What have you watched recently? 3D!

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They Cloned Tyrone (2023)

All the pulpy paranoia of They Live, rendered through Blaxploitation cinema with a dash of Get Out. A dystopian SciFi whose central rug-pull contained absolutely zero percent Subtext: this was Text all the way down (into the secret laboratory no less).

By all accounts though, subtle or not this was a very canny & stylish directorial debut - and significantly more cinematic than many of these "Netflix Originals" which clog the service's backlog. One of those digital releases you wish had a cinematic run, however short. The aesthetics of the thing were a shade... gloomy at times, but more often it had a richly textured, grainy & tangibly moribund sense of itself; one that matched the idea of a penned-in community made to rot by design and conspiracy.

Jamie Foxx was a hoot, and you'd miss his presence in mainstream cinema with performances like this; his Slick Charles both a walking swaggering cliché but often vulnerable and showed depth when required. Same with Kiefer Sutherland's . To the extent he kinda stole John Boyega's lunch, though the younger actor was saddled with the more serious, slightly charisma-deficient lead role.

Fysh

Dinner In America

I enjoyed this as a dark/weird coming-of-age comedy about 2 oddballs in their early 20s in a non-specific Small Town; the central performances are really strong, and the songs composed for the film work well for the in-story musicians. There's some tonal similarity to Napoleon Dynamite, if one of the core characters was an uncompromising DIY punk.

Mr.Nice Guy

Sabrina (1954)

Never watched this movie before. It was only okay. I enjoyed Audrey Hepburn in the role but spent most of the movie feeling sorry that Sabrina has such poor options for a love interest. I didn't feel Bogart suited his part. Apparently he didn't like his co-stars off the set.

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Thirst (2009)

Oh man, I think as I dip more into his work I realise I just can't vibe with Park Chan-Wook at all. He's a masterful director of imagery, I can't fault that but everything else keeps getting in the way. It's the tone that keeps irritating me; the whiplash between an odd (Korean?) goofiness, with almost cartoonish characters, then into outsized violence, then back again. While even with his talented eye there's something about Chan-Wook's editing that can make the experiences a bit frustrating.

Same here, writ large. The rendering of vampire powers as something almost mundane or throwaway was neat, definitely. And the story of a Priest turned vampire is an absolute head turner. But every time one of the characters opened their mouths I couldn't buy into this at all. Nobody seemed real, or vaguely of planet earth to begin with before we introduced a vampire to mingle with ... whatever the F you could call that family unit he found himself part of.

I've watched Oldboy, this and tried Decision to Leave before bombing out of that; I think I might pass on this guy's work cos I'm just more irritated than anything.

Fysh

I find that Korean cinema is much more likely to have wild tonal shifts, but as far as taste goes I've really liked every of Park Chan-Wook's films I've seen (I still have to make time for The Handmaiden and I'm A Cyborg, But That's OK).

Having said that - from your review I would suggest giving Stoker a go; Park directed but didn't write it, so you might find it less frustrating than the rest of his filmography.

johnny_ultimate

I've rewatched most of Director Park's film's recently (the Blank Check effect) and love virtually all of them. It's the fact that his films waltz through so many tonal registers with such confidence that helps make them so appealing - they can be deeply funny and disturbing, sometimes even in the same scene. Of course, he's one of the most imaginative formalists of our time too, with scenes staged with frequently delightful imagination, depth and humour.

I do think Thirst is a tad on the more challenging side relative to something like JSA or Oldboy, as it's less confined by its apparent genre. And Decision to Leave is an overwhelming rush of a film, that's so dense with visual ideas that it's designed to overwhelm the viewer at first (to ultimately very rewarding ends). I think The Handmaiden is his masterpiece, though - one of the greatest films of the 2010s, bringing all his filmmaking instincts together with startling clarity.

Was surprised to see I'm A Cyborg... so hard to find these days - it got a good old Tartan release back in the day. I remember seeing it at DIFF when it first came out, and it was a mainstay in the world cinema selection in HMV and the like. But apparently, it never got a commercial release in the US at all, which is wild given it followed Oldboy.

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121049091#Comment_121049091

The characters of Thirst were cartoons though, this is my main blocker: the mother in law, husband and family friends these grotesque caricatures that kinda kept breaking the spell. Especially the husband with his constantly runny nose and "stock audio" farting.

