What have you watched recently: Electric Boogaloo

grohlisagod

Finally got around to watching "The Assassination of Jesse James.."

Very good film with some brilliant performances from Pitt, Affleck and Rockwell.

Wish Dominik made more movies. 3 in 12 years just isn't enough!

SilSil

The Invention of Lying (2009)

Guys this film is brilliant! It concerns problems that will be topical forever! I recommend it strongly! :rolleyes:

A comedy set in a world where no one has ever lied, until a writer seizes the opportunity for personal gain.

ButtersSuki

Watched The Burning Plain over the weekend. Very strong female cast featuring Charlize Theron, Kim Basinger and a very young Jennifer Lawrence in a dark tale of three women's complicated lives. All three shine in this, particularly Theron and Lawrence. I can't say anymore really without giving away big parts of the story save to say it's well worth a look. Male support provided by the almost always excellent Joaquim de Almieda (you'll know him when you see him!). 8/10.

TICKLE_ME_ELMO

ButtersSuki wrote: »

Watched The Burning Plain over the weekend. Very strong female cast featuring Charlize Theron, Kim Basinger and a very young Jennifer Lawrence in a dark tale of three women's complicated lives. All three shine in this, particularly Theron and Lawrence. I can't say anymore really without giving away big parts of the story save to say it's well worth a look. Male support provided by the almost always excellent Joaquim de Almieda (you'll know him when you see him!). 8/10.

I watched this a few months ago after recording it off film 4, one of those ones they tucked away at some ungodly hour of the night/morning. Really liked it too. You kind of have to stick with it a little at the start but once you get into it it's excellent. It was only the second thing I'd seen Theron in, the first being Hancock, and I was very impressed with her. This was actually before Winter's Bone for Lawrence. I was always under the impression that Winter's Bone was her first proper film but she shares the lead here two years before her "breakout" role and is as impressive as ever.

Did you figure any of it out before it was revealed? I found that I was figuring things out literally right before they were revealed. It never felt glaringly obvious what was going on but it didn't make me feel like what the hell is going on here either.

bellinter

Blue Jasmine - I loved every minute of it. Cate Blanchett gives one of the performances of the year. She was utterly convincing in her potrayal of a woman whose easy, millionaire lifestyle is suddenly taken away from her. Good supporting cast as well, your man who played Gyp Rosetti in Boardwalk Empire always good to watch. 9/10

Captain Phillips - Thought it was excellent. I did find that it took a while to get going properly but once it did, the tension and excitement never eased off. I knew nothing of the incident besides what I had seen in the trailer so I was kept guessing all the way.

I liked how it stayed with Phillips and the pirates for the duration and there was no cutting back and forth to rescue attempts or a crying wife. We got the outside information at the same time as the guys on the both did and it made it all the more engrossing.

8.5/10

ButtersSuki

TICKLE_ME_ELMO wrote: »

I watched this a few months ago after recording it off film 4, one of those ones they tucked away at some ungodly hour of the night/morning. Really liked it too. You kind of have to stick with it a little at the start but once you get into it it's excellent. It was only the second thing I'd seen Theron in, the first being Hancock, and I was very impressed with her. This was actually before Winter's Bone for Lawrence. I was always under the impression that Winter's Bone was her first proper film but she shares the lead here two years before her "breakout" role and is as impressive as ever.

Did you figure any of it out before it was revealed? I found that I was figuring things out literally right before they were revealed. It never felt glaringly obvious what was going on but it didn't make me feel like what the hell is going on here either.

Really on Theron? You're missing out, she's a really talented actress. I haven't seen Hancock (I can't watch almost anything with Will Smith) but she's excellent in most things she's in, and even did a great recurring role in Arrested Development years ago. And Monster obviously. Even her role in Devil's Advocate is worth a look.

Ok, back to TBP. Yeah, likewise thought Lawrence's first major role was in Winter's Bone until I saw her in this. It's mad how much she matured into a woman from the girl she is in this in just 2 short years, but her talent is blatant,y obvious in this.

re. Figuring it out, yeah, it had just clicked into place when the reveal came, it didn't spoil anything for me. It's very well balanced in terms of walking that fine line. A very pleasant and surprising find.

TICKLE_ME_ELMO

ButtersSuki wrote: »

Really on Theron? You're missing out, she's a really talented actress. I haven't seen Hancock (I can't watch almost anything with Will Smith) but she's excellent in most things she's in, and even did a great recurring role in Arrested Development years ago. And Monster obviously. Even her role in Devil's Advocate is worth a look.

re. Figuring it out, yeah, it had just clicked into place when the reveal came, it didn't spoil anything for me. It's very well balanced in terms of walking that fine line. A very pleasant and surprising find.

