What have you watched recently: Electric Boogaloo

Hector Savage

Tough Guys https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092105/?ref_=nv_sr_1

Great film really love it, brings back memories.
Love the last scene.

spacecoyote

Watched Ninja III - The Domination

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087805/

I think its possibly the most 80s movie that I've ever seen. Its from Cannon Group, which brought us such amazing movies as Breakin', so you know you're on to a winner :cool:

Its got:

• Ninjas
• Aerobics instructors
• Demonic Possession (with blatant rip offs of the likes of Poltergeist)
• Cops who can't shoot guns
• Bad make up
• Terrible outfits
• Terrible attempts at "sexy" scenes
• Badly choreographed fight scenes

In a nutshell, everything you could possibly want

Frank O. Pinion

2018: The Year of Nicolas Cage continues...



Between Worlds (2018)

This is like the polar opposite in tone and quality, of recently released Cage masterpiece Mandy, this new film is firmly in so-bad-it's-really-good territory. It's like Twin Peaks meets...Nicolas Cage! From a review on FilmInquiry.com:

"Between Worlds may not be the finest receptacle for Cage's insanity, but it does feature a sex scene in which he reads, mid-intercourse, from an erotic book titled Memories by

Nicolas Cage

. Make of that what you will."

I loved it.

ButtersSuki

Very mixed week or so viewing for me, including:

Operation Finale on Netflix. Awfully bad telling of the extraction of ex-Nazi Adolf Eichmann from Argentina in the 1960s. It's so bad I don't even know where to start. It's a very loose telling of the tale, full of historical inaccuracies, bad acting and terrible casting. I guess maybe if you knew notching about the subject matter it might be ok, but even then I think most people would struggle to believe the version shown in the movie and

Eichmann's turn

. I considered giving up such was my frustration with it and I've never not finished any movie I started but this is just terrible. It also features a very miscast Nick Kroll in a serious role. I actually kinda like Kroll in comedies and his style of comedy, but he's just not credible in this. Ben Kingsley is mostly good, but even he has his moments where you're saying to yourself "I hope the cheque was good for this". 3/10.

Uncle Drew I watched this as I'm a big basketball fan and even still it's awful. The back story of the character is he's an alter ego for Nike commercials for NBA players Kyrie Irving. So they decided to make a movie for this character to basically showcase his sneakers and him. It's basically one long ad for Nike and Irving's other corporate sponsors. It's truly awful, even with current US darling Tiffany Haddish. Imagine a Tyler Perry/Madea basketball movie - that's what this is. Nick Kroll also features - again! 2/10.

Want to try and redeem all of this with Revenge tonight if I can fit it in.

Two others:

Better Call Saul Season 4. Highly recommended, possibly the best written and acted to show out there right now. It is very slow and I'd imagine it would be frustratingly so for some, but for me the current season is a 9/10 (I very rarely give 8's, let alone 9's).

Miami Vice complete original series on blu ray. I will post a full review when I've completed the entire thing but one thing I'd forgotten about it (I was very young when it was out) was the amount of guest stars, cameos and future big name actors who appeared on it. It's astonishing tbh!

buried

The Man From Mo'Wax (2018) Music documentary from the BFI about Mo Wax Record label boss and A&R man James Lavelle. A look at one of the key figures of the British music scene from the mid 90's, the rapid rise and the gigantic fall. Grim enough but worth a watch if you are interested in that period. Makes you glad you ain't in the flip flop fame/music business, also a warning shot to anyone if all they want from getting into it is just outside validation from everyone else. 5/10

Solo (2018) Surprised by the main leads performance which was very good, the bits of himself and chewbacca were good, but its just more of the same lame and weak writing infesting all these works . In saying that, I probably enjoyed this one the most out of all the last 4 new films. Could have done with less jokes and smartarsery from too many side characters. That mouthy robot boiled my p!ss with rage. What is it with all these loud nods to the current lame political climate in a galaxy far far away and from a long long time ago? Quit it for christsakes. It's not clever and it doesn't work. Best of bad bunch but still not great. 4/10

