What have you watched recently? 3D!

barrymanilow · 01-04-2021 1:07pm

Homelander wrote: »

Synchronic with Jamie Dornan and Anthony Mackie. A simple but thought-provoking sci-fi that doesn't overly rely on special effects or spectacle, and while I usually dislike Anthony Mackie but he's pretty decent in this.

Directed by the guys who made "The Endless" (available on Netflix) which is a stunning low-budget, high-concept movie. I'd say Synchronic is a bit more "mainstream" but it's a solid movie.

Thanks for the recommend , watched it last night and really enjoyed it. Terrific concept , well executed on a thin budget.

pixelburp · 01-04-2021 5:15pm

Freaky (2020)

Yet another effortlessly balanced mix of horror, comedy and elevator-pitch gimmickry from the director of the "Happy Death Day" films: the horror aspect this time accentuated through some suitably crunchy kills, while yet again the characters had effective, relatable arcs that kept the sci-fi premise grounded; its young leads game and enthusiastic throughout. The standout was obviously Vince Vaughan, playing a teenage girl with almost disturbing ease, but the whole package was pure entertainment. When they're on form, Blumhouse really mainstream horror look easy.

Crimson Tide (1995)

There's something unique about dramas on a submarine that can't be replicated in almost any other working environment. It's such a specific, modern circumstance that automatically possesses high tension and claustrophobia by dint of its very being. Throw in a faction war over whether to launch nuclear missiles and you have what was arguably Tony Scott's high point as director. The testosterone never boiled over, the action never strayed too far into outright histrionics, while all the performances sold this battle of wits throughout. Hackman and Washington were fantastic. The only minus point was perhaps its most famous piece of trivia: the scenes Quentin Tarantino was hired to rewrite were almost painfully obvious, if only for the utterly needless pop-culture non-sequitors.

4Ad · 01-04-2021 10:37pm

Creation Stories.
Story of Alan McGee and his Creation Record label..
I really enjoyed it but I love the music and bands, goes stupid towards the end..
Ewen Bremner is very good in it though.

dubstepper · 02-04-2021 2:52pm

El Gato De Negocios wrote: »

Shocker (1989)
Craven really did have more piss poor efforts throughout his career than classics. Other than Last House on the Left, Hills have eyes, Elm Street and Scream, his catalogue is pretty dire.

People under the stairs is also very good. As is serpant and the rainbow.

Del.Monte · 03-04-2021 5:07pm

Airforce One is Down on Amazon Prime

Serbian rogue army officer wants revenge on the West.

Poorly acted, poor special effects, no likeable characters and, apart from the Russian Foreign Minister, nobody able to act. Corny is the best description. 4/10.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTrtZRyxDn8

TICKLE_ME_ELMO · 04-04-2021 12:04am

I watched Minari tonight and was bit disappointed, to be honest. I get why it's an important film, and it's not a bad film, but as far as the story goes it felt like something I've seen before multiple times.

04-04-2021 12:14pm

Shiva Baby - 2020

A short film drama very much set in the New York Jewish suburban milieu about a fairly lost young woman feeling the usual Jewish parent expectation pressure about what to do in life. Oh and she has a very questionable side hustle. It all comes to a head at a funeral after party. Interesting and doesn't overstay its welcome.

6.5 / 10

06-04-2021 8:01am

The Father Anthony Hopkins delivers a whirlwind of a performance here, most brutally showing Alzheimers in all its misery. I can't remember a more sobering final act of a film, and I hope he picks up best actor for the bravery alone it took to make this and perform his final scene.

run_Forrest_run · 06-04-2021 9:44am

The Vanishing (the original one, 1988)

When Mark Kermode said it's in his top 10 of movies that scared him I had to watch it. Awfully disappointing really. Maybe at the time, it was scary (the ending?) but by today's standards, I thought it was fairly poor, to be honest.

06-04-2021 11:46am

Drive - 2011

I hadn't seen it since the first viewing in the cinema. It's short on lead character dialogue which serves to create an enigmatic aura about him. Yet this man of few words is decisive when called upon to be so and the film's tension is heightened by this deliberate scarcity of the verbal form. There is little fat here and it's all the better for it. I'd forgotten that the moments of violence were so intense and graphic. A finely judged soundtrack completes the picture.

