What have you watched recently: Electric Boogaloo

TICKLE_ME_ELMO

Chain Smoker wrote: »

It's a bit baffling that he wound up using a Talking Head, it seemed wholly unnecessary to me; I chalked it down to first-feature nerves, the idea that he may have

killed the dad

would've given the film an awfully off tone but I can see where you're coming from!

Well I was trying to figure out who he was talking to and why and that seemed the most obvious thing from what we were seeing. Or maybe that's just me....

Chain Smoker

TICKLE_ME_ELMO wrote: »

Well I was trying to figure out who he was talking to and why and that seemed the most obvious thing from what we were seeing. Or maybe that's just me....

Meanwhile I was thinking "this seems like the kind of stupid thing a director would do if they have no faith in how they've presented their story". It's more likey that they shot the talking head to patch up a load of gaps they had following a very frustrating initial editing process.

TICKLE_ME_ELMO

Chain Smoker wrote: »

Meanwhile I was thinking "this seems like the kind of stupid thing a director would do if they have no faith in how they've presented their story". It's more likey that they shot the talking head to patch up a load of gaps they had following a very frustrating initial editing process.

Well you see the thought that there was absolutely no real explanation for the talking head never crossed my mind. Everything else was ticking along nicely I just assumed there would be an explanation.

Harry Palmr

The Keep 1983 Dir Michael Mann

Or "Michael Mann's Ken Russell Moment"

During WW2 German troops occupy a remote Keep in Romania and unwittingly unleash something from its interior. Damn strange film no matter how you slice it. Much of it due to the very troubled shoot and death of special effects director Wally Veeres but even taking that into account it seems Mann never really got to grips with the material with awful dialogue or indeed the actors - Ian McKellen sounds like he should be driving a Yellow Cab, Scott Glen is nothing other than himself, Gabriel Byrne is game but only Jurgen Prochnow and Robert Prosky come out the affair with any credit. The special effects are good with a nice traditional mix of in camera and floor effects.

In the Heart of the Sea 2015 More like in the heart of the Green Room, I suppose a passable flick which puts a different slant on Moby Dick, hard to connect with it with so much CGI, but a nice story all the same

Legend 2015 Outstanding Hardy performance, and overall a great flick. He should be up for an oscar for that. Has had me calling everything a F****** C*** the last few days

Steve Jobs 2015 Wasn't expecting much here but a rehash, but was pleasantly surprised with the angle the film took. Sorkins dialogue played well here as opposed to Newsroom his recent series where he overdid it to the point taking all the realism out. Fassbenders performance is light years ahead of Kutchers attempt to play the same character. Very interesting insight into Jobs and the details of his removal and coming back to Apple.

Irish Aris

Happy New Year folks!! I wish you all a 2016 full of great films!!

Norwegian Wood (2010)

I am a big fun of the stories of Haruki Murakami - I also have the opinion that adapting them for the cinema wouldn't be an easy task.
Here, Vietnamese director Tran Anh Hung makes an attempt to one of the (what I would consider) most accessible books of Murakami and keeps things as simple as possible.
In the beginning his pace is quite fast-as is the editing in order to introduce us to the characters and the story without wasting too much time. Things get a bit slower as we go along and the story focuses on the 3 main characters. Music is present all the time with strings playing a key part in some of the most important points in the film -

the scenes around Naoko's death

Overall a decent effort which however leaves something to be desired. I would recommend the book more than the film to be honest.

ButtersSuki

Harry Palmr wrote: »

The Keep 1983 Dir Michael Mann

Or "Michael Mann's Ken Russell Moment"

During WW2 German troops occupy a remote Keep in Romania and unwittingly unleash something from its interior. Damn strange film no matter how you slice it. Much of it due to the very troubled shoot and death of special effects director Wally Veeres but even taking that into account it seems Mann never really got to grips with the material with awful dialogue or indeed the actors - Ian McKellen sounds like he should be driving a Yellow Cab, Scott Glen is nothing other than himself, Gabriel Byrne is game but only Jurgen Prochnow and Robert Prosky come out the affair with any credit. The special effects are good with a nice traditional mix of in camera and floor effects.

Love The Keep, or at least certain aspects of it. If you like weird synth driven soundtracks, try and find a copy of this one, all by Tangerine Dream. Interesting story about the soundtrack too but I won't bore ye.......

