What have you watched recently: Electric Boogaloo

Chain Smoker

Ah fin12, they clap at the end of EVERYTHING. It could be the world's ****test film and it'll get a standing ovation.
In the case, the audio was off by about half a second for a large chunk of the film so the projectionist certainly didn't deserve applause either.

TICKLE_ME_ELMO

Clapping at a film when nobody involved in it is there is as bad as clapping when your plane lands.

fin12

Tony EH wrote: »

Always thought it was a bit silly myself.

Who are they applauding?

Unless the director is there, or actors out of the film, it doesn't really make much sense. The projectionist couldn't give a toss.

I've seen it America, but can't recall ever seeing it in Ireland or Europe.

It's not about clapping to anyone, it's about how people are feeling at the end of a film, i just think it's basically down to people's emotions.... I have clapped with the crowd but it has been rare so the ones where it's happened have been pretty special films.

Canadel

I was tempted to clap at the end of The Revenant, but only in appreciation of it finally being over.

Chain Smoker

Existenz
God, I dunno, I can't come up with any particular reasons why this seemed so silly when I love so much Cronenberg but it seemed very silly. It might be that it was an attempt by Cronenberg to address some things he touched upon before but with new media he was far less in touch with that he though.
At points it seemed to be very intentionally stupid as f*ck though.

mewe

I felt like standing up and clapping at the end of 12 Years A Slave. Only time I've ever felt that.

Seen Spotlight last week and although it was an important issue to make a film about it didn't grab me in the same way. It was shot really well and the acting was good but just found it a bit overdramatic the way some of the scenes were set up at times and Mark Ruffalo going round with his eyes popping out of his head for most of the film. Different strokes for different folks I guess. I'd say it was decent and worth the watch but that would be about it. Don't see how it deserved best picture at the oscars.

fin12

mewe wrote: »

I felt like standing up and clapping at the end of 12 Years A Slave. Only time I've ever felt that.

Seen Spotlight last week and although it was an important issue to make a film about it didn't grab me in the same way. It was shot really well and the acting was good but just found it a bit overdramatic the way some of the scenes were set up at times and Mark Ruffalo going round with his eyes popping out of his head for most of the film. Different strokes for different folks I guess. I'd say it was decent and worth the watch but that would be about it. Don't see how it deserved best picture at the oscars.

I found his character really annoying and distracting. Has anyone here been in the cinema where nobody in the audience leaves till the screen goes completely blank and after all the credits have rolled, I thought it was fierce funny.

MadDog76

fin12 wrote: »

I found his character really annoying and distracting. Has anyone here been in the cinema where nobody in the audience leaves till the screen goes completely blank and after all the credits have rolled, I thought it was fierce funny.

So .......... you've done that yourself then!!!

fin12

MadDog76 wrote: »

So .......... you've done that yourself then!!!

Ya I stayed because I was curious to see when people would eventually start moving,:):) it was at Philomena, I think older people are like that they watch the credits fully.

TICKLE_ME_ELMO

Or it just takes them that long to get out of their seats.

MadDog76

TICKLE_ME_ELMO wrote: »

Or it just takes them that long to get out of their seats.

Or they were all sitting there wondering what this weirdo fin was up to!! :pac:

cowboyBuilder

To Live and Die in L.A. - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090180/

Can't believe I only saw this for the first time now, a gem !

And directed by William Friedkin who also directed The Exorcist

Fantastic soundtrack and cinematography


soundtrack :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tItxr8cY8Gc

Fysh

The Forest - every bit as pedestrian and bland a jump-scare witless piece of pablum as you might uncharitably guess, depending on which trailer you watch. No new ideas that I noticed, lazy jumpscares (uniformly weak payoffs, despite occasionally building uneasy tension). Mostly lazy visuals, a script that depends almost entirely on the idiot ball for its progression (along with the same weakness that plagued Oculus - i.e. if you have seen proof that your antagonist can manipulate what you are seeing, the only sane choice is to cut and run - which the protagonist of course fails to do). The occasional neat moment (like the protagonist's narration of a sanitised version of an incident in her past while the visuals depict the factual version) is undermined by subsequently hammering home the point, the fact of it being set in Japan is almost entirely irrelevant. The acting was pedestrian as well, so there really was no core to it at all.

