What have you watched recently: Electric Boogaloo

Liam McPoyle

quickbeam wrote: »

I saw it when it came out, and really loved it. Different strokes, I guess.

I didnt love it but I did enjoy it. Thought it was good, silly fun.

jcsoulinger

Harrocks wrote: »

Watched Foxhunter and Birdman on the bank holiday.Foxhunter was a slow burner it gave me an uncomfortable feeling throughout 7/10.Birdman on the otherhand just annoyed the heart out of me how did it win oscars?3/10.I just want to be entertained by a movie.

Everyone wants to be entertained by the movies they choose to watch, What entertains Bill may not entertain Ted. I really liked Birdman.

e_e

How is Birdman not entertaining?

Duggy747

Mad Max 2: Road Warrior

Getting ready for Fury Road I thought I'd put this on since I hadn't seen it in so long.

Still an amazingly cool film and, by many reviews so far, Miller seems to have recaptured the spirit of this film in the Fury Road.

GF never seen it and wanted to watch it, this was her favourite scene :pac:

Mickeroo

Duggy747 wrote: »

Mad Max 2: Road Warrior

Getting ready for Fury Road I thought I'd put this on since I hadn't seen it in so long.

Still an amazingly cool film and, by many reviews so far, Miller seems to have recaptured the spirit of this film in the Fury Road.

GF never seen it and wanted to watch it, this was her favourite scene :pac:

A lot of cinemas are screening Mad Max 1 & 2 this Wednesday before Fury Road comes out just so you know.

Duggy747

Mickeroo wrote: »

A lot of cinemas are screening Mad Max 1 & 2 this Wednesday before Fury Road comes out just so you know.

Just spotted that, late enough showings but I'm glad I watched it yesterday.

johnny_ultimate

I find 'being entertained' is one of those weird, intangible demands people have of films, almost meaningless. Sure there are plenty of films out there that are merely enjoyable, little more or little less, but there are countless that offer far more than that, and require wildly varying levels of engagement and rewards.

Anyway...

A Hen in the Wind - Atypical Ozu in several respects, but incredibly intriguing because of it - in some respects reminiscent of Mizoguchi as much as Ozu himself. Here Ozu deals both literally and allegorically with post-War Japan. The first half follows a wife still waiting for her husband to return, while the second carefully switches perspectives to the recently repatriated husband. It's one of the darker, more melodramatic of Ozu's films, but still full of the nuances and empathy present throughout his work. Stylistically it sits right on the periphery of his 'masterworks' period, and shows him continuing to experiment and develop the elegant camerawork and editing that defined the many masterpieces that followed.

Rewatched It's Such a Beautiful Day. Only a few months have elapsed since my first viewing (and several viewings of World of Tomorrow in the interim), but a film this rich and dense still feels legitimately fresh and exciting second time around. Fiercely emotional yet vibrantly experimental, Hertzfeldt's debut is an extraordinary explosion of ideas, tangents and tones that nevertheless achieve startling clarity and coherence. Formally adventurous and thematically complex, It's Such a Beautiful Day is that rare sort of film that is difficult to digest in one sitting, yet also feels like you've just completed a marathon. I mean that in the nicest way.

e_e

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

I find 'being entertained' is one of those weird, intangible demands people have of films, almost meaningless. Sure there are plenty of films out there that are merely enjoyable, little more or little less, but there are countless that offer far more than that, and require wildly varying levels of engagement and rewards.

To me "I was entertained." means little more than "It distracted me and held my attention for 2 hours I guess." It's not much at all compared to a film that elicits a genuine reaction like being moved, thrilled, challenged, provoked, scared, intrigued etc etc. I'd rather have my patience tested watching a movie than just being left to sit passively and comfortably for 2 hours getting absolutely nothing out of the experience.

Reminds me of Roger Ebert summing up a really mediocre movie by saying "Well something is moving on the screen so you look to see what it is..."

Glebee

Oblivion: Quite enjoyed this Tom Cruise sci/fi romp. Not as good as his other recent sci/fi film Edge of Tomorrow but still ok, 7/10 from me.

Inside Llewyn Davies: Really enjoyed this comedy drama and loved the soundtrack. 8/10.

The Trip: Ok not a film but an 6 episode mini documentry type thingy starting Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon. Have to say I really really enjoyed this ad though Steve Coogan character came across brilliant as the sad lonely figure.
The Northern English country side also looked spectacular. 9/10.

Joshua J

The Butterfly effect: I'm not sure the ending was deliberately hilarious but I literally laughed out loud. Poor show all round.

