Last movie watched...

[Apestrife]

Yeah another big fan of Das Boot. I've always avoided the original cinema release having been introduced to it via the longer TV mini series version that my Dad had on video tape for years. There seem to be so many versions out there these days, but I really must get around to watching one again as it was quite, quite brilliant. Though whether I could bare that ending again I don't know... just thinking about it is making it awfully dusty in here... I think I got something in my eye...

its quite a happy ending, if you know when to stop watching

is the tv series much different from the dir cut (3,5h long)

[TordelBack]

Bit like a 6 page Dredd one off!

"...and we drug them, torture them, lobotomise them, entrap them, kneecap them, spy on them, hand out huge sentences, all for harmless offenses we just created for no reason, and for the big finale completely fail to protect them from vengeful foreign powers who we committed genocide against!"
"What do you call your... regime?"
"...Justice Department!"

[Buttonman]

The really shitey British WW1 zombie soldiers fest World War Dead : The Rise of the Fallen

[CrazyFoxMachine]

La planète sauvage

A surreal 'late-night' sort of feeling pervades my first viewing of this film - a tale of subdued humans on an alien world of giants. It's irritatingly linear and moves at quite a glacial pace but it is stuffed full of wonder and creativity and is quite captivating. The artwork has a "17th century biological etching" type style to it which lends it an ethereal timeless quality (although the rad jazzy funk soundtrack grounds it firmly in the 70s). Fascinating film - although I must say I prefer Time Masters as it has a more punchy ending and is artistically more engaging.

The DVD also featured a good number of Rene Laloux's short films - the best of which being the brilliant Comment Wang-Fo fut sauve - some of them (especially his first - made with mentally ill patients) are genuinely very disturbing and gave me the heebie jeebies.

[Keef Monkey]

Ex Machina. Wow.

[Keef Monkey]

The Aristocrats
Watching it again you see a bunch of seriously funny people passionately showing - through the creative depravity of the joke - what they personally find funny and it's enlightening, inspiring and probably depressing depending on where your offence lines are drawn.

I went to see this at Cineworld at the time, and the staff had clearly been told to recite a warning to anyone buying a ticket, perhaps they'd had complaints or walk-outs.

When I asked for the ticket the woman said 'Just to let you know the film contains some very offensive material' then leaned in to get out of her manager's earshot and whispered with a nod and a wink 'but it's really, really funny'.

She was right! Watching it in a cinema was interesting, as the pockets of people all seemed to laugh or wince at different tellings, you could feel very keenly just how varied those offence lines you mention can be. For my part I remember letting out a surprised cackle at a particular Sarah Silverman line while the rest of the cinema was stone silent, and feeling a little guilty about it.

[auxlen]

Sorry to lower the tone after the glorious Das Boot. However, just watched John Wick.
Awesome.
Me and mrs auxlen love bad guys getting served a la death wish 3 and taken (the first one only)
Our favourite scene: [spoiler]when the mob leader calls a man who had punched his son to find out why. the man says because he stole John Wick's car and killed his dog. the mob leader just hangs up and knows they're all fucked.[/spoiler]

[Richmond Clements]

Sorry to lower the tone after the glorious Das Boot. However, just watched John Wick.
Awesome.
Me and mrs auxlen love bad guys getting served a la death wish 3 and taken (the first one only)
Our favourite scene: [spoiler]when the mob leader calls a man who had punched his son to find out why. the man says because he stole John Wick's car and killed his dog. the mob leader just hangs up and knows they're all fucked.[/spoiler]

"What did he say?"
"Enough."

Love that movie.

[Satanist]

The Aristocrats
Watching it again you see a bunch of seriously funny people passionately showing - through the creative depravity of the joke - what they personally find funny and it's enlightening, inspiring and probably depressing depending on where your offence lines are drawn.

I went to see this at Cineworld at the time, and the staff had clearly been told to recite a warning to anyone buying a ticket, perhaps they'd had complaints or walk-outs.

When I asked for the ticket the woman said 'Just to let you know the film contains some very offensive material' then leaned in to get out of her manager's earshot and whispered with a nod and a wink 'but it's really, really funny'.

She was right! Watching it in a cinema was interesting, as the pockets of people all seemed to laugh or wince at different tellings, you could feel very keenly just how varied those offence lines you mention can be. For my part I remember letting out a surprised cackle at a particular Sarah Silverman line while the rest of the cinema was stone silent, and feeling a little guilty about it.

Check out Doug Stanhopes version on Youtube. It is amazing!

[radiator]

The Station Agent. Enjoyable low-key slice of indie whimsy about an introverted young man played by Peter Dinklage, learning to open his heart to a few other lost souls in the hinterlands of New Jersey. This film has a pretty substantial cult following and it's fairly clear why. It's a nice little movie, but nothing exceptional. Ending feels like a bit of an anticlimax, as very little of note happens and there isn't much in the way of resolution that the film seems to be building towards.

Fargo. First time watching this since it was out on video - when I must admit it went over my head. I only remembered it very dimly - lots of people saying 'Ya!' and an incident with a wood chipper. What a revelation though watching it all these years later! We both adored every minute of it. This has got to be one of the films of the 90s, right? Up there with Pulp Fiction. Filled with amazing performances, memorable characters (Marge Gunderson is one for the ages), hilarious, bleak, but with a warm heart. Running time whips by and there isn't a wasted scene. Doesn't feel dated one bit for a film approaching its twentieth anniversary. Cracking film, and a new all time favourite. Really need to address my Coen Brothers neglect.

