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What have you watched recently? 3D!

johnny_ultimate

You people just keep on watching films, don't you?

We have reached the contractually-mandated 10,000 post limited in thread 2, so here's another one. It's like the first two, but with gimmicky 3D added and a no-name director taking over from the well-known one who directed the first two.

Here's the first thread: https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055488699
And the second: https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056732038

So... what have you watched recently?

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FullBack Jam

buried wrote: »

The Visit (2015) This was desperate stuff. Found footage style shtick attempting to be a horror film. First of all, the two kids are the most annoying characters to have ever been shot on film, you are supposed to empathise with these two as the main protagonists in this thing, but from the very get-go they are about as like-able as getting a migraine in your head and a toothache in your arse. Secondly, the found footage editing does not work in this at all. Too many times the camera is conveniently placed by one of these two exactly where the action is going on. Like they drop the camera in a drain, there is the lens standing up the right way in the drain, in the water, looking at the scene. Fair enough if this happens once or twice but it happens all the time, plus the camera is constantly turned on at the start when nothing seems out of the ordinary, all night sometimes, even though one of these two is "making a documentary about my moms parents house" for whatever reason. Thirdly, we get lots of footage of a long haired auld wan crawling on the ground. No matter how many times I see a long haired woman crawl around the floor or the ground in countless other horror films that have this awful style gimmick in them I do not find it scary or unnerving. It wasn't scary the first time, its definitely not the 5000th time. This is a M night Shamayalan jobeen and there could be a twist at the end but I swear to god, I had zoned out so much the last five minutes of this, I started to notice I really need to clean the cobwebs in the corners of my ceiling. Then there was the credits. Utter scutter/10

Ah, I think you're being overcritical for the sake of it. It's not a bad film.
Bit of a twist at the end. But nothing ground-breaking.

The Black Oil

Midnight Run

Very enjoyable, I thought. It reminded me of Dumb and Dumber and the Blues Brothers, and it felt like it was pitched just right. Serious ish, but also goofy. You root for them and they go through the ringer and the road scenes (and dialogue) don't feel like they've been vetted by a committee. Didn't feel dated at all and good to see Yaphet Kotto too, haven't seen him since I watched Homicide: LOTS. And yes, because of the genre, some police cars end up broken, destroyed or in a ditch.

Homelander

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

The Painted Bird - A shallow pastiche of a European art film.

Have to agree with you on this one. It's certainly a decent film, but I very much disliked the fact it went overboard trying to hammer home the message that war and persecution are hell, rather than just allow us to naturally come to that conclusion.

It's a stunning looking film, but just too exploitative, having the protagonist repeatedly encounter unspeakable depravity and cruelty literally everywhere he goes without respite.

If he had just taken the foot off the pedal slightly, it could have been one of the finest films of the past decade.

Still worth a watch and the 3 odd hours passes well, but a baffling missed opportunity for a timeless classic I thought by its end.

Come and See is a far better, more effective film that feels organic and credible.

Harry Palmr

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

Possession - bonkers yet impressive horror oddity, this. Everything is ramped all the ****ing way up - in particular Isabelle Adjani and Sam Neill's insane performances. The special effects are ghastly and grotesque and wonderful. Glorious late night nonsense

One day I'll watch this, I still remember the review in Starburst, not exactly a thumbs up to say the least

Used Cars - early Robert Zemeckis joint that has aged poorly in a few regards, and aged like a fine wine in many others. The film is mostly scattershot and often crude, and a lot of jokes don't land. But it works overall due to a committed cast (playing characters who range from lovable asshole to despicable asshole) and the many moments that do stick the landing.

It's absolutely preposterous, of course - Zemeckis and Bob Gale (working together a few years before Back to the Future) reject our reality and substitute their own. None of the logic holds together whatsoever - it features arguably the most absurdist court room scene in Hollywood history, and every plot setup is flimsy as all hell. But you get swept up in the screwball energy of it all, and it's hard not to have a good time. A major setpiece where a character attempts to force bad luck upon himself in a small bar is a masterpiece of physical comedy. But it's the third act that really puts a bow on this package: a lengthy, high-stakes and large-scale race against time that commits to its innate ridiculousness with impressive gusto. A grand old time.

Very enjoyable farce with two brilliant comic turns by Jack Warden as the warring rival car lot brothers.

The Concorde - Airport 79 (1979) Dir David Lowell Rich.