ButtersSuki

The Big Short had a few hours to kill before a flight home the other day and went to see this in 'Merica. It tells the story of the financial crash 0f 2008 from a relatively new angle; that tiny minority who saw it coming and bet everything on it happening to make themselves insanely rich. Strong performances from Christian Bale (as usual) and a very bizarre looking Ryan Gosling and a decent supporting cast (too many to mention), but the standout for me is Steve Carell. I'm a big fan of The US Office, but in this and in Foxcatcher Carell shows a depth I doubt many would have given him credit for previously. Carell seems to be the only one suffering a crisis of conscience when faced with the realisation of the consequences of what he's doing, but ultimately he does it, which makes you wonder is he any better than those he despises? It has some weird turns and bizarre cameos (Selena Gomes explaining CDOs for instance), and it breaks the fourth wall a few times and to be honest I think they took a little from the film, but maybe I'm being grumpy and would just have preferred a really deep and intense drama that few other people would have liked (lol)? There's a lot of montages and music from certain important years in the arc of the story that sometimes drifts and tells the tale in an MTV-like way, which is fine I guess....I think what they were trying to do is possibly make quite a complicated and relatively boring subject matter more interesting and certainly sexier to a wider audience, and, in fairness, I think they achieved that.

It's not as good as Inside Job or Client 9 (which both touch lightly on this aspect of the crash), nor is it as deep and thorough in its research and exploration of the subject matter, but it is very interesting and engaging. It has some flaws, as it's produced by Plan B there's the obligatory Brad Pitt + Southern Accent appearance for one :rolleyes:. All that said, on a first viewing I'd give it a strong 7.5/10, but I will revisit this on a second viewing as I was very tired at the time of the screening.

The Raid (extended cut) on Blu ray at home last night for the first time - hadn't even seen as much as a trailer for this previously, though I had heard it was worth watching. I'm not a huge martial arts movie fan per se, but you can't help but be impressed by the choreography and the fight scenes in this, and the non-stop relentless nature of them. There are some pretty voilent and very well shot execution scenes too, if you're into that kinda thing. For what it is, 7/10. The Raid 2 is tonight's viewing.

ButtersSuki

ButtersSuki wrote: »

. Interesting story about the soundtrack too but I won't bore ye.......

Tell us!

ButtersSuki

Deleted User wrote: »

Tell us!

You asked.....
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Keep Studio album by Tangerine Dream Released 1997 Recorded 1983 Genre Soundtrack Length 60:06 Label TDI Producer Tangerine Dream Tangerine Dream chronology TimeSquare
(1997) The Keep
(1997) Ambient Monkeys
(1997) The Keep (1997) is the soundtrack to the movie The Keep (1983) by the German electronic music group Tangerine Dream. A limited run of 150 CDs were sold at a concert by the group in the UK in 1997. Virgin soon announced that the album would be available for general release in early 1998, but legal issues with the film studio stopped the release. In 1999, Tangerine Dream's own record label sold 300 copies of the Millennium Booster album set that included The Keep with a different cover.
Contents

• 1 Track listing
• 2 Personnel
• 3 The vinyl release
• 4 Radio interviews
• 5 Bootlegs
• 6 Covers
• 7 Fan releases
• 8 References
• 9 External links

