Main Menu

Last movie watched...

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

Previous topic - Next topic

Keef Monkey

I think if I'd gone into Hold The Dark without seeing his previous films I'd probably have been way more impressed, I did find it absorbing but after the gutpunch feeling of Blue Ruin and Green Room it didn't really have the impact I expected. Decent enough though, loaded with atmosphere.

Finally watched Gerald's Game and loved it, but it's very intense and goes to some dark places. I haven't read the book and didn't know anything beyond the basic 'trapped on a bed' concept and was pretty blown away. It's a pretty common complaint that Stephen King's style rarely adapts well to film and there seem to only be small handful of directors/writers who have managed to capture it, and this felt very King (I really enjoyed Hush as well, so this director is definitely on my watch-list now). The one thing that I thought might really turn people off isn't even the dark story turns it takes, but the [spoiler]really quite intense degloving scene. It takes a lot of gore to shock me, but I was squirming and wincing like crazy at that point, it's horrible. Thankfully the whole film isn't a total gorefest but I can imagine some folk deciding at that point that they've had enough which would be a shame given how things turn out.[/spoiler]

Went straight into Bird Box from there, which suffered a bit from not being as good as Gerald's Game really. It has some neat ideas and I really liked some of the themes outside of the high concept horror conceit ([spoiler]I may have taken my own baggage into the movie and overthought it, but my wife and I have recently been talking about how we feel like we should want kids but we really, really don't have any interest in it, so the whole thing about feeling that cold detachment to parenting felt a bit timely and was interesting[/spoiler]), plus that Reznor/Ross score is excellent (they're so damn good at that blanket of music approach, ever-present but never showy or attention-grabbing, they service the films they work on to perfection I think).

Something about it just didn't hit hard enough for me though horror-wise though and it all fell a bit flat. I straight-up love the basic idea that [spoiler]there is something you can see which causes you to kill yourself immediately, that idea that it might be so indescribable and incomprehensible that it snaps your mind like that is pure Lovecraft (although it's only occurred to me now that with some people seeing it as dead relatives then perhaps what they're seeing is a glimpse of the afterlife which is so beautiful they have to join them? Hmmmm), but I think having the fact you've seen it manifest in that weird clouding of the eyes undermined that a bit and made it feel a bit hokey because it maybe comes across as less psychological that way and more of a physical ailment. Anyway, wasn't keen on that. A solid enough film, but no Gerald's Game.[/spoiler]

Oh, and as a palette cleanser we decided to pick a madcap comedy so watched Gringo, because the trailer suggested that's what we'd get. It wasn't really that at all (it took some pretty depressing turns in places) but was excellent and we really enjoyed it. Not a full-on zany comedy, more of a crime caper with some dark laughs. Very funny in places and there are some brilliant performances in it, so was just what we needed after all that relentless grim.

Mardroid

Bird Box.

The basic premise was pretty scary, although it wasn't all that frightening as a film. Quite an original idea though, a very different take on post apocalyptic films.

Very decent film and Sandra Bullock ages very well, although she might have had some help there...

Oh and that's two films recently where I've seen Sarah Paulson, albeit her role was smaller in this film than Glass. She certainly gets around as I've seen quite a bit of her in recent years on Netflix.

I remember her as Merlin* the quirky ghost ghost girl from American Gothic. Remember that?

*Pronounced "maer-lin" by her psychic little brother Caleb.

Professor Bear

Under the Silver Lake is nice because it's been ages since I saw genuinely bad film that has no excuses for turning out the way it has.  Ostensibly it's a rip-off of The Bogie Man, with an unlikeable hipster* with undiagnosed mental problems conjuring up an elaborate conspiracy from "clues" he sees in popular culture.  There is a good story in this premise - John Wagner and Alan Grant have proved that several times over by now - but this is not it, as the premise rather hinges on the main character not being so utterly charmless that you think the worst of them at all times.  Not worth your time.

* You may insert your own punchlines about my using unnecessary qualifications here.

radiator

#12843
Dunkirk.

