movies

Put the world to rights here (off-topic discussion)
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Darkweasel
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Re: movies

Postby Darkweasel » Sat Sep 17, 2016 2:00 pm

NeglectedField wrote:Fancy the look of 10 Cloverfield Lane. Is there any connection to the Cloverfield film there, or would that spoil it? :P

That would spoil it.


31

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If you've seen even just one Rob Zombie movie, you'll already have a good idea of what's in store for you here. Brutal and sadistic violence, bucket loads of gore, bright, garish music video lighting, trailer trash characters, nightmarish imagery, and a suitably '70s-heavy soundtrack. But not really much to speak of in the way of plot. And in that sense, 31, the dribbling, greasepainted mongoloid offspring of The Running Man and the Texas Chain Saw Massacre, is 100% a Rob Zombie film.

The trailer trash characters are even louder, stupider, hairier, and more unlikable than before, the baddies have names like "Psycho Head", "Death Head" and "Sick Head" and wear scary clown grease paint. Zombie's influences, as ever, are all up there in full view, but at no point does he ever come close to emulating any of them with any real degree of success. After half an hour of running around, stabbing and screaming, everything just becomes a pointless blur of colours and noise. At one point, something happens which looks like it could actually send the film off in a totally different, and most welcomed direction, but instead it completely ignores its chance and just carries on doing the same old thing to a soundtrack of screaming, gurgling, splashy noises, chainsaws, '70s hard rock, and a John Carpenter, let's say... inspired music score.

Again, Zombie has put together a talented cast of cult actors, but this time fails to utilise almost every single one of them in a satisfactory manner. Malcolm McDowell (A Clockwork Orange) and Judy Geeson (10 Rillington Place) spend their sparse screen time in renaissance wigs, repeatedly telling the group of intended victims their odds of survival. Green eyed Meg Foster (They Live, Masters of the Universe) - now resembling a screwed up brown paper bag - spends most of the film running, hiding, falling over, or grabbing her crotch, and the ever reliable Tracey Walter (Silence of the Lambs, Batman, Conan The Destroyer) is reduced to a role of a toothless, sweary garage attendant. At least porn actress Ginger Lynn gets to play to her strengths by doing what she does best.

With its haphazard, almost panicked direction, 31 is clearly a bad film and arguably Zombie's worst effort thus far, but it's not irretrievably awful. Richard Brake (Batman Begins, Hannibal Rising) is brilliantly OTT as "Doom Head" (most notably during the Tarantino-esque opening sequence, and the final scene) and Sheri Moon Zombie actually turns in her first genuinely passable performance. The exteriors have a wonderfully washed out look giving it a genuine 1970s vibe, the gaudy carnival lighting plays a key role as usual, and there's a great use of Aerosmith's 'Dream On' during a black and white flashback. But it's just not enough as 31 basically just retreads old ground in unimaginative ways, and you get the feeling that not even the fully uncut version (apparently set for the Blu ray release) will be able to salvage things any further.

4.5/10
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Annihislater II
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Re: movies

Postby Annihislater II » Mon Jan 02, 2017 12:16 pm

I've not posted for probably a year now.

So it's quite convenient that letterboxd provides a year in review so you can see some stats about my film watching in the last 12 months.

http://letterboxd.com/nslater90/year/2016/

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Re: movies

Postby Soze » Mon Jan 02, 2017 7:08 pm

Annihislater II wrote:I've not posted for probably a year now.

So it's quite convenient that letterboxd provides a year in review so you can see some stats about my film watching in the last 12 months.

http://letterboxd.com/nslater90/year/2016/


That's quite flashy and statnerdtastic. Almost tempted to upgrade to Pro myself now! I've made my own list of every film I've seen in 2016, in order of preference...

http://letterboxd.com/soze/list/2016-best-to-worst/

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Re: movies

Postby Annihislater II » Sat Jan 07, 2017 1:26 pm

Soze wrote:
Annihislater II wrote:I've not posted for probably a year now.