Track listing

No. Title Writer(s) Length 1. "Puer Natus Est Nobis" Thomas Tallis 3:09 2. "Ancient Powerplant" Edgar Froese 4:28 3. "The Silver Seal" Edgar Froese, Johannes Schmoelling 3:07 4. "Voices from a Common Land" Edgar Froese, Chris Franke, Johannes Schmoelling 4:06 5. "Arx Allemand" Edgar Froese 4:24 6. "The Night in Romania" Edgar Froese 3:15 7. "Canzone" Edgar Froese, Johannes Schmoelling 2:51 8. "Sign in the Dark" Edgar Froese 4:19 9. "Weird Village" Edgar Froese, Johannes Schmoelling 3:23 10. "Love and Destiny" Edgar Froese, Johannes Schmoelling 3:31 11. "The Challenger's Arrival" Edgar Froese 4:32 12. "Supernatural Accomplice" Edgar Froese 4:07 13. "Parallel Worlds" Edgar Froese, Johannes Schmoelling 4:29 14. "Truth and Fiction" Edgar Froese 2:52 15. "Wardays Sunrise" Edgar Froese 3:20 16. "Heritage Survival" Edgar Froese, Chris Franke, Johannes Schmoelling 4:13 "Puer Natus Est Nobis" is a Christmas mass composed by Thomas Tallis around 1554 - this track is from the introit, "Gloria", and is credited as "Gloria" from the "Mass for Four Voices". This theme appears in the film when the demon saves Eva from the soldiers. "Heritage Survival" and "The Night In Romania" first appeared in several live concerts during the 1982 "Logos" tour, but were not titled as such until the soundtrack release. The tracks appear in the film when Cuza rejects the demon. "Canzone" appears to be an original composition for the film and is used in the scene where Cuza triumphantly brings the Talisman to the surface. None of the other tracks were included in the actual film score.
A rerecorded version of "The Challenger's Arrival" was released on the album Tangerine Dream Plays Tangerine Dream in 2006, and in 2007, "Ancient Powerplant" was included in the Ocean Waves Collection, available for download from the Tangerine Dream website.
Personnel

• Edgar Froese– guitars, vocoder voices, keyboards
• Christopher Franke– additional keyboards
• Johannes Schmoelling– additional keyboards and drumcomputer

Additional personnel

• Bob Badamy– music supervisor
• Michael Mann– executive producer
• Jerome Froese– master

The vinyl release

A persistent story that The Keep was released on 12" vinyl in 1984 has become an urban legend. Several Tangerine Dream fans relate a story whereby they saw the record in the shops but were not able to purchase it due to a lack of funds. Upon returning to the shop, they found that the record has been withdrawn for some nebulous legal reason, and that all copies have been destroyed.[1][2] No actual copies of such a vinyl release had ever been noted publicly by any collector until 2013.
A bootleg LP pressing of the 1984 LP was issued in 2001 in Italy or France under the title The Keep Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, on Sunday Records (SUN-65275). Almost no one realized at the time that the music on it was from the 1984 LP and not the leaked studio tapes that comprised the contents of most of the bootleg CDs nor the official TDI CDs, and so many of the people who own this bootleg LP might never have played it and therefore don't realize its significance to this day. A track from this LP entitled "The Night in Romania" appeared on YouTube on 16 December 2013, said to commemorate the 30th Anniversary of the release of the film. This track was discovered years ago by Stéphane Piter, who has a website devoted to the film and is making a documentary on the film, but he didn't think the track was real until he shared it with Steven Feldman of the website Molasar's Homepage on 29 October 2013. Steven recognized that this version of "The Night in Romania" is not the same as the version on the officially-released TDI CD, mainly because the track ends like the version in the film, not the version on the TDI CD. Notably, a studio version of this tune had never been bootlegged.
Additionally, Kit Rae premiered a photo of what may be the front cover of the 1984 LP on his website The Keep Score by Tangerine Dream: Strange Obsessions for the Music from an Obscure 1983 Supernatural Horror Film in November 2013.
Radio interviews

In 1987, Sender Freies Berlin interviewed Edgar Froese, and three tracks from The Keep were played.

1. "Gloria"– a segment of "Puer Natus Est Nobis"
2. "Romanian Road"– later titled "Voices from a Common Land"
3. "Sailing Mission"

Westdeutscher Rundfunk interviewed Froese in 1989 and played three tracks from The Keep:

1. "Fisherman's Morning"– a version of "Ancient Powerplant"
2. "Sailing Mission"
3. "Gloria"

Bootlegs

TD scored the film The Keep in 1983, but the first issue of the soundtrack The Keep (1997) was a limited run of 150 CDs sold at a concert in the UK. Virgin soon announced that the album would be available for general release in early 1998, but legal issues with the film studio stopped the release. In 1999, the TDI label sold 300 copies of the Millennium Booster album set that included The Keep with a different cover. Out of sixteen tracks on the official release, only four were actually used in the movie. The scarcity of the official release led to high resale prices, this and the lack of the actual film music has led to an unusual number of bootleg, pirate and fan releases.

