What have you watched recently? 3D!

pixelburp · 09-09-2022 3:55pm

Cape Fear (1991)

Ah, finally. After all these years, I get what that old (so very old) Simpsons episode was riffing on.

Gleefully misanthropic and operatic to such a fulsome degree, it shot past a precarious level of goofiness until the movie simply existed as a bombastic nightmare thriller. The sub-genre of the "Home Invasion" thriller has found a latter-day resting, default tone where everything is played brooding - serious and portentous films often devoid of mirth or colour.

Martin Scorsese however, in the manner of a man letting off some steam, went in another direction entirely - and I loved every last, demented minute of it. Every eccentricity and visual motif we come to think of with Scorsese films was cranked up to the Nth degree; as if he looked at Brian DePalma's homages to Hitchcock and said, "That, but more". While shadowing his director's approach, Robert DeNiro played his compelling antagonist with broad strokes, but with an underlying grotesquery and menace that frequently arrested the onset of any chuckles. This was a performance millimetres distant from Scenery Chewing. The borderline demonic madness of DeNiro's character slowly infected the rest of the main cast; such that by the end scene, it was clear nobody "won" this story. Everything had been slowly corrupted, or left in ruins - or both. Thank goodness the journey to that cynical ending was such compelling, grandiose entertainment.

silliussoddius · 09-09-2022 5:36pm

I always wanted to catch the original, have never got round to it (also there's another Robert Mitchum film called Night of the Hunter which is supposed to be good).

Tony EH · 09-09-2022 6:50pm

'Night of the Hunter' is dreadful. I'm constantly amazed at how much good will it gets. One of the most incredibly over rated films I can recall. The original 'Cape Fear' is very good however, even if it's mre subdued than Scorsese's remake.

Ninthlife · 10-09-2022 1:11pm

Beast (2022)

A man (Idris Elba) and his two daughters are hunted by a rogue lion in the African savanna..

I wasnt expecting a whole lot from this movie and I didnt get much either so wasnt overly disappointed I watched it.

The characters dialogue and actions weren't very believeable and unrealistic ( I know youre supposed to suspend belief a little but..)

One good thing was the lion and some very decent CGI which doesnt happen often in these type of movies.

A very flat 4 ½ maybe a 5 out of 10 from me!

11-09-2022 10:12pm

The best things that no-one has ever watched.

Patriot.

Quarry.

Damnation.

Friday night lights, obviously.

Fysh · 12-09-2022 10:29pm

I got a hankering to re-watch some Michel Gondry when "Be Kind, Rewind" showed up on Mubi recently and decided to start with that. It remains a lovely, if slightly scattershot, film - and while the tonal mismatch between its two core interests doesn't entirely gel smoothly, each strand is satisfying in its own way. Crucially, the sincere and earnest thematic strand about the importance of film and art as part of our social and community lives manages to avoid being too cloying by virtue of the film embracing the whimsical playfulness of the improvised remakes (or perhaps more accurately demakes) that Mike, Jerry & co. assemble.

The criticism of the film industry is, if anything, less biting than deserved (though Sigourney Weaver's cameo remains wonderful) - although the stuff about DVD replacing VHS felt like it needed to be either expanded a bit or excised, particularly given that the local West Coast Video manager admits that his store is also struggling at the time. It fits in that it's all part of Mr Fletcher's general feeling that the world is moving on and leaving him, and his community, behind - but it feels a bit crowbarred-in.

I think it's to Gondry's credit that the ending refutes Hollywood-style Deus Ex Machine Happy Endings (think Empire Records) and instead accepts that, in the face of inevitable defeat, sometimes it's good enough if you get to choose how and when you go.

I'm looking forward to revisiting The Science Of Sleep (my favourite of Gondry's films) and Mood Indigo.

monkeyactive · 13-09-2022 12:25pm

Shiva Baby

Enjoyable Indie Set Piece Drama centered around a young Jewish woman at a Jewish "Shiva" or wake. Funny , clever and well acted/ put together. Short at less than 80 minutes.

8/10

silverharp · 13-09-2022 12:46pm

Momento 2000 , Never saw it or heard about it before. Not a shocker that its a C Nolan film, some interesting stuff in it though 7.5-8 /10

flasher0030 · 13-09-2022 2:00pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119599565#Comment_119599565

Same as. A little bit of excitement, but overall left me underwhelmed. But not a whole lot material there to play with in terms of plot-wise - Lion chases humans through the forest

RickBlaine · 17-09-2022 2:23pm

I saw Jaws in the imax screen in Cineworld. It is one of my favourite movies and I've seen it millions of times including on the big screen, but seeing it on an imax screen gave it a different experience. Chrissie and Quint's deaths look particularly gruesome on the imax screen.

silliussoddius · 17-09-2022 11:40pm

Barbarian. Try to go into it by hearing as little as possible about it.

