Last movie watched...

[Proudhuff]

Anyone got a favourite Steve McQueen film that isn't 'The Great escape'?

I really like his performance in the 'The War Lover' - his WWII bomber-pilot character is a monstrous arsehole of the highest order, and McQueen plays him with antagonistic brilliance.

Good call on this one Greg! Credit to him for playing the asshole role rather than the romantic lead - still the ladies all love a bastard. Like the scene of him giving a prostitute a fiver and telling her to get a dress and call herself Daphne - we've all been there!

yeah but he said it to a woman...

[HdE]

Just managed to squeak a viewing of Captain America: The Winter Soldier in on Blu Ray.

That was a bit good!

It felt radically different in tone to most Marvel movies, and managed the neat trick of making name heroes vulnerable within a two hour movie. Major props for giving Black Widow plenty to do on-screen, and I was impressed with the fact that it didn't resolve as I'd expected it to. Brilliant stuff!

[CheechFU]

They should have renamed it to Saving Private Groundhog

[JamesC]

Batman (1989)

I hadn't seen this for about 25 years or more but I saw it was on Amazon instant so I thought I'd give it a go.
I can remember being really disappointed when I first saw it at the cinema because it didn't really feel like Batman. I'd been reading the London Editions Batman monthly comic which was reprinting the Grant/Breyfogle stories at the time and I'd also read The Killing Joke. They were what informed my notions of Batman and the Joker so I was surprised to see the Joker as a cheap gangster and Batman in a suit of armour giving him severely limited mobility.
Since then, I've reconciled countless interpretations of both characters and so the concerns I had when I was a child were no longer really relevant on this re-watch.
I have to say, I really enjoyed it. Keaton plays an excellent, wild eyed, Bruce Wayne/Batman who absolutely convinces as a man on the edge of sanity.
The Joker is basically just Jack Nocholson twatting about. It's as if his preparation for the role was watching five minutes of Caeser Romero in his limousine on the way to the studio.
Kim Basinger is rather dull as Vicki Vale and just about everyone else camps it up a treat. I'm sure some of the cast found it impossible to expunge the influence of Adam West, no matter what Tim Burton said.
Production design is absolutely stonking. Gotham looks great and the Batmobile and Batwing are awesome, iconic, designs (yeah I know the Batmobile design doesn't make much practical sense but who cares?)
The mis-steps for me are The Joker / Wayne murder reveal and Batman's curious disregard for human life. I doubt I'd have even noticed the latter a few years ago but after all the fuss over Man of Steel it stood out.


Batman Returns

Unfortunately I didn't enjoy this nearly as much. It's pretty much just a Tim Burton cliche vehicle - you could play Tim Burton bingo or some kind of drinking game to it.
Keaton is still great but doesn't get nearly enough screen time.
DeVito plays a typical Burton grotesque who happens to share a name with a well known Batman villain.
Michelle Pfieffer plays an annoyingly silly and incredibly un-sexy zombie Catwoman. Seriously, I really can't understand why people found her performance sexy. She's a good looking woman and a decent actress but I think she was given an awful part and a ridiculous costume that she obviously found it hard to walk in. She did some good whip work though - props for that.
Christopher Walken gets loads of screen time but even he, even with his considerable powers of charisma, failed to hold my attention.
It's a real shame that they went in this incredibly camp direction. There's none of the cool 'Batman swoops down silently in the background' type scenes like you get in the first film. I can't help but wonder how things may have been with a different director and a more serious direction. In my mind's eye I see Michael Keaton watching a circus performance as The Flying Graysons plunge to their death and a young boy is left orphaned...

[Professor Bear]

If I had to pick one of the Burton Bat-flicks to be subjected to*, I'd probably pick Returns.  I know it's an utterly appalling film, but it does at least feel like it exists in a separate reality rather than a really poorly-realised version of our own world where nobody sounds like a human being.  It's a fairy tale for people embarrassed by the idea of watching a superhero film, which I suppose is something that dates it quite a bit: there's an anecdote about how Adam West was asked by journos at the time about the upcoming Tim Burton Batman films, and people involved with the movies assumed he was out to sabotage it by smiling, being nice and making jokes.



* This is a bit like being asked which tooth I want torn out by a gorilla.

[Greg M.]