ButtersSuki

cowboyBuilder wrote: »

To Live and Die in L.A. - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090180/

Can't believe I only saw this for the first time now, a gem !

And directed by William Friedkin who also directed The Exorcist

Fantastic soundtrack and cinematography


soundtrack :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tItxr8cY8Gc

If I had a penny for every time I've listened to that soundtrack, well, I'd have a lot of pennies.

Harry Palmr

Night of the Big Heat 1967 Dir Terence Fisher

Sweaty nonsense about an island off Britain which in mid winter is suffering a bizarre heatwave but why? Low budget guff which somehow gets by on the strength of the cast of usual suspects - Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Patrick (Nuclear attack warning films) Allen back up by a sultry turn from the cleavage of Jane Merrow.

I'm a bit of a sucker for this sort of thing!

Chain Smoker

Contact
Well, christ, this film certainly made me appreciate Interstellar a lot more, which seemed to be trying for similar ground. Some horrific overexposition throughout and the whole thing seems so much more focused on trying to tell you its concepts than make any effort towards showing you them. I don't rate Zemeckis very highly but I was very surprised to discover I knew the director's name at all with how much it lacked personality.
Just a goofy piece of ****, really. I feel like the George Miller version could've easily been far far worse but at least it wouldn't be boring as all hell.


The Big Short
It doesn't all work, but it is at times really funny and I can't imagine anyone coming out of it without having an understanding of how the banking crisis happened so it achieved its goals.

Proof
Russell Crowe and Hugo Weaving's breakout roles, I believe? Decent little film elevated by the quality of actors involved.

Queen of Earth
Hmmm... so this is the third Alex Ross Perry film I've seen and the third one I've been lukewarm about while also being increasingly convinced he's a bit great.
The strained Polanski vibes don't really work and are somewhat detrimental to other things going on (and stylistically pale hugely in comparison to the work of someone like Peter Strickland), a lot of it winds up being carried by the extremely strong performances of Moss and Waterston. It's all quite beautifully shot, it was certainly worth trying (a lot of it comes close to working extremely well) and, as ever, Perry's pitch black humour is absolutely on point.
Alex Ross Perry's next project is a live action Winnie the Pooh film for Disney.

Harry Palmr

naloN rephotsirhC riD (0002) otnemoM

.ecraeP yuG yb pse detca llew tub ,yllaer ykcimmig tib A

ButtersSuki

Harry Palmr wrote: »

naloN rephotsirhC riD (0002) otnemoM

.ecraeP yuG yb pse detca llew tub ,yllaer ykcimmig tib A

I see what you did there.......
There's a Chronological version on one of the special release versions of this I have somewhere that I am yet to watch., maybe some day I'll get around to it.

You could also watch "Irreversible" if you like that kind of thing.......(reverse chronology)

johnny_ultimate

Chain Smoker wrote: »

Queen of Earth
Hmmm... so this is the third Alex Ross Perry film I've seen and the third one I've been lukewarm about while also being increasingly convinced he's a bit great.
The strained Polanski vibes don't really work and are somewhat detrimental to other things going on (and stylistically pale hugely in comparison to the work of someone like Peter Strickland), a lot of it winds up being carried by the extremely strong performances of Moss and Waterston. It's all quite beautifully shot, it was certainly worth trying (a lot of it comes close to working extremely well) and, as ever, Perry's pitch black humour is absolutely on point.
Alex Ross Perry's next project is a live action Winnie the Pooh film for Disney.

I agree with what you're saying here, although I much preferred Queen of Earth to Listen Up Phillip overall. While it certainly wasn't up to the standards of some of its contemporaries or influences, I thought its mood and form was a whole lot more interesting and engaging. Listen Up Phillip I simply felt became more trying as it went along - I think I admired its intentions more than what it was in execution. QoE I found more confident overall, almost Persona-like in the way it obsessively focused on these two characters driving each other into a sort of psychosis. That said, there's something about his films that leaves me cold and detached too, although he does have an incredible ability with actors, and great to see Moss being given such substantial roles.

