What have you watched recently: Electric Boogaloo

budgemook

Watched Anomalisa a couple of weeks ago. Really enjoyed it. Some Kaufman madness along with the probably the best ever stop motion for a feature length movie. After the film I was telling my wife about Synecdoche New York and we spoke about it a couple of times over the next few days and decided we'd watch it some time soon.

We went to Amsterdam last weekend and would you believe it - we passed a small cinema which just happened to be showing the final movie in their Charlie Kaufman season season at 11 that night and it was of course Synecdoche New York. Naturally we got tickets.

I had only seen it once before and that was in the cinema too when it came out. Both of us really enjoyed it. It is complex, layered, difficult to understand at times and has your head spinning for a few days afterwards. As my wife so eloquently put it afterwards "you'd have a hard time putting any sense to that film". Some great performances from the cast but Philip Seymour Hoffman was in a class of his own in this one, really great performance from him.

As for the cinema itself - a wonderful place altogether. A tiny theatre with about 50 seats just beside the Leidseplein area. I recommend checking it out if you are around - http://uitkijk.nl.

briany

Our Day Out (1977)

Part of BBC's Play for Today, adapted from the stage. A group of Liverpool school pupils from a remedial 'progress' class (i.e. those who "can't read 'n' write 'n' tha'" are taken by their teachers on a coach outing to the Welsh countryside. Predictably, the kids' unruly ways irk both the teachers and the other adult folk they come across on their travels.

I'd been looking for another good Play for Today ever since I'd seen films in the series such as Nuts in May, Abigail's Party and The Blackstuff. Some of the films in the series can be unrelentingly bleak, I found, and, well, a bit boring in their depiction of social realism. Some, however, can be really well-balanced, being funny, serious, dramatic and poignant. Our Day Out was definitely in the latter category, along with the aforementioned examples of the series, dealing with both the comical hijinks of the kids, but also their place in society and relationship with their schoolmasters. Barely a dull moment in it's 69 minute run time and would resonate with just about anyone who's ever been a kid on a coach bus. Recommended.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1HTXxF02ng

pixelburp

Steve Jobs (2015)

Truthfully, I've not really watched much of Aaron Sorkin's other projects (such as The Newsroom or West Wing) but his shtick is talked about enough that I'm at least passingly familiar with many of the supposed tropes that pepper his writing. On that, Steve Jobs pretty much kept to those tropes, being a film predominantly about powerful, egotistical figures stalking sundry corridors and hallways as they have heated discussions with rivals and friends (the two often being fairly indistinguishable concepts).

Not that I'm meaning to sound reductionist by way of criticism, I still enjoyed the film as a fairly fresh take on the generic Hollywood biopic - cutting to the chase & attempting to distill the essence of what the film thought made Steve Jobs tick. Some might have called it a hatchet job, but at worst it felt like a 'warts n' all' portrayal, showing how dividing and frustrating this well-documented figure could be. From a technical stand-point, kudos is also due to Danny Boyle for giving each chapter in the story its own distinctive vision, cribbing styles and visuals of that particular era. Again, it gave what could have been a pretty sterile biopic its own voice. Needless to say, Michael Fassbender put in a fantastic performance, but that's par for the course at this stage.

The Big Short (2015)

First I laughed. Then I wailed. Then I just got depressed as the credits rolled. I wouldn't have pegged the man behind Anchorman to deliver such a razor-sharp polemic on the 2008 financial crash, but that's precisely what he managed (though having watched the credits to The Other Guys, another McKay film, you can see it was a subject playing on his mind for some time). It was a perfect balance of humour and dramatic recreation, neither tone ever swallowing the other; oddball interludes such as Margot Robbie explaining Sub-prime mortgages were the perfect occasional tonic amid the scenes of blood-boiling hubris from the men who fiddled while Rome burned. Tragedy and comedy often walk similar paths, and a film like this demonstrated that concept ably.


