What have you watched recently: Electric Boogaloo

ButtersSuki

Chain Smoker wrote: »

Does that include 70s Jack Nicholson though? Before he became so associated as being Jack Nicholson he was knocking out some really f*cking good performances.

It's something of an achievement that he managed to embrace his over-familiarity as the years went on too.

I'd seen Chinatown and One Flew when I was much younger and hadn't been as irritated by him, but I developed this (irrational I guess) hatred for him over time. I've watched quite a few movies with him in it since getting over the hump with The Shining, but I still find him nauseating at times. I don't quite get the abuse Pacino gets for example, while Nicholson gets a free pass.

Chain Smoker

ButtersSuki wrote: »

I'd seen Chinatown and One Flew when I was much younger and hadn't been as irritated by him, but I developed this (irrational I guess) hatred for him over time. I've watched quite a few movies with him in it since getting over the hump with The Shining, but I still find him nauseating at times. I don't quite get the abuse Pacino gets for example, while Nicholson gets a free pass.

Pacino is odd, there is that whole thing of how he never quite managed to stop being Tony Montana but he seems like a guy who just ****ing loves acting so i let him slide with a lot. If he were more selective and a bit more afraid of embarrassing himself, I think he'd be a lot more well regarded still.

Nicholson, however, firstly only seems to work with a few people unless he's given a ****ton, so he hasn't the string of flops that Pacino does. He's also not a real actor actor, he hasn't the range to deviate too far from his own personality but he's typically pretty good about it. He's a smart guy, knows how to handle his image

ButtersSuki

Just a quick question after watching Room 237. Has anyone watched The Shining Code 2.0? I assume 2.0 is an update on a previous effort?

Or
Eyes Wide Shut — A Steganalysis? It was actually hearing about this that I finally watched Room 237 as it is the more celebrated of the Kubrick analysis docs that I've heard of.

johnny_ultimate

Cemetery of Splendour - Apichatpong Weerasethakul's work often feels like it's operating on another layer of cinematic consciousness. There's only a few other directors out there making the films that hit these sort of notes - Tsai Miang-Liang and Hou Hsiao-Hsien spring to mind - and there's something giddy about those moments when they catch you in their spell.

Cemetery is unmistakably a film by 'Joe', with many of his formal trademarks and narrative concerns reappearing. But it feels new too, a fresh manifestation of what's he's been doing throughout his most acclaimed films. My favourite of his films is the wonderful Syndromes and a Century, and this feels like a companion piece to that. Different layers - time & space, the spiritual & the temporal - mesh with a glorious fluency. There's a constant dream-like logic holding everything together, and there's some of the most mesmerising images you'll see in a cinema this or any other year (the neon 'sleeping machine' tubes illuminating a group of comatose soldiers is an improbably beautiful image of pure cinematic hyper-reality).

There's a lot said about the state of Thailand here, plenty of which flew over my head until I read a few analyses (thank god for Tony Rayns, as ever). But like all of Joe's films complete contextual comprehension is only an added bonus on top of the film's uniquely hypnotic spell. This is a film that often makes the viewer like they're in a dream world and wide awake at the very same time. In a film of narcoleptic soldiers, friendly spirits and potential psychics (who may also be police informants) that couldn't be any more appropriate.

Duggy747

Found out the girlfriend hasn't seen most of Scorsesse, DeNiro and Pacino films pre-2000. She's mainly used to seeing DeNiro as an old man and in comedy roles so had to fix that :P

Heat, Goodfellas, Raging Bull, Dog Day Afternoon so far................It's been a great past few days revisiting the classics.

Forgot how entertaining Raging Bull is.

mewe

Duggy747 wrote:

Forgot how entertaining Raging Bull is.

Great film. Ye still have Taxi Driver to watch too!

Duggy747

mewe wrote: »

Great film. Ye still have Taxi Driver to watch too!

Yup, will be interesting to see how she takes to that as I actually don't know anybody who likes that film.

The 70's is also one of my favourite decades for film which she has seen feck all movies from so have a huge selection to go through after this stint :pac:

Tony EH

Duggy747 wrote: »

Yup, will be interesting to see how she takes to that as I actually don't know anybody who likes that film.

Duggy747

Tony EH wrote: »

I love the film but everyone I've recommended it to have written it off and don't like it at all, the soundtrack especially seems to get on their nerves :pac:

Tony EH

Genuinely surprised.

One of THE greatest films of the 70's.

mewe

Yeah it's so good. I think the soundtrack is amazing aswell.

