What have you watched recently: Electric Boogaloo

holy guacamole

The Witch

First thing to note about this film is the dialogue and how impenetrable it will be for a lot of people. The director wanted to make the film as authentic as possible so the characters speak in the style of ye olde England, there's plenty of "thee" "ooh" "ahr" and "yon" throughout the film and it can be difficult to follow. Adding to the sense of authenticity is the setting, it is as grim and as bleak a film as I've ever seen, lots of greys and browns, proper miserable.

In terms of story it's similar to a lot of recent horror films in that there's a sense of ambiguity in terms of the evil presences and how real they are. This is especially relevant given the era its set in and how religious people were during that time.

Ultimately it's more of an unsettling film than a straight-up scary one, I can see why the critics raved over it because it is beautifully crafted and uniquely styled, but in terms of raw entertainment it fell a little short for me.

Chain Smoker

briany wrote: »

There's a lot of very bad Found Footage films out there. It's a genre that lends itself to cheapness of production because you can basically shoot a film of this type on your phone or with a handheld camera and it'll have an authentic look. However when done right, as I think BWP was, they can hit the mark and hit it hard. I think that Blair Witch succeeds as a film because it's actually very atmospheric and there's a good amount of backstory that goes into the film, and this was provided in part by the promotional campaign which was, and remains, an interesting way to flesh out a film's plot.

To me, BWP is like Halloween in that it popularised a sub-genre and is a film that is often imitated but rarely duplicated, at least not in its execution of impact.

I'd go a step further and say it succeeds as a film purely on atmosphere, the bit of backstory at the start (excluding the one interview tacked on after it test screenings which I found detrimental tbh) doesn't really add anything other than atmosphere.

I can't really remember the promotional campaign at all but it was obviously hugely successful to bring in so many punters who f*cking hated the film, I do wonder if it would've been as successful on its own if the reviews weren't so positive though. Like, it's one thing having a lot of interest around a promotional campaign, but seeing reviews saying "hey, it's actually good!" seems like it would have been the nudge needed to push it over.

Its just a really solid concept imo (i.e. lets bring a bunch of actors to the woods and make their lives hell for a few days on the loosest of loose plots). I think they wound up with something like 20 hours of usable footage through a mixture of a lack of resources and sufficient editing skill, they managed to put together a bit of a gem.


Halloween is a film I avoided for most my teens when I was in full "horror films suck" snob mode, at this stage I'm kind of convinced that when I do get to see it (in a cinema, not gonna settle for home viewing of that) that it'll shoot straight into my favourite films.

pq0n1ct4ve8zf5

I like Blair Witch but the found-footage cycle it kicked off is generally dross really. The most annoying thing was that the format was just shoe-horned in on top of any plot, for no reason, to the point where the illogicality of it was all I could focus on.

It's like Modern Family on TV, or a few other shows that came out in the wake of The US Office. Who the actual fcuk is filming this and why? Why is this not being addressed?!?!

Chain Smoker

I think the US Office actually fully acknowledged the documentary throughout the final season. And yes, it was just as awkward as you'd imagine.

Parks and Rec was from mostly the same people for the same network who wanted more of the same, it changed hugely after the first season so I feel that's more just a thing they were stuck with. They definitely scaled back on it too, it wasn't carried on into Brooklyn Nine-Nine and you'd barely notice.

Modern Family was almost certainly a lot more Christopher Guest influenced in pre-production, the name and setup all seem pretty suitable for a mockumentary.



Are there any others?

Liam McPoyle

Mila Clumsy Termite wrote: »

I like Blair Witch but the found-footage cycle it kicked off is generally dross really. The most annoying thing was that the format was just shoe-horned in on top of any plot, for no reason, to the point where the illogicality of it was all I could focus on.

It's like Modern Family on TV, or a few other shows that came out in the wake of The US Office. Who the actual fcuk is filming this and why? Why is this not being addressed?!?!

Modern Family is brilliant.

pq0n1ct4ve8zf5

Probably, found-footage horror would be more my wheelhouse than 2010s American sitcoms though :P

The premise of Modern Family does mesh pretty well with a mockumentary, but I'd imagine it being the 'in' style when it was commissioned was as important a deciding factor as anything else. And once you get 50 episodes or so past the premise, with the inevitably wackier story telling that involves in a sitcom, things start getting strained imo. Narratively, it's only really there to get characters to explain their motivations to camera (there's a Community episode that's pretty cutting about that, but then again, isn't there always), outside of the interview segments the characters pretty much ignore the 'documentary crew' and it might as well be a regular one camera set up

TICKLE_ME_ELMO

Saul T Nutzz wrote: »

Modern Family is a load of balls.

