After seeing the trailer for the remake, I had the urge to see Total Recall again. That film is Arnie's best film imo. Could definitely have some form of anti-capitalist reading into it too. The thing I love most is those faces used on special effects though :groucho:
The remake is bound to be shit though, even if the special effects actually look real.
I'll give it a go - in desperate need of something to avoid writing essays!
This girl nerd was quite convincing as to why remake will suck. The fact they have so heavily edited the original P K Dick story makes me sceptical...
[youtube]RgkHKBO5b5U[/youtube]
The mention of Big Trouble in Little China makes me really want to watch that again. I don't think I've seen it since I was about 10 and I can remember having a weird attraction to it that's hard to describe.
The most important question about TR was brought up in this too. Will the woman with 3 breasts be in it? Apparently so...
I still don't understand why they don't remake things that were shit the first time round, that'd make more sense. That said, new TR has a Deus Ex Human Revolution vibe to it which is always good.
I saw loads of rubbish but A Bittersweet Life was worth a watch. There's not enough gangster films where the main person worries about having never been in love AND gives his boss and all the people he's sent after him a slap.
Got round to watching Big Trouble in Little China again. Brilliant film. I think I remember why I loved it so much when I was younger now. It was because I had a thing for the 2 'brides' when they were dressed up. There was just something about the way they looked :roll:
Aye, I want someone to remake Bloodsport as an existentialist arthouse film but still involving underground fighting rings obviously.
I just finished it this week. It's no Deus Ex but the art direction and wee touches are interesting enough. I completed ME1 but didn't carry my save over so now I can't be fucked with the rest.
I watched the Hunger Games, it was pretty bog standard but amusing enough and will hopefully prevent them remaking The Running Man or Battle Royale ;)
It had some decent ideas but it was a bit derivative, there were some really silly bits and some unnecessary stupidity. The magic dog monsters probably being worst.
Saw the Total recall remake advert, it looked shit.
Saw the advert for Lock Out which is basically Escape from New York in space without Snake Plissken, so it'll be shit.
The Thing (2011) ok prequel to the awesome original which suffered from a bizarrely unevenly powered alien (more so than the original) and had a few ridiculous moments, mostly the test for aliens which was first of all pretty stupid and trying to inject tension by having not asking people first was just ridiculous. No way near as good as the original but not too bad.
Pandorum - bit like Event Horizon but w/ less Cthulhu and more sci-fi. Saw ending a mile away and there was too much shit martial arts in it - I blame it on Paul W. S. Anderson. Still, scary-ish enough and a good thrill ride.
I've also obtained Bruno Dumont's Hors Satan and Tarr's last film A Turin Horse. Very excited about watching them soon.
I saw Modern Times and Safety Last, Lloyd was no Chaplin alas. Le Trou, probably the best prison break out film ever, and Kiss Me Deadly, noir with Nat King Cole songs and science fiction paranoia. I have forgotten what colour films look like.
Wojtek - of course it's got better if you're Bill Murray lolling on a bed next to Scarlett Johanssen. It's hard to imagine any improvement on that, no matter what angle you look at it. :)
Flaneur - Modern Times has to be in my top ten favourite movies. i always put it on when I need cheering up.
The Mechanic, despite starring Jason Statham it was pretty enjoyable and entertaining. Just a shame about the 'clients' all being 'bad people', pretty lame. Streamed it on-line for free. Worth a watch. Much better than his more recent film with De Niro.
Werner Herzog's last documentary, Into The Abyss. A look at the case of death row inmate Micheal Perry through to his execution, looking at the lives he has fucked over, the lives the death penalty has fucked over, especially those who administer the process and generally the mess that is guns, poverty and the death penalty in the US. Definitely worth a watch.
The Hangover part II. Won a free streamed film from film4 od (try the homepage, I think it's actually a promotion and everyone wins). It wasn't too bad but it was a basically the same film, a bit shitter, had two songs and was a bit disturbing at times.
[youtube]SBBoxXEBrxU[/youtube][youtube]a5yoqjABeBM[/youtube] Pervert's Guide to the Cinema with Slavoj Zizek, the man's hilarious. I'm not the film buff I should be, but it was still fascinating.
I've had a "film week" recently, and downloaded films I've seen talked about on here - Gattaca, A Scanner Darkly, and The New Babylon. Also re-watched Fight Club. I tried to get hold of Germinal, but couldn't find a decent download with English subs, as my French isn't what it used to be. Could anyone help?
I liked Gattaca, it was well made, fairly good script, and well acted. The New Babylon is incredible, and I'm happy I've come across that one, especially being a big fan of Soviet Russian and German Expressionist cinema.
A Scanner Darkly didn't really impress me, it was a bit too mumbly really, but maybe that's the point. Didn't really seem to go anywhere, barring the last 20 minutes. I liked the animation/acting idea though, it was almost Cezannian in character, flattening out the screen if you like. Still took a while to get used to, and I think this technique can be improved.
I'm still undecided on Fight Club. I think there's just a tad too much "coolness" - by that I mean the music and cinematography. I think the style overrides the substance a little, but each to their own. It has an interesting plot, but from what I took from it, it was a critique of masculinity, that I didn't really agree with. I need to think about it more.
I'm looking forward to The Master. I loved There Will Be Blood by the same director - the cinematography, acting, script (even though I've heard it's no a lot like Oil!) and the music. Jonny Greenwood's doing the score once again for this one.
FFS lay off tulips! They're about the only thing that I can grow really well.
I was wondering where this thread has gone when I had an overwhelming urge to bore everyone rigid with my opinions on The Avengers. Fortunately for all, the moment passed.
This was on TV the other night. Gritty as hell and hard hitting. It's about a British Borstal in the 70's, loads of racism, violence etc. what you would expect.
Monsters.
This was on last night. Didn't catch the start of it, but what i did see was very good. It's about aliens, and 2 people trying to get from A to B. Reminds me of Cloverfield in terms of the point of view it's shot from, and also aliens being in it. The soundtrack worked well and caught my ear. Yeah, i like it, a good, welcome twist on 'alien' movies, like district 9 but without the turning into aliens stuff.
I've also watched a number of movies recommended by you Libcom folks. Y'all have good taste.
Gentlemen Broncos - Pretty awesome. Napoleon Dynamite director, and has one of the guys from Flight of the Conchords.
Attack the Block - Also pretty cool. It would be fun to watch with kids who are 12+.
Also watched:
Scanner Darkly - I got a similar impression as Standfield. Would like to read the book.
The Salt of Life - Upper class Italian retiree trying to find love. Pretty good.
EDIT: I also watched Live Nude Girls Unite! It was pretty good, though they should have affiliated with the IWW instead of SEIU. You can watch it for free on HULU in the US.
District 9 and Goodfellas are the last two films I watched. Not for the first time, obv.
I keep promising myself a Sam Rockwell week, but then I forget, til it hits 2am and Im still awake and the only stuff on my telly is eighties game shows.
Germinal torrent here http://isohunt.com/download/178238369/Germinal.FRENCH.DVDRIP.XVID.AC3-NIKKA.avi, English subtitles here http://www.opensubtitles.org/sk/subtitles/3798601/germinal-en
Avengers - amazing and lots of fun!!!
Chronicle - very good and fun
Iron Sky - pretty lame to be honest
Sky Captain - horrible script, very good art/design/feeling
The Thing (2011) - thought it would be shit compared to the classic, but i liked the atmosphere. still, the classic is a classic
Prometheus - Pretty good, but not as good as Alien. Not by a long shot. Still, it had good acting and beautiful camera work. They just messed up the editing and the character development.
Prometheus - Pretty good, but not as good as Alien. Not by a long shot. Still, it had good acting and beautiful camera work. They just messed up the editing and the character development.
Yeah, those first couple of minutes...talk about eyegasm. As for character development, I thought it was funny that one of the few, if not the only one, who showed more emotional states was the robot. I could have done without that coda after the credits as well.
[Prmoetheus Spoiler Below]
Also, I thought the scene where the geologist comes back as a sort of zombie was silly as hell; to the point of comedy.
EROS PLUS MASSACRE: BIOGRAPHY OF ANARCHIST REVOLUTIONARY SAKAE OSUGI, AS OBSERVED BY 2 STUDENTS IN 1969
The film is a biography of anarchist Sakae Ōsugi, who was assassinated by the Japanese military in 1923. The story tells of his relationship with three women: Hori Yasuko, his wife; Noe Itō, his third lover, who was to die with him; and his jealous, second lover, Masaoka Itsuko, a militant feminist who attempts to kill him in a tea house in 1916. Parallel to the telling of Ōsugi’s life, two students do research on the political theories and ideas of free love that he upheld. Some of the characters from the past and from the present meet and engage the themes of the movie.
Osugi was evidently active in syndicalist groupings. I haven't watched the movie, just passing it along because I'm sure somebody here may be interested.
Attack the Block - lots of fun if a little cheesy at times.
Due Date - Fun enough although not much realy happened and that guy from The Hangover is playing the same part he does in every film.
RED - quite fun, a bit of shooting and a silly plot but otherwise worth a watch.
"We want to hurt no one. We're here for the bank's money, not your money. Your money is insured by the federal government, you're not gonna lose a dime. Think of your families, don't risk your life. Don't try and be a hero."
Besides Prometheus (words cannot describe how bad), I also watched the oldie Office Space. Probably it's an iconic film for a lot of libcomm-like people but I found it really depressing! Obviously the part about taking control of the office was cool, but:
1 - no thoughts about using his new found power to help his class and his co-workers
2 - just because you've taken a weird path into management, doesn't mean you're not one (and showed already a few cunt-ish actions)
3 - their plan to become 'free' was completely individualistic and relied on stealing from worker pensions (couldn't they have stolen from some rich bastard's investment fund?)
4 - they're not even caught... they turn themselves in! Worst radicals ever.
5 - finally, he seems fine taking a manual labour job because at least he's outdoors and not in the office. See how you like it when it rains or when a concrete block falls on your foot and your employer isn't insured!
Moonrise Kingdom, really white, really really good. So goddamn good, Wes Anderson just proves in this movie that he is a master of the art of cinema.
word. It's amazing.
Other things I have watched recently…
- Martha Marcy May Marlene - excellent film with the new Olsen non-twin who has left a cult
- Rampart - Woody Harrelson plays a bad cop in the LAPD during the Rampart scandal. Pretty good, but it's no Training Day
- Attenberg - Greek film from the director of Dogtooth (which is amazing) about a weird girl brought up in an oppressive modernist urban environment
I watched In Time a few months ago following a recommendation here - fucking excellent! Another good recent film with communist leanings is Ben Stiller and Eddie Murphy's Tower Heist!
Downloading Germinal and subtitles now, thanks for the links. It is my favourite book!
"Hitchhiker's Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy" (2005) - was awful, knew it would be, I just had to watch it out of curiosity.
"Control" - the Ian Curtis thing. For all of it's good reviews, I didn't really like it. I don't think the film really did a good job of portraying what kind of state of mind he was in, it was just like, "My marriage is failing, I had a few fits, time to go now...". It was a bit cold, in my opinion - the portrayal of depression could've been a bit less simplistic.
"When A Tree Falls" - This is about the Earth Liberation Front, and the subsequent conviction of one guy for an "eco-terrorist" bombing. It was mainly discussing the events, interviews with the people involved, and the term "terrorist", and what it means. Quite enjoyed it really. A fair few dodgy politics, but overall I sympathised with the eco-warriors. They genuinely seemed to regret the bombings (which killed no-one I might add), but the film also does quite a good job of showing us why they resorted to such action, and it certain ways, it is understandable, just misguided perhaps.
A.C.A.B.: All Cops Are Bastards - i really enjoyed it. it even has neonazi squatters in it, hehe. although it is not a very funny thing as it is a real problem in italy (not only for antifascist in italy).
followed the recommendation here and watched 50/50 - it is one of the films you think "what was so special about it?" while at the same time you enjoy it a lot and hardly forget it.
i might watch Tower Heist but it has very bad reviews so Steven., pray... :twisted:
SAFE - typical jason statham, inoffensive action shite, rips of LEON a bit without any depth
PROMETHEUS - watched it in 3D with Revol, he didn't understand any of it and was all 'who's the alien? is this the same alien from out of ALIENS 2? which planet are they on?' what a bellend
Prometheus is a movie I just gotta watch as well but I'll wait for a bluray rip or something.
I just watched The Nightmare before Christmas in 1080p, impressive how much better this looked than the DVD version I have. Another movie that greatly benefited from its transition to HD was The Asphyx, now that was awesome how crystal clear a 16mm movie can look like.
Speaking of blu-ray, House of 1000 corpses was twice as awesome in HD... Cpt Spalding gotta be the most awesome movie villain in the history of ever.
MT, 50/50 you mean the movie with the kid with third Rock from the Sun in? Yeah that's okay. Quite enjoyable in some ways.
If you like that kid he's also in Mysterious Skin which is great (although it's yet another film with a paedophile that looks like me in it).
Re Tower Heist having bad reviews, what do reviewers know?! Ben Stiller has never been in anything not amazing: http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=ben_stiller_should_star_in_every_movie
I just watched the film adaptation of Treasure of the Sierra Madre. I've been reading a bunch of B Traven recently. Really enjoyed it, very true to the book, it's great that Traven was able to oversee it (albeit while pretending to be his own literary agent!).
MT, 50/50 you mean the movie with the kid with third Rock from the Sun in? Yeah that's okay. Quite enjoyable in some ways.
He - Joseph Gordon-Levitt - was in another film called, "Brick". Seen it? I came across on late night telly a while back, it was really good, engrossing. Though I can't for the life of me remember what it was about.
The Treasue of Sierra Madre is quality.
Just watched "Don't Look Now" with Donald Sutherland. Really faithful to the de Maurier's short story, and the cinematography is really similar to Hitchcock's I think. Really good film.
Le mystère Picasso - a classic, and one I like to watch every year or so.
Cave of Forgotten Dreams, by Werner Herzog. About the cave paintings in Lascaux. Apart from the annoying overly-poetic commentary by Herzog, I found it interesting. It's my dream to one day go to Lascaux, but unless I'm a millionaire film-maker, or I get a job there, it looks unlikely.
Germinal. Didn't feel like the 2hours 30mins it actually was. Really intense, very realistic, and very human. In that respects, a good film. I liked the way Zola gave the bourgeois their own relationship problems. In artistic terms, I think it worked to demystify the elite.
I read the book around 8 years ago, while studying contemporaries of Zola at uni, and this film has promoted me have to read it again in the near future. I think it's fair to say it's more of a record of those times, rather than having any political ideas in itself. If there was anything in it, it is reformist I think.
The depiction of the anarchist is typical of the shady, bomb-throwing stereotype. This probably has something to do with Zola's relationship with Turgenev, who angered Russian revolutionaries of his representation of them - despite being a friend of Bakunin's. Zola was also known for "betraying" his closest friends - Cezanne in particular.
Still, a beautiful story, and brilliantly written. I remember it reminding me of Thomas Hardy's novels wierdly enough, in it's representation of nature being this all-encompassing "beast", and it's use when dramatising the events. This was touched on in the film - the only nice days are the party and the ending - but I think it still could've done more. The storm was only referred to in passing.
I enjoyed the film overall, and I'd watch it again, definitely.
I watched Prometheus in 3D IMAX and thought it was really good. It's an Alien film, who cares about plot? It's visually and sonically stunning. It has its scary moments. I wasn't expecting anything else. I am no fan of 3D but I thought it was done well here.
Boys from the Blackstuff - good call wojtek, I saw this the first time round on TV when I was 9 and loved it then, I've been meaning to watch it again but keep forgetting.
Oh, I also saw The Angel's Share by Ken Loach. I was a bit disappointed by a fairly weak plot but it was good to see scenes shot in Edinburgh and Glasgow. That's a poor reason to like a film, eh? It was pish!
Amazing Spiderman - interesting to see that superhero films are segmenting into genres, unlike just being of the superhero genre. Amazing Spiderman is a teen adventure film (think Buffy?), with embarrassed teenage romance, pesky parents, high-school status fights, mentor figures who disappoint, etc. Enjoyable, though.