Victor Frankenstein (2015)

Very much a 'me too' attempt to jump on the bandwagon of the various prequel adaptations of Public Domain and fairytale literature. Specifically, this film felt genetically closest to the Guy Ritchie hyperactive, post-modern adaptations of Sherlock Holmes, albeit swapping Holmes for the equally eccentric Victor Frankenstein (complete with slow motion fisticuffs and 'genius vision' scenes). Unlike the Holmes films however, there was none of the bromance chemistry that existed between Jude Law and Robert Downey Jr: James McAvoy and Daniel Radcliffe do their best, McAvoy happily chewing the scenery with abandon, but neither of them could elevate the fairly limp, somewhat intangible script. Lifeless, you could say; lacking ... spark. See what I did there? Its failure at the box office isn't much of a mystery here, there was too little imagination to be even remotely memorable.

Del.Monte

"The Valley of Knockanure" (2009)



At long last I managed to track down a DVD of this elusive movie by writer/director Gerard Barrett - better known for "Pilgrim Hill" and "Glassland". Sadly, it's much ado about nothing and at 34 minutes running time it's about 20 minutes longer than it needs to be. Unlike Carlsberg it wasn't worth waiting for. 1/10.

1921 Ireland -IRA volunteers murder Sir Arthur Vicars in County Kerry, and the Black + Tans murder three young men chosen at random by way of reprisal. Compares very unfavourably with a similar low budget film in the same genre - "Volkswagen Joe" - which is well worth getting hold of.

Chain Smoker

briany wrote: »

Our Day Out (1977)
I'd been looking for another good Play for Today ever since I'd seen films in the series such as Nuts in May, Abigail's Party and The Blackstuff.

The Muscle Market
Was meant to be part of Boys from the Blackstuff but when the series got delayed they made this one separately. Stars Pete Postlethwaite

Edna the Inebriate Woman is top notch in the bleakness stakes too, if you /do/ want to try a bleak one. Just a Boys Game is worth a dart too.

B.A._Baracus

Predator (1987)
It has just been added to the Irish Netflix. I've must have seen this movie nearly 30 times in my life (No joke )

I would go as far and say it is one of the best movies ever made. But to prove that point, here we are 29 years later and the predator effects still look amazing. But how many movies can have next to no dialogue in it's final 20 minutes and still be amazing to watch?

BMMachine

B.A._Baracus wrote: »

Predator (1987)
It has just been added to the Irish Netflix. I've must have seen this movie nearly 30 times in my life (No joke )

I would go as far and say it is one of the best movies ever made. But to prove that point, here we are 29 years later and the predator effects still look amazing. But how many movies can have next to no dialogue in it's final 20 minutes and still be amazing to watch?

watching Predators right now
its nothing on the original two but as far as those new remakes go like robocop and total recall etc. its a lot of fun and doesnt take itself too seriously.

Predator though is a stone cold classic. Life changing movie!

j.s. pill II

BMMachine wrote: »

watching Predators right now
its nothing on the original two but as far as those new remakes go like robocop and total recall etc. its a lot of fun and doesnt take itself too seriously.

Predator though is a stone cold classic. Life changing movie!

I remember watching it in the Triskel in Cork a few years back. Seeing it on the big screen was an experience!


*shudders at thought of Total Recall remake*

johnny_ultimate

Hellraiser - I'm pretty sure the iconic cover image of Pinhead cemented itself into my subconscious after I caught a glimpse of it on a VHS box in the video shop when I was a wee lad. Ever since, I've always been fascinated and reasonably creeped out by the character, although I'd never actually seen any of the films.

Naturally, the actual film doesn't live up to that very mild childhood trauma. It does feature some memorably strange, hellish and graphic imagery for sure, and the psychosexuality and mental effects work well. What's holding it together is not so stable a few decades after release (albeit in some cases surely made it fresh at the time) - a meandering, straightforward horror film with plenty of po-faced wheel-spinning. The passing of time has dimmed - but not extinguished - some of the once radical aspects, such as the AIDs-era themes and SFX (in some cases). At times, I was wishing the creepier imagery was married to a less rote story, or something abstract ala Eraserhead, Tetsuo or other such pure cinematic nightmare channeling. Still, remains interesting with some cheery 80s surrealist splatter.

Kikujiro - Lovely to see it get a Blu-Ray release. The film is more ramshackle and odd than I recalled, in both good and bad ways. Some of the tonal shifts are bizarre - the sequence behind the toilets remains very dark stuff, especially in what is typically a very playful film. At the same time, some of those more violent or surprising moments add shades of reality and uncertainty to the situations, even if that doesn't quite fit right with the more triumphant final act.