FYP.

You're welcome.

Dair76

TICKLE_ME_ELMO wrote: »

FYP.

You're welcome.

Just kidding. It can be quite good at times.

FYP.

Chain Smoker

Mila Clumsy Termite wrote: »

Probably, found-footage horror would be more my wheelhouse than 2010s American sitcoms though :P

The premise of Modern Family does mesh pretty well with a mockumentary, but I'd imagine it being the 'in' style when it was commissioned was as important a deciding factor as anything else. And once you get 50 episodes or so past the premise, with the inevitably wackier story telling that involves in a sitcom, things start getting strained imo. Narratively, it's only really there to get characters to explain their motivations to camera (there's a Community episode that's pretty cutting about that, but then again, isn't there always), outside of the interview segments the characters pretty much ignore the 'documentary crew' and it might as well be a regular one camera set up

Watching 2010s American sitcoms is on my CV! But yeah, it was a brief weird fad. The Office was raking it in on syndication (remember when the Office was on 3e the whole f*cking time?), and NBC had already committed to another one with Parks & Rec, so ABC took a punt on one of the doubtless dozens of shows being pitched.
A certain amount of it may have been that it, at the time, was still fairly hard to convince networks to take on single camera sitcoms.

I actually find Parks & Rec far worse than Modern Family for it, with Modern Family they completely ignore them, whereas Parks & Rec will routinely use the Gervaisian Tim-face.
When you completely ignore it outside of the Talking Heads you could at least rationalise that they're doing interviews without any footage being shot of their lives.

TICKLE_ME_ELMO

Dair76 wrote: »

FYP.

Reported for abuse.

ButtersSuki

I love the American office and Parks and Rec. I just can't get into Modern Family at all though, I just don't find it funny.

30 Rock was like a mockumentary of a mockumentary at times

Reno 911 was another that I quite liked.

pq0n1ct4ve8zf5

Chain Smoker wrote: »

Watching 2010s American sitcoms is on my CV! But yeah, it was a brief weird fad. The Office was raking it in on syndication (remember when the Office was on 3e the whole f*cking time?), and NBC had already committed to another one with Parks & Rec, so ABC took a punt on one of the doubtless dozens of shows being pitched.
A certain amount of it may have been that it, at the time, was still fairly hard to convince networks to take on single camera sitcoms.

I actually find Parks & Rec far worse than Modern Family for it, with Modern Family they completely ignore them, whereas Parks & Rec will routinely use the Gervaisian Tim-face.
When you completely ignore it outside of the Talking Heads you could at least rationalise that they're doing interviews without any footage being shot of their lives.

...I'm definitely going to do that next time I see it.

Anyhoo, it was a brief phases on TV, Blair Witch was 1999 (not that found-footage was unheard of before that, I'd guess the advent of digital society is part of what made it take hold the way it did in '99) and found-footage kept going strong well into the 2010s, they're still being made. There are occasional ones which work well, but there's some awful auld nonsense too. Admittedly the fault for that is probably just the general standard of low budget horror flicks than anything to do with found-footage...

Seem to remember The Bay being fairly good but I might be mixing it up with something else

pq0n1ct4ve8zf5

Oh and Creep from 2014 uses it really well, definitely a film that shows how FF can enhance a film rather than just being plonked down on top of it any old way

Chain Smoker

Creep's on my watchlist, didn't even know it was found footage though, I just think Mark Duplass could be a very good low-key creep, especially if he's wearing his glasses. I mean, if he's not the titular creep of that film I'm going to switch it off immediately.
Other than that and Cannibal Holocaust (for reasons other than quality), [REC] is the only one I've down to watch.

Going off of absolutely nothing, I'd imagine the overflow of them last decade had as much to do with it being one of the only genres that could completely get away with shooting digital that early on as it being especially successful in cinemas.

pq0n1ct4ve8zf5

Chain Smoker wrote: »

Going off of absolutely nothing, I'd imagine the overflow of them last decade had as much to do with it being one of the only genres that could completely get away with shooting digital that early on as it being especially successful in cinemas.

Definitely. I mean 'low budget horror film' is approaching a tautology, really only a need to specify the budget if it's medium or high

briany

Mila Clumsy Termite wrote: »

I like Blair Witch but the found-footage cycle it kicked off is generally dross really. The most annoying thing was that the format was just shoe-horned in on top of any plot, for no reason, to the point where the illogicality of it was all I could focus on.

