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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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barrymanilow

Mirani

This is an A24 Drama I saw last night. If your into art house stuff or independent cinema it could be up your alley. It follows the lives of a Korean family in middle America who try to better their lot by starting a farm. I have lived in Korea at one stage so I enjoyed the film more than I might have otherwise. Its a pretty heart warming film about family and the trials and struggles of life.Good.

7.5/10

dubstepper

Tangerine: Movie about a new released trans prostitute looking to find her boyfriend who cheated on her while she was in prison. In parallel we see another story about a taxi driving family man who seems addicted to sex with transgender prostitutes. Good movie on friendship and relationships, while moving through the underbelly of LA. While there is a seedy side to the setting, there is some real heart to it.

Available on all4 app. 7/10

shrapnel222

dubstepper wrote: »

Tangerine: Movie about a new released trans prostitute looking to find her boyfriend who cheated on her while she was in prison. In parallel we see another story about a taxi driving family man who seems addicted to sex with transgender prostitutes. Good movie on friendship and relationships, while moving through the underbelly of LA. While there is a seedy side to the setting, there is some real heart to it.

Available on all4 app. 7/10

really enjoyed tangerine, and his next film was even stronger imo "the florida project". well worth a watch

splashthecash

Watched Compliance last night - Jesus it made me so angry. I must have stood up from the couch and said about 3 or 4 times to my wife “I can’t watch this anymore, this is just getting ridiculous...these people are too stupid”

The whole time watching was spent asking myself why don’t they just ask this, or do that...unbelievable that it’s based on multiple real events.

A great example of how good people can do bad things when faced in situations with authoritative figures.

It’s a solid film but not one I would want to return to again.

Tony EH

^
I believe the real story was even worse. Plus, it wasn't the first time the guy had done it.

Stupid people? If the last 4 years has taught me anything, it's that there is an abundance of them and loads of them are all too willing to do "bad things" for "authoritative figures".

dubstepper

shrapnel222 wrote: »

really enjoyed tangerine, and his next film was even stronger imo "the florida project". well worth a watch

Florida project was excellent. I didn't realise it was the same director, but you can see a common thread in both.

barrymanilow

Sound of Metal

I really enjoyed this drama about a musician battling addiction who begins to lose his hearing. Riz Ahmed is great in it. Its up there with other films that deal with the horror of addiction and the human suffering beneath it in a humane and realistic way , such as beautiful boy. The acting in it is great , there are no gammy lines , the writing is great. The flipping between the main characters perception of sound and others perception of sound is powerfully used.

8.3/10

joe1010

I recently watched "The Queen's Gambit" on Netflix . I liked it.

[Deleted User]

joe1010 wrote: »

I recently watched "The Queen's Gambit" on Netflix . I liked it.

haven't heard of that movie.

splashthecash

glasso wrote: »

haven't heard of that movie.

It’s a series - only a one off. 6 episodes I believe but it’s excellent, really grabs you from the first episode. Thrilling...or as thrilling as a series based on a chess player can be ðŸ˜ðŸ˜

Harry Palmr

homerun_homer wrote: »

I finally got around to watching The Love Witch (2016) yesterday which has been on my radar since it came out, and probably half as long on my Virgin Media box after I recorded it on Film4 one night.

I really enjoyed it, from the style, colour palette, set design and costumes. The story is a hoot. I imagine the wooden acting, mimicing that 60s trash movie/tv vibe is as hard to do just right as really good acting, and everyone in it does a great job. Feels very authentic, and enjoyably so.

Great example of a film killed by the hype of supposed "cineasts". I was looking forward to it but saw through it's thin facade within about 60 seconds, but was not able to see past it and just enjoy the film. I found it airless and remote instead of seductively trashy.

[Deleted User]

splashthecash wrote: »

It’s a series - only a one off. 6 episodes I believe but it’s excellent, really grabs you from the first episode. Thrilling...or as thrilling as a series based on a chess player can be ðŸ˜ðŸ˜

yes I've seen it.

thought this was the Films forum tho

[Deleted User]

Harry Palmr wrote: »

Great example of a film killed by the hype of supposed "cineasts". I was looking forward to it but saw through it's thin facade within about 60 seconds, but was not able to see past it and just enjoy the film. I found it airless and remote instead of seductively trashy.

that's because the movie tried mixing that with pseudo-feminist aspirations - ended up being neither and just a bore-fest.