• 70/90 (1990); Includes two tracks from The Keep.[3]
• Rare Trax 1 (1991); A Keen Auricle fan release which includes "Romanian Road" and "Gloria".[4]
• The Keep (First Mix)
• The Complete Works of the Keep (1994)
• The Keep (1995) Boot Moon Records; Sourced from a studio master tape, a 1985 German radio broadcast and from the bootleg CD 70/90.[5][6]
• Logotypes (1997); also known as Logos Types because of one of the cover titles.[7]
• Electronic Orgy (1997); Includes the tracks "Fisherman's Morning", "Romanian Road", "Sailing Mission" and "Gloria".[8]
• The Keep (1999), Event Horizon
• The Keep (2001) Orange Records; Used the sixteen tracks from the TDI release, plus tracks from Logos Live (1982), Tangents (1994), The Hollywood Years Vol. 2 (1997) and Antique Dreams (2000).[9][10]
• The Keep Ultimate Edition (2001)
• The Keep (2003); A counterfeit version using the same cover and liner as the 1997 TDI release, but packaged in a standard jewel case instead of a digipak.
• Tangerine Dream— The Keep Cues; Contains seven untitled tracks. The album was published by Ricochet Dream as a release of 222 numbered CDs issued for fans attending the 2008 Ricochet Gathering in Transylvania, Romania to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the film.[11]
• Tangerine Tree 54: The Keep: An Alternative View (2004); A Tangerine Tree fan release.
• Ricochet Gathering— Keep On (2010) Ricochet Dream[12]
• The Keep; A CD-R version of the supposed promo LP
• The Complete Laserdisc Soundtrack to The Keep; Sourced from the laserdisc release of the film.

Covers

• (1995) The Keep by the Fantasy Merchants; First Floor/Tsunami

1. The Keep – Main Title 4:49
2. Glacken's Quest 4:24
3. Brothers In Death 8:13
4. Fisherman's Morning 3:37
5. The Challenger's Arrival 4:54
6. Gloria 3:15

Fan releases

• (2004) Tangerine Tree Volume 54– The Keep: An Alternative View

TICKLE_ME_ELMO

Inside Out.

Really disappointed with this. From the rave reviews it got and Mark Kermode hoping it might sneak a Best Picture Oscar and all that jazz I was expecting something really special. I found it quite boring and bar the chewing gum jingle bit I didn't find it all that funny. The emotional bits did nothing for me either. All in all it was pretty meh.

retalivity

The hateful 8

It was bloody long, took an hr to get going. I liked it, she didnt. Not outstanding but watchable once you get over the first bit. For a film that primarily takes place in one big room it was pretty stylistic.

3.5 djangos/5 jackie browns

Faith+1

retalivity wrote: »

The hateful 8

It was bloody long, took an hr to get going. I liked it, she didnt. Not outstanding but watchable once you get over the first bit. For a film that primarily takes place in one big room it was pretty stylistic.

3.5 djangos/5 jackie browns

Best rating system ever!! That made me chuckle!!!

MadDog76

Forced to go see this (my 9 year old son) and found it a bit meh ......... not a bad film per se but still quite boring for the most part.
My son loved it so I'd call it a great children's movie but that's as far as it goes for me ........... 6/10 at best and I'm being generous.

Chain Smoker

Diary of a Teenage Girl
Really liked this! At points it has that issue where a first time director has a bit too much going on visually and on paper it prolly sounds a bit of a a mess, but it got the self absorbed obnoxious teen down far better than most films of this kind do (I'm looking at you, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl). Great performances from the cast all around

Tangerine
Deserving of every bit of praise it gets, especially the editing (it's a bit amazing the whole thing holds together so well with how it's paced). Sean Baker's had some similar characters and biting dialogue in Starlet but he really notched it up here.
Highlights include

Sin-dee being a gigantic bitch to everyone when she's trying to track down Dinah, "You see right through me, don't you?", James Ransone yet again proving he has the most punchable face in films

Prophet's Prey
Standard religion sex-abuse doc

Harry Palmr

ButtersSuki wrote: »

You asked.....
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The Keep

Reminds me of the Blade Runner saga, cover versions, abridged versions, bootlegs, and finally a proper but still not comprehensive release. I have the Esper Edition and "Los Angeles, November 2019" (ambient and sound effects) disk.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blade_Runner_(soundtrack)