Well, it's the old 80 percent rule, isn't it? Found Footage films that are effective, as horrors, are few and far between but when they're good, they're very good. For me, it's only a handful,

BWP
Paranormal Activity 1&3
Cloverfield
Exhibit A
Rec
Trollhunter
Willow Creek
Europa Report
Alien Abduction: The Mcpherson Tape

pq0n1ct4ve8zf5

Never heard of Exhibit A, trailer looks good, must give it a watch, cheers

Liam McPoyle

TICKLE_ME_ELMO wrote: »

I'm a load of balls.

I know!

:mad:





:pac:

briany

Chain Smoker wrote: »

Creep's on my watchlist, didn't even know it was found footage though

Creep is not a found footage film, but it is quite an enjoyable and, er, creepy horror.

pq0n1ct4ve8zf5

briany wrote: »

Creep is not a found footage film, but it is quite an enjoyable and, er, creepy horror.

In what sense? It's composed of

footage shot by a murdered protagonist, found by the murderer and presented to the viewer after the protagonist's death

. It complicates the format in how it presents the material, sure, but how is not found footage

briany

Mila Clumsy Termite wrote: »

In what sense? It's composed of

footage shot by a murdered protagonist, found by the murderer and presented to the viewer after the protagonist's death

. It complicates the format in how it presents the material, sure, but how is not found footage

Excuse me, I was thinking of the wrong Creep. I see you meant the one from 2014 instead of 2004. Carry on...

Dair76

Speaking of BWP and found footage, avoid Exists. It's found footage meets bigfoot from the creators of the original Blair Witch Project. After the release of BWP, they cited creature features such as The Legend of Boggy Creek as being part inspiration for BWP, but when it came time to tackle the hairy subject themselves, they missed the mark. There were one or two effective scenes in it to be fair, but overall I thought it was fairly bland.

Willow Creek on the other hand, another bigfoot found footage movie released at the same time as Exists, was more entertaining. Directed by Bobcat Goldthwait of all people, it actually riffs on a few scenes from BWP. It's not a great movie in it's own right, but it's worth a watch (if you don't expect anything new and can stomach the occasionally annoying characters).

Huh, Exists and Willow Creek score 5.2 and 5.1 respectively on IMDb. You have been warned. :pac:

Canadel

Dazed & Confused ~ Alriiight Alriiight Alriiiight...

9/10. Masterpiece.

briany

Dair76 wrote: »

Speaking of BWP and found footage, avoid Exists. It's found footage meets bigfoot from the creators of the original Blair Witch Project. After the release of BWP, they cited creature features such as The Legend of Boggy Creek as being part inspiration for BWP, but when it came time to tackle the hairy subject themselves, they missed the mark. There were one or two effective scenes in it to be fair, but overall I thought it was fairly bland.

Willow Creek on the other hand, another bigfoot found footage movie released at the same time as Exists, was more entertaining. Directed by Bobcat Goldthwait of all people, it actually riffs on a few scenes from BWP. It's not a great movie in it's own right, but it's worth a watch (if you don't expect anything new and can stomach the occasionally annoying characters).

Huh, Exists and Willow Creek score 5.2 and 5.1 respectively on IMDb. You have been warned. :pac:

Bobcat does good stuff as far as I'm concerned, and Willow Creek is no exception. I like that it juxtaposes gentle comedy with some tense scenes. Not enough horror films do this, I think. They basically go with one mood right the way through, which makes you numb to it, oftentimes. But if add in some light and some time to get to know the characters, whatever horror you then add becomes infinitely more effective.

LuckyLloyd

Canadel wrote: »

Dazed & Confused ~ Alriiight Alriiight Alriiiight...

9/10. Masterpiece.

Went to see it's 'spiritual sequel' Everybody Want's Some last night. Another Linklater hit for me, though the dialogue and execution doesn't flow anywhere near as well as Dazed and Confused. Some of the setups and conversations seem a little contrived. But that is more than compensated for by a flip of the typical coming of age focal point. In this film the focus are the jocks and the dickheads - and that works really well, to see the same themes examined via the normally peripheral one dimensional characters that sit in the background of so many of these films.