Hereditary (2018) Great performances from everybody in this, beautifully shot but as a horror film, I dunno, doesn't stack up. More a nightmarish look at a family falling apart with grief. Then the horror aspect comes in later but by then the horror element is nearly a escapism relief. Maybe that's the point. Different anyways. Will keep a look out for future works from this director. 7/10

You Were Never Really Here (2018) Want to see this again as I enjoyed it but was a bit drunk watching it so the full effect never got to me. The Taxi Driver comparisons I heard from everyone before watching it distracted me a lot, I just kept thnking "man Taxi Driver, that was a good film" 7/10 need see again though

A Quiet Place (2018) Had no sympathy for anybody in this and they all annoyed the hell out of me. Too much plot holes and the creatures just looked totally unbelievable and fake. The whole thing was like watching cutscenes from a computer game and not a motion picture story set to any structure whatsoever. I was dying for it to end. 2/10

NIMAN

@ buried.

Jez, you're a tough critic!

buried

NIMAN wrote: »

@ buried.

Jez, you're a tough critic!

This is true N. But I spend money and time on watching these things so if they don't make the cut for me Ima going to say it. Just being honest about it and how I seen it, don't make me right about any of it either though.

ButtersSuki

buried wrote: »

The Man From Mo'Wax (2018) Music documentary from the BFI about Mo Wax Record label boss and A&R man James Lavelle. A look at one of the key figures of the British music scene from the mid 90's, the rapid rise and the gigantic fall. Grim enough but worth a watch if you are interested in that period. Makes you glad you ain't in the flip flop fame/music business, also a warning shot to anyone if all they want from getting into it is just outside validation from everyone else. 5/10

Bought but haven't watched the 3 disc version of this as I'd be a bit of a fan of certain aspects of that culture. Looking forward to watching it at some stage.

For those of you who haven't seen it, the excellent Hell Or High Water is on Monday night next October 15th on Film 4.

My very short review from my first viewing (in a cinema) of this from 2016:
Hell or High Water Possibly the best film I've seen this year. Excellent performances as usual from Jeff Bridges and Ben Foster (why isn't he more famous and in more lead roles?) and a breakout performance from Chris Pine, who up to now I have to admit to dismissing largely based on his looks (and from memory only seeing him in Horrible Bosses 2). Modern western tale, it has a lot of nods to No Country for Old Men, but for me is a much better story and ultimately, movie, than it. 8.5/10

Harry Palmr

The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961) Dir Val Guest

Saw this in full for the first time since I was about 12/13 when it made a great impression on my young mind. Still holds up well though my memories emphasis on certain scenes was wrong it turns out (far fewer rioting scenes than I thought).

This copy was shown on Talking Pictures and it's the restored BFI/StudioCanal release so looks very good in widescreen but alas TP decided to "fog" that part of the image where we would see Janet Monro's boobs for a moment (in 1961!). I understand why they did it - this went out at 7 PM and they need scheduling flexibility but all the same it was a bit jarring.

The depiction of a big newspaper's workings (the Daily Express offices and staff were used) is really good and the conveyance of the films theme is well done (you can feel the sweaty heat even in B&W) though a couple of the optical effects are as cheap as you'd expect.

Sugarlumps

Black Panther - Watched the first 20 minutes, then turned it off.

Nerdlingr

Ant Man and The Wasp

twas a bit of convoluted rubbish .... nowhere near as good as the first. 5/10
did enjoy the post credit scene though!!!

Del.Monte

"The Magnificent Seven" (2016) - watched this on Netflix last night having stayed away from it for a long time as I hate remakes. That said, I was pleasantly surprised and if you put the original (1960) movie out of your mind this is a decent Western with an acceptably high level of carnage. It's not "Unforgiven" and Clint Eastwood is nowhere to be seen but it still deserves a 9/10.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-RBA0xoaWU

The Belstone Fox 1973 What a fantastic film this is, one that I can't imagine ever getting made today. Its about a fox that gets rescued as a baby, and gets brought up with a hound thats used for The Hunt. As eventually the pair have to get split up the Fox leaves to the forrest and the hound becomes part of the hunt, having to hunt his friend. Some of the expressions caught on the animals faces are just fantastic, and its pretty moving stuff at times, with one or two very hard scenes to watch

