What have you watched recently? 3D!

Tony EH · 24-07-2023 09:46PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120891475#Comment_120891475

I'm sure I have it knocking around somewhere on the alien box set. But I'd rather watch the theatrical version of Indiana Jones and the last crusade on a loop for the rest of my life than bother with again. 😝

To me Alien will always be a trilogy and it's as damn near a perfect trilogy of films that you can get. A rare thing indeed.

In my world Jenuet's thing doesn't exist, likewise Scott's ill considerd misfires.

budgemook · 25-07-2023 09:58PM

I watched all three Alien movies recently after reading the discussion on here. I had seen them all over the years or parts of them but my memories of them all blended into one and I could never remember which one was which. I preferred Alien 3 (theatrical cut on Disney+) more than the second one by quite a bit. Aliens has too much of that 80's bro dialogue and action which I normally enjoy but doesn't belong in an Alien movie. I also didn't like how easy it was for them to kill the Aliens - I get they had good weapons and all but they were shooting the Aliens up from close range and rarely getting harmed by their acid blood. Alien 3, on the other hand, was back to the moody horror feeling which I preferred in this franchise. I know it had big problems during development and you can see these throughout the movie, particularly in the second half, but overall it's a solid movie and a nice end to the trilogy.

I have memories of Resurrection too and there is no way I am going back to that.

Skipping forward a bit - I really did not like Prometheus and have not been tempted to watch Alien Covenant Does it have any redeeming qualities to make it worth watching?

Tony EH · 25-07-2023 11:02PM

No.

pixelburp · 26-07-2023 06:20AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120896381#Comment_120896381

Skipping forward a bit - I really did not like Prometheus and have not been tempted to watch Alien Covenant Does it have any redeeming qualities to make it worth watching?

Uhhhh, not really. Covenant was a very handsome movie, but it's Ridley Scott so that was to be expected. Somehow the characters made even stupider decisions than in Prometheus, robbing all the horror of its punch by dint of the morons that made the problem for themselves; while the movie completely overexplained what the xenos were and where they came from.

steve_r · 27-07-2023 11:49AM

My Dinner with Andre - 1981

The simple synopsis of this film is that it is two men having dinner, and discussing life, how we experience it, and the role of purpose.

I say simple synopsis because this is a more complex film than that in a lot of ways. Andre is a retired theatre director who has recently suffered some family tragedies. Wally is a struggling writer with financial struggles which are his main focus. Wally is encouraged to have dinner with Andre when a mutual friend encounters Andre on a street, crying over an Igmar Bergman quote 'I could always live in my art, but not in my life'.

Andre tells Wally the story of his recent theatre experiences in India, the Sahara and Poland, the profound impact that they had upon him. Wally summaries these experiences as an attempt to experience life without purpose. Wally pushes back on this concept and feels that life has to be lived with a purpose, and defends the concept of science against the idea of following omens and new age concepts of transcendence.

In between there are conversations about how we interact as a society, how we represent ourselves to others and how we hide our real feelings. Wally talks about the rise of self help books and how these show how we have a desire to live the way we believe that others live.

Amidst all of the talking, there is a sense of what is not being said, and what is really going on with Andre, and how Wally really feels about what he is saying. Andre is coming from a place of economic privilege relative to Wally and it's hard to escape the impression that Wally is not saying what he truly feels. The cinematography is very interesting - the choice of certain close up shots reacting to certain dialogue, and also showing the other characters reflection through a mirror at times, and the impact of this colors the view of what we are hearing .

This is a film that appears simple but is quite complex, and one I'll be chewing over for a while.

buried · 27-07-2023 07:47PM

Beau Is Afraid (2023)

First half of this is absolute genius. Almost a pastiche of some sort of Stanley Kubrick/Jerry Seinfeld/Larry David mashup with outlandish horror mixed in with satirical, almost sit-com like comedy. Fantastic sequential editing, cinematography, use of colours and story method. But then after 1 hour and 40 minutes the whole thing completely looses track and becomes a totally different film, solely dealing with the all consuming, all controlling domineering mother archetype and the rest of it just becomes a total slow slog trough. Pity they was no balance to the entire thing because it could have been one of the greatest modern works from the last 20 years if it was given the balance it deserves.

