Last movie watched...

[Mardroid]

Against my better judgement, and mainly because t'missus fancies seeing the sequel later in the year: Kingsman: The Secret Service.

Fuck me, that was so unapologetically, determinedly stupid that it actually ended up being enormous fun. No one is more surprised by this than me.

I was in Holland a couple of years back when one of my hosts chose this film to watch. I'll admit it didn't really appeal to me, when considering the trailers, etc. Then I watched it and found myself thoroughly enjoying it.

There was an amusing moment* when my friend (a nice Polish lady) turned to me and said "But Chris**, you're English! You don't sound like that!" (Referring to the main character's accent and style of speech.)

* I'm probably easily amused.
** She doesn't know my real name, Mardroid.

[Rately]

Against my better judgement, and mainly because t'missus fancies seeing the sequel later in the year: Kingsman: The Secret Service.

Fuck me, that was so unapologetically, determinedly stupid that it actually ended up being enormous fun. No one is more surprised by this than me.

I loved it.

Expectations of it were pre-loaded with contempt due to who wrote the comic, but I thought it was incredibly well directed, had great perforamnces throughout and had some lovely moments.

That Church scene alone is worth the rental fee.

[JamesC]

Against my better judgement, and mainly because t'missus fancies seeing the sequel later in the year: Kingsman: The Secret Service.

Fuck me, that was so unapologetically, determinedly stupid that it actually ended up being enormous fun. No one is more surprised by this than me.

I loved it.

Expectations of it were pre-loaded with contempt due to who wrote the comic, but I thought it was incredibly well directed, had great perforamnces throughout and had some lovely moments.

That Church scene alone is worth the rental fee.

Matthew Vaughn is generally pretty good I think. I've enjoyed most of his films.


The last film I watched was Arrival starring Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner.

I thought the basic story was pretty good but I didn't like the direction or writing (some really awful lines) and the soundtrack was just awful (loads of heavy OTT violins and ambient whale-music type sounds).
Much as I respect Amy Adams I didn't even like the central performance very much. The character's general mopeyness doesn't really have context [spoiler]when the plot twist hits in the final act.[/spoiler] 
In fact, I think 'mopey' sums up the tone of the film pretty well.
Renner was okay and Forest Whitaker gave solid support, as you'd expect.

[Mardroid]

Against my better judgement, and mainly because t'missus fancies seeing the sequel later in the year: Kingsman: The Secret Service.

Fuck me, that was so unapologetically, determinedly stupid that it actually ended up being enormous fun. No one is more surprised by this than me.

I loved it.

Expectations of it were pre-loaded with contempt due to who wrote the comic, but I thought it was incredibly well directed, had great perforamnces throughout and had some lovely moments.

That Church scene alone is worth the rental fee.

I didn't even know that it was based on a Mark Millar story until recently. If I had, it wouldn't have put me off, as I don't dislike him as a writer. He gets a bit too nasty for nastiness sake at times but I've enjoyed some of his work. I do like the Kick-ass films a lot.

I think it was partly the idea of kids being secret agents and the main characters style of speech, sounding like he is channeling Ali G which irritated me. (A lot of youngsters talk like that now. A personal peeve of mine. Not something I'm particularly happy about myself, incidentally as I don't like to think I'm prejudiced.)

But on seeing it, I liked it. Its not my favourite film, and I have no inclination to get the dvd, but it was fun.

[Arkwright99]

Atomic Blonde. Maybe not perfect but I enjoyed it. Charlize Theron is very good and there are some pretty brutal* (Bourne/John Wick-esque) fight scenes that keep the momentum going through to the end. Good (i.e. realistic) use of stamina in the fight scenes was refreshing to see, in contrast to lots of action movies where the combatants appear to be powered by Duracell, and Theron's agent is clearly not physically stronger than the men she has to fight meaning her attacks are both savage and desperate (Broughton knows she has to take her assailants down quickly because she's no match for them if the fights last more than 30 seconds). Jane Bond she is not. (She gets roughed up more than even Daniel Craig tends to do.) James McAvoy is nicely sleazy but Sofia Boutella's talents are perhaps somewhat under used, while Toby Jones and John Goodman deliver typically Toby Jones and John Goodman performances as expected.

