What have you watched recently: Electric Boogaloo

Looper007

Mezcita wrote: »

Sunshine by Danny Boyle (Swizz Netfilx).

One of those movies where you realise twenty minutes before the end that you've seen it before and you still don't like it.

Sorry what are you talking about :pac:.

I love Sunshine, I even love the last third of the film that many seem to knock. I think it's Boyle's greatest film to date and that's saying something.

e_e

LuckyLloyd wrote: »

Everest is technically very impressive and offers a visual feast worthy of 3D IMAX (a rarity I must say). To its credit it avoids the usual big budget thriller clichés but its sombre realism makes for difficult viewing at times. Well worth going to see in IMAX as smaller screens will do it ever less justice.

Went to see this in The Savoy and Me & Earl in The Lighthouse. A 2D trailer played for Everest in Me & Earl and to my surprise it looked a lot better than the 3D version I saw. Found the picture and sound very murky in the Savoy screening. Wouldn't recommend seeing it there tbh.

Mickeroo

LuckyLloyd wrote: »

Everest is technically very impressive and offers a visual feast worthy of 3D IMAX (a rarity I must say). To its credit it avoids the usual big budget thriller clichés but its sombre realism makes for difficult viewing at times. Well worth going to see in IMAX as smaller screens will do it ever less justice.

Glad to hear it, i read Into Thin Air a few years ago so was looking forward to it but was worried when I saw the trailer we'd be getting Cliff Hanger 2.

Liam McPoyle

Went to see Legend earlier.

Enjoyed it well enough, I liked Hardy as Ronnie, Reggie he didnt have to do too much tbh.

The woman playing Frances is stunning, /swoon.

Chain Smoker

Mad Max
Ah man, this is one of the best film viewing experiences I've ever had and the film itself had hardly anything to do with it. Was a classic movie night in an old theatre that's been turned into a live music venue. For $5, I was expecting something along the lines of your standard blu-ray on a projector type dealio but this was totally different! Right from the door they had everyone really playing up the old theatre experience with everything down to the tickets being right. The venue inside was in exceptional condition and worth be worth popping into just to observe the architecture.
Head into the actual theatre itself and there's an organist playing an actual proper big f*ck off huge organ while people fill in. They then played a few newsreels that were clearly 35mm prints and two looney tunes prints (that were worn to ****, but still!), had a really kitsch raffle and played some trailers for coming attractions. Even the bits of film to break apart the individual things (e.g. the "coming soon to this theatre" title and the "don't disturb others during the picture" yoke) were clearly from the time the theatre was a film venue.
The film print of Mad Max was definitely not the best but it's a film that doesn't exactly suffer too much from that so it was grand, there was definitely a fair level of charm to some of the recurring scratches and whatnot too in a "oh god, yeah, I remember these being a thing". Thankfully it wasn't the dubbed version! So yeah, Mad Max itself was pretty fun, I'd say a bit overlong and its budget is exposed a few times. Nice sense of humour about itself and all the action scenes were great (but left you seriously wanting due to their brevity).

The Black Oil

The Colony

Efficiently made, but not great. Someone saw 28 Days Later and thought 'oh, let's try that, with snow', right down the soundtrack.

Harry Palmr

Nosferatu - the Vampire (1979) Dir Werner Herzog

The remake of the F.W. Murnau silent is a slightly strange but compelling version of the Dracula legend which focuses in on the horror of the situation rather than the deeds of the title character. The German language copy I saw felt a bit choppy with a couple of scenes apparently not filmed fully or at all in one case (Harker having sought out Nosferatu the morning after the bite is suddenly and without explanation locked in his room and has to exit via the window). Klaus Kinski is a mournful vampire but Isabelle Adjani is the real star here as Harkers wife, she has little of the first half but dominates the second as the action returns to Wismar. The fine score is by Popol Vuh who cook up something that sounds like Eno and Tangerine Dream combined.