Not like someone such as Bong Joon-ho doesn't dip into farce or outsized characters, but ... I dunno. Maybe cos his films tend to have more distinct Genres about them he carries it off better (though Okja nearly blew the doors of there), while Parasite dialled back that goofiness much more deftly.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121048807#Comment_121048807

That's true. Korean cinema appears to lack a naturalism that I'm used to, but Chan-Wook does appear to double down on this really heightened approach. Funny you say Stoker cos I have wondered if that might be the one I enjoy the most; like Johnny I'm listening to the Blank Check podcast, hence the desire to dip back into Chan-Wook again.

But so far my problem is beyond the undoubted technical ability I'm struggling to "get" Park Chan Wook.

johnny_ultimate

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121049949#Comment_121049949

You say cartoonish, I say heightened 😅 But yes, he's definitely a filmmaker whose work typically operates on a more exaggerated scale. Not that his characters don't have depth or anything like that (I love the two very different journeys the two main characters in Thirst go on) but yeah Bong Joon-ho definitely keeps things a little more pared back in at least some of his films. Although I personally go with Hong Sang-soo when I want the really grounded Korean stuff (i.e. 20 minute scenes of people getting drunk on soju) :)

That said, I would urge anyone diving into Park's filmography to at least give The Handmaiden a go before abandoning ship. That's the fullest realisation of everything he's done to date, and has a slightly more traditionally twisty thriller vibe than any of the other films (JSA and Stoker perhaps excluded), at least the first go around.

Fysh

On the subject of The Handmaiden - @johnny_ultimate would you recommend the theatrical or extended cut for a first watch?

johnny_ultimate

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121050252#Comment_121050252

I've only seen the theatrical! The extended cut isn't a director's cut or anything: my understanding is Park was pushed / encouraged to release it by distributors after the success of the film in Korea and abroad, so he put together what he could. I can't speak to its quality either way, but the original edit is a wonderfully crafted thing :)

loyatemu

Watched Marcel the Shell with Shoes On earlier in the week - what a lovely film, just totally sincere and warm-hearted but still gently funny and genuinely engaging. I went into it not really knowing what to expect, and my (teenage) kids were a bit dubious for the first few minutes but then really got into it. Highly recommended.

tesla_newbie

Watched Dune ( 2021 ) last night, second time seeing it having first viewed it over a year ago, I liked it so much more second time around. Honestly I don’t think a better movie exists when it comes to sound

Dune is a movie you live , not just see

johnny_ultimate

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121050252#Comment_121050252

Actually just had a gander there and I believe Park himself recommends watching theatrical first.

One other thing to note is that the film does have unique subtitles on the Blu-Ray release, to differentiate the Japanese and Korean dialogue. This is a big thematic and character detail. However, Mubi doesn’t have the different colour coding, so if you can’t pick out the two languages by ear you might be missing some of the nuance there.

Fysh

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121051025#Comment_121051025

Ah, thanks! Had been thinking of watching on Mubi first but I reckon I'll go for the Blu in that case, I wouldn't want to bet on distinguishing the two languages by ear alone 😅

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121050523#Comment_121050523

Pure Cosy Cinema; up there with Paddington 2 in being a perfect little film that embraces sincerity and kindness without ever once feeling phoney or saccharine.

loyatemu

I loved the Paddington films but I think anyone going into Marcel expecting the same level of action and humour will be disappointed. It's much more gentle and small-scale (though it does have plenty of funny scenes). It's not a million miles away from the first half of Wall-E.

monkeyactive

Lakelands

Has made the list of my favourite Irish films , very authentic drama set in the GAA obsessed country side where two schoolfriends reunite as adults dealing with challenges in their lives. Never slides into twee Irishness or needs to fall back on oh so whacky characters like so much of that overly self concious Irish cinema that I have no time for.

American woman

Character study of a woman putting her life back together to care for her grandson following the disappearance of her daughter , his mother. Well put together and acted , check out if drama is your thing.

Decuc500

Pasolini

Abel Ferrara film about the last few days of filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini. This was a bit of a slog for an 84 minute film. Quite a plodding art house thing. Some interesting scenes but overall dull.

I haven't been bothered to watch any of Pasolini's films and this didn't make me want to change my mind. I would imagine you could draw a line from Pasolini to modern day bores like Haneke or von Trier.