Holy Mountain - holy shit!!!!!!!! Watch it!!!!!
The Running Man - I remember watching this film when I was a child and it left a big impression and made me want to fight for truth and end the spectacle. A tragedy of our times, and of my adulthood, is that worse crimes than the ones in The Running Man are revealed (editing of footage to cover State murder, et al) and no revolution happens, not even a lukewarm outrage. The creators of Running Man (Stephen King under a pseudonym) seemed to think that if the people discovered they were being lied to, they would rebel. :(
Soundtrack, the retro clothes, the hairstyles, a very strong sense of morality and so on. I didn't mean it in a bad way. Let me rephrase:
A Kitano film w/ contemporary young American aesthetics.
I thought the Kitano part was more controversial! But frankly the laconic, emotionally dead on the outside but very intense loner who has lots of power but no passion where to use it is a Kitano staple (not just Kitano of course). Pacing was overall similar too, Hana-bi or Brother would be recommendations.
Soundtrack, the retro clothes, the hairstyles, a very strong sense of morality and so on. I didn't mean it in a bad way. Let me rephrase:
A Kitano film w/ contemporary young American aesthetics.
I thought the Kitano part was more controversial! But frankly the laconic, emotionally dead on the outside but very intense loner who has lots of power but no passion where to use it is a Kitano staple (not just Kitano of course). Pacing was overall similar too, Hana-bi or Brother would be recommendations.
Soundtrack, the retro clothes, the hairstyles, a very strong sense of morality and so on. I didn't mean it in a bad way. Let me rephrase:
A Kitano film w/ contemporary young American aesthetics.
I thought the Kitano part was more controversial! But frankly the laconic, emotionally dead on the outside but very intense loner who has lots of power but no passion where to use it is a Kitano staple (not just Kitano of course). Pacing was overall similar too, Hana-bi or Brother would be recommendations.
Also very similar is Jarmusch's Ghost Dog.
The laconic loner is an old hat archetype of cinema, from chambara, noir and Westerns. Though Drive is unique in showing people like that are socially inept and unhinged.
And what some would call hipster aesthetics, others would call a decent haircut and a nice set of clothes. Skinny jeans and a jean jacket, that's like crazy man.
Started watching the first season of Space Battleship Yamato... full retro overload, I tell you, 70s sci-fi anime in 4:3 and shit, I out-hipster you all
Any of you ever check out redlettermedia.com? They gained some internet fame when they did these hilarious reviews of the new star wars movies. They're also pretty cool because they criticize the shallow corporate culture in Hollywood. Check it out http://redlettermedia.com/plinkett/star-wars/star-wars-episode-ii-attack-of-the-clones/
Suckerpunch was chauvinist and utterly shit in everything except its visuals.
Also Drive is shit as well, maybe I was hoping too much for something as awesome as Heat. The Town tried and was ok but not nearly as good as Heat. They should have at least got an ex-SAS guy to choreograph the shootout like Heat did.
thats true, sucker punch was pretty blatant about criticising chauvinist shit. problem is it still did so through the medium of a film that sold itself on sex appeal of the victims in the film
It is indeed grim times when Snyder goes over the head of most film critics, then again we do live in grim times.
You can argue that Snyder failed to do what he set out to, that in many ways it was too ham fisted and of course he can't write dialogue for shit and so his characters appear one dimensional (though that could be seen as intentionally Bretchian)but to make the accusation it was just chauvinist wank fantasy is just stupidly lazy.
I'm a fairly literal guy so maybe it went over my head but if suckerpunch was a pisstake it was too subtle for a lot of the audience. And after the outright fascism of 300 and the watchmen it would have had to be a lot more obvious in it's satire to be noticed by me.
i don't give a damn about 300 as it was simply an action movie for me, but i consider watchmen a cinematography masterpiece that makes you think and not accept everything you are told. why do you think these movies were outright facsist?!
I haven't read the Watchmen comic but I understand it's a satire of the fascistic tendencies of many superhero comics. Snyder totally failed to get this satire across and seemed to uncritically revel in the vigilantism. And it was boring too like all his other movies.
300 was racist, homophobic and glorified the 'perfect' human body, if that doesn't add up to fascism it comes pretty close. And the author of the 300 comic, Frank Miller, is known for his far right views. It also wasn't very good as an action film.
i don't give a damn about 300 as it was simply an action movie for me, but i consider watchmen a cinematography masterpiece that makes you think and not accept everything you are told. why do you think these movies were outright facsist?!
Go read the book instead (Watchmen). 300 is beyond recuperation of any kind.
A smart comedy series about higher education - and lower expectations. The student body at Greendale Community College is made up of high-school losers, newly divorced housewives, and old people who want to keep their minds active. Within these not-so-hallowed halls, "Community" focuses on a band of misfits, at the center of which is a fast-talkin' lawyer whose degree has been revoked (Joel McHale), who form a study group and end up learning a lot more about themselves than they do about their course work.
Really clever and funny, I wish all shitty former polytechnics were this honest haha. One of the main characters, Britta Perry whose played by Gillian Jacobs is a stoner AND an anarchist cat lover! :)
She's got NOTHING on Ben Chang though!
[youtube]N7k78jEQXlA[/youtube]
[youtube]VtvIW6UHQbU[/youtube]
The Man with X-Ray Eyes. Doctors should not do experiments on themselves to see through things (even if that involves everyone's clothes), because they eventually lose their marbles. Confessions of a Dog is interesting, probably the most ACAB film ever, showing Japanese cops in cahoots with both courts and the media, fake busts they've set up with organised crime, drug dealing, sleeping with underage prostitutes and bit of murder when they've time.
Germinal torrent here http://isohunt.com/download/178238369/Germinal.FRENCH.DVDRIP.XVID.AC3-NIKKA.avi, English subtitles here http://www.opensubtitles.org/sk/subtitles/3798601/germinal-en
I had to warn all those who want to watch it with these subtitles - it seems it is just a google translation. I finally watched it last week and had difficulties to get what's going on and sometimes it was really bad (when something important was talked about).
perhaps also because of that i really didn't understood the whole thing and the story didn't touch me much. neither zala's politics express by it. i guess i will just read some short synopsis on wiki:)
not a bad movie, it didn't bore me and even had funny bits (including the anarchist character, which was mostly funny because i could imagine people telling quite similar stupid demagogic things in the a similar stupid way even these days, hehehe), but i guess i expected more.
Raid: Redemption - kicks ass! a very nice surprise
The Help - finally I saw it. I was amazed by the acting! Otherwise it was a bit sweet, still I liked it.
8/10, good cube-esque movie with plot twists out of nowhere, but the ending (and by that I mean the very very last scene) was seriously weak, thus -1 point. Overall a decent movie
I didn't like the whole ancients thing. If it had been "oh this is how horror movies are actually made" or something like that even though it would have been much more predictable and stupid I would have still preferred it.
I last saw the (I think?) Swedish film Evil. It's about a "bad" violent, working class teen getting kicked out of his school and is sent to a boarding school. Believe me, it gets crazy and depressing.
Also its based off of a semi autobiographical book written by an honest-to-god former Maoist anti-american spy so uh there's that.
Shifty
British film about a drug dealer and his long lost friend, not too bad but a little basic. And the dealer's brother didn't work somehow evn though the actor was good and the part was decently written. Might just be because I recognise him from something else. IT's free on iplayer for the moment.
Great film about McCarthyism and the news corporations, directed by george clooney
The main character is accused of being an ex-member of that 'subversive terrorist organisation' the Industrial Workers of the World. 8-)
thanks for the tip! it was so great to see such a good film. i don't know anything about the story, so it is hurt to be a historical-political judge but from what i've seen, i have to say that clooney made a real masterpiece. it impressed me even more when i tried to imagine it being filmed not in black and white;)
8/10, typical hollywood popcorn action movie that despite its obvious flaws does have its moments. Looking forward to the sequel (if Thanatos at the end of the movie is not a hint I dunno what is)
Directorial debut from Dexter Fletcher about a guy coming out of prison to find his kids have been living on their own after their mum ran off abroad, and are starting to get into the same sort of bother that landed him in jail. Decent film, fairly entertaining in an East End gangster kind-of-a-way, but also surprisingly touching in places. 7.5 /10
Dream House:
Psychological, supernatural thriller with Daniel Craig. The main premise is pretty stupid, loads of plot holes, saw the ending coming a mile off, but fairly well done and quite effective in places 6/10
Shifty
British film about a drug dealer and his long lost friend, not too bad but a little basic. And the dealer's brother didn't work somehow evn though the actor was good and the part was decently written. Might just be because I recognise him from something else. IT's free on iplayer for the moment.
Just watched the trailer on Imdb, looks decent, reckon I'll check this out, cheers
The Set Up, a real time noir about a boxer whose manager has set up a fall but he doesn't know it. And The Night of the Hunter based on a real bloke who married and killed all of his 25 wives. It was Robert Mitcham to be fair, how could you say no?
I watched the Last King of Scotland, which despite Whitakers' standout performance, the film didn't have much to offer. It wasn't the Constant Gardner, nor was it Hotel Rwanda.
Gone baby gone. Decent acting from Amy Ryan but aside from that not very interesting. Overuse of the technique of killing the 'real' sound in the scene and too many welling strings.
The main character bored me and I am not quite sure why I am supposed to care that this is Boston.
Not a bad film but at most two actual characters and a plot that managed to seem convoluted although it was easy to follow.
Recently I watched or re-watched these, all of which I'd recommend:
- Salvador (1986) by Oliver Stone, on the civil war in El Salvador. Featuring Jim Belushi as a crazy American.
- Mississippi Burning (1988) with Gene Hackman, set in 1964, on the KKK
- The Great Escape (1963), I was surprised by how realistic it was, especially towards the end. When I first saw it as a kid I had no idea it was based on real events
John Carter, what a gigantic piece of fail. Fuck Hollywood has no clue whatsoever, it's like the technical ability they now have to put pretty much any images imaginable on screen has developed in inverse proportion to the ability to write, direct and act a coherent story.
Iron Man (2008) - still my favorite Marvel movie, Tony Stark is way cooler than he should be to someone like me.
Dark Shadows (2012) - Burton movies with Depp in them always work. What made this move come alive was the style clashes between vampire movies, hippie flair and the canning industry - love how dead serious Depp was all the time, the end was a bit too abrupt (in a sense the opposite of what I usually think about endings - that they drag on too long). Contrary to my expectations, Victoria didn't have the big female lead role I thought she'd get though. Which kinda felt like there was something missing. Not sure about the rewatch value of this movie, but the humor certainly was compatible with mine.
Helena Bonham Carter was also pretty cool in Dark Shadows, though IMO her best role was in Sweeney Todd. Which was a fucking masterpiece.
Hehe. Not a big fan of Burton, I just don't find him that dark or that quirky- two characteristics he's supposedly famous for. Depp's disappointing too. For some reason I still hold on to this idea that he's a good actor, even though he keeps making terrible movies.
I'm a big fan of both, but Burton stuff I wouldn't actually call dark or quirky. Hard to describe.
Depp is a great actor to me and I generally love all the movies he does. Can't say I've ever been disappointed by him though the Pirates movies got worse each installment. Wouldn't say that's Depp's fault though... IMO he really shines in the 'strange' roles. Was kinda shitting bricks when I rewatched the first Nightmare on Elm Street, and a young Depp was the male lead.
The Dictator. I think someone else already pointed out the similarities between Cohen's speech at the end of the film and Chaplin's speech at the end of The Great Dictator...I thought that was pretty good. The rest of the film was sort of "ehh". I chuckled occasionally, so I guess it's all right.
Railyon
Iron Man (2008) - still my favorite Marvel movie, Tony Stark is way cooler than he should be to someone like me.
Are we still going to be allowed to watch movies with capitalist heroes post-revolution? 'Cause I friggin' love There Will Be Blood; so much that I'm kind of willing to become a liberal just so I can continue watching it. ;)
Robert Hughes examines the relationship between art and authority by looking at Dadaism and the art of political movements such as fascism and Soviet communism. Featuring works by Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Otto Dix and George Grosz.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0074qfm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eKSp6j8UNw
Fascinating, particularly for a newbie.
Edit:
Railyon wrote:
Iron Man (2008) - still my favorite Marvel movie, Tony Stark is way cooler than he should be to someone like me.
Forgive me if I get my marvel and DC mixed up (I'm sured you won't and rightly so! ;) ), but it has to be Kick-Ass for me, though I haven't seen the Dark Knight Rises yet... oops that's DC, so yeah definitely Kick-Ass.
Forgetting Sarah Marshall - Wasn't enjoying it too much and then realised that I'd only been watching for 40 mins and couldn't face over an hour more of it.
Resident evil 5 3D - incredible opening scene plus some nice bits in the rest of the movie but poor screenplay and not likeable actors. still, a good entertainment if one doesn't expect much.
Bound for Glory - Woody Guthrie biopic. Really baggy, poorly scripted, but the songs are worked well in the film, so it just about scrapes through. It really went for the early background of the dustbowl period, which didn't make for the best viewing, but in retrospect probably made more sense. It did abruptly end pre-New York (where he took off in a big way, apparently) which was odd.
Dungeon Masters - Documentary which shows the worst side of three socially akward gamers. Good for observation, reminded me of certain personality traits that exist out there, but not very entertaining.
If a Tree Falls... - Award winning documentary ;-) on the recent repression against the ELF. Made all the good points along the way about the terrorism tag being shoehorned onto a non-violent group, about the conciousness/civility arc of people involved in direct action politics. Not being clued up about the events, somethings panned out different than I anticipated - basically who co-operates with the police etc. Interesting, but not a scratch on the Weathermen documentary from awhile ago.
Inheritance - Total emotional headfuck. The daughter of Amon Goeth, who ran the Plaszow death camp, discusses her life and we are subsequently taken on a journey with her to Plaszow to meet one of the survivors. Pretty gut-wrenching. Peppered with some really memorable scenes, because Goeth's daughter is plagued by her fathers actions.
Drag Me To Hell, after reading Dead Pledges: Debt, Horror, and the Credit Crisis by Annie McClanahan. Wasn't sure if she was right about it being a horror movie playing on our collective fear of financialisation and debt.
Seconds, about a man in his 50s who begins a new life with plastic surgery and under a new name. Course, you can't escape your past and he dwells on the things he left behind, even if he is now Rock Hudson. Hudson was gay, but lead his public life as a straight married man, so there's a fair bit of parallels. He realises that all the nice things he had and his fancy job mean nothing, and he's led a wasted life which he's doomed to repeat. Made my corn flakes hard to swallow.
The World of Apu, bollywood film from the 1950s, loved it, great music. The one Satyajit Ray film I've watched that doesn't have blatant pro-British and pro aristocracy propaganda in it.
Hangover 1 & 2 were ace, Lesley Chou is a god and very surprised to see Yasmin Lee lol. Really hope there's a third! Oh and why isn't 'Bridesmaids' nearly half as good??
Just started watching 'The Trotsky' (2009), the opening few minutes are hilarious:
Loved the Trotsky. Especially struck a chord with me, remembering my scowling young self who wandered about declaring everyone "facists!" There are loads of jokes in it which are nods to some of the absurdities of Quebec politics. There are 2 parallel school systems in Quebec, french and english, and at one point the kids are standing in front of a sign saying that their school is part of the Jacques Parizeau English School board. Jacques Parizeau was the Parti Quebecois Premier at the time of the 1995 referendum, and an absolute vehement opponent of allowing wider access to the english school system and restricting english across all sectors of Quebec society as a whole. Blamed the no vote on "the anglos and the jews, " an irony not lost on the anglos and jews when he was hospitalized in the Jewish General Hospital a few years back.
Last film I saw was Dredd. I grew up reading 2000AD and I thought it was amazingly faithful to the spirit of the comic, the oppressive, alienating nature of Megacity One, not trying to turn Dredd into some kind of charasmatic, sympathetic character, he's a nasty bastard. And loads of graphic, slow-motion gore. Best 90 minutes I've spent in a while.