17-09-2022 11:42pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119632532#Comment_119632532

What does that mean?

17-09-2022 11:49pm

Watched This is The End....thought is was gas...loved it...no complaints... just enjoyed it for the film it was ...had a few good laughs...

I actually think its strange how unrecognized the film is.......Its just a sign of the times I think...had it been realeased in the early 2000's I'd say it'd have a good following...loads of great relatable jokes...

BruteStock · 18-09-2022 11:08pm

A black supremacists daughter tries to build a relationship with a honky white man she learns is her father. Entertaining with a good message at the end. 7/10. Disney +

johnny_ultimate · 19-09-2022 12:04am

Funny Pages - the film for anybody who thought the likes of Ghost World and Crumb were a bit too clean and sanded down. Owen Kline’s assured debut is a coming-of-age story where nobody really comes of age. The main character (an 18-year-old comics enthusiast from an upper middle class background) instead encounters an assortment of weirdos, creeps, eccentrics and assholes as he navigates the real world for the first time after leaving home and quitting school following the death of his beloved art teacher (who was also a creepy weirdo).

This is a very funny comedy coated in a thick layer of scuzz, including what may be the dingiest, dodgiest apartment ever committed to cinema and various close-ups of characters with strange features and even stranger mannerisms. Shot in exquisitely grimy 16mm, the whole thing is a low-key film that nonetheless pulsates with strange, uneasy energy where it feels like something grotesque or uncomfortable could happen at any moment. The Safdies produced and it’s not hard to see what they saw in this. Admittedly, the film just kinda ends eventually: suitably inconclusive, but frustrating in its way. But this is a funny, distinctive debut film - Kline’s one to watch, but in the meantime this is quite the scuzzy delight.

After Yang - and now for something completely different. I’ve been waiting quite some time for this after being absolute bewitched by Kogonada’s stunning debut feature Columbus (and his excellent work on the recent Pachinko TV series). This thankfully doesn’t disappoint: a lovely, gentle and artful reflection on grief and identity where the sci-fi setting only enhances the themes being explored.

The cast is great here: from a restrained Colin Farrell in the lead role, to Columbus star Hayley Lu Richardson popping up in an important supporting role. Young Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja very much holds her own too.

Kogonada’s control of form is absolutely extraordinary: to see someone working in American cinema while being so informed by the storytelling philosophy of great artists like Ozu is such a pleasure to witness. That’s not to say it’s derivative: no, this is a filmmaker with a style all his own, including the way he lets his camera take in spaces or places, or the unusual, glitchy editing rhythm he adopts for some key flashbacks here. But he’s a playful and energetic filmmaker when he wants to be too - this has what is without question the best and most surprising opening credits sequence in cinema this year.

silliussoddius · 19-09-2022 12:24am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119632538#Comment_119632538

The less you know about it the better.

Snake Plisken · 19-09-2022 12:49am

Needed a laugh this evening and stuck on Hot Tub Time Machine which I've seen a good few times but it still makes me laugh out loud.

John Cusack Rob Corddry Craig Robinson and Clark Duke are all great in it Also I forgot that Sebastian Stan, Lizy Caplan and Cobra Khai's William Zabka are in it. Crispin Glover s great as the one armed bellboy.

Great 80's soundtrack as well plus love Motley Crew's video for Take me home with Lou as the lead singer instead of Vince Neil.

Probably not for everyone but it hits my funny bone whenever I watch it.

dubstepper · 19-09-2022 11:22am

Watched Fried Barry. I think it is a Shudder movie. About a waster type who's body gets taken over by an alien. Good craic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2daFosaFGdQ

Fysh · 19-09-2022 1:40pm

Fried Barry is some grade-A demented fun, must stick it on again at some point.

If you want something in a similar (though not quite as out-there) vein, The Greasy Strangler is worth a look.

pixelburp · 19-09-2022 2:47pm

Miami Vice (2006)

A film that ran almost entirely on a distinct vibe: a certain pulse of emotional energy, more interested in the feel of things such that its actual plot became abstracted into a lot of dialogue about "loads". The audience wasn't asked to understand the minutiae though - only to feel. Like many Mann films, its cast was stacked with characters full of competent purpose, all while laden with unspoken burdens - albeit with less cocaine mania than in Heat & Pacino's famous performance. The pensive mood here was reflected across the sky; full of thunder & lightning from a storm constantly threatening to start. A character would remark late in the movie that "... time is luck", punctuation that the cast were simply existing as best they could before the storm came, the axe fell and luck ran out. I can see why this thing got roasted on its initial release.

