What have you watched recently? 3D!

De Bhál

Pig

Movie with Nicholas Cage in the lead role. It had good moments but probably not one I'd watch again.

bnt

Saving Mr. Banks, the story of how Walt Disney (Tom Hanks) finally persuaded author P.L. Travers (Emma Thompson) to let him make a movie of her book Mary Poppins. It was OK for a Sunday afternoon, I suppose, but not a lot happens, to be honest. It might be true to life in that Travers' involvement was limited to some pre-production, but it might have been nice to have some more detail about the production. All we hear about the casting is that Travers tried to veto Dick Van Dyke, but got ignored.

storydove

Going through a 70s & 80s mood at the moment.

Yesterday I watched River's Edge (1985), it stars Keanu Reeves, Crispin Glover and Iona Skye. It was a surprisingly dark tale, showing the lack of empathy in modern life. Also Dennis Hopper shows up in it, his brand of crazy fits in perfectly with the listless, hopeless world that's portrayed.

Earlier today I looked at The Woman in Red (1984), Gene Wilder and Kelly LeBrock. Some of the humor doesn't date well, but the movie has it's moments. Gene getting petulantly angry, to put his wife off the trail of his potential affair, cracked me up.

Just finished watching Capricorn One (1977). OJ Simpson the murderer is in it, he has a supporting role as one of three astronauts. Elliot Gould shines as the investigative journalist.

~Rebel~

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121422591#Comment_121422591

That's mad, I only just watched Capricorn One the other day myself. As you say, Elliot Gould steals the show, which kinda tells you all you need to know about the movie when the central story is overshadowed by the B-plot. Really wished they'd focused more on the machinations of the astronauts story, going more in depth on the faking of the mission, rather than just turning into a 'North by Northwest' knockoff.

storydove

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121422711#Comment_121422711

Yep it reminded me of that too. And Elliot doesn't show up till 25 mins in, so yep the main story in a way becomes the side story from then on. I'm surprised a remake hasn't happened. I guess OJ being in it is problematic and maybe the reason the movie doesn't show up on streaming services.

Homelander

Planned watching a comedy movie last night and as you do ended up watching a double feature about Nazi concentration camps on Amazon Prime.

First was Naked Among Wolves (inventively just called "The Camp" on Amazon), decent enough though nothing you haven't seen before and done better in other movies, but overall a fine watch. Bizarrely there is a German officer in it who is the spit of Ralph Fiennes in Schlinders List, incredibly uncanny.

Second was Collette (generically renamed Prisoners of Auschwitz), surprisingly this one got far more medicore reviews but I thought it was far better, really good production values and portrayed the grimness and general reality of camp life more convincingly. Interestingly while it's a Czech film it's English language.

Not quite Son of Saul or Schlinders List levels of film-making, but very good.

I suppose to be fair Naked Among Wolves is about Buchenwald which wasn't an actual extermination camp like Auschwitz so they're portraying different things and the latter is going to be bleaker, which it absolutely was.

Would recommend both for anyone interested in the topic though.

pixelburp

Ed Wood (1994)

A treatise on the bulletproof confidence of those possessing more hopeless optimism than talent, manifested through a ragtag & talentless group of charismatic misfits & losers; the shunned basically, whose latent good nature even while surrounded by adversity was a source of the film's positive energy, no matter if actual "success" eluded them all. All around these earnest faces lay tragedy, addiction and rejection yet Burton's arguable masterwork never once wallowed or indulged in excessive exoticism or turmoil: this was a deeply empathetic story that admired its characters, even as darkness would intermittently interrupt the goofing about - such as the visual motif of Bela Lugosi's pin-pricked arm reminding what lay beneath all the cheery gumption. Indeed the very last scene's text scrawl managed to drop a bum note in the lap of the audience: a close up of Johnny Depp's hopelessly amiable rictus grin as text on screen spoke of later alcoholism and squalor; Burton dropped the mic with a curt reminder that eventually, reality can shatter our belief things might yet turn out OK.

As said I think this might be Burton's best film: perhaps it lacked the kind of signature eccentricity of his early work (that would eventually become a sad empty pastiche), but it had enough of that sense of the macabre coupled with a really deft control of his visual impulses that all the jumbled tones neatly slotted into each other. HIs use of black and white here was fabulous, some of his compositions quite stunning really. It was a reminder that mainstream cinema lost one of its more creative voices when Burton started picking up easy pay cheques to churn out anemic studio flicks. Ed Wood felt like a point where maybe in another universe, he kicked on and really honed his style - instead it may yet be the zenith? Certainly, I hold zero hope for Beetlejuice 2 arresting that sense of decline.