The trials and tribulations of two men looking after women in comas. Strangely for an Almodovar film the main characters aren't the women. I enjoyed it, it's looking at some heavy themes of love and loss, and the performances (especially from Javier Camara, as Benigno, a nurse at the hospital whose obsession with one of the women is one of the film's main drivers) are excellent. Highly recommended for those who haven't yet seen it (it was released in 2002).
snipfool
... Depp's disappointing too. For some reason I still hold on to this idea that he's a good actor, even though he keeps making terrible movies.
Depp is a good actor - who keeps making terrible movies. I think his last great performance was probably in 'Once Upon a Time in Mexico'. Or maybe 'The Rum Diary' (also not a great movie I thought).
He is a one trick pony that has coasted along for yonks on his 'good' looks. Even actually good looking Brad Pitt has acting chops. Dead Man was an awful long time ago now.
Monsters, about an alien invasion but not really. Disaster films wish they were this calm and soppy, and it helped with the hangover. And then Pierrot le Fou before going out again. "Why do you look so sad? Because you speak to me in words and I look at you with feelings."
Tried watching In the Mood for Love (2000) and The Double Life of Veronique (1991) but stopped halfway through both the films. I was finding the former quite slow, while the latter I found more ... engaging but progressively incomprehensible. Plus it was late at night and I had better things to do: lurk this forum, read up more anarchic texts, and since I follow cricket, update myself with the latest scores (England are out of the T20I; how does that make everyone feel? :P ) . ;)
The World of Apu, bollywood film from the 1950s, loved it, great music. The one Satyajit Ray film I've watched that doesn't have blatant pro-British and pro aristocracy propaganda in it.
I would hate to be a pedant here but, strictly speaking, "Bollywood" tag is used only for those films wherein the language used is primarily Hindi. Some people also oppose the term "Bollywood" as they claim it makes the Hindi cinema sound like a poor cousin of Hollywood.
Satyajit Ray directed most of his films in his native language Bengali at his native state Bengal. Therefore, majority of his films form a part of cinema of Bengal, rather than the much larger "Hindi Cinema" (or "Bollywood").
Watched loads of films recently, but one that stuck out for me was "Looking For Eric", by Ken Loach. Even though Cantona was a boy-hood idol of mine - though never a United fan - I was kind of wary it would be another one of those glory-filled football films. So I was pleasantly surprised when it turned out to be a really good, intelligent film, with a good blend of seriousness, and light humour. The scene in the pub where the fans are debating about the merits of F.C. United was brilliant.
Tabu - A kind of low budget Portuguese art house version of Out of Africa. Which doesn't sound that promising - most of the Portuguese won't go to see Portuguese films - but I liked it.
Tabu - A kind of low budget Portuguese art house version of Out of Africa. Which doesn't sound that promising - most of the Portuguese won't go to see Portuguese films - but I liked it.
I watched it here in London. First half absolutely pure cinema, perfect. Second half a bit of bourgeois/colonialist wankery, but hard to say if it was intended or not.
Tried watching In the Mood for Love (2000) and The Double Life of Veronique (1991) but stopped halfway through both the films. I was finding the former quite slow, while the latter I found more ... engaging but progressively incomprehensible. Plus it was late at night and I had better things to do: lurk this forum, read up more anarchic texts, and since I follow cricket, update myself with the latest scores (England are out of the T20I; how does that make everyone feel? :P ) . ;)
Aye, you don't want to watch Wong Kar Wai films if you want something to happen.
I saw Hara Kiri, about the bushido code being a load of shite. And hara kiri obviously.
Diaz: Don't Clean Up This Blood - primarily about police raid on Diaz school during Genoa G8 summit. i'm still not sure what to say about this movie. for people without any background info it could be quite uncomprehensible. after those years, it was a bit unclear even to me who took active part in solidarity activities with the detained comrades. anyway, the movie depicts the events in a rough way and i am afraid this was the main focus. i say i am afraid because it feels like if the authors were not sure what else the movie should contain. there is a bit of antiG8 politics but very vague, there is a bit the non-violence vs. violence idea, there is a bit of some other things. also, sometimes it looks cheap, but sometimes very "profi".
in brief, most of the movie is very intense, rough, emotional. i wouldn't recommend it to anyone who is sensitive to violence. all in all, it is really hard to judge this movie. but maybe this is the good thing about it.
Can you please explain to me what it was all about?
I found it incomprehensible, saved by great cinematography, colour and the clever use of the "soundproof limo".
I probably didn't enjoy it also because a couple of hipsters sat behind us kept saying, "Brilliant!" "Genius!" "Haha! What a line!" etc. through the whole fucking film. They were laughing too! What the hell were they laughing at?
I'm honestly curious, I tried to do research on the original book when I got back home, but I'm still none-the-wiser as to it's genius.
Can you please explain to me what it was all about?
I found it incomprehensible, saved by great cinematography, colour and the clever use of the "soundproof limo".
I probably didn't enjoy it also because a couple of hipsters sat behind us kept saying, "Brilliant!" "Genius!" "Haha! What a line!" etc. through the whole fucking film. They were laughing too! What the hell were they laughing at?
I'm honestly curious, I tried to do research on the original book when I got back home, but I'm still none-the-wiser as to it's genius.
It was about lots of different things innit....
On the one level it's about how capitalists create their own crises and their egoism brings them close to possible destruction i.e Pattison's character insisting on going to get the haircut even tho his security guards constantly advises him otherwise and as the situation gets more and more dangerous for him.
But is also just a interesting prediction of what people will be like in the future, not 1000s of years in the future but just a few decades ahead. Plus the acting is great and the cinematography like us said is very good.
Sorry about the hipsters, the only bit I laughed at was the scene where he gets his prostate examined "it's sexual tension!" "you have a aspherical prostate".
I just felt I was missing the "in-jokes" for intellectuals or something... That was probably more to do with the couple sat behind me, like I said. And found it really hard to follow the dialogue. But, as previously said, the acting and the aesthetics of it still made it engrossing to watch.
I'll watch it again, this time in piece and quiet ;)
On a side note, one film I've definitely been looking forward to for a while now is The Master.
Searching for Sugar Man - A brilliant doc about a Detroit musician named Rodriguez who never 'made it' back in the 70s, though his recordings were really good. Somehow or another he blew up in South Africa (like, bigger than Elvis) and sold half a million records. The movie is about a couple S. Africans trying to track down Rodriguez. It has a great narrative and footage from Cape Town and Detroit. I don't really know anything about apartheid, but that plays a role here, as does the working class culture of Detroit. If you're familiar with the Moth Podcasts, this is like a two-hour long one. Highly recommended.
Looper, which I enjoyed, but possibly found funnier than it was supposed to be. It was all the funnier because the first time I saw Jeff Daniels on screen I was convinced it was a surprise cameo by Žižek, and was kinda disappointed it wasn't, since he'd be all over the Freudian shit in that film, the totalitarian father figure, the pure ideology...
(a cursory google for "Looper Žižek" confirms I'm not alone in this...)
'Promised Land' with star Matt Damon (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHQt1NAkhIo); it hasn't come out yet, so I haven't watched it. But it's premise is basically the people of a small town versus a $9 billion natural gas company. So it looks kind of interesting.
Loved the broken tape look, and the effects were pretty awesome... not quite bloody enough for my taste though, but luckily the sequel offers more (never watched it in full, only bits and pieces but that'll change)
AU lost itself in random and quite trivial and pointless scenes to accompany the torture and killing (though that was of course intentional), but it still delivered the good stuff; that is, bloody vicious degraded misanthropy on film.
Stomach acted up in one scene, I consider that a good sign... (only watch this if you're a gorehound or a masochist)
Recently made movies I've seen are Loopers, Seven Psychopaths and The Master, all of which I enjoyed. Older stuff includes Village of the Damned and Lord of War. The special effects in the former were laughable by todays standards but the cast and story were excellent.
Harlan County War with Stellan Skarsgard and Holly Hunter. Also features the guy who plays "Monk's" boss in the tv series, and he is great. It is about 1970s Kentucky miners and is almost a dramatization of Harlan County USA, with many of the same developments over the course of the strike. Still, it's a good sister movie. Sadly, Hunter was in the recent anti-union "Won't Back Down," a movie promoting school privatization and demonizing unions. Not sure what the hell she was thinking, but I have no idea what her actual political views are. Matewan is classic, but Harlan County War is worth watching.
I appreciated that they portrayed the female lead character working closely with the male union organizer, but the idea that an affair would occur was never even raised, even as their friendship deepens. That seemed pretty mature and uncharacteristic of Hollywood to me. There is tension between the husband and wife, but it stems from the miner husband's sense that he is neither providing for the family nor able to be as radical as he wanted to be given the parameters of the strike. The characters are fairly well developed and very sympathetic.
Cockneys Vs. Zombies: Dumb, fun UK Zombie Film. Zombies kind of stand in for gentrifiers.
Juan of the Dead: First Cuban horror film. Fun zombie film with lots of social satire.
Evil Dead 3: A "where have you been all my life" moment. SO fun
Moonshine Kingdom: very sweet, enjoyable, probably Anderson's best film, but doesn't have the underlining commentary/sadness of his other films. Life Aquatic is still my fave.
Watched "Lincoln" the other night. Y'know, fanfare, oscar-bait and grandiose. The amazing part was that Fredrick Douglas wasn't even mentioned. It's kind of like making a movie about Kennedy and the civil rights movement without mentioning or showing Martin Luther King, jr. Way to go, hollywood.
Riding Giants about the history and development of "big wave" (9+ meters) surfing in Hawaii and California. Loved it. Growing up in Chicago, always dreamed of going to California and becoming a surfer. Pity I hated (and still hate) water.
Ghost Dog which is better than Le Samourai. Yeah, I said it.
How the fuck have you not been banned.
You shouldn't even be allowed to watch films.
Inception: quite fun, although a bit silly. Made me want to rewatch Dark City.
Scott Pilgrim: Another fun film, I'm not sure if it quite worked but the combination of music and visuals was really good, although it did sometimes stick out a little bit.
Total Recall (2012) - i regret i didn't go to cinema to watch it. no doubt much better than the original one with Arnie.
Ted - it felt so nice and good to watch it.
Just watched The Way We Were with Redford and Streisand on bbc2 while my flat filled up with the smell of chicken stock simmering along. Excellent Sunday afternoon fare. And to think I nearly stayed in the pub to watch Chelski - Shitty! She's a communist, he's not, they fall in love in interesting times. Very sweet, and Streisand is ace. "You think you're easy? Compared to what - the 100 years war?!"
Some awesome scenes and photography. The one where the weeping willow (or whatever) obscures just enough and the brother stands with his back to the camera...
Can't make up my mind if I like James Dean's "I'm a troubled kid so I walk by sort of falling" thing or not but I think I'm coming out in favour of it.
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - found it a bit dull, none of them really emerged as characters and the plot was too obscured to grab my attention.
This. Maybe if I'd read the book it would have been OK, but it was tedious and mystifying.
I've seen a few reviews that said if you'd seen the mini-series or read the book then it was a lot better. I didn't find the plot too hard to follow (although I wasn't quite sure about the bit at the end) I just found that they didn't tell me enough about it to make me feel as if anything was really at stake.
I would like to see the mini-series, it's a shame that the BBC don't put old stuff up on the iplayer.
Still Bill - Doc about Bill Withers. Slightly corny, but pretty good. He was like 30 when he learned to play a guitar. Then he got famous and then he faded away. There's a good parallel story within the film about his daughter's quest to be a musician.
Stranger: Bernie Worrell on Earth - It's got interviews with everybody but Bernie (David Byrne, George Clinton, Bootsy Collins, Dr. Know, etc.). Basically, the dude's an under-appreciated genius on the keys whose innovations -mainly with Parliament/Funkadelic- have really crept into mainstream music. Sadly, he's been screwed out of all kinds of royalties. The movie shows him playing with all kinds of people: Les Claypool, Government Mule, Talking Heads, P-Funk.
Weather Underground - I think the film is excellent. Certainly nothing about class self-organization, but the time period is portrayed with such anxiety and the development of the central personalities is really well done. If they had been anything but (rich?) white folks, these people would be dead by now. I like what Mike Davis had to say:
I’m trying to argue against people who are doing histories of the ’60s. They’re looking at far too much from the top down, the media-appointed celebrities, old-guard leadership, the rich kids who became the Weathermen. They’re not looking at the rank-and-file kids. They’re not seeing how the ’60s were cultivated and made possible by this massive anti-authoritarian youth rebellion that began in the late ’50s. First of all by first-generation, young black northerners. Then amongst white kids of all kinds. My kind of pre-politics was with this stuff—drinking, racing cars, breaking windows, stealing cars. It wasn’t just trivial. There was a deeper and very serious aspiration.
I watched "Drive" online the other day. I saw "Valhalla Rising" before Drive and like Winding Refn's style. Valhalla Rising reminded me of Tarkovsky's style. Very surreal, a good hangover movie. With Drive I didn't think Ryan Gosling could pull off the role but he did. The elevator scene was good. Violence as art. It works. Him stepping out of the darkness to have his last embrace with her in the light before stepping back into the darkness, the jacket with the scorpion on it signifying the old tale of the scorpion and the frog. Good stuff.
Skyfall.
I don't actually expect much from a Bond movie, they're not Bunuel, Fellini, they're not going to provoke many interesting thoughts or send me away enlightened in any way, but I do expect fast cars and exotic locations. With Skyfall I got the London Underground and Scotland. No disrespect to Scotland, but no-one's going to emerge seductively out of Loch Lomond in a swimsuit. Bond seemed to be having the mother of all mid-life crises and where it was nice to see the Aston Martin again, he did have the look of a man who would have probably preferred a Volvo.
I suspect that I might have enjoyed it more if I had gone for a couple of beers first.
I watched this while drunk, so I think it only fair to review it while drunk. Also, for no particular reason, I'm going to write my review in the form of a single incomprehensible sentence.
So from what I could make out some Australian bloke who looks like that northern actor from those annoying job website adverts, but probably isn't, because why would he put on an Australian accent in a movie set in ancient whereever the fuck it is set (greece or rome? it just looked like they stood a bunch of extras on the beach and cgied everything else in, to me), so as I was saying the Aussie bloke, goes to find Xena and a cockney Jesus, played by Russell Brand, or someone like that, and they all set off in search of Liam Neeson, who has a beard but doesn't yet look like Gandalf, because someone else who does look like Gandalf tells them too right before he dies, and they have to go and find Dumbledore (he really does look like Dumbledore, you know) who it turns out comes from Manchester, and then I chased this really anoying fly about the room with a tissue for ten minutes, and by this time there were all these cgi rocks whizzing around and exploding, in the film, and this really big bloke with a face made of lava who keeps mumbling about something or other, who's hanging out with that bloke from the Harry Potter films who had his nose removed by a computer, but in this film he has a nose, and a beard, and there's also this arsehole with a beard, (this film has too many beards), and then Aussie bloke turns up and rescuse Liam Neeson, who by this time has turned into Gandalf, and I thought the bloke who didn't have a nose in the Harry Potter movies died here as the fly distracted me for a moment but it turns out he didn't later on, anyway, then there's this big battle where these cgied extras who you don't care about get slaughtered, and old Lavaface is mumbling, and the Aussie kills the arsehole with the beard to impress his son, or something, then flies down Lavaface's throat on a horse and, I can only assume, out of his anus, and he explodes, the cgied extras no one cares about (the one's who haven't been slaughtered) all cheer, and No Nose turns out to be helping the goodies now (buh?) and Liam Neeson, who doesn't look so much like Gandalf anymore, turns to dust (I think he was a vampire or something), and Aussie bloke kisses Xena (it turns out she was the love interest - who knew?) and Russel Brand cracks a joke, and also something about Aussie bloke bonding with his son in a vague attempt to make us care about him which failed miserably, and right at the very end it turns out the Titan in "Wrath of the Titans" is spelled with a backwards "N" which is really clever.
So, in summary, Grenache Noir, £10 for three at a popular supermarket, is full bodied, fruity, red, 13% by volume, and has a really difficult to remove cork.
That's probably the best film review I've read in a long time. Wrath of the Titans is a truly dreadful movie, which is best avoided without a serious amount of alcoholic lubrication. It is not as bad as Immortals however, which apparently had a lighting budget of about five bucks, you couldn't actually see what was going on half the time but in it's defence it should take home the award for the most ridiculous headwear in any film ever.