7.8 / 10

cmac2009 · 06-04-2021 3:02pm

glasso wrote: »

Drive - 2011

I hadn't seen it since the first viewing in the cinema. It's short on lead character dialogue which serves to create an enigmatic aura about him. Yet this man of few words is decisive when called upon to be so and the film's tension is heightened by this deliberate scarcity of the verbal form. There is little fat here and it's all the better for it. I'd forgotten that the moments of violence were so intense and graphic. A finely judged soundtrack completes the picture.

7.8 / 10

I'm not a huge fan of rewatching films but I make an exception for this.

The Raging Bile Duct · 06-04-2021 4:05pm

The Dry with Eric Bana is a great little Aussie thriller. Bana plays Aaron Falk, a federal agent who returns to the hometown he left abruptly as a teenager to attend the funeral of his childhood friend, Luke, who is apparently responsible for a murder suicide. Although intending to leave as quickly as possible, Falk is persuaded by Luke's parents to look at the case to try and clear their son's name. While investigating with the local cop, Falk starts to believe the case isn't as clear cut as many believe and that the case might have a connection to the death of one of their friends 13 years before. The films switches between the present and the past leading up to the tragic death of Aaron's friend. The flashbacks to a summer in his adolescence playing in the river with his friends highlights the devastation caused to the community by the drought it is now suffering and Falk's return acts as a tinderbox reigniting old tensions. Well worth a watch.

06-04-2021 11:00pm

The Raging Bile Duct wrote: »

The Dry with Eric Bana is a great little Aussie thriller. Bana plays Aaron Falk, a federal agent who returns to the hometown he left abruptly as a teenager to attend the funeral of his childhood friend, Luke, who is apparently responsible for a murder suicide. Although intending to leave as quickly as possible, Falk is persuaded by Luke's parents to look at the case to try and clear their son's name. While investigating with the local cop, Falk starts to believe the case isn't as clear cut as many believe and that the case might have a connection to the death of one of their friends 13 years before. The films switches between the present and the past leading up to the tragic death of Aaron's friend. The flashbacks to a summer in his adolescence playing in the river with his friends highlights the devastation caused to the community by the drought it is now suffering and Falk's return acts as a tinderbox reigniting old tensions. Well worth a watch.

read the Jane Harper book a couple years back so may not watch this as the style of the book's writing would not be easy to bring across imo - may give it a go sometime tho.

darced · 06-04-2021 11:36pm

run_Forrest_run wrote: »

The Vanishing (the original one, 1988)

When Mark Kermode said it's in his top 10 of movies that scared him I had to watch it. Awfully disappointing really. Maybe at the time, it was scary (the ending?) but by today's standards, I thought it was fairly poor, to be honest.

I only seen this last year, scary? Maybe not but an absolutely brilliant film.

The Raging Bile Duct · 06-04-2021 11:42pm

glasso wrote: »

read the Jane Harper book a couple years back so may not watch this as the style of the book's writing would not be easy to bring across imo - may give it a go sometime tho.

I don't know how faithful it is to the book but from reading up on it, fans of the book have enjoyed the film. The cinematography is great at capturing the arid desolation of the drought-striken town. I'd have only one niggle about a very convenient plot point, in I guess you'd call the epilogue, which I don't know if it's how it happened in the original book or was as a result of the script tying up loose ends. Apart from that, I enjoyed it a lot and it had me guessing the whole way through.

S.M.B. · 07-04-2021 7:58am

glasso wrote: »

Drive - 2011

I hadn't seen it since the first viewing in the cinema. It's short on lead character dialogue which serves to create an enigmatic aura about him. Yet this man of few words is decisive when called upon to be so and the film's tension is heightened by this deliberate scarcity of the verbal form. There is little fat here and it's all the better for it. I'd forgotten that the moments of violence were so intense and graphic. A finely judged soundtrack completes the picture.

7.8 / 10

Can't believe this is 10 years old, also can't believe I still have not watched it or any Winding Refn movie for some reason.