Jupiter Ascending: This got a hard time by the critics and I think the reason might be, since the Wachowskis were involved, they were expecting something new and different but what they got was old and familiar. An old school fairytale. It reminded me of Dark Crystal, Neverending Story etc, these classics from my youth and I feel in time Jupiter Ascending will sit happily along with those.

pixelburp

Attended the double-bill showing of Mad Max and Mad Mad: Road Warrior last night in Cineworld. Such great, yet contrasting films. Mad Max 1 is beginning to show its age, the rough edges and borderline amateur production taking some of the sheen off the otherwise exciting car chases. As for Road Warrior, well, it still looks fantastic on the big-screen & holds up to this day. Full of memorable scenes and great if unnamed character. I hate to sound like an old fogey, but even on the umpteenth showing I find the climatic truck chase thrilling and nail-biting, in stark contrast to the CGI cartoon chases I saw in Fast & Furious 7 where I just couldn't care.

Tipsy McSwagger

Shoah

A documentary about the holocaust that doesn't use archival footage, just former inmates of the concentration camps, guards and historians being interviewed by the filmmaker Claude Lanzmann. It's over 9 hours long but absolutely mesmerizing. It's often described as the best documentary ever made and I can't disagree with that, 5/5*.

pixelburp

Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome (1985)

Cineworld's Mad Max evening didn't include the much maligned third film from the Mad Max franchise, so figured I'd complete the set before seeing the fourth entry that everyone's raving about.

And you know what? Thunderdome's nowhere near as bad as its reputation might have you think. In fact, I loved it, it was fun adventure, tinged with sadness for a world lost.

Ok, sure, it has absolutely none of the physical, full-injected motor mayhem of the first two films - it's certainly not as overtly adult and violent as number 2 - but that didn't make Thunderdome any less enjoyable. It easily fits in the Mad Max world, showing another two sets of warped communities that sprung up after the apocalypse (this time retconned to an actual nuclear war). People scoff at the presence of Tina Turner, but she made for a great 'villain', though she was far from that really; and the world of Bartertown, its culture and strange patois (ditto the lost tribe of children) was fascinating and highly entertaining.

Tony EH

I've never understood the hate that this film gets. It's just bizarre. It's a decent film as far as I'm concerned.

It knocks the socks off the first film that's for sure.

pixelburp

Tony EH wrote: »

I've never understood the hate that this film gets. It's just bizarre. It's a decent film as far as I'm concerned.

It knocks the socks off the first film that's for sure.

To be fair to the haters, with the disappearance of the motorised carnage, as well as the general sense of a brutal, violent future that the first two films had, Thunderdome was always going to disappoint. But what I like is how Miller just went in a different direction, pitching a different idea and perspective in the Wasteland. That not every new community would turn into something primordial and vicious. It all had this bittersweet taste to it, and I loved the creative use of language; both Bartertown and the tribe of children using an inventive style of talking & rhyming speech patterns that made everyone (bar Max) seem like they had regressed to childhood. 'Bust a deal and face the wheel' n' all.

MagicMarker

I don't really recall much of the first two movies, except for the fact I didn't like them. I did like the third though. Haven't seen any since I was a kid though.

Harry Palmr

Alan Partridge - Alpha Papa

Obviously rather different to the various tv series it being a film but still full of great moment that are quintessentially Partridge-esque. Missed one good little joke when he didn't say "like Joe Lynn Turner - I Surrender" but otherwise good stuff. He also has an excellent taste in pure pop. Who else would think to feature Sparks and Roachford?

fin12

Harry Palmr wrote: »

Alan Partridge - Alpha Papa

Obviously rather different to the various tv series it being a film but still full of great moment that are quintessentially Partridge-esque. Missed one good little joke when he didn't say "like Joe Lynn Turner - I Surrender" but otherwise good stuff. He also has an excellent taste in pure pop. Who else would think to feature Sparks and Roachford?

Ya thought that film was good too.

pq0n1ct4ve8zf5

Hobo With A Shotgun. Does what it says on the tin, really. Blood, guts, and tits in glorious technicolor. Rutger Hauer plays it totally straight, which makes the whole thing about 15% better.

Genuinely laughed out loud a few times

especially at him with the cardboard "you grow it we cut it sign", and him giving a speech about the darkness of life to the newborns (which actually makes them start crying)

. Personally, if the day ever comes where I dislike a film that has the line "when life gives you razor blades, make a baseball bat covered in razor blades!" then I'll know I've lost my way in life.

Felt a bit long even at 1hr26 though. Pretty pointless to criticise a film like this on the basis of things like realism, characterisation, or even basic good taste, but it should at least be consistently entertaining, and this was too repetitive for that to happen. Still fairly enjoyable, 6/10

Arghus

Run All Night- Nessonage.