The final bedraggled entry in the Airport series is just terrible - it looks and feels like a TV movie of the era just with slightly coarser dialogue esp from the permanently horny Captain George Kennedy who along with Alain Delon and David Warner fill out the cramped cockpit. Of course this plane was still an exciting talking point when the film was made but it's technology and beauty aren't a feature at all really. It just happens to be a location for some of the most inept flying action scenes ever filmed. This cost more than Star Wars or Alien but as mentioned looks like TV. Hard to understand where the money went as the cast is very average. No big American names wanted to be on board by this installment. Watch it only for the laugh esp the distress flare moment at mach 2.

Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure 1988

Still "Bodacious"! (dual guitar riff thing)

Tony EH

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

Possession - bonkers yet impressive horror oddity, this. Everything is ramped all the ****ing way up - in particular Isabelle Adjani and Sam Neill's insane performances. The special effects are ghastly and grotesque and wonderful. Glorious late night nonsense.

Harry Palmr wrote: »

One day I'll watch this, I still remember the review in Starburst, not exactly a thumbs up to say the least

Amazing to think that this ended up on the Video Nasties list in the 80's.

FullBack Jam

Just watched Warrior there (again!!!). With Tom Hardy.
What a film. When the song by The National comes on near the end, it just gets me every time.

megaten

Watched Children of the Sea on screenanime.com, which still doesn't have an app so I had to hook my laptop up to my TV.
Saw it was one of the films planned fr the Japans Film Festival this year and it would have been nice to see it in the cinema. Plot is soothing to write home about but the visual are absolutely stunning and scream 'this was intended for a giant screen'

The Black Oil

The Last Samurai

I recall wanting to see this back in the day, comparisons with Dances with Wolves are inevitable. We watched that in school, where we dubbed it Wolf Dancin'. Anyway, Samurai is a pretty good film, though it never quite reaches the heights you might see elsewhere. You're always a little conscious of a Western lens (pardon the pun) being shone on a story like this. To its credit, it never seems to pull on Cruise's star power as a way of driving the film, compared to story and character. The main battle sequence is pretty intense too.

For the record, I hate seeing horses fall on camera.

Sugarlumps

Watched a decent doc called Tread. Colorado small town, dude gets slightly annoyed with the town counsel. Buys a dozer, turns it in to a vehicle straight out of Mad Max. Chaos ensues, should be turned into a movie.

pixelburp

Inception (2010)

Re-watched this for what I believe is the first time since the cinema - or at most its first appearance on home release or "other means".

Holds up as a triumph of action cinema, perhaps Nolan's zenith of structural gimmickry that has come to define his blockbuster work. All the time and money spent on "real" sets and stunt-work means it hasn't aged a day: its various action set-pieces still breathless in execution, building to a legitimately exciting climax that remains the best Bond movie never made.

The dialogue though. What an absolute stinker of a script; the awe of the visual experience perhaps blinded me, first time around, to the near-endless streams of exposition. Not even exposition dressed up through action; no no. Actual, tedious tutorials. If a script is 3/4s into its runtime is still injecting explanations as to the internal logic, then it needed rewriting by someone with panache.

TICKLE_ME_ELMO

Watched an Irish film from last year called The Last Right.
Long story short it's basically two estranged brothers (one American, one an autistic teen) and a neighbour woman driving from Skibbereen to Rathlan Island with a coffin tied to the roof rack, so they can bring this dead old man back to his home village to be buried alongside his brother.

It's very hit and miss and there ends up being a lot of random side threads thrown into the main plot that are then resolved very quickly. Michael Huisman plays the older brother, I've never rated him much as an actor, but Niamh Algar plays the woman who is with them and she is fantastic, easy to see why she's a star on the rise. Her scenes with the younger brother, Louis, are probably the best ones in the film. There's a couple of genuine laughs throughout and all in all it's an enjoyable enough watch if you're just looking to switch off and relax the brain for 90 minutes.

FullBack Jam

TICKLE_ME_ELMO wrote: »

Watched an Irish film from last year called The Last Right.
Long story short it's basically two estranged brothers (one American, one an autistic teen) and a neighbour woman driving from Skibbereen to Rathlan Island with a coffin tied to the roof rack, so they can bring this dead old man back to his home village to be buried alongside his brother.

It's very hit and miss and there ends up being a lot of random side threads thrown into the main plot that are then resolved very quickly. Michael Huisman plays the older brother, I've never rated him much as an actor, but Niamh Algar plays the woman who is with them and she is fantastic, easy to see why she's a star on the rise. Her scenes with the younger brother, Louis, are probably the best ones in the film. There's a couple of genuine laughs throughout and all in all it's an enjoyable enough watch if you're just looking to switch off and relax the brain for 90 minutes.