His films might now be box office poison, and his personal life the subject of tattle and controversy, but this film served as a reminder why Johnny Depp was such a big name for a time: his performance was a touch theatrical - but in all the right ways. It was a balance of ostensible cheer full of encouragement for his friends, and an internalised sense of simmering frustration; it was sometimes fleeting with a quick twitch of the eye, but I always got a sense that this performance of barrelling enthusiasm was nothing more than a patina. Like I said, the very final shot of his grinning face as the text read of a downward spiral really sold that sense of how the only truly convincing special effect Ed Wood ever managed was this bubbly persona. Then there was Martin Landeau selling - but never overselling - the sad, defeated cantankerousness of a Bela Lugosi already well out to pasture. In Wood he found a spark of bonhomie again, but the resignation in the old actor's shoulders told a different story - there was only one way it was all going to end.

It was also surprisingly nuanced and sympathetic in its portrayal of Ed Wood's transvestism, or his friend Bunny's desired transgenderism: this was a film from a time where while both were present in cinema, they were deployed as something grotesque, shocking or deceitful (see The Naked Gun 33⅓, Ace Ventura or even The Crying Game in its own way); instead, the film had a sense of foxhole camaraderie, ordinary people finding and accepting each other as they came; there was no judgement, only support. Sure a few moments were pitched as jokes, relying on others' reaction to Wood's clothing choices - but it never asked the audience to point and laugh either. Again, it was all part of this encouragement of the audience to embrace and cheer these losers whose only desire was to shoot some films together.

monkeyactive

The Creator

Left me a little unimpressed. Went into it hoping for something with the philosophical depth of Ex Machina or blade runner on the AI sentience Topic.

But this dealt with that aspect in a more smaltzy Termoinator 2 style and was more of a Chappie / District 0/ Elesyium style silly shoot em up, which was alright too. Thought they'd go full Akira with the kid but unfortunately not. Looked very cool and worth a watch but not the genre defying classic I was waiting for.

TICKLE_ME_ELMO

The Three Musketeers: D'Artagnan

First film of 2(?) in this year's French adaptation of Dumas' classic book. Starring everyone you've seen in other French and French adjacent things, like Vincent Cassel, Romain Duris, Eva Green, Vicky Krieps, and Louis Garrel.

I enjoyed it, it seems like everyone's having fun and the 2 hour run time flew by. The Three Musketeers don't get a lot to do in this one, and past their initial meeting with D'Artagnan they could be 3 random people for all the character exploration we get, but the political maneuvering around the King gets a lot of room to build, and it all left me quite excited for the second one. It felt like a good old fashioned swashbuckling romp.

Robert Jackson

Watched the uncut version of Maitresse the other night very much my cup of tea

HalloweenJack

High and Low

@pixelburp did a detailed review of this not too long ago. I've been looking to watch more Kurosawa films after Rashomon and Kagemusha but there are just so many. That review tipped the scales in its favour for my next watch.

I enjoyed it. The tension was well done and there are some great performances, though the cultural context is essential as I don't think some of the societal norms could be replicated in any country that wasn't Japan (the importance of the businessman, the chauffeur's humility and selflessness).

The investigation part reminds me of the middle chapters of a James Ellroy novel. It felt a bit disjointed, as if it were different episodes of a series. There are different styles incorporated into it. There's parts that feel like you're watching a play, others that are police procedural TV show, others which are true crime documentary (specifically, the police meetings and the press conferences) and then more hard-boiled detective films but the revolutionary thing is this was 1963 so it was quite ahead of its time in establishing such styles. It does drag a bit but it's a very good film.

As pixelburp mentioned, and its a bit of a spoiler, but its a black-and-white film up until one very important important moment with a shot in colour and its quite excellently done (the characters could have just said 'hey, look at that colour'). The camera work changes quite a bit depending on the 'style' of the scene which certainly makes it a unique film.

EDIT: I hadn't actually finished the film when I posted but the final scene was incredible. A great visual work from Kurosawa from both sides of those prison visitor screens where you can see both parties fighting to have the upper hand in the conversation.

Another idea that struck me: I watched this on a Spanish platform with Spanish subtitles and there is a formal and informal register in Spanish and I know there are several different registers in Japanese but I wonder was that properly conveyed in the English subtitles.

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121464658#Comment_121464658

I enjoyed it. The tension was well done and there are some great performances, though the cultural context is essential as I don't think some of the societal norms could be replicated in any country that wasn't Japan (the importance of the businessman, the chauffeur's humility and selflessness).