Win Win 2011 Paul Giamatti, one of todays greatest actors if you ask me plays a small town lawyer, and wrestling coach, pillar of the community, struggling to makes ends meet for his family. He makes a decision to care for an old man, because he can pick up a monthly cheque for doing so, but dumps him in a home against his will. The old man's son arrives having run away from his drug addled mother and ends up living with Giammati's family and becoming the schools star wrestler. Until the mother returns and Giammiati's money making scheme is uncovered. Very enjoyable, original stuff

ButtersSuki

Platoon on Blu ray, a first rewtach since I saw it (underage) in the cinema. Hmmmm...it is still very good, but time hasn't been especially kind to it on many levels. The explosions etc. look very amateurish/fake/staged etc., while the cinematography pales in comparison to other Viet Nam war movies, notably Full Metal Jacket.

I also have a number of issues with the rape scene given the film's rating.

The performances of Berenger, Defoe, and Sheen however are excellent, and they're ably supported by the rest of the cast. A minor quibble is the overuse of Barber's Adagio for Strings (if it has just been used for that scene rather than intermittently throughout the film I think it would have been more effective) and there's a good few continuity errors/props visible etc. which I was quite surprised at, but it's a must see. It's perhaps been eclipsed recently by the 18+ hour Viet Nam documentary, but it is still a strong 8/10.

1983 French Movie La Belle Captive on DVD. Bonkers, but artsy as f*ck. If you don't like World Cinema, French movies, or art house cinema in general, this most definitely is not the movie that will change that for you! It's a surreal erotic murder mystery/thriller with some Eyes White Shut and David Lynch vibes thrown in....in French, complete with bad 80's styling and style cues etc. You'll either love it or hate it I'd imagine. I started watching the commentary (by two North Carolina University Professors) immediately after watching it and that was quite interesting in itself, but tiredness took over so it have to be revisited - I'd rarely be tempted to do this immediately after watching a movie for the first time but this drew me in. Also, there's a French actress (Cyrielle Clair) in it who I hadn't really noticed before who plays the wonderfully 80's named character Sara Zeitgeist who is stunningly beautiful in this. 6.5/10.

Here's a still from the movie (doesn't really do her justice to be fair):

Disposable1

Sugarlumps wrote: »

Black Panther - Watched the first 20 minutes, then turned it off.

Racist!


I didn't really care for it either, or the latest Ant-Man for that matter. Although I quite enjoyed Ghost, not so much how they used her, but I love her costume, I saw her in the Avengers cartoon and she was super cool, don't think I've come across her in the comics.

castletownman

A Star is Born

I dunno. Saw it last night and never got over invested in it. Riddled with cliches, and the pacing was all over the shop.

Whats the craic with country and western stars with an addiction to pills/alcohol living in a cabin in the wilderness? (ala Walk the Line)

The ending was telegraphed from early on, although I will admit that it was done in a slightly fresh way,

as it seemed his hearing problems was as big a contributory factor as anything else.

. I did like the transition between her performance at the end and his performance of the same song to her for the first time though.

Lady Gaga was very good in her first lead role, while Cooper wasn't as painstakingly annoying as he usually is to be fair. I will say she is far prettier looking natural than when she is in "character" with her outlandish costumes etc. Although ironically she was smoking hot in the dyed red hair in this too.

Poor Charlie though

Overall, as a 30-year old male I wasn't the target audience, but it is watchable if there is nothing else on. Fans of Lady Gaga, and by extension fans of Bradley Cooper, would love it though, as evidenced by the number of totes emosh ladies at the screening last night

But for me, 6/10

branie2

Hunter Killer at the cinema this evening. I thought it was very good.

