What have you watched recently: Electric Boogaloo

Judgement Day

"The Ipcress File" (1965) On VHS. Classic Cold War thriller starring Michael Caine and Nigel Greene. I had intended watching "Fatal Inheritance", a newly acquired, ultra rare Irish film but the my player started acting up and despite the use of a new head cleaning tape it failed to respond adequately, and I wasn't prepared to risk my new tape. So I sacrificed my copy of the Ipcress File - I'll be getting it on DVD anyway - and I can still recommend the movie to anyone who hasn't seen it yet.

Strangely there's a hypnosis scene in the middle of the movie which always seems to knock me out and I regain consciousness just in time for the grand finale.

10/10

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1pa9yTI3ZY

Goldstein

Gamayun wrote: »

Agora (2009)

Alejandro Amenábar (The Sea Inside, The Others) film revolving around the life of 4th century philosopher Hypatia (Rachel Weisz) and the religious power struggle in Alexandria. It's very well made (in Malta) and Weisz is great. It's probably rife with historical accuracies but I couldn't care less, I though it was a solid historical drama.

If Wikipedia is to be believed then it lost money, costing us$75m, making us$38m.

A grand total of 17 theatres showing it in the "Land of the free" explains that one.

Mickeroo

TICKLE_ME_ELMO wrote: »

Apparently the map he had didn't have the crossing on it, but if he'd had a compass he would have been able to find a different route back.

There is newer information on his death that seems to be fairly well believed now.... http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2013/09/how-chris-mccandless-died.html

Thanks for the link, will give it a read later. The guy who wrote it actually wrote the book. If you're interested in reading any more of his stuff Into Thin Air is also a great read.

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

the brotherhood of the wolf

it'd been so long since i'd seen this I couldn't remember whether or not I liked it enough for another viewing, stuck it on anyway and i'm still kind of in shock at how fantastic it was.

i'd watch it again now if I wasn't so tired. also i'm pretty sure i'm in love with emilie dequenne

Mickeroo

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar wrote: »

the brotherhood of the wolf

it'd been so long since i'd seen this I couldn't remember whether or not I liked it enough for another viewing, stuck it on anyway and i'm still kind of in shock at how fantastic it was.

i'd watch it again now if I wasn't so tired. also i'm pretty sure i'm in love with emilie dequenne

Haven't seen that in years, absolute beast of a film.Mark Dacascos was great in it, shame that ****ty The Crow tv series was the only other thing he ended up being known for.

Mickeroo

Mickeroo wrote: »

Haven't seen that in years, absolute beast of a film.Mark Dacascos was great in it, shame that ****ty The Crow tv series was the only other thing he ended up being known for.

Dacascos is huge in America thanks to his role in Iron Chef.

johnny_ultimate

Kōchiyama Sōshun - watching this wonderful film is such a sad reminder that not only did we lose director Sadao Yamanaka too young, the loss of the bulk of his two dozen films is easily one of cinema's greatest catastrophes. Like his other two films, 1935's Kōchiyama Sōshun is a wildly entertaining film, full of humour, drama, action and elegant plotting. An ensemble period piece, the film follows a fascinating bunch - from rogue monks to miserable ronins. All enjoy strong characterisation and intriguing subplots (all amazingly fit into 80 minutes), until they all collide in a brilliantly anarchic final act that's action packed yet surprisingly compassionate. Ozu fans will be interested to see a very early appearance from his great muse Setsuko Hara, not yet out of her teens here. The film hasn't held up as well in terms of picture and audio quality as the other two, but all Yamanaka's surviving films are well worth a gander if you're at all interested in Japanese cinema or classic cinema generally.

Pickpocket - fascinating Robert Bresson film about - you've guessed it - a pickpocket. Shot with non actors, it's a curious, complex character study about the motivations and philosophy of a man who turns to petty crime, a habit that turns increasingly destructive as he slowly alienates himself from the rest of the world. Bresson is among the least showy of the great directors, keeping Martin LaSalle's protagonist almost constantly in frame. There's some great visual poetry though, especially the dark thrill of the pickpocketing sequences themselves. It all boils to an almost transcendent ending that reminded me a bit of a Dreyer film, with less dramatics: a carthathic, spiritual ending that brings the story to an end in a considered, moderately ambiguous but wholly satisfying manner.

krudler

Mickeroo wrote: »

Haven't seen that in years, absolute beast of a film.Mark Dacascos was great in it, shame that ****ty The Crow tv series was the only other thing he ended up being known for.