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In the Loop (2009)

Trigger warning: very Lefty opinions follow, given the last time 😂🙄 ...

I'm wasn't one of those folk who had thought in our post-populist, post-Trump era (2024 and his growing list of felony crimes notwithstanding) that "satire is dead"; even if the likes of Adam McKay rose to the top off the back of a deep streak of patronisation towards his audience, the genre of comedy only changed with the times. It reassessed its targets, and doubled its anger. Not least upon the realisation the politicians weren't as much our enemies as the billionaire class was becoming; political satire somewhat morphing into class satire instead.

There was something curiously quaint watching this - even if this film only hailed from 2009. The Anglophone political world has since become a cruder, more publicly divisive and antagonistic animal: polemics emboldened by social media's ability to magnify the worst of us. This film, and the TV series on which it was based, mined great comedy from inserting the swearing, viciously Rasputin-like figure of Malcolm Tucker into the polite & slightly bumbling stratosphere of British Politics; laughs generated as we watched this psychotic schemer upend the facade of competence. It was like a tiger let loose on an episode of Yes, Prime Minister (for those of a certain vintage).

While in reality, the UK has seen its own rise of anti-intellectualism and performative cruelty within its corridors of power (speaking as a sympathetic neighbour in Ireland, isolated from the madness). Malcolm Tucker's darkly funny tirades as he belittled and cajoled now rendered a little more ... odd when compared with the decade of actual Tories bullying the staff - and country. Satire's not dead - but it can find itself quickly outstripped by reality mutating into something more vulgar and disappointing than anything the talented Armando Iannucci could imagine.

pixelburp

Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence (2004)

I nearly did a spit take during this film: when with only about 10 minutes left, the main character declared without an ounce of self-awareness, "No time for philosophising now". Oh, so now there's no time Batou, eh? Maybe your brain truly had been hacked, if you somehow missed your prior 110 odd minutes of constant ponderous aphorisms.

I think on balance this was the better, more structured entity than the first film - but for me anyway this was an arguably lesser experience. The term has begun to get a little overused but that first film had that sense of a Tone Poem, a thing running on vibes; it captured that sense of being on the cusp of a transformative moment - in this case the birth of the singularity across a thinly sketched and broadly incidental plot. The occasionally impenetrable waxing poetic somewhat appropriate against the weight of the loss of our physical selves and sense of reality therein.

I'm not sure the sequel had that same sense of a yawning precipice like its predecessor: instead it sometimes drifted into being akin to a rote bit of cyberpunk; a little side-story while the larger events happened elsewhere. Even the visual elements hadn't the same impact as before and I think the technology of the time was the cause there. The use of CGI to offer more dynamic, moving compositions was a really neat idea but I think a few years too soon; it didn't always work, the rendering not quite subtle enough to pull off the intent of that 2D-but-3D artwork.

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Shin Godzilla (2016)

I had always thought The Thick of It or Veep would have benefited from a sudden Kaiju Crisis.

Immediately wrestled itself to the top tier of the genre in being a totally barnstorming Anti-Kaiju feature: a pacy political thriller-satire while still functioning as a romping Kaiju movie when Godzilla - be it full-sized or a fantastically googly eyed infant version - trashed Tokyo with its usual indifference.

Primarily this was a film whose motivation was the kaiju operating as a catalyst for a deadpan interrogation of the suffocating effect of bureaucracy run amok and its inability to act with purpose - even when an existential crisis demands immediacy of purpose. Yet just as the film had overwhelmed the viewer with endless meetings, conferences, meetings-about-the-conferences - not to mention an obscene number of titled characters - all of it culminating in the worst possible outcome for the residents of Tokyo ... the film became something else. Something to cheer.

It's easy to wallow in all the ways things are wrong - harder still to offer a positive solution. The film abandoned its cynicism and pivoted into an optimistic treatise on the importance of cooperation, ingenuity, and science and non-violent responses as solutions to our problems. Incompetence might be punished, but we can do better & it'll be the nerds & weirdos who save us not the military (and certainly not the politicians). Not for that matter, America. They were quietly positioned as the bad guys throughout this.