El Duda

Hold the Dark – 7/10
A glacially paced thriller with plenty of twists and turns that doesn’t really have a suitable climax despite several nerve shredding, edge-of-your-seat moments. Jeremy Saulnier is already one of many upcoming directors that I am keeping a keen eye on. Blue Ruin and Green Room are both fantastic films with explosive scenes of extreme violence. Hold the Dark is a more tepid affair that uses its frosty surroundings to generate a brooding atmosphere.
The big flaw for this film is that it disappointingly peters out into a very unsatisfactory, ambiguous ending. We don’t get a conclusive outcome for any of the main characters and there doesn’t seem to be an underlying message to the film.
This is the first Saulnier film that he didn’t write himself. Instead, writing credits are attributed to Macon Blair who also stars in all of Saulnier’s films. Perhaps the characters needed fleshing out a bit more, but this is still an effective thriller that utilises its location well.


Wonder – 6/10
Sentimentality the movie, featuring tonnes of mawkishness and schmaltz. It was a lovely way to spend a Sunday evening in with the other half, but something just didn’t work for me. This is the type of film that would usually make me sob but I didn’t feel like any of the sentimental moments were earned.
It’s like no one on set at anytime questioned whether they were pushing the sentimentality too far. There is no restraint at all. I also thought it was a bit of an odd decision to keep switching the focus to the lesser characters. The Sister’s friends’ story didn’t really work at all.
Julia Roberts and Owen Wilson are incredibly underwritten, they literally don’t have any character traits and are incredibly shallow. The shining light of this film is little Jacob Tremblay putting in another performance that is way beyond his years. He is a natural talent so lets just hope he manages to avoid the usual Hollywood child star pitfalls.

Captain Red Beard

The Night Comes For Us.

Something something triads, something a young girl, something something revenge.

A full on festival of fight fuckery, amputations, decapitations, broken bones, and stabbings and slashings.

473/10

johnny_ultimate

The Image Book

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcXn1LRyNq8

Godard follows up the sublime masterpiece Goodbye To Language with a film that is late Godard dialled up to 11 (or maybe 13 or 14 - feels like he's hit 11 before a couple of times). If that fills you with dread, run for the hills. If it piques your interest, stick around!

At 87 years of age, JLG still has it. This dense, playful, infuriating collage is as pure and unfiltered as the artform gets. Basically (a laughably insufficient word given the endless barrage of ideas here), this is Godard reflecting on the very essence of images and sound and language: what they mean, what they communicate, how they come together, how they clash. This ranges from a hypnotic segment about how trains have been represented on film, to a lengthy final section reflecting on portrayals of the Middle East. This is shown in JLG's characteristic discordant style - snap edits, distortions, obtuse soundtrack, sudden aspect ratio changes. Oddly, for a director obsessed with lo-fi techniques, few play with the cinema experience so vividly - at one point, he uses surround sound to selectively 'whisper' at different sections of the audience.

If this is to be his swangsong, it's a good one. A post-credits sequence (one of the few worth sticking around for - trust JLG to own another one of modern cinema's most useless appendages) sees him signing off by showing a fit of joyous, unfiltered hysteria. It's a playful closing wink from one of the greats - equivalent of Bugs Bunny saying 'that's all folks' at the end of a classic cartoon. But if there's more to come, I'm all on board.

Sunset

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKAZINs-xas

Lazlo Nemes of Son of Saul fame returns with this Budapest-set film. It's instantly recognisable as his work: it boasts that same close-up, long-take approach that made SoS such a frighteningly lucid piece of work. This too exclusively follows a single protagonist over the course of several days. But with the change of setting and time period, this actually IMO comes across as the stronger film. Set just before WW1, it shows a city and society on the brink of collapse. When it does all go down, it's hard to look away - the fluid, elaborate camerawork putting you right in there as everything goes to ****.

It's main sticking point is likely to prove its often deliberately confusing plot, with a dizzying array of characters popping up over the course of the narrative. But in a sense the confusion is part of the experience - the viewer is right there with protagonist Írisz as she defiantly pushes her way through a strange new world in a bid to find out more about the family taken away from her.

Saw in 35mm, and it looks stunning - a real eye for period detail, and visuals that combine the classic with the modern.

Madeline's Madeline

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

Definitely one of the boldest American films in quite some time. Josephine Decker's film is an offbeat but instantly effective story about creating art - in this case, 'immersive' theatre.

