What have you watched recently? 3D!

silliussoddius

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123886094#Comment_123886094

Thanks, had meant the one with Gregory Peck.

steve_r

The Big Heat - 1953

I do love a film noir and came across this recently. Directed by Fitz Lang, it tells the story of a cop (Glenn Ford) who goes after the crime syndicate who runs the city.

There's an element of cliché associated with that premise but there's a darkness and violence in this film which which I wouldn't generally associate with films of that era.

It subverts a number of the tropes of that era in how it portrays the lead character and the "femme fatale".

I've included below a link to Scorsese discussing this film - the clip does talk about a few key scenes so spoiler warning.

A tight 90 min film that stuck with me for a while after finishing it.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=UiR_FF6XZgU

johnny_ultimate

Speaking of the end of the world..

A House of Dynamite

Kathryn Bigelow returns with material that should be right in her wheelhouse: a tense procedural thriller about what unfolds when it's discovered a nuclear missile is making its way towards a US city.

In terms of tension and unease, it's certainly effective - though the drama largely being relegated to office spaces and situation rooms perhaps means it lacks the raw, visceral unease of some of the older nuclear panic films. But, like The Hurt Locker, Bigelow is adept at capturing the teeth-gritting panic that sets in when everything is about to go to ****. Nuclear war remains an existential horror, and this - despite its procedural nature - doesn't shy away from that.

There's two big problems.

The first is the structure. This is a triptych film, where we watch the same 30 minutes or so unfold from multiple different perspectives (while there's three parts, there are multiple viewpoints in each). The best of those is the first, focused largely on Rebecca Ferguson's White House situation room officer. It's a problem when the best of a triptych is the first part. While Bigelow does manage to maintain the tension each team even when the audience is aware of the inevitable worsening of the situation, the perspectives - almost all focused around White House or military personnel - are simply not different or illuminating enough to justify repeating broadly similiar stories. Yes, some information is withheld in each part, but it's just not enough to justify going around the block three times.

The second, and more damning problem, is that it feels like this film has arrived at the worst possible moment. Its potrayal of a competent US administration, a nobel & thoughtful president, careful diplomacy in a time of crisis etc… feels completely divorced from the current shambles that is the United States government. Frankly, this stuff would have been questionable during any US administration, despite a more sustained illusion of "competence". In the Trump era, it exists in the realm of pure fantasy. Despite the careful production design, procedural detail, very real horror of nuclear war etc… it can't escape the contemporary moment in which it arrives. Zero Dark Thirty might have been controversial - this just feels naive.

Tony EH

a nobel & thoughtful president

Hmmmmm

🤔

😛

johnny_ultimate

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123889537#Comment_123889537

Occasionally I’m happy to leave typos as they are :)

Romario11

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123889438#Comment_123889438

Pity you have to insert your politics into your reviews, like its a sort of common knowledge or something. You’re a self confessed marxist are you not? An even lower form of political ideology than the one you happily abhor.

Bogey Lowenstein

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123888120#Comment_123888120

The Narrow Margin is a good one if you like a bit of noir.

silliussoddius

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123889911#Comment_123889911

Damn real world is stopping me from being able to tell if this is serious.

Tony EH

'The Concorde...Airport '79'

The 1970's was the greatest period of Hollywood and disaster movies were a staple of it. The 70's produced some of the best films that have ever been made, largely as a result of studios letting directors with vision control what they wanted to put on the screen and the decade having a more relaxed attitude to what was allowed in the cinema in terms of sex, violence and more realistic acting in dramatic situations.

The awkwardly named 'The Concorde...Airport '79' is not one of those movies. Instead it is, easily, the worst entry into the Airport series of films, that began in 1970 with 'Airport' and continued in 'Airport '75' and 'Airport '77'.

The disaster befalling the Concorde in this movie is the result of some dodgy businessman, Kevin Harrison (Robert Wagner) who's been selling arms to people that he shouldn't have been. When his girlfriend and news reporter Maggie (Susan Blakely) finds out about his dirty dealings he plots to bring down the plane that she boards to Paris.

It really is as dull as it sounds and 'The Concorde...Airport '79' is a laborious slog to get through. The plot is just too thin to sustain a movie of this length and as if to illustrate that the Concorde doesn't go through just one disaster, but two, which probably isn't too much of a spoiler.