Oh for sure, it made the whole thing very unique while also kinda "strange": as I said myself, the way the chauffeur was so obsequious while everyone else criticised him to his face, was odd but also reflective of the distinct social structure of that time. His poor son was the one actually taken, but the narrative lamented Gondo the businessman's financial troubles 🤨 But then the film was also a critique of that class difference at the same time, cos the criminal made a point to note how domineering Gondo's mansion was on the hill, how it lauded over everyone down below & seeded a desire to lash out. Was a complicated beast of a film with no real easy answers.

You just couldn't make that story in American cinema cos by all accounts the rich man wouldn't be the character the audience would be asked to sympathised with - in fact if anything criminal "caper" movies reveal in making the rich person the victim.

As to the comment about the "register"; not sure I understand what you mean? Do you have any examples?

HalloweenJack

@pixelburp

I don't know a great deal about Japanese but I understand there is a tiered system of formality depending on the position of the speaker and the person they are speaking to.

An example in the film would be how the chauffeur talks 'down' to his son and then how he talks 'up' to his boss and the police. Or how Gondo was talking 'down' to the criminal at the end while the criminal was still speaking 'up' to him as a 'social superior'. In the film, Gondo seemed to be at the top, even above the police.

I understand it goes as far as different verb forms and titles. My wife's studied a bit of Japanese and once she got to this stuff, there was loads of new grammar and vocabulary to learn.

There is something similar but far simpler in Spanish. It's usually used by politicians in parliament or for talking to the elderly or people you don't know (though, this isn't as common among younger people). Previously, it would have been more common when talking 'up' to a social superior. There are different pronouns and verb forms but it doesn't really translate into English. A Spanish example would be saying 'hazlo' (do it, when talking 'down') and 'hagaselo' (when talking up).

As the Spanish and Japanese concepts are somewhat similar, it came across effectively in Spanish but I was wondering how that was done when translated into English.

Sorry for the detour - I'm a translator and the structural relations were an important part of the story so I'm curious on both fronts.

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121468609#Comment_121468609

That's my understanding too, though it never really occurred the caste system would extend into the language itself - but as you say it it makes sense there would be a different formality in how you address folks at varying tiers. I know French has a mild aspect of that too, where depending on the subject you're speaking to, you address them more formally.

Sorry for the detour - I'm a translator and the structural relations were an important part of the story so I'm curious on both fronts.

Naw the detour is useful 'cos it shows how much can potentially be lost in the nuance of these films if you're only relying on subtitles. Sometimes when watching French films my lingering competency with the language spots a real simplification in how someone spoke vs. what the subtitles would display. Obviously you need to strip things down to a one line sentence that's quickly read by the viewer, but sometimes you can lose something of the film - but what else can you do if you're not a native speaker?

HalloweenJack

Ceddo (Outsiders)

A 1977 film by Sembene Ousmane, a wonderful storyteller, about the forced Islamic conversion of West African peoples.

In an unspecified time, a king's daughter is kidnapped by one of the villagers (the titular outsiders). The question of who should rescue her leads to tension among the village leaders. The king, a recent convert to Islam, ignores the group's pre-Islamic traditions, important as only the leaders have converted while the villagers continue with the old religion.

Sembene's strength is as a storyteller. I've seen earlier films of his and I was surprised by how amateur this felt in comparison. There's some seriously stiff acting. The score comes in at odd times and is a mix of African rhythms and blaxploitation soundtracks with odd bursts of American gospel music (particularly odd because the film isn't in English and only a tiny part of the film deals with a Christian missionary). The camerawork is at times shaky and unfocused and it tends to linger a few seconds too long. It's nearly two hours long but there are long sequences with no dialogue. Technically, it isn't great.

But the story is: a criticism of Islam violently infiltrating African power structures and taking over while all the time demeaning the native practices and raising suspicion of the Christian missionaries and the European traders.

It is set before European colonisation but there has been contact with Europeans, most notably with slaves, weapons and alcohol. The criticism is on two fronts: the Europeans for their harmful commercial endeavours and the Muslims for violently suppressing any objections and denying the expression of indigenous culture. Given it was made at a time when African countries were gaining independence, it feels like a warning to not be taken in by Islamic fundamentalists just because they criticise the destruction that Europeans brought to Africa. There's a more recent film called Timbuktu which presents the same argument in a more effective manner (mainly due to the better technical aesthetic).