It's effectively about three women: Madeline, a teenage actress (Helena Howard) with an unspecified mental illness); Regina (Miranda July), her exasperated mother; and Evangeline (Molly Parker), the theatre director pushing Madeline to explore ever more intense approaches to performance. The two known actors are excellent, but Howard's revelatory.

What's interesting is how these three people interact and play off each other, leading to an atmosphere that's equal parts creative and toxic. A certain selfishness emerges in all three as they push each other to greater emotional extremes, and the lines between performance and, well, actuality become deliriously blurred. This is all presented in this dreamy, expressive way that culminates in a wonderfully explosive final 15 minutes or so where all the tensions, emotions and creativity come to the boil.

What's key here is that this never dips into po-facedness or self-seriousness. There's a lively sense of humour to it all that ensures this all hums along nicely, without overwhelming the tricksy, intriguing themes Decker is playing around with.

p to the e

Having recently read the book (great read by the way) I gave "The Lost City of Z" a go. Pretty decent adventure yarn which tried its best to fill the packed life of Percy Fawcett into 2.5 hours.

I felt the book did a better attempt at showing just how tough a time the intrepid adventurers had in the jungle and takes a bit of dramatic licence at the end. The cast are impressive and some of the scenes are shot beautifully. Overall 7/10

Frank O. Pinion

Juliet, Naked (2018)

Based on Nick Hornby's novel of the same name. An enjoyable film, that caught me in the right mood for something like this. I love Ethan Hawke (2017's First Reformed was a fantastic film), and Chris O'Dowd isn't super annoying here. It's also an Apatow Productions film, whose most recent released film was 2017's The Big Sick. Only negative I could say about the film was that the lesbian sister character was ridiculous. Never appeared in a scene without her lesbianism being a part of the scene. Seemed so late 90s/early 00s, where the only personality trait the character has is being gay. Otherwise, a decent film.

Vulture.com wrote:

When the movie premiered at Sundance in January, the audience was buzzing, not because it moved the boundary posts but because it was everything a mainstream rom-com should be but no longer is

branie2

Bohemian Rhapsody at the cinema yesterday. It was brilliant.

pixelburp

Skyscraper (2018)
Rampage (2018)

The latest in the sub-genre known as "films starring The Rock", a man apparently incapable of slowing down. Both films were loud, brainless without charm and full of CGI (forgiven with Rampage as the monsters required it). Skyscraper was one of those productions with obvious Chinese money behind it, between the obvious location and utterly superfluous local side-characters. Neither film was particularly good, nor particularly awful but Johnson can do much better than this & perhaps it wouldn't hurt to start being a little more circumspect when it comes to scripts passing his agent's desk.

TerrorFirmer

Yeah, I somewhat enjoyed both those films alright but they were pretty soulless, even as brainless popcorn fare goes.

Watched Galveston the other night. Gets off to an uneven and rocky start but it really is a good film with a great performance from Ben Foster. Fairly brutal in spots, and I don't mean graphically so, but the whole thing is fairly bleak.

ButtersSuki

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

Watched Galveston the other night. Gets off to an uneven and rocky start but it really is a good film with a great performance from Ben Foster. Fairly brutal in spots, and I don't mean graphically so, but the whole thing is fairly bleak.

Haven't seen that but even in crap films Foster is always good. Will look out for it.

branie2

For the night that's in it, the 1976 version of The Omen on Blu-ray

8mv

'It Comes At Night' - it was pretty good, quite slow moving and thoughtful in places although the trailer would have you believe that it's an action-packed scream-a-minute horror flik.

Sugarlumps

Drawing Dead - The highs and lows of online poker seen through the eyes of a rich professional player and a gambling addict.

Fascinating insight into the murky world of poker.

Frank O. Pinion

The Miseducation of Cameron Post (2018)

It's 1993 and Cameron Post (Chloë Grace Moretz) is suffering from SSA (same sex attraction). So, Cameron's aunt Ruth, a devout christian, sends Cameron to a gay conversion therapy centre for teenagers named God's Promise. Very good little drama. Directed by Desiree Akhavan, bisexual herself, known for Appropriate Behavior, Creep 2, and Channel 4's...The Bisexual.