Tony EH

Bernard Herrmann.

What's not to like?

Chain Smoker

Duggy747 wrote: »

I love the film but everyone I've recommended it to have written it off and don't like it at all, the soundtrack especially seems to get on their nerves :pac:

It's one of those films people won't really need recommended to them if they're gonna like it, surely? Like, anyone who's over 14 who's gonna like Taxi Driver will have heard of it and probably seen it.

For a film that is pretty much never on at times where people will randomly stumble upon it, it sure has a lot of ratings on imdb, like.

MilesMorales1

I just can't take movies like Mother's Day seriously anymore. These stupid bad movies, I just can't. I was sitting in a cinema screen with maybe 5 other people, no one was laughing except me.

Not because the film was funny, I hasten to add, its terrible awful sludge. But I kept remembering all the humorous reviews of this movie and other movies like it from Mark Kermode, and the idea Jennifer Anniston has a face made for tv, and it just made me snigger every time.

This movie is so stupid and boring and bad, it basically ended up being a parody.
Like how the racist homophobic parents from Texas just so happen to have a daughter who marries an Indian (who is referred to as a towelhead incidentally) and another daughter who is such a raging lesbian she builds a float of a giant womb for a parade (not sure which parade thats for), or how Jennifer Garner still manages to show up in this movie despite her character having been dead for a whole year at the time the movie takes place in, or how they all live in these perfect upper class neighbourhoods where you don't need to lock your doors when you go out and everyone has a heart of gold, even the gruffest oldest characters, and they're all somehow crazy rich despite doing vague unspecified jobs.




Apparently valuable lessons to learn from this movie, women who don't want to have children are bad, all mothers are better than all fathers, and mothers have special senses in their bodies to let them know when their children are in danger.


What a bad movie. Bleh. Also, I detest Jack Whitehall, he's just not funny.

GreNoLi

Coherence: Low budget mumblecore sci-fi filmed in five days in one location, definitely worth a watch, go in blind.

ButtersSuki

MilesMorales1 wrote: »

I just can't take movies like Mother's Day seriously anymore. These stupid bad movies, I just can't. I was sitting in a cinema screen with maybe 5 other people, no one was laughing except me.

Not because the film was funny, I hasten to add, its terrible awful sludge. But I kept remembering all the humorous reviews of this movie and other movies like it from Mark Kermode, and the idea Jennifer Anniston has a face made for tv, and it just made me snigger every time.

This movie is so stupid and boring and bad, it basically ended up being a parody.
Like how the racist homophobic parents from Texas just so happen to have a daughter who marries an Indian (who is referred to as a towelhead incidentally) and another daughter who is such a raging lesbian she builds a float of a giant womb for a parade (not sure which parade thats for), or how Jennifer Garner still manages to show up in this movie despite her character having been dead for a whole year at the time the movie takes place in, or how they all live in these perfect upper class neighbourhoods where you don't need to lock your doors when you go out and everyone has a heart of gold, even the gruffest oldest characters, and they're all somehow crazy rich despite doing vague unspecified jobs.




Apparently valuable lessons to learn from this movie, women who don't want to have children are bad, all mothers are better than all fathers, and mothers have special senses in their bodies to let them know when their children are in danger.


What a bad movie. Bleh. Also, I detest Jack Whitehall, he's just not funny.

I'm just surprised you went to see it. My sincerest commiserations.

ButtersSuki

On a Kubrick Documentary buzz so went with

Stanley Kubrick's Boxes A fascinating insight into the collection of boxes (clever title eh?) in which Kubrick stored the research material for his movies, fan letters, newspaper ads etc. which were stored at his house. The level of detail is astonishing as evidenced throughout but particularly obvious when the tale of Spielberg researching, planning, casting, shooting and delivering Shcindler's List in the same time as Kubrick hadn't even finished researching his Holocaust movie (the release of Schindler's List caused him to abandon the work after more than 2 years of research). Quite short at less than 50mins but freely available on youtube. 7/10

Eyes Wide Shut - A Steganalysis Low-budget (the quality of the imagery/screen shots etc. used and the VO are of poor quality) but a far more "academic" (it's almost like reading a thesis), serious and thoughtful review of the film than say Room 237 is of The Shining. Again on youtube, I found it superior to Room 237, but not as entertaining - if you catch my drift? The visuals used in Room 237 and the sound quality, coupled with some "interesting" takes on the subject matter would make it appealing to a far wider audience than this, but there is a place for this kind of analysis. It would likely bore non-fans or those who aren't into the minutiae and attention to detail that the director himself put into the movie, but it kept my attention to the end. 8/10

Now just have to find time to watch the actual films again......

edbrez

Hells angels on wheels - one of several Jack Nicholson biker movies from the 1960s.