Liaming it up in the big city. Playing -for seemingly the third or fourth time in a row - a washed out alcoholic. It should feel complicated. Bear with me now....

His characters life in the world of the movie is one of a man who lives broken and befuddled, at the bottom of the nearest bottle. Liamos past ability to be the ultimate killing machine has helped his brother Ed Harris, to become the resident top don in the world of the local underworld. This fact has, in turn, helped mutate the scion of Harris into a monstrous, drug fueled, homicidal ego manic, riding on the coattails of family success, and all that. All this becomes a bit of a messy situation when the hubris and ambition, that Neeson has helped create, has murderous consequences. Resulting in son of Neeson - who is estranged from his own father due to his murderous past -becoming target number one for the forces that he, Almighty Liam, helped create. So Liam is faced with a situation, where he has to kill the monster he himself has birthed and win back the respect of his son, through the very means that helped alienate him in the first place.

Deep right? Nah not really. Run All Night could have amounted to something more on an emotional or thematic level, but instead is just happy to be as dumb as a bag of rocks. The main character is initially pretty cut up about all that killing in his past, but soon enough he's back at it, with his formerly shakey alcoholic paws confidently putting bullets through the eyes of baddies, at distances of hundreds of feet. That old reliable muscle memory.

A bit like the dependable acting skills of Neeson and Harris. They both do their best with material that could have been powerful, but instead is formulaic and fairly stupid. I don't know why the central dilemma couldn't just have been solved without a lot of bloodshed. It was fairly obvious that the Harris son was a nutter, who was better off dead and who was going to kill his cousin in cold blood to boot. Not really a lot to do in that case, maybe just chalk it off, and avoid the murderous blood feud. It's only going to end bad.

It's not as bad as the Taken sequels, or as dull and boring as A Walk Amongst The Tombstones. Neeson makes it better than it really is, with his charisma alone. But I was left pining for high quality trash, like Non-Stop and that's a pretty poor state of affairs really.

Tipsy McSwagger

Star Wars Ep 5 Attack of the Clones - A film that manages the impossible, to be an even worse film than The Phantom Menace. It hasn't got one decent thing going for it, awful awful awful, 1/5*.

Ex Machina - I really enjoyed it and don't want to spoil it for anyone as I believe you're better off watching without knowing too much, 4/5*.

fin12

Anyone seen the age of adeline film with Blake Lively? thinking of going seeing it

Myrddin

Just watched all five of the original Planet of the Apes movies, in relatively quick succession. Honestly, without having any idea of how their viewed by minds greater than mine, I really enjoyed them all. Next up is the 2001 Walberg remake...

Arghus

Dumb and Dumber Too - This got an airing, as a potential please-all, none too brain-taxing couple of hours. Ugghh. If, like me, you have fond memories of the first Dumb and Dumber, do yourself a favour - Just watch that movie again. Now that was a funny movie. The sequel, by comparison, is a real stinker.

Such a shame really. This one may as well be subtitled -Faded Glory. It's a mystifying viewing experience. There's a lot of comedic talent here, on display onscreen and behind the camera but yet, it just doesn't work. It isn't funny. Most jokes are telegraphed long in advance, arrive without surprise and then totally outstay their welcome. Yes, I'm being very critical of a unapologetically silly comedy with low pretensions. But with so many gags repeatedly failing to ignite, I can't even admit to admiring the sheer silliness of it all. You can't move for all the misfiring clunkers. And I ended up hating it.

I can forgive the dumbness of the plot, that's fine, but it's hard to forgive the overall sloppiness. So many scenes feel like they are first takes or B-Roll footage. I have to wonder what was going on during production. The film is filled with known comedic actors, and yet so much of it is dead, tired or filled with bad timing. Did no-one among the professional actors think, "there has to be a funnier way to approach this scene"? It takes some sort of weird black magic to make such talented people die on-screen like that, or maybe the material is just so crap that mortality is unavoidable. I felt terribly bad for Jim Carrey throughout. The guy is one of the greatest screen comedians who has ever lived and now he's reduced to...this?

The plot adheres to the original to a slavish extent, and you can't hep but get nostalgic for those better days of yore. What's probably the worst thing about it, in the end, is the fate of the two central characters.

The film has a lot going for it initially, to sucker you in. Who would pass up the chances to spend some time getting reacquainted with the lovable twosome? Whose denseness brought smiles to millions back in the day. Surely the whole point of the exercise is to witness another run-around by Harry and Lloyd? In the first film they were Dumb and Dumber. In this they're Retarded and Clinically Brain-Dead. They aren't even playing the same dumbasses, just far cruder, stoopider, less funny versions. So it isn't a sequel in any meaningful sense, not even a re-tread of past glories, just a tired cash in trying to hood-wink you by past associations.