So it's quite convenient that letterboxd provides a year in review so you can see some stats about my film watching in the last 12 months.

http://letterboxd.com/nslater90/year/2016/


That's quite flashy and statnerdtastic. Almost tempted to upgrade to Pro myself now! I've made my own list of every film I've seen in 2016, in order of preference...

http://letterboxd.com/soze/list/2016-best-to-worst/


Pretty good selection.
Arrival was a very close contender for me. And I think with a stronger ending it would be up there. But I just found the conclusion far far to convenient and nonsensical. I felt it lessened it on the whole for me. WHich is a shame, because it was prety special up until that point.

I feel kind of similar about Room. Fantastic until what I'm going to call the 3rd act, where they adapt to life outside. I just felt it got really boring and meandering and like it didn't know where to go anymore or really where to end. I think I was basically hoping for a life is wodnerful/look at the beauty in the world/discovering the world for the first time though the eyes of someone who can appreciate it type thing.

But I appreciate both criticisms are more about what I wanted rather than what the film does.

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Re: movies

Postby Haldamir319 » Mon Jan 09, 2017 7:47 am

La La Land won an unprecedented seven Golden Globes last night - something no film has ever done before (One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Next and Midnight Express were the previous record holders with 6 each).

What's everyone's opinion on this? I'm actually really looking forward to seeing it.
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Re: movies

Postby gavdann » Tue Jan 10, 2017 12:25 pm

Annihislater II wrote:I feel kind of similar about Room. Fantastic until what I'm going to call the 3rd act, where they adapt to life outside. I just felt it got really boring and meandering and like it didn't know where to go anymore or really where to end. I think I was basically hoping for a life is wodnerful/look at the beauty in the world/discovering the world for the first time though the eyes of someone who can appreciate it type thing.

Totally agree. The first half was sinister and creepy, the second half was a snooze fest and just not believable either.

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Re: movies

Postby gavdann » Tue Jan 10, 2017 12:30 pm

someone else wrote:Compare and Contrast: Point Break (1992) and Point Break (2015).

As soon as the appalling reviews started to come in, I refused to watch it. Some of your words look like a lift & shift from one of the reviews I read in fact. :lol:

The Keanu/Swayze version is one of my all time favourite films so I'm not going to let anything tarnish it.

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Re: movies

Postby Annihislater II » Sat Jan 14, 2017 12:10 pm

Haldamir319 wrote:La La Land won an unprecedented seven Golden Globes last night - something no film has ever done before (One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Next and Midnight Express were the previous record holders with 6 each).

What's everyone's opinion on this? I'm actually really looking forward to seeing it.


I like it, but I don't quite think I love it.

This was my review that I wrote about half an hour after watching it last week.
http://letterboxd.com/nslater90/film/la-la-land/

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Re: movies

Postby kanet666 » Sun Jan 15, 2017 6:51 pm

So what have I seen recently:

Doctor Strange - Very good, one of the better films in the Marvel Universe 9/10
Zoolander 2 - Awfully cringey and over the top, but that's exactly what it was trying to do 7/10
Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens - Pretty bad, worse than at least 4 of the 6 previous films. Bland characters, rehashed plot 5/10
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story - A much better film than VII, amusing in places, horrifying in places, needed more Vader though 7/10
10 Cloverfield Lane - Was thoroughly enjoying it. Then the last 15 mins happened 8/10 first 2 acts, 1/10 last act
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice - What a steaming pile of garbage 1/10
Steam = Starchild

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Re: movies

Postby Gandalf the Red » Sun Jan 15, 2017 7:14 pm

Haldamir319 wrote:La La Land won an unprecedented seven Golden Globes last night - something no film has ever done before (One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Next and Midnight Express were the previous record holders with 6 each).

What's everyone's opinion on this? I'm actually really looking forward to seeing it.


It all depends on what the awards are for. If it's for best actor, screenplay or film, then it's relevant.

If it's for best costume, song, special effects or soundtrack then it's probably unfair to compare it with a film that most of the cast wear jeans and T shirts and has no music or effects.

