What have you watched recently? 3D!

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TICKLE_ME_ELMO wrote: »

I watched The Kid Who Would Be King a few weeks ago. It's, I think, Cornish's follow up to Attack the Block. I really enjoyed it too. It has the nostalgia feeling of things I watched as a kid without laying it on too heavy by actually setting it in the 80's/90's.
I didn't realise until after watching this that Joe Cornish is Joe from Adam & Joe. I have distinct memories of seeing bits of their TV show when I was probably too young to be watching it and finding it hilarious.

Yeah, The Kid who Would be King was a surprisingly fun movie but IIRC got buried in the schedules and was a bit of a flop. I remember the Adam and Joe show too, they were kinda doing the geek nostalgia humour long before the internet oversaturated the concept; and Cornish seems to take that into his brief filmography. "...King" felt very much of the aesthetic of The Goonies, Time Bandits and those other darker kids oriented films. Hope Cornish keeps going as both his films have shown good energy and playfulness.

Mr Crispy

Deep Blue Sea 3

I'm on a monster movie/creature feature binge at the moment and following some semi-decent reviews, I was hoping this would be above average. But no. Despite some decent effects that belie the low budget, this is pretty poor fare. Cliches abound, and there are more than a couple of preposterous set pieces. A step above the SyFy Channel crap, but nowhere near being a good example of the genre.

johnny_ultimate

House of Hummingbird - fantastic debut from South Korean director Bora Kim: a refreshingly unusual and messy take on the coming-of-age drama. No easy revelations or catharsis here - instead, it's a move that captures the confusion of teenage life in a memorable and probing way. Goes beyond the clichés to find something that truly feels more honest and genuine than you usually get in this sort of film. Looks great too, with some superb use of natural lighting to create moments of subtly heightened emotion.

Candyman - this 90s slasher cult favourite has aged very well. It's the rare socially-conscious movie of its ilk, really keen to dig into issues such as gentrification and class / racial divides in the US. I think actually that's what makes it unusually well-suited to the imminent reboot / sequel - especially one being made by a young black female director. Of course, this functions well as a piece of slasher movie thrills as well, even if it's often a bit flimsy in terms of pacing and concept. The Philip Glass soundtrack digs right into the skin, while Tony Todd's unnervingly dominant voice makes the titular phantom a memorable movie villain.

Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol - in terms of inventive action setpieces, this is definitely a series highpoint: you'd rarely get one action sequence of delightful fun and invention in an average blockbuster, but you get three or four of them here. The hallway 'illusion' is a blast, and the skyscraper scaling is the pinnacle of 'Tom Cruise is a mad bastard' filmmaking. Brad Bird did good in that sense. As a total package, it's messy and surpassed by its predecessor and particularly its successors: a forgettable villain, nonsense plot and weak third act are problems here compared to the relentless thrill of Fallout in particular. Still though, it's a great and distinctive entry in Hollywood's best modern franchise.

Boogie Nights - definitely pales a bit in comparison to what PTA would go on to do, but an awful lot to like nonetheless. Most importantly, PTA learned the right lessons from the likes of Goodfellas and Nashville: this isn't a straight copy of those films, but takes the freewheeling, multi-stranded style perfected by Altman and Scorsese and does its own thing with it. Extremely playful too: the coke-addled confrontation that serves as the film's climax (in a film filled with different sorts of climaxes... ahem) is both uncomfortably tense and legitimately hilarious. The random firecrackers going off and random pop tunes as the situation threatens to spiral out of control... it's a scene that's early evidence of the sheer talent of the man who'd go on to make some of the best films of the past two decades.

Tony EH

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

Candyman - this 90s slasher cult favourite has aged very well. It's the rare socially-conscious movie of its ilk, really keen to dig into issues such as gentrification and class / racial divides in the US. I think actually that's what makes it unusually well-suited to the imminent reboot / sequel - especially one being made by a young black female director. Of course, this functions well as a piece of slasher movie thrills as well, even if it's often a bit flimsy in terms of pacing and concept. The Philip Glass soundtrack digs right into the skin, while Tony Todd's unnervingly dominant voice makes the titular phantom a memorable movie villain.

Don't bother with the sequels.

gmisk

Tony EH wrote: »

Don't bother with the sequels.

The trailer for the new version looks very promising

gmisk

I am watching Jaws at the minute....still brilliant it has aged really well.

flasher0030

I watched the OldBoy last night – the American version. Not the Korean one. I know recommendations are that the South Korean one is much better, but was tired last night and not in the form for subtitles.