Occupying the cockpit is Hollywood character actor, George Kennedy (who was also in the original 'Airport' 8 years previously as the same character), French superstar Alain Delon (who looks thoroughly disgusted with himself) and British non-star David Warner (who sits in his chair, pretends to do things and thinks of his paycheck). Passengers and cabin crew are filled out with mostly nobodies and sprinkled with one or two familiar faces, like Eddie Albert and Sylvia Kristel. Absolutely no one appears to be having a good time.

The only thing about 'The Concorde...Airport '79' that has any kind of charm is some of the model work, especially in the end crash sequence. But the effects are mostly awful, especially when when the Concorde itself is thrown around in manoeuvres that, in real life, would rip it to pieces in a matter of seconds.

A truly dreadful movie with bad writing, uninvolved acting, mediocre direction and not so special effects. Even the music was instantly forgettable.

As an aside, listen out for 'The Simpsons' Harry Shearer as a television voice over. It's impossible not to think of Kent Brockman, which was the only thing that brought a smile to my face for the entire duration of the film.

How it made $65 million on a $14 million budget is a minor miracle.

1/10

steve_r

Play Dirty (2025)

Directed by Shane Black and starring Mark Walhberg as the "Parker" character from the Richard Stark books.

This has been fairly critically panned but I went into it thinking surely it can't be that bad - Shane Black after all and based off a novel so presumably there source material is there from a storytelling perspective.

In a lot of ways the reviews are kind to it. The basic storytelling is awful, we meet characters who quickly vanish, we meet antagonists that seems to exist in a separate world - there are multiple threats - except there aren't because Parker is basically superpowered.

There's no humor or charm in this at all. I found Walhberg incredibly unlikeable in this and wished they had gone with someone different.

It has such a weird tone - the body count is massive and the characters are totally flippant. Parker himself is made out to be sympathetic but sociopathic is probably a more accurate representation.

What's frustrating is that it could have been a lot better - refine the character more, tighten up the plot and the cast of characters but the whole thing just reeks of a paycheck for everyone involved.

Tony EH

'Beast of War'

In 1942 a group of ANZAC troops get set adrift in the Timor sea after their transport is attacked and sunk by Japanese aircraft, where they soon find out that they are being stalked by a 20 foot great white shark.

Directed by Kiah Roache-Turner, 'Beast of War' starts out as a bog standard WW2 movie, showing greenhorn Aussie troops on manoeuvres, where we're introduced to the characters we'll be on the raft with. Among these "diggers" is Leo Bennett (Mark Coles-Smith), who is half Aborigine and immediately there's some cheap racial tension added into the mix to provide a bit of extra drama between the men as another soldier Des Kelly (Sam Delich) continually needles him and calls him racist slurs...just in case blokes being chewed up by a big shark wasn't enough drama for you.

'Beast of War' ends up being a kind of low brow 'Jaws' set in World War Two that can never even hope to match Spielberg's masterpiece. Its shark antagonist is absurd looking and while Bruce (the shark in 'Jaws') can appear to be a bit dodgy in one or two places, he's a much more realistic looking effect. Beast of War's great white simply looks like a ridiculous, nightmarish, monster and nothing at all like a real great white.

The setting, too, never feels realistic once we are out to sea and everything is clearly shot on a sound stage with the excuse of a gigantic fog bank being used to explain why everything is shrouded in murkiness. The whole film simply looks too fake after we leave the opening jungle scenes.

'Beast of War' ultimately results in being a mediocre way to spend 90 minutes, but it certainly won't be spending any time in your memory afterward.

5/10

Osmosis Jones

Another quick run through of my past 2 weeks:

Pretty Woman, 1990

Another in my line of RomComs I've never seen, it's all about Julia Roberts here, even if the movie had nothing else going on her performance alone is raison d'être.

I found it at points charming, touching, funny, and sometimes uncomfortable (as intended).

4.5/5

One Battle After Another, 2025

I've given more thoughts on this one in its dedicated thread, it's hard to imagine that this won't be my movie of 2025 by year's end….it might even be my movie of the decade so far.

5/5

Casino, 1995

I don’t care if it’s considered “too similar to Goodfellas” to some (also I don’t really think it is), I’d watch a million DeNiro/Pesci gangster movies. I’d put this somewhere in the middle of my Scorsese movie rankings, which is to say it’s excellent.

4.5/5

Raising Arizona, 1987

Returning to the Coen Brothers after some time away, certainly not as a grand as some of their other movies but this one’s a lot of fun. I compared the comedy in The Hudsucker Proxy to The Simpsons and I’d say the same for this one, everyone in this movie is a cartoon character. Can fully understand why the Coens couldn’t let go of John Goodman after this, he has so many hysterical moments (the hayseed bank robbery, every extremely long scream, “do they blow up into funny shapes?”).

