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

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Professor Bear

I didn't have high hopes for the Child's Play remake as I don't like horror much as the trend of late is to be unpleasant rather than terrifying - if I never see Hereditary* again in my entire life it will still be too soon - and there's lots of gore in this as well as a latter plot turn where the killer doll frames its crimes on the kid it's stalking, but it's just so reminiscent of the era of slasher horror that spawned the original that I really enjoyed it.  There's a neat trick in that only slimeballs get the chop up until a point in the film so you know when the plot has turned a corner from playful gorefest to For Reals, and a line in anti-capitalist humor that I am almost certain the usual sponds have tried to decry like it wasn't an element of the original series (in which an evil corporation literally rebuilds a murder doll just to generate good PR) just as much as they do the scene in while a female friend of the lead male character is shown to be brave and competent.
If you look past the -occasionally quite gross - gore, this is also a half-decent kids' adventure movie, though I wouldn't show it to kids.


* it is a good film and I recommend it to anyone who likes horror, but once was enough for me.

Keef Monkey

I did enjoy the Child's Play remake, and that's as someone who rolls his eyes whenever a horror reboot comes along. Went in cynical but it was too fun not to win me over, and as much as I love Brad Dourif and everything he does I liked what Mark Hamill did with it.

Watched In Search Of Darkness yesterday which at nearly 4hrs long was the perfect hangover Sunday afternoon viewing! It's one of these talking heads docs where people reminisce about horror in the '80s and I loved it, but I have a big appetite for hearing anecdotes and seeing clips of films from the era. I could watch that all day, but might not be for everyone.

radiator

Ready Or Not

I think the praise I'd heard for this film raised my expectations unreasonably high, because what I saw was a very underwhelming, run of the mill horror comedy that wasn't scary or shocking enough to be a good horror movie, nor funny enough to be a decent comedy  (think Severance or Grabbers, or a far less clever Cabin in the Woods). The premise of the movie starts out super far-fetched and never really gets sufficiently fleshed out for it to be convincing, and the characters are so thin that it's hard to care much about any of them.

Not sure what all the fuss was about, honestly.

Hawkmumbler

Bit of a quick fire round:

Duck, You Sucker! (aka A Fistful of Dynamite)

Sergio Leone's last western and, goddamn it, it's another masterpiece. Coburn should have got all the awards.

"For once Juan, I know what i'm fighting for. And i'm happy, my friend."

Zombie Holocaust

Attempts to ape off of both Deodato via Cannibal Holocaust and Fulci via Zombi 2. It's as good as neither and is mostly a curio as a rare instance of genre crossover. Fun gore scenes though.

Mondo Cane

For "Macaroni Januari" over at letterboxd. There's no reason to watch these "shockumentaries" today, they're tame at best but mostly boring when not focasing on the animal slaughter.

Jojo Rabbit

Well intentioned but a complete tonal mess, honestly had a few genuinely great laughs but failed to fallow through on them. Waititi at his most defanged.

The Rise of Skywalker

Get in the fuckin bin!

Greg M.

Quote from: Hawkmumbler on 17 January, 2020, 06:10:51 PM

Jojo Rabbit

Well intentioned but a complete tonal mess, honestly had a few genuinely great laughs but failed to fallow through on them. Waititi at his most defanged.

I kind-of know what you mean - it doesn't totally commit to its premise, or completely nail the jokes in quite the same way as it might have done if it were, say, an Armando Iannucci or Chris Morris satire. Instead, it pulls back and tries to be a heartwarming Nazi comedy. I still liked it though - mostly because Waititi absolutely lights up the screen whenever he appears.

NapalmKev

#13790
Quote from: Hawkmumbler on 17 January, 2020, 06:10:51 PM

The Rise of Skywalker

Get in the fuckin bin!

Don't forget to add petrol and a match. It's the only way to be sure!

There's much I dislike about the sequel trilogy movies but I'm happy to ignore them in favour of my EU/Legends collection of novels.

/Waves hand across forum - There is no sequel trilogy!

Cheers

"Where once you fought to stop the trap from closing...Now you lay the bait!"

Colin YNWA

Quote from: Hawkmumbler on 17 January, 2020, 06:10:51 PM
Duck, You Sucker! (aka A Fistful of Dynamite)

Sergio Leone's last western and, goddamn it, it's another masterpiece. Coburn should have got all the awards.

"For once Juan, I know what i'm fighting for. And i'm happy, my friend."

While its not Leone's best  its still a damned fine film and yes Coburn is the very definition of cool.

Definitely Not Mister Pops

Quote from: Hawkmumbler on 17 January, 2020, 06:10:51 PM

Jojo Rabbit

Well intentioned but a complete tonal mess, honestly had a few genuinely great laughs but failed to fallow through on them. Waititi at his most defanged.

I have to disagree with this reading. Tonally, Waititi has always been unconventional, and I wouldn't call this work defanged because I don't think he has ever been particularly biting.