This is still 'vintage' Kitano though (a notch below Hana-Bi and Scene by the Sea, maybe), and it's a shame he rarely makes film anymore with the level of charm, playfulness and aesthetic exuberance he displays here. And if there's a single lovelier piece of film music than Joe Hisaishi's main theme, I haven't heard it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-wIByLxR8s

Silent Light - Beautifully filmed (those opening and closing shots :eek:) and thoughtful - a tad emotionally removed at times, but pulls it together towards the end. But...erm... why exactly is the climax just lifted straight - not quite shot for shot, but bizarrely close - from Ordet? I'm all for paying homage to the greats (and Ordet's ending is very much one of cinema's greatest endings), but my main thought watching this, given its overtness, wasn't how the 'repurposed' ending fit this particular film, but more not being able to get over 'I've actually seen this before'.

R P McMurphy

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

Hellraiser - I'm pretty sure the iconic cover image of Pinhead cemented itself into my subconscious after I caught a glimpse of it on a VHS box in the video shop when I was a wee lad. Ever since, I've always been fascinated and reasonably creeped out by the character, although I'd never actually seen any of the films.

Naturally, the actual film doesn't live up to that very mild childhood trauma. It does feature some memorably strange, hellish and graphic imagery for sure, and the psychosexuality and mental effects work well. What's holding it together is not so stable a few decades after release (albeit in some cases surely made it fresh at the time) - a meandering, straightforward horror film with plenty of po-faced wheel-spinning. The passing of time has dimmed - but not extinguished - some of the once radical aspects, such as the AIDs-era themes and SFX (in some cases). At times, I was wishing the creepier imagery was married to a less rote story, or something abstract ala Eraserhead, Tetsuo or other such pure cinematic nightmare channeling. Still, remains interesting with some cheery 80s surrealist splatter.

Kikujiro - Lovely to see it get a Blu-Ray release. The film is more ramshackle and odd than I recalled, in both good and bad ways. Some of the tonal shifts are bizarre - the sequence behind the toilets remains very dark stuff, especially in what is typically a very playful film. At the same time, some of those more violent or surprising moments add shades of reality and uncertainty to the situations, even if that doesn't quite fit right with the more triumphant final act.

This is still 'vintage' Kitano though (a notch below Hana-Bi and Scene by the Sea, maybe), and it's a shame he rarely makes film anymore with the level of charm, playfulness and aesthetic exuberance he displays here. And if there's a single lovelier piece of film music than Joe Hisaishi's main theme, I haven't heard it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-wIByLxR8s

Silent Light - Beautifully filmed (those opening and closing shots :eek:) and thoughtful - a tad emotionally removed at times, but pulls it together towards the end. But...erm... why exactly is the climax just lifted straight - not quite shot for shot, but bizarrely close - from Ordet? I'm all for paying homage to the greats (and Ordet's ending is very much one of cinema's greatest endings), but my main thought watching this, given its overtness, wasn't how the 'repurposed' ending fit this particular film, but more not being able to get over 'I've actually seen this before'.

While some of the effects such as the lightening look terrible now I had read that Clive barker and a friend added them in a weekend while smoking a large by of weed so that explains part of it. Pinhead himself was only a background character but proved popular so effectively took over the franchise. Of the sequels, I think there are something in the region of 8. The first two were ok for what they were, and I quite liked the third were they went with a pinhead in space theme. A while back I decided to watch the last film which was thrown together in 2 weeks. I watched about ten minutes as was horrendous and I got what I deserved. There are rumours of a reboot directed by barker which could be interesting.

tunguska

Eddie the Eagle

Saw this tonight not expecting much but I loved it. A really lovely film. Genuinely uplifting and moving. These types of films can sometimes go over board on sentimentality but this was spot on. A little pacing problem but that's a minor gripe. Hugh jackman is great and the guy playing Eddie us brilliant. Well worth a watch.

Chain Smoker

Out 1
It started at midday, it ended around 1am, there were no intermissions asides from the credits of each section.
I typed out so much there and it said absolutely nothing so I'll just do some bullet points.