Drive is well worth a watch (not the Gosling one), he's good in that. silly 90's action film

Turtyturd

Prisoners:

Probably about 45 minutes too long and cliche ridden, including some of my pet hates such as

the detective who has solved every case, and the detective hitting a brick wall on the case until something sends him into a fit of rage resulting in him upending his desk and the key piece of evidence being right in front of him.

There are also a few too many false leads that by the time you actually find out who is responsible it's pretty meh.

The focus on the lengths a person could go to in order to protect their kids is interesting but other than that it's all fairly average.

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

joint security area


i'd actually completely forgotten how this movie ended.

lee byung-hun shooting himself in the head took me by surprise. I remembered the final image, with the four of them in it but I couldn't remember what it was that made it such a powerful image. kinda depressed now

Essien

Prisoners.

I can't remember the last time I was this frustrated after watching a film, and it just gets worse the more I think about it.

It's definitely a good 30-40 minutes longer than it needed to be, which I could live with if there wasn't so much stuff in there that could have been explained a lot better.

In hindsight, a few things in it just made no sense whatsoever, I don't think any amount of explaining could have corrected them.

I wouldn't recommend this one.

Edit: the following quote from its review on time.com sums it up for me.

This is one of those films that prod the viewer to dream of storming the editing room and trying to carve an excellent thriller out of a meandering rough cut.

Ole Rodrigo

I thought Prisoners was very good. There may have been a few minor plot holes but they weren't obvious. I think the last film I saw that kept the story unfolding right up until he last scene was Seven.

Bipolar Joe

Friday the 13th (2009)

Having sat through every Friday the 13th movie for the last week (A movie a day, sometimes two), I finally got to this one. Is it a remake? Not quite. Is it a reboot? Not quite. Is it any good? Not quite. Maybe I'm suffering from Jason fatigue, but this movie, on the Jason scale, was about two points below Jason X. It claimed to "Explore the character" a bit more than the previous ones, but it really didn't. We know who he is, why he kills, his love for his Mother and all about his psychosis from the previous films.

The characters are all annoying, and I hated them all. It was a case of "Why the fuck are these people friends? Why the fuck is that seemingly nice chick dating this cartoon character of an asshole?" You're not supposed to root for the bad guy. You're meant to empathise with the victims. Using cheap tactics to make us think we feel bad for them is bullshit, we are not all so damn stupid. We KNOW Jason is gonna murder them all, so make us not want that to happen. I'm not gonna instantly feel bad for a guy because his Mom died of cancer in a totally unrelated scenario. It's sad when people die, but you know what? You can't use that as a character crutch.

In the canon of Jason movies, where does this film lie? The others were clearly part of the same Jason universe, even the bad ones. Each one referenced the previous films. We see Pamela die, so we know this isn't a remake of the first one. Is this a reboot starting from Part II? Jason wears the burlap sack, at any rate, before he finds the hockey mask. Does it take place after Freddy Vs. Jason? There'd be no reason for Freddy to continue the war, he got what he wanted. I don't know why this bothered me, but it did.

Another point, the mask. The way he finds it bugged me. In Part III, he nabs it from an actor's bag of props and costumes, which makes sense. He doesn't want people to see his face, so he found a way to cover it up. In this one, he apparently has some sort of sixth sense used to find masks, instinctively lifting up a piece of cloth and finding the hockey mask. Bullshit. That was dumped in there because it's recognisable. At least have the mask trade make sense. Maybe he loses the sack, maybe it gets burned up, maybe literally anything. GAH!!

Last point, how were the kills? Mostly, kind of meh. The burning was pretty good, and slamming the guy down on to the axe. That's it, really. The CGI machete to the head looked awful. For a film focussing on murdering a whole bunch of people, it could have been more inventive.

The end.

OR IS IT????

I guess we'll never care.

mike65

Judgement Day wrote: »

"The Ipcress File" (1965) On VHS. Classic Cold War thriller starring Michael Caine and Nigel Greene. I had intended watching "Fatal Inheritance", a newly acquired, ultra rare Irish film but the my player started acting up and despite the use of a new head cleaning tape it failed to respond adequately, and I wasn't prepared to risk my new tape. So I sacrificed my copy of the Ipcress File - I'll be getting it on DVD anyway - and I can still recommend the movie to anyone who hasn't seen it yet.