5/10

Decuc500 · 28-07-2023 04:32PM

Robert Altman's 3 Women

I didn't know what to expect from this. I had heard that is was supposed to be Altman's strange, arty film.

But it wasn't at all. It was a bit unconventional alright. It's basically about the relationship between Sissy Spacek and Shelly Duval's characters who work together in a convalescent home for old people in a California desert town. Spacek plays the new girl who lodges with Duval. Both women are a bit odd. Spacek plays the typical innocent wide-eyed girl she played a lot in the 70's. Duval is this constant talker who makes up stories and is oblivious to the fact that no-one likes her.

Like David Lynch's Lost Highway the film changes dramatically half way through. In fact this has a very Lynch vibe to it. It is also like the widescreen California movies of PT Anderson and Tarantino. It looks amazing in that way films shot in widescreen in the 1970's looked.

But what impressed me the most was Shelly Duval. She completely owns the film and her train wreck of a character is impossible to take your eyes off. She won best actress at Cannes that year. I didn't realise how good an actress she is and how unconventionally beautiful she looks. I will be checking out her other collaborations with Altman asap.

pixelburp · 01-08-2023 03:11PM

The Bad Sleep Well (1960)

(Apparnetly the Japanese title literally translates as "The worse the villain, the better they sleep", which IMO reads much better)

God damn, the framing and blocking in this was unreal: I can understand why Kurosawa became such a mainstay of film schools; the camera-work here always effortless, never called attention to itself but there all the same, often using a compelling and imaginative bit of visual structure to make even a simple scene of dialogue more alive (and more instructive about the current power dynamic at that point).

This was a surprisingly cynical and downbeat feature, one whose borderline anticlimactic final scene only underpinned a sense of hopelessness that a single figure might better the monolith of omnipotent corporate greed; forget it Nishi, it's Dairyu-town. The subject and execution of the White Collar Crime as pertinent now as it was 60 odd years ago - but with an added eccentricity of how the industrial-age corruption was merged with all that honour-based culture more often seen in Kurosawa's Feudal Japan era films. A culture where corporate executives would throw themselves to their deaths rather than betray their lords & masters. Maybe that's how it was back then, I can't say, but it was a singular anachronism to what was an otherwise modern genre story. And within all this plotted Nishi, played with silent intensity by Kurosawa's bestie Toshiro Mifune; this time not sporting a top-knot and manic warrior energy, but a snazzy suit and a quiet, constant simmering rage as he navigated his way into the interior lives of those he might revenge upon.

I loved how artful and confident the structure of this was: all of it starting deeply in media res during a wedding, with a convenient Greek chorus of reporters to catch the viewer up to speed about as neatly as an info-dump could hope to. The point of that approach perhaps simply that this was a corporation already corrupted, malfeasance already endemic by the time we joined the story; we were only here to watch it all unravel, the guilty attempt to manage the crisis as a mystery-man schemed to uncover the murder masked as suicide, and the millions of Yen justifying it. But as with all these sorts of stories of revenge, those emboldened by a righteous purpose risk becoming changed by the corruption they fight - or find themselves altered in getting too close to your enemy; so it was here with Mifune's Nishi. That as his rage began to consume his sanity, what started as performative love became something less shallow than he had planned.

02-08-2023 08:18PM

The new Little Mermaid. I thought it was really well done and perfectly cast. Very nice film for the cinema. Don't know what all the fuss and overreacting was about before the film tbh.

buried · 03-08-2023 07:59PM

Bull (2022)

This is currently up on Netflix, a 2022 British gangster revenge thriller. I never heard anything about it but I have great time for Neil Maskell who plays the title character so I said I'd give it a go. Maskell plays the role of a vicious and violent mob enforcer who returns to his former gang's territory ten years after the gang double-crossed him, seeking to violently hunt each one of them down and also to search for his young son.