McGrath5

No Country For Old Men

Probably my 7th or 8th to watch this, a proper modern day masterpiece.

conorhal

Zardoz (1974)

A John Boorman film and shot here in Wicklow.
Watching this felt a little like tripping balls without the use of drugs. It's classic dystopian sci-fi that dares to ask the big questions, like where are we headed as a species? The answer in this case it seems, is that in the distant future we (or at least some of us) become immortals living in ivory towers managed by complex computer systems we no longer understand and where the only punishment for transgression (such as negative thought) is aging.

The film stars Sean Connery in a red nappy and sporting a ponytail as an unwitting barbarian enforcer tasked with thinning the heard of humans on behalf of this elite. He is however gifted with an inqusitiveness and cunning atypical of the now bovine humanity and so he sets out to breach the ivory towers of his masters and discover the truth about the world.

It's interesting stuff.

Tony EH

One of the great 70's sci-fi films that seems to get poked in the ribs more than it deserves.

A great gem of a film that was often caught by the unwary channel hopper, when such a thing was such a thing. I remember seeing this on (probably) BBC2 one night when I was a kid and WTF'ing my way through it. But it was one of those pictures that tends to stay with you.

adox

Me And Earl And The Dying Girl.

Really enjoyed this sort of "coming of age" movie. Loads of quirkiness, humour and drama and very little, if any sentimentality in it, which you always felt it could fall in to at any time.

Very strong performances from the whole cast with very well written characters, i laughed a lot and cried a bit and was captivated for the 100 minutes or so of the run time.

Looper007

adox wrote: »

Me And Earl And The Dying Girl.

Really enjoyed this sort of "coming of age" movie. Loads of quirkiness, humour and drama and very little, if any sentimentality in it, which you always felt it could fall in to at any time.

Very strong performances from the whole cast with very well written characters, i laughed a lot and cried a bit and was captivated for the 100 minutes or so of the run time.

Brilliant film and I loved that it didn't go down the route with the main character

Falling in love with the Dying girl Rachel

. Plus any film that loads it's soundtrack with Brian Eno tunes is great for me. I loved the little takes on films they did like for Harold and Maude they did Hairy, Old and Mod etc.... You can see big things happening for Olivia Cooke, and she's certainly easy on the eyes. But the film is stolen by Thomas Mann as Gregg and Ry Cyler as Earl, fantastic chemistry and laugh out moments especially from Cyler. It's very Wes Anderson but it has more heart to it. The scene

When Gregg shows a dying Rachel his finished project is beautiful and touching

. This is a excellent film.

johnny_ultimate

This is the part where I'm 'that guy'.

I saw Me and Earl... on Friday, and I'm still frustrated by it. Given the divisive response it has received, I was at first pleasantly surprised. It was stylish - rather shallow formally, but no doubt Alfonso Gomez-Rejon and Chung-hoon Chung were putting a welcome amount of effort into it. There wasn't a whole lot to the 'sweded' movie remakes, but the references more deeply embedded into the film's cinematography and soundtrack were a joy to spot (I could be reading too much into it, but I definitely got the sense the camera angles became distinctly Ozu-like during a conversation about pillows). I also appreciated how pleasantly non-sentimental it was - there was a knowing casualness to it, able to sneak in moments of sincerity without overplaying them.

Then the second half happened. Stylistically, the film seemed to abandon almost everything that made it memorable. The tone shifted radically to something significantly more melodramatic, but it felt unearned. The vast majority of the characters become more infuriating, highlighted as the one-note gags or plot devices they actually were. There were legitimately emotionally affecting moments, but the lazy contrivances and overblown Eno soundtrack did them a serious disservice. Earl... Earl could effectively be removed from the film from all the difference he makes, almost feels like he was parachuted in from a different film altogether. I had serious issues with how they handled 'the dying girl' - Rachel was given increasingly less screentime, and more and more her suffering felt like a way to advance Greg's plot, not her own. Not quite manic pixie dreamgirl, not quite the consumptive heroine, but definitely a bit of both.