Oh I remember her in Arrested Development too (and Brandon Flowers' music video for Crossfire). She was in That Thing You Do, which I've seen a million times but she had just a tiny part in that. I'm not sure why I've seen so few of her films. I was looking through her page on Letterboxd and was shocked when the bit at the side said I'd only seen 1 (this was before I saw The Burning Plain). I've been aware of her for years and I just thought I had seen her in things. I'm trying to rectify this.

krudler

TICKLE_ME_ELMO wrote: »

Oh I remember her in Arrested Development too (and Brandon Flowers' music video for Crossfire). She was in That Thing You Do, which I've seen a million times but she had just a tiny part in that. I'm not sure why I've seen so few of her films. I was looking through her page on Letterboxd and was shocked when the bit at the side said I'd only seen 1 (this was before I saw The Burning Plain). I've been aware of her for years and I just thought I had seen her in things. I'm trying to rectify this.

give Young Adult a watch she's excellent in it, I'm not a fan of Diablo Cody's work at all but I enjoyed it.

Mizu_Ger

Frozen Ground: Couldn't enjoy this with all the shaky cam and relentless ominous music score (which was taken straight from Seven). It would have been much better if it had had a more straight direction. The performances were good, with all the leads playing something different to usual. But as a whole it was trying too hard to be gritty and "real".

Iron Man 3: Started off well, but it followed a lot of other superhero films by

making him disappear for most of the film, same as Spiderman 2, Superman 3 etc. It should have been called "Tony Stark" not "Iron Man"!

. Ending was the blow-up-everything style. Bit of a let down after the first two.

Safety Last!: Had never seen this before. The (famous) climax really is stunning. I tried to find something on the filming of that scene online, but didn't come up with much. Would love to see some photos of the filming it! The Criterion disk is fantastic quality too.

TICKLE_ME_ELMO

Headhunters

Described as a thriller but I almost thought it was a comedy. I enjoyed it, don't get me wrong, but not for the reasons I think I was supposed to. There's a scene where the main guy is escaping the guy trying to kill him on a tractor while covered in poo going about 20mph with a dog impaled on the front of the tractor. I can't believe they didn't intend me to laugh at that?

Anyway, it's quite an enjoyable watch but not the brilliant thriller I remember it being billed as when it was in cinemas.

johnny_ultimate

Zero - for a good two-thirds of its running time, this is a solid, blackly comic Moroccan noir about a lowly, self-destructive detective in Casablanca. It's familiar, but it's well enough realised.

Then it goes bat****. It turns into this crazy, ridiculous action film that is impossible to take even remotely seriously. Of particular note is a bafflingly odd scene where the eponymous Zero tortures a butterfly fetishist by taking a blow torch to his prized collection of butterflies. It's considerably more absurd than it sounds, and the shark jumping continues through an almost satirically violent and generic visit to a brothel. And even though it's genuinely mad stuff, the whole ending also feels rote and overly familiar. A film where the silly third act does its best to undo the interesting stuff that came before.

A Page of Madness - fascinating 1926 Japanese avant-garde effort. The story is simple but some specifics slip by because there's no intertitles (the film would have originally been accompanied by live narration). Basically, a janitor in a psychiatric asylum tries to help his wife escape from the institution. A straightforward tale, but you're here for the presentation. And it is still absolutely unique and breathtaking as it approaches it's ninetieth birthday. The cinematography and editing are incredible, notably in a mid-film riot scene that cuts with such force you just can't look away from the scene. But it's the opening and closing scenes that really sink their teeth in. Using a dizzying array of young and inventive techniques, director Teinosuke Kinugasa creates this nightmare vision, slicing between various distorted, disturbed points of view. It's beautifully chaotic and disorienting stuff, a 'sane' reality and 'insane' fantasy eventually merging and forcing the audience to question what they can trust. A fascinating experiment that we're lucky has survived, even in incomplete form.

Judgement Day

"Massacre in Rome" (1973) on YouTube via Wii. Strangely I'd never seen this movie before as it's from my era and area of interest. Based on a true story and set in Italy during 1944, the Germans are desperately trying to keep control of the country as the Allies advance from the south. An act of rebellion in Rome leads to a massive reprisal against the civilian population by the SS. Richard Burton and Leo McKern are the key baddies, and the film is a fairly sickening indictment of the German/Italian fascist axis - if it were needed -

and the 7th Cavalry don't ride over the horizon in the nick of time. Depressing and slow moving the film makes its way to the inevitable massacre.

