Last movie watched...

[Greg M.]

Recently seen a couple of documentary movies set in New York. Precinct Seven Five (2015) concerns police corruption in the 80s, and centres around crooked cop Michael Dowd. What's interesting is the scale of the criminality – those who caught Dowd call him a "once in a generation" bad cop, but Dowd himself describes an endemic culture of cover-ups and institutional corruption which he claims was actively endorsed from police academy onwards. Enjoyed watching this but wasn't blown away – it's interesting, but there are no real surprises in store.

What did blow me away was The Wolfpack (2015) about a family effectively imprisoned by their egomaniacal father in a New York apartment for most of their lives. The film focuses on the six long-haired Angulo brothers, mostly teenagers (they have a younger sister, but she's barely in the film) who have experienced the outside world largely through the medium of movies.  Their parents claim they've kept them from the world to protect them, but the film-makers arrive at a point where the boys are no longer content to adhere to their father's rules. The lads are highly intelligent, extremely creative (particularly when it comes to costume-crafting and movie re-enactment) and understandably a bit damaged. The result is an absolutely haunting movie, one of the best I've seen this year. Very unsettling – you often feel like you're on the verge of a bigger, even nastier revelation about their years of virtual captivity, but it never quite comes, and instead the film ends with a sense of hope (and concern.) The most jaw-dropping moment concerns the hippy mother – just as much a prisoner as her sons, it appears – when she phones someone she hasn't spoken to in many years. Must have had something in my eye right then...

TLDR version – watch The Wolfpack, it's brilliant.

[Tiplodocus]

Hmm a flattering post about Channing Tatum, must be Tips....WHAT??? 

That's one of the joys of being comfortable with your own sexuality.

  I think I'll give Magic Mike a watch. Just to keep Mrs Tips happy of course...

[Professor Bear]

So, Harry Potter and The Philosopher's Stone

The short answer to your questions is "the books were better", but to be fair to the movies, they do actually explain all your concerns - made as they are for American kids who will likely never read any book in their lifetime let alone a Harry Potter one, and so the movies are self-contained without needing to reference a wiki somewhere to explain things for you (and I'll eat my hat if there's not a Harry Potter wiki somewhere).

[ThryllSeekyr]

The lads are highly intelligent, extremely creative (particularly when it comes to costume-crafting

Threatening to cosplay.....

[CrazyFoxMachine]

Our Mother's House

Tonally very strange - a largely very bleak film about a group of evangelical kids coping with loss but marred perhaps by the heavy-handed character of (a very charismatic) Bogarde and the unsubtle examples of the kids dipping into 'sinfulness'. Before he turns up though it gets genuinely quite sinister - and Franklin's "channelling" of the dead mother in punishing Gerty is really very harrowing.

[Tiplodocus]

Star Trek: Renegades
Well, twenty minutes of it.

It's a recently relased crowd sourced fan film or something but has some genre names hidden away in the cast (i.e. they were original series people or had one genre hit twenty or thirty years ago and are either crap or can't escape type casting; who actually falls for that?  It's never a guarantee of quality is it?)

It seems to be the usual mix for one of these fan films; variable production standards (some really good looking stuff but some really shonky stuff right next to it), uniformally poor acting, either lacks a script or it's full of cliche and full to the brim with proper fan wank refernces.

This compounds it by having about the most un Star Trek like plot possible; "There's a bad guy. But our prime directive makes it hard to deal with him. So we'll send a dirty dozen/magnificent seven of misfits, criminals and renegades (roll credits) to assassinate him!".  It may subvert this idea later on but I just don't have the fucking patience.

"Star Trek: Renegades"? More like "Star Trek: Shite".

[Keef Monkey]

Watched the second Ron Weasley film, Harry Potter & The Chamber of Secrets AKA the one where Weasley chunders slugs. It's the only one I've seen previously, on release I went to the cinema for it and was put off the whole series by the [spoiler]sword out of the hat moment[/spoiler] which I found a real cop-out (but may have been missing some context from the books).

Enjoyed it more this time round, Jar Jar the house elf didn't seem as annoying this time, it was a decent enough family adventure film, even if I'm still not quite seeing what all the fuss is about. Next up Prisoner of Azkhaban which I see is directed by the Children of Men chap, so should be interesting.