Strangely there's a hypnosis scene in the middle of the movie which always seems to knock me out and I regain consciousness just in time for the grand finale.

10/10

BBC4 screen this 10 days ago as part of its Sound of Cinema season, in pristine widescreen, looked and sounded great. What was criticised at the time for looking flashy and gimmicky now seems a model of steady restraint. No shakey cams back then thank God.

Cartel Mike

Django unchained on DVD


Awfull mess .
Kill bill vol 2 , Inglorious Basterds, Django Unchained.... they're all the exact same movie.
Taking that into consideration I don't want to watch the next.... I've already seen it 3 times .

A revenge type movie with one (maybe two) characters in each that have exceptional "principles". Creativity Tarantino has hit a brick wall . I think alot of his fans have grown up and moved on but he hasn't.
The same dialogue ,the same characters and even more unnecessarily drawn out scenes that don't ultimately serve any purpose or actually create suspense mixed with comic book blood spurting scenes.

Yea disappointed. Don't want to comment on the acting as ultimately it dosn't matter , the whole movie is a mess from start to finish and just like inglorious Basterds I honestly couldn't wait for the end.

The music was about as appropriate as Django's shades.

4/10

MagicMarker

McGrath5 wrote: »

Watched The House I Live In last night, fantastic documentary about the so called war on drugs. Mainly told from the perspective of America, well and truly worth a watch.

Dr Carl Hart, who features in that documentary (which is excellent by the way) has just released a book called High Price: Drugs, Neuroscience and Discovering Myself. Looks good.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0670919748/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1380452762&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX110_SY165

TICKLE_ME_ELMO

Anna Karenina

I watched this out of curiosity more than anything. I'd read a lot about it being set in a theatre and choreography of movement etc. etc. and I couldn't figure out what it meant so I gave in and watched it. I was surprised how much I liked it.

Visually it's really interesting and different from what you'd expect from a period costume film. I watched the latest Great Expectations last week and the main problem I had with it was that it felt very familiar, like I'd seen it all before from countless other films like it. Anna Karenina feels like something different. Yes, there's the corsets and dancing and what have you but it feels like something new.

As for the film itself.... well I haven't read the book but I suspect it goes a bit deeper with all the characters and their motivations. The film just gives you the basic outline of what they're all doing and at times it seems a bit flimsy. Keira Knightly is actually pretty good in this, shock horror, as are most of the cast. I particularly liked Domhnall Gleeson and his scenes with Alicia Vikander were lovely, if few and far between.

8mv

Blue Valentine - Good performances but very bleak and uncomfortably explicit at times.

Ruby Sparks - I enjoyed it. I like Paul Dano and Zoe Kazan was quirky in a good way. Kids liked it but I wasn't expecting such an amount of strong language.

I'm coming across as a right prude as I get older.:(

TICKLE_ME_ELMO

^ I agree about Blue Valentine. Very depressing. You could argue it's a depressingly realistic look at a relationship, but it was maybe a bit too depressing for me. And that whole bit in the fantasy motel place was pretty explicit.

Not The Real Scarecrow

Friday the 13th part 6

Total proof that nostalgia is a bitch. Must have watched this a million times when I was younger and used to love it.Looking at it now over 20 years later, I'm seriously considering that I may have had a mental illness when I was a kid.
The film is absolute garbage,makes little to no sense and no where near ad gory as I remembered.Saying that ,it's still far better than part 5.

charlie_says

Timecrimes 2007

Time travel film, with it's hand on it's heart. A man gets lost in a wood after spying some boobs through his binoculars after moving into a new house next to a wooded area. He moves to investigate (said boobs, not pervy though) leading to a war against what he should have done in the past....

Every moment could just cause a paradox, but satisfyingly doesn't. Cleverly done time travel film, I enjoyed it more than Primer as it was at a speed and tome that you could follow which also supplied surprises and certainties played out from different perspectives. Worth a look.

8/10

Bipolar Joe

Meatwad wrote: »

Friday the 13th part 6

Total proof that nostalgia is a bitch. Must have watched this a million times when I was younger and used to love it.Looking at it now over 20 years later, I'm seriously considering that I may have had a mental illness when I was a kid.
The film is absolute garbage,makes little to no sense and no where near ad gory as I remembered.Saying that ,it's still far better than part 5.