I prefer Richard Burton as one of the good guys in "Where Eagles Dare" - I'm a simple soul. 5/10

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whJjlOnG5TE

Duggy747

TICKLE_ME_ELMO wrote: »

Headhunters

Described as a thriller but I almost thought it was a comedy. I enjoyed it, don't get me wrong, but not for the reasons I think I was supposed to. There's a scene where the main guy is escaping the guy trying to kill him on a tractor while covered in poo going about 20mph with a dog impaled on the front of the tractor. I can't believe they didn't intend me to laugh at that?

Anyway, it's quite an enjoyable watch but not the brilliant thriller I remember it being billed as when it was in cinemas.

Definitely a dark comedy / thriller film, I thought that scene was hilarious. :pac:

Snake Plisken

Tobe Hooper's Lifeforce I was reading on some of the Bluray sites that this was being re-released, and saw that it was on Netflix, so sat down to watch it last night, now the version on the Irish Netflix is the international version which is 116 minutes. I recall when I saw this in the 80's I wasn't that impressed as I was hoping for something along the lines of Hooper's Salems Lot, but have to say I enjoyed it in an 80's it's so bad its good kind of way. Also Patrick Stewart turns up in it towards the end. it reminded me a bit of Space 1999 meets Quartermass, also it had a lot of Mathilda May walking around naked.
Overall worth a watch as a curiosity of 80's science fiction cinema.

Tony EH

Snake Plisken wrote: »

Tobe Hooper's Lifeforce I was reading on some of the Bluray sites that this was being re-released, and saw that it was on Netflix, so sat down to watch it last night, now the version on the Irish Netflix is the international version which is 116 minutes. I recall when I saw this in the 80's I wasn't that impressed as I was hoping for something along the lines of Hooper's Salems Lot, but have to say I enjoyed it in an 80's it's so bad its good kind of way. Also Patrick Stewart turns up in it towards the end. it reminded me a bit of Space 1999 meets Quartermass, also it had a lot of Mathilda May walking around naked.
Overall worth a watch as a curiosity of 80's science fiction cinema.

:cool:

mike65

I keep waiting for Lifeforce to turn up on telly. The wait continues....! Brilliant cast.

e_e

It's playing in the IFI Horrorthon this year if any of y'all are interested.

mike65

mike65 wrote: »

I keep waiting for Lifeforce to turn up on telly. The wait continues....! Brilliant cast.

It should appear in the horror channel sometime after the Blu-Ray release

ButtersSuki

Watched Machete Kills in an almost empty Cineworld during the week. Now I really liked Machete, and though Machete Kills has its moments, it's not a patch on its predecessor. It just seems lazy and forced by comparison, and overly long. Demian Bichir steals the first half of the show from Danny Trejo who seemed to be dialing it in, while a camp Mel Gibson steals the second half. Also starring Jessica Alba (very briefly), the excellent Michelle Rodriguez, Lady GaGa (why?), Cuba Gooding Jr., Walton Goggins, Amber Heard and Antonio Banderas amongst others. Worth a look if you enjoyed Machete, otherwise I'd say avoid. Could have been so much better but I'll still give it (for what it is) a 6.5-7/10.

Judgement Day

"The Bourne Identity" (1988) YouTube via Wii.
As a major fan of the Bourne movies (the Matt Damon trilogy) I had intended buying this made for TV movie but thanks to YouTube I've saved myself from wasting money. Although it sticks more faithfully to the Robert Ludlum book than the Matt Damon version, it fails to come to life. At just over three hours it's heavy going and the action pedestrian at best. 1980's heart throb Richard Chamberlain and former Charlie's Angel (Jaclyn Smith) are the lead actors - need I say more.......It's so dated, and as one reviewer elsewhere says it was dated when it was first broadcast! As I sat watching it I couldn't immediately twig what was so odd about it and then the penny dropped - it was the phones or lack of them. The pre-mobile era was truly a different world and it's hard to imagine the recent Bourne trilogy using public telephone boxes. However, the movie fails mainly due to the poor casting of the hapless lead actors who should never have been allowed near it. 3/10

Snake Plisken

Deleted User wrote: »

It should appear in the horror channel sometime after the Blu-Ray release

Blu-ray release might be interesting http://www.amazon.co.uk/Lifeforce-Blu-ray-Limited-Edition-Steelbook/dp/B00CA1P7K0/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1382557395&sr=8-3&keywords=lifeforce
It's got commentary track by Tobe a new 72 minute documentary about the making of Lifeforce and also chronicles the rise and fall of Golan/Globus's Cannon studios. Various interviews with cast and crew and International & Theatrical versions of the film. It's £20.75 i'm kind of tempted to pick it up

bnt

Silver Linings Playbook. I didn't entirely get this film, I have to say. A couple of great lead performances, and De Niro had some good bits too, but the story became rather conventional by the end. Mental illness doesn't just "clear up" as it apparently did here.