What I did find funny and petty was that the film was banned in Senegal (Sembene's home country) because the government said the title was a misspelling.

nachouser

Killers of the Flower Moon.

Looks and sounds gorgeous, as you would expect but I kept thinking to myself that everyone in it was too old for the circumstances their characters found themselves in. After looking up the history of the Osage killings, William Hale was in his 40's at the time of the first killings which makes more sense. Not an 80 year old man approaching the end of his life. All of the main actors just felt 20 to 30 years too old for what was going on. Scott Shepherd is 57 years old, ffs.

budgemook

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121478295#Comment_121478295

Yeah I had read the book so the age of the characters was pretty off putting for me. William Hale was 52 towards the end and Ernest Burkardt was in his 20's - realistically Leo could have played Hale. I thought Jesse Plemons was a woeful choice for Tom White too. Very strange casting all round.

I really enjoyed the film once I got over all of that though - Lily Gladstone is particular was excellent.

monkeyactive

The Holdovers,

A Christmas film released this year that probable went under many radars. Set around a group of students and a teacher who have to stay over Christmas break in their boarding school for various reasons.

Goes for a kind of Scent of a woman redemption through relationship, the breakfast club , 80's vibe.

Kind of a bit of a mess. Teens are a bit stereotypical, Characters your asked to emotionally invest in suddenly leave the film , Paul Giamati a bit overwrought , farcical and not believable enough as the lead. Too many heart strings being tugged in too many directions and a sense that they really made this up as they went along.

Still as a Christmas film it ticks boxes and hits the right notes for a night in during the holidays.

TICKLE_ME_ELMO

The Holdovers isn't being released here until next year.

Fysh

I rewatched Fear Street: 1994 the other day; it's still an enjoyable riff on several horror tropes. Not sure if I'll rewatch the latter two films though - they are decent but not up to the first one (in part because the first one has the best needle drops).

I also watched It's A Wonderful Knife on Shudder, a decent but unexceptional slasher riff on It's A Wonderful Life. The cast and general setup was pretty good, but I think the script needed more refinement. There are a couple of moments where it feels like you're going to get a reveal suggesting a bit of awareness of slasher tropes, but they don't go anywhere. It's a fine way to pass an hour and a half but I wouldn't be going back to it.

pixelburp

Paprika (2006)

A feature that could be at once effortlessly playful, before adroitly pivoting towards moments that were quite disturbing and dark, always ensuring the viewer would be jostled out of any creeping fallacy that this might be entirely frivolous little jaunt through dreams by a literal manic pixie dream girl. This strategy of periodic shock culminated in what I can only describe as a moment of horrendous personal invasion, rendered as something ... upsettingly imaginative. It wasn't ever over-cranked or indulgent but there were always little reminders that above all else, dreams can be somewhat fúcked up by default; that it doesn't take much for the surreal to quickly morph into something more existentially unpleasant.

While never apparently confirmed by Nolan himself, I could certainly see aspects of Paprika that found their way into Inception, but I'd stop short at calling the Hollywood blockbuster as any kind of genetic clone; it seemed more like little hints found their way into the Nolan vehicle. And as it was with the Spider-Verse films' animated super-heroics, Paprika demonstrated that the medium allows a much broader horizon of ideas than live-action can ever open up - especially in rendering our dreams. That's not to diminish Nolan's own film, 'cos it remains a fantastic blockbuster, but stacked against the raw visual fantasy of Kon's own exploration of dreamscapes, the Hollywood blockbuster might come off a little flat.

Paprika didn't just jettison simple notions of physics, or throw out the odd surrealist image, it completely warped and upended the structures of cinematic language itself - with one particular Cut so outrageous it defies description by text - yet also was a perfect embodiment of the illogical nature of our dreams. And yet despite all that scant regard for internal geometry or spatial coherence, it was quite remarkable how I was never lost or bewildered by the constant shift of competing realities - or indeed the eventual merging of both. It was that sense of being lost, but also aware of my forward direction at the same time - not unlike a dream I suppose?

This was my first Satoshi Kon film, and I could already see why his passing at such a young age felt like a career halted before it got going: 'cos just on the basis of this film alone I saw a director with an already matured, fiendish talent for manipulating space and time as just another part of the editing process of cinema; but not so arbitrarily that it ever became an annoying gimmick - or rendered the story unintelligible. Think I'm gonna have to go and seek out the rest of his tragically short CV.

HalloweenJack

All Quiet on the Western Front

My kind of war movie. Visually quite stunning and the score was brilliant, I loved the two leitmotifs.

