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Last movie watched...

Started by SmallBlueThing, 04 February, 2011, 12:40:44 PM

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Dandontdare

(Jet Li is) The One - retitled to cash in on the star's name no doubt.It was on Channel Drunk the other night and it started out as just about the most 2000ad movie I've ever seen. Basically it starts with Stan Lee beating up a bunch of judges before Sinister Dexter turn up to take him down and then beam back to the doghouse. Sadly the Kung fu set pieces are rather lacklustre but there's enough dimension hopping sci-fi to make up the slack. Really wish this had been the pilot to an 80s TV show

Angry Vince

The Back to the Future trilogy.

Watched it with my 8 year old son (his first time) over the weekend.

It still holds up, genuinely funny moments and a few tense moments here and there. A couple of shonky FX shots and a lot of swearing - every time someone said 'shit', 'son of a bitch' or 'bastard', my son would look at me and say 'but it's still a PG!'.
Definitely worth watching again, maybe with a kids eyes.
Angry Vince: One Man Against the World! (So far the world is winning 96:0)

SIP

Watched them again recently with my kids, still think the first film is a nigh on perfect movie.........along with raiders of the lost Ark.

Mardroid

Quote from: Greg M. on 19 August, 2017, 01:57:51 PM
I think the werewolf story has a foreboding atmosphere that builds up quite well,
You're right. That one started promising. I quite liked the twist at the end of that tale.

QuoteThe titular 'house', apparently, is Dr. Terror's deck of cards.
I'm dense. I missed that.

Quote'Dr. Terror...' is probably the most iconic of the Amicus anthologies - it's the first one they did - but it's not the best. It's certainly outstripped by 'Asylum' and 'Tales from the Crypt', but 'From Beyond the Grave' is the jewel in the crown.

I recorded Asylum some while back*, but I never got round to watching it yet. I'll dig that out soon!

*I've used my PS3s PlayTV gadget to record a load of stuff. A wonderful gadget... until it broke down recently. It still loads but keeps freezing during liveTV for some reason. On looking online it seems prone to that.

I bought it second hand rather cheap, and got plenty out of it in the short time I had it so I guess I mustn't complain. I really miss pausing/rewinding in LIVE TV though. I went years not doing that, only to find I really miss that little feature now it's been taken away. 😁

Thankfully I was able to export the library videos when I realised it was going funny.

Greg M.

Quote from: Mardroid on 20 August, 2017, 12:46:09 AM
I recorded Asylum some while back*, but I never got round to watching it yet. I'll dig that out soon!

Asylum's an interesting one - there are better individual stories in other Amicus anthologies, but Asylum has the best framing sequence and the best central conceit of any of them. It also has Robert Powell, and everything's better with more Robert Powell.

I, Cosh

Seen numerous heist films recently.

If I told you that Going in Style stars Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman as honest ex-working men forced to turn to bank robbery after the dissolution of their pension fund then I'm confident you could already tell me how everything plays out. It's a pleasant 90 minutes with some gentle barbs at banks and capitalists and observations about the pifalls of aging. It's hardly Black Mirror, but mildly amusing without being too saccharine.


Seems like the banks have now taken on the mantle formerly held by Latino drug cartels, white supremaxcists and people traffickers as the go-to bad guys in American cinema. The protagonists of Hell and High Water also offer up a moral justification for their crime spree as they need the cash to prevent the bank repossessing the family plot where some oil has just been struck. It's a much less comedic effort than Going in Style yet the jokes it does have hit harder.

Captain Kirk is fine as the sensible brother (naturally, there is a less stable one) while Jeff Bridges steals the show as the sherrif on their trail. A role which, to be fair, is basically the same as Tommy Lee Jones in No Country for Old Men

It's a fairly slow film, some might even say po-faced and heavy-handed in its insistence on repeatedly beating the viewer over the head with the impact of unfettered capitalism on poor communities, but it's the relatively small scale of the crime and the ambitions of the brothers which best illustrates the point its trying to make.


Finally, Baby Driver has the most enjoyable parts of any of these films yet, on balance, I think I hated it. The first couple of car chases are a lot of fun, Jamie Fox is great, Kevin Spacey was mostly entertaining and the Michael Myers joke was . As even the positive reviews mention, it completely runs out of steam after an hour and becomes a series of unlikely reversals for no other reason than because that is what's supposed to happen in this kind of film.