Tony EH

briany wrote: »

Well, it's the old 80 percent rule, isn't it? Found Footage films that are effective, as horrors, are few and far between but when they're good, they're very good. For me, it's only a handful,

BWP
Paranormal Activity 1&3
Cloverfield
Exhibit A
Rec
Trollhunter
Willow Creek
Europa Report
Alien Abduction: The Mcpherson Tape

Out of those, I've seen the bolded and enjoyed them, except for 'Paranormal Activity 3', which is a series that outlived its welcome by the end of the first one really. I'd also add 'Cannibal Holocaust' to your list as an example of a good FF film, which despite the gaudy title and its notority, is not the film that most people think it is.

My major issue with found footage films though, besides the annoying way the concept is overused, is the "acting". The problem is a lot of the actors in these FF films actually act like they're appearing in a straight shot narrative and it destroys the concept in one single swoop.

The momentary slips from "just normal people caught on camera" to "actors acting" dissolves the conceit and can take the viewer out of the piece in no short time.

MilesMorales1

Gosh, what did I see this week...

Lets start with X-Men Apocalypse! And I have to ask do the X-Men movies ever get good? Were they ever good? Granted, I haven't seen all these movies yet (I've seen apocalypse, first class, days of future past, and the two wolverine movies) and the only one I've even liked a little bit was the 2013 Wolverine. Otherwise these movies are either mediocre at best, or just bad or boring or whatever. That's disappointing, and thats what apocalypse is.

Not only does it look bad, with kinda bad CGI (I'm usually an unobservant pleb who doesn't notice bad CGI, so the fact I noticed it here annoys me) bad looking costumes, stiff, boring acting, humour so thats out of place it makes Age Of Ultron look like an actually funny movie by comparison, and a plot that makes so little sense in its own bizarre continuity that not only was it hard to follow, I didn't really want to.

The worst thing for any movie to do, is make me bored and make tempted to check my phone in the cinema to see how much longer its gonna drag on (I know, phones in cinemas are bad) And X-Men Apocalypse is one of those movies. Is it the worst movie ever? Is it the worst super hero movie ever, even the worst superhero movie this year? It isn't. Its just a big pile of bleh, with bad acting, bad costuming, bad visuals, nonsensical plot, bad humour, and just... it doesn't come together. Bleh. Avoid.


Also, why was Wolverine in this movie? Its a fanboy cameo, absolute useless nonsense.



Next, we had Our Kind Of Traitor Our Kind Of Traitor is a movie that the trailer made it look super average, but upon watching it I discovered it was super understated, super well acted, super great. Thats awesome.

The story isn't that complicated, Russian mob boss gives British university professor who had marital tensions with his wife a memory stick with evidence of the corruption of many British politicians in line with the Russian Mafia to hand over to British intelligence and offers more information in exchange for safe sanctuary. Said Mob boss won't hand more information over to intelligence without the presence of his professor courier cos he thinks intelligence will try and screw him over, so professor and his wife are temporarily conscripted into MI6 to conduct the deal.

If thats a kinda long explanation, its honestly less complicated than it sounds. Damian Lewis is the main MI6 man with a score to settle in the political world, Ewan McGregor is the college professor with marital problems but is also 'a man of honour' as Stellan Skarsgard's Russian mob boss describes him.

Its kind of odd, although I really liked this movie, I can't think of a lot of things to say about it. Its well acted, looks nice, has some great filming and cinematography, the plot was engaging, and goddamn Damian Lewis. He's amazing. I also love the accent Mark Gatiss puts on.


Great movie. Highly recommended.



I also (re)watched The Big Short now the blu ray is out. And that movie is still fantastic, one of the best movies I've seen all year. Not dissimilar to The Wolf Of Wall Street, it does a much better than Wolf in telling its story and its message, mainly cos unlike Wolf it never ends up too pleased with itself or indulging itself in the pleasures of excess, and the ending is tough. I also love the various celebrity cameos.

Harry Palmr

Hell in the Pacific (1968) Dir John Boorman with Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifune. Starts slowly but becomes quite absorbing drama in which neither party can understand a word the other says. Impressive performances from both esp the scenes on the raft, looked pretty hazardous! The version Film4 have is the original studio cut and not the DVD ending which is somewhat different

One thing that I thought about watching it was how people would watch this if they spoke neither English or Japanese as nothing is translated we have to guess what is being said by the one we don't understand, did dubbers just stick with the English dialogue or did they translate both?

Tony EH

What's the Film 4 ending?

Harry Palmr

the ending features

an explosion from a navel gun which kills both, the other version they both live albeit arguing again