The violence is off the scale straight from the get go, really violent. And it's not executed in any sort of cliched cartoonic British gangster style effect, its almost done nonchalantly, which makes the scenes even more violent, but its refreshing too, nothing is glorified. This film literally shows you the grim reality of the world of this type of shower. Storytelling is very good, nothing you haven't seen anywhere else though, almost in the vein of the wild western movies of the 60's and the 70's, but it runs along nicely and the running time is 90 minutes so that is refreshing for a modern crime movie too. Really nicely shot, lovely use of colour, location and framing.

Just don't watch it with anyone who can't stomach the violence.

7/10

04-08-2023 08:57PM

Nefarious ellipes I really enjoyed this film. I saw reviews that were more angry about the motive of the film than how good it was but I really enjoyed it. It does make you question things ellipes thats what art is meant to do ellipes not that I would agree with it all but I did consider going to mass again lol

I'm going to hell for making a joke about that aren't I? Maybe I will go to mass! I'll say a prayer at least ellipes.

flasher0030 · 05-08-2023 11:07AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120940724#Comment_120940724

What's ellipes

Fysh · 05-08-2023 11:11PM

Medusa Deluxe

I was looking forward to this and it didn't disappoint - it handles its "single tracking shot" shtick better than many films (e.g. the seams are hidden more artfully than in Birdman), and more importantly it feels like when the focus shifts between characters it's for good reason. There's definitely a "heightened reality" aspect to some of the characters, and with less deft direction & performances it could have fallen into soap-opera territory (particularly Angel), but the whole thing has just the right amount of swagger and confidence to pull it off. This sort of film is why I keep my Mubi subscription active despite not using it as much as I know I should.

Extraction 2

At the other end of the spectrum, the other half and I wanted some straightforward action nonsense to watch with a couple of beverages tonight, so we took a punt on this. Ridiculous "we need to gloss over the downer ending of the first film" intro sequence aside, the first 2/3 of it are pretty good (the writing is still tropey AF, and the quality of writing and characterisation takes a step down since the sequel can't try and glide by on minimalist suggestions of character motivations).

Then the last 1/3 fouls the bed, at least for me:

we get one of the most tedious tropes in action films - the hero has a perfect chance to finish off the villain, whose motivations and lack of remorse are clear, but instead leaves them alive, resulting in the villain coming back 30 seconds later to kill the only character with even vaguely amusing dialogue. This is followed by another 40 minutes of uninteresting - in either action or character terms - dragging on of the story, because the Russos really wanted the story to be about saving the tedious dickhead teenage boy who's spent too much time listening to Andrew Tate-err, his toxic bellend of an uncle. Honestly I was hoping someone would just say "the boy's a waste of space, forget about him and move on" because there's so little depth to any of the characters.

It ends with a blatant franchise tease, which feels very presumptuous. It may have gotten enough eyeballs to justify Netflix funding an Extraction 3, but I certainly won't be bothering to watch it.

HalloweenJack · 08-08-2023 10:42PM

Timbuktu

The story here is how ISIS took over the city of Timbuktu in Mali and imposed their Islamic fundamentalism on a people who were already faithful Muslims. There is a hint that ISIS took advantage of inter-ethnic differences in the area and it also refers to their claims of the evil of Western influence while struggling to communicate with the subjects in any language that isn't French or Arabic.

It's a sad story, one of the saddest I've ever seen. The atmosphere is tense. There's no great exposition. It jumps in and tells the story. The destruction and denial of the local culture for a foreign one while pretending its something else is well demonstrated but its not filled with verbose, eloquent speeches that break everything down to the most basic level (one scene aside). Its short and sweet and shows the very real changes on a basic level. 40 lashes for playing music at night, twenty for playing football. The sad part is how easily they seem to subdue the locals.

This is well worth watching. I'm honestly surprised the director hasn't ended up on a list like Salman Rushdie. This shows how Islamic fundamentalism is just colonialism under the banner of religion.