The plot is a fairly basic MacGuffin of a missing list of agents and standard spy tropes of double agents, defectors and double-crossing with the fall of the Berlin Wall thrown in as a historical backdrop. The film captures the look of late-'80s Berlin (both East and West) well but I'm not sure there isn't a major plot hole in the film's narrative which blows its internal logic wide open [spoiler]if Spyglass has memorised the List why doesn't he know who Satchel is? And if he does, why doesn't he recognise them? Obvious 'no-prize' answer is he's bluffing about the eidetic memory thing[/spoiler] but I'd have to watch it again to check. Excellent soundtrack and nice to see Tarkovsky's Stalker getting name-checked.

*^{Reckon it would have been an 18-cert maybe ten(?) years ago rather than a 15. Certainly doesn't skimp on the headshots and blood splatter like some films.}

[Professor Bear]

The last film I watched was Arrival starring Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner.

The character's general mopeyness doesn't really have context [spoiler]when the plot twist hits in the final act.[/spoiler]

I assumed this was a deliberate attempt to make the viewer [spoiler]see Adams' character as a grieving mother from the opening scenes so that the twist comes as a surprise, but the side-effect is that retroactively, her character at the start of the film doesn't make any sense.[/spoiler]

If you want a good version of the original story upon which the film is based - Ted Chiang's The Story Of Your Life - give the pilot episode of Deep Space Nine a rewatch, although in the spirit of the twist, DS9 came out five years before Chiang's story did.

[JLC]

The last film I watched was Arrival starring Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner.

The character's general mopeyness doesn't really have context [spoiler]when the plot twist hits in the final act.[/spoiler]

I assumed this was a deliberate attempt to make the viewer [spoiler]see Adams' character as a grieving mother from the opening scenes so that the twist comes as a surprise, but the side-effect is that retroactively, her character at the start of the film doesn't make any sense.[/spoiler]

Its basically a variation of the Kuleshov effect. You as a viewer are doing the work, inferring an emotion on the actor based on the juxtaposition of images etc.

[JamesC]

The last film I watched was Arrival starring Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner.

The character's general mopeyness doesn't really have context [spoiler]when the plot twist hits in the final act.[/spoiler]

I assumed this was a deliberate attempt to make the viewer [spoiler]see Adams' character as a grieving mother from the opening scenes so that the twist comes as a surprise, but the side-effect is that retroactively, her character at the start of the film doesn't make any sense.[/spoiler]

Its basically a variation of the Kuleshov effect. You as a viewer are doing the work, inferring an emotion on the actor based on the juxtaposition of images etc.

...and the fact she has a mopey frown on her face 

[JLC]

The last film I watched was Arrival starring Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner.

The character's general mopeyness doesn't really have context [spoiler]when the plot twist hits in the final act.[/spoiler]

I assumed this was a deliberate attempt to make the viewer [spoiler]see Adams' character as a grieving mother from the opening scenes so that the twist comes as a surprise, but the side-effect is that retroactively, her character at the start of the film doesn't make any sense.[/spoiler]

Its basically a variation of the Kuleshov effect. You as a viewer are doing the work, inferring an emotion on the actor based on the juxtaposition of images etc.

...and the fact she has a mopey frown on her face 

No. As I said, its basically a variation of the Kuleshov effect.

[Professor Bear]

That can only be ascribed in retrospect, but doing so robs her character of her only defining trait, hence in retrospect her only defining trait is that she's mopey.

[JamesC]

The last film I watched was Arrival starring Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner.