I wasn't quite sure what kind of film I was about to get; ostensibly being a remake of a popular TV crime series from the '80s. A show famous for its brazen, contemporaneous style above all else. Maybe my resting bias assumed it'd be another action-thriller of the type Mann has become synonymous for - but I sure wasn't expecting something so deeply existential or brooding in between the (brief) moments of brutal gunfire. The action scenes we got had exactly the impact and physicality as one would have hoped from this director - but overall? Miami Vice was as if Mann took the character played by Robert DeNiro in Heat - and especially that scene as he looked out his window across the LA coastline - and expanded it out into thematic feature-length.

dubstepper · 19-09-2022 10:57pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119637417#Comment_119637417

I saw the greasy strangler. Messed up but a laugh

neirbloom · 20-09-2022 11:16pm

I just finished And God said to Cain (1970) on Amazon Prime. It was tagged as a Horror Western so it kind of caught my eye and the fact it starred Klaus Kinski. Noting all that special about the plot, basic revenge style Western but makes up for in atmosphere suspense. Best Western I've watched in a long, long time.

21-09-2022 3:07am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119644330#Comment_119644330

You should try The Great Silence, another Western with Kinski a couple years earlier. Brilliant soundtrack from Morricone and some iconic scenes

21-09-2022 3:26am

A Most Violent Year 2014 - A really outstanding drama, that's feels like theres a touch of Cronenberg in the direction due to the cold feeling around it. Set in the 80's its about a business man played by the exceptional Oscar Isaac who is in the home heating business supplying oil, an industry run by the local crooked families. Isaac is not clean, but is trying to be despite his wife and his competitors hijacking his trucks and hurting his drivers. What plays out is a lesson in business through a film, but remarkably accurate and relatable if you are in the business world. Highly recommended.

The Woman King 2022 - Having to kill time and a choice of Top Gun 2 again, a cartoon about a dog samurai or this I chose The Woman King, and went in thoroughly sceptical. I came out fairly unimpressed, because the film is confused in whats its trying to be - an action film or a serious drama/true story about a very interesting African tribe that had all highly trained virgin female warriors. Its suffers a lot being in between these two because the moments of seriousness and realism are countered by Viola Davis, in her late 50's, outmuscling elite warriors a foot taller and 10 stone heavier. Considering this was set in Africa you'd also expect decent visuals. Instead you got mostly condensed sets and no scope of what was outside.

One thing it did do was show that Viola Davis, whom I didn't see what all the fuss was about before at all is actually very talented indeed. She is the best thing about the film and kept me in the cinema until the end. This is a role completely different to anything I've seen her do before but she pulled it off very well.

neirbloom · 21-09-2022 11:42am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119644626#Comment_119644626

There's a few of his earlier movies on Amazon now at the moment. I'll check to see if The Great Silence is there as well later thanks

Arrow has its own streaming service now and got a lot more obscure movies from the 60s 70s. I've seen practically everything on Netflix at this point.

pixelburp · 21-09-2022 3:56pm

The Lost City of Z (2016)

This was hauntingly beautiful stuff, sumptuously textured, all breathing with atmosphere. Occasionally disjointed for sure, but overall a film the likes of which hasn't been seen since the heyday of David Lean or adjacent pictures of yore. James Gray's determination to (apparently) keep events matching the historical timeline meant this was a story that somewhat bounced about without much in the way of clear direction or trajectory; but that's not to say the end result didn't work either. That slightly jumbled structure ultimately worked in tandem with the on-screen fumbling around by those various explorers within the "green desert" of the Amazon.

It also managed to successfully thread a tricky moral needle: it embraced the adventuring spirit of those twilight years of colonial exploration, without necessarily condoning the turpitude of that era either; indeed it was through the growing obsession with the titular city of 'Z' that Hunnam's Percy Fawcett showed an empathic awakening towards the Amazon's tribes and history. At first ambivalent towards the slavery & dismissal of the Europeans, Fawcett showed subtle nous, understanding and - ultimately by story's end - acceptance that his part in this region's history was minimal - irrelevant and ephemeral in the face of things. All of it culminating in a genuinely emotional and heart-rending finale; one that both maintained the mystery of Fawcett's ultimate destiny - while nodding towards his & his son's probable fate.