Short Term 12. A recent film about a young couple working in a temporary home for troubled kids. This is a very earnest, well-intentioned and likeable little indie drama full of great performances that - for me - occasionally lapses into overly sentimental melodrama and schmaltz. Tonally it kind of awkwardly veers between hard-hitting grimness and feel-good crowdpleaser. I also found the lead characters a bit Mary Sue-ish. They're so super-cute and altruistic it feels a little unconvincing at times - I thought they'd be a little more nuanced and textured. Sorry if that makes me sound like a horrible misanthrope. Still, it's decent and well-worth a watch if you like that sort of thing.

The Cove. Must admit I didn't make it to the end of this doc. As well-intentioned as the protestors were, in all honesty I felt a little uncomfortable that these Americans are going over to Japan and getting all judgemental and condemning the food production practices of a foreign culture. Is there a Japanese equivalent doc about the suffering of cows? I dunno, I don't want to sound heartless. Animal slaughter is never palatable, but it's sadly a fact of life. I just feel it's little disingenuous to get all hand-wringy about one species over another.

We also tried to watch Gone Girl, but that went off after about half an hour. It's a very weird film, very overly mannered and detached and the plot seemed very silly and implausible - at the risk of sounding a bit reductive, it plays like a kind of chick-lit thriller. I guess it was all hingeing around a 'did he or didn't he?' mystery but the strange tone of the film and the weirdly cold, unlikable yuppie lead characters made it hard for either of us to get invested or care much either way. So that's the second Fincher film that we've given up on, after The Social Network. I know he's this revered director but his films just seem to leave me utterly cold.

[Sideshow Bob]

A bit late to the party,  but am soaking up several movies at the moment due to just getting Amazon Prime.

So I watched Pacific Rim the other night,  and despite expecting to absolutely loath it as ' over blown and ludicrous tripe', I found myself enjoying it immensely. Ok, it's not the greatest film I've ever seen, but it was extremely watchable and thoroughly enjoyable.
Provided that you switch of the real 'thinking part' of the brain, ( and don't question the plot too much ),  relax and immerse yourself in it,  there is a hell of a lot to enjoy here.
Cheers

[radiator]

A bit late to the party,  but am soaking up several movies at the moment due to just getting Amazon Prime.

So I watched Pacific Rim the other night,  and despite expecting to absolutely loath it as ' over blown and ludicrous tripe', I found myself enjoying it immensely. Ok, it's not the greatest film I've ever seen, but it was extremely watchable and thoroughly enjoyable.
Provided that you switch of the real 'thinking part' of the brain, ( and don't question the plot too much ),  relax and immerse yourself in it,  there is a hell of a lot to enjoy here.
Cheers

While you could reasonably argue that one might have to 'switch their brain off' to enjoy a film about giant robots fighting giant monsters in the first place, I don't actually think there's anything wrong with the plot of Pacific Rim. It's simplistic, formulaic, a little derivative and littered with corny dialogue, but to my mind (unlike with certain other giant robot franchises) there aren't any particular plot-holes or logical inconsistencies. As modern popcorn movie scripts go I'd hold Pacific Rim's up as one of the more solid examples. As for being a modern, loud visual effects extravaganza, it's actually pretty restrained, well-paced and surprisingly non headache-inducing.

People tend to talk about it like it's some 'guilty pleasure' film that you have to apologise for liking, but I think it's legitimately decent, and easily my favourite blockbuster of that summer.

[Jim_Campbell]

Everything Radiator says about Pacific Rim. I'd add: note how clear the fight scenes are. I've seen precious few live action fight scenes in a major summer blockbuster recently that paid such attention to making sure it was clue who was doing what to whom. (Fury Road being the clear exception!)

Cheers

Jim

[Professor Bear]

The Cove...

I felt a little uncomfortable that these Americans are going over to Japan and getting all judgemental and condemning the food production practices of a foreign culture.

Animal slaughter is never palatable, but it's sadly a fact of life. I just feel it's little disingenuous to get all hand-wringy about one species over another.

I saw a news report on the gangs in Indonesia who use bitches on heat to lure family dogs away from their homes to sell them to restaurants where the animals are hung on hooks and skinned alive because the meat is said to taste better if the animal has been tortured to death.  I was outraged, of course - who are these white people to judge the food production practices of a foreign culture?  And eating dogs is exactly the same as eating cows, anyway.

[JamesC]

The Cove. Must admit I didn't make it to the end of this doc. As well-intentioned as the protestors were, in all honesty I felt a little uncomfortable that these Americans are going over to Japan and getting all judgemental and condemning the food production practices of a foreign culture. Is there a Japanese equivalent doc about the suffering of cows? I dunno, I don't want to sound heartless. Animal slaughter is never palatable, but it's sadly a fact of life. I just feel it's little disingenuous to get all hand-wringy about one species over another.
cold.

I think we've had plenty of debates on here about animal rights and the meat industry. While I'd love to see stronger regulation and a reduction in meat consumption in our own country, our practices are still vastly preferable to indiscriminately slaughtering wild animals in their natural habitat, while they are in their family groups.
Culture is an excuse, the slaughter of Dolphins is fucking horrific and needs to stop.