I must admit I'd kinda written Nolan off after Dark Knight Rises and Interstellar, but thoroughly enjoyed this. Very effective piece of blockbuster filmmaking that didn't oversimplify the events or insult the viewer's intelligence, allowed some nuance in the characters (Harry Styles' character would probably have been positioned as a 'bad guy' or a coward in a typical Hollywood war movie, but is treated with sensitivity and comes across as someone just trying to survive.

My major complaint about the film is its colour grading - which probably represents the single most damaging and egregious use of an orange and teal colour palette I've ever seen. Having the characters skin and the sand on the Dunkirk beach be rendered a ghastly shade of neon orange is a truly baffling creative choice, and also really works against the period setting and subdued tone of the film. I thought Nolan was classier than that - it seems so strange to go the lengths he does of shooting on film and on IMAX cameras, using minimal cgi and all that, then layering on a heavy, garish digital colour treatment that makes his film look like a mid-2000s Michael Bay production.

Jim_Campbell

Quote from: radiator on 22 January, 2019, 08:49:46 PM
My major complaint about the film is its colour grading - which probably represents the single most damaging and egregious use of an orange and teal colour palette I've ever seen.

I wonder if this has been tweaked for the home market? I haven't seen Dunkirk since the cinema and whilst I wouldn't describe the palette as naturalistic, it had a slightly desaturated quality that wouldn't have had me reaching for 'neon' as an adjective. Baffling, if the film has been messed about with.
Stupidly Busy Letterer: Samples. | Blog
Less-Awesome-Artist: Scribbles.

radiator

#12845




That's interesting - it looked super obvious and incredibly distracting to me - certain scenes were essentially monotone - literally everything on screen was either orange or blue, and the skin tones looked almost comically saturated and orangey in a lot of scenes... Maybe I need to adjust my TV settings?

Have to say, I normally don't even really notice things like colour grade if I'm into the film and/or if it suits the tone of the film as a whole - I'm not a fan of orange and teal generally, but I will say that it at least seems far more appropriate for something that was shot in say, Southern California.

Jim_Campbell

I'm on record as a right whinger about orange & teal grading (I even had a minor gripe about it in the recent Jumanji movie) so I'm fairly sure I'd have had a moan if it had been that egregious in the cinema. I'm of an age where my memory could be playing tricks on me, of course, but I honestly don't remember the cinema release looking like that.

Stupidly Busy Letterer: Samples. | Blog
Less-Awesome-Artist: Scribbles.

radiator

As I say, I may need to adjust the colour saturation settings on my TV, but I swear the sand on the beaches was this really warm peachy/orange colour in a lot of sequences which looked very odd and out of place. Perhaps it wasn't so much a saturation issue as it was how heavily the grade was applied and how it strangled a lot of subtlety out of the natural colour tones of a given scene. It almost looked a bit like when they 'colorize' old black and white footage.

Mattofthespurs

Quote from: radiator on 22 January, 2019, 11:01:13 PM
As I say, I may need to adjust the colour saturation settings on my TV


This. I took possession of a new 65 inch LG not so long ago and I spent about an hour getting the settings right for the picture (used one of the discs that come with the old Criterion sets).


Just checked Dunkirk myself and see nothing to suggest that it's been tampered with for the home market. Certainly no neon.

Hawkmumbler

The Flying Guillotine (1975, Meng Hua Ho and RunRun Shaw)

Part of the legendary Shaw Brothers mid 70's pantheon, The Flying Guillotine caters it's usual flair for excellent wushu choreography and surprisingly lush set designs, with a surprisingly socialist take on the effects conditioning in the military system on a person. The titular (allegedly real?!) weapon is front and centre and creates for an fun set of decapitations and some glorious choreography. Good fun from a dependable era in Hong Kong cinema.


Stan and Ollie (2019, John S. Baird)

A delightful send up to the legendary duo in their twilight days. Heartwarming, charming and sincere, and i'll echo any sentiment that John C. Riley stole the show. In ever way he was the spits of Oliver Hardy. Shall revisit this many a time I feel.