And yet I'm aware that's actually sort of the point. It is, ultimately, a study of egotism ('Me' would have been a more accurate, less catchy title), one teenager's genuine selfishness put to the test, and how he deals with trauma and possible tragedy. I just don't believe it earned it's character developments or moments of catharsis, and the resolution -

where Greg and the audience finally learn something about Rachel after she dies, and how she manages to 'save him' from beyond the grave

- left a bitter taste in my mouth, like it was played as a hopeful conclusion while glossing over the tragedy. It doesn't help, I must add, that Greg is less an unreliable narrator and more a ****ing liar (

what exactly does anybody achieve with his numerous false reassurances that Rachel doesn't actually die?

)

There's a lot of attention paid to the 'me' part, then, but regrettably little to the 'Earl', 'Dying Girl' and a whole lot of other stuff too. It boasts some inspired moments, and is often moving in spite of itself, but I found it overall a frustrating experience that got as much wrong as it did right.

LuckyLloyd

Well, there's probably a lot of technical truth to that opinion. But I'm happy that I allowed myself to be swept up in it. Sometimes it's nice to take the medicine on offer without thinking too much about it.

Sugarlumps

Bob and the Monster: Six years in the making, this documentary film follows outspoken indie-rock hero Bob Forrest, through his life-threatening struggle with addiction, to his transformation into one of the most influential and controversial drug counselors in the US today.

Chain Smoker

Lawrence of Arabia
On a big screen in 70mm (or 4K, I'm sure... I might be drinking the kool aid but it really felt like it needed every ounce of detail to the sand that was there), this is one hell of a treat. As epic as an epic can be, fairly ridiculous but brilliantly so.
Would never even consider watching it at home though; it'd be quite a slog if you weren't repeatedly getting to gaze in awe at all the amazing shots covering your field of vision, and the whole thing seemed incredibly shallow (fairly effectively covered up for the most part by O'Toole being fantastic).


Would love an opportunity to see Ryan's Daughter in 65mm, even if I expect to hate the film I'd love to see what Lean done with Ireland.

The Black Oil

Toy Story 2.

Amazing how they have this knack to pull you into the warmth and life of the characters from the get go. Slinky, Jessie, Bullseye...and the repair scene was great.

Looper007

Had a bit of Clint Eastwood season over the week.

Dirty Harry (1971)

Still to this day probably my favourite Eastwood film and performance, it's gritty and down right nasty police thriller that Hollywood hasn't quite topped, although Se7en and The French Connection are the few that have. Eastwood was never cooler and has there been a villain as good as Andrew Robinson as Scorpio. Add in a cool Lalo Schifrin soundtrack, a tense chase Die hard 3 basically copied for half it's film time. A script that had a rewrite from John Milius and some of the greatest one liners given to cinema.

Magnum Force (1973)

The last truly great Dirty Harry sequel and a film that has grown on me over time, a true gem that deserves rediscovering. Eastwood still oozes coolness as Harry Callahan, I think Force does better then any other Dirty Harry film they give Callahan a group of villains in Vigilante cops they actually give him a legit threat, something the other sequels sadly lack. It's a film that demands rewatching and isn't as gut punching as the first film but with John Milius great script it's a great film in it's own right. I do have a soft spot for The Enforcer (1976) but after that things do become a little silly with the Dirty Harry films.

The Gauntlet (1977)

A underrated gem in Eastwood's canon, cop who has seen better days, hard-living Ben Shockley (Clint Eastwood) is recruited to escort Augustina "Gus" Mally (Sondra Locke), a key witness in a mob trial, from Las Vegas to Phoenix. Shockley finds out soon enough that they been hunted by his own side too and they won't make it back to Phoenix alive. Eastwood mixes it up a little playing a slightly more down on his luck, alcoholic Cop who does the wrong thing at times. Locke, who been in a relationship with Eastwood for most of the 70's and 80's and who actually put in good performances in most of them. Does give her tough escort with a heart a bit of depth although I did notice that Eastwood did have a pattern for Locke characters been beaten and nearly raped in his films (her character is raped in Dirty Harry sequel Sudden Impact) that doesn't sit right even today. But this is a great action thriller.