I didn't really notice the age difference between the leads, since Lawrence in particular came across as much older than her 21 years (at time of filming). But I was a bit flummoxed by the subplot involving De Niro's sports-mad dad, the complexities of the betting and the reasoning behind it. The "sports orphan" concept, a parent so into sports he neglects his or her family, was done more effectively in Buffalo '66 in my opinion. :cool:

darced

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jaykhunter

darced wrote: »

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I saw that recently. Really annoyed as I thought it was a documentary discussing the themes of The Shining, but no, it's just insane conspiracy theorists grasping as straws. "And his pants line up with the cup handle for a few frames, an obvious phallic reference and foreshadowing to Jack's oppressive..." :mad: SIGH!

bellinter

Room 237 - the "letter tray is clearly a boner" was my personal favourite of the absurd theories! The doc starts off pretty good, its fun, but becomes unbearable as the theorising gets more and more outlandish

TICKLE_ME_ELMO

bnt wrote: »

Silver Linings Playbook. I didn't entirely get this film, I have to say. A couple of great lead performances, and De Niro had some good bits too, but the story became rather conventional by the end. Mental illness doesn't just "clear up" as it apparently did here.

I'm not sure it just "cleared up". Personally I didn't think the Tiffany character was "mentally ill", she just wasn't dealing with her husband's death and I assumed all the sex she had been having was a reaction to how he died, or rather why he was where he was when he was killed. As for Pat, his recovery was an ongoing process started in the clinic, he was on medication, he was seeing a therapist, he just made a big step in letting go of the obsession he had with his ex wife. You go back to these characters in 5 years time and maybe he's back in psychiatric care or they've killed each other, who knows

johnny_ultimate

Sion Sono had something of a breakthrough success with the uber-weird, uber-gory Suicide Club. But instead of using that film's success as a gateway to more mainstream projects (he would late make a cheekily obtuse sequel to Suicide Club) he made Hazard instead. A disillusioned Japanese student Shinichi (Joe Odagiri) travels to New York in search of danger and excitement, and he finds it when he falls in with a gang of Japanese-Americans who rob grocery stores, drive the streets selling drugged ice cream and creating general mischief.

Or does any of this happen? Hard to tell - there are frequent indicators this is all imagined by Shin, a false America based on a tourist guide he reads in a library. His coming of age story might be a mental breakdown, or one he's conjured up to fit his own criteria. Either way, the film is one of mood and atmosphere as opposed to traditional coherency, although Sono certainly takes the time to show his directionless characters trying to figure out who they are. And it works: through aesthetic ingenuity, the film is a wild trip, full of charismatic characters, dark humour and even the joys of anarchy - perhaps Sono expressing his fondness for independent, rule-breaking filmmaking.

This all has something of a darker edge, but the film has energy to spare, even if the chaos and carefree storytelling inevitably grow a touch repetitive at times. Still, it's a worthwhile watch: rougher and more haphazard than Sono's subsequent work, but a rebellious delight in its own right, with shades of the likes of Taxi Driver and Attack the Gas Station.

Judgement Day

Despite having tons of unwatched DVDs I find myself drawn back to my YouTube/Wii combination time and again. Last night it was to "When Eight Bells Toll" (1971) based on the book by Alistair MacLean. A maritime thriller set off the Scottish coast, disappearing ships carrying gold bullion, murder and kidnapping...with a strong cast lead by a young (34) Anthony Hopkins, Robert Morley and Jack Hawkins. The movie has dated well and I can recommend it - great to see the large figure of Robert Morley again! 8/10

marwelie

1976 version of King Kong.

Jessica Lange.......:eek:

krudler

marwelie wrote: »

1976 version of King Kong.

Jessica Lange.......:eek:

Stunning looking woman, she's aged really well too she's in American Horror Story and amazing in it, especially the 2nd season.