What have you watched recently? 3D!

Red Rocket (2021)

Drama with comedy elements about a down-at-heel and washed-up pornstar having nowhere else to go but to return from California to shitsville Texas where his ex-wife lives with her mother. The ex is not so keen to take him in even though she eventually relents but a younger model catches his eye. Watchable fare as it's not so predictable in its zaniness.

6.5 / 10

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wfndmy-6e28

For some reason, Netflix is bigging up The night of the condor. So I'm gonna rewatch and chuck some other Redford films into the mix.

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The Adam Project (2022)

It's so weird: Netflix's film strategy at one end of the spectrum is full of genuine auteurs and creatives putting out apparently "hands off" features - yet their blockbusters have lately been a succession of cheap looking, half-assed films that smell like productions passed over by other studios.

This latest was not the one to break the cycle; the family drama wasn't the worst but literally everything else was low budget (presumably to offset Ryan Reynolds' pay packet), and lacking any flourish or spark to the point it looked less cinematic than most TV these days . It wasn't outrageously bad, it passed the time harmlessly enough but barely clearing the bar of "midly entertaining" ain't great.

De Bhál

Uncut Gems (2019)

Watched it on Netflix last night. knew nothing about it only it was recommended to me when it came out.

Lots of people shouting at each other, opals, crazy plans, pro basketballers, mafia. More shouting. Brilliant scene at an auction. Overall it grew on me by the time it was finished.

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Studio 666 (2022)

There's a point where non-actors' natural charisma and timing can offset their obvious lack of learned acting ability. Arguably, Arnold Schwarzenegger's entire career is down to that. And while this film was way more goofy, funny, gory and enjoyable than it ever had any right to be, it was all underpinned by Dave Grohl's surprisingly excellent non-acting performance as the lead. The rest of the Foos blew hot and cold - mostly cold if I'm honest - but Grohl's energy often shouldered both the comedy and horror - and the two corners were, again, far stronger than I'd have otherwise expected.

And anyone who likes their horror old-school with lots of squishy, crunchy practical FX will do well here: it had that by the barrel-full. There were a couple of small CGI moments but they really were in the minority. Also: the theme tune scored by John Carpenter, the man also appearing as a cameo.

Though the best cameo had to be:

Spoiler Warning

Jump scare Lionel Ritchie

Decuc500

X

A new film from Ti West is always something to look forward to and X doesn't disappoint.

A film crew rent an old farmhouse to film an adult movie on the property. The old couple who live there are a bit weird and things take a turn for the worse...

Ti West obviously has a love of trashy horror cinema from the 70's and 80's and X has that authentic feel to it. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a big influence.

West is too good a filmmaker though to just make a soulless homage to everything Grindhouse. There are some fantastic shots and quirky edits and a brilliantly sustained sense of menace throughout. The inevitable bloodbath feels well earned. It's a real antidote to most current cheap, nasty, mean spirited and badly made horror cinema.

Most importantly the film doesn't take itself too seriously. A total blast!

silverharp

The Wind Rises (2013) Anime , really nice film, top class animation

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2013293/?ref_=ttls_li_tt

Fysh

I caught Turning Red last night and really enjoyed it - easily the best Pixar film since Inside Out for me, and a definite top-tier Pixar film. More of this!

(Luca was charming and visually lovely, but more of a delicious morsel than a full meal. And Onward was well-done, but didn't have anything that would draw me back for a second watch.)

The Nightingale (2018)

Extremely violent revenge piece set in 1820's Tasmania featuring the Irish Actress who was the schoolgirl in "The Fall" (Aisling Franciosi). The most interesting part of the movie comes from the development of the relationship between the Franciosi character and her Aboriginal guide / tracker (who puts in a great turn). Good movie if not an easy watch at times.

6.8 / 10

Wombatman

The Lost Daughter

Seems to have gotten mixed reviews. I found it to be a captivating psychological drama, brilliantly cast and delivered. The soundtrack works really well throughout a patchwork of scenes that subtly convey unsettling insights into loss, regret, parenthood, obligation and quite desperation. Marvelous melancholia.

8.5 / 10

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Black Crab (2022)

Atmospheric, with a palpable sense of cold, moribund ennui & desolation - but "The Road" this wasn't. At least that better movie remembered to sprinkle some humanity within its dour framework - even if it was often smothered by the worst of humanity. Here, we got Dour all the way down, never once relenting, so by the last act I was totally numb - meaning the gut-punch ending never felt especially shocking. Needless to say, it was a total waste of Noomi Rapace's talent.