Still, the incredible third act reversal in the Colour Wheel is probably one of the only times I've gone from thinking a film was utterly tedious to thinking it was a near masterpiece in the space of one scene :pac:

Chain Smoker

Listen Up Phillip is definitely third place in his films for me. It felt like it wasn't totally sure what it was yet it really really wanted to be whatever that thing was (I gather he wanted it to be like a Philip Roth novel? I dunno how it compares, never read one). Moss was the best thing about it by far.
There was /something/ really odd looking about that whole film too, in a good way but I wouldn't have been surprised to discover it was made for next to nothing.

RE: "cold and detached"
So far, they've all came from a pretty cold and detached place imo. Queen of Earth felt far more like a "this would be a fun thing to try out" project than something wholly natural. I've listened to the guy on podcasts and the films so far definitely don't reflect his personality that much, the idea of him doing a Winnie the Pooh movie would just seem completely bonkers to me on the basis of his films alone.


Ach, the Color Wheel was way too funny to be utterly tedious to me. My expectations for no budget films are always significantly lower though. Very surprised HBO didn't pick up whatever his half hour indie dramedy thing was, it seems like he'd be ideal for that kind of thing.

pq0n1ct4ve8zf5

Montage of Heck I seem to be rather decidedly in the minority on this, but I really thought it was dreadful. Ample running time, huge access to material, and you'd learn as much if not more about the man reading a 300 word biography.

Full of gobsmacking insights from close family members along the lines of "I think he just wanted to feel like he belonged somewhere".

Someone will say something to the effect of "Nirvana became really famous really quick" and there'll be like five shots of magazine covers saying "Holy ****, Nirvana are so super famous right now". And that's pretty much it in the way of cultural context. Surely the early 90s are far enough away by now that briefly situating the subject of a documentary about that time within a network of other pop-cultural phenomenon would be worthwhile. Mention MTV, the gulf war, The Simpsons, one single other grunge band apart from Nirvana and Hole? It's repeatedly asserted that Kurt was seen as the voice of a disaffected generation, and never examined further. What exactly was the chord he was striking, what made it the right time and right place for Nirvana to happen?

The whole voice of a generation question was one that Kurt very actively avoided as well. The man straight up did not like talking about or dissecting his music. Which is something to be admired and respected, but several clips in a row of him stonewalling questions about his lyrics hammers the point home a bit. Anybody close to Kurt have any light to shed on why he took that stance? Na, let's just watch him and his annoying wife on heroin.

The less said about her the better (presumably her heavy involvement is why we get no Dave Grohl, either) but goddamn that woman loves the camera. It's a real shame for her that she didn't get born 20 years later and get to surf the sweet wave of the selfie culture. So that is one piece of information I didn't know (but kind of would have guessed, tbh) before watching this: Courtney Love is incapable of not acting up to a camera in the same room as her.

Apart from that here's the things which people repeat at you for the whole 2hr+ ordeal: Kurt was very talented and very depressed. Kurt hated being humiliated and was a shy, private man. And on that note here's a load of private home videos of him making a tit of himself on drugs.

I've a big long list of stuff I hated about it structurally and stylistically too. Anybody who wants to get to know the guy would be better off picking up that collection of his diaries and letters that was out around ten years ago.

Hrududu

Mila Clumsy Termite wrote: »

Montage of Heck I seem to be rather decidedly in the minority on this, but I really thought it was dreadful.

I saw this last week and agree. I just thought it was a mess of a film. I also felt pretty uncomfortable watching their home movies. It seemed like endless clips of watching them in a dingy apartment out of their heads. I came away feeling bad for their daughter.

homerun_homer

Mila Clumsy Termite wrote: »

Montage of Heck
The less said about her the better (presumably her heavy involvement is why we get no Dave Grohl, either) but goddamn that woman loves the camera.

