What have you watched recently: Electric Boogaloo

Pierce_1991

SarahBM wrote: »

Nightcrawler - very different film. Gyllenhaal is brilliant in it. Very disturbing!

This is one of very few examples of a film I was really looking forward to that I ended up really enjoying. Jake is great, thought he might have got an oscar nomination but it's not a very Academy style performance.

e_e

I'll be buying that on blu-ray almost just to see that scene where Jake laughs manically watching the TV while ironing.

e_e

Watched Now You See Me last night. Worst plot twist in movie history?

pixelburp

What We Do in the Shadows (2014)

Enjoyably daft, and while not something that'll produce uproarious laughter, it had a consistent, bubbling through line of amusing juxtapositions between the monstrousness of the vampires and their mundane, suburban existence. It didn't skewer the genre by any means, but was happy to play with them a little. Rhys Darby's turn as the leader of a pack of werewolves were the film's biggest sources of proper laughs.

batnolan

Enemy (2013)

Sublime.

Fury (2014)

Enjoyable tripe. Some really cheesy scenes.

Nightcrawler (2014)
Jake Gyllenhall's performance and dialogue is sublime. Really enjoyable movie but Gyllenhall perhaps overshadows the movie completely.

TICKLE_ME_ELMO

Not Suitable For Children

Australian kind of rom-com about a guy who finds out he's got cancer and the treatment will make him infertile. He realises he really want a kid and now has only 3 weeks to make that happen.Enter his female roommate who takes pity on his pathetic attempts and suggests a more professional arrangement.The inevitable happens.

It's alright. It's a bit different from your standard Rom Com but it seems to be a bit confused about where exactly it wants to be genre wise. Sarah Snook is very good as the female lead. She looks a bit like Emma Stone?

Kolido

The Loft

Remake of a Belgium flick. I kinda enjoyed it but I feel I shouldn't have. The acting and dialogue are pretty bad and there are loads of plotholes. Worth a watch if you have nothing better to do but I wouldn't go out of my way to see it.

Would be keen to hear someone else's opinion on this one.

5-6/10

Sam Mac

e_e wrote: »

Watched Now You See Me last night. Worst plot twist in movie history?

I loathed this film. What a waste of time and great actors.

ButtersSuki

e_e wrote: »

Watched Now You See Me last night. Worst plot twist in movie history?

God I HATED that movie - the missus made be watch it a friend/acquaintance of hers is in it (yes, there's an Irish person in it).

They're making a sequel if you can believe that!

scouttio

TICKLE_ME_ELMO wrote: »

Not Suitable For Children

Sarah Snook is very good as the female lead. She looks a bit like Emma Stone?

Well, I'm sold

TICKLE_ME_ELMO

scouttio wrote: »

Well, I'm sold

Note the ? in there.

scouttio

TICKLE_ME_ELMO wrote: »

Note the ? in there.

I googled her, I'm unsold again

Duggy747

Dumb & Dumber To

Woof, this was a slog to get through. The first 30 minutes had very little in the way of laughs and the room was just silent watching it, wasn't a good sign at all. Loved the 1st film growing up but I kept my expectations low for this one.

Lloyd has definitely turned into a real asshole this time, he had sprinkles of it last time and motives for some of his antics but here he's just an out and out dickhead. Carrey seemed off delivering a lot of the jokes, to be honest.

Jeff Daniels just slipped into his role as Harry like a glove, he's exactly the same from the 1st film and remained likeable. :pac:

It did pick up in the middle with some decent laughs but they were too few and far between with some awkward jokes that had the camera linger too long.

Curiosity about the sequel satisfied, I'll be happy if there won't be a 3rd film.

Frank O. Pinion

Duggy747 wrote: »

Jeff Bridges just slipped into his role as Harry like a glove, he's exactly the same from the 1st film and remained likeable.

"Yeah, well, you know, that's just, like, your opinion, man."


And Harry was different! He had a lisp in the sequel that he didn't have in the original.