HalloweenJack · 09-08-2023 12:09AM

After watching the above, Youtube recommended some other African films, both by Ousmeane Sembene.

Borom Sarret

A short filim about life in Senegal after independence from France. The gist of it is that life hasn't changed. It's still rough and classism is what really separates the people as opposed to racism.

La noire de...

A woman from Senegal goes to work as an au pair in France and sees her essence denied and become, essentially, slave with the French thinking money is enough to resolve problems and make any situation enough whereas the Senegalese just want acceptance and acknowledgement as victims of French colonialism. The ending is incredible, one of the most impactful I've ever seen where a French guy is literally throwing money at a problem in Senegal while running away from it.

In both films there is an interesting comparison between the 'French' scenes with contemporary French music and the 'native' scenes with native music.

pixelburp · 09-08-2023 03:40PM

Blade (1998)

Ah, remember that old trope of yesterday when nameless goons would run around in identical shades & bomber jacket combos?

If you want a good compare and contrast, within the same film, of two actors taking the same deeply cheesy material & achieving wildly different results - this film had a good example of this in action. On the one hand, Wesley Snipes: magnetic, charismatic and glowered through his lines with an intensity that never once dipped into self-parody, never let a glimmer in his eye spoil the mood. This was a movie star at the height of his powers. Then there was Donal Logue: an actor whose entire single speed was pure, glazed ham - and every time his regrettably omnipresent henchman character turned up it threatened to upend that otherwise balanced tone achieved by Snipes. The rolling gag of Blade lopping off the hands of Logue's character was a nice rejoinder to the irritation mind you. Or indeed the ease with which he was finally dispatched, an unearned sense of rivals clashing quickly corrected with a flash of Blade's sword.

The efficiency of this film was something to behold though: a visceral & thrilling first scene; the universe entered proper via an audience surrogate; we learned the rules, established the stakes; then crisis, finale; the end. Mic dropped in 2 hours, no post-credits scene, no bloated ensemble cast hinting at spin-offs. Some of the fight choreography was a little frenetic for its own sake, while sure the CGI FX has only aged like spoiled milk (but except in a few cases it never called attention to itself either), but those were quibbles around an otherwise very solid, very rewatchable curio from an era when comic-books remained a slightly unknowable entity; one where producers weren't quite sure what to do with them so didn't feel like they were adapting sacred texts either.

El Gato De Negocios · 12-08-2023 01:09PM

The Deepest Breath (Netflix)

Documentary about free diving focusing on an Italian girls efforts to be come a world record holder and the Irish man whose path she crossed. Mostly real footage with interviews from friends and relatives, this is a beautifully made and poignant piece of film. Some of the footage is stunning and I've concluded that free divers (an activity I'd never heard of) are mentalists.

Directed by Irish lady Laura McGann this is well worth a watch.

RickBlaine · 12-08-2023 06:44PM

To Live and Die in L.A. (1985)

After the recent death of William Friedkin, I wanted to watch one of his movies. I've seen The French Connection, The Exorcist, and Sorcerer many times and love them, but I went with a film I hadn't seen before. It's a good 80s cop thriller with quite of lot of twists and turns in the plot and a typically assured yet unassuming direction from Friedkin. It has a great car chase which isn't as iconic as the one from The French Connection but is still very gripping. The whole movie is dripping in 80s especially the score which is too badly dated for my taste. It isn't going to become a favourite of mine from the 80s or from Friedkin; but it is still worth a watch for fans of 80s cop thrillers.

HalloweenJack · 13-08-2023 11:42AM

Midsommar (re-watch)

I saw this a few years back and loved it, though I can't remember what specifically I thought about it.

Watching it again, I certainly picked up on a lot more and there's an incredible level of depth to it. To call it a horror is too simplistic; I'd describe it as more of a psychological thriller.

There is a lot to do with accepting grief and finding the right outlets for it and getting the support you need, also about being brave enough to take the steps to do what you want, even if it hurts others or seems like an overly-daunting task.

Visually and musically, it's a beautiful film, though its guilty itself somewhat of what it criticises (the clairvoyance of 'primitive' cultures).

