Main Menu

Last movie watched...

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

Previous topic - Next topic

Keef Monkey

Had a day off yesterday so caught up with a couple on the Netflix watchlist.

First up was Veronica, a Spanish ouija-seance-gone-wrong movie from one of the writer/directors of [REC]. [REC] is top 5 material for me, an absolute stone cold classic in sustained terror, so I went in with high expectations and it didn't let me down. It's brilliantly spooky, very stylishly shot (there was one shot that had me applauding from the couch - thinking about it now it would be really simple to pull off but in the moment it blew my mind and left me really disorientated) and scary in a completely different way to [REC]. Loved it, will probably watch again with the wife over Halloween.

Then watched The Villainess which I was a bit up and down on. The action is incredibly well staged and technically pretty amazing. There are a ton of really long uninterrupted shots (I'm certain there are cuts all over the place but they're masked to give the illusion of one big fluid take) where characters are fighting on motorbikes, leaping out of windows etc. and it's all pretty breathless. Hell, if you want a taster just throw the first 10 minutes on, which is all filmed in first person and is really quite mental.

The story was a problem for me, not because it isn't good, but because it's told in a jump-around staccato flashback method that I found a bit annoying and made a very simple tale needlessly complicated to follow. I was very tired at the time which didn't help but I do think it may have hooked me better with a more linear structure.

The action is amazing but I found a lot of it weirdly unengaging, it was just so frantic and technical that I found myself being distracted by wondering where the edits were and how they pulled off the impossible camera moves and that made me detach from it a bit if that makes sense. I guess I mean I was constantly impressed by the action, but often in a bit of a cold unexcited sort of way.

If you imagine that amazing shot from The Raid 2 where the camera watches a fight inside a car before moving through the window, down the road into another car and then out the other side (which was all done practically and creatively - with camera-men handing the camera around and disguising themselves as seats and stuff) - it's sort of like that relentlessly and to the point where it's a bit numbing, and with what seems to be a lot more CGI assistance.

I'll watch it again sometime, as I say I was very tired and the more I think about it the more I think I'll probably enjoy it more on a second watch. May have just been the wrong film in the wrong mood!

Magnetica

Started watching Avengers Infinity War on Sunday. We are half way through and in between I watched Doctor Strange on Netflix. It was entraining enough even if the middle bit was all a bit Batman Begins.

TordelBack

Yeah,  been doing a Phase 3 re-watch ourselves over the past few weeks, in no particular order. There's some truly incredible stuff in there - Black Panther alone is absolutely stunning (and by heck do the kids love it - there's been nonstop 'Wakanda forever!'-ing), and I'd forgotten just how funny Dr Strange is, not to mention Thor Ragnarok which is genuinely hilarious start to finish.

I think we just have Spiderman Homecoming to go.

I know MCU has its problems,  but taken together it is an incredible body of work.

The Legendary Shark

Venom. Pretty mediocre, I thought. Although Tom Hardy is, as always, very good, the film itself felt to me like a tv pilot. The MCU, as Tordels says, is pretty incredible as a whole and so Venom has a great deal to live up to and, for me, didn't quite manage it. Don't get me wrong, it's no Fantastic Four (the last one - the first two were ace) and if there's a sequel, or a crossover, I'd be more than happy to go and see it. As for the dvd, though, I'm content to wait until it turns up on a car boot sale or in a charity shop.

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




Jim_Campbell

Quote from: TordelBack on 17 October, 2018, 08:11:56 PM
I know MCU has its problems,  but taken together it is an incredible body of work.

I've enjoyed some movies more than others, but I think the only one I didn't enjoy at all was Iron Man 2 (which I'll confess I've only seen once and may be judging harshly). I'm fairly kindly disposed towards Age of Ultron — its only real fault is that it tries to do too much (waaaay too much) and, let's be honest, there are worse faults a film can have.

Even the much-derided Thor: Dark World isn't terrible, it's just... off. Somehow, none of its scenes seem to be the right length. It feels like all the right notes, just not necessarily in the right order.

But, by and large, that MCU brand is pretty much a guarantee of a couple of hours of decent cinema entertainment — sometimes merely pretty good, often great. That's a hell of a thing over eighteen (?) movies.
Stupidly Busy Letterer: Samples. | Blog
Less-Awesome-Artist: Scribbles.

radiator

Quote from: Jim_Campbell on 17 October, 2018, 08:25:28 PM
Quote from: TordelBack on 17 October, 2018, 08:11:56 PM
I know MCU has its problems,  but taken together it is an incredible body of work.

I've enjoyed some movies more than others, but I think the only one I didn't enjoy at all was Iron Man 2 (which I'll confess I've only seen once and may be judging harshly). I'm fairly kindly disposed towards Age of Ultron — its only real fault is that it tries to do too much (waaaay too much) and, let's be honest, there are worse faults a film can have.