JP Liz V1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118745841#Comment_118745841

Fresh is a fleshy rom dramedy, don't eat when watching but Sebastian Stan is still oh la la la 

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Sound of Metal (2019)

Struck a deft balance between emotionally devastating while also empowering & inclusive: at once sympathetic, but never sentimental or mawkish. Acknowledged the chaos and mess of a life turned upside-down, including the denial and folly trying desperately to restore what can never return - yet never dipped into the kind of over-earnest and patronising faux-nobility beloved of Hollywood when telling these kinds of stories (and angling for Oscars). The sound design has tended to get most of the plaudits, and rightly so because it was tremendous: but it was the humanity beneath that layer that stuck in my mind. The wounded humanity of it all, alongside the simple, honest decency of the deaf community normalising their condition. "Powerful" might be a trite adjective, but this film really did strike a chord.

If I was left with any quibble, it was a wonder if the cochlear implants are as horrendously tinny as the film presented them (again, that sound design was astonishing); a horrible, constant noise into your brain seems worse than a loss of hearing, and given the film's definite focus to champion deaf communities, I couldn't help wonder if it overplayed the discomfort.

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The Dig (2021)

Was expecting a lot of self-mythologising about the English psyche but there was nothing of the sort. Rather it was a film of dignified melancholy, never miserable or lost in angst: it spoke of how we are all ephemeral creatures, tenants within that neverending story of our species, only leaving echoes while we crossed paths. But it didn't wallow in that either; it had a decent, empathic heart with its deeply human characters all trying their best to live "true", find connections and be happy and kind to each other. The backdrop of WW2 emphasised the idea to do right now while we can, and that as the saying goes, This Too Shall Pass. A far more heartfelt feature than I was girding myself for.

Sugarlumps

Rita, Sue and Bob Too

Hadn't seen it in years, some hilarious scenes. Ah the 80's was great.

Tony EH

'A Few Good Men'

A 90's thriller as slick as the Fonz's hair, which sees Tom Cruise as Navy JAG lawyer, Dan Kaffee, being assigned as council to defend two US Marines who are up on murder charges for a crime committed in Guantanamo Bay.

Rob Reiner's 'A Few Good Men' is one of those movies that most people who have seen it will probably only be able to recall Jack Nicholson's famous line at the climax of the courtroom drama. It's, basically, an enjoyable and serviceable thriller that holds your hand all the way through and is populated with decent actors giving decent performances in a story that simply unfolds with no great surprises. But it's also a very entertaining one and very well made.

If there are some fall backs, it has to do with an ending that just thumps ungracefully on the ground and some issues with Cruise's acting/character. Cruise, who I have nothing against as a professional, largely played characters in the early part of his career that were insufferable personalities and Daniel Kaffee is no exception. Kaffee is a person that floats along in life, but also possesses a thoroughly unlikeable smugness that won't endear him to most folk. He's just deeply unpleasant, much like a number of Cruise's previous characters, Joel Goodson, Stefan Djordjevic, Maverick, Vincent Lauria, Brian Flanagan and Charlie Babbitt. He's arrogant, undisciplined and full of himself. His excuse for this is some vague daddy issues that never really get explained to any degree. Cruise isn't bad in the role, he just lacks personable qualities and comes off as an amalgam of previous Cruise incarnations meaning that Kaffee holds no revelatory moments for Cruise's thespianism.

Ample support is provided by Demi Moore, Kevin Pollack, Kevin Bacon and Jack Nicholson, who in his 15 minutes of screen time (for which he received $5 million dollars!) blows everyone else off of the screen as the completely awful Colonel Nathan R. Jessup. A man who not only enjoys the fact that his rank privileges afford him the opportunity to order people around, he positively revels in it.

Reiner's direction is confident and assured and he gets his cast to complete their roles admirably. He manages to maintain a tension throughout even if 'A Few Good Men' never rises above bog standard courtroom drama fare and everything plays out very satisfactorily indeed.

8/10

silliussoddius

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118855194#Comment_118855194

Good old Channel 4 for adolescent exposure to art.

NIMAN

Latest watches have been Boiling Point, with the fantastic Stephen Graham. Anything with Stephen in it is always worth a watch, although I think some of his fellow actors were equally as good in this. Follows a burned out head chef, under severe pressure in his personal life, over a nights service in his restaurant.

Definitely worth a watch, and the fact that it was all done in 1 take is an achievement in itself. A solid 7/10 for me.

Also caught The Power of the Dog. I definitely fall into the 'meh' side of the debate on this one. Not sure what all the fuss is about. Quality acting for sure, but it is following the modern trend of films that don't really tell much of a story. And the one they do tell, they tell slowly. Maybe 5.5/10.