This weekend I will be taking a medium sized herd of small boys to see the Hobbit and unfortunately because of that responsible adult clause, I will have to sit through the full three hours stone, cold sober.
OK, so I've got to the booze again, and this probably isn't a good idea (and goes against everything this thread title stands for), but the next film I am going to watch is Clash of the Empires, which was originally titled Age of the Hobbits before the suing began. I shall watch it tomorrow, with booze, and post my review here then, if I haven't passed out/killed myself.
Basically it's a thinly disguised attempt to make money from people too thick to realize that major Hollywood movies don't get released straight to DVD the day before they premiere in the cinema.
Now, unlike all of The Asylum's other movies, this one isn't technically plagiarism, as, and I quote: "Age Of The Hobbits is about the real-life human subspecies, Homo Floresiensis, discovered in 2003 in Indonesia, which have been uniformly referred to as ‘Hobbits’ in the scientific community."1
I can't wait!
[youtube]vfGk-5Fvduw[/youtube]
1Though the dragon at the end of the trailer suggests that it may not be as entirely palentologically correct as advertised.
Age of the Hobbits is the latest [s]movie[/s] combination of moving pictures and sound from The Asylum. It features people, who occasionally do things and speak words, events, which happen for 87 minutes and then stop, and places, in which the events happen. It stars Some Guy who used to be on television, in an actual television show.
OK, so it starts with some hobbits wandering about, and they get attacked by some dudes wearing plastic halloween teeth, then some more dudes with halloween teeth flying on dragons turn up at the hobbit village, and they all run round and round in circles, and no one seems to be actually doing anything other than running around in circles, because that's what the director told them to do! Now the hobbits are all played by Indonesians, and despite apparently speaking English, they are all dubbed with cheesy American accents. So, one of the hobbits gets dangled from a dragon and flown away, but she drops rocks so the other hobbits can find her. Now the rocks are supposed to be magic or something, but they're really big, and I've no idea where she hid all of them, as she's tiny! Maybe that's how they are magic? But anyway, her family follow the magic rocks, and on the way they rescue Some Guy from a wolly rhino - in a tropical rain forest! Some Guy, who it turns out is called Anthea, I think, and also turns out to be playing exactly the same character he played in his TV show, is so grateful he takes them back to his village, where his incompetent and over acting king, who has manky teeth and wears a fur hat (in a tropical rain forest!) with tiny antlers on it, has them tied to a tree, with very loose rope, which they could obviously escape from, but they don't until Anthea comes to set them free, by ever so lightly pulling on the rope. One of the warrior women from the village steps out to block them from escaping, and for some reason or other she has to walk about in her underwear for the whole movie. Also, she is the only non-American who gets to speak with her own voice, as presumably her agent put a clause in her contract saying don't dub over her voice you racists, or something. Anyway, she offers to help the hobbits as well, and they all set off together, with enough extras to get picked off along the way, to rescue mother hobbit.
At this point I ate a bag of pickled onion monster munch.
Now, much of the rest of the movie consists of wandering about in some woods a lot, and cutting to a cave where mother hobbit and some other hobbits wander about a cave a lot. Also, a giant spider spits venom (like they do) into the Underwear Woman's face which blinds her, but then she's OK again almost immediately, phew! And then Anthea gets bitten by a giant venomous lizard, and spends the next 20 minutes or so sweating and generally slowing the hobbits down, even though he's supposed to be helping them which was the whole point of his going along! So underwear Woman catches one of the halloween teeth men by whacking him in the balls with a big stick (remember that bit, it is important later!), then he trips up for no reason and smashes his head on a rock and dies. Then almost immediately one of the goodies wanders into a spikey trap, and gets stabbed by wooden spikes, which we don't even get to see! Now, there's a lot of this: people dying in gruesome ways which we don't quite get to see! So anyway, two of the hobbits sneak stealthily into the halloween teeth dudes cave, and immediately begin making loud bird noises, for some reason or other, even though they are trying not to attract attention, and the halloween teeth dudes have such lax security that pretty much all the remaining characters are able to wander freely about the cave making as much noise as they like.
Then I ate a mince pie.
So it turns out the halloween teeth men want to eat the hobbits after making them wander about the cave, and their queen even kills one, but it looks more like attempted cannibalism to me, as although they keep talking about eating them, you never once see them eating anything! Then we get the money shot, as someone (I didn't see who) throws a spear through the halloween teeth queen's eye, and you actually get to see it go in the eye and out of the back of her head! (So like why couldn't we see all the other gore, hmmmn!?) So then, for no reason at all, the incompetent king from earlier with the tiny antlers turns up with some warriors to save the day, and he's killed straight away, as he's rubbish. Underwear Woman whacks a guy in the nuts with a big stick again, but this time nothing happens, and the guy just says "coconuts!" so she stabs him in the face instead. (This is the pay-off for the previous nut-whacking gag.) Oh, and the big battle scene consists of a bunch of men waggling sticks back and forth like its a sword fight in a school play, or something. No one actually tries to hit each other, they just keep hitting each other's weapons! And the goodies basically wipe out the halloween teeth men, and then after they've all been wiped out Underwear Woman looks into the camera and shouts "I will avenge you brother!", even though everyone's already dead! Then one of the hobbits, for no apparent reason (at that time), in the aftermath of the battle invents a musical instrument, made from a coconut and two horns, which looks coincidentally like a bow, and also, unrelatedly, invents a small sharpened stick. One of the halloween men gets up, and the quick thinking hobbit shoots him in the head with his makeshift ukulele bow and arrow. So it turns out that hobbits invented the bow an arrow, after all - which is the big reveal at the end!
Right at the very end, Anthea says to the hobbits in dramatic fashion: "May your descendants live for 10,000 years!" Which is somewhat ironic, as the movie, we are told at the beginning, is set 12,000 years ago, and the hobbits are supposed to have died out around 12,000 years ago. So presumably just after the titles roll, the hobbits walk around a corner and are all eaten by a dinosaur, or something, even though dinosaurs died out millions of years ago, but it's not like this movie is striving for accuracy or anything.
Top that, Peter Jackson, with your big budget, well written script, special effects, and actors.
In summary: Hawksridge Cider, £2 for two litres, 4.2% by volume, best served chilled, and comes with free alcoholism.
And Life Without Principal, a Cantonese noir about the financial crisis, banks purposely misleading people investing and working a soul destroying job doing it. Probably the realest film about the crash.
I liked Sylvester Stallone's performance, but you couldn't see his face - he shoulda took his helmets off so you could see his face! That's what the fans paid to see, damnit! Also, where the hell was Rob Schneider? A Judge Dredd film isn't a Judge Dredd film unless its got Rob Schneider gurning into the camera and capering about like he's having an embolism or something. Hey! Give the public what they want to see, Hollywood, you assholes!
Things I learned from this film: 1) It's only two years to go before we get flying cars! Yay! 2) Analog TV will make a come back, for some reason. 3) It had more plot-holes than I remembered. 4) Still good though.
Just watched 'There Will Be Blood'. Amazing film about an oil hunter in California around the turn of the 19th/20th century. The performance by Daniel Day Lewis is incredible. Seriously, you have to see this film.
7 Psychopaths, written by same guy as "In Brugges". Fun but not great film. Somewhat disconcerting because American characters talking like Irish (ie the screenwriter). But probably the best role I've ever seen Christopher Walken in, funny, scary and over the top all at the same time.
zero hour, the film on which airplane! is based. a B movie, it has its own drama, but it's hard to watch without comparing every scene with the spoof (which is much more elaborate a movie, btw)
I posted on this thread previously about the film THERE WILL BE BLOOD. It's a truly incredible film in which the main character personifies how cold and focused capitalism can be.
I just wanted to flag up the fact that anyone in the UK can see this film tonight at 11 o'clock on BBC2.
I posted on this thread previously about the film THERE WILL BE BLOOD. It's a truly incredible film in which the main character personifies how cold and focused capitalism can be.
I just wanted to flag up the fact that anyone in the UK can see this film tonight at 11 o'clock on BBC2.
Haha you Brits are pretty late on this one. Really great soundtrack by Thom Yorke btw.
I posted on this thread previously about the film THERE WILL BE BLOOD. It's a truly incredible film in which the main character personifies how cold and focused capitalism can be.
I just wanted to flag up the fact that anyone in the UK can see this film tonight at 11 o'clock on BBC2.
Haha you Brits are pretty late on this one. Really great soundtrack by Thom Yorke btw.
I watched online the 2 part film We The Living (Noi vivi) based on Ayn Rand's novel. It was not the original 1942 lengthier film version though (which was loyal to the first version of her book). Perhaps that's why I didn't find the story, which takes place in the Soviet Union, to be crazy in its ideology at all, or because I just was watching the movie and not trying to do a Zizek analysis.
Silkwood on the tele, about Karen Silkwood, the union activist who was first poisoned and then found dead in suspicious circumstances, having been a whistleblower on the unsafe conditions of the power plant where she worked.
You forgot to add it was a nuclear plant! (More precisely a "fuel fabrication site".)I first saw the film when I was about 11. It totally freaked me out. Great film.
Zero Dark Thirty. Politics aside, it's a decent film, albeit far too plodding and melodramatic. The siege is impressive though, something on the scale of the Heat bank robbing scene.
I watched Unthinkable the other night. An American citizen converts to Islam (Michael Sheen) and decides to plant nuclear bombs in cities in response to U.S. foreign policy. Samuel Jackson plays a contractor/interrogator and Carrie-Anne Moss plays an FBI agent.
I've only ever liked Samuel Jackson in Pulp Fiction, but his performance in this one was so good that it will definitely make it into my (very short) Sam Jackson movies to watch list. The film also has very light undertones regarding the implications of consequentialist ethics and how an agent that understands his/her role within this framework would behave.
Skyfall.
I don't actually expect much from a Bond movie, they're not Bunuel, Fellini, they're not going to provoke many interesting thoughts or send me away enlightened in any way, but I do expect fast cars and exotic locations. With Skyfall I got the London Underground and Scotland. No disrespect to Scotland, but no-one's going to emerge seductively out of Loch Lomond in a swimsuit. Bond seemed to be having the mother of all mid-life crises and where it was nice to see the Aston Martin again, he did have the look of a man who would have probably preferred a Volvo.
I suspect that I might have enjoyed it more if I had gone for a couple of beers first.
I don't think beers would have helped, this was pony. He's about as cynical and brooding as a pack of Maltesers. The next Bond film had better have him writhing about in his sick, calling his ex-girlfriend who won't pick up and crying in the mirror. Otherwise fuck off and don't bother.
I watched Unthinkable the other night. An American citizen converts to Islam (Michael Sheen) and decides to plant nuclear bombs in cities in response to U.S. foreign policy. Samuel Jackson plays a contractor/interrogator and Carrie-Anne Moss plays an FBI agent.
I've only ever liked Samuel Jackson in Pulp Fiction, but his performance in this one was so good that it will definitely make it into my (very short) Sam Jackson movies to watch list. The film also has very light undertones regarding the implications of consequentialist ethics and how an agent that understands his/her role within this framework would behave.
I'd have let Jackson torture the shit out of Sheen's kids. There's a rather ironic line in there about the US being better since democracy/Jackson would go on trial afterwards.
Can Dialectics Break Bricks?, a film about class struggle of the proletariat against state-capitalist bureaucracy done via kung-fu cinema. It was made by the French underground group the Situationists in 1972. I highly recommend it for its revolutionary content, unique delivery, and humour.
It mentions many libertarian socialist thinkers and revolutionaries.
The Working Class Goes to Heaven (La classe operaia va in paradiso).
A disciplined, Stakhanovite worker, after losing a finger in a factory accident, becomes aware of his alienated condition and starts supporting direct action.
Critical of both the unions (who are preoccupied only with maintaining the status quo and winning small 'victories') and the radical students (lost in their fetishism of abstract theory).
I'd have let Jackson torture the shit out of Sheen's kids. There's a rather ironic line in there about the US being better since democracy/Jackson would go on trial afterwards.
Schadenfreude!
SPOILERS:
I liked how that scene illuminated the shit morality the other characters had: Torture one guy? Sure. Slit his wife's throat? Pfft, go for it. Torture his kids? What kind of monster are you?!
A disciplined, Stakhanovite worker, after losing a finger in a factory accident, becomes aware of his alienated condition and starts supporting direct action.
Reminds me a bit of my friend Chris. Then again he was like that before he lost his pinkie.
Loses his finger to the machine, boss calls asking him to come back into work on the day of surgery.
Looper. What actually is this genre called 'sci-fi'? I mean, fact is stranger than fiction, it would be more appropriate to name it ' sci-fact ' ? The propositions of any fiction are nothing more than a real factual desire for change, it is a psuedo-metaphor for revolution, a work of détournement..
HG Wells did this 100 years ago, then Butterfly Effect, Looper was still an interesting repeat of an age old meditation, that of cause and effect, moral obligations, the things that make us human, some dry wit mixed with a self-absorption in ones own identity.
I downloaded '1492', Ridley Scott's historical masterpierce, I love the experience of discovery, of being surprised, and therefore savouring a sensual experience, like a peasant that first tastes caviar and champagné, or holding a high powered rifle, these things belong to heroes, which we are all capable of being, we need the will, but I have scars as my passport, these are experiences that cannot be,,,deleted,,,hah,, I told a Catholic priest who loved my spirit and wanted to make a priest out of me, in the 70's, but I enjoyed sandoz lsd and pink rock cocktails mainlined, I mixed with the rabble, they were my bothers and sisters, society had become so dreary,to go out into the ocean without any system was freedom or death, but it was noble atleast, and required no cleaning up, hah! This is Columbus's spirit, the nuance that Ridley Scott imparted to an interpretation of a much politicized cultural historical clash is always going to invite critiques of neo-colonialism,,, is that term almost obsolete?
Just watched Rebellion in Patagonia. Really depressing film about the FORA being massacred in the 1920s. Think an Argentine Land and Freedom but with fewer trots, and no women, and where no one gets away.
Zero Dark Thirty. Everyone (mostly the media) made such a big deal about it that I decided to pay the $1.75 to watch it. My liberal friends refuse to even go near it, so I don't know how the "general public" felt about this, but I think that if you have a soul you'll come out thinking that everyone who is anyone when it comes to U.S. foreign policy is a psychopath; people willing to do exactly what their enemy does, and then some, for "God and country" (that phrase is actually in the movie). In the end the rah-rah-rah, flag waving, quasi-fascist (or perhaps blatantly fascist) ideology ends up backfiring.
Zero Dark Thirty. Everyone (mostly the media) made such a big deal about it that I decided to pay the $1.75 to watch it. My liberal friends refuse to even go near it, so I don't know how the "general public" felt about this, but I think that if you have a soul you'll come out thinking that everyone who is anyone when it comes to U.S. foreign policy is a psychopath; people willing to do exactly what their enemy does, and then some, for "God and country" (that phrase is actually in the movie). In the end the rah-rah-rah, flag waving, quasi-fascist (or perhaps blatantly fascist) ideology ends up backfiring.
Maybe fitting then that this dude with downs syndrome was suffocated to death by pigs at one of the screenings. http://thepeoplesrecord.com/post/43367912794/police-murder-man-movie-theater-for-disobeying
Zero Dark Thirty. Everyone (mostly the media) made such a big deal about it that I decided to pay the $1.75 to watch it. My liberal friends refuse to even go near it, so I don't know how the "general public" felt about this, but I think that if you have a soul you'll come out thinking that everyone who is anyone when it comes to U.S. foreign policy is a psychopath; people willing to do exactly what their enemy does, and then some, for "God and country" (that phrase is actually in the movie). In the end the rah-rah-rah, flag waving, quasi-fascist (or perhaps blatantly fascist) ideology ends up backfiring.
Maybe fitting then that this dude with downs syndrome was suffocated to death by pigs at one of the screenings. http://thepeoplesrecord.com/post/43367912794/police-murder-man-movie-theater-for-disobeying
I wish I could say I was surprised... Thanks for the link, though.