Neamhshuntasach

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

There's a lot of attention paid to the 'me' part, then, but regrettably little to the 'Earl', 'Dying Girl' and a whole lot of other stuff too. It boasts some inspired moments, and is often moving in spite of itself, but I found it overall a frustrating experience that got as much wrong as it did right.

From the title I always expected it to be heavily 'me' focused. To me the 'dying girl' implied an inconvenience to 'me'.

Del.Monte

Two nights, two different moods required two very different movies.



Friday night - stone cold sober - and in the mood for a serious movie..."How Many Miles to Babylon" (1982)

Made for BBC television, based on the book by Jennifer Johnston and starring a young Daniel Day-Lewis. Shot on location at Ballinacor in Co.Wicklow.

Alex (Daniel Day Lewis) is a young man from the 'Big House' who becomes friends with a local boy Jerry (Christopher Fairbank) from the nearby village. His mother disapproves of the friendship and the advent of WW.I. gives her the opportunity to manipulate the situation. Following a family revelation by his mother Alex feels obliged to join-up to get away. He ends up as a British officer in France, due his class rather than ability, and renews his friendship with Jerry who is a private in the same regiment. It's all here, class, religion, family relationships and a large dose of anti-Irish sentiment from Alex's commanding officer - Major Glendinning (Barry Foster) - who is seriously annoyed by having to try and turn a bunch of 'Bog Irish' into men. 10/10

I watched the film on YouTube as it's impossible to find on VHS. However. it has recently been released as part of a BBC Daniel Day-Lewis triple feature DVD.

The second film was watched last night after watching the England vs Wales match down the pub - I was tired and my guard was down and that's my excuse!




"Left Behind" (2014) starring Nicolas Cage on Netflix.

I had no idea what the film was about before sitting down - it was a Netfix suggestion. A complete 'train-wreck' of a movie from start to finish. God, or a spaceship (?), beams up a large portion of the world's population.....need I say more! Cage must have been desperate to make this rubbish.

Avoid at all costs. 0/10

charlie_says

Love & Mercy

A lovely bitter-sweet dramatised biopic of the seminal Brian Wilson of Beach Boys fame. Music was fantastic as you would expect and the story quite gripping as I knew little about his life before watching except that he had gone a bit mad on drugs and had lost the plot somewhat.

I loved this, stayed watching the whole credits. Sounds just great on a good home cinema system. Pump it up!

edit: I forgot to mention both Affleck and Cusack did fine jobs in their roles as the young and 80's Wilson.

e_e

Dano

Really enjoyed it too. Was worried about Cusack's performance but the contrast really worked well as he's in a completely different mental state at that point.

Have to agree with the criticism of Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, it's a rather frustrating film that for the first half strives to do something a little different within the genre restrictions we're all so familiar with. It's a rather comforting film in that it uses every trick the director knows but none of them work quite as well as they have for others. The unreliable narrator is often a fascinating tool but here Earl is an outright liar and it hurts the film, it makes everything he states hard to take and robs the film of much of it's emotional weight.

That the film didn't spend too much time on their Sweded films was an inspired choice, the real sweded moments came in how Alfonso Gomez-Rejon paid tribute to the filmmakers he loved through his compositions and use of the camera.

The biggest issue with the film is that Rachel as a character has little to do beyond simple window dressing. As the film progresses and with it her cancer she is seen less and less and exists simply as a plot device. Her suffering is little more than a handy way to motivate the "Me" and try to give his character some resemblance of humanity.