8mv

'David Copperfiel' - (Armando Iannucci - 2019)
Wonderful. Clever and inventive while retaining the essence of Dickens. Dev Patel is great, as always, heading a cast full of diversity. Peter Capaldi gives his best performance ever as Mr. Micawber. Hugh Lawrie, Tilda Swinton, Bronagh Gallagher, Daisy May Cooper and Ben Wishaw have a ball, as do the entire cast. An RTE memory from my childhood, Rosaleen Linehan, is in there as well.

Captain Red Beard

Shadow in the Cloud, a Chloe Grace Moretz action horror type thing which is pretty decent.

TICKLE_ME_ELMO

Blithe Spirit - on Now TV, it's a remake of the play/old film, with Dan Stevens, Judi Dench, Isla Fisher and Leslie Mann. It's awful. Felt about 7 hours long, not a single joke landed and it's a while since I read the play but I'm sure they changed the ending for the worse.

Harry Palmr

The Great Waldo Pepper 1975 Dir George Roy Hill

The story of the barnstorming/flying circus era which took the United States by er storm in the 1920s.

Some absolutely brilliant flying sequences which must have been thrilling if you were in the front row before a big screen with stereo sound. Real aircraft of the era being flown with great dexterity and more than a hint of real danger at times. No CGI to make it look clever back then!

Very much a pet project for the director who flew during WW2 and Korea. Robert Redford is the title character who never flew in battle during WW1 but towards the end of the film gets his wish by proxy.

Trivia fact Hill studied at Trinity College Dublin after leaving the military studying literature while acting at the Gaiety.

[Deleted User]

Nomadland 2021 Im sure some people will rave over this, but at the half way point I could not care less to see any more of Francis pi**ing and shi**ng her way from caravan park to caravan park meeting various uninteresting people who would be better served in a Sky One reality tv show about people who left their homes to live in a van.

Unknown 2011 Some days you just can't beat Liam Neeson. This is very slick thriller where Neeson wakes up after a crash on a business trip and his wife pretends not to know him and his identity is seemingly stolen. Entertaining stuff

Beirut 2018 Jon Hamm does alcoholism better then most. Pretty decent spy thriller where he is a negotiator called into Beirut in the 80's to negotiate a hostage trade between the CIA and Hezbollah. Decent.

IAMAMORON

I vaguely remember drooling over Rosamund Pike in Beirut one Saturday evening a while back, decent enough.

However if international espionage is your tipple look no further than the vastly superior yet glossy Spy Game 2001. Starring Robert Redford and Brad Pitt this twists and turns its' way through the streets of the Lebanon to far East Asia, to East Berlin and right to the heart of a corrupted Pentagon. Highly entertaining with a sublime intense finish and superbly acted throughout. Edge of seat stuff.

8mv

From the sublime to the ridiculous - after the joy of David Copperfield on Thursday we watched the mind-numbingly awful Inheritance last night. 'Kin hell, what were they thinking? I'm normally easily pleased and I'll try to find something positive in most films but this was a horrible disaster with poor performances and plot holes everywhere. Should never have got passed the elevator pitch.

IAMAMORON

8mv wrote: »

From the sublime to the ridiculous - after the joy of David Copperfield on Thursday we watched the mind-numbingly awful Inheritance last night. 'Kin hell, what were they thinking? I'm normally easily pleased and I'll try to find something positive in most films but this was a horrible disaster with poor performances and plot holes everywhere. Should never have got passed the elevator pitch.

Is Lily Collins any good?

8mv

IAMAMORON wrote: »

Is Lily Collins any good?

To save their blushes i wasn't going to mention who was in it, but no, not good. To be fair it's a ridiculous premise to begin with and the script is awful, so she doesn't have much to work with...

el Fenomeno

Just finished watched Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets - a documentary about a run down dive bar in Vegas and it's last day open to the "public" - which is a really a rag tag group of regulars. It just follows their drunken antics and interactions as the day winds down.

It's fascinating viewing, but I'd strongly urge watching it without googling or searching anything about it or the story behind it. Thankfully that's what I did - had I known the story behind it before watching, I imagine it would have been an infinitely less enthralling watch.