Haven't seen The Last Right. Must give it a spin.
WAtched Calm with Horses. Also with Niamh Algar. Loved her in it. Seemed so natural for her. Seems like a very cool lady. Hope she does well.

Homelander

Niamh Algar is really good in the excellent Shane Meadows TV show the Virtues.

TICKLE_ME_ELMO

flasher0030 wrote: »

Haven't seen The Last Right. Must give it a spin.
WAtched Calm with Horses. Also with Niamh Algar. Loved her in it. Seemed so natural for her. Seems like a very cool lady. Hope she does well.

I haven't seen Calm With Horsed yet but I would imagine it's a vastly different kind of thing than The Last Right

Homelander wrote: »

Niamh Algar is really good in the excellent Shane Meadows TV show the Virtues.

She's in the new Ridley Scott associated thing for HBO, Raised by Wolves, at the moment. I'm sure it wasn't an overnight success for her, but it seems that way from the outside.

Decuc500

The Dogs of War

A somehow forgotten early 80’s movie (it never appears on tv) about mercenaries hired to overthrow a regime in a small African country.
Very nice post Deer Hunter Christopher Walken performance. The intensity, facial tics and quirky delivery are all here.

I felt the Frederick Forsyth book dragged and the level of detail put into the planning of a coup was too much. It reads like a handbook on how to overthrow a government.
But the film condensed this detail into two very entertaining hours.

AMGer

A few older films the last two days

McCabe & Mrs Miller: first time seeing it, had been wanting to see it for a while. Splashed out on the criterion collection blu ray. Really excellent film, probably one that will benefit from repeat viewings. It features the most drab & dreary looking setting for a western that I’ve ever seen, yet the film still manages to look fantastic. I don’t think it’ll be everyone’s cup of tea though. It might not be fast paced enough for some tastes. The sound editing takes a bit to getting used to aswell. I love Robert Altman and this did not disappoint.

Django: Off the wall 60s spaghetti Western, I do enjoy these though. I need to check out more of Sergio Corbucci’s films. This is probably a good place to start. Lots of guns, lots of violence, really enjoyable 90 or so mins.

The Last Picture Show: Another I hadn’t seen before but it caught my attention on Sky Cinema. Again, really enjoyed this. Coming of age drama set in the backend of nowhere in early 50s Texas. Some great early career performances by Jeff Bridges, Cybil Shepard (& Randy Quaid). Great performances by Cloris Leachman and Ellen Burstyn aswell.

Red River: classic Western by Howard Hawks. Clips of it are seen in The Last Picture Show so I had an itching to dig it out again. One of better John Wayne performances IMO, Montgomery Clift in one of his first films is excellent alongside Wayne, Walter Brennan is amazing as always. If you like Westerns this is essential viewing. One of the best Westerns ever made.

Tony EH

AMGer wrote: »

Django: Off the wall 60s spaghetti Western, I do enjoy these though. I need to check out more of Sergio Corbucci’s films. This is probably a good place to start. Lots of guns, lots of violence, really enjoyable 90 or so mins.

If you can get hold of it, check out 'The Great Silence'. It's Corbucci's best and probably the best Spag western out there.

If you can, watch it with the English dub. The Italian never seems to work in westerns.

AMGer

Tony EH wrote: »

If you can get hold of it, check out 'The Great Silence'. It's Corbucci's best and probably the best Spag western out there.

I actually found a reasonably priced copy of the blu ray online today. High praise indeed to say probably the best Spaghetti western - you’d put it ahead of the Leone Spag westerns?

Zak Flaps

Random Acts Of Violence - Absolute Horsesh1t

El Gato De Negocios

The Goonies

Triumphant 80s classic that has not lost any of the thrills or fun that it had when I first saw it more than 30 years ago, cliche or not, they do not make them like this anymore.

Creepshow 2

Another anthology that while not as fun as its predecessor, is still an enjoyable romp. As 80s as a very 80s thing, the stories are decent with the third segment being the highlight by a good stretch and it really hits the mark for what a short should be.

Tony EH

AMGer wrote: »

I actually found a reasonably priced copy of the blu ray online today. High praise indeed to say probably the best Spaghetti western - you’d put it ahead of the Leone Spag westerns?

The Leone spags are sort of out on their own. But in the area of the Italian western, which is a very large area indeed, it is the best of its type, IMO, of course.

Bear in mind, its type of genre has peculiarities that you have to be forgiving of, such as dubbing. But, seeing as the Italians shot all of their films silent, you get a dubbed track no matter what. And the over acting of the secondary parts can be an issue too, if you don't just go with it.