Apart from that here's the things which people repeat at you for the whole 2hr+ ordeal: Kurt was very talented and very depressed. Kurt hated being humiliated and was a shy, private man. And on that note here's a load of private home videos of him making a tit of himself on drugs.

Brett Morgan had final cut on the film and Frances was more of the sounding board for him on the project than Courtney. It's certainly not a standard documentary that will wash over with everyone and not designed to give you the same insight you would have got from a doc like Amy. It was more a peek into the mind of Kurt via the art work, audio recordings and performances.
The numerous scenes of him and Courtney off their t!ts makes for uncomfortable and, after a bit, boring viewing but to an extent it goes to show the side of him we all heard about but never saw. He was mythologized, worshiped and though everyone knows he was a junkie, he had been romanticized as the tortured artist in pain rather than seeing it like this, a man who just wanted to get f**ked on heroin. It brings him back down to Earth from the character he was built up as by fans. He was a talent that was wasted and I think the film does do a good job at showing that.

8-10

Harry Palmr wrote: »

naloN rephotsirhC riD (0002) otnemoM

.ecraeP yuG yb pse detca llew tub ,yllaer ykcimmig tib A

I think you mean 'otnemeM'

Harry Palmr

:mad:

Chain Smoker

homerun_homer wrote: »

BIt was more a peek into the mind of Kurt via the art work, audio recordings and performances.

I'd say it was more an EXTREMELY strained attempt to get some value out of the remaining unreleased Cobain material.

Either that, or the project was given far far too much money to do a documentary about "just a man". There's no way you can be going "he was just another guy" while instead of showing photos you're showing extremely expensive looking (and quite creepy) animated videos of Kurt recording stuff at home.

boy98

The Hangover Part Two
Copied the first film out in more exotic place. A few unnecessary stereotypes, most violent action from a Russian characters played by a couple of British Actors.
But not too much screaming in a foreign language which is supposed to be a signpost that foreigners are manic and hysterical.

Very quick, tidied up neat ending with no loose ends... just like my school essays.

johnny_ultimate

88:88 - pretty sure that might have justified a Mubi subscription for the next few months.

A mind-meltingly dense explosion of ideas - visual, thematic, intellectual ideas. A deeply political and philosophical film concerned with the nature of 21st century poverty and technology (among, I would imagine, many other things that whizzed past my head), but also a poignant exploration of companionship. There is little standard narrative hook here, instead a poetic, abstract series of images that loop and link at quite frankly exhausting speed. But it hits like a rocket punch at times, the often astonishing images cutting into each other with staggering impact (a 4:3 home movie cross cutting to a child playing an iPad is the Canadian contemporary arthouse equivalent of the 2001 'bone to space station', maybe). Hip-hop drifts in and out of the fractured, multi-layered soundtrack, and the concept of freeform rap certainly seems to have driven Isiah Medina's frantic, radical formal ingenuity and his aggressive disregard for the standards of narrative cinema.

It's rich and inscrutable. It has echoes of Godard but also something that feels totally new. I'm pretty sure I need to watch the ****ing thing again pretty much immediately.

fin12

Has anyone seen the film Risen in cinemas now? Not sure whether to go see it? And Michael Collins the film is showing in cinemas now as well.

Chain Smoker

High School
Wiseman has gotten way better with age and the general freedom to make films as long as he wants but this was still pretty good. Final scene and closing lines are an absolute jackpot for what the documentary sets out to convey. The weird tension and awkwardness of stifled giggles of the scene with a gynaecologist struggling to stick to a really tedious formal sex ed talk to class and the way the tension's alleviated was the other stand out moment for a whole heap of reasons (the drama, the humour, a gynaecologist suddenly realising how big of a reaction he could get from the crowd with the right words).


That Nina Simone documentary
Meh, was grand.

American Ultra
For whatever reason I expected this to be great. It was not great but it was an easy watch and occasionally garnered a chuckle.

Howard the Duck
Well **** me this thing is bad but I can absolutely see why it has a cult. The way it embodies such a huge amount of silliness from the time period and is wholly sincere is all quite commendable, it's a shame it wasn't funnier