Zero Dark Thirty. Everyone (mostly the media) made such a big deal about it that I decided to pay the $1.75 to watch it. My liberal friends refuse to even go near it, so I don't know how the "general public" felt about this, but I think that if you have a soul you'll come out thinking that everyone who is anyone when it comes to U.S. foreign policy is a psychopath; people willing to do exactly what their enemy does, and then some, for "God and country" (that phrase is actually in the movie). In the end the rah-rah-rah, flag waving, quasi-fascist (or perhaps blatantly fascist) ideology ends up backfiring.
Zero Dark Thirty. Everyone (mostly the media) made such a big deal about it that I decided to pay the $1.75 to watch it. My liberal friends refuse to even go near it, so I don't know how the "general public" felt about this, but I think that if you have a soul you'll come out thinking that everyone who is anyone when it comes to U.S. foreign policy is a psychopath; people willing to do exactly what their enemy does, and then some, for "God and country" (that phrase is actually in the movie). In the end the rah-rah-rah, flag waving, quasi-fascist (or perhaps blatantly fascist) ideology ends up backfiring.
Its a rental service? I thought you went to the theaters.
Yeah, it's a kiosk where you rent movies. I ain't paying $10+ to see some state propaganda. I get my state propaganda the ol' fashioned way: by getting it hammered into me at school.
The Chaser, entertaining in a
The Chaser, entertaining in a sleazy way but it was a bit daft a pimp suddenly gets a conscience to convienantly push the film forward.
Il Posto was better. Italian neorealist film about how working in an office and teenage infatuations are shit.
Mission Impossible: Ghost
Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol. Decent spy action.
Gentlemen Broncos - loved it,
Gentlemen Broncos - loved it, so surreal.
Magicians - decent as in not a waste of time but not amazing either
God Bless America:
God Bless America: Fantastic!
Horrible Bosses: Really good as well.
Bottle Rocket, good wes
Bottle Rocket, good wes anderson film about rubbish criminals
After seeing the trailer for
After seeing the trailer for the remake, I had the urge to see Total Recall again. That film is Arnie's best film imo. Could definitely have some form of anti-capitalist reading into it too. The thing I love most is those faces used on special effects though :groucho:
The remake is bound to be shit though, even if the special effects actually look real.
The Hunger games- thought it
The Hunger games- thought it rocked.
I liked The Immortals.
They're remaking Total
They're remaking Total Recall? What the fuck? Why would you do that?
Just saw the first 3 episodes
Just saw the first 3 episodes of The Good Soldier Svejk (1955 animated version, should you be intrigued). Fucking amazing.
Alasdair wrote: They're
Alasdair
Haven't seen the original although i've been told it is good.
The trailer for the new one looks aussom though
[youtube]gA-18LuLDEQ[/youtube]
Mate you *have* to see the
Mate you *have* to see the original, it's really good! [/wanker that tells everyone the original of everything is always the best]
I'll give it a go - in
I'll give it a go - in desperate need of something to avoid writing essays!
This girl nerd was quite convincing as to why remake will suck. The fact they have so heavily edited the original P K Dick story makes me sceptical...
[youtube]RgkHKBO5b5U[/youtube]
To be fair, the original
To be fair, the original total recall had very little to do with the PKD story.
The mention of Big Trouble in
The mention of Big Trouble in Little China makes me really want to watch that again. I don't think I've seen it since I was about 10 and I can remember having a weird attraction to it that's hard to describe.
The most important question about TR was brought up in this too. Will the woman with 3 breasts be in it? Apparently so...
I still don't understand why
I still don't understand why they don't remake things that were shit the first time round, that'd make more sense. That said, new TR has a Deus Ex Human Revolution vibe to it which is always good.
I saw loads of rubbish but A Bittersweet Life was worth a watch. There's not enough gangster films where the main person worries about having never been in love AND gives his boss and all the people he's sent after him a slap.
Got round to watching Big
Got round to watching Big Trouble in Little China again. Brilliant film. I think I remember why I loved it so much when I was younger now. It was because I had a thing for the 2 'brides' when they were dressed up. There was just something about the way they looked :roll:
flaneur wrote: I still don't
flaneur
ie. Battlestar
flaneur
Still mean to get round to playing that. Currently replaying ME2, but not sure i'm going to like the third, because apparently the ending is shit.
Aye, I want someone to remake
Aye, I want someone to remake Bloodsport as an existentialist arthouse film but still involving underground fighting rings obviously.
I just finished it this week. It's no Deus Ex but the art direction and wee touches are interesting enough. I completed ME1 but didn't carry my save over so now I can't be fucked with the rest.
I watched the Hunger Games,
I watched the Hunger Games, it was pretty bog standard but amusing enough and will hopefully prevent them remaking The Running Man or Battle Royale ;)
It had some decent ideas but it was a bit derivative, there were some really silly bits and some unnecessary stupidity. The magic dog monsters probably being worst.
Saw the Total recall remake advert, it looked shit.
Saw the advert for Lock Out which is basically Escape from New York in space without Snake Plissken, so it'll be shit.
The Thing (2011) ok prequel to the awesome original which suffered from a bizarrely unevenly powered alien (more so than the original) and had a few ridiculous moments, mostly the test for aliens which was first of all pretty stupid and trying to inject tension by having not asking people first was just ridiculous. No way near as good as the original but not too bad.
jesus can you have not seen
jesus can you have not seen the original Total Recall???
Pandorum - bit like Event
Pandorum - bit like Event Horizon but w/ less Cthulhu and more sci-fi. Saw ending a mile away and there was too much shit martial arts in it - I blame it on Paul W. S. Anderson. Still, scary-ish enough and a good thrill ride.
I've also obtained Bruno Dumont's Hors Satan and Tarr's last film A Turin Horse. Very excited about watching them soon.
Paul W. Anderson did Event
Paul W. Anderson did Event Horizon though?
Harrison wrote: Currently
Harrison
I hear that ME3 suffers from a lack of Harbinger.
Yes, he wrote, directed and
Yes, he wrote, directed and produced Event Horizon, whereas he just produced Pandorum but the similarities are there.
Cabin in the Woods. First
Cabin in the Woods. First movie I bothered to watch in the cinema in over a year. It's amazing. One of the best genre movies I've seen, period.
The Last Exorcism
The Last Exorcism LAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMEEEEEEEEEEEEE and terrible ending
That's what you get for
That's what you get for watching a remake.
I saw Modern Times and Safety Last, Lloyd was no Chaplin alas. Le Trou, probably the best prison break out film ever, and Kiss Me Deadly, noir with Nat King Cole songs and science fiction paranoia. I have forgotten what colour films look like.
Is what Bob says in the first
[youtube]eNK7N3AwVFQ[/youtube]Is what Bob says in the first half of this scene true? x
Wojtek - of course it's got
Wojtek - of course it's got better if you're Bill Murray lolling on a bed next to Scarlett Johanssen. It's hard to imagine any improvement on that, no matter what angle you look at it. :)
Flaneur - Modern Times has to be in my top ten favourite movies. i always put it on when I need cheering up.
A new dye transfer print of
A new dye transfer print of The Birds (1963.) Very beautiful and still a disturbing open ended allegory.
Will trotting hahaha. Such a
[youtube]Id0V2F0DlTk[/youtube] :D :D Will trotting hahaha. Such a great film!
A Beautiful Mind, Ron Howard
A Beautiful Mind, Ron Howard is overrated
50/50 Mary and
50/50
Mary and Max
Submarine
M&M probs best out a those.
Is 50/50 good, but more
Is 50/50 good, but more importantly have you ever tried the cancer line in a club? :p
EDIT: If you're going to watch this, having some tissues handy is a must. x
The Mechanic, despite
The Mechanic, despite starring Jason Statham it was pretty enjoyable and entertaining. Just a shame about the 'clients' all being 'bad people', pretty lame. Streamed it on-line for free. Worth a watch. Much better than his more recent film with De Niro.
Werner Herzog's last
Werner Herzog's last documentary, Into The Abyss. A look at the case of death row inmate Micheal Perry through to his execution, looking at the lives he has fucked over, the lives the death penalty has fucked over, especially those who administer the process and generally the mess that is guns, poverty and the death penalty in the US. Definitely worth a watch.
[youtube]_HJzyIJLPlg[/youtube]
The Hangover part II. Won a
The Hangover part II. Won a free streamed film from film4 od (try the homepage, I think it's actually a promotion and everyone wins). It wasn't too bad but it was a basically the same film, a bit shitter, had two songs and was a bit disturbing at times.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-7_8y-McLo
The Odyssey.
Brilliant :)
Rarely bettered in history I feel, if at all.
Pervert's Guide to the Cinema
[youtube]SBBoxXEBrxU[/youtube][youtube]a5yoqjABeBM[/youtube]
Pervert's Guide to the Cinema with Slavoj Zizek, the man's hilarious. I'm not the film buff I should be, but it was still fascinating.
I've had a "film week"
I've had a "film week" recently, and downloaded films I've seen talked about on here - Gattaca, A Scanner Darkly, and The New Babylon. Also re-watched Fight Club. I tried to get hold of Germinal, but couldn't find a decent download with English subs, as my French isn't what it used to be. Could anyone help?
I liked Gattaca, it was well made, fairly good script, and well acted. The New Babylon is incredible, and I'm happy I've come across that one, especially being a big fan of Soviet Russian and German Expressionist cinema.
A Scanner Darkly didn't really impress me, it was a bit too mumbly really, but maybe that's the point. Didn't really seem to go anywhere, barring the last 20 minutes. I liked the animation/acting idea though, it was almost Cezannian in character, flattening out the screen if you like. Still took a while to get used to, and I think this technique can be improved.
I'm still undecided on Fight Club. I think there's just a tad too much "coolness" - by that I mean the music and cinematography. I think the style overrides the substance a little, but each to their own. It has an interesting plot, but from what I took from it, it was a critique of masculinity, that I didn't really agree with. I need to think about it more.
I'm looking forward to The Master. I loved There Will Be Blood by the same director - the cinematography, acting, script (even though I've heard it's no a lot like Oil!) and the music. Jonny Greenwood's doing the score once again for this one.
[youtube]9oZDKFoCqAw[/youtube]
Red State by Kevin Smith.
Red State by Kevin Smith. Very good and not a comedy.
Chronicle. Good superhero/sci-fi shaky-cam movie.
FFS lay off tulips! They're
FFS lay off tulips! They're about the only thing that I can grow really well.
I was wondering where this thread has gone when I had an overwhelming urge to bore everyone rigid with my opinions on The Avengers. Fortunately for all, the moment passed.
Oh yeah, and The Avengers.
Oh yeah, and The Avengers. Lots of fun.
Gattaca is really good, one
Gattaca is really good, one of my favourite films.
Thought Chronicle was ace...
Watched 'Iron Sky' tonight. Had a lot of satirical stuff, but it was done so heavy handedly. I'd say it was just about on the good side of meh.
Scum. This was on TV the
Scum.
This was on TV the other night. Gritty as hell and hard hitting. It's about a British Borstal in the 70's, loads of racism, violence etc. what you would expect.
Monsters.
This was on last night. Didn't catch the start of it, but what i did see was very good. It's about aliens, and 2 people trying to get from A to B. Reminds me of Cloverfield in terms of the point of view it's shot from, and also aliens being in it. The soundtrack worked well and caught my ear. Yeah, i like it, a good, welcome twist on 'alien' movies, like district 9 but without the turning into aliens stuff.
I've also watched a number of
I've also watched a number of movies recommended by you Libcom folks. Y'all have good taste.
Gentlemen Broncos - Pretty awesome. Napoleon Dynamite director, and has one of the guys from Flight of the Conchords.
Attack the Block - Also pretty cool. It would be fun to watch with kids who are 12+.
Also watched:
Scanner Darkly - I got a similar impression as Standfield. Would like to read the book.
The Salt of Life - Upper class Italian retiree trying to find love. Pretty good.
EDIT: I also watched Live Nude Girls Unite! It was pretty good, though they should have affiliated with the IWW instead of SEIU. You can watch it for free on HULU in the US.
District 9 and Goodfellas are
District 9 and Goodfellas are the last two films I watched. Not for the first time, obv.
I keep promising myself a Sam Rockwell week, but then I forget, til it hits 2am and Im still awake and the only stuff on my telly is eighties game shows.
Box of Moonlight is a good
Box of Moonlight is a good Rockwell film. Has John Turturro in it and a surf soundtrack.
I saw Pale Flower last. Japanese new wave noir. Sharp.
Germinal torrent here
Germinal torrent here http://isohunt.com/download/178238369/Germinal.FRENCH.DVDRIP.XVID.AC3-NIKKA.avi, English subtitles here http://www.opensubtitles.org/sk/subtitles/3798601/germinal-en
Avengers - amazing and lots of fun!!!
Chronicle - very good and fun
Iron Sky - pretty lame to be honest
Sky Captain - horrible script, very good art/design/feeling
The Thing (2011) - thought it would be shit compared to the classic, but i liked the atmosphere. still, the classic is a classic
Legend, thank you MT.
Legend, thank you MT.
21 Jump Street. Surprisingly
21 Jump Street. Surprisingly good. Funny movie and quite self-aware.
My Idiot Brother - ok. Better than most movies out now, but nothing special. Paul Rudd is good as the idiot brother.
Prometheus - Pretty good, but
Prometheus - Pretty good, but not as good as Alien. Not by a long shot. Still, it had good acting and beautiful camera work. They just messed up the editing and the character development.
and the story from what I've
and the story from what I've heard.
knotwho wrote: Prometheus -
knotwho
Yeah, those first couple of minutes...talk about eyegasm. As for character development, I thought it was funny that one of the few, if not the only one, who showed more emotional states was the robot. I could have done without that coda after the credits as well.
[Prmoetheus Spoiler Below]
Also, I thought the scene where the geologist comes back as a sort of zombie was silly as hell; to the point of comedy.
Just found this movie on
Just found this movie on Youtube:
Osugi was evidently active in syndicalist groupings. I haven't watched the movie, just passing it along because I'm sure somebody here may be interested.
Attack the Block - lots of
Attack the Block - lots of fun if a little cheesy at times.
Due Date - Fun enough although not much realy happened and that guy from The Hangover is playing the same part he does in every film.
RED - quite fun, a bit of shooting and a silly plot but otherwise worth a watch.
Prometheus - terrible in all
Prometheus - terrible in all aspects
The Pact - after a long time
The Pact - after a long time a horror movie with an atmosphere
Moonrise Kingdom, really
Moonrise Kingdom, really white, really really good. So goddamn good, Wes Anderson just proves in this movie that he is a master of the art of cinema.
starship troopers the heros
starship troopers
the heros are really disturbing (guess why)
Bug sympathiser.
Bug sympathiser.
[youtube]7oTNNjRuqbE[/youtube]
shit, Heat has one of the
shit, Heat has one of the best action scenes ever (the shooting in the streets)!
"We want to hurt no one.
"We want to hurt no one. We're here for the bank's money, not your money. Your money is insured by the federal government, you're not gonna lose a dime. Think of your families, don't risk your life. Don't try and be a hero."
Boo-ya:
Boo-ya:
[youtube]ZL9fnVtz_lc[/youtube]
Besides Prometheus (words
Besides Prometheus (words cannot describe how bad), I also watched the oldie Office Space. Probably it's an iconic film for a lot of libcomm-like people but I found it really depressing! Obviously the part about taking control of the office was cool, but:
1 - no thoughts about using his new found power to help his class and his co-workers
2 - just because you've taken a weird path into management, doesn't mean you're not one (and showed already a few cunt-ish actions)
3 - their plan to become 'free' was completely individualistic and relied on stealing from worker pensions (couldn't they have stolen from some rich bastard's investment fund?)
4 - they're not even caught... they turn themselves in! Worst radicals ever.
5 - finally, he seems fine taking a manual labour job because at least he's outdoors and not in the office. See how you like it when it rains or when a concrete block falls on your foot and your employer isn't insured!
Speaking of Michael Mann
Speaking of Michael Mann movies, a recent favorite re-seen:
[youtube]UiqwF_Y9S5Q[/youtube]
Locustinferno
Locustinferno
not working. I was going to rewatch that, I remember being very disappointed when I watched it.