I'm about 40 mins into Boiling Point (Stephen Graham) and it's probably the most stressful thing I've watch this year.

All My Friends Hate Me (2022)

British dark comedy college reunion sort-of-thing centred around one of the group's birthday after they haven't gathered together for a number of years since university. But paranoia sets in on the birthday boy - but is it real or not? Funny with a bit of dark and a twist of cringe thrown in. This seemed quite original to me and I really liked it, even if I didn't really care for the main actor's performance all that much.

7.3 / 10

Sugarlumps

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118863946#Comment_118863946

Would have been much better as a series, develop some of the characters. Found it flakey. Stress is watching 2 girls one cup.

Tony EH

'In Search of Darkness Part II'

The second entry of a lengthy set of frivolous talking head interviews by David Weiner about 1980's horror movies is pretty much the same as 2019's effort, 'In Search of Darkness', in that it's running time is fearsome and it has little to say that genre fans haven't already heard many times before. Clearly, it's suited more to people who have little knowledge of the movies and personalities on show than it would be to someone like myself who's saturated themselves in such fare since the decade in question. That being said, it's still entertaining enough that its run time goes by relatively quickly and it's always nice to see the likes of John Carpenter, Jeffery Combs, Stuart Gordon, Joe Dante, Robert Englund, Tom Atkins and a load of others pop up and tell their stories. There are, however, numerous non-entities and YouTubers that are involved, too, that are really only there to pad things out, one or two of them coming off as insufferable fools into the bargain.

'In Search of Darkness Part II' concentrates on lesser known 80's horror, whereas 'In Search of Darkness' set it sights on more familiar goods. So items like 'Terror Train', 'The Boogens', 'Nightmares in a Damaged Brain', 'Evilspeak' or 'Alone in the Dark' get rolled out and discussed, albeit never too deeply. But also included are popular favourites like the Jason and Freddy franchises. There's also some inevitable discussion about movies that fall firmly outside of the 80's, like 'It Came from Outer Space' or 'Creature from the Black Lagoon' but when you have people like Joe Dante or John Carpenter talking that's a given as their formative cinema experiences are of that time.

Like its predecessor, 'In Search of Darkness Part II' brings nothing new to the table and is probably best viewed by someone who's never really stepped too deeply into these types of movies as they will be the audience that will get the most out of it. But it will still hold the attention of those horror freaks who enjoy being reminded of genre's greatest decade.

7/10

The Contractor - (2022)

Just about worth watching guy-out-of-the-army-needs-the-money caper so signs up to the same private contractor gig as his old army mate. Assured that he will be doing "honourable work". Things don't exactly go swimmingly from there as you might expect. Functional thriller that is in the "ok" territory. Chris Pine leads.

5.95 / 10

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News of the World (2020)

Neither a deconstructionist nor an especially nostalgic Western, though on occasion its naive sentiment nearly got the better of it. Very solid, and also a huge pivot away from the frantic "shaky cam" director Paul Greengrass had become known for. Tom Hanks brought that paternal decency that has come to define much of his later career: while the actor is rightly lauded as a paragon of decency, his actual acting doesn't seem to garner the same plaudits. Maybe his lack of awards recognition is down to his roles always being that of dependable professionals, the mix of the actor's understated method coupled with those characters' lack of eccentricity never sticking in the mind as much as bigger, noisier performers out there.

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Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)

Remains an absolute barnstorming tour de force of acting, especially Jack Lemmon's simpering performance as he circled the drain. The toxicity & testosterone levels still through the roof by modern standards - but equally, that was always the point of the beast; a cast of performative "alpha" males, all trying to dance around the butcher's knife, their swagger full of loud, empty bravado to the point where you suspected these salesmen were walking examples of the Dunning-Kruger Effect.

Yeah, you can tell this started as a stage play, with its boxed-off locations and characters walking in and out of scenes; but the direction still found ways to add a touch of the cinematic here and there with some effective push-ins at important, pivotal moments of dialogue.

I think it's a hard one to find these days: it didn't show up on JustWatch at all which must be rare, and don't see it listed on Netlifx or Prime Video; good job I had my DVD.

Evil Dead 2 (1987)

Anything that could be said about this iconic horror-comedy has probably already been uttered ... but wow, I had forgotten just how fast it got going. All hell broke loose within the first 5 minutes; boom, we're off. No fat, no gristle - just pure blood-soaked drenched Looney Toons.

loyatemu

Evil Dead 2 (1987)

Anything that could be said about this iconic horror-comedy has probably already been uttered ... but wow, I had forgotten just how fast it got going. All hell broke loose within the first 5 minutes; boom, we're off. No fat, no gristle - just pure blood-soaked drenched Looney Toons.