Harry Palmr

Omen 111 - the Final Conflict (1981) Dir Graham Baker

Third and final big screen outing for the anti-Christ is a very tepid affair with a truly damp squib ending. Sam Neill in his lead debut is decent but the whole things screams "meh" as it feels like a TV film with a bit more money for the most part. No blood or guts to speak of as everything happens off screen. I think it had a AA/15 cert at the time.

castletownman

Daddy's Home

Not as laugh out loud as some of Ferrell's other work, but enjoyed it nonetheless. For some reason I thought some of the non-comic scenes were quite poignant and probably illustrative of the struggles facing a step dad trying to "become the dad".

Good way to spend a couple of hours.

Solid 7/10

pixelburp

Blackhat (2015)

So I dipped into this on the back of some retroactive praise from certain quarters on this forum (not looking at anyone *cough*e_e*cough*), but honestly I thought it was a bit of a dud. Stacked against it for starters was that I'm no fan of Michael Mann's love affair with digital video, and this felt like his most overt use of the method to date. To be fair, sometimes the film looked quite handsome, the crisp digital format matching the neon, urban environments; other times however, it resembled like a vomit-inducing Go-Pro video.

And while the presentation was digital modernity, the story itself felt like an ill advised throwback to those cheesy paranoia thrillers from the early Internet era - I'm thinking of guff such as the Sandra Bullock vehicle, The Net. Manns film grabbed at all the clichés of the computer as a magic box - beeping UIs and all - and it just made the film feel completely out of touch with the modern era; the over-earnest screenplay didn't help either. I dunno, maybe the fact I had just watched the first two episodes of Mr. Robot, with a ... believable & 'mundane' presentation of the world of hacking, only served to make Blackhats slightly 'sexier', more melodramatic vision seem even weaker.

youreadthat

Scott Pilgrim vs The World

7/10

I enjoyed it as it had some good comedy (I giggled a few times which is rare for me even with great comedy) and interesting uses of cinematography that was sometimes used to aid the comedy, and sometimes used to create atmosphere. On the other hand, sometimes it goes too far in its pacing from scene to scene and the elephant in the room is the lack of a good plot or story. Saying that, it is curious that despite the story lacking and the fact that the film isn't a character film either, a few of the characters came across as having a journey and were more than just 2D so I was impressed it made me feel that way.

One thing I don't get was that I read a lot about this film in the past about it being "geeky" and niche which is why it may have bombed at the box office. I am 25 and have played computer games since about 1996, mainly playing pretty mainstream stuff and I think I'm pretty typical of my age group of growing up playing games semi-regularly and I got 95% of the game references and stuff. I think it didn't find an audience because there's only so far a film can go with such a rubbish plot. Yes I get the gaming nature of the plot, but having game references does not make a film great, maybe it made the source material great but I'm not into comics and graphic stories.

2 of the 7/10 I gave this film are for Mary Elizabeth Winstead. God bless yeee eyes.

ButtersSuki

Concussion with Big Willie (Smith) himself. I've followed this story on si.com and elsewhere since it broke and while the subject matter is fascinating, this dramatisation of it is a bit lame tbh. Smith's performance is not bad (he's come a long way form The Fresh prince) but his Nigerian accent and speech pattern is painfully slow and annoying. Albert Brooks hair (or lack thereof) is mad in this, esp. as I only recently re-watched Drive and was more accustomed to his white man's 'fro. Alec Baldwin also co-stars but doesn't really add anything. What lets it down for me is the constant God and USA! USA!/NFL/FOOTBALL! references and jingoism. Ultimately it just doesn't pack enough punch (no pun intended) for a very serious subject matter. Maybe I'm just enough of a nerd to have preferred watching a documentary on this instead of a dramatisation. A disappointing 5/10.

Chain Smoker

The Lobster
I liked it anyways, first hour was fantastic, second one was grand. Rachel Weisz stuck out a bit in that she was nearly too good at managing to actually act within the pretty tight constraints the cast had.

The Stanford Prison Experiment
Strong cast (a bit overloaded with 'I recognise that guy!' faces though, had to pause about 20 minutes in to figure out who they all were!), well shot, but it suffered hugely from how long the experiment went on. By the point you've reached the final day with the fourth or fifth inmate having their mental breakdown, it's lost all its impact. Not a whole lot you can do about that really.