MilesMorales1

The Angry Birds movie is.. not that bad? Like its not good by any stretch of the imagination. But its much better than ratchet and clank, or warcraft. It's mildly funny. It looks nice. Its a harmless kids movie, can't argue with that. It spends way too long on the set up before we get the angry birds scenario, but thats all I can think of really. Not as good as the secret life of pets though.

Tony EH

MilesMorales1 wrote: »

The Angry Birds movieis.. not that bad? Like its not good by any stretch of the imagination. But its much better than ratchet and clank, or warcraft. It's mildly funny. It looks nice. Its a harmless kids movie, can't argue with that. It spends way too long on the set up before we get the angry birds scenario, but thats all I can think of really. Not as good as the secret life of pets though.

Is it good?

The lovely wife says we're going.

MilesMorales1

Tony EH wrote: »

Is it good?

The lovely wife says we're going.

I like it more the more I think about it. Not great, but very entertaining.

The Gunman 2015 - I thought that this was very watchable, especially with the lack of decent thrillers in recent years. Can't understand why it go such bad reviews really. Sean Penn wasn't that bad in it and there is a decent supporting cast - Javier Bardem et al. Worth a watch if you're in the mood for an action conspiracy type movie. The plot is not very original but thriller plots rarely are.

johnny_ultimate

Remainder - Intrigued after finishing Satin Island, I started reading Tom McCarthy's Remainder earlier this week. I didn't realise when I started that there was actually an adaptation out this week too - so it gave me a good motivation to just gorge on the book (which I probably would have done anyway given how fascinating it is). Finishing the novel and seeing the adaptation in such close proximity, alas, made Omer Fast's film suffer in comparison.

The story is similar to Synecdoche, New York. A man (Tom Sturridge) receives a fortune in compensation after a mysterious accident. A flashback to a scene - possibly imagined - from his past, equal parts vague and vivid, provokes him to spend a good portion of that cash attempting to recreate that exact scene over and over. This leads him to start re-creating other moments, and increasingly elaborate / dangerous situations.

A book, IMO, kind of has you acting as cinematographer and editor (and casting director... and set designer...) in your own head - albeit with some very helpful instructions. For me, Remainder is book of very potent loops and repetitions, that really captures the compulsive nature of the protagonist's actions (and also a commentary on the nature of creating art in the first place). Indeed, I'd go as far as saying it's very cinematic, so reliant is it on a series of incidents and images. Sadly, this is something I think the film really struggles to capture. While it's obviously silly to expect an adaptation to be exactly what you'd expect, I think this really faltered in translating McCarthy's descriptions and narrative to the screen.

The sterile visual palette and awkward acting don't help. While changes are certainly needed to adapt a story of this nature, the majority of the alterations / additions (one or two well-judged changes aside) here lead to two main problems: a) confusing the themes & story, and b) making the whole thing more generic than it needs to be. The frequent appearance of a few gangsters, a 'mysterious suitcase' and an expanded role for the 'romantic interest' (although it's not very romantic at all) come across as concessions to a wider audience that the narrative doesn't need. The revised ending, meanwhile, simply doesn't make much sense at all. While the actions of the narrator in the novel retain an artful ambiguity, here they just seem awkwardly obtuse.

This is criticising the film for what it isn't as opposed to what it is, but I really believe a more experimental approach would have benefited this film. I'd point to Upstream Colour as a film that achieves truly remarkable things through visual links, narrative echoes and associative editing. There's hints of that here - a few moments where the camera and protagonist focus on some minor gesture or image. Ultimately, though, Fast seems more concerned with powering through the plot rather than dwelling on the nuances. There's hints of what makes the book remarkable here, but it's a wasted opportunity at the same time. There's a scene near the end - and, to be fair, the lead-up to the ending is the closest the film gets to meaningfully adapting the events of the book - where a 're-enactor' observes how they've gone through the same motions hundreds of times. There's very little in the film, though, to really show us the sort of delusions, cycles and repetitions the book manages to capture.