I also like that the first 10 mins are basically a recap/remake of ED1 so you don't even need to have seen the first movie. Bruce Campbell's autobiography "If Chins Could Kill" is well worth a read, there's a load in it about the making of the ED films. Also if you love ED2 and haven't seen it, Peter Jackson's early movie Brain Dead is a hoot in a similar vein, but about 10 times as gory.

We watched Death on the Nile (2022) on Disney+ over the weekend - it was an entertaining romp, better than Murder on the Orient Express (I think, can't remember that much about the first film TBH). 7/10

Previous weekend we watched Wes Anderson's latest The French Despatch (2021). As usual with WA it looked and sounded amazing but only really the first section of it (about Benicio Del Toro's insane artist) really grabbed me, and I found my attention drifting in the subsequent sections which kind of went nowhere (stylishly). 5/10

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Mank (2020)

I can't entirely hate on something a son made to honour his father, but this was by far Fincher's weakest film. To regard what I think are his two worst - Alien 3 and now this - while the former suffered from excessive studio meddling, perhaps Mank suffered from none. Netflix seem to be happy to give its "auteurs" total creative control and not for the first time, the end result was a baggy, disjointed and unfocused mess. Nothing landed, little seemed cohesive enough to have something to say beyond lip service that Hollywood was/is a bit of a moral quagmire. I'm not even sure this would have been of interest to Citizen Kane obsessives, to be honest.

The dialogue often had a very wry, sardonic wit and the actors seemed to enjoy the patter, but it was all framed by a narrative that was, honestly? Often deeply boring - and that's somewhat unforgivable, especially for Fincher. While the adherence to the black & white cinematography of the era never amounted to anything except slavish affectation. To the extent you'd be hard-pressed to even know it was a Fincher production.

Wish Netflix would stop throwing money at directors to direct whatever script was lying behind their sofa when the service came calling. As said, to be fair this was obviously a deeply personal project for David Fincher, but it needed a stronger hand.

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Outlaw King (2018)

Odd to have a movie about Robert the Bruce, with the money to make the battles and locations work, and it stopped before Bannockburn. Spoilers I guess? It doesn't even get a mention as foreshadowing; maybe those with more historical understanding might know why but it seemed odd.

Otherwise a very boilerplate historical "Great Man" epic, that while seemed intent to set itself as a palette cleanser to Braveheart, still couldn't resist making the English at times almost comical evil like in Gibson's film. I'm sure life then was brutal and unsympathetic, but Bruce's own violent pragmatism was redrawn as forgiveable so the text had its own manipulative angle.

Chris Pine put in a good performance though and you feel had he lived in a previous era he'd be headlining more movies than he is. Never showy, very understated and his accent was surprisingly solid. Never going pure Groundskeeper Willy, or overly affected.

Fysh

I watched The Beach Bum last night, a 2019 effort from Harmony Korine whose Spring Breakers I recall very much enjoying. I can't make my mind up on TBB, though - in some ways it's very much a companion film to SB, in that its protagonist Moondog (played by Matthew McConaughey) has a similar party-seeking attitude to life. Within the first five minutes of TBB, Alien's refrain from Spring Breakers ("Spring Break forever, yo") popped into my head. There isn't really a conventional plot, and while there is some bit of observation of Moondog's character there's not really any depth to it - but in terms of the presentation it's more like a guided tour through the endless holiday that Moondog has managed to make of his life, and viewing it that way is probably the best way to enjoy it.

Like in Spring Breakers, the characters are all extremely wealthy and privileged individuals. We see frequent examples of them being awful shitebags, generally with few or no consequences. I think my ambivalence around TBB is that while with Spring Breakers there was some sense of seeking escape from something, Moondog lives a life of ongoing wish fulfilment. The character is a Mary Sue - we keep being told, with IMO little convincing demonstration, that he's a genius poet who can effortlessly conjure words that leave other in speechless awe, but nothing ever requires even modest amounts of effort from Moondog. Everyone who meets him thinks he's amazing, and the only character who ever criticises him is immediately discarded as being "dependable" but who will "never be brilliant".

In a lot of ways the film feels like its theme can be summed up with a line from Jonah Hill's character - "You know what I like the most about being rich? You can just be horrible to people, and they just have to take it."

Bull (2021)

Curt revenge thriller for those with short attention spans who love graphic violence (sometimes incongruous). Decent turn by the lead Neil Maskell whose intensity definitely helps carry the piece.

6.1 / 10