Making a Murderer
May as well post my thoughts on this somewhere.

Thought it was pretty bad and all but the documentary really did not have any sense of journalistic integrity in the way ones such as the Staircase and Serial had. I really didn't like how much it focused on clips of the victim's brother during the court proceedings, knowing how much these kind of things lead to armchair detectives all over the world making all kinds of accusations.
I dunno, the whole thing felt like the people doing it lacked the nuance to do anything interesting and as a result the portrayals all came across quite hollow and rudimentary.
None of which is to say I thought he should've been convicted.

AnonoBoy

The Lookout (2007)

Only heard about this one when it was mentioned on the Scriptnotes podcast. It's solid without being spectacular - Joseph Gordon Levitt plays a guy with a brain injury who gets roped into a bank robbery.

Funnily enough I turned off Jurassic World and started watching this instead and JGL's character's name is Chris Pratt.

Revenge 1990 A Tony Scott foray with Costner, Stowe and Anthony Quinn. The story is a small and simple one, a love story with revenge, but it is powerful nonetheless and the 3 mentioned actors are outstanding. Stowe is captivating and she really was beautiful in her day.
Its unlike Scotts other movies in that there is little action but a lot of sentiment, and its not very Hollywood at all. Well worth a watch - I believe the extended version is what you want and not the directors cut which is 20 mins shorter.

Glebee

Godzilla (2014)
Why oh why did I bother watching this. Even compared to the previous films this is bad. 4/10 at the most.

The Hateful 8
Really liked it, takes a while to get going alright but well worth the watch.
4/5

Harry Palmr

Duel (1971) - Dir Steven Spielberg

Suburban every-man in an inoffensive saloon car takes a back road journey to a meeting and is increasingly terrorised by his wife an 18 wheeler fuel truck which eventually releases the motorists Id.

Dennis Weaver who is the only one on screen for most of the film is terrific as the mild mannered hen-pecked businessman, he also does a fine piece of stuntwork at the climax.

I saw the 90 minute print as shown in European cinemas in '71, watching it you wonder what was missing for the original 75 min TV premier I suppose its just a few shots here and there and maybe shortening the diner scene and it adds up.

Tony EH

'Lost Soul - The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Dr. Moreau'

A thoroughly absorbing documentary into the trials and tribulations of director Richard Stanley's efforts to realise his dream of getting H.G. Well's 'The Island of Dr. Moreau' onto the screen.

'Lost Soul' is one of the best documentaries I've seen about Hollywood in a long, long time and perfectly illustrates the difficulty of trying to put your vision into effect, when there are people around you who, largely without malice, are tearing it down.

Although, as the title suggests, Stanley's vision was probably "doomed" from the get go, as the man is, to put it mildly, eccentric. An individual who, raised by a wiccan mother, believed in magic and spiritual influences on the real world, who at one point engages in magic to try and put the film back on course after the production started to display it's drift into nightmare seas.

However, the chain smoking (and naturally nervous) Richard Stanley - descendant from Henry Morton Stanley - remains a charming figure and one who'd be genuinely interesting to talk to about a great many things, besides film making.

Unfortunately, Stanley seems to have been irreparably damaged by the whole sordid affair and his career took an inevitable nose dive after he was fired from the film by the studio, largely because of his erratic behaviour and the inability to control the cast. A cast which included the notoriously "difficult" (read wanker) Val Kilmer and Hollywood heavyweight (in every sense) Marlon Brando, who had signed on to do the picture solely because Stanley won him over. Then proceded to not give a crap about anything afterward, when the director was fired and replaced by equally "difficult" John Frankenheimer, who subsequently used his "old style Hollywood" director skills to rip a large part of the cast to shreds. Mostly, the undeserving part like Fairuza Balk, it has to be said.

That, plus natural disasters destroying sets and holding up production even further would probably have meant another studio shutting down the whole show and taking the hit, but New Line Cinema soldiered on and turned out a picture that is, to a great degree, hated.