I really enjoyed this, even if the German accents were a bit Allo' Allo'.
You may quote me on that.

radiator

I thought the best thing about Jojo Rabbit was how well it held together despite the wild swings in tone. It's quite an impressive high wire act. Though I can totally appreciate that others might not gel with it.

Keef Monkey

Your Name, which I've had on my to-watch pile for a long time. Absolutely tremendous, beautiful film. About halfway through I found myself in tears at a relatively small character moment and realized how utterly it had hooked me, and I was on a hair trigger for the rest of the film and wound up crying a few more times! I just found the whole thing immensely touching and moving, and you can't beat a good cry sometimes so I guess I must have needed that.

Brilliant.

JamesC

The Hustle - which is basiclaly a Dirty, Rotten Scoundrels remake starring Rebel Wilson and Anne Hathaway.

It's a fun enough watch and Rebel Wilson is amusing enough while doing here usual thing. Anne Hathaway is unbelievably bad though. Like, I can't believe she actually got paid for it. If they'd cast a decent actress with a bit of gravitias it would have lifed the whole thing immeasurably.

Us - which I really enjoyed. The script was quite witty as these things go and the cast were top class.

radiator

Little Women (2019)

I really, really wanted to like this as I loved Greta Gerwig's previous film Lady Bird, and the cast and overall production is outstanding... however (and this may be down to me being a bit slow) due to the non-linear structure (the narrative unfolding over two concurrent timelines) I found the film almost impossible to follow scene to scene for the first hour or so. It eventually settled into a rhythm I could grasp towards tue end, but throughout I just constantly found myself thinking that the jumbled timeline seemed like an unnecessary flourish, and wishing that the movie just played out chronologically instead.

I can totally appreciate that Little Women is a very well known story that has been filmed multiple times, so I can understand the impulse to shake it up and do something fresh with the material... but for someone like me who actually isn't intimately familiar with the beats of the story, I just found it needlessly obtuse and confusing, to the point where it feels like a remix aimed at people already familiar with the story rather than a proper adaptation for people who aren't.

There is an attempt, with the use of contrasting colour palette to delineate the timelines (warm summery tones for the past vs cool winter tones in the 'present'), but it doesn't always work - it seems much more pronounced in some scenes over others and some scenes with the 'summer' scheme take place in winter etc). Honestly, for the most part I just found it distracting that everyone's skin looked bright orange half the time. The confusing timeline makes an already quite episodic narrative even more choppy and bitty; character arcs don't seem to flow organically, and big dramatic moments often feel lacking in enough build up or context for them to have much dramatic impact.

The structural problems aren't helped by the often frenetic editing and pacing - scenes just come and go so fast that I often felt like I was watching a montage or a trailer rather than an actual movie.

A bit of a frustrating misfire, and a real shame, and not a film I'd recommend despite occasional moments of real charm and beauty.

Dark Jimbo

My girlfriend got me to sit down and watch Rogue One, the first full Star Wars movie I've seen since Phantom Menace. She's a big fan of the series and desperate to get me involved, but it's always left me totally cold. You know what? It was pretty good. Very little to fault really, some funny bits, some great action... but I wasn't left with any particular desire to watch another (to the gf's annoyance).

Best bit? The droid character - made me long for that Insurrection movie!

Weirdest bit - Peter Cushing. Despite some great CG I never for a moment felt I was watching a real person.

Biggest complaint? Too much assumed knowledge (and I acknowledge this is totally my fault, as it's fair enough to assume the average viewer will be a paid-up SW fan); things like the Jedi, the Force, the Empire, Resistance - there's barely a line of explanation for any of them, and while cultural osmosis means I'm pretty au fait with all that in a general sense, a bit more in-universe context for everything (or anything!) that was happening would have been nice. There were also a lot of character backstories hinted at, and unless I'm misremembering, none of them were ever explored/revealed - meaning come the end, everyone was still a bit of a cypher. Maybe all that is why my over-riding feeling was just 'Yeah, it was okay, I suppose.'
@jamesfeistdraws

Dark Jimbo

It was certainly better than Phantom Menace, anyway!  :lol:
@jamesfeistdraws

Professor Bear

Harriet Tubman was an escaped slave who led a Union platoon against the confederacy in the American civil war, in which she also served as a spy for the Union and in one action which she personally commanded, rescued 750 slaves from Confederate forces and incurred not a single Union fatality.  Postwar, she dedicated her life to feminist causes, and after receiving brain surgery without anesthetic - reasoning that biting down on a bullet was good enough for her troops in the war when they underwent surgery - she lived a long and happy life until the age of 91, whereupon she was noted to have said on her deathbed "I'm going ahead, to prepare a place for you", likely a reference to her time before the war, when she ferried slaves to freedom on the Underground Railroad.
None of this is in Harriet, her biopic, which is a two hour movie about her relationship with a white guy, the only thing that was interesting about Harriet Tubman's life, apparently.

I did not like it.