Be warned.

SarahBM

Watched Reel Steel last night on RTE2 after Eurovision.

I was really pleasantly surprised. Great film

Plus, that kid can dance!

johnny_ultimate

The Tribe - There's plenty to appreciate here. The audacious formal choice to film in Russian sign language and exhibit it without translation is a worthy one. Director Miroslav Slaboshpitsky is articulate in cinematic language, and even communicates many of its characters and narrative details in a raw, purer form - while some specifics remain endearingly ambiguous without explicit explanation, there's a real pleasure in seeing the story unfold this way. The film's long takes are very impressive, particularly because of the amount of camera movement and energy, making everything feel lively and unpredictable in spite of a considered, often glacial pacing. And there's plenty to chew on too, including a subtly allegorical undercurrent that is only more intriguing given situations in Ukraine following the film's inception and production.

Yet I couldn't shake the feeling that in some ways this is also 'Eastern European arthouse cinema 101'. The deeply uncomfortable violence, raw sex scenes and a prolonged, graphic back-street abortion sequence (no camera movement there) have the desired effect, especially a genuinely horrific conclusion. Yet at the same time they seem almost gratuitous, daring the audience to look away. The Romanian New Wave is full of gritty, explicit tales of hopelessness and despair - and despite coming from a different country, The Tribe's no-nonsense portrayal of horror and miserableness felt at times numbing, and can I even suggest obvious?

A Woman Under The Influence - A stunning piece of work. It has that meandering feel of all Cassavetes films, almost as surreal as it is realistic. Yet here the emotions are so powerful, but totally unsentimental, that is has an edge over his already impressive filmography. Gena Rowland's performance is one of the all-time greats, while Peter Falk also impresses as the beleaguered husband himself driven to extremes. The film remains admirably critical, and while Rowland's character is the one suffering a very visible breakdown, the writer-director also explores the questionable social norms and gender roles occurring all around her. It's a lengthy film, but doesn't feel it given how raw and hypnotic everything is. The film, like its characters, almost feels like it's constantly on the edge of collapse, a misjudged edit away from total anarchy and failure. But control is retained, and the result is one of the most remarkable achievements of 1970s American cinema.

Paddy Samurai

I had forgotten how good Heath Ledger was.I watched this film a lot when it first came out.But have not watched it in years .I watched it tonight and again
realised what a massive loss his death was to the film industry.

Really miss the guy and the amazing performances that could have been.:(

RIP Heath

FloatingVoter

The Age Of Adaline - makes Terms of Endearment look like a slasher flick. It's sentimental mush but well made sentimental mush. And if Star Wars need a young Han Solo for flashbacks...they're got their guy here.

Big Game - brainless hokum. It'll be on every Christmas until doomsday (for when daddy has had ten too many beers and can't work out the complex plotting of the Indiana Jones franchise). I could have done with more Samuel L Jackson being the least gung-ho onscreen US President in living memory.

charlie_says

35 Shots of Rum

Excellent, subtle and immensely intriguing French drama that centres on a quiet troubled train driver and his daughter living together in modern day Paris.

One of those films that draws you in with such natural acting (the entire cast just comes together and you almost forget that they are acting at times) and skilful direction even though the subject matter is just the trials and tribulations of daily life.

Has one particular scene of a big night out on the town that looks like it's ruined from the get go, then turns out be one of those brilliant accidental nights out with your friends and loved ones, only to go pear shaped again. Captivating stuff.

At times quite somber and yet at others quite touching. A really real gem.

Alien^3

Hadn't seen this in years. Fincher directs, this was the longer (I think) directors cut. Not the my favourite in the series but not a bad movie either. The prison planet is a great setting for the grim reality of being stuck planetside with a xenomorph.

One major gripe was the sound though, loads of the dialogue is pretty much intelligible due to crap sound design. Probably about 30% of it is just shouting where you have no idea what they are saying.

Alien Resurrection

The worst of the series. There are some great parts to it and some good characters but it tries too hard to be the everyman sci fi movie and just comes off as cheesy loads of times. Great aliens though, really cool models. Ripley is brilliant in this. Probably the last time I'll ever see this one again, but worth a look only for the sake of completeness in the series. Terrible ending though.

iomega

Myrddin wrote: »

Just watched all five of the original Planet of the Apes movies, in relatively quick succession. Honestly, without having any idea of how their viewed by minds greater than mine, I really enjoyed them all. Next up is the 2001 Walberg remake...

I love the original series. Even the bad ones.