Ironically, 'The Island of Dr. Moreau' is a picture I rather like, but it's difficult to say why, exactly, and I am certainly in a very tiny minority. I suppose a lot has to do with just how bloody odd the whole thing is. Plus Stan Winston's creature makeup is pretty amazing...in parts anyway.

There are great interviews from a lot of the cast and crew, some of who reveal that their 6 months of shooting turned into a long party of drink, drugs, sex and general debauchery.

Curiously missing, though, is David Thewlis, which is the only, very minor, downside to the documentary. It would be very interesting to hear his side of the story.

'Lost Soul' stands by 'Jodorowsky's Dune', 'Burden of Dreams' and 'Hearts of Darkness' as great examples of behind the scenes documentaries of the madness of making movies.

10/10

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0y_wLNe15x0

johnny_ultimate

Worked my way through Arrow's gift to cinema fans over the last few weeks - namely, the Love + Anarchism boxset, bringing together stunning restorations of Kiju Yoshida's loose trilogy of politically themed films he made in the late 60s- early 70s.

The Japanese New Wave might be IMO the single most underappreciated 'movement' (I use the term lightly) in cinema history - it seems to remain niche, boasting some passionate and thankfully articulate supporters but hasn't quite graduated to wider critical appreciation (the few that did break through eventually - like Oshima - sometimes did so with their arguably least interesting films). Yoshida's work offers plenty of examples of what treasures are waiting to be discovered - formally accomplished, intellectually provocative, and deeply engaged with socio-political concerns.

I don't feel I'm exaggerating in the slightest when I say these three films are among the most visually striking films ever made. Shot in starkest monochrome, Yoshida utilises geometrically precise angles, subverted perspectives, aggressively fetching lighting and much more to probe the issues present in the films by observing from a critical distance. These are films that deserve the 'every frame a painting' description: almost every shot is layered, communicative and above all stunning.

Of the three films, Coup d'Etat is the most straightforward, Heroic Purgatory the most challenging (in his video introduction, critic David Desser dares the audience to try and explain what happens in it :pac:) and the epic length Eros + Massacre somewhere in between. It is also the most satisfying - a masterpiece of experimental filmmaking. Yoshida has woven a cinematic web where past and present collide, intermingle and contrast to explore some of the political philosophies of both turn of the 20th century Japan and more contemporary times (contemporary at the time of production, anyway). It's a fiercely challenging but immensely rewarding four hours (there's a shorter cut also included). The other two films are essential too, of course - and I think aesthetically speaking Heroic Purgatory is in many ways the strongest of the series. Crucially, they all play off each other to form a comprehensive yet artful critique of anarchism, nationalism, socialism and - as the title of the boxset clearly reminds us - love & sex in 20th century Japan.

This is the kind of lavish, niche boxset that makes physical media remain so essential - in-depth, critical essays and discussions offering a perfect accompaniment for three astounding films that could easily get lost in the noise. Don't let them, they deserve much, much better than that

Now, bring on that even more lavish Jacques Rivette set!

Harry Palmr

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels 1988 Dir Frank Oz

Delightful, sunny comedy of con men attempting to win a bet on the French Med Cote.
Probably the last film in which Steve Martin was happy to be true to his very funny (old) self and nothing else. His mugging as Ruprecht is just hilarious, perfectly pitched. Michael Caine once again proves his underrated talent for dry humour.

youreadthat

Sicario: 5/10

Two good set pieces, 50% Emily Blunt looking vacant and gormless saying nothing (lead roll!), paper thin story, and only saved by del Toro and a few lingering landscape shots. At least it made me thoughtful of the Mexicans who have to live with that mess.

The Martian: 7/10

The best thing I can say is that it was better than Interstellar and Gravity and I'd watch it over those any day. It is like a mash up of Cast Away and Apollo 13, but isn't as good as either (not close really). Those films have an edge, a tone/atmosphere, and a consistency that makes them feel like engaging, exciting well rounded films even when you know the outcome as you've seen it or you knew about the real Apollo 13. It really really lacks something, there's a lack of edge that betrays the scale. scope, and visuals and it's compounded by the tone which is all over the place. It's not terrible, it's just forgettable. In a decade people will be like oh yeah Damon did that space film Gravity or something. Although as a fan of vegetable gardening I did enjoy him growing potatoes on Mars.

Really disappointed with these two after all the hype they've had.