Nice to put on your posters but a bit irrelevant in my opinion.
“He likes having the ball, playing football, passes. It’s like an orchestra. But it’s a silent song. But I like heavy metal more. I always want it loud.” - Jürgen Klopp

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Re: movies

Postby Haldamir319 » Mon Jan 16, 2017 9:21 am

Gandalf the Red wrote:
Haldamir319 wrote:La La Land won an unprecedented seven Golden Globes last night - something no film has ever done before (One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Next and Midnight Express were the previous record holders with 6 each).

What's everyone's opinion on this? I'm actually really looking forward to seeing it.


It all depends on what the awards are for. If it's for best actor, screenplay or film, then it's relevant.

If it's for best costume, song, special effects or soundtrack then it's probably unfair to compare it with a film that most of the cast wear jeans and T shirts and has no music or effects.

Nice to put on your posters but a bit irrelevant in my opinion.


Well, the Golden Globes are sort of unique in that they separate dramas from comedies (and musicals get lumped into comedies) for the best picture and actors/actress awards (the others, like director, supporting actor/actress etc is just one award for the lot).

In the Comedy / Musical section, La La Land won for:
Best Film
Best Actor
Best Actress

The other four awards were:
Best director
Best screenplay
Best original score
Best original song.

For the record, I saw this on Saturday and really enjoyed it. I think it's at least a 4 out of 5 film.
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Re: movies

Postby Darkweasel » Thu Jan 19, 2017 7:18 pm

FULL ECLIPSE
(1993)

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You have to feel sorry for all those movie cops whose partners are billed as the main star but who don't even make it as far as the movie poster themselves. These poor dead men walking are so blissfully unaware of their own impending demise that you can't help but want to give them a little hug and tell them its going to be all right. Every time I watch Alien Nation I want to warn James Caan's partner that death by armour piercing bullets awaits him in the very first action sequence. I want to shout "No, Jeff Daniels! Don't go into Dennis Hopper's house!" whenever I watch Speed. I yell into the TV at Andy Garcia, warning him not to worry about retrieving his coat in Black Rain, and I don a funereal black armband every time a job vacancy arises in Dirty Harry's precinct.

And yet, never in all my days of watching expendable partners meet their untimely ends, have I seen such a sad case as Jim Sheldon in Full Eclipse. On screen for one whole second before asking his partner and main star Mario Van Peebles, "I've been your partner for how many years?", the poor damned fool proceeds to inform us that he just proposed to his girlfriend over the weekend and they're now due to get married. On top of that, he then announces that he's leaving the force because he's "getting tired of this shit". A long term partner all set to get married and leave the force? It's the perfect storm. Oh, Jim.

A mere ten seconds after sharing his upcoming wedding vows with Van Peebles, the all too inevitable call comes in that there's a hostage situation at a local nightclub. I shout "STAY IN THE CAR, JIM! YOU'RE GETTING MARRIED, DAMMIT!!". But he doesn't hear me. Instead, he gets out and follows Mario up onto the roof and down into an air conditioning vent which looks down on the hostage scene below. "DON'T MOVE, JIM! THEY'LL HEAR YOU!". Again, he ignores me and tries shuffling forwards inside the large metal tube which will soon become his coffin. Against my panicked advice, he inches forwards and the metal pipe screeches its disapproval. The bad guys hear, aim their weapons towards the long metal tunnel above them and before I can shriek a final, desperate warning, they riddle the ventilation passage with holes, and blood begins to drip steadily onto the dance floor below.

Jim is dead.
Well, almost...

Inside Jim's hospital room, as he lies comatose in critical condition, a mysterious figure enters and injects the prone partner with a sinister looking serum and leaves. Mourning the loss of his partner, the very next morning Mario is more than shocked to discover Jim is suddenly alive and well and already strapping on his holster for another busy day of partnering.