It still packs a punch on seeing it again.

Fysh · 15-08-2023 11:56AM

L.O.L.A

This turned up on a Spanish streaming service I'm subscribed to, and was a pleasant surprise.

When you say "time travel" and "found footage", certain expectations are likely to form - but this film confounds them artfully. The time travel mechanism depicted allows for a bit of divergence from what we usually see in films with such a premise - the protagonists devise a machine which can receive electromagnetic broadcasts from the future.

The characters are reasonably well-drawn albeit without too much nuance, with a plausible bond between the two sisters that is strained as the plot unfolds.

One thing I really appreciated is that the access to new culture enabled by the machine is what drives the protagonists to start with; beyond the options for exploitation of the machine and the advance knowledge it can provide, there is a sheer joy in just being exposed to new culture and art.

Neil Hannon of The Divine Comedy scores the film, including two new songs which are simultaneously great and toe-curling in context.

I'll need to see how it holds up to rewatching, but on a first viewing I quite enjoyed this. I admire the style and confidence of it, and would be glad to see more films tackling this sort of material to demonstrate the same inventiveness.

monkeyactive · 17-08-2023 07:59PM

War Pony

Drama set on a modern day Indian reservation that follows two young men trying to make ends meet , humorous in parts but gritty too . I liked 👍

nachouser · 17-08-2023 08:56PM

The Founder is up on Netflix now. The story of how McDonalds became a fast-food behemoth, with a side of Michael Keaton. It's great. He's absolutely wonderful in it.

pixelburp · 18-08-2023 03:41PM

Fight Club (1999)

So. Pair this movie with Falling Down for two cult classics where a cohort of (predominantly male?) fans entirely missed the point; so completely missed that this minority figured the protagonists were relatable heroes to be cheered. That said, I think as the years have trickled on you see a broader recognition of this as something almost satirical and subversive, the men not for celebrating at all - as opposed to Falling Down where even today I'll see letterboxd reviews expressing an uncomfortable degree of camaraderie with that film's psychotic lead.

To be sure though, some films should come with a heavy caveat all the same: that "depiction does not equate endorsement" and while born from that now quaint pre-911 period of a superpower experiencing existential malaise - a funk acknowledged by Brad Pitt's character when he lamented how men now had "no wars to fight" (that aged well) - unfortunately many thematic aspects remain as true now as they did back in '99.

Look at the likes of Andrew Tate and his grotesque ilk, parading around the internet, latching onto demographics of emotionally rudderless boys without a sense of identity to call their own. His words as seductively poisonous as Tyler Durden's own cod-philosophy. Maybe this film has only become more relevant than ever: how does one define "masculinity" now when we're repeatedly told how not to behave, toxic swamps ready to entrap the vulnerable - without offering definitions for a more positive masculinity instead? Not that this movie proposed any solutions mind you - but it sure did present a version of that misguided, over-entitled sense of vulgar machismo run amok. A cautionary tale where what little good intentions existed were quickly overtaken by a cult mentality of self-destruction & bullshít faux-caveman aspiration.

Perhaps what allowed the reading of the Text as sympathetic to its leads was all born in how this early-doors David Fincher - a man then approaching his own middle-age & still fresh from a career making slick and arousing music videos - gave the film a patina of glamorous squalor through Project Mayhem & Tyler Durden's life. Later films would show a steadier head and a more mature, misanthropic world-view creep in, but here with Fight Club everything had an alluring scent of sorts. Living "off the grid" was shown as gross sure - but also exciting and a little too enticingly anarchic in places. And with a mic-drop that resulted in everyone's debt being erased, maybe that only punctuated a rationale to embrace its crew of emotionally corrupted men, rather than detest or laugh at them.

Everything was just a little too cool, basically; you certainly wouldn't see such swagger and flavour by the time Fincher got to Gone Girl, by way of comparison

Fysh · 18-08-2023 05:04PM

Fight Club was definitely a belter of a film and that rare adaptation of a book where it is remarkably faithful to the source and yet better than it (I still appreciate the very pessimistic ending to the book, but in the context of the film the closing "flash frame" gag remains the better choice).

