Last movie watched...

[El Chivo]

Dark Skies
Pretty good 'Close Encounters' rip-off, altho some scenes were lifted wholesale from the original
(I suppose if they did that with Insidious & Poltergeist it must be standard practice now)

Cheers

Chi

[Professor Bear]

A Belfast Story starts with five minutes of credits, then opens on some people unironically using the word "feck" so I stopped watching, reasoning that the word is something bad playwrights use and that some terrible dialogue lay ahead that I didn't need right then.
I eventually came back to it because I like Colm Meaney and really, it couldn't possibly be worse than some of those old episodes of DS9 he starred in.  This was my reasoning and I am man enough to admit that I was wrong.  A Belfast Story is terrible, and not just run-of-the-mill terrible where it's boring and lacks any focus on a central story or theme - though these are also problems - but actual "the writer and director are on different pages and no-one knows what they're making" terrible where the end result is something that's most likely to just foster resentment in the country it was made from people who try very hard - and fail - to get creative/arts grants and then have to have this milquetoast middle-class hand-wringing exercise in pseudo-liberalism wafted in their face like a bad fart.  I suppose you could argue that on that scale it's attempting to be a clever metacommentary on the class and theological division of the country in which it's set by creating an analogous resentment for the work itself, but more likely Occam's Razor would suggest it's just a bunch of art school wankers with too much public money tossing themselves off rather than learning the difference between a film and a play.
In one scene, Colm Meaney comes into an empty home, sits down, and then starts a monologue that includes the line "this country is haunted by echoes of the past" and it's not even a country mile within being the worst line of dialogue in the film.  This is literally all that you need to know about it to make a decision on whether or not to watch it, but in the words of Barry Norman, "I think it's a steaming pile of horseshit that makes me want to punch a nun."

Steel Frontier - which pushes all my b-movie buttons as it's a post-apocalyptic western based on Yojimbo made in the mid-80s and starring the still-missed Brion James as the baddie.  It stars Joe "Tarzan" Lara and doesn't feature much in the way of the ubiquitous screen-fu beloved of no-budget flicks of the era, but it's eventful, has some decent old-school composite effects to establish setting and then gets down to the expected gunfights and car chases.  I'd rate it as middling between Steel Dawn and Fist of the North Star in terms of post-apocalyptic ronins cracking skulls in a desert town, and while it's predictable trash that looks like an episode of a tv show, it's still good fun with a beer or two and it isn't Belfast Story, so there's that.
Also available to view on Youtube in VHS-quality 4:3 format: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YB9Kqmts_8

[JOE SOAP]

In one scene, Colm Meaney comes into an empty home, sits down, and then starts a monologue that includes the line "this country is haunted by echoes of the past" and it's not even a country mile within being the worst line of dialogue in the film.

Now I want to see it.

[Ghost MacRoth]

Captain Phillips

Brilliant.  First half of the movie flashes past in a heartbeat, and the second half doesn't slouch either, but it's a very different film by that point. [spoiler] A very emotional end, that worked very well for me.  Wasn't because it went for the usual emotional shit, more the way only Hanks was having a hard time, and the more professional those around him were, the worse he got.  Had a lump in my throat at that I must admit[/spoiler].  Won't say any more, other than see it, if you haven't already.

[GrinningChimera]

The Trip

Steve Coogan and Rob Wotsit eating food and talking lots. Lots of laugh out loud moments. Plus lots of nice visual goodness of the English countryside. And lots of the word lots in this post too I've just noticed.

8.5/10

[Recrewt]

Insidious 2

I really enjoyed the first Insidious movie but I think this one is even better.  I especially like how this movie follows on directly from the first and deals with what happenned there.  Perhaps it doesn't have the same slow chilling build up as the original but there are plenty of scares and the 'baddie' this time is a lot better than the first.  There is also a really clever part that ties in directly with the first movie. 

I would definitely recommend it to anyone who enjoyed the first Insidious.

[JamesC]

Insidious 2

I really enjoyed the first Insidious movie but I think this one is even better.  I especially like how this movie follows on directly from the first and deals with what happenned there.  Perhaps it doesn't have the same slow chilling build up as the original but there are plenty of scares and the 'baddie' this time is a lot better than the first.  There is also a really clever part that ties in directly with the first movie. 

I would definitely recommend it to anyone who enjoyed the first Insidious.

I saw this last week and thought it was pretty good although nowhere near as scary as the first.
I followed it up directly with The Conjouring which was great. Really scary and freaky. It's based on real events too so there's plenty of creepy stuff you can read on the internet about it.

