo, Nest of Spies on BBC Four last year, and loved it I have to say as you say Dujardin is a hoot - perfect pitch and timing. The fight between the two increasingly naked females was also top notch

There were some cheap laughs in the Rio film during the hospital "chase" sequence and at a beach party where bottoms were on show. As cheap as they were I laughed at both! I'll give the Cairo film a spin this weekend.

charlie_says

ButtersSuki wrote: »

The Stag on the insistence of the OH as she heard it was "brilliant". Though in my heart and soul I expected it to be a great stinking pile of shoyte, I was unpleasantly surprised to find it was way, way, wayworse than I had ever possibly imagined. ....I've had funnier doses of diarrhea.

:pac: I like your review.

nicklauski

Bad Words

Starring and Directed by Jason Bateman.
He's a 40 year old man who enters kids spelling bee's (that's a test to me & you) as he's found a loop hole to exploit. It has it's moments. Mainly when Bateman goes off on one of his foul mouth tirades.
It's good for a few laughs, I wasn't expecting too much when watching it but was watchable all the same.
5/10
Will definitely broaden your vocabulary after watching it.
Slubberdegullion.

johnny_ultimate

Whiplash is a both a classical and thoroughly modern cinematic two-hander. Like many films past, it boasts fantastic performance and a whip smart script. But it's also a film that offers lots of powerful audio and visual storytelling - moments when the dialogue drops away and everything is communicated in a much more visceral manner.

The basic story involves a young musical academy drummer Andrew (Miles Teller) who is invited by a tough but brilliant teacher Fletcher (JK Simmons) to join the 'elite' school band. Simmons is a force of nature here. He is a convincing monster - full of deliciously vile insults and the capability of pushing his students to bleeding point. But he's also a credible human being, with lots of little, carefully judged scenes that expand on his character in subtle and intriguing ways. He pushes his students to a degree that drives them to obsession. Is this regimental practice regime a way of bringing out someone's inner brilliance, or a cruel, destructive, unnatural routine? The film remains neutral - it is based on the filmmaker's own experience - proposing lots of ideas and readings but letting the viewer work through the nuances.

Writer / director Damien Chazelle and his team film everything with a cool Fincher-esque precision. There are a number of exhausting sequences, shot with brutal intimacy and edited to match. Close-ups of sweat and blood are common, and the camera zooms in on the anger, frustration and exhaustion of the characters. Sound wise its impeccable - watch it in a cinema, and let those drums roar.

Everything builds to a magnificent conclusion, in which everything comes together in the best battle scene you'll see in a cinema this year (sorry, The Hobbit). It's intense, brilliantly shot (special kudos to a fresh new twist on the panning shot) and a culmination of the central tensions and conflicts of the film. It pulls both main characters in fascinating new directions, and with a bare minimum of dialogue. This is how you deliver third-act catharsis, and a perfect cut to black.

Boo-urns for the

stealth car crash

scene, though.

Squeedily Spooch

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

Whiplash is a both a classical and thoroughly modern cinematic two-hander. Like many films past, it boasts fantastic performance and a whip smart script. But it's also a film that offers lots of powerful audio and visual storytelling - moments when the dialogue drops away and everything is communicated in a much more visceral manner.

The basic story involves a young musical academy drummer Andrew (Miles Teller) who is invited by a tough but brilliant teacher Fletcher (JK Simmons) to join the 'elite' school band. Simmons is a force of nature here. He is a convincing monster - full of deliciously vile insults and the capability of pushing his students to bleeding point. But he's also a credible human being, with lots of little, carefully judged scenes that expand on his character in subtle and intriguing ways. He pushes his students to a degree that drives them to obsession. Is this regimental practice regime a way of bringing out someone's inner brilliance, or a cruel, destructive, unnatural routine? The film remains neutral - it is based on the filmmaker's own experience - proposing lots of ideas and readings but letting the viewer work through the nuances.

Writer / director Damien Chazelle and his team film everything with a cool Fincher-esque precision. There are a number of exhausting sequences, shot with brutal intimacy and edited to match. Close-ups of sweat and blood are common, and the camera zooms in on the anger, frustration and exhaustion of the characters. Sound wise its impeccable - watch it in a cinema, and let those drums roar.

Everything builds to a magnificent conclusion, in which everything comes together in the best scene of warfare you'll see in a cinema this year (sorry, The Hobbit). It's intense, brilliantly shot (special kudos to a fresh now twist on the panning shot) and a culmination of the central tensions and conflicts of the film. It pulls both main characters in fascinating new directions, and with a bare minimum of dialogue. This is how you deliver third-act catharsis, and a perfect cut to black.

Boo-urns for the

stealth car crash

scene, though.

I thought it was absolutely fantastic, especially the finale. When

Teller walks back on stage and goes off on his own solo and Simmon's character realises what exactly he's doing and starts giving him direction I got chills. Interestingly it's supposed to be a scene where an abused person gives in to their abuser and goes back for more, not a triumphant scene even though it feels that way according to the director. Be interesting to see how people interpret it. And you're right about the cut to black, it leaves the question open if Fletcher found his Charlie Parker, or would Teller's character go off on his own having performed his career moment.

Harry Palmr

Your Highness - nah I didn't really, gave it about 15 minutes then realised it wasn't going to get any better so went through the rest in 30 second PVR jumps. Looks like they spent too much time and money on everything but the script.

ButtersSuki

Harry Palmr wrote: »

Your Highness - nah I didn't really, gave it about 15 minutes then realised it wasn't going to get any better so went through the rest in 30 second PVR jumps. Looks like they spent too much time and money on everything but the script.

You prob missed the very nice shots of Natalie Portman's ass then - just about the only redeeming feature of the movie.

Bipolar Joe

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

Whiplash

I really want to see this. Scannain is telling me the 16th of January, with Birdman on the 2nd and Big Hero 6 on the 30th. A friend in California has seen them all already, and it's driving me insane .

Also, managed to avert my eyes for the spoiler when quoting! Totally unrelated, but was proud of my will power.