Zak Flaps

8mv wrote: »

'David Copperfiel' - (Armando Iannucci - 2019)
Wonderful. Clever and inventive while retaining the essence of Dickens. Dev Patel is great, as always, heading a cast full of diversity. Peter Capaldi gives his best performance ever as Mr. Micawber. Hugh Lawrie, Tilda Swinton, Bronagh Gallagher, Daisy May Cooper and Ben Wishaw have a ball, as do the entire cast. An RTE memory from my childhood, Rosaleen Linehan, is in there as well.

I'm a huge Iannicci fan but was a little underwhelmed by this. Maybe I'd need to be more familiar with Dickens to enjoy it.
It was still enjoyable but I prefer Iannucci's more biting work.

4Ad

Wild Target with Emily Blunt.
Think I lasted 25 minutes.
Pure gack altogether..

[Deleted User]

Kajillionaire - 2020

Very quirky con-artist drama about a highly dysfunctional family unit of 3 living on the margins of society. With an unrecognisable Evan Rachel Wood and her father is one of those actors who you immediately recognise but have no clue of his name. It works tho imo. An original effort.

If you're willing to give a quirky movie a chance here you'll be rewarded.

6.7 / 10

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8143990/

Tony EH

'The Freshman'

A comic (as opposed to comedy) movie about a young college freshman (Matthew Broderick) who joins an NYC film school and gets ripped off as soon as he hits the big apple. One thing leads to another and he ends up running jobs for Carmine Sabatini, who seems to be a crime boss (Marlon Brando) that bears an uncanny resemblance to a famous mafia figure from screen. But not everything seems as it first appears to be.

'The Freshman' is a movie that shows how good writing can transform what is a pretty low key story into something great and produce a very rewarding film. It's well cast and everyone goes for it, including Brando, who shows that he could take the piss out of himself and his past work and it's laced with nice moments, like the two college kids (Broderick and Frank Whaley) remarking on Brando's "resemblance" to The Godfather, or Bert Parks singing the famous Miss America song, "There She Is", for a decidedly different kind of pageant.

Broderick is fine in the lead role and is used perfectly as a vehicle for the audience. We experience what he experiences and see the story unfold completely through his eyes. This means, though, that once you've seen the film it can never provide the same entertainment again. Which, in fairness, can be said for a lot of movies I suppose. There's fine support from a load of famous faces, like Bruno Kirby, Jon Polito, Maximilian Schell and the, always-odd-in-everything-he's-been-in, Paul Benedict.

But it's the tight script that brings everything through to the end. You won't be guffawing all the way through it, but it's one of those films that will leave the majority of people completely satisfied.

9/10

'2 Days in the Valley'

An interesting, but flawed story, that basically boils down to a series of events that befall a group of disparate characters who, due to a murder, clash into one another over the course of the titular 2 days.

Made in the wake of the enormous success of 'Pulp Fiction', John Herzfeld's '2 Days in the Valley' lacks that Tarantino touch to move his movie into that area that 'Pulp Fiction' enjoys. It just isn't as "cool" as Quentin's movie and always comes across as trying to be, instead of just being its own thing. However, had it been made before 1994, people would probably have approached it very differently. But seeing as it got the go ahead because of Tarantino's film, it seems destined to be forever darkened by its shadow. Which is unfortunate, as '2 Days in the Valley' isn't bad in its own right.

The characters are all interesting, if mostly grotesque and the story does come together very nicely, for the most part anyway. It's helped by most of the cast being on point, but there's nothing here that you haven't seen them do before. Danny Aiello plays "Italian hood", James Spader plays the same little shit he's played since the early 80's, Eric Stoltz returns as "nice guy trying to do the right thing", Greg Cruttwell seems to be the same person he was in 'Naked' and Glenne Headly appears to be reprising her grift from 'Dirty Rotten Scoundrels'.

Elsewhere, there's Teri Hatcher trying to carve out a movie career on the back of Lois Lane and a stupidly sexy Charlieze Theron as a nasty piece of eye candy. Jeff Daniels appears too but has an odd fizzling out that suggests that the writer (also Herzfeld) ran out of ideas for him or the editing process left a bit on the cutting room floor.

'2 Days in the Valley' is certainly an entertaining movie and if you've run out of stuff to watch during Covid lockdowns it's worth checking out. But it just cannot escape its issues.

