What have you watched recently: Electric Boogaloo

firestarter51 wrote: »

Jarhead 2
Not a sequel to jarhead at all
Not a great film
It's like a promo video for us marines
4/10

Pity. 'Jarhead' was quite good IIRC.

Brief Encounter- Another trip to ye olde classic film nostalgia world with this one. Another classic which I had never laid eyes upon. My shame burns a little less painfully now.

The sedate pacing can seem almost sleepy in comparison with the modern day, but there's no denying the deserved classic status of this one. A howl of repressed emotion and passion from emotionally straight jacketed times.

For all the films stagey mannerisms, which show it's stage origins, the film gains a great poignancy by the time the narrative rolls around to the end and we can finally realise the depth of feeling and difficulty of situation felt by the poor beleaguered couple. Adding to the emotional turmoil is the fact that are no easy answers or escapes- no-one in the affair is running from a terrible place in life or a tyrant at home. They just see the possibility of another life, which is alluring because it's so unobtainable.

It's a beautifully shot film. It felt like it was like a film noir of the emotions, with stark black and white, filled with trains spewing out coal smoke and town streets with old discarded newspaper sheets billowing about. Some of the camera work, particularly at the climax, when all that repressed emotion comes seeping out for a few split seconds, is downright shocking and disturbing compared to the willfully buttoned everything that has come before.

A great film- excellently acted, beautifully shot, highly evocative of time and place and psychologically acute.

Yeh, 'A Good Marriage' wasn't great. I came away with the same impressions as you.

Plus, the obvious conclusions are always just around the corner. It's a bit of a tick the box film.

FortuneChip wrote: »

Follow it up with Prisoners if you haven't already seen it.
Very similar mood, and another well acted thriller.

Have seen it and thought it was outstanding! Cheers for the recommendation though!

ButtersSuki wrote: »

Just out of curiosity - did you watch Zodiac on the plane's entertainment system? It's heavily edited, you really should watch the Director's Cut instead.

Only saw this now - I did indeed, will check the directors cut...must check out more DCs too really

Shooting Bigfoot (2013)

(another) BBC 4 documentary following three disparate expeditions, to use the term very loosely, as they each seek to find, capture, film or just find any evidence whatsoever of the elusive cryptid.

An hilarious documentary at many points because the subjects are each so earnest in their pursuit and they're all such characters. The 'main' hunter is such an over the top grotesque character who quickly drops his nice guy act as soon as even the slightest thing goes wrong, and I mean something as trivial as his favorite soft drink not being on hand.

It feels almost like a mockumentary at times and there's been questions raised about what side of the line it sits on, but whatever it is, it's very entertaining. Recommended.

Just watched Locke and with the closing titles it hit me, it is a Dogma movie!

The Signal (2014)

A trio of college students come into contact with a mysterious hacker and things go awry when they attempt to track him down.

A great little sci fi movie. Good story, good setting and good acting. Not a movie that I can say a lot about for fear of giving it away. I heard it being criticised for being slow-paced, but I thought it was paced just fine.

That's a shame.

So, it's just more hollywood rubbish then?

Thought it was too good to be true, but I saw Brad Pitt (a 50 year old) in charge of a tank in WWII, I knew something would be amiss.

One day, somebody (who isn't German) will make a realistic WWII film.

The One I Love-It's weird that I find myself with so little to say on this one. It's so clearly designed to be a thought provoker. It's a relationship movie, it's intense. It has a playful time with some knockabout sci-fi ideas and for a short while it has some interesting, even wise, things to say about what happens to and between people in long term relationships. The movies inventiveness is, during the first half, more or less equally matched with it's ability to get down to some raw truths about the nature of commitment and long term love, but as it begins to get wise to its own schtick it loses that sense of truthfulness that had me initially hooked. What felt like reality now comes across as glib and characters that felt relatable are now reduced to playthings inside an overly schematic screenplay.

I was hoping the presence of Elizabeth Moss would, at least, cancel out any lingering stink that still remained on Mark Duplass after the awful sub-greeting card fiasco that was Jeff, Who Lives at Home. To his credit he does a great job. There's a lot of work for the actors to do, apart from the usual emoting there's also the fact that there is never a scene where they both aren't on screen. Elizabeth Moss can handle the walking bag of barely suppressed neuroses that is Peggy Olsen, so I'd say she's good for any acting job under the sun, but it turns out Duplass is also pretty good, even great in places.

Worth a watch if you fancy it, but let down by it's own sense of cleverness.

Frank- Fassbender. What a man. It's amazing how even with a huge plastic dome covering his entire head he can still somehow pull out a wild, energetic, sad and sometimes hilarious performance. It made me think of how in X Men Days of Future Past so many of the actors who tried their hands at rocking the seventies style of dress looked out of place or, in the case of Jennifer Lawrence, looked like a kid doing dress up with their mums clothes. Fassbender looked like a boss.

The film is a mixture of charming oddity and genuine emotional heft. It's hard not to laugh at the broken down lives of the characters in the movie, at least initially. So many of them seem like outsider music archetypes, all in thrall to the King of Randomness that is Frank. Most of the first act and slightly afterwards is played for a mixture of broad laughs and knowing guffaws at what elements of the rock movie genre they're trying to deflate. This part of the experience is probably what will draw most people in. If you're willing to go along with the movies mix of weirdness and childlike glee you'll have a fun time in strange, new surrounds.

Thankfully though there is more to it than that. It's a comedy of sorts, but more of a meditation on the price people can pay for artistic ambition. The people who populate the film are broken down human beings, too shattered and eccentric to ever be accepted by the masses. That's the point really. There's a high price to be paid for artistic integrity and often the pursuit of the more traditional trappings of fame can leave the more vulnerable and precious chewed up and battered. For a film that has a lot of hilarious moments, it's really quite melancholic and bittersweet.

Aside from Fassbender Domhnall Gleason does his best. He's not helped that he has to play a version of Jon Ronson, a poor mans British Woody Allen. Maggie Gyllenhaal plays an underwritten crazed person who doesn't even get to hint at a heart of gold. Though Scoot McNairy is brilliant. This guy is seemingly turning up everywhere with great character actor performances.

Deliver us from Evil (2014)

Crime/horror. Some demonic evil's going down in the big city, and it's up to one jaded cop to stop it.

Decent 'Possession-horror' type movie. Some nice jump scares. Hard to take a movie like this seriously though, because it totally overblows the whole possession angle. It's trying to be taken seriously, but in it's mission to do so, it ends up becoming a pretty standard popcorn movie.