Gamb!t

Would recomend River.
Low budget thriller with plenty of suspense.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4215810/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2

ButtersSuki

The Nice Guys
I was just so disappointed in this. I had heard good things about it, but it felt very forced, staged, overly long, and just silly in places. i just felt it was trying too hard and that ultimately it's not as cool or as slick as it likes to think it is. The soundtrack was good though (I like disco.......forgive me ) and Angourie Rice was a revelation. Overall though, a disappointing 5/10.

holy guacamole

Midnight Special , had been really looking forward to this as I'd enjoyed Nichols' previous work (Take Shelter, Shotgun Stories) but it was a thundering disappointment.

It's intentionally vague and just throws you into the action straight away; a boy with mysterious powers has been kidnapped from a commune by his father and they're being chased by the FBI, the CIA and just about everyone.

Initially that was enough to intrigue me, but when it became clear that the intentional vagueness was just a means of covering up the gaping plot-holes it became a problem. Much of the questions raised by the film are left unanswered, which in certain instances can be a good thing, but in a science-fiction film where you're asked to go along with ideas outside the boundaries of normality it's criminal. And when you add in a chronic lack of character development, poor pacing and non-existent narrative what you get is an incredibly boring movie.

4/10

Mizu_Ger

McQ (1974)
John Wayne/John Sturges '70s detective film made in the wake Dirty Harry (it seems Wayne turned down that role and regretted it). Wayne spends most of the film being fed up with the system and goes out on his own to solve some murders. It tries to bring him into the 70's with a score that's ripped off from Pelham 123. He also drives a sports car to match Steve McQueen (including a car chase that feels like it was cut short) but he seems to have trouble getting in and out of it! And most bizarre of all he beds a cokehead informant and then tries to do the same to the grieving widow, but is interrupted at the last second. There was a decent 70's thriller in here, but Wayne was the wrong person for the lead (and too old).

Sweet Smell of Success (1957)
Quite short at 95 minutes and moves along like a bullet. Constant quips and smart, quoteable one-liners from almost everyone in the film makes this a dizzying film to follow when watching for the first time. It stops short of melodrama and has none of the whimsical tone of Alexander MacKendrick's other films (that I've seen). Will have to rewatch this at some stage to get the most out of it.

Del.Monte

"Once Upon a Time in America" (1984) - on Netflix.

Starring Robert de Niro and James Woods.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzhX2PD6Srw

A depressing tale of love, lust, opium trips and gangsters in America. Directed by Sergio Leone and hailed as a 'classic' by many. I found it fairly dull, depressing and way to long. Much as I'm a fan of the director and many of the cast it was much ado about nothing. Think "Apocalypse Now" without the action sequences. Frequent use of flashbacks between the 1920s and 1960s makes for poor viewing.According to Wiki the director intended it to be released as two three hour long movies, so that probably accounts for the confusing mess which is the cut-down (slightly under four hours) version on Netflix.The best part of the movie is the soundtrack by Ennio Morricone.

5/10 as it's still worth sticking with - once!

ButtersSuki

Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping Andy Samberg and the other two guys from The Lonely Island's mockumentary take on boybands, celebrity, self-promotion, and a few things in between (the TMZ/CMZ skits that occasionally pop up are particularly cutting) . It's Spinal Tap-lite, however, if you don't find The Lonely Island songs funny, then you likely won't find this funny either. As you'd expect from The Lonely island, there are songs, incl. "I want you to f*ck me like the US Government f*cked Osama Bin Laden" and a direct piss-take of Macklemore's "Same Love" song. Too many cameos to mention and screams SNL, but it's definitely one of the better SNL movies and it was genuinely a lot better than I expected. 7/10.

Trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9RoNzJrmDo

ButtersSuki

Del.Monte wrote: »

"Once Upon a Time in America" (1984) - on Netflix.

Starring Robert de Niro and James Woods.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzhX2PD6Srw

A depressing tale of love, lust, opium trips and gangsters in America. Directed by Sergio Leone and hailed as a 'classic' by many. I found it fairly dull, depressing and way to long. Much as I'm a fan of the director and many of the cast it was much ado about nothing. Think "Apocalypse Now" without the action sequences. Frequent use of flashbacks between the 1920s and 1960s makes for poor viewing.According to Wiki the director intended it to be released as two three hour long movies, so that probably accounts for the confusing mess which is the cut-down (slightly under four hours) version on Netflix.The best part of the movie is the soundtrack by Ennio Morricone.

5/10 as it's still worth sticking with - once!

Not sure how long (exactly) the version you've just seen is, but I've seen 4+ hour versions (plural) and I love it/them. Worth tracking down IMO, though if you only gave the version you saw 5/10 then you may not get a lot more out of it.