Locustinferno wrote: Speaking
Locustinferno
Yo homie, that my briefcase? I watched both of them within a week too. I've Miami Vice downloading. Mann is a beast.
Shame I liked it, but I don't
Shame
I liked it, but I don't understand why people praise Fassbender's performance in this one more than they do his performance in Hunger.
MT wrote: shit, Heat has one
MT
Word, best movie shootout ever.
Soapy wrote: Moonrise
Soapy
word. It's amazing.
Other things I have watched recently…
- Martha Marcy May Marlene - excellent film with the new Olsen non-twin who has left a cult
- Rampart - Woody Harrelson plays a bad cop in the LAPD during the Rampart scandal. Pretty good, but it's no Training Day
- Attenberg - Greek film from the director of Dogtooth (which is amazing) about a weird girl brought up in an oppressive modernist urban environment
I watched In Time a few months ago following a recommendation here - fucking excellent! Another good recent film with communist leanings is Ben Stiller and Eddie Murphy's Tower Heist!
Downloading Germinal and subtitles now, thanks for the links. It is my favourite book!
"Hitchhiker's Hiker's Guide
"Hitchhiker's Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy" (2005) - was awful, knew it would be, I just had to watch it out of curiosity.
"Control" - the Ian Curtis thing. For all of it's good reviews, I didn't really like it. I don't think the film really did a good job of portraying what kind of state of mind he was in, it was just like, "My marriage is failing, I had a few fits, time to go now...". It was a bit cold, in my opinion - the portrayal of depression could've been a bit less simplistic.
"When A Tree Falls" - This is about the Earth Liberation Front, and the subsequent conviction of one guy for an "eco-terrorist" bombing. It was mainly discussing the events, interviews with the people involved, and the term "terrorist", and what it means. Quite enjoyed it really. A fair few dodgy politics, but overall I sympathised with the eco-warriors. They genuinely seemed to regret the bombings (which killed no-one I might add), but the film also does quite a good job of showing us why they resorted to such action, and it certain ways, it is understandable, just misguided perhaps.
A.C.A.B.: All Cops Are
A.C.A.B.: All Cops Are Bastards - i really enjoyed it. it even has neonazi squatters in it, hehe. although it is not a very funny thing as it is a real problem in italy (not only for antifascist in italy).
followed the recommendation here and watched 50/50 - it is one of the films you think "what was so special about it?" while at the same time you enjoy it a lot and hardly forget it.
i might watch Tower Heist but it has very bad reviews so Steven., pray... :twisted:
SAFE - typical jason statham,
SAFE - typical jason statham, inoffensive action shite, rips of LEON a bit without any depth
PROMETHEUS - watched it in 3D with Revol, he didn't understand any of it and was all 'who's the alien? is this the same alien from out of ALIENS 2? which planet are they on?' what a bellend
God I watched Prometheus with
God I watched Prometheus with my girlfriend and she was like Revol. Should I worry?
I'd find that pretty cool
I'd find that pretty cool personally...
Prometheus is a movie I just gotta watch as well but I'll wait for a bluray rip or something.
I just watched The Nightmare before Christmas in 1080p, impressive how much better this looked than the DVD version I have. Another movie that greatly benefited from its transition to HD was The Asphyx, now that was awesome how crystal clear a 16mm movie can look like.
Speaking of blu-ray, House of 1000 corpses was twice as awesome in HD... Cpt Spalding gotta be the most awesome movie villain in the history of ever.
Saw Prometheus on opening
Saw Prometheus on opening day. Not great, but I don't think it was absolutaly terrible as everyone seems to think.
Also The Avengers too a while back. It was ok, although my date fell asleep during the middle.
jura
If she ever says something along the lines of "Have you even read Zizek?" I'd start to worry.
MT, 50/50 you mean the movie
MT, 50/50 you mean the movie with the kid with third Rock from the Sun in? Yeah that's okay. Quite enjoyable in some ways.
If you like that kid he's also in Mysterious Skin which is great (although it's yet another film with a paedophile that looks like me in it).
Re Tower Heist having bad reviews, what do reviewers know?! Ben Stiller has never been in anything not amazing: http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=ben_stiller_should_star_in_every_movie
I just watched the film adaptation of Treasure of the Sierra Madre. I've been reading a bunch of B Traven recently. Really enjoyed it, very true to the book, it's great that Traven was able to oversee it (albeit while pretending to be his own literary agent!).
Steven. wrote: MT, 50/50 you
Steven.
He - Joseph Gordon-Levitt - was in another film called, "Brick". Seen it? I came across on late night telly a while back, it was really good, engrossing. Though I can't for the life of me remember what it was about.
The Treasue of Sierra Madre is quality.
Just watched "Don't Look Now" with Donald Sutherland. Really faithful to the de Maurier's short story, and the cinematography is really similar to Hitchcock's I think. Really good film.
Standfield, Brick was a high
Standfield, Brick was a high school movie crossed with a film noir. I didn't really like it…
BTW, Control was amazing. I want to watch it again
Have half finished watching If a tree falls, will post my thoughts later
"I think someone should just
"I think someone should just take this city and just... just flush it down the fuckin' toilet."
Le mystère Picasso - a
Le mystère Picasso - a classic, and one I like to watch every year or so.
Cave of Forgotten Dreams, by Werner Herzog. About the cave paintings in Lascaux. Apart from the annoying overly-poetic commentary by Herzog, I found it interesting. It's my dream to one day go to Lascaux, but unless I'm a millionaire film-maker, or I get a job there, it looks unlikely.
Germinal. Didn't feel like the 2hours 30mins it actually was. Really intense, very realistic, and very human. In that respects, a good film. I liked the way Zola gave the bourgeois their own relationship problems. In artistic terms, I think it worked to demystify the elite.
I read the book around 8 years ago, while studying contemporaries of Zola at uni, and this film has promoted me have to read it again in the near future. I think it's fair to say it's more of a record of those times, rather than having any political ideas in itself. If there was anything in it, it is reformist I think.
The depiction of the anarchist is typical of the shady, bomb-throwing stereotype. This probably has something to do with Zola's relationship with Turgenev, who angered Russian revolutionaries of his representation of them - despite being a friend of Bakunin's. Zola was also known for "betraying" his closest friends - Cezanne in particular.
Still, a beautiful story, and brilliantly written. I remember it reminding me of Thomas Hardy's novels wierdly enough, in it's representation of nature being this all-encompassing "beast", and it's use when dramatising the events. This was touched on in the film - the only nice days are the party and the ending - but I think it still could've done more. The storm was only referred to in passing.
I enjoyed the film overall, and I'd watch it again, definitely.
THE DICTATOR fairly rubbish
THE DICTATOR
fairly rubbish but did have some funny moments, not the kind of thing you'd feel the need to revisit
^ That reminded me to watch
^
That reminded me to watch "The Great Dictator", by Charlie Chaplin.
Wow. Probably my favourite film now, incredible.
Full film here.
The Boys from the Blackstuff
The Boys from the Blackstuff series (1982) on youtube - pertinent and depressing in equal measure.
I watched Prometheus in 3D
I watched Prometheus in 3D IMAX and thought it was really good. It's an Alien film, who cares about plot? It's visually and sonically stunning. It has its scary moments. I wasn't expecting anything else. I am no fan of 3D but I thought it was done well here.
Boys from the Blackstuff - good call wojtek, I saw this the first time round on TV when I was 9 and loved it then, I've been meaning to watch it again but keep forgetting.
Oh, I also saw The Angel's Share by Ken Loach. I was a bit disappointed by a fairly weak plot but it was good to see scenes shot in Edinburgh and Glasgow. That's a poor reason to like a film, eh? It was pish!
Pandorum Best movie I watched
Pandorum
Best movie I watched all year, straight 10/10
Railyon wrote: Pandorum Best
Railyon
Watched this last night based on this recommendation (and a cheeky look at imdb)
Really enjoyed it. so thanks, i guess!
Dial 'M' for Murder liked it
Dial 'M' for Murder
liked it less than previous times, the grace kelly character was intolerable
Amazing Spiderman -
Amazing Spiderman - interesting to see that superhero films are segmenting into genres, unlike just being of the superhero genre. Amazing Spiderman is a teen adventure film (think Buffy?), with embarrassed teenage romance, pesky parents, high-school status fights, mentor figures who disappoint, etc. Enjoyable, though.
Holy Mountain - holy shit!!!!!!!! Watch it!!!!!
The Running Man - I remember watching this film when I was a child and it left a big impression and made me want to fight for truth and end the spectacle. A tragedy of our times, and of my adulthood, is that worse crimes than the ones in The Running Man are revealed (editing of footage to cover State murder, et al) and no revolution happens, not even a lukewarm outrage. The creators of Running Man (Stephen King under a pseudonym) seemed to think that if the people discovered they were being lied to, they would rebel. :(
White Lightnin. fuckin
White Lightnin. fuckin amazing!!! Love, murder, insanity and Appalachian tap dancing!!
also The Running Man. And
also The Running Man. And immediately before that, The Little Mermaid.
At the end of the running man, after the kissing bit, i noticed arnie grabs token love interest by the back of the neck to lead her off. Bit weird.
It will surprise noone that my favourite character in little mermaid is Ursula the sea witch. Would like to know the backstory between her and Triton.
Lockout. Decent sci-fi action
Lockout. Decent sci-fi action by Luc Besson.
godfather, before then
godfather, before then driving around north london with friends in someones parents meat refrigerator van and pretending to be the coglione family.
Animal Kingdom - Another
Animal Kingdom - Another Libcom recommendation. It was good. Ben Mendelsohn's character was right creepy.
Moonrise Kingdom - Wes Anderson didn't disappoint. Awesome acting by the kids.
Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2
More of a trash movie than straight up horror, but I liked it. Especially dug Bill Moseley.
"I don't know whether to fuck
"I don't know whether to fuck him or fight him."
Drive - a Kitano film but w/
Drive - a Kitano film but w/ hipster aesthetics
Melancholy of Resistance
Melancholy of Resistance
Why do you say hipster aesthetics? Because two people were in love with each other?
Soapy wrote: Melancholy of
Soapy
lol, by that standard every Hollywood film would be hipster.
Or is being hipster while being hipster, aka being "normal", considered hipster with the hipsters?
Hipsters are weird
Steven. wrote: MT, 50/50 you
Steven.
meant this: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1306980/
Soundtrack, the retro
Soundtrack, the retro clothes, the hairstyles, a very strong sense of morality and so on. I didn't mean it in a bad way. Let me rephrase:
A Kitano film w/ contemporary young American aesthetics.
I thought the Kitano part was more controversial! But frankly the laconic, emotionally dead on the outside but very intense loner who has lots of power but no passion where to use it is a Kitano staple (not just Kitano of course). Pacing was overall similar too, Hana-bi or Brother would be recommendations.
Also very similar is Jarmusch's Ghost Dog.
Melancholy of Resistance
Melancholy of Resistance
ya i see what you mean
The first Violence Jack
The first Violence Jack movie. Nostalgic like fuck, 80s post-apocalypse anime on steroids, think Fist of the North Star but 20% cooler
Melancholy of Resistance
Melancholy of Resistance
The laconic loner is an old hat archetype of cinema, from chambara, noir and Westerns. Though Drive is unique in showing people like that are socially inept and unhinged.
And what some would call hipster aesthetics, others would call a decent haircut and a nice set of clothes. Skinny jeans and a jean jacket, that's like crazy man.
revol68 wrote: kooky retard
revol68
Deep critique.
everyone knows that you can't
everyone knows that you can't be a real hipster unless you hate hipsters, which clearly casts doubts on revol's non-hipster credibilities.
FULL DEEP SOCIAL ANALYSIS
Revol wishes he was hipster
Revol wishes he was hipster cos he read about it on the internet ;)
revol68 wrote: you are trying
revol68
this is revol talking about revol.
Drive is pretty shit
Drive is pretty shit
I disliked Drive before it
I disliked Drive before it was popular to dislike Drive.
Sure it's not hemp?
Sure it's not hemp?
Started watching the first
Started watching the first season of Space Battleship Yamato... full retro overload, I tell you, 70s sci-fi anime in 4:3 and shit, I out-hipster you all
Any of you ever check out
Any of you ever check out redlettermedia.com? They gained some internet fame when they did these hilarious reviews of the new star wars movies. They're also pretty cool because they criticize the shallow corporate culture in Hollywood. Check it out http://redlettermedia.com/plinkett/star-wars/star-wars-episode-ii-attack-of-the-clones/
Yeah, but just the plinkett
Yeah, but just the plinkett reviews. Half in the bag is horrible, they called sucker punch chauvinist or something like that (don't recall exactly)
Suckerpunch was chauvinist
Suckerpunch was chauvinist and utterly shit in everything except its visuals.
Also Drive is shit as well, maybe I was hoping too much for something as awesome as Heat. The Town tried and was ok but not nearly as good as Heat. They should have at least got an ex-SAS guy to choreograph the shootout like Heat did.
i might watch Drive later
i might watch Drive later
thats true, sucker punch was
thats true, sucker punch was pretty blatant about criticising chauvinist shit. problem is it still did so through the medium of a film that sold itself on sex appeal of the victims in the film
and it was also a shit film
revol68 wrote: Sucker Punch
revol68
I doubt Zach Snyder has the intelligence to send anything up.
Melancholy of Resistance
Melancholy of Resistance
That film was awful.
revol68 wrote: Choccy
revol68
:)
revol68 wrote: Choccy
revol68
How can you tell the difference?
revol68 wrote: It is indeed
revol68
I'm a fairly literal guy so maybe it went over my head but if suckerpunch was a pisstake it was too subtle for a lot of the audience. And after the outright fascism of 300 and the watchmen it would have had to be a lot more obvious in it's satire to be noticed by me.
Quote: outright fascism of
i don't give a damn about 300 as it was simply an action movie for me, but i consider watchmen a cinematography masterpiece that makes you think and not accept everything you are told. why do you think these movies were outright facsist?!
I haven't read the Watchmen
I haven't read the Watchmen comic but I understand it's a satire of the fascistic tendencies of many superhero comics. Snyder totally failed to get this satire across and seemed to uncritically revel in the vigilantism. And it was boring too like all his other movies.
300 was racist, homophobic and glorified the 'perfect' human body, if that doesn't add up to fascism it comes pretty close. And the author of the 300 comic, Frank Miller, is known for his far right views. It also wasn't very good as an action film.
MT wrote: Quote: outright
MT
Go read the book instead (Watchmen). 300 is beyond recuperation of any kind.
Community Quote: A smart
Community
Really clever and funny, I wish all shitty former polytechnics were this honest haha. One of the main characters, Britta Perry whose played by Gillian Jacobs is a stoner AND an anarchist cat lover! :)
She's got NOTHING on Ben Chang though!
[youtube]N7k78jEQXlA[/youtube]
[youtube]VtvIW6UHQbU[/youtube]
The Man with X-Ray Eyes.
The Man with X-Ray Eyes. Doctors should not do experiments on themselves to see through things (even if that involves everyone's clothes), because they eventually lose their marbles. Confessions of a Dog is interesting, probably the most ACAB film ever, showing Japanese cops in cahoots with both courts and the media, fake busts they've set up with organised crime, drug dealing, sleeping with underage prostitutes and bit of murder when they've time.
The Hunger Games. Not exactly
The Hunger Games. Not exactly Battle Royale, but a decent movie.
MT wrote: Germinal torrent
MT
I had to warn all those who want to watch it with these subtitles - it seems it is just a google translation. I finally watched it last week and had difficulties to get what's going on and sometimes it was really bad (when something important was talked about).
perhaps also because of that i really didn't understood the whole thing and the story didn't touch me much. neither zala's politics express by it. i guess i will just read some short synopsis on wiki:)
not a bad movie, it didn't bore me and even had funny bits (including the anarchist character, which was mostly funny because i could imagine people telling quite similar stupid demagogic things in the a similar stupid way even these days, hehehe), but i guess i expected more.
and btw: Raid: Redemption -
and btw:
Raid: Redemption - kicks ass! a very nice surprise
The Help - finally I saw it. I was amazed by the acting! Otherwise it was a bit sweet, still I liked it.