However, my two biggest problems with it were Baby and Debra. I was really worried during the opening scenes that he was going to turn out to have some sort of bizarre, cinematic mental illness. I was extremely relieved when he turned out to be just annoying rather than actually offensive. Debra's role is so underwritten it's hardly there. She's happy to go off with some weirdo who gets her mixed up in a bunch of violent crimes why? Because she's a bit bored at work? Maybe this can also be filed under "things which happen because thats what happens in these films" but it's especially disappointing because Scott Pilgrim was an asbolute tosser as well, but it was the differing attitudes and reactions of the various female characters to that which made the film enjoyable.
We never really die.

dweezil2

The Lobster is a genuinely amusing idea, which would of worked fine as a short, but is stretched to an almost unbearably long feature length.
In the film's world being single is frowned upon and anyone not successfully mated has to go through the conversion procedure of being turned into an animal of one's choosing-hence the title.

The film has some pertinent things to say about modern relationships and its Pythonesque approach to the material works for the most part and elicits some chuckles, but it's subplot of a 'sigleton' terrorist organisation doesn't really go anywhere and the overtly stylised and manored delivery of the dialogue from Colin Farrell and a host of British film and TV stalwarts, makes it hard to engage or care about the characters.
Ultimately, it's the protracted running time that eventually sinks the whole enterprise.
File under 'misfired curio'. 
Savalas Seed Bandcamp: https://savalasseed1.bandcamp.com/releases

"He's The Law 45th anniversary music video"
https://youtu.be/qllbagBOIAo

I, Cosh

Quote from: dweezil2 on 20 August, 2017, 02:06:08 PM
The Lobster is a genuinely amusing idea, which would of worked fine as a short, but is stretched to an almost unbearably long feature length.
...
Ultimately, it's the protracted running time that eventually sinks the whole enterprise.
File under 'misfired curio'.
I would agree that it's too long but I think I enjoyed it up until the living in the woods part. Farrell is great though.

If you haven't seen it, I'd really recommend the director's first film Dogtooth. It has a similarly wacky premise played straight but doesn't fall apart in the same way.
We never really die.

dweezil2

Quote from: I, Cosh on 20 August, 2017, 02:35:03 PM
Quote from: dweezil2 on 20 August, 2017, 02:06:08 PM
The Lobster is a genuinely amusing idea, which would of worked fine as a short, but is stretched to an almost unbearably long feature length.
...
Ultimately, it's the protracted running time that eventually sinks the whole enterprise.
File under 'misfired curio'.
I would agree that it's too long but I think I enjoyed it up until the living in the woods part. Farrell is great though.

If you haven't seen it, I'd really recommend the director's first film Dogtooth. It has a similarly wacky premise played straight but doesn't fall apart in the same way.

Cheers, I shall look out for that!  :thumbsup:
Savalas Seed Bandcamp: https://savalasseed1.bandcamp.com/releases

"He's The Law 45th anniversary music video"
https://youtu.be/qllbagBOIAo

Apestrife

Saw the last of Lawrence of Arabia this morning. Not sure how correct it is, and don't care much either. Quite amazed how complex it was. Was expecting a typical hollywood hero. Him teaching the arabs how things are done. But I was pleasingly surprised how it rather explored his legend, his and other views on it and himself. Also how "he" (again, not sure how accurate the story is) was effected by the little war of his he was waging.

Really enjoyed the last minutes. He sits in the car, hoping to get recognized by those riding camels to no avail, and then the soldier on a motorbike driving by like a doppelganger of death (in relations to the beginning), I must say I was quite gripped by it. Felt an urge watching it again. If only I had 4 more hours to spare and the energy. But will soon enough.

Colin YNWA

The Keep was on Film4 the other night and I've watched it over the last couple of nights... and .... well ... that was quite something... yes something.

Its not  a film I'd heard much about, so I did a bit of reading (a lot here as it goes) about it and was intrigued but approached it with caution. It had the kernal of an interesting film buried in it. Alas that kernal was lost in some pretty appalling, hamfisted execution. In summary German soldiers arrive at a Welsh slate mine masquerading as a Romanian village, home of a big scary slate Keep, which is actually a prison for... well some ill defined metaphysical nightmare. At first the sin of greed releases the beastie and the germans are picked off... or so we're told we don't see this. Then the SS arrive to raise the sins of man stakes (I think) while a jewish... what ... historian type.... is pulled to the scene with his daughter to befriend the beastie in a quick scene and get miracilous healed by it.