As to the FX: they were solid for the most part; a photorealistic, gnarly CGI Godzilla that looked threatening, nightmarish but also still retaining that slight sense of goofiness - not least the aforementioned googly-eyed version that moved like a penguin sliding along the ice. If the satire was played with a straight face, the infant Kaiju was a definite hat-tip towards comedic intent. My only real complaint was the sound design: obviously Gojira himself sounded as arrestingly iconic as ever, but the sounds of Japan's tanks, missiles and explosions as they were thrown against the monster's hide had too much of a "stock" quality to them; the sound oddly deadened and flat in places. Maybe it was simply my sound system but more crunch and impact would have given the urban destruction more heft.

And when Hollywood once more try to reboot Godzilla - cos the reboots will continue 'til morale improves - you can almost guarantee the script won't have the nerve to work something this inventive, its cast made up of oddballs and freaks; instead we'll get another film where rote melodrama around the American nuclear family will sit in the foreground, flabby and uninteresting with occasional, floaty CGI monsters walloping each other somewhere else.

Mr Crispy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121092381#Comment_121092381

Might give it a rewatch ahead of Godzilla Minus One. Was just thinking about the longevity of the series. I mean, it must have close to thirty movies in it at this stage?

Edit: Minus One will be the 37th movie in the franchise according to Wikipedia 😲

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121092570#Comment_121092570

37?? Yeah I definitely haven't seen all the movies; and TBH many of them do look like campy, goofy nonsense when Godzilla became a hero more than walking apocalyptic metaphor.

I had heard Shin... had a satirical edge but this floored me with its execution. And the quietly optimistic nationalism. And quietly angry fist shaking at Americas interference with Japan's future.

johnny_ultimate

Don’t skip Shin Ultraman after Shin Godzilla. It’s very much a spiritual successor - the tone’s goofier given the different tonal identity of the two series, but it’s like a fun variation on the ideas laid down in SG and has the same balance between bureaucratic drama and eccentric SFX action. It has some of the most charmingly odd special effects I’ve seen in years.

Shin Kamen Rider is more niche given it’s a much more straightforward film than its two ‘Shin’ predecessors, more like an extended TV episode with less of the satirical bite of SG and SU. But in terms of capturing the visuals and vibes of old Japanese superhero serials, it’s worth a watch. Just not as sharp or essential as the other two.

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121092837#Comment_121092837

Hmmm I gotta say I would only be vaguely aware of Ultraman, so a bit sceptical about it as a recommendation re. a successor to Shin Godzilla; I'll take a look though. Is the whole "Shin" moniker a thing going on over there?

johnny_ultimate

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121096922#Comment_121096922

So basically Hideaki Anno (of Evangelion fame) and Shinji Higuchi were able to use the success they enjoyed with Shin Godzilla to follow up with a series of other reboots of classic Japanese genre franchises, in the general style of SG. Shin Ultraman was the follow-up to Shin Godzilla, and is very much the spiritual successor to that film. Shin Kamen Rider came after (again, much more niche proposition IMO) and technically the final Evangelion film is also a ‘Shin’ film but that’s a very loose branding connection I think. So basically it’s a series of three (four if you count the Eva one) films from the same creative team.

IMO Shin Ultraman is very much the real follow up to SG, as it’s a very similar vibe creatively, albeit naturally a different tone in some respects given the different characters. I’m not familiar with Ultraman either but I had a ball with it, and very much more in the Shin Godzilla lineage. Godzilla Minus One looks interesting but it’s a different creative team and AFAIK Shin Godzilla is considered a ‘once off’ in the series.

nachouser

"Hell or High Water" is now available on Netflix.

"So, what don't you want?" Anyone who has watched it will get that quote.

Zero fat, it just zips along. Probably the best thing I've watched in years.

eightieschewbaccy

Kes, I'm sure I saw it when I was younger but honestly realist cinema like that is so great to watch. It's got comedy including the football scene but also just an incredibly sad commentary on how terribly children were treated. Being pushed into mining or something along those lines when you'd barely entered puberty. I will confess, the Yorkshire accents required me to use subtitles. 😂

Tony EH

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121103172#Comment_121103172

I don't think there's a Ken Loach film that I don't like. At least in some way.

eightieschewbaccy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121103194#Comment_121103194

I've been going through a lull in my movie watching as of late and having watched The 400 Blows the previous night, really reminded of what I love about great cinema. Neither story should manage to jitter between tragic and hilarious but they both do. Stopping my lovefest now. 😂