Not seen this for years,
Not seen this for years, Slovenias finest export,
[youtube]pyAcNwaOpgw[/youtube]
Tyrannosaur: brilliant;
Tyrannosaur: brilliant; moving and well made.
nevermind
nevermind
I watched Coriolanus (Ralph
I watched Coriolanus (Ralph Fiennes re-make) last night. Ignoring the political angle it takes, I'd say it was all right entertainment.
Although, I can't help but to think that a lot of the people who raved about it only did so because of the fancy language in modern attire.
This week I'm gonna watch at
This week I'm gonna watch at least one of the following
BATMAN RETURNS 3
BOURNE IDENTITY 4
EXPENDABLES 2
Cabin in the woods 8/10, good
Cabin in the woods
8/10, good cube-esque movie with plot twists out of nowhere, but the ending (and by that I mean the very very last scene) was seriously weak, thus -1 point. Overall a decent movie
I didn't like the whole
I didn't like the whole ancients thing. If it had been "oh this is how horror movies are actually made" or something like that even though it would have been much more predictable and stupid I would have still preferred it.
That would have been cool
That would have been cool too. I would have preferred the cube-style conspiracy though, unknown objectives and all that jazz
The ancient things could have been potentially awesome if it were done right. Would have loved to see Cthulhu in the mix...
I last saw the (I think?)
I last saw the (I think?) Swedish film Evil. It's about a "bad" violent, working class teen getting kicked out of his school and is sent to a boarding school. Believe me, it gets crazy and depressing.
Also its based off of a semi autobiographical book written by an honest-to-god former Maoist anti-american spy so uh there's that.
Good Night and Good
Good Night and Good Luck
Great film about McCarthyism and the news corporations, directed by george clooney
The main character is accused of being an ex-member of that 'subversive terrorist organisation' the Industrial Workers of the World. 8-)
Made in Hong Kong, about a
Made in Hong Kong, about a triad having an existential crisis and falling in love with a girl who has cancer. FAMILY FUN.
Wall Street with Michael
Wall Street with Michael Douglas and Charlie Sheen.
Shifty British film about a
Shifty
British film about a drug dealer and his long lost friend, not too bad but a little basic. And the dealer's brother didn't work somehow evn though the actor was good and the part was decently written. Might just be because I recognise him from something else. IT's free on iplayer for the moment.
EXPENDABLES 2 - great film,
EXPENDABLES 2 - great film, really important piece of cinema
Harrison wrote: Good Night
Harrison
thanks for the tip! it was so great to see such a good film. i don't know anything about the story, so it is hurt to be a historical-political judge but from what i've seen, i have to say that clooney made a real masterpiece. it impressed me even more when i tried to imagine it being filmed not in black and white;)
Harrison wrote: Good Night
Harrison
Just finished watching it because of your post, Harrison. Pretty cool film.
Wilde: shockingly not ruined
Wilde: shockingly not ruined by Stephen Fry, who was just wooden. A decent film in the end, worth a watch.
The Avengers 8/10, typical
The Avengers
8/10, typical hollywood popcorn action movie that despite its obvious flaws does have its moments. Looking forward to the sequel (if Thanatos at the end of the movie is not a hint I dunno what is)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbEuq54FcBg
soul
Wild Bill: Directorial debut
Wild Bill:
Directorial debut from Dexter Fletcher about a guy coming out of prison to find his kids have been living on their own after their mum ran off abroad, and are starting to get into the same sort of bother that landed him in jail. Decent film, fairly entertaining in an East End gangster kind-of-a-way, but also surprisingly touching in places. 7.5 /10
Dream House:
Psychological, supernatural thriller with Daniel Craig. The main premise is pretty stupid, loads of plot holes, saw the ending coming a mile off, but fairly well done and quite effective in places 6/10
jef costello
jef costello
Just watched the trailer on Imdb, looks decent, reckon I'll check this out, cheers
Alien Hunter..... NOT GOOD!
Alien Hunter..... NOT GOOD! :confused:
Blade Runnah again. So bloody
Blade Runnah again. So bloody perfect but the love scene is very rapey. When a woman is leaving Harrison, you don't block the door.
flaneur wrote: Blade Runnah
flaneur
i might re-read the PKD book. its been a couple years since i last read it...
my favs have to be that, and martian time slip. maybe also penultimate truth. 3 stigmata was a bit too much of a trip.
Me as well but I probably
Me as well but I probably prefer the film. Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said is the best thing of PKD's that I've read.
flaneur wrote: Me as well but
flaneur
i'm in a library right now that has a copy. i shall withdraw it
The Set Up, a real time noir
The Set Up, a real time noir about a boxer whose manager has set up a fall but he doesn't know it. And The Night of the Hunter based on a real bloke who married and killed all of his 25 wives. It was Robert Mitcham to be fair, how could you say no?
Night of the hunter is
Night of the hunter is awesome
The original 13 Assassins.
The original 13 Assassins.
Time theft in the 1840s.
I watched the Last King of
I watched the Last King of Scotland, which despite Whitakers' standout performance, the film didn't have much to offer. It wasn't the Constant Gardner, nor was it Hotel Rwanda.
Stranger than
Stranger than Fiction.
Existentialism and literary theory for the layman. I think the real thing is garbage, so this was no better.
Gone baby gone. Decent acting
Gone baby gone. Decent acting from Amy Ryan but aside from that not very interesting. Overuse of the technique of killing the 'real' sound in the scene and too many welling strings.
The main character bored me and I am not quite sure why I am supposed to care that this is Boston.
Not a bad film but at most two actual characters and a plot that managed to seem convoluted although it was easy to follow.
I didn't like Gone Baby Gone
I didn't like Gone Baby Gone either.
Recently I watched or re-watched these, all of which I'd recommend:
- Salvador (1986) by Oliver Stone, on the civil war in El Salvador. Featuring Jim Belushi as a crazy American.
- Mississippi Burning (1988) with Gene Hackman, set in 1964, on the KKK
- The Great Escape (1963), I was surprised by how realistic it was, especially towards the end. When I first saw it as a kid I had no idea it was based on real events
Searching for Sugar Man -
[youtube]8hEojBYmR-o[/youtube]
Searching for Sugar Man - this was actually pretty good.
Prometheus - very good
Prometheus - very good atmosphere, but with a script that would be a waste of time to even talk about:D
Game Change - great body talk by Harrelson, generally entertaining as well
Cabin in the Woods - nothing groundbreaking but a very solid average at least
John Carter, what a gigantic
John Carter, what a gigantic piece of fail. Fuck Hollywood has no clue whatsoever, it's like the technical ability they now have to put pretty much any images imaginable on screen has developed in inverse proportion to the ability to write, direct and act a coherent story.
Iron Man (2008) - still my
Iron Man (2008) - still my favorite Marvel movie, Tony Stark is way cooler than he should be to someone like me.
Dark Shadows (2012) - Burton movies with Depp in them always work. What made this move come alive was the style clashes between vampire movies, hippie flair and the canning industry - love how dead serious Depp was all the time, the end was a bit too abrupt (in a sense the opposite of what I usually think about endings - that they drag on too long). Contrary to my expectations, Victoria didn't have the big female lead role I thought she'd get though. Which kinda felt like there was something missing. Not sure about the rewatch value of this movie, but the humor certainly was compatible with mine.
Railyon wrote: Burton movies
Railyon
There are Burton movies without Depp???
snipfool wrote: Railyon
snipfool
Is that a serious question? ;)
Helena Bonham Carter was also pretty cool in Dark Shadows, though IMO her best role was in Sweeney Todd. Which was a fucking masterpiece.
Railyon wrote: snipfool
Railyon
Hehe. Not a big fan of Burton, I just don't find him that dark or that quirky- two characteristics he's supposedly famous for. Depp's disappointing too. For some reason I still hold on to this idea that he's a good actor, even though he keeps making terrible movies.
I'm a big fan of both, but
I'm a big fan of both, but Burton stuff I wouldn't actually call dark or quirky. Hard to describe.
Depp is a great actor to me and I generally love all the movies he does. Can't say I've ever been disappointed by him though the Pirates movies got worse each installment. Wouldn't say that's Depp's fault though... IMO he really shines in the 'strange' roles. Was kinda shitting bricks when I rewatched the first Nightmare on Elm Street, and a young Depp was the male lead.
The Dictator. I think someone
The Dictator. I think someone else already pointed out the similarities between Cohen's speech at the end of the film and Chaplin's speech at the end of The Great Dictator...I thought that was pretty good. The rest of the film was sort of "ehh". I chuckled occasionally, so I guess it's all right.
Railyon
Are we still going to be allowed to watch movies with capitalist heroes post-revolution? 'Cause I friggin' love There Will Be Blood; so much that I'm kind of willing to become a liberal just so I can continue watching it. ;)
Quote: Robert Hughes examines
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0074qfm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eKSp6j8UNw
Fascinating, particularly for a newbie.
Edit:
Forgive me if I get my marvel and DC mixed up (I'm sured you won't and rightly so! ;) ), but it has to be Kick-Ass for me, though I haven't seen the Dark Knight Rises yet... oops that's DC, so yeah definitely Kick-Ass.
Forgetting Sarah Marshall -
Forgetting Sarah Marshall - Wasn't enjoying it too much and then realised that I'd only been watching for 40 mins and couldn't face over an hour more of it.
Motorway, a Cantonese love
Motorway, a Cantonese love letter to Drive without the melodrama or skinny jeans, although more's the pity.
I rewatched Gattaca the other
I rewatched Gattaca the other day; it could be really interesting, but in the end the politics are shite. Looks amazing though.
Resident evil 5 3D -
Resident evil 5 3D - incredible opening scene plus some nice bits in the rest of the movie but poor screenplay and not likeable actors. still, a good entertainment if one doesn't expect much.
Bound for Glory - Woody
Bound for Glory - Woody Guthrie biopic. Really baggy, poorly scripted, but the songs are worked well in the film, so it just about scrapes through. It really went for the early background of the dustbowl period, which didn't make for the best viewing, but in retrospect probably made more sense. It did abruptly end pre-New York (where he took off in a big way, apparently) which was odd.
Dungeon Masters - Documentary which shows the worst side of three socially akward gamers. Good for observation, reminded me of certain personality traits that exist out there, but not very entertaining.
If a Tree Falls... - Award winning documentary ;-) on the recent repression against the ELF. Made all the good points along the way about the terrorism tag being shoehorned onto a non-violent group, about the conciousness/civility arc of people involved in direct action politics. Not being clued up about the events, somethings panned out different than I anticipated - basically who co-operates with the police etc. Interesting, but not a scratch on the Weathermen documentary from awhile ago.
Inheritance - Total emotional headfuck. The daughter of Amon Goeth, who ran the Plaszow death camp, discusses her life and we are subsequently taken on a journey with her to Plaszow to meet one of the survivors. Pretty gut-wrenching. Peppered with some really memorable scenes, because Goeth's daughter is plagued by her fathers actions.
Drag Me To Hell, after
Drag Me To Hell, after reading Dead Pledges: Debt, Horror, and the Credit Crisis by Annie McClanahan. Wasn't sure if she was right about it being a horror movie playing on our collective fear of financialisation and debt.
She was totally right.
Rollover
Rollover (1981)
.
.
.
(spoiler alert)
here is the scene depicting Global Worldwide Economic Collapse:
[youtube]6butfe1f9Hg[/youtube]
- "gold over 2000"
- "by tonight that will be cheap"
Seconds, about a man in his
Seconds, about a man in his 50s who begins a new life with plastic surgery and under a new name. Course, you can't escape your past and he dwells on the things he left behind, even if he is now Rock Hudson. Hudson was gay, but lead his public life as a straight married man, so there's a fair bit of parallels. He realises that all the nice things he had and his fancy job mean nothing, and he's led a wasted life which he's doomed to repeat. Made my corn flakes hard to swallow.
The World of Apu, bollywood
The World of Apu, bollywood film from the 1950s, loved it, great music. The one Satyajit Ray film I've watched that doesn't have blatant pro-British and pro aristocracy propaganda in it.
The breakup. prety pointless
The breakup. prety pointless
Hangover 1 & 2 were ace,
Hangover 1 & 2 were ace, Lesley Chou is a god and very surprised to see Yasmin Lee lol. Really hope there's a third! Oh and why isn't 'Bridesmaids' nearly half as good??
Just started watching 'The Trotsky' (2009), the opening few minutes are hilarious:
http://laborfilms.com/2012/06/04/the-trotsky-2009/
AHHAHAHAHA THIS IS PISS FUNNY
AHHAHAHAHA THIS IS PISS FUNNY
Loved the Trotsky.
Loved the Trotsky. Especially struck a chord with me, remembering my scowling young self who wandered about declaring everyone "facists!" There are loads of jokes in it which are nods to some of the absurdities of Quebec politics. There are 2 parallel school systems in Quebec, french and english, and at one point the kids are standing in front of a sign saying that their school is part of the Jacques Parizeau English School board. Jacques Parizeau was the Parti Quebecois Premier at the time of the 1995 referendum, and an absolute vehement opponent of allowing wider access to the english school system and restricting english across all sectors of Quebec society as a whole. Blamed the no vote on "the anglos and the jews, " an irony not lost on the anglos and jews when he was hospitalized in the Jewish General Hospital a few years back.
Last film I saw was Dredd. I grew up reading 2000AD and I thought it was amazingly faithful to the spirit of the comic, the oppressive, alienating nature of Megacity One, not trying to turn Dredd into some kind of charasmatic, sympathetic character, he's a nasty bastard. And loads of graphic, slow-motion gore. Best 90 minutes I've spent in a while.
Talk to Her: Pedro
Talk to Her: Pedro Almodovar.
The trials and tribulations of two men looking after women in comas. Strangely for an Almodovar film the main characters aren't the women. I enjoyed it, it's looking at some heavy themes of love and loss, and the performances (especially from Javier Camara, as Benigno, a nurse at the hospital whose obsession with one of the women is one of the film's main drivers) are excellent. Highly recommended for those who haven't yet seen it (it was released in 2002).
snipfool
Depp is a good actor - who keeps making terrible movies. I think his last great performance was probably in 'Once Upon a Time in Mexico'. Or maybe 'The Rum Diary' (also not a great movie I thought).
He is a one trick pony that
He is a one trick pony that has coasted along for yonks on his 'good' looks. Even actually good looking Brad Pitt has acting chops. Dead Man was an awful long time ago now.
Monsters, about an alien invasion but not really. Disaster films wish they were this calm and soppy, and it helped with the hangover. And then Pierrot le Fou before going out again. "Why do you look so sad? Because you speak to me in words and I look at you with feelings."
So much Depp hate... I think
So much Depp hate... I think I'm gonna have a crisis of fanboy butthurt overaccumulation...
Tried watching In the Mood
Tried watching In the Mood for Love (2000) and The Double Life of Veronique (1991) but stopped halfway through both the films. I was finding the former quite slow, while the latter I found more ... engaging but progressively incomprehensible. Plus it was late at night and I had better things to do: lurk this forum, read up more anarchic texts, and since I follow cricket, update myself with the latest scores (England are out of the T20I; how does that make everyone feel? :P ) . ;)
Soapy wrote: The World of
Soapy
I would hate to be a pedant here but, strictly speaking, "Bollywood" tag is used only for those films wherein the language used is primarily Hindi. Some people also oppose the term "Bollywood" as they claim it makes the Hindi cinema sound like a poor cousin of Hollywood.
Satyajit Ray directed most of his films in his native language Bengali at his native state Bengal. Therefore, majority of his films form a part of cinema of Bengal, rather than the much larger "Hindi Cinema" (or "Bollywood").
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_of_Bengal
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bollywood
Soapy or Silent Wage Slave,
Soapy or Silent Wage Slave, do either of you know where I can watch The World of Apu? Thanks you :)
Not as mental as title
Not as mental as title suggests, some good reminders of what happened and how.