Even the much-derided Thor: Dark World isn't terrible, it's just... off. Somehow, none of its scenes seem to be the right length. It feels like all the right notes, just not necessarily in the right order.

But, by and large, that MCU brand is pretty much a guarantee of a couple of hours of decent cinema entertainment — sometimes merely pretty good, often great. That's a hell of a thing over eighteen (?) movies.

20 now isn't it?

TordelBack

And amazingly No. 20 was great too, despite being a bloody Ant-Man sequel. An Ant-Man sequel fercrissakes, getting just one seemed like a ridiculously fortuitous blip in the space-time continuum, but two?  And two good ones?  Madness.

von Boom

Quote from: TordelBack on 17 October, 2018, 08:52:54 PM
And amazingly No. 20 was great too, despite being a bloody Ant-Man sequel. An Ant-Man sequel fercrissakes, getting just one seemed like a ridiculously fortuitous blip in the space-time continuum, but two?  And two good ones?  Madness.
Ant-Man is still my favourite of the MCU films.

GordyM

Venom

Surprisingly tedious. Film takes far too long to get Eddie and the symbiote hooking up. Villain is dire.
Check out my new comic Supermom: Expecting Trouble and see how a pregnant superhero tries to deal with the fact that the baby's father is her archnemesis. Free preview pack including 12 pages of art: http://www.mediafire.com/file/57986rnlgk0itfz/Supermom_Preview_Pack.pdf/file

Hawkmumbler

venom is the greatest gay coded love story of the year.

GordyM

Yeah, there's some... interesting fan art out there.
Check out my new comic Supermom: Expecting Trouble and see how a pregnant superhero tries to deal with the fact that the baby's father is her archnemesis. Free preview pack including 12 pages of art: http://www.mediafire.com/file/57986rnlgk0itfz/Supermom_Preview_Pack.pdf/file

Woolly

Watched Nuts In May for about the millionth time - so much to love about these character observations.

I do wonder how it would be recieved these days though. Would its depiction of Keith and Candice-Marie's values be deemed offensive?

radiator

Mandy.

An arthouse grindhouse movie - sort of a mashup of Drive and The Evil Dead with Nicolas Cage at peak Caginess. Has a grainy, oversaturated burned-in VHS aesthetic that looks like nothing else out there and the soundtrack and sound design in general is insane, and holy shit is it loud! The plot is so thin as to be almost immaterial - this film is 99% mood and atmosphere which makes it one to see on the big screen - I imagine it would lose a hell of a lot watching it on a TV. No doubt its fans would claim 'that's the whole point' but I felt it took far too long to get going and was at least 30 mins too long, to the point where it really struggled to hold my attention by the end. Wouldn't watch it again, but kinda glad I saw it nonetheless. It's certainly memorable, and people who love this movie are really going to love it.


Sorry to Bother You.

Satirical arthouse movie with a surprising sci-fi twist. Sort of like a feature length, avant garde episode of Black Mirror. Amazing cast, and voice cast (you'll have to see the movie to see what I mean... ). Creative, visually inventive and full of righteous anger but ultimately a bit too unfocused and messy to really get it's message across. Tbh it really lost me in the second half, it just got too out there for me to follow what was happening and what the director was trying to say. Ultimately feels like a surrealist comedy sketch that outstays it's welcome.

Mattofthespurs

Halloween (2018)

Does exactly what you would assume although there are some very good set pieces along with shed loads of plot holes (as you would assume). Michael kills 5 in the original (this film continues if the films after the original did not happen) and 20 (if my maths is correct) in this one. Some are very, very nasty [spoiler]but at least he did not kill the baby. There are some boundaries that even Michael won't go past[/spoiler] Solid and enjoyable. 6.5/10

The First Man
The opening 90 mins are a solid 5/10. Some good stuff but far too much gazing, navel contemplating, and out of focus art shots for my tastes but the final 45 minutes from the launch of Apollo 11 onwards are mesmerising. Truly spectacular stuff and worth the admission on it's own. If you really want to know what it's like to be on the moon then those last 45 minutes (a 9/10 for those alone) are for you. Overall I give it a 8/10.

wedgeski

We chose to remind ourselves how good Inglorious Basterds is last night, by watching it again. Creeping to the top of my Tarantino fave list, I think, just edging out Jackie Brown. You can't go back, of course, so the tension has all been used up, but what's left -- dialogue, performance, all the usual Tarantino stuff -- justifies any re-watch, and the the way the whole thing slides into comic absurdity as it takes a left-turn from established history is brilliant. We might just go on a Tarantino binge after this.