It soon becomes clear that Jim is a little different to his normal, jokey self. You can tell this by the way he snarls, is suddenly able to jump over cars and leap thirty feet into the air as he attempts to arrest some gang members who just committed a drive-by shooting. It appears mere arrests aren't good enough for Jim any more as he jumps onto the back of a motorcycle and rams himself and his felonious pillion passenger into a wall, exploding on impact. Expecting to find his partner dead for a second time in as many days, Mario is more than a little shocked to find Jim is a little crispy around the edges but otherwise unharmed. Unlike the gang member.

Life begins to get a little rough on Jim, and he decides, rather dramatically, to end it all by melting down his lucky silver dollar, and shooting himself in the head with it in front of his partner and some other cops including Hank from Breaking Bad.

After losing his partner twice in the space of a few days, Mario is assigned to a police support group run by blonde baddie cop Bruce Payne (Passenger 57). The rest of the group is made up of Jason Beghe (Monkey Shines), Paula Marshall (Hellraiser III), John Verea (Collateral Damage) and slinky sexpot Patsy Kensit who just can't wait to take all her clothes off. It turns out the support group are actually moonlighting (quite literally) as a gang of vigilante werewolves, using the magical serum to turn themselves into cheap looking monsters with pointy teeth, and lumpy foreheads straight out of the Star Trek: Next Generation alien of the week special effects box.

After making sexytime with Mario still doesn't tempt him over to their side, Kensit simply shoots him instead and administers the drug against his will. Mario instantly becomes a conflicted super-cop and sets out to get rid of Bruce Payne. Payne, however, has a secret. If he transforms into a full werewolf using really bad early CGI during a full eclipse (which that night happens to be), and even if shot with a silver bullet, he is rendered indestructible. Fortunately for Mario, full eclipses and bad special effects don't last very long in 1993 and he does away with Brucie the moment the moon clears.

A completely stupid, but completely brilliant bit of werewolf silliness directed by the bloke who did Hellraiser III, Waxwork, and Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat. Van Peebles gets to say some ridiculous lines, dive around shooting two guns at the same time (a lot), and in one brilliant shot left over from the eighties, is seen sitting alone and dispirited atop a white, wooden lifeguard's station, staring into the distance with his shirt blowing in the breeze and his jacket draped solemnly over one shoulder as seagulls fly overhead. A classic moment if ever there was one.

"Go ahead, make your day!"
7/10
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Re: movies

Postby Sonic Brewer » Thu Jan 19, 2017 10:50 pm

Well now I absolutely have to watch Full Eclipse, that sounds amazing!

At the cinema recently I have seen Doctor Strange, which was very good, one of the best Marvel films I'd say. Also 10 Cloverfield Lane, which I loved. Even the end.

Star Trek: Into Darkness was my favourite of the new films. It felt the closest to Next Generation, which I loved in my youth. And I liked how there were bits that I thought were plot holes but I then realised the significance of later, as if the director didn't want to spoon feed the audience. Also, the big space battle towards the end is one of my favourite musical moments from a film in recent memory.

Rogue One... I really wanted to like it. I didn't set my expectations really high or anything. I was cautious. And I was pretty underwhelmed. How it's gone for me is that in the original films, I was watching them thinking "Please don't die!" about the characters. In the prequels, I was thinking "Somebody better kill them soon, or I'm going to rip through the screen to do it myself." In Rogue One, I was completely indifferent to whether they lived or died. Any of them. Absolutely no emotional attachment to the characters. Tarkin looked awful, like he'd fallen off the Polar Express and landed on the death star. They should have just cast Charles Dance, or not used the character at all. The tone felt all wrong and there was way too much planet hopping at the start. Also, why would you have Jimmy Smits there and give him nothing to do? He was the best thing about every single one of his scenes in Sons of Anarchy.

Suicide Squad was pretty poor, but I knew it would be. My sister wanted to see it, and looked all disappointed when I said I didn't want to. I'm such a sucker. Very stupid film with too much character backstory and not enough character development. And as was pointed out to me, none of the events of the film would even have happened if the squad hadn't been assembled in the first place, which is probably why everything felt so inconsequential. But talking about this does lead me rather neatly onto another David Ayer film which I finally got round to on Blu-ray...