6/10

'Awakenings'

There's so much schmaltz in Penny Marshal's 1990 film, that it could be bottled and sold to other movies that are desperately in need of it. That's not to say the her movie about catatonic patients experiencing their "revival" in a 1960's Bronx Psychiatric hospital is a bad film, it just doesn't convince fully, despite being well made and, at times, very emotional and heartfelt. But it has a tendency to lay it on a bit thick and that kind of blunts the impact when all is said and done.

Based on Oliver Sack's own book of the same name, it tells the story of encephalitis lethargica patients who became catatonic over 40 years before and a doctor's attempt to "reach" them though a new drug called L-DOPA which was developed for Parkinson's sufferers. Dr. Malcolm Sayer's (Robin Williams) use of the drug has an amazing effect on his subjects who completely awaken from their catatonia.

Of the two main leads, Williams is decent in his role as the extremely shy doctor, who's probably suffering from a few mental issues himself. It's the type of role that he learned to grab with great gusto, once he made efforts to shelve the maniac that made him famous, so the audience knows what they're going to get immediately. On the other hand, DeNiro as the main patient, Leonard Lowe, is fine too and was Oscar nominated for his part which he lost to Jeremy Irons. But, he's also one of the film's flaws in an important way. Lowe is supposed to be a boy in his early teens who was struck down with his malady in 1928, only to be "awakened" in 1969. But DeNiro, as good as he is, never once comes across as a boy trapped in a 40 something's body. He is always far too adult and doesn't seem to possess any of the qualities of a young 13 or 14 year old boy. So, his Leonard comes across as somebody that's only been "away" for a few years and not an entire lifetime. It may come across as an unkind criticism of a generally fine film, but it was impossible to shake.

Two others from the cast deserve mention, Julie Kavner (Marge from 'The Simpsons') provides some normalcy in the down to earth role so did so well and Ruth Nelson is excellent as Leonard's aged mother., who manages to convey all the emotions you'd imagine that a mother go through in such circumstances without ever overdoing it.

'Awakenings' is far from being a bad picture, despite my relatively minor problems with it. It's well done and rewarding in a way that that type of heartstring pulling movie can be and if you're the type to cry easily at stories like this, you'll be well advised to have a box of tissues handy.

7/10

joficeduns1

Two films over the weekend

The Lighthouse

Definitely a unique film to watch, and I'd recommend to anyone interested in the art form, you can definitely appreciate the thought and technical skills put in by Eggers. The performances are great by Defoe and Pattinson, I actually struggle to decide who was better. Plotwise, it leaves a lot of questions on the table that makes you think. Some people don't like that but not everyone story needs to be cut and dry. I won't rush back to watch it again, but definitely glad I did. 8.5/10

Casino

It was between this and Raging Bull for our Sunday billing, and I feel we made a mistake. It has qualities of Scorcese that make it watchable, but some are overdone. To much narration, meandering story, too long. Not the worst film I've seen recently, but not worth its run time. 6.5/10

The Raging Bile Duct

Watched Synchronic at the weekend and really enjoyed it. Made by the same team that made The Endless and Spring. Anthony Mackie and Jamie Dornan are two paramedics working in New Orleans who find themselves dealing with the consequences of a new designer drug that has hit the streets. If you're a fan of The Endless, I think you'll enjoy this. It's got the same kind of twists and turns in it.

homerun_homer

Got through a few films at the weeked.

Promising Young Woman
I really liked this. Without spoiling I will say the end will be divisive and it is probaby worth noting that going in. As I'm still letting it mull around in my head I haven't settled on a final rating but for now I'll give it a 4/5.

I'm Thinking Of Ending Things
I want to love Charlie Kaufmann's work. I did in the early days, and I think that's where he worked best in letting someone else adapt his work. I've yet to love, or even really like any of the movies he's made himself.
There is a lot to unpack and decipher with this film but it was such a slog to get through. To merit getting more out of it then it surely deserves a rewatch and I can't imagine bringing myself to go through it again.
2/5

Escape from New York
I recorded this on Film4 at the weekend. After re-watching Big Trouble in Little China recently, which I love, I decided to re-visit this as I watched it at too young an age and thought that I maybe didn't appreciate it then. It's still not great if I'm honest. It has a great 80s movie premise, I love the Carpenter score and style, but the action is never exciting, fun or interesting compared to BTILC.
2/5