I think the thing that lets the numpty audience view it as sympathetic toward them (despite the extremely clear messaging in e.g. the scene in the house after Bob is killed) is that by having Brad Pitt - who, to his credit, is excellent in the role - as Durden, Pitt's real-world status transfers onto Durden. And they're not bright enough to catch the I-assume-intentional irony in lines from the book that become jokes in the film like Pitt as Durden pointing at a poster of an underwear model on the bus and mocking it. I do think Fincher must have learned from that for later films like Gone Girl, because it's easy to imagine that style of thriller falling foul of the exact same trap.

It's interesting to consider The Matrix alongside Fight Club - in that while the characters in The Matrix are presented as heroes the in-world activities near the end (particularly when they go to save Morpheus) would be considered terrorist activity by any of the inhabitants in the Matrix. And I really can't see a big-budget Hollywood production post-Twin-Towers going for either a climactic action scene where the heroes smash a helicopter into a building full of people, any more than one where a charismatic-but-evil character manages to blow up a bunch of banks...

Side note - if you want to see a very weird spin on Fight Club, it's worth checking out the I Am Jack's Laryngitis fanedit. It removes the narrator's voiceover entirely, which leads to some scenes being quite surreal.

Snake Plisken · 19-08-2023 12:55AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120936255#Comment_120936255

I enjoyed up until the last 5 minutes when I went "Really?"

flasher0030 · 19-08-2023 10:58AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120998621#Comment_120998621

That movie certainly took a rapid change of course. Wasn't expecting that. I think I enjoyed it though.

eightieschewbaccy · 20-08-2023 04:35PM

Did a rewatch of The Death of Dick Long by Daniel Scheinert.(One of the Daniels responsible for Everything Everywhere All At Once) It's pretty fascinating to watch it as a response to movies like The Hangover. Unlike the more white collar Hangover, you've got characters that do horrific things one night while drunk and it's funny but horrifically uncomfortable to the point where you're not sure if it's intentionally funny. Personally I find it to be a hilarious movie but the comedy was entirely lost on my friend. It's far from pleasant but a great movie.

pixelburp · 23-08-2023 03:13PM

They Cloned Tyrone (2023)

All the pulpy paranoia of They Live, rendered through Blaxploitation cinema with a dash of Get Out. A dystopian SciFi whose central rug-pull contained absolutely zero percent Subtext: this was Text all the way down (into the secret laboratory no less).

By all accounts though, subtle or not this was a very canny & stylish directorial debut - and significantly more cinematic than many of these "Netflix Originals" which clog the service's backlog. One of those digital releases you wish had a cinematic run, however short. The aesthetics of the thing were a shade... gloomy at times, but more often it had a richly textured, grainy & tangibly moribund sense of itself; one that matched the idea of a penned-in community made to rot by design and conspiracy.

Jamie Foxx was a hoot, and you'd miss his presence in mainstream cinema with performances like this; his Slick Charles both a walking swaggering cliché but often vulnerable and showed depth when required. Same with Kiefer Sutherland's . To the extent he kinda stole John Boyega's lunch, though the younger actor was saddled with the more serious, slightly charisma-deficient lead role.

Fysh · 25-08-2023 11:20AM

Dinner In America

I enjoyed this as a dark/weird coming-of-age comedy about 2 oddballs in their early 20s in a non-specific Small Town; the central performances are really strong, and the songs composed for the film work well for the in-story musicians. There's some tonal similarity to Napoleon Dynamite, if one of the core characters was an uncompromising DIY punk.

Mr.Nice Guy · 26-08-2023 01:45AM

Sabrina (1954)

Never watched this movie before. It was only okay. I enjoyed Audrey Hepburn in the role but spent most of the movie feeling sorry that Sabrina has such poor options for a love interest. I didn't feel Bogart suited his part. Apparently he didn't like his co-stars off the set.

What have you watched recently? 3D!

Comments