The character's general mopeyness doesn't really have context [spoiler]when the plot twist hits in the final act.[/spoiler]

I assumed this was a deliberate attempt to make the viewer [spoiler]see Adams' character as a grieving mother from the opening scenes so that the twist comes as a surprise, but the side-effect is that retroactively, her character at the start of the film doesn't make any sense.[/spoiler]

Its basically a variation of the Kuleshov effect. You as a viewer are doing the work, inferring an emotion on the actor based on the juxtaposition of images etc.

...and the fact she has a mopey frown on her face 

No. As I said, its basically a variation of the Kuleshov effect.

Sorry, I was just being flippant.

More seriously though, musical score and sound design plays a huge part so I don't think you can lay the tone of the early scenes, or our perception of the character purely at the feet of the Kuleshov effect (although I'm sure it plays a part).

[Link Prime]

The Eyes of my Mother

A powerful horror that definitely won't be for everyone, but I was quite impressed with this debut film from the young Nicolas Pesce.
Some very disturbing scenes that will linger, I was reminded of the first time I watched Martyrs.
Recommend for genre fans.

[Greg M.]

The Angry Red Planet (1959) Four astronauts visit Mars, and have a run-in with the local wildlife, including a growling, tentacled space-minge, a corrosive blacmange with a rotating eyeball, and the film's most iconic denizen, the awesome bat-rat-spider. It's fun once they actually set foot on the planet and encounter red-tinted drawings standing in for background, but first you've got to sit through half-an-hour of control-room pottering. That bat-rat-spider though, he's the man.

Castle of the Living Dead (1964) Prime French / Italian gothicism, now most famed as being Donald Sutherland's first movie, and having Witchfinder General's Michael Reeves as second unit director. A travelling troupe of performers visits Christopher Lee's castle, where Lee is engaged in a kind of experimental taxidermy (sans actual stuffing.) Nightmarish black and white ambience, filmed in the Gardens of Bomarzo in Italy, and therefore filled with huge monstrous sculptures. Definitely worth a watch for lovers of atmospheric horror and dwarf-based heroism.

A Bell from Hell (1973) Profoundly odd and unsettling Spanish horror / thriller, featuring a young man who returns from an asylum, plotting revenge on the aunt (Viveca Lindfors) and three female cousins who sent him there. However, whilst protagonist is undoubtedly a twisted fellow, he's also a much-more complex and ambivalent character than might be assumed. Furthermore, his relationships with his cousins are decidedly incestuous, and things don't quite play out as expected. A sordid but stylish movie, in part a meditation on Franco-era fascist Spain, which unfortunately contains a very nasty and potentially unwatchable slaughterhouse sequence in which real cows are killed.

Super Duper Alice Cooper (2014) Oddly frustrating Alice Cooper documentary that never actually shows you any of the participants speaking as they comment on the life and times of Alice. Some good footage in there, including the infamous chicken-lobbing, but could have been improved immeasurably if the director had just cut to Dennis Dunaway or Neal Smith occasionally.

[Dark Jimbo]

Horror Channel comes good at lunchtime yesterday with The Lost Continent (1968) from Hammer.
Eric Porter captains a dilapidated tramp steamer whose passengers all seem to be running from various respective shady pasts, most of which come to light as the film progresses. Coming a cropper in the man-eating seaweed of the Sargasso Sea, it's a cavalcade of giant crabs, sea monsters, heaving bosoms and the degenerate descendants of a lost Spanish Galleon, whose inbred Conquistadors feed all prisoners to the god-beast in the bilge of their ship, led by a boy king and a ravening Torquemada-alike who thinks the Inquisition's still going.
They truly don't make 'em like this any more. Somewhat ropey effects are made up for by a fascinatingly flawed clutch of characters, fantastic sets, the aforementioned heaving bosoms and an unexpectedly ambiguous ending.

[Greg M.]

...the aforementioned heaving bosoms

It's certainly notable how much of the publicity material for the film features a relatively bored-looking Dana Gillespie leaning forward in a low-cut top, whilst large crabs grab her.