After all those MCU appearances, it was interesting to watch a young Tom Holland play the oldest son; maybe it's simple retroactive analysis, but you could see the germ of that older actor, his final scene with his father naturalistic & powerful. All with relatively little screen time. While this movie also forced me to reassess Charlie Hunnam as a leading man: he wasn't entirely playing against type, but showed subtle range that never overplayed the conflicts within Fawcett's nature - so that it was easier to swallow a man repeatedly leaving his family to pursue folly & presumed death. Sienna Miller also nailed it, her own performance amounting to the Supportive Spouse trope, but with a good layer of visible hurt. A wounded performance, she always appeared quietly devastated when her husband left for the Amazon - more so than when he went to war.

Also: noting this was a total flop at the time, I couldn't help speculate if the title acted against the success of this. Superficially it reads so schlocky & explotational. I know film titles can sometimes err on the side of bland (see "Edge of Tomorrow" vs the Japanese title of "All You Need is Kill"), but perhaps here, the opposite applied; audiences scoffing at such an anachronistic name for a film. But then given it was all such a meditative piece of filmmaking, it was never destined to blow the doors off the box-office anyway.

pixelburp · 29-09-2022 7:57am

Athena (2022)

Deeply flawed, but yet another intriguing nugget on Netflix shamefully buried by its algorithm.

No question, this was an arresting and propulsive technical spectacle, one that rarely let the viewer take even a hastened breath for comfort; and if they did, as the credits rolled for instance, the realisation would dawn at just how superficial the whole thing was under its otherwise slick, immaculate surface.

Now. I don't generally insist upon or expect socio-political commentary in films, and it's increasingly tedious when its presence or absence becomes an instant point of contention in cinematic discourse - but here? The nagging feeling after finishing was that you can't structure an entire movie around class & racial tensions boiling over into full-blown conflict within a French tower block ... not without having something to say about that. And I nearly forgave that emptiness, if I'm honest ... until the closing scene played out & amounted to a gigantic fudge; a limp ideological fig-leaf offered that only robbed the preceding beast of all its anger; retroactively tipping a hand towards a viewpoint trying to have it both ways. To say it didn't work is understatement.

Still. Taken just as a technical exercise in breathless, ground-level action, I'd go so far as to compare this with something akin to Mad Max: Fury Road; not in terms of exotic world-building, but for an unrelenting pace that never got boring or let the tension escape. A visceral shock of an exploding molotov cocktail, spread across 90 minutes of almost swaggering confidence in its direction.

But all the showboating in the world can't count for much if you don't score that open goal - and **** yourself instead.

29-09-2022 2:55pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119678849#Comment_119678849

I think you guys are being too critical of the politics of this thing. And probably because Costa Gavras' movies are almost completely political I can see why that expectation is there but it is unfair in my eyes.

For me the commentary in this film was the internal family struggle inside the backdrop of the racial/police tensions. But there were no other central characters then the 3 brothers; if it were a politically charged film there would have been a story alongside it with politicians, police chiefs and so on. Our Cop, was just a scared young recruit with no skin in the game.

The backdrop is just the reality that has been there for decades, the theme was the brothers handling of this reality in such different ways and how they all chose to survive in it. How the reality of these places in France can affect a family. Meshed together with a cool high octane pace, I believe this film will appeal to the masses, and the Director will get to indulge in more serious political commentary down the line with a very large budget in his pocket he has now appeased the financiers.

FYI - this was heavily advertised on Netflix in Greece at least

pixelburp · 29-09-2022 4:54pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119680760#Comment_119680760

Hmmm in fairness I did say I was willing to forgive the lack of statement about the politics of the tower blocks ... but the final scene, the coda really, was a weird attempt to make a statement trying to absolve the police of responsibility. That in of itself was a political swing that kinda undercut all the anger of the residents and as you say, the acceptance of reality as it existed.

I'd have to watch it again but I wonder was the reveal a decision made after filming and the clues dropped in via some convenient ADR and TV news spots. Cos the coda felt so disjointed from the rest of the film, and such a loud declaration of absolution it smelt of retroactive interference in an otherwise contained story.

Had the movie just finished before that coda, then bravo. A superficial treatment of a serious topic but the pace didn't allow for deep thought.

29-09-2022 7:59pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119681241#Comment_119681241

Wouldn't surprise me at all if it was interference. I imagine producing something like that cost a pretty penny and certain ‘requirements’ would have been insisted on.

What have you watched recently? 3D!

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