4/5

Panic Room, 2002

Very different to all the other Fincher movies I’ve seen, a much smaller and more singular story. Jodie Foster and Kristen Stewart are really great together, the movie has boatloads of tension and crafts a real nightmare scenario for the main characters. At just under 2 hours the premise never wears thin either. Platonic ideal thriller.

4/5

Feel like I need to watch something bad to recalibrate 😆

Xofpod

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123896335#Comment_123896335

Looks like you picked the wrong week to give up on quality movies…

Bogey Lowenstein

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123901598#Comment_123901598

Good call on Casino. DeNiro and Pesci just work so well together.

That is what annoyed me about Alto Knights where DeNiro plays the two leading roles: the whole way through I was thinking 'why didn't you just get Pesci to play the slightly unhinged, violent character, you idiots!'.

The producers had an open goal there and they skyballed it.

Dogsdodogsstuff

One battle after another really should have been just up my alley but I couldn’t connect with what Anderson was going for, I need another watch of it as I didn’t know anything about it going to watch it.

I didn’t find it as funny as I probably should have and the on the nose political points made seemed, well, too on the nose.

I’m not going to rate it cause I don’t know what to think of it. Longer movies you aren’t entirely enjoying can feel more annoying and there were moments were I was like “I don’t really care what happens here”, which is not ideal.

Punch drunk love and Magnolia really resonated with me, probably at a time in my life when I felt lonely and just not somebody who fits in and has no voice. Boogie nights was an absolute riot and had perfect mix of humour and tragic story.

This feels more like a political statement that I can’t connect with because I can’t find any heart in the story. Even the main relationship, I was rooting for the father but I didn’t feel the payoff.

steve_r

Day of the Fight - 1951 - Stanley Kubrick Short

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_K6Cu4N8JLo

This is Kubricks first short film, and follows a boxer waiting for his fight to start.

Quite interesting to see the early work of someone who would go on to have such an accomplished career.

The story is basic but visually I found it quite striking, and well worth a watch.

Tony EH

'Dangerous Animals'

'Dangerous Animals' is a mildly entertaining piece of horror trash that's let down very badly by a couple of unlikable characters (the type of millennial tropes that thinks they crap ice because they're so cool) and one supremely stupid and utterly implausible scene involving handcuffs which instantly removed a couple of points from it.

To its credit, it's led by a genuinely pleasing lead turn from Jai Courtney and the central premise is a mash up that I've never seen before, plus the movie switches its lanes very slickly indeed.

But, when it's all said and done, 'Dangerous Animals' fits far too comfortably into that box that we call "straight to streaming". The modern day equivalent of "straight to video" that used to be a bench mark for sub par or bang average video releases back in the 80's.

4/10

Osmosis Jones

The French Connection, 1971

I'm a huge huge huge fan of The Wire and watching The French Connection for the first time all I could think about was how much of an inspiration this clearly was for it. The documentary filming style, the tone and themes, the sparse use of music, all the way down to the protagonist being a drunk Irish-American sex pest named Jimmy with "smartest guy in every room" delusions of grandeur.

The location shooting in this is astounding, the scenes in France (especially on the coast) are so serene, everything in New York feels so real (and from reading the IMDB page maybe too much of it was real! 😆).

The way the chase scenes are shot is breathtaking especially the Subway chase with Charnier, following him almost exclusively through quick glimpses of his umbrella through the crowds… and again to liken it to The Wire each has a big cat and mouse chase scene that climaxes with the antagonist coming out on top and acknowledging the police for the first time like so:

When the movie started I fell into thinking it was just going to be a great buddy cop sort of movie, but the character of Popeye and Hackmann's phenomenal performance take this down a very different path. The abrupt ending stunned me, as did the choice to end with that horror movie-esque composition.

5/5

Tony EH

I love the way Doyle is a racist, sexist, swine, but you still want him to get the better of Frog One, the suave, sophisticated French drug smuggler.

And yes, a lot of it was guerilla film making, back in the days when you could just take a camera and film stuff on the streets. These days you need permits out the wazzoo to do that in New York and other cities in the US. Probably for good reason too as a lot of movie productions were shutting down entire streets for days at a time at one stage.

The car chase under the el train in Brooklyn is second only to the one in 'Bullitt'.

One of the greatest films ever made in my book. I have a lot of time for the Frankenheimer sequel too.