Meanwhile Scott Glenn fresh from how to look stern and ethereal lesson in Greece makes his way slowly to the piece so he can, in a scene make out with the jewish man's daughter and look stern and mysterious. From here in about 15 minutes there's some shouting and nearly everyone dies. The final confrontation between the also metaphyisical beastie as it turns out Scott Glenn and the original beastie, in what could be a metaphor for the evil in man challenged by the good and no one really winning but life going on...

Its been suggested that the original cut of this was over 3 hours and within that with a less murderous edit lays a good film. While the edit of this version was rubbish and so a longer version could cure many of its ills, I also suspect that it's just be another 1 1/2 of slightly ill considered pap.

The terrible thing is I think I'd put myself through it to find out. I'm a bloody idiot I suspect.

Proudhuff

Quote from: Frank on 17 August, 2017, 05:42:25 PM

IT'S ALL BOWLER HATS, BROLLIES, AND GENTLEMEN'S CLUBS!

Every page. It's like the inside of Jacob Rees-Mogg's head.

DDT did a job on me

The Legendary Shark



This old film's still got it!

[move]~~~^~~~~~~~[/move]




Keef Monkey

The Dark Tower. The books are easily my favourite thing I've ever read, and I've spent years re-reading and fantasizing about what a movie adaptation could be like. The scale of the whole thing is so massive that the idea of doing the mainline story stuff as a series of movies but having an accompanying TV show that filled in the gaps  and adapted the bulk of the flashback stories sounded like a really smart way to do it. The casting got me really excited too, because Elba and Mcconaughey seemed perfect choices, and every set photo or trailer shot fired up my imagination even more and convinced me that this was the epic adaptation that I'd wanted.

Went to see it yesterday and the more I think about it the more gutted I am with what they've done with it.

I know this is said often about adaptations but I'm genuinely, absolutely certain that nobody involved with writing this thing has read any of the books. It feels like they just got someone to spend five minutes describing them while they only half-listened, so you wind up with a weird mish-mash of broad stroke images and moments from the novels but without any of the connecting tissue, character or story. It feels rushed in every single way, there's no attempt to establish or communicate any of its ideas and it's painfully obvious that nobody had the confidence to commit to adapting it as a series so they've bottled it and just tried to knock together as short a standalone film as they could, possibly to fill some kind of contractual obligations. It also weirdly feels very much like they've tried to redress it as something for the YA market, which wouldn't be so bad (some of those adaptations are great!) but they've clearly felt the need to dumb it down ridiculously in order to try and get there.

I've no idea how someone who hadn't read the books would find the film, maybe it'll work as a serviceable but forgettable adventure film. I'd imagine they might just wonder what all the fuss was about with the books, seeing as there's nothing on the movie's bare bones to mark it out from any other property.

I know this is coming across as one of those 'they changed my beloved book!' rants, where nit-picks get blown out of all proportion, but the number of balls that have been dropped on this really is staggering, and everywhere you look there's something to be upset about. The run-time is way too short for this sort of thing, so there's no attempt to set up Mid-World, or the Gunslingers, or the paths of the beams and what they represent (Roland mentions a 'beamquake' at one point, but they haven't even bothered to explain what that means), or even Roland himself. The launch-pad for the books is Roland's obsessive, self-destructive quest to find the Dark Tower, and the tower itself takes on a mythical presence, almost more of an idea than a physical object, where just the act of trying to find and get to it feels like an impossible, insane task. In the film Roland doesn't really give a toss about the tower, probably because (as established in the first five minutes) it's just a building about as close as your nearest Tesco's, and the first sight we get of it Mcconaughey is firing telepathic child-powered mind-missiles at it. God typing that made my heart sink.

And as for the much teased (by King himself no less) angle that [spoiler]it's a sequel to the books because of the whole horn of Eld thing? Not even touched on in the film, there is literally not a single element to suggest that this is the case, so that now seems to have just been some (admittedly very clever) deflection of any criticisms that it's not sticking to the books.[/spoiler]

I know this is just a rambling complaint now, but I just don't think I've ever before had the feeling of source material I hold so dear being flippantly, off-handedly, utterly squandered like this, and the saddest thing is that this feels like it's now had its shot, and because this thing with the Dark Tower name on it is out there underwhelming people, I'll probably never see anyone take a run at a faithful adaptation.

Sigh.

Maybe now that I know what it is I can watch it a second time and enjoy it more, but right now I just feel quite sad about the whole thing.

Goaty

Jumanji - as watch it on Netflix, not see it for many years, and still entertainment, so fun! Very dark for young children.