Anyway, really enjoyed it. I thought it was very good. I knew nothing about the storyline which made it more compelling, in that I hadn’t a clue as to why things were happening. I would recommend it and ignore the usual gripes that generally critisise re-makes. Josh Brolin plays the main character well. 9/10 for me. Was gripped to it for the entire movie.

Countdown Watched it at the weekend. An app that tells you when you're going to die. Entertaining enough. I thought it would be a cheesy type movie, but was actually quite scary. I’d give it a 7 out of 10.

Her Wasn’t too gone on this. It was ok. Very well done. Very arty. Nice concept. But overall it was a bit draggy. Similar enough style to Lost in Translation. If you like that, you’d prob like Her. Another great performance by Phoenix.

gmisk

Days of the bagnold summer

A teenager spends his summer listening to heavy metal music and trying to get along with his librarian mum.

A little low key gem not to everyone's taste, but I really enjoyed it I have to say, good cast and the belle and sebastian soundtrack helped too!
8/10

santana75

Unhinged

Russell Crowe film which starts off really well. I mean the first 20 minutes or so sets things up brilliantly. But then it just descends into ridiculousness. It's very similar to Steven Spielberg's Duel but that movie kept the tension and believability right to the finish line whereas this loses the plot long before the final act. Cant fault the acting, everyone is really good, especially big Rus. Although he's taking the Big thing a little too far......his appearance is quite shocking, Maximus is a very distant memory at this stage. Hope he turns it around, always liked him and he's a quality actor. Just hate to see him go the way of Marlon Brando

El Gato De Negocios

Beetlejuice

Watched it over the weekend for the first time in over 20 years. Had hugely fond memories of it but i really didnt enjoy it. Keaton kinda grates in it. Some of the effects work is super but some of the effects work like the sandworms and the stop motion looks really dated.

6/10

Sleepaway Camp (1983)

One of the few 80s slashers that I hadnt seen before. Standard summer camp who is the killer fare. Light on gore, poor acting but saved from total mediocrity by an enjoyable ending.

6/10

Flash Gordon (1980)

Recently released in a glorious 4k boxset by Studio Canal, this is another that i had fond memories of but had not seen in years. Thankfully, I was not left disappointed. This is an absolutely delightful romp, more hammy than a pig processing plant, cheesier than Kilmeadan village and more colorful than an explosion in a paint factory this ticks every box for a thoroughly enjoyable sci fi romp. The cast is perfect, from the doe eyed Sam Jones in the titular role, Topol as the mad scientist Dr Zarkov, Max VonSydow as Emperor Ming and a scene eating turn from Brian Blessed as Prince Vultan, everyone involved is hugely watchable. Some of the effects work is naturally a little dated and some of the sets could have been lifted directly from Prisoner Cell Block H but neither matter because the movie is so much damn fun. A perfect fun filled family movie, cannot wait to watch it with my own kids when they are a little older.

10/10

johnny_ultimate

The Matrix Reloaded / Revolutions - Like everyone, I watched these films in the cinema in 2003. Like everyone, I felt a sense of vague disappointment with Reloaded that transitioned to anger with Revolutions. So the pop culture record goes. But I've seen another train of thought become more prevalent recently: something once whispered by a few, but that has had more and more believers emerge recently (look at the Letterboxd pages for these films). That train of thought? That The Matrix sequels are good, actually. The defenders were passionate enough that I was encouraged to revisit these most maligned of movies.

I'm not going to pretend these are unheralded masterpieces - they're too flawed, too uneven for that. They certainly lack the iconic simplicity and focus of the original. But equally I think these stand quite a bit above your Hobbits or Star Wars prequels.

The main thing is that the Wachowski sisters and their many collaborators are incredible stylists. These films are loaded with impressive compositions, epic production design and cool ideas. There's a moment when Trinity and Neo very, very briefly soar above the clouds of the ruined real-world - and it's a perfect example of how these filmmakers are willing to move from memorable image to memorable image with nary a pause for breath. Whether it's the incredible 'robot face' that Neo encounters or the Architect's room of TVs, these films for the most part hold up very well after 17 years of far more visually generic blockbusters becoming the norm. For the most part, but more on that below.

Also worth noting the action, which is frequently breathtaking. The highway chase that marks the climax of Reloaded is very simply one of the best CG action scenes of the last 20 years - sure, there are a few iffy moments, but the use of space in particular is tremendous: characters defying gravity and physics, while the action remains coherent and stylish throughout. The big final Neo / Smith brawl is something I hated first time around, but now wish more modern CG spectacles embrace: an intense, epic melee that has some of the absolute wettest rain ever committed to film. Even the Battle for Zion has a certain desperate intensity and physicality that elevates it beyond most climactic battles of its sort.