Also watched 22 Jump Street, which I wanted to like a lot more than I did. Found the first one a really pleasant surprise, didn't expect much and wound up finding it very, very funny. This time around I still find Tatum and Hill really likeable and easy to watch, but the gags fell flat for the most part. Might have been a mood thing (we were pretty tired) but it just didn't seem to be zinging and apart from a couple of great moments I didn't think it was a patch on the original.

[Goaty]

Next up Prisoner of Azkhaban which I see is directed by the Children of Men chap, so should be interesting.

Oh you would love it! that is great film, change the way of Harry Potter films from first two films.

[TordelBack]

Yeah, Azkaban is the best of the movies, with a visual flair subsequent installments never quite recapture. Curiously it is also the one that (for me) most drops the ball in terms of stuff-you-need-to-know-is-in-the-books, but the style and pace carries it through what otherwise may seem incomprehensible coincidence.

[CrazyFoxMachine]

which I found a real cop-out (but may have been missing some context from the books).

No, that's pretty much it.

Also yeah Azkaban is a beaut, that Cauron really went for it - shame they didn't get him for any more of them as they fall back into solid-but-unremarkable formula quite sharply after that and his singular creativity really makes the world shine.

Shame to hear about 22 Jump Street as after Lego Movie I thought I'd invest in the two films of Miller & Lord's that I never got around to watching. So they're sitting in me pile to be watched at some point :S

[Keef Monkey]

Shame to hear about 22 Jump Street as after Lego Movie I thought I'd invest in the two films of Miller & Lord's that I never got around to watching. So they're sitting in me pile to be watched at some point :S

Don't let me put you off, I still had a good time with them and I really did enjoy the first film a great deal! In fact I've watched 21 a few times since, it's become one of those movies that appears on TV occasionally while channel hopping and it pulls us back in again.

It's just one of those situations where the first film working as well as it did feels a bit like a happy accident and the second one in comparison feels a little forced, trying a bit too hard to hit the same beats and formula. In 22 they even make a lot of jokes about how following up a 'mission' that was a surprise success by trying to do the same thing again is a bad idea, so they seem to know the score and are having some fun with it and there are chuckles to be had there.

It's possible I went in with high expectations after 21 winning me over so much, I'll no doubt revisit 22 at some point and have a better time with it.

Just remembered we also watched Monster Squad! One of my favorites as a kid (used to rent it repeatedly). Bea was a bit down about something and I figured it would cheer her up and it did indeed. The healing power of Monster Squad saved the day.

[I, Cosh]

Yeah, Azkaban is the best of the movies, with a visual flair subsequent installments never quite recapture. Curiously it is also the one that (for me) most drops the ball in terms of stuff-you-need-to-know-is-in-the-books, but the style and pace carries it through what otherwise may seem incomprehensible coincidence.

Now, I haven't seen any of films except the first but anytime I see people talking about it, Cuaron seems to get all the plaudits here when, surely, a big part of it is that Azkaban is also by far the best of the books. It's the last one which is a readable length, there are Empire Strikes Back style revelations and implications for the ongoing story and it has, in the form of the Dementors, Rowling's one really interesting and unsettling creation. (Cue somebody saying they're just Judge Fear without the smart hat.)

[Goaty]

in the form of the Dementors, Rowling's one really interesting and unsettling creation. (Cue somebody saying they're just Judge Fear without the smart hat.)

[Professor Bear]

Star Trek: Renegades

It seems to be the usual mix for one of these fan films; variable production standards (some really good looking stuff but some really shonky stuff right next to it), uniformally poor acting, either lacks a script or it's full of cliche and full to the brim with proper fan wank refernces.

It actually gets worse later on.  I don't feel too bad about trashing Renegades, because it's clearly made not by fans but by people who saw that Trek fan movies were quite popular and decided to grab some of that action.  The script is absolutely dreadful on so many levels, but I think my favorite quirk is probably that despite dragging in all these fan-wank actors to play the characters they played in Trek shows, the script has them sitting around explaining their backstory for minutes at a time in some of the clunkiest exposition I've ever seen - at whom is this aimed?  Fans will know these characters, but casual or curious viewers don't need to know these details as they have no bearing on the story.

[ThryllSeekyr]

Yeah, Azkaban is the best of the movies, with a visual flair subsequent installments never quite recapture. Curiously it is also the one that (for me) most drops the ball in terms of stuff-you-need-to-know-is-in-the-books, but the style and pace carries it through what otherwise may seem incomprehensible coincidence.

Those movies got darker and more adult with each installment.