SarahBM

Selma - goosebumps!!! Fantastic film and a shame that Ava DuVernay didn't get any recognition for a fantastic film at the Oscars.

SUNGOD

On a great run recently the last 4 I saw were
Blue ruin
Kill list
Whiplash
The imitation game
Only a matter of time till the good run ends

charlie_says

Recently saw:

The Hunt for the Red October

Great fun altogether. Dates quite well. Sean Connery (epic casting) is the quintessential Lithuanian Naval Commander with a Scottish accent ever to cruise the depths of the North Atlantic in a state of the art Russian missile sub in this gloriously cheesy 90's Cold War romp. Actually has a pretty heavy weight cast in fairness. Still fun.

Iron Man

Having successfully ignored most of the Marvel films I thought I would give this a chance. Won't be doing that again! Medicore CGI laden rubbish.

American Sniper

Was expecting better from director Clint Eastwood, but it was uninvolved and boreish. Failed to see why this received so much hype. Bradley Cooper was pretty good in this, he really made the guy come across as a bit of a meat head at times.

Del.Monte

The Hunt for Red October is a good thriller and Sean Connery is, well, Sean Connery.

Iron Man - inflicted on me twice during mid-term break by my 12 year old - gets three of these.

Pierce_1991

Iron Man is great!

rob316

Ah Robert Downey Jr is pretty good in Ironman he is well cast for the character like. Things like Paltrow make it a bad movie though, she is an awful actress.

Lucas Hood

John Wick.

Surprisingly very good. Lots of violence which I love.

delbertgrady

Still Alice
Like a lot of films (Crazy Heart springs to mind), it's an ultimately forgettable movie with a high-profile, Oscar-winning performance. Julianne Moore is very good, but it's bordering on TV movie territory and due to the subtlety of Moore's playing, the gradual deterioration of Alice's condition (for the most part) leads to a considerable (unspecified) leap forward in time in the final reel, effectively leading the film to be over before you know it.
It's obviously a sad and poignant story, and maybe its understated style is why I felt it lacked substance, but it's very much a sort of just-add-water style of film-making. Keep bringing in those plaintive piano chords, let's have a cello in a minor key, throw in some faux 8mm footage for flashback sequences, let's have Kristen Stewart playing with her hair. It's not terrible, but it has nothing to distinguish it apart from Julianne Moore's performance.

ManOnFire

When The Game Stands Tall
Your typical high-school football flick with Jim Caviezel and an almost unrecognizable Michael Chiklis. Worth a watch but this type of film has been done before and in my opinion done better.

Cake
Great performance from Jennifer Aniston but aside from that its very forgettable. Found my attention waning the longer it wore on!

Callanutd

Horrible Bosses 2
Very poor, I enjoyed the first one but this was just a slog to get through.

Ageyev

Anaconda (1997)

Guilty pleasure B-movie trash here. Better than Snakes on a... There's quite a cast of characters with Jon Voight, Jen Lopez, Ice Cube, Eric Stoltz and even Owen Wilson! They chase a giant snake up a river in what feels like a cheesy college film remake of Herzog's Aguirre by way of Spielberg's Jaws.

The computer effects are primitive and the shocks are ineffecitve but it's fun for what it is and a bit of a curio considering the cast.

johnny_ultimate

Mon Oncle - watched this a few years ago and was impressed if a little bemused by it. But having worked my way through the full Tati filmography, and grown more comfortable with his style (this was the first of his I ever watched), revisiting it was a delight. The sheer precision and artistry of his comedy was astounding, almost every shot a perfectly framed gag, and all serving the film's playful yet probing themes and mood. Playtime I'd still rank as his definitive masterwork, but Mon Oncle is too one of the great cinematic comedies, and one of the boldest, sharpest directorial visions in all of cinema. Shots like this... well they just make me gasp and laugh at the same time.