Just watched Dinosaur 13 (2014), a documentary movie about the 1990 discovery of "Sue" - the largest and most complete T-Rex fossil ever – and the surprising saga that followed, when 35 FBI agents and the National Guard descended on a small town in South Dakota to take custody of it. What starts as a joyous recollection of paleontological discovery transforms into the kind of Big Government vs The Individual tale that would have The Legendary Shark nodding along sagely. Knowing nothing about the events in question, I wasn't initially sure how this film was going to meet its hour-and-a-half running time – but I'd reckoned without a series of surprising twists involving Native American land laws, angry judges and the possibility of prison time lengthier than that faced by Jeffrey Dahmer. In short, well worth a watch.

[Colin YNWA]

Just watched Dinosaur 13 (2014), a documentary movie about the 1990 discovery of "Sue" - the largest and most complete T-Rex fossil ever –

Read and own an enjoyable book about all this. Rex Appeal (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Rex-Appeal-Amazing-Dinosaur-Changed/dp/1931229384/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1408819856&sr=8-1&keywords=rex+appeal) indeed an astonishing story.

Only just heard of the film, must catch it at some point, glad to hear its worth seeing.

[shaolin_monkey]

Just watched Dinosaur 13 (2014), a documentary movie about the 1990 discovery of "Sue" - the largest and most complete T-Rex fossil ever –

Read and own an enjoyable book about all this. Rex Appeal (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Rex-Appeal-Amazing-Dinosaur-Changed/dp/1931229384/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1408819856&sr=8-1&keywords=rex+appeal) indeed an astonishing story.

Only just heard of the film, must catch it at some point, glad to hear its worth seeing.

This sounds fascinating! I couldn't find a copy if it anywhere though. Did you see it in the cinema?

[Greg M.]

This sounds fascinating! I couldn't find a copy if it anywhere though. Did you see it in the cinema?

Yep, don't think it's out on DVD for a while yet. Here's a list of UK screenings - assuming you're in the UK. http://dinosaur-13.com/screenings

[ThryllSeekyr]

Bad Boy Bubby

A unusual and disturbing Australian movie good for a few laughs.

Most memorable scene quoted (Not quoted word for word, but to the same effect!) ....

I want Pizza!

What topping?

Pizza!

[shaolin_monkey]

This sounds fascinating! I couldn't find a copy if it anywhere though. Did you see it in the cinema?

Yep, don't think it's out on DVD for a while yet. Here's a list of UK screenings - assuming you're in the UK. http://dinosaur-13.com/screenings

Cheers mate! It's playing Chapter in Cardiff on Sept 12th and 13th. I'm gonna book my tickets now - cheers for the heads up!


In the meantime, I've been watching another Monkey King movie, this time 'Journey to the West' by Stephen Chow, of 'Kung Fu Hustle' fame. 

It is very very good indeed, and also the first of a three parter. While more loosely based on the book of the same name, and not as epic in scope as 'The Monkey King' with Donnie Yen, it abounds with imaginative direction and great visual flair.  It's also very funny in parts. 

One major difference is the treatment of Sun WuKong himself. Without wanting to spoil it too much, he's [spoiler]a right evil bastard [/spoiler] in this retelling.

Recommended!!!

[HdE]

Finally got around to watching 'The Purge', which I thought was a very lazy piece of film making addled ith cod morality.

Wafer-thin premise, not properly explored, basically seems like an excuse for 90 minutes of violence. And this is the part I don't get. It's too tame to be shocking, but undercooked in terms of story development to be nasty.

I'm truly disappointed that stuff like this gets to be a franchise, even if I did get to look at Lena Headey for a bit.

[Theblazeuk]

The Purge is dirt cheap to make though.

[JamesC]

Alien

This is another film I hadn't seen for a long while (all the way through at least). This was my first viewing since seeing Prometheus.
It's still a good film but much shorter than I'd remembered and the rubber suit doesn't stand up too well. I was surprised by the Alien's lack of aggression towards the end - not killing the cat or attacking Ripley. I had a quick Google to see what the theories were on this which made for some quite interesting reading. One thing that I can't find mention if is that the alien seems to move the cat's crate. In one scene we see the alien looking at the cat in the crate - it's on a table (or raised surface anyway) in a room. The next time we see the cat crate it's sitting on the floor in the middle of a corridor. Maybe the alien was using it as bait or something?

[Theblazeuk]

I think I know what bit you mean and I think that was Ripley carrying it and then putting it down.