[Dark Jimbo]

The Trip

Steve Coogan and Rob Wotsit eating food and talking lots. Lots of laugh out loud moments. Plus lots of nice visual goodness of the English countryside. And lots of the word lots in this post too I've just noticed.

8.5/10

Movie? Is that the re-edited US version of the TV series?

[Frank]

The Trip

Movie? Is that the re-edited US version of the TV series?

Apparently it was a big hit with the Sundance crowd, who I suppose just see it as another Michael Winterbottom joint and part of Coogan's reinvention as someone who makes films you might want to see. Big laughs all round; the only thing they didn't get was a Michael Parkinson impression.

[Recrewt]

Insidious 2

I really enjoyed the first Insidious movie but I think this one is even better.  I especially like how this movie follows on directly from the first and deals with what happenned there.  Perhaps it doesn't have the same slow chilling build up as the original but there are plenty of scares and the 'baddie' this time is a lot better than the first.  There is also a really clever part that ties in directly with the first movie. 

I would definitely recommend it to anyone who enjoyed the first Insidious.

I saw this last week and thought it was pretty good although nowhere near as scary as the first.
I followed it up directly with The Conjouring which was great. Really scary and freaky. It's based on real events too so there's plenty of creepy stuff you can read on the internet about it.

Yeah, I thought The Conjouring was good also.  One of the things I like in the Insidious movies is that the ghosts keep popping up in the background.  You will be following someone around the house, even in the day, and catch something with your peripheral vision.    

[Spikes]

The Wolf of Wall Street.

I must admit I enjoyed Sauchie's review of the film, more than I did the film itself.

Not that its a pile of crap. Its fun - at times, but I didn't really find myself warming to it overall. And yes,its too long!

Whether that's because it became a bit of a chore to sit through, or because its genuinely too long, i don't know... 

[Frank]

Sorry for the bum steer, neebs. I value films with a sense of humour more than anything else, so scenes like Jonah Hill's hilarious Quaalude slow motion struggle for coherence (together with the brilliant reveal at the end of DiCaprio's epic drive home) and the petty squabbles between the monumentally stupid characters kept me entertained for the full running time. Like I say, I've been working my way through a lot of humourless and weighty Oscar contenders lately, so maybe I cut Wolf Of Wall Street extra slack.

Room 237 is an even greater mind fuck than Kubrick's original movie. The numerology and moon landing stuff - the moon is (room) 237,000 miles from Earth - which most folk will have heard before, and the kind of nonsense that occurs to you during most films about their being metaphors for events like the Holocaust, eventually give way to bat shit craziness like the guy who has run the film in reverse superimposed upon the film running forwards and developed a reading based on the resulting visual congruities.

Once you've listened to these bizarre (and mutually exclusive) theories for a while you find yourself almost as convinced as the folk involved that Kubrick was trying to communicate something much greater than the surface narrative by creating such a complex system of interconnected and unexplained visual references. That makes the film's pay off - that [spoiler]the central metaphors of the film are the trap of the labyrinth and the irrational geography of the hotel, and that the film has become the lives of these poor lost souls, its unresolvable puzzle holding them within its limits like Jack Torrance at the end of the film[/spoiler] - all the more unnerving.

[JOE SOAP]

My favourite one is the subtext of The Shining as America's abandonment of The Gold Standard.

[radiator]

The Wolf of Wall Street.

I must admit I enjoyed Sauchie's review of the film, more than I did the film itself.

Not that its a pile of crap. Its fun - at times, but I didn't really find myself warming to it overall. And yes,its too long!

Whether that's because it became a bit of a chore to sit through, or because its genuinely too long, i don't know... 

I agree about the running time. Tbh I think I'd get bored of just about any film pushing the three hour mark, and the rather simple tale of the rise and (sort of) fall of some yuppie is hardly an epic tale for the ages. It was very funny though.

[Hawkmumbler]

I think it's been mentioned by a few people on here, and its a stance I support, but my favourite format for a film is the short one. On that note I concluded the early works of Jan Svankmajer last night and what a wonderful this it was to. Considerably more gruesome and twisted than the considerably more joyful (but no less mischievous) early shorts, Svankmajers later shorts included castle of Otranto (which is highly recommended for any Kolchack or Twilight Zone fans. Great twist ending.), The Fall of the House of Usher, Dimensions of Dialogue, Down to the Caller, The Pendulum, ThenPit, and Hope, the utterly delirious Virile Games, the music video Another Kind of Love (with Hugh Cornwell!), Meat Love, Darkness-Light-Darkness, Flora, The Death of Stalinism in Bohemia, and the notorious Food.

A cracking collection that I will enedever to make a review of over on my Tumblr soon.