If only all the action was quite as convincing. There's no way to talk about these films without mentioning the infamous Burly Brawl in Reloaded - a chaotic fight that starts well enough, but descends into what I would call perhaps the worst CGI in blockbuster history. It's that the Neo model becomes so clearly computer-generated - a rubbery nothing that even at the time was unconvincing, but now looks like an early PS3 game - that makes the sequence fail so resolutely. The first 50% of the fight is entertainingly silly; the remainder is the ultimate case study in catastrophic CG excess.

It's all good talking about the style of the thing? What about the substance, if any? I think this is where the films are simultaneously better than I remembered, and as frustrating as I remembered. Having revisited based on the analyses of some of the film's more vocal supporters, I have certainly come around to these films being (re)loaded with good ideas. Neo's arc in particular is a fun exploration and deconstruction of the very concept of a 'hero's journey': he's someone battling against the idea that he is some prophesied saviour, and much of the films are about him coming around to 'choosing' his own path (superheroic though it may be). Similarly, the way the Wachowskis personify computer concepts is even more convincing here than it is in the original: many of the characters encountered are cool examinations of aspects of computing.

The problem is that the ideas can sometimes be lost. Straight off the bat it's hard to be particularly concerned about the moment to moment stakes - it's perhaps only when they're protecting the Keymaker in Reloaded that there's a clear, captivating 'goal' for the lead characters. A lot of both films consists of characters trying to reach some objective in a very video game way, but it can be confusing and uncertain about why the objectives are so important. The main three characters are frequently sidelined, and a lot of the new characters don't have enough space to come into their own (especially the ones who had subplots cut for a spin-off video game). And while the philosophical ideas and spiritual undercurrents are actually pretty interesting, that doesn't always come across: the Architect sequence might be a visually impressive one, but his 'ergo' ramblings are hard to parse without rewatching and listening very carefully.

So yes, flawed films these absolutely are, but I was actually generally pretty satisfied with rewatching these - to the degree I'm actually pretty fascinated now to see what the third sequel has to offer when it shows up. Misunderstood masterpieces? That's stretching it, perhaps. Better than I remembered? Yep.

fin12

Lord of the rings, return fo the king.

Just watched this in the cinema a few days ago having seen it in the cinema previously 14 years ago. What a amazing film and to think this film is nearly 15 years old, really stands the test of time. Love all those lord of the rings films and hobbit.

Really happy the cinema are bringing back old films and giving people the opportunity to see their favorites again in the cinema.

flasher0030

I watched a film Match Point. I had always thought it was some tennis romcom thing. But far from it. It's a great little psychological number.
Reminds me a lot of the movie Closer, with Johnny Rhys Meyers similar to the Jude Law character.
Anyway would definately recommend Match Point for 2 hours of entertainment. Complete film with very satisfactory ending.

Mizu_Ger

Victoria (2015)

Finally got around to watching this the other night. In general, I though it was good. The one-shot setup didn't bother me at all and I wasn't aware of it most of the time. The pacing did drag a little in some scenes, but the biggest problem I had was with Victoria's character. She needed more character development to make her actions more believeable. She was surprising (unbelieveably?) calm during the more outrageous sections (eg.

the meeting with the Eurotrash gangster in the underground car park

) and only seemed to get upset when the car wouldn't start!

If her character was developed better or the action in the second half of the film was more grounded it would have worked better.

Overall it's worth a watch.

gazzer

Watched Host last night. Only 56 minutes long but a bloody great scary movie. Well worth watching

megaten

Ride your Wave

I like most of Masaaki Yuasa's stuff that I've seen but I found this hard enough to get into, maybe its because despite having a pretty different plot it shares a lot of imagery and visual tricks with Lu over the wall.

Never Look Away 2018 Wow what a piece of filmmaking this is. It spans the life of an artist from the time he was a small kid pre WW2 until his 30's when he becomes a painter after escaping from East Germany to the West.
It is incredibly powerful and brutal at the beginning, and over 3 hours becomes something else entirely while delivery a painting lesson in a dramatic form that I have't seen in film before. Brilliantly acted and the direction truly outstanding. Couldn't recommend it enough.

Plode

The Wild One. Brando on a motorbike, all sullen and moody.

These "punks" would be in their eighties now!!

Kids those days...

Sugarlumps

Rollerball – Kinda futuristic sport involving rollerblades. Stellar cast. First 5 – 10 minutes were okay, braindead but passable for the purpose of falling asleep.