And yet at times it almost works,

the death bed scene

was very well handled and had a maturity the rest of the film lacked but at the same time it felt so trite and convenient. The use of Brian Eno to create emotion worked well but stripped of it, the scene simply wouldn't have any presence. And the scenes which follow lack the emotional resonance the director no doubt wanted, it's hard to care for a character who only cares for themselves and repeatedly sets out to lie to the audience.

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl is one of those frustrating nearly films, it tries so hard to be deep and emotional but it hasn't nearly enough heart when it needs to.

pq0n1ct4ve8zf5

45 Years: Pretty bleak in a lot of ways but excellent. Just enough gentle humour to leaven the heavier stuff, wonderfully understated about the emotional distress the characters are in (it is, and I mean this in the nicest possible way, a kind of antidote to very talky, hearts on sleevey American relationship dramas) and fantastically acted. The script really did subtly nail the length of the characters' relationship and the comfort and weight of their shared history, the way they can refer to things in the most vague way ('that racist from the community centre' 'that hole in Scotland') and have the other immediately know precisely what they're referring to. Not a date movie though.

Bride of Frankenstein Well that was pretty demented. A good old scenery chewing, gleefully ridiculous horror that takes its lighting, sets and costumes about 60% more seriously than it takes anything else.There are also some pretty impressive (and as it happens narratively irrelevant) special effects

McGrath5

Poltergiest

This is the 2015 version that I had the misfortune to watch, I almost turned it halfway through it, utter crap.

San Andreas

I meant to catch this CGI fest in the cinema earlier this year but never got around to it. I found it to be very predictable and I know if I had seen it on the big screen, I would of enjoyed a lot more.
Decent popcorn flick.

marwelie

charlie_says wrote: »

Love & Mercy

edit: I forgot to mention both Affleck and Cusack did fine jobs in their roles as the young and 80's Wilson.

Paul Dano played young Brian Wilson not Ben or Casey Affleck. The film is worth seeing for his performance alone. Absolutely brilliant.

marwelie

Saw Life this evening. Anton Corbijns interest as a photographer is clear from the outset. Unfortunately this ruins the movie for me. The whole film is just an excuse to recreate the pictures Dennis Stock took of James Dean. The screenplay didnt interest me at all, each scene was just a set up for another picture. And I may be missing something but Robert Pattinson cant act to save his life.

Harry Palmr

Perfect Creature 2012

New Zealand made vampire themed steam-punked style mash up with Saffron Burrows (cop) and Dougray Scott (vampire "Brother") Slow start with too much CGI but things pick up as the hunt for the "Brother" who goes bad gets under-way. No bad, not great - the direction and pacing is a bit lacklustre and because CGI is so prevalent the environment that the story unfolds in lacks heft and weight. Ripper Street for example shows how artful use of such special effects can work well when an addition to real world locations and physical sets.

Turtyturd

Fantastic Four: Yet another movie of two halves. Really good origin in the first 45-60 minutes, developing the relationships between the characters and how they get their powers, before the second half is teleported into the dimension of sh!t movies. I haven't read up on it but I guess there were some creative differences between the director/studio because it seems like a large chunk of the movie is missing. For all the sh!t Marvel get on here for playing it safe it's easy to see why they do it. For every X-Men DOFP there's about 4 not so fantastic comic movies, and it's laughable that people will put the likes of this and some DC movies forward as examples of what Marvel could be doing if they took some risks.

Also not a fan of changing Johnny Storm's ethnicity. The problem of the lack of/poor black characters isn't going to fixed by making traditionally white characters black, especially if you're going to have them play a stereotypical role anyway. But if you're going to change a character why not have it be Reed?

Edit: The worst part is that the characters have been blacklisted from the comics over this.

Sugarlumps

Sunshine Superman

A heart-racing documentary portrait of Carl Boenish, the father of the BASE jumping movement, whose early passion for skydiving led him to ever more spectacular -and dangerous- feats of foot-launched human flight.