Parade - Watched this a few weeks ago, and it's Tati's swansong. It's a smaller film than his other work, almost by design - simply a 'parade' of circus performances. The film is shot on several different film stocks, so significant chunks like quite rough on the TV cameras. Yet for Tati fans there are still many pleasures to be found - there's still a great artistry to the film's construction, and watching the great man having a ball performing some of his classic routines is a joy. But it's the ending that hits hardest - Tati subtly shifting focus to two small children, claiming the props as their own. It's a poignant celebration of play - perhaps the single word that best encapsulates the great director's oeuvre and Tati quietly slips off into the background without fanfare, passing the baton to a new generation. A truly beautiful curtain call.

Pierce_1991

Grave of the Fireflies (1988)

Saw a headline for a review which said this is the best film you'll never want to see again. Got to say, it's not a million miles off that. Got an English dubbed version which was a bit annoying as I'd probably have preferred the subs, that said they did do a good job on the dub. Very sad movie, a real tear jerker for sure. Beautiful animation too. 8/10

Callanutd

Foxcatcher

Finally got around to this last night. Not sure what to make of it. 3 very good central performances. Just an awkward watch though. Felt uncomfortable all the way through. It is very bleak and the sense of forboding just hangs over you from the start.

ButtersSuki

Rosemary's Baby (2014 mini series version) with Zoe Saldana, Carole Bouquet and Jason Isaacs. Watched all 4 episodes back to back last night. It's grand, kinda like an MTV-type remake of the original. I only watched the original for the first time late last year and was disappointed in it to be honest given all I'd heard so wasn't expecting too much from this but, as I said earlier, it's grand. The plot remains pretty much the same as the original save for a few tweaks (setting moved to Paris, husband has a different occupation etc). The worst thing about it however is Patrick J. Adams' performance.....he's got all the charisma of Zumo from Fair City in this. 5/10.

johnny_ultimate

Kumiko: The Treasure Hunter

THIS IS A TRUE STORY

So opens Fargo, and so opens Kumiko: The Treasure Hunter. Yet while the former used the disclaimer as a deadpan gag, it's a much trickier line when it comes to Kumiko.

The Zellner Brothers' film is heavily inspired by the Coen Brothers' film - indeed, it's integral to the plot. Rinko Kikuchi plays an office worker who becomes obsessed with the buried suitcase in Fargo. With her life in Tokyo becoming more and more insular and unhappy, she opts to travel to Minnesota and travel to real-world Fargo USA to retrieve the suitcase and its valuable contents.

The film is inspired by the media's distortion and misunderstanding of an actual true - and tragic - story, and therein lies the film's metatextual complexity. This is a story where the lines between fact and fiction, dreams and reality, legend and truth become increasingly blurry, and we all see this through the perspective of an unstable, deluded and mentally disturbed protagonist. Kikuchi's is sometimes cast as the token Japanese actress (kind of like a younger, female Ken Watanabe) but with films like this one remembers that she is above all a terrific actress when given the opportunity. Her edgy, paranoid realisation of Kumiko is subtle and engaging, and she manages to express a lot with a minimum of dialogue.

Truth be told Kumiko can be an emotionally distant film at times (matching the frosty Minnesotan landscapes and impersonal Tokyo exteriors - Kumiko's red-riding hood-like outfit often the only bold colour in scenes), and it's pacing unhurried, occasionally to the point of frustrating. But it's a film that has grown on me more and more since watching it a few hours ago, with the ramifications of its themes and contexts making more and more sense with the knowledge of the story that inspired the film. Its ending is particularly well-handled - rather abrupt in action, but as the credits roll its seemingly contradictory registers become more and more potent, both devastating and oddly celebratory. It's a final reminder, though, that this film is one operating on layers other than face value.

Even a quick glance at the reviews shows a film that has understandably divided critics. But certainly I'd be closer to David Ehrlich's wildly enthusiastic response (and IMO a perceptive one) than Peter Bradshaw's wildly dismissive one ('twee' to me seems like a particularly unjust description of the film). Not for everybody for sure, but nothing better than some healthy discord