• The first three hours are borderline insufferable, especially THAT improv scene
• it very abruptly becomes pretty damn easy to watch after that
• 16mm color is bloody gorgeous if you stick to the right colours and shades, got me really pumped for checking out Carol later this week
• This film's actually pretty damn funny
• ...but definitely not as funny as the girl beside me seemed to find it
• the sheer fixation on smoking in this was surely intentional?
• checking on the internet afterwards, I'm pretty surprised by just how thoroughly I picked it all up despite hardly paying attention for fair sized chunks
• It's not a great film, it's a pretty damn big achievement, it's surprisingly fun, but right now I don't feel like it was a revelatory experience that you might expect from something so unique
• Jean Pierre Leaud's looking well
• I really liked the bits where they're clearly shooting off the cuff in a fairly public area, the camerawork at points was a bit playhouse 90 with how it'd try to hide ****
• Juliet Berto's looking incredibly well
• Eric Rohmer's looking ridiculous
• the Alamo Drafthouse system seriously needs to be adopted somewhere in Europe, sure the food's a bit expensive but the layout and sheer comfort is really hard to fault
• The ending was a lovely communal moment
• I didn't realise NXT Takeover was yesterday, so I COULD have watched it live? Well.. ****.
• Looks like I wasn't the first person to think it was all a bit like a Pynchon novel..
• Unfortunately, some sound was bleeding in from the big theatre downstairs. I have now heard the key moments from the midnight special score 4 times.
• Between the last few parts you basically had everyone leave the theatre to walk around doing stretches in a circle outside before heading back it, it must've looked ridiculous

johnny_ultimate

Ha the first three hours (and especially the improv scenes) are basically Rivette trolling the audience and daring them to stick with it. Then it's like "good, you're here now, let's get going shall we?" (Although I love the scenes with Leaud and the harmonica, especially because most of the people clearly don't have a ****ing clue what's happening)

I'm still glad I watched it in 'episode' form rather than in a marathon. It breaks up well and doesn't feel like the overload it would be in two let alone one sessions! Still been meaning to get the 'theme song' as a ringtone for a joke only I would get.

Harry Palmr

Source Code (2011) Dir Duncan Jones

Hmm, another example of film which has a nice idea but never quite gets to grip with it, not helped by offering a fairly sentimental undercurrent to the audience as a way to stay with the concept (and as things are it should have ended with that freeze frame kiss). Terrible 'dynamic' CGI effects and colourising as is the way of things in modern cinema where so much ends up looking like an expensive advert.

Chain Smoker

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

Ha the first three hours (and especially the improv scenes) are basically Rivette trolling the audience and daring them to stick with it. Then it's like "good, you're here now, let's get going shall we?" (Although I love the scenes with Leaud and the harmonica, especially because most of the people clearly don't have a ****ing clue what's happening)

I'm still glad I watched it in 'episode' form rather than in a marathon. It breaks up well and doesn't feel like the overload it would be in two let alone one sessions! Still been meaning to get the 'theme song' as a ringtone for a joke only I would get.

The really brief transitions to Leaud in general for that godawful improv scene seemed to be there to say "don't worry, we'll have to get back to this guy eventually!" It
Honest to God would swear that I heard a collective sigh of relief each time it cut back to him stamping the letters.
The other acting group were fairly fun to watch imo, more distinct individuals too.

It really wasn't an overload imo. I'd find it easier to commit to it for 13 hours again than 2.5 hours with the Turin Horse (i.e. something where you know you're missing out on a lot if you're mind wanders at all from its misanthropy). It didn't really feel episodic, more just a thing that you can watch in chunks, which is a lot less strange now with shows being made for streaming and boxsets and whathaveyou.
...I wouldn't have returned after day one if I was watching it in four parts though.

Really looking forward to seeing Celine and Julie now though, sounds like it'd be great altogether. Saw somewhere just there describe it pretty much as "Like Daisies except not ****", which sounds very good!

Chain Smoker

Midnight Special
Oh dear, at some point during this I caught just how in denial I was about the film. Really didn't work for me at all and puts a pretty huge underscore over some lingering doubts Mud left me with that Jeff Nichols doesn't really know what he's at. Exceptional talent imo but, if this is anything to go by, it's far too raw for him to really make use of a larger budget.
There's a certain point where plot holes become so big that you just can't help but look at them and this was stuffed with them, it was so bad that it was impossible to feel any tension by the end. Lots of huge jumps about with the plot too. Really surprised with how strong of a reception this has gotten.