That one is where the whole thing started wearing thin for me. Part V was a terrible, God awful mess of a film, and VI only happened because Paramount the audience didn't like Jason not being the killer. Jarvis was supposed to take over the role. And then there's Part IX. Good God, Part IX .

charlie_says wrote: »

Timecrimes 2007

Time travel film, with it's hand on it's heart. A man gets lost in a wood after spying some boobs through his binoculars after moving into a new house next to a wooded area. He moves to investigate (said boobs, not pervy though) leading to a war against what he should have done in the past....

Every moment could just cause a paradox, but satisfyingly doesn't. Cleverly done time travel film, I enjoyed it more than Primer as it was at a speed and tome that you could follow which also supplied surprises and certainties played out from different perspectives. Worth a look.

8/10

The whole film is a paradox, a causal loop. Saying that, it's my second favourite time travel movie, completely regardless of the paradox.

Bad Taste

It's hard to believe the guy who made Lord of the Rings also made Bad Taste, Meet the Feebles and Dead Alive. Special effects are amazing, it's hilarious and gross (The green vomit bit actually makes me feel ill) and it makes you feel like you could make a movie, too, if you have the patience and love for it. I've heard people say this treads the "So bad it's good" territory, but I think it transcends anything like that. Yeah, it was clearly done on the cheap (Kind of, 30,000 spread out over four years), but it's still a classic film. Go see it!

charlie_says

Bipolar Joe wrote: »

The whole film is a paradox, a causal loop. Saying that, it's my second favourite time travel movie, completely regardless of the paradox.

What is your favorite then? It wasn't mine but I can't quite place my one until I say yes.

Bipolar Joe

charlie_says wrote: »

What is your favorite then? It wasn't mine but I can't quite place my one until I say yes.

Summer Time Machine Blues. Also contains a causal loop, but the little things you see on repeated viewings make it a total adventure to watch every time. The characters are all enjoyable, and to top it all off, the main focus of the entire thing is an innocuous little remote control. DEFINITELY recommended.

Judgement Day

"The Riddle of the Sands" (1979) YouTube via Wii.

Based on the 1903 novel by Erskine Childers and set in 1901, Kaiser Wilhelm II plans an invasion of England from the East Frisian Islands on Germany's North Sea coast.
I'm sure that I must have seen this movie years ago but gave it a lash again last night. Seriously disappointing and should be described as a children's adventure movie. Despite featuring Michael York and Jenny Agutter, an interesting storyline and good locations it fails to rise above the mediocre. I can't imagine that the novel on which it was based was anything like as bad and I shall track down a copy. 4/10 (scenery and Jenny Agutter)



Not worth buying but a good quality upload of the whole movie is available here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQMdGfNTJvw

LorMal

Afraid the novel is awful. Don't bother.

Judgement Day wrote: »

"The Riddle of the Sands" (1979) YouTube via Wii.

Based on the 1903 novel by Erskine Childers and set in 1901, Kaiser Wilhelm II plans an invasion of England from the East Frisian Islands on Germany's North Sea coast.
I'm sure that I must have seen this movie years ago but gave it a lash again last night. Seriously disappointing and should be described as a children's adventure movie. Despite featuring Michael York and Jenny Agutter, an interesting storyline and good locations it fails to rise above the mediocre. I can't imagine that the novel on which it was based was anything like as bad and I shall track down a copy. 4/10 (scenery and Jenny Agutter)



Not worth buying but a good quality upload of the whole movie is available here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQMdGfNTJvw

krudler

Mmm...Jenny Agutter...

Liam McPoyle

Curse of Chucky.

Meh, meh and more meh.

Lacklustre mostly CGI gore, some of the worst acting I've seen in a long time ( I wasn't expecting much but Jesus this was woeful) and not an iota of the humour that made the earlier sequels bearable.

An awful pile of crap.

3/10

e_e

Leviathan

An experimental documentary set on a fishing trawler that really immerses you in the grit, brine and heavy toil of the men on board. If you're expecting any kind of insight or contrived narrative you're better off walking away, this is a purely immersive experience that puts the scallops, seagulls and fish on the same level pegging as the humans on board (even amusingly including all the creatures in the cast list). I freakin' loved it, though it's clearly not for everyone as indicated by the amount of walkouts in the screening I was in.

Baked.noodle

Sophie Scholl: The Final Days (2005)

Based on the last days of Sophie Scholl, a member of the anti-Nazi non-violent student resistance group the White Rose. Razor sharp and encouragingly courageous. Superb.