Greg M.

Quote from: Hawkmumbler on 23 January, 2019, 11:03:21 AM
The titular (allegedly real?!) weapon is front and centre and creates for an fun set of decapitations and some glorious choreography.

Cor! Sold!

Hawkmumbler

Quote from: Greg M. on 23 January, 2019, 05:18:41 PM
Quote from: Hawkmumbler on 23 January, 2019, 11:03:21 AM
The titular (allegedly real?!) weapon is front and centre and creates for an fun set of decapitations and some glorious choreography.

Cor! Sold!

It's chuffing great fun Greg, and for more wushu weirdness check out todays viewing...

Killer Constable (1979, Kuei Chih-Hung)

What Yojimbo was to A Fist Full of Dollars, The Good The Bad and The Ugly is to Shaw Brothers Killer Constable, following china's chief law enforcer and his wild bunch purser thieves who stole 200,000 gold taels from the palace treasury, and leave a trail of corpses in their wake. Among the best Hong Kong wushu movies i've seen and highly recommended to fans of Kurosawa and Leone.


Django...Kill! aka If You Live, Shoot! (1967, Giulio Questi)

One of a slew of not-Django euro westerns from the late 60's and early 70's stands out from the crowd in part due to it's acid western vibe and starring genre mega star Tomas Millian, the chameleonic charisma cuban. A lone gun, risen from the grave, is stripped of his chance for revenge and finds himself on the run between lynch mobs and a posy of gay BDSM cowboys. Filled with the trappings of euro western whilst also predicting El Topo and the like. Worth a punt.

Mattofthespurs

Glass

A film that unravels at a glacial pace but still pretty entertaining. James McEvoy steals the show, once again, and there is a twist but it's not very 'twisty'.

I enjoyed it but it would certainly help if you have seen 'Unbreakable' and 'Split' beforehand, although the latter not as much.

Professor Bear

Mortal Engines is mostly good, and I really enjoyed it despite its many problems.
A lot of it is ham-fisted, like the "you're history" quip, the McGuffin that has USA emblazoned on it, and especially the "you wuuuuv him" bit that really should have left things unsaid and allowed the actors to sell it, as even though this is as high concept as it gets, I think a little bit more subtlety would have helped it warm with audiences, as it feels a lot like those cgi-heavy movies that have been trickling out of the East in the last decade or so that reproduce the trappings of Western movies, but the storytelling is still steeped in the shorthands of entirely different theatrical schools and traditions with no direct equivalents over here, so they feel a bit off.  Cognitive dissonance and suspension of disbelief gets tricky in some places, but the Londoners cheering on poor people's homes being destroyed like it's a sport rings true, as does the central concept of London being a massive parasitic entity sucking up all the wealth and resources and eventually - when its needs become unsustainable - seeking a union with China, herein depicted as a homogenous monoculture comprising all peoples of the East from Indians to Chinese to Japanese, and naturally hiding behind a giant wall.
Like I say, a bit of subtlety would have been nice, but as a high concept romp, it's great fun, reminding me a lot of the emotionally and thematically disappointing but often visually-spectacular Escaflowne theatrical movie.

Dandontdare

Spiderman: into the Spiderverse. I was at a loose end on a wet Sunday, and was surprised, not only to find it still showing, but to almost a full house. Loved almost everything about it except ... help me out here guys: Did I just watch a 3D print advertised as 2D or was it supposed to look like that? Lots of the backgrounds were blurry with clear colour-separation. Nobody else seemed to object, but I didn't like that.

Even the bits that may have given me nerd-nigggle (spider-people instantly 'knowing' each other via spider-sense, Aunt May having a huge spider-cave under the back yard) didn't even register on my grumpometer. The audience ranged from about 6 to the fifties (ahem) and everyone seemed to love it. Also liked the many knowing nods - the old cartoon theme song, the Stan Lee cameo and all the names (L Kirby, B Bendis etc) in people's phones. An excellent movie.