I remember being really surprised by his top 10 list for sight and sound, it was surprisingly narrow in scope and the overall group didn't really go hand in hand that well with what he had done up to that point. Best thing he could do is watch a few more films, find some new sources to inspire him.

johnny_ultimate

Turbo Kid - ugh. I decided to give this a watch as I'd read some very positive things, and it looked like a Tsai Ming Liang film compared to the garish neon nightmare that is Kung Fury (which remains a strong candidate for being the genuine 'worst thing')

Sadly, this is also terrible, if not quite as much as a crime against humanity as Kung Fury. That is faint praise. This is still another near joyless film that automatically fails by trying to be bad on purpose. But it's not even good at being bad on purpose - a strange mix of being too visually competent (if completely uninteresting) and not at all amusing. This is a lazy parade of cartoon gore, bad acting, worse direction, worst writing. The action has no tension or oomph, which carries over to the near placeless story - a random collection of disjointed, drama-free scenes and setpieces. The fact this is clearly shot in industrial estates adds a vague ragtag charm to a largely charmless effort, but there's always one of the universally grating characters to yank you right back out if you do occasionally tune in to the correct wavelength. The pedal bike chases were better in that Darkplace episode.

This trend of celebrating the worst of the 80s - and in some cases faux 80s-ness that was in fact brought to prominence in the '10s - remains weird and confusing to me. They almost universally fail to live up to their inspirations, which in many cases aren't worthy of affection anyway. Turbo Kid aims for being bad, but sadly does an even better job at that than the three directors intended. Still better than Kung Fury, mind.

Chain Smoker

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

the garish neon nightmare that is Kung Fury (which remains a strong candidate for being the genuine 'worst thing').

That ****ing thing...
I've been made watch it three times by people expecting me to absolutely love it. My opinion of it is so overwhelmingly negative that I've no clue how to tell them how much I hate it and wind up going "No! I never heard of it! What is it?! Oh, yes, okay, I'll watch it!"

There's nothing quite as annoying as a really **** joke that looks like it's simultaneously had an incredible amount of work put into it and absolutely no thought whatsoever.

Miguel_Sanchez

Victoria - one shot German thriller. It's good, quite a feat to pull off a true one shot film that lasts over two hours. Takes a while to get going but is genuinely tense at times and the central performance is great.

Don't watch the trailer though - it gives too much away I felt.

Available on Volta.ie at the moment but only in SD for some reason so I'd advise going to the cinema to see it.

Arghus

Hidden(2015) - In the aftermath of what appears to be some sort of enviromental disaster, a nuclear - pun not intended - family hunkers down for the long haul in an underground shelter, dealing with issues like scarity of food, light, water and craic. Up above there be untold dangers and you know, eventually, something or someone is going to give...

I decided to give it a whirl after hearing it receiving a favourable mention from Jay in Half In The Bag. 10 Cloverfield was hot in my brain so I figured there was no better time for a double dose of hiding underground films.

It is what it sets out to be: a good genre picture. The setting is convincingly dark and murky and there is a palpable sense of growing dread as the story progresses.You figure out early that the script has a few surprises in store and it manages to deliver in that regard, and - maybe just about - manages to give the film a bit more emotional impact than it really should have.

It does have flaws though. The effects look like they were put together using someone's PS2, but I can overlook that - it was obviously a frugally put together film, so I'll cut it a bit of slack. What's more of a problem is the scripts reliance on contrivances and characters behaving illogically in order to drive the plot onwards. It works against the films best efforts to create a sense of tension, when it's at it's most obvious. However, the biggest problem - one that could be a deal breaker for many - is that the action is seen through the eyes of the young girl of the family, and the young actress playing the part gives a terrible performance. Her overly showy acting brought me out the experience countless times. She really was a bad casting choice. If you are going to anchor a movie with a child actor, you better make damn sure that they're bringing it. Otherwise it's frustrating and maddening.

edbrez

Till Death Do Us Part - WW2 bombings, 1966 World cup, rehoused to flats, and Una Stubbs wearing a mini-dress. Made by another forgotten Irish director.