A brilliant performance from the main actor who skillfully showed the character's development over the two hours. The main supporting one was very good, too. The story was well done, not bogged down in exposition and heavy amounts of dialogue, though the opening scene was well done.

There is a case of history repeating itself through the story while there was also a sense of inevitability about it (I was already familiar with the ending) and an impressive display of just how war wears people down. I was left thinking that Paul was ready to die towards the end and his final assault is more about him attacking the concept of war as opposed to the enemy.

Highly recommended.

heatnikki

Midsommar, it is brilliant. 9/10.

pixelburp

Murder on the Orient Express (1974)

Ah allo! I am doing zee accent zat is broadlee oorupeen, yas?; I suppose I can't crib about Poirot's accent when everyone was pulling a cod euro inflection.

One of the Agatha Christies that has perhaps transcended into existing within the broad pop cultural mother-brain; arguably without many (most?) ever having read the novel I feel - though that could be massive projection on my part, as it has always seemed like the enduring legacy of this story was the especially singular "solution" to its mystery. So here we have the 1970s adaptation, itself singular in the sense of having a once-off Poirot, with Albert Finney's turn existing like the George Lazenby of Belgian detectives as David Suchet, Peter Ustinov and - most recently - the giant moustache with Kenneth Brannagh attached, had multiple films in the role.

And perhaps like Lazenby, while I believe Finney has his fans I did not like the Poirot here: this was a grumbling, hunched and frequently & obnoxiously loud version of Poirot, all wrapped up in a thick accent that made comprehension a bit of a mystery unto itself. Perhaps this was a more faithful adaptation of the character from the books - but Suchet and Ustinov definitely brought a softer, more genial approach to the ostensibly irascible detective. Maybe it's just that I grew up with UK & Irish TV, where both actors' iterations were on constant repeat, Ustinov's charisma a natural gentling of those rougher edges. Still smug, confident and lout - but amiable and magnetic. If I met Albert Finney's version, I'd probably ring security.

As to the film itself: structurally it felt like a much denser meal, the central mystery more elaborated and exacting as opposed to Kenneth Branagh's more melodramatic and calorie-light version. Here Sidney Lumet let the characters shoulder the burden of the drama, allowing the dialogue and twists therein inform the audience's emotional responses - rather than queueing up some flashy bit of cinematography, blocking or whatnot. Or indeed manufacturing some action set-piece, like the Citizen Kane parrot writ large. That said, I'm not sure what version I preferred on reflection, 'cos while I respect Lumet for not treating the audience as needing occasional superficial jolts, his direction's pedestrian & no-frills approach bordered on the somnambulant at times. Particularly with that soft, lightened look the film always had.Sometimes a little pep or flourish goes a long way.

nachouser

American Underdog on Netflix.

Yeah, it's got a lot of religion in it, but it's based on a true story and it has the bonus of Dennis Quaid popping up in the last third. I know nothing about American football, but I enjoyed it. And it's U rated so maybe something for the kids over the weekend.

Which brings me to my two favourite U rated films ever.

The Rookie (2002)

Dennis Quaid again, in a "Is it too late to live my dream?" thing re baseball. It's a really rewarding, funny, feel good film.

Innocent Moves / Searching for Bobby Fischer (1993)

Such a great cast and the kid holding it all together is great.

Fysh

This year it's been a fair amount of ghost stories and horror for me around Christmas. Probably the standout, at least in part due to not expecting all that much from it, was Dead Of Night, a 1945 anthology horror. While it is in some ways of its time - the acting style probably the most notable - in terms of narrative it holds up very well, and in particular it sticks the landing excellently. A very pleasant surprise.

Tony EH

^

Easily the best story is 'The Ventriloquist's Dummy'. If you liked that, maybe you should check out 'Magic' from 1978.

Fysh

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121537258#Comment_121537258

Yeah, I think that's the strongest story of the bunch - mind you, I think the only one I found a bit disappointing was the one about the two golfers, and even at that I do understand the reasoning behind having something more light-hearted at that point in the film. 'Magic' sounds interesting, I shall stick it on the list, thanks :)

NIMAN

Will start off by saying I'm not Bond fan.

Stopped watching them away back in the 80s, early 90s maybe. Think I also watched Quantum of Solace.

Just switched on Die Another Day, as its Xmas and I'm slouching on the sofa. Can't believe just how bad it is. Cheesy, terrible acting, terrible dialogue, incredibly sexist and filled with smutty schoolboy humour. Women treated like objects.

I suppose it was of its time.

Tony EH

The Pierce Brosnan movies were awful.