Ramped up in the last 15 minutes, went full retard. Like Trump had written it.

p to the e

Sugarlumps wrote: »

Rollerball – Kinda futuristic sport involving rollerblades. Stellar cast. First 5 – 10 minutes were okay, braindead but passable for the purpose of falling asleep.

Ramped up in the last 15 minutes, went full retard. Like Trump had written it.

Which version?

Sugarlumps

p to the e wrote: »

Which version?

LL Cool J.

Tony EH

Sugarlumps wrote: »

LL Cool J.

Well, there's your problem right there.

flasher0030

Just looking for a bit of advice:- I have set myself a 2 hour slot tonight to watch something. Was going to throw on something older like Mean Streets, Marathon Man, China Town, Serpico. Some movie like that. I've seen Godfathers, Goodfellows, Scarface
Or maybe Vertigo. It got great reviews, but is that because it's such an old film that was really ahead of it's time. Or would you look at it now, and think wow, that was really good. Some of those movies get generous reviews on the basis that they were made many moons ago, when resources to make movies were obviously a lot more limited.

Any advice is welcome. I watched about 20 mins of Chinatown last night, and seems good. Will prob go with that.

Homelander

Sputnik. Starts off well and is really compelling with some cool design, but the second half is painfully generic, by the numbers. Worth a watch if you enjoy sci-fi horror, but it doesn't do anything you haven't seen a hundred times before.

Harry Palmr

flasher0030 wrote: »

Just looking for a bit of advice:- I have set myself a 2 hour slot tonight to watch something. Was going to throw on something older like Mean Streets, Marathon Man, China Town, Serpico. Some movie like that. I've seen Godfathers, Goodfellows, Scarface
Or maybe Vertigo. It got great reviews, but is that because it's such an old film that was really ahead of it's time. Or would you look at it now, and think wow, that was really good. Some of those movies get generous reviews on the basis that they were made many moons ago, when resources to make movies were obviously a lot more limited.

Any advice is welcome. I watched about 20 mins of Chinatown last night, and seems good. Will prob go with that.

Christ, just rewind and watch Chinatown in one go! Sacrilege to start and not finish such a film.

In that same era I watched The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973) Directed by Peter Yates. Determinedly low key story of a low level Boston Irish criminal and those in his circle and how they come to grief. Robert Mitchum as the title character is his every reliable self looking a good decade older than his supposed 51 years of age (in the film). Richard Jordan, Peter Boyle and Alex Rocco are the other main leads. The real star is Boston in it's hideous post war redeveloped concrete 'inglory'.

branie2

Tenet at the cinema this evening, and it was very good.

flasher0030

Harry Palmr wrote: »

Christ, just rewind and watch Chinatown in one go! Sacrilege to start and not finish such a film.

In that same era I watched The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973) Directed by Peter Yates. Determinedly low key story of a low level Boston Irish criminal and those in his circle and how they come to grief. Robert Mitchum as the title character is his every reliable self looking a good decade older than his supposed 51 years of age (in the film). Richard Jordan, Peter Boyle and Alex Rocco are the other main leads. The real star is Boston in it's hideous post war redeveloped concrete 'inglory'.

Watched it last night. Didn't appeal top me at all. Plodded along about water for an hour and a half. And then shifted direction towards incest. And then when it looked like there was going to come to some conclusion, the credits rolled, and left it hanging.
I must read up about it. I must have missed something. If something like that were released these days, it wouldn't raise an eyebrow.

Tony EH

'Tentacles'

After the phenomenal success of 'Jaws' in 1975, there were a slew of sea monster movies quickly chucked out to cash in on its currency and there were none so eager to cash in than the maestros of cinematic cashing in, the Italians. 'Tentacles', or Tentacoli, exchanges a massive Great White shark for a massive octopus, which can apparently suck the marrow out of people's bones and leave nothing but an emaciated corpse behind to be washed up on the beach afterward. This beast has been disturbed by some dodgy underwater business activity and suddenly decided it would try a bit of manflesh for a change of diet and the locals and tourists of a Californian seaside town are on the menu. It's up to Will Gleason (Bo Hopkins) and his pair of trained orcas to tackle the tentacles and save the day.

'Tentacles' sounds like it should be a riot. A legit "so bad, it's good" movie that can provide some dubious fun with a few beers, and there are a number of those types of movies made from Italian producers during the period that fit that particular gap. But, unfortunately, the majority of the film is so dull that it becomes a real challenge not to check ones watch in between each attack.