TerrorFirmer

The 5th Wave - so astoundingly bad that I had to give up after an hour. First 30 minutes were fine but it goes downhill about as rapidly as I've ever seen in a movie before - and being a somewhat lengthy movie at 2 hours, I couldn't face another 60 minutes of it (and this from a guy who enjoyed Sharknado). Criminal waste of good talent.

pq0n1ct4ve8zf5

Dreamcatcher (2003): OK. This is an adaptation of a book Stephen King wrote while traumatised after a bad road accident and taking quite a lot of oxycontin. He had to be talked out of calling it Cancer, and it revolves around aliens which

burst out of people's assholes after incubating in their stomachs and causing lengthily and lovingly described flatulence. Also the aliens are mould that causes telepathy (which he calls Ripley just so we know he's deliberately rather than accidentally ripping off bits of Alien), projections of what people think aliens look like, and also the main alien isn't real, but some kind of psychological manifestation of trauma. He really was on a lot of painkillers.

So, I wasn't expecting Casablanca. But trying to explain or analyse the badness of this is like trying to analyse the wetness of water. It's not so much a film as the basis for a drinking game. I'm just going to list some things.

Jason Lee spends one scene fighting a CGI creature but looking slightly to the left or right of it, the complexities of 'look at the tennis ball on the stick, Jason' being apparently beyond him.

Half or two thirds of the way through, someone remembered that wipes are a thing and that they really like them, so they're used a lot from then on, but nobody bothered to go back and put them in for the early scenes.

Donnie Wahlberg plays a intellectually disabled leukemia patient with a Scooby Doo obsession. Not even in the top ten bad things.

A snowflake falls, lands on the lens of someone's glasses, and it makes a little *bing* sound, because hey, why not.

Swear to god the score is the exact same as one of the early 2000s Tombraider games or something.

Damian Lewis, god bless him, really decides to just commit to the over the top awfulness of the whole thing. Saves it from being just boringly or cringy bad and puts it in the vicinity of so-bad-it's-good. At one point his character has to feed something to a dog, as part of an evil plot. It's as though they told him 'OK, give us some Saturday morning cartoon villain type lines, we'll pick one in post' but then they just USED ALL OF THEM. At least 20-30 seconds of him going 'Yes, good doggie. Eat up boy. There's a good boy. Yes, yes, eat the num nums....' and so on and so forth

I mean, I don't know. If you want to see how someone can make a mess of one of the hot-messiest King books (there actually is plenty of amusing, creepy and entertainingly gross and violent stuff in the book, but it all gets left out), then fire away with this. Also yeah, definitely a good drinking game in there somewhere.

Liam McPoyle

Deadpool.

Awful.

Smug, self back patting, thinks its clever garbage.

BMMachine

Saul T Nutzz wrote: »

Deadpool.

Awful.

Smug, self back patting, thinks its clever garbage.

you describing "millennials" or the film?

fin12

Saw The Huntsman winters war 2 today, enjoyed it, good film. Jessica Chastain is so pretty, gorgeous red hair.

TICKLE_ME_ELMO

fin12 wrote: »

enjoyed it, good film. Jessica Chastain is so pretty, gorgeous red hair.

Quote for the DVD cover there.

Canadel

Saul T Nutzz wrote: »

Deadpool.

Awful.

Smug, self back patting, thinks its clever garbage.

Pretty much my feelings from just seeing the trailer. Plain unfunny.

I might stream it some time. (it's made more than enough money already)

Howard the Duck

Midnight Special. More like Midnight very average......ba dum tish....I'll go now

Snake Plisken

Saul T Nutzz wrote: »

Deadpool.

Awful.

Smug, self back patting, thinks its clever garbage.

if you watched the trailers you know exactly the type of movie it's going to be, if the trailers didn't float your boat then there is a very good chance it's not going to be for you!

Just to keep this on topic I saw Batman Vs Superman and was pleasently surprised that it was nowhere near as bad as critics etc made out, I look forward to the directors cut on the Blu-Ray when it's released in July, this and the Dradpool Blu-Ray's will be day one purchases for me!