However, if you're going to buy it, avoid reading too much about it though.

As far at the Dollars trilogy is concerned, I kinda burned out on them a number of years ago. They're still very good, especially 'For a Few Dollars More', which I consider the best. But, I've seen them so many times now, I could act in them.

I spose if I were to list the essential Spaghetti westerns, it would be the Dollars trilogy, Once Upon a Time in the West, Django and The Great Silence. There are, literally, hundreds of others out there. But they're all of wildly varying quality. Not that I've seen all of them, mind you.

AMGer

Tony EH wrote: »

There are, literally, hundreds of others out there. But they're all of wildly varying quality. Not that I've seen all of them, mind you.

Yeah, I saw some of the Sartana films recently, didn’t do much for me tbh. I’ll work my way through the Corbucci stuff and see what else is out there. You gave me some ideas from the recent ‘guess the screenshot’ thread post you had

Tony EH

The Sartana stuff isn't great. They're more amusing and interesting than entertaining. 'Sabata' is a better film and it also has Lee Van Cleef in it, which is a bonus.

Unfortunately, a lot of the spaghetti westerns are hit and miss and they ended up trying to ape American westerns and ended up losing what made them good in the first place. With the spaghettis, everyone is usually dodgy to some degree. There are no black hats and white hats like there are in American western movies. So, while they've all dated, some of the spaghettis remain more entertaining due to the dubious nature of their characters.

They're nearly always interesting, but they're also a bit limited too. I spose the best thing about them ended up being the effect they had on American western films, which became more gritty and "revisionist" in their wake.

[Deleted User]

The Rhythm Section - 2020 Seriously bad thriller effort here with this film despite a decent enough cast - Jude Law, Blake Lively, Sterling K. Brown. Meandering, pointless and unconvincing story. Avoid. 4/10

12 Hour Shift - 2020 Short incongruous organ-stealing and losing of same in hospital caper and chaos ensues. Not terrible. 5.6/10

Harry Palmr

Murder on the Orient Express (2017) Dir Kenneth Brannagh

A fairly needless filming given the 1974 version is fine but not too bad, it improved from a shaky opening with a bit too much flimflam and annoying swooping "CGI camera" nonsense as the train moved through the mountains. When the avalanche arrived things calmed down visually and we could do the story. Obviously if you have read the story or seen previous film there's no real tension or revelation.

I see the sequel Death on the Nile is pencilled in for December release and Brannagh has ambitions for a series. Back in the 70s/80s they quickly lost steam after "Nile" and ended up as desperate low budget, non-star star-studded productions.

pixelburp

My Neighbour Tortoro (1988)

A film with almost no recognisable aspect associated with traditional cinematic structure, yet the end result was still as pure a distillation of happiness and cinematic enjoyment as you could ever hope to find.

I want it to rain, just to enjoy the patter of it on my umbrella. I'm sorry it took this long to get around to watching this.

Retr0gamer

Florida Project

So thrashy but yet moving, funny and with a lot of heart. Some real stand out performances and even the kids were excellent. Some really dodgy shots though as it was filmed on an iphone. I know the director was probably using it to get a certain type of visual presentation but some shots were just blurry and out of focus. Really enjoyed it other than that.

Midsommar

Needed a good horror and this one didn't disappoint. Great suspense the whole way through and gorgeously shot. Completely crazy but the right kind of crazy for me.

The Breakfast Club

Never seen this before and heard a lot about it. Probably needed to see this back in the 80's as it's dated quite a bit. Sometimes it's poignant, other times it's pretty silly. Seemed a bit too tonally inconsistent for me.

TICKLE_ME_ELMO

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Florida Project

So thrashy but yet moving, funny and with a lot of heart. Some real stand out performances and even the kids were excellent. Some really dodgy shots though as it was filmed on an iphone. I know the director was probably using it to get a certain type of visual presentation but some shots were just blurry and out of focus. Really enjoyed it other than that.

Was it not just the last shot was on an iPhone? The Disneyland one? The director's previous film, Tangerine, was all on iPhone.

Retr0gamer

TICKLE_ME_ELMO wrote: »

Was it not just the last shot was on an iPhone? The Disneyland one? The director's previous film, Tangerine, was all on iPhone.

You're right. Not sure why then those few scenes don't look great then.

TICKLE_ME_ELMO

Retr0gamer wrote: »

You're right. Not sure why then those few scenes don't look great then.

It was shot on film and seemingly entirely in real locations so maybe it was just poor choice of shots or settings. For what it's worth, I hated everything about The Florida Project