Making things worse is the fact that 'Tentacles' is actually shot quite nicely too, by Roberto Piazolli, so there's not too many wobbles happening there to offset the tedium in the dull script, which one time Star Trek contributor Steven Carabatsos had a hand in. The effects aren't too bad in the main, either, and the only laughs in that dept. come at the end when a pair of crushingly obvious model killer whales attack what seems to be a real octopus, albeit a dead one (hopefully). The tedium never manages to subside and aside from a slightly tense opening scene director, Ovidio G. Assonitis (which sounds like a bad dose of something), fails to raise the pulse even momentarily.

Probably the most surprising thing about 'Tentacles' is the sheer amount of famous actors and familiar non-stars that they managed to get on board. Somehow, they convinced John Huston, Shelly Winters, Claude Akins and Henry Fonda onto this wreck, as well as the aforementioned Bo Hopkins who, while of a lesser umph, had a period of relative fame during the decade. But, the ultimate test of patience is the movie's reuse of music from other Italian productions. The most obvious being the centrepiece regatta scene that poaches Stelvio Cipriani's score from 1973's 'La Polizia Sta A Guardare'. Italian productions have a history of stealing music from other films as a way of keeping costs down, such as 'Zombie Creeping Flesh', which brutally nicked Goblin's 'Dawn of the Dead' tunes. But, unlike 'Zombie Creeping Flesh' which still entertains because it's a genuine "so bad it's good" movie, 'Tentacles' ends up just being generally boring and a waste of time all round.

1/10 (generous, if you ask me)

cdgalwegian

Tony EH wrote: »

'Tentacles'

After the phenomenal success of 'Jaws' in 1975, there were a slew of sea monster movies quickly chucked out to cash in on its currency and there were none so eager to cash in than the maestros of cinematic cashing in, the Italians. 'Tentacles', or Tentacoli, exchanges a massive Great White shark for a massive octopus, which can apparently suck the marrow out of people's bones and leave nothing but an emaciated corpse behind to be washed up on the beach afterward. This beast has been disturbed by some dodgy underwater business activity and suddenly decided it would try a bit of manflesh for a change of diet and the locals and tourists of a Californian seaside town are on the menu. It's up to Will Gleason (Bo Hopkins) and his pair of trained orcas to tackle the tentacles and save the day.

'Tentacles' sounds like it should be a riot. A legit "so bad, it's good" movie that can provide some dubious fun with a few beers, and there are a number of those types of movies made from Italian producers during the period that fit that particular gap. But, unfortunately, the majority of the film is so dull that it becomes a real challenge not to check ones watch in between each attack.

Making things worse is the fact that 'Tentacles' is actually shot quite nicely too, by Roberto Piazolli, so there's not too many wobbles happening there to offset the tedium in the dull script, which one time Star Trek contributor Steven Carabatsos had a hand in. The effects aren't too bad in the main, either, and the only laughs in that dept. come at the end when a pair of crushingly obvious model killer whales attack what seems to be a real octopus, albeit a dead one (hopefully). The tedium never manages to subside and aside from a slightly tense opening scene director, Ovidio G. Assonitis (which sounds like a bad dose of something), fails to raise the pulse even momentarily.

Probably the most surprising thing about 'Tentacles' is the sheer amount of famous actors and familiar non-stars that they managed to get on board. Somehow, they convinced John Huston, Shelly Winters, Claude Akins and Henry Fonda onto this wreck, as well as the aforementioned Bo Hopkins who, while of a lesser umph, had a period of relative fame during the decade. But, the ultimate test of patience is the movie's reuse of music from other Italian productions. The most obvious being the centrepiece regatta scene that poaches Stelvio Cipriani's score from 1973's 'La Polizia Sta A Guardare'. Italian productions have a history of stealing music from other films as a way of keeping costs down, such as 'Zombie Creeping Flesh', which brutally nicked Goblin's 'Dawn of the Dead' tunes. But, unlike 'Zombie Creeping Flesh' which still entertains because it's a genuine "so bad it's good" movie, 'Tentacles' ends up just being generally boring and a waste of time all round.

1/10 (generous, if you ask me)

Genuinely curious here. I assume you read some review prior to watching it, as material that somehow piqued your interest. But given this type of review:





..why on earth would you watch it? (and then give a considered review)

Tony EH

cdgalwegian wrote: »

Genuinely curious here. I assume you read some review prior to watching it, as material that somehow piqued your interest.

Oh I've been aware of it's reputation for years. But it was one that I was meaning to check out anyway and make up my own mind + I have a bit of a goo for Italian giallo/horror from the 70's and 80's. I was kinda hoping that their might be a bit of charm to it, like 'The Last Shark' - another Italian 'Jaws' rip off - but, alas, no.