07-04-2021 1:02pm

The Raging Bile Duct wrote: »

I don't know how faithful it is to the book but from reading up on it, fans of the book have enjoyed the film. The cinematography is great at capturing the arid desolation of the drought-striken town. I'd have only one niggle about a very convenient plot point, in I guess you'd call the epilogue, which I don't know if it's how it happened in the original book or was as a result of the script tying up loose ends. Apart from that, I enjoyed it a lot and it had me guessing the whole way through.

it's more about the childhood events that are related to the present day. there is a lot of flashback stuff in the book which works in the written word but I find doesn't really work in film. don't know if they left this out in the film or not but it was a big part of the book.

The Raging Bile Duct · 07-04-2021 1:15pm

glasso wrote: »

it's more about the childhood events that are related to the present day. there is a lot of flashback stuff in the book which works in the written word but I find doesn't really work in film. don't know if they left this out in the film or not but it was a big part of the book.

The flashback stuff works really well in the film.

I think it does a great job of showing how Aaron's perception of what had happened in the past coloured his opinion of Luke but he hadn't known that Luke came up with the alibi not to protect himself but to protect Aaron. He only discovers that after Luke's girlfriend tells Aaron that Luke was with her on that day.

barrymanilow · 08-04-2021 11:45am

darced wrote: »

I only seen this last year, scary? Maybe not but an absolutely brilliant film.

What is the remake like ? any good?

Mad_maxx · 10-04-2021 2:25pm

Doctor Sleep

really enjoyed it until it completely falls apart in the final twenty minutes or so at the lookout hotel

run_Forrest_run · 10-04-2021 2:35pm

Mad_maxx wrote: »

Doctor Sleep

really enjoyed it until it completely falls apart in the final twenty minutes or so at the lookout hotel

totally agree

dubstepper · 10-04-2021 2:41pm

I find a lot of Stephen King's works fall apart near the end.

TICKLE_ME_ELMO · 10-04-2021 8:20pm

dubstepper wrote: »

I find a lot of Stephen King's works fall apart near the end.

The book ending for Doctor Sleep is different from the film ending. I'm pretty sure I prefered the film ending.

mikhail · 10-04-2021 11:23pm

TICKLE_ME_ELMO wrote: »

The book ending for Doctor Sleep is different from the film ending. I'm pretty sure I prefered the film ending.

It is. The hotel is destroyed at the end of King's The Shining, but not in Kubrick's. Dr Sleep treads the line between adapting King's Dr Sleep (a sequel to his own book) and being a sequel to Kubrick's The Shining.

I slightly preferred the book, to be honest. The film just jarred in comparison with Kubrick's. For example, reducing the woman in room 327 to a tiredly repeated punchline was as tone-deaf as I'd feared going into it.

TICKLE_ME_ELMO · 11-04-2021 12:13am

mikhail wrote: »

It is. The hotel is destroyed at the end of King's The Shining, but not in Kubrick's. Dr Sleep treads the line between adapting King's Dr Sleep (a sequel to his own book) and being a sequel to Kubrick's The Shining.

I slightly preferred the book, to be honest. The film just jarred in comparison with Kubrick's. For example, reducing the woman in room 327 to a tiredly repeated punchline was as tone-deaf as I'd feared going into it.

I haven't read or seen The Shining, but did read and watch Doctor Sleep, so I was going in with very different eyes, I guess.

silverharp · 11-04-2021 9:41am

Nightcrawlers is great, just saw it for the first time last night

Del.Monte · 11-04-2021 12:31pm

"Secret State" (2012) 4 part mini-series on Amazon Prime.

Excellent, realistic thriller starring Gabriel Byrne as the UK Prime Minister surrounded by disloyal ministers, and military/industrial interests as he tries to find out who was behind the death of his predecessor - Iran or the military/industrial complex. There'sa lot more going on in the background but I cannot say more without giving too much. 10/10

run_Forrest_run · 11-04-2021 1:42pm

Lake Mungo - enjoyed it, 90 mins get in, scare, get out, perfect.

Harry Palmr · 12-04-2021 5:57pm

Whiplash Young would-be Buddy Rich goes to school to be schooled by abusive tutor.

If you love post war jazz and drums you'll love this!

Del.Monte · 13-04-2021 9:32am

"No Country for Old Men" (2007) on Amazon Prime.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38A__WT3-o0

Don't know how I missed this Coen Bros classic before but I really enjoyed it - if one can really enjoy murder/mayhem? If there's one disappointment

it's the ending - did they run out of time, film, money or ideas?

8/10

What have you watched recently? 3D!

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