End of Watch. What a film. All the hype I read about it when it was released was totally justified. If you haven't seen it already, do yourself a favour and pick it up. Packed with tension, heart and humanity.

Also on DVD, we made the unusual choice of Into The Wild for our New Year's Eve viewing. Whilst it did cast a somewhat... reflective mood on the evening, it was a stunning film. Beautifully shot, introspective, uplifting and emotional. Even Kristen Stewart couldn't mess it up. Much.

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Re: movies

Postby Darkweasel » Sat Jan 28, 2017 12:21 pm

BODOM
(2016)

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In 1960, on the shores of Lake Bodom near Espoo in Finland, three teenagers were murdered by an unknown assailant. A fourth was injured in the attack but survived to tell the tale. In 2004 he was arrested for the crime but was eventually found not guilty. The case remains unsolved to this day.

Not exactly a widely known real life murder case, I only heard about the incident myself for the first time when I discovered Children of Bodom about seventeen years ago, and have been waiting for someone to make a film about it ever since. Using the true story as a jumping off point, Bodom begins with four teens going off to the lake to recreate the original murders as a bit of fun (make-believe, not for real) but soon discover a killer has smiliar, but rather more literal plans for them.

What begins as standard stalk and slash fare soon turns into something more interesting when the actual story is revealed, and then returns to more familiar territory for the final third. It's nicely paced and relatively short (coming in at around 1hr 20mins), the acting is decent, and some of the cinematography is really quite superb. It's not too gory, but doesn't really need to be, and overall is just a very decent little Finnish (so subtitles ahoy) horror film.

Strangely, no Children of Bodom on the soundtrack though. Missed a bit of an open goal there.
7/10
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Re: movies

Postby Darkweasel » Sun Jan 29, 2017 1:45 am

SHIN GODZILLA
aka Godzilla Resurgence
(2016)

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In this 31st film and third full reboot in the long-running Toho franchise, Godzilla begins his latest adventure as one of the most ridiculous looking creations you will ever see. With two massive back legs, an elongated body with gills, no front claws, two huge, round - almost kawaii-like eyes - and a happy-little-doggy grin that makes Godzuki look terrifying in comparison, it uses the waterways to waddle its way inland while the government's super-scientists all promise that everything will be perfectly fine and that there is absolutely no need for panic.

Stupid scientists. Don't they know this version of Godzilla can evolve in a matter of moments? Without any warning whatsoever, the monster suddenly grows a pair of front arms, doubles in size, and basically looks a whole lot scarier than it did thirty seconds before. All the usual smashing and stomping follows, complete with helicopters, tanks, missiles, exploding bomb-trains, panicked citizens,and laser breath/photon beams spraying in all directions like some kind of mad, mobile Jean-Michel Jarre concert (and most of it in daylight too, unlike the recent US version).

Unfortunately, all the lovely action keeps getting bogged down by the film having too many characters, too many long-winded conversations, endless cabinet meetings and politics (this is the only creature feature I've seen where the heroes of the film are the politicians), and lengthy spells of back story and exposition. Whenever it looks like the action is about to kick off to another level, we're suddenly back in a room of sexagenarian cabinet ministers waffling on about something or other.

That said, some of the dialogue is truly fantastic. You can't help but read the subtitle, "freeze the bugger!" in a Yorkshire accent, and then facepalm along to the "way to go, USA!!" line. The CGI varies from excellent to terrible, with some sequences done so badly that they simply have to be deliberate homages to the original man-in-a-rubber-suit miniature model mayhem.

If you get bored with the story (which is fairly likely tbh), either flick it forward to the action sequences or wait until the ludicrously hot US envoy played by Satomi Ishihara (Attack on Titan) makes an appearance and try not to drown in your own drool.

"I won't see a third bomb dropped on the country of my grandmother, who lived through it!"
6/10


Stupid Godzilla
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Stupidly hot Satomi.
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She's 30 before you ask.
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