What have you watched recently? 3D!

loyatemu wrote: »

Total Recall (1989) - continuing to educate the kids on the classics - still great, clever plot but also a lot of fun. I've never seen the remake, and I never will.

Agree with you about the original - a classic - and although I enjoyed the remake I can't really remember much about it. Zero Recall??

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.

glasso wrote: »

had to turn that off tbh when I tried watching it before

a retro colour palette and some gratuitous titties (of the style or not) wasn't going to save it

ran out of steam quicker than an electric locomotive and the terrible dialogue, long scenes and long runtime dragged harder than a horse.

Awful movie.

The Scheme - A jaw-dropping new documentary dives into an absurd tale of how the FBI tried to bring down a 26-year-old basketball star scout.

Good watch, Dawkins is a very likable character with smarts at a young age.

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

^
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".

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

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.

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

'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

Watched the original version of The Magnificent Seven. A good fun western with a brilliant soundtrack. Enjoyed the remake too, but I still think this version has the edge.

'Big Jake'

When a young boy gets kidnapped by a bunch of no good outlaws, Jacob McCandles is asked by his estranged wife to seek out the gang and bring him home.

'Big Jake' is an old fashioned John Wayne western made at a time when old fashioned westerns were pretty much a dying breed. Even in 1971 it must have seemed kind of quaint, so now 50 years later I'm sure it could seem positively ancient to some people. But it's decision to set it in 1909, complete with motorcars and bikes gave it an unusual feel to the average cowboy movie, if only for the first third. It's also clear that the impact of the more violent spaghetti western was being felt in Hollywood, as 'Big Jake' was a lot more bloody than regular.

The Duke is his usual self so there's no surprises there, despite him being visibly over the hill, which is the subject of a few jokes here and there. But there's an undeniable charisma to him that manages to get what he does over the line and he carries out everything he needs to with the expected professionalism that he was famous for. He's joined by his own son, Patrick, and Robert Mitchum's son, Christopher, who play Big Jake's lads. They're members of the party tasked Martha McCandles (Maureen O'Hara) to go and retrieve their grandson, played by John Wayne's youngest son, Ethan.

'Big Jake' is one of those films that would have done the rounds on TV when I was a kid and I remember it being one of my old man's favourites. We must have watched it every time it was on (which felt like an annual outing) and it still remains as enjoyable today as it was all those years ago. It's, no doubt, a silly story for sure. But that doesn't really matter as everything flows along relatively smoothly, although there are a couple of missteps here and there, most notably in the area of some ill-fitting comic moments that don't really work and in the (very) limited acting abilities of Wayne younger and Mitchum.

The gang are a very suitable group of scumbags, headed by the great Richard Boone as John Fain (who Wayne would also get to knock about with in his last movie 'The Shootist') and you just love seeing them get their just deserts. That goes especially for one character, John Goodfellow (Gregg Palmer), who was responsible for killing two of my favourite members of the protagonist posse in the final act.

'Big Jake' is the final effort of director, John Sherman - a veteran of over 100 movies - and is a pleasing film of the type that has been forever lost to the past and one which manages to overcome its weaknesses. Plus there's a genuine charm to seeing Wayne as an old horse who has outlived his time and is struggling to come to terms with how the times are changing in the 20th Century.

8/10