[youtube]THlaMUq6MKU[/youtube]
Watched loads of films
Watched loads of films recently, but one that stuck out for me was "Looking For Eric", by Ken Loach. Even though Cantona was a boy-hood idol of mine - though never a United fan - I was kind of wary it would be another one of those glory-filled football films. So I was pleasantly surprised when it turned out to be a really good, intelligent film, with a good blend of seriousness, and light humour. The scene in the pub where the fans are debating about the merits of F.C. United was brilliant.
wojtek wrote: Soapy or Silent
wojtek
Sorry about referring to it as a bollywood film.
I torrented it from here http://kat.ph/the-world-of-apu-apur-sansar-xvid-bengali-mp3-sub-ita-eng-por-rom-gre-tntvillage-t4297052.html
Tabu - A kind of low budget
[youtube]-Zi3k0JpivY[/youtube]
Tabu - A kind of low budget Portuguese art house version of Out of Africa. Which doesn't sound that promising - most of the Portuguese won't go to see Portuguese films - but I liked it.
Cheers Soapy. Quote: Watched
Cheers Soapy.
http://inbedwithmaradona.com/journal/2012/9/6/manchester-united-a-lifetime-on-the-left.html
Mark. wrote: Tabu - A kind
Mark.
I watched it here in London. First half absolutely pure cinema, perfect. Second half a bit of bourgeois/colonialist wankery, but hard to say if it was intended or not.
wojtek wrote: Quote: Watched
wojtek
Cheers Wojtek, great article, appreciated.
Silent_Wage_Slave
Silent_Wage_Slave
Aye, you don't want to watch Wong Kar Wai films if you want something to happen.
I saw Hara Kiri, about the bushido code being a load of shite. And hara kiri obviously.
Diaz: Don't Clean Up This
Diaz: Don't Clean Up This Blood - primarily about police raid on Diaz school during Genoa G8 summit. i'm still not sure what to say about this movie. for people without any background info it could be quite uncomprehensible. after those years, it was a bit unclear even to me who took active part in solidarity activities with the detained comrades. anyway, the movie depicts the events in a rough way and i am afraid this was the main focus. i say i am afraid because it feels like if the authors were not sure what else the movie should contain. there is a bit of antiG8 politics but very vague, there is a bit the non-violence vs. violence idea, there is a bit of some other things. also, sometimes it looks cheap, but sometimes very "profi".
in brief, most of the movie is very intense, rough, emotional. i wouldn't recommend it to anyone who is sensitive to violence. all in all, it is really hard to judge this movie. but maybe this is the good thing about it.
Beyond contempt police beat
Beyond contempt police beat up hippie festival go-ers with commentary by all round good egg Nick Davies:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHyDaAXw8Ck
Cosmopolis by David
Cosmopolis by David Cronenberg, with Robert Pattison. Absolutely fucking brilliant.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3ZmIwteUAY
Ellar wrote: Cosmopolis by
Ellar
Can you please explain to me what it was all about?
I found it incomprehensible, saved by great cinematography, colour and the clever use of the "soundproof limo".
I probably didn't enjoy it also because a couple of hipsters sat behind us kept saying, "Brilliant!" "Genius!" "Haha! What a line!" etc. through the whole fucking film. They were laughing too! What the hell were they laughing at?
I'm honestly curious, I tried to do research on the original book when I got back home, but I'm still none-the-wiser as to it's genius.
23 proletariat classics. Blue
23 proletariat classics. Blue Collar is the best one, communist car factory noir :rb:
Night of the Living Dead 1990 remake. Barbra's back and this time she's pissed offfffffffffff.
Quote: Can you please explain
It was about lots of different things innit....
On the one level it's about how capitalists create their own crises and their egoism brings them close to possible destruction i.e Pattison's character insisting on going to get the haircut even tho his security guards constantly advises him otherwise and as the situation gets more and more dangerous for him.
But is also just a interesting prediction of what people will be like in the future, not 1000s of years in the future but just a few decades ahead. Plus the acting is great and the cinematography like us said is very good.
Sorry about the hipsters, the only bit I laughed at was the scene where he gets his prostate examined "it's sexual tension!" "you have a aspherical prostate".
I just felt I was missing the
I just felt I was missing the "in-jokes" for intellectuals or something... That was probably more to do with the couple sat behind me, like I said. And found it really hard to follow the dialogue. But, as previously said, the acting and the aesthetics of it still made it engrossing to watch.
I'll watch it again, this time in piece and quiet ;)
On a side note, one film I've definitely been looking forward to for a while now is The Master.
[youtube]fJ1O1vb9AUU[/youtube]
Yes! Can't wait to see The
Yes! Can't wait to see The Master, There Will Be Blood was incredible :)
Searching for Sugar Man - A
Searching for Sugar Man - A brilliant doc about a Detroit musician named Rodriguez who never 'made it' back in the 70s, though his recordings were really good. Somehow or another he blew up in South Africa (like, bigger than Elvis) and sold half a million records. The movie is about a couple S. Africans trying to track down Rodriguez. It has a great narrative and footage from Cape Town and Detroit. I don't really know anything about apartheid, but that plays a role here, as does the working class culture of Detroit. If you're familiar with the Moth Podcasts, this is like a two-hour long one. Highly recommended.
Looper, which I enjoyed, but
Looper, which I enjoyed, but possibly found funnier than it was supposed to be. It was all the funnier because the first time I saw Jeff Daniels on screen I was convinced it was a surprise cameo by Žižek, and was kinda disappointed it wasn't, since he'd be all over the Freudian shit in that film, the totalitarian father figure, the pure ideology...
(a cursory google for "Looper Žižek" confirms I'm not alone in this...)
'Promised Land' with star
'Promised Land' with star Matt Damon (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHQt1NAkhIo); it hasn't come out yet, so I haven't watched it. But it's premise is basically the people of a small town versus a $9 billion natural gas company. So it looks kind of interesting.
Brokeback Mountain... imfao
Brokeback Mountain...
[youtube]-0MrczERAe4[/youtube]
imfao
August Underground Loved the
August Underground
Loved the broken tape look, and the effects were pretty awesome... not quite bloody enough for my taste though, but luckily the sequel offers more (never watched it in full, only bits and pieces but that'll change)
AU lost itself in random and quite trivial and pointless scenes to accompany the torture and killing (though that was of course intentional), but it still delivered the good stuff; that is, bloody vicious degraded misanthropy on film.
Stomach acted up in one scene, I consider that a good sign... (only watch this if you're a gorehound or a masochist)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WiRGcExb0E
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/jun/19/potiche-film-review
Recently made movies I've
Recently made movies I've seen are Loopers, Seven Psychopaths and The Master, all of which I enjoyed. Older stuff includes Village of the Damned and Lord of War. The special effects in the former were laughable by todays standards but the cast and story were excellent.
Holy Motors. But don't ask
Holy Motors. But don't ask me to explain it more than this: Scenes within movies, within a movie, within a movie, within a limousine.
Escape from L.A, The Big
Escape from L.A, The Big Lebowski which I should have watched sooner and Ghost Dog which is better than Le Samourai. Yeah, I said it.
Harlan County War with
Harlan County War with Stellan Skarsgard and Holly Hunter. Also features the guy who plays "Monk's" boss in the tv series, and he is great. It is about 1970s Kentucky miners and is almost a dramatization of Harlan County USA, with many of the same developments over the course of the strike. Still, it's a good sister movie. Sadly, Hunter was in the recent anti-union "Won't Back Down," a movie promoting school privatization and demonizing unions. Not sure what the hell she was thinking, but I have no idea what her actual political views are. Matewan is classic, but Harlan County War is worth watching.
I appreciated that they portrayed the female lead character working closely with the male union organizer, but the idea that an affair would occur was never even raised, even as their friendship deepens. That seemed pretty mature and uncharacteristic of Hollywood to me. There is tension between the husband and wife, but it stems from the miner husband's sense that he is neither providing for the family nor able to be as radical as he wanted to be given the parameters of the strike. The characters are fairly well developed and very sympathetic.
Cockneys Vs. Zombies: Dumb,
Cockneys Vs. Zombies: Dumb, fun UK Zombie Film. Zombies kind of stand in for gentrifiers.
Juan of the Dead: First Cuban horror film. Fun zombie film with lots of social satire.
Evil Dead 3: A "where have you been all my life" moment. SO fun
Moonshine Kingdom: very sweet, enjoyable, probably Anderson's best film, but doesn't have the underlining commentary/sadness of his other films. Life Aquatic is still my fave.
Watched "Lincoln" the other
Watched "Lincoln" the other night. Y'know, fanfare, oscar-bait and grandiose. The amazing part was that Fredrick Douglas wasn't even mentioned. It's kind of like making a movie about Kennedy and the civil rights movement without mentioning or showing Martin Luther King, jr. Way to go, hollywood.
Riding Giants about the
Riding Giants about the history and development of "big wave" (9+ meters) surfing in Hawaii and California. Loved it. Growing up in Chicago, always dreamed of going to California and becoming a surfer. Pity I hated (and still hate) water.
Quote: Like a Nestor Makhno
[youtube]9fuPsC_UD1Q[/youtube]
flaneur wrote: Ghost Dog
flaneur
How the fuck have you not been banned.
You shouldn't even be allowed to watch films.
Inception: quite fun, although a bit silly. Made me want to rewatch Dark City.
Scott Pilgrim: Another fun film, I'm not sure if it quite worked but the combination of music and visuals was really good, although it did sometimes stick out a little bit.
Total Recall (2012) - i
Total Recall (2012) - i regret i didn't go to cinema to watch it. no doubt much better than the original one with Arnie.
Ted - it felt so nice and good to watch it.
jef costello wrote: flaneur
jef costello
Just watched The Way We Were
Just watched The Way We Were with Redford and Streisand on bbc2 while my flat filled up with the smell of chicken stock simmering along. Excellent Sunday afternoon fare. And to think I nearly stayed in the pub to watch Chelski - Shitty! She's a communist, he's not, they fall in love in interesting times. Very sweet, and Streisand is ace. "You think you're easy? Compared to what - the 100 years war?!"
East of Eden Some awesome
East of Eden
Some awesome scenes and photography. The one where the weeping willow (or whatever) obscures just enough and the brother stands with his back to the camera...
Can't make up my mind if I like James Dean's "I'm a troubled kid so I walk by sort of falling" thing or not but I think I'm coming out in favour of it.
Definately recommend the film.
Cockneys vs Zombies - cool
Cockneys vs Zombies - cool working class zombie comedy:)
Dredd 3D. Avoid at all costs.
Dredd 3D. Avoid at all costs.
Haeven/A better world.
Haeven/A better world. Excellent Danish film about violence, revenge and moral choices. Stunningly filmed well worth the watch. Acting is excellent.
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy -
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - found it a bit dull, none of them really emerged as characters and the plot was too obscured to grab my attention.
jef costello wrote: Tinker
jef costello
I highly highly recommend the BBC miniseries with Alec Guiness by the same name
jef costello wrote: Tinker
jef costello
This. Maybe if I'd read the book it would have been OK, but it was tedious and mystifying.
bastarx wrote: jef costello
bastarx
I've seen a few reviews that said if you'd seen the mini-series or read the book then it was a lot better. I didn't find the plot too hard to follow (although I wasn't quite sure about the bit at the end) I just found that they didn't tell me enough about it to make me feel as if anything was really at stake.
I would like to see the mini-series, it's a shame that the BBC don't put old stuff up on the iplayer.
(No subject)
Still Bill - Doc about Bill
Still Bill - Doc about Bill Withers. Slightly corny, but pretty good. He was like 30 when he learned to play a guitar. Then he got famous and then he faded away. There's a good parallel story within the film about his daughter's quest to be a musician.
Stranger: Bernie Worrell on Earth - It's got interviews with everybody but Bernie (David Byrne, George Clinton, Bootsy Collins, Dr. Know, etc.). Basically, the dude's an under-appreciated genius on the keys whose innovations -mainly with Parliament/Funkadelic- have really crept into mainstream music. Sadly, he's been screwed out of all kinds of royalties. The movie shows him playing with all kinds of people: Les Claypool, Government Mule, Talking Heads, P-Funk.
Weather Underground - I think the film is excellent. Certainly nothing about class self-organization, but the time period is portrayed with such anxiety and the development of the central personalities is really well done. If they had been anything but (rich?) white folks, these people would be dead by now. I like what Mike Davis had to say:
That's a film that needs to be made.
I watched "Drive" online the
I watched "Drive" online the other day. I saw "Valhalla Rising" before Drive and like Winding Refn's style. Valhalla Rising reminded me of Tarkovsky's style. Very surreal, a good hangover movie. With Drive I didn't think Ryan Gosling could pull off the role but he did. The elevator scene was good. Violence as art. It works. Him stepping out of the darkness to have his last embrace with her in the light before stepping back into the darkness, the jacket with the scorpion on it signifying the old tale of the scorpion and the frog. Good stuff.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scorpion_and_the_Frog
[youtube]PDNGe60co4k[/youtube]
Halfway through re-watching
Halfway through re-watching Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.
Skyfall. I don't actually
Skyfall.
I don't actually expect much from a Bond movie, they're not Bunuel, Fellini, they're not going to provoke many interesting thoughts or send me away enlightened in any way, but I do expect fast cars and exotic locations. With Skyfall I got the London Underground and Scotland. No disrespect to Scotland, but no-one's going to emerge seductively out of Loch Lomond in a swimsuit. Bond seemed to be having the mother of all mid-life crises and where it was nice to see the Aston Martin again, he did have the look of a man who would have probably preferred a Volvo.
I suspect that I might have enjoyed it more if I had gone for a couple of beers first.
Wrath of the Titans I watched
Wrath of the Titans
I watched this while drunk, so I think it only fair to review it while drunk. Also, for no particular reason, I'm going to write my review in the form of a single incomprehensible sentence.
So from what I could make out some Australian bloke who looks like that northern actor from those annoying job website adverts, but probably isn't, because why would he put on an Australian accent in a movie set in ancient whereever the fuck it is set (greece or rome? it just looked like they stood a bunch of extras on the beach and cgied everything else in, to me), so as I was saying the Aussie bloke, goes to find Xena and a cockney Jesus, played by Russell Brand, or someone like that, and they all set off in search of Liam Neeson, who has a beard but doesn't yet look like Gandalf, because someone else who does look like Gandalf tells them too right before he dies, and they have to go and find Dumbledore (he really does look like Dumbledore, you know) who it turns out comes from Manchester, and then I chased this really anoying fly about the room with a tissue for ten minutes, and by this time there were all these cgi rocks whizzing around and exploding, in the film, and this really big bloke with a face made of lava who keeps mumbling about something or other, who's hanging out with that bloke from the Harry Potter films who had his nose removed by a computer, but in this film he has a nose, and a beard, and there's also this arsehole with a beard, (this film has too many beards), and then Aussie bloke turns up and rescuse Liam Neeson, who by this time has turned into Gandalf, and I thought the bloke who didn't have a nose in the Harry Potter movies died here as the fly distracted me for a moment but it turns out he didn't later on, anyway, then there's this big battle where these cgied extras who you don't care about get slaughtered, and old Lavaface is mumbling, and the Aussie kills the arsehole with the beard to impress his son, or something, then flies down Lavaface's throat on a horse and, I can only assume, out of his anus, and he explodes, the cgied extras no one cares about (the one's who haven't been slaughtered) all cheer, and No Nose turns out to be helping the goodies now (buh?) and Liam Neeson, who doesn't look so much like Gandalf anymore, turns to dust (I think he was a vampire or something), and Aussie bloke kisses Xena (it turns out she was the love interest - who knew?) and Russel Brand cracks a joke, and also something about Aussie bloke bonding with his son in a vague attempt to make us care about him which failed miserably, and right at the very end it turns out the Titan in "Wrath of the Titans" is spelled with a backwards "N" which is really clever.
So, in summary, Grenache Noir, £10 for three at a popular supermarket, is full bodied, fruity, red, 13% by volume, and has a really difficult to remove cork.
Also, the fly continues to elude me.
That's probably the best film
That's probably the best film review I've read in a long time. Wrath of the Titans is a truly dreadful movie, which is best avoided without a serious amount of alcoholic lubrication. It is not as bad as Immortals however, which apparently had a lighting budget of about five bucks, you couldn't actually see what was going on half the time but in it's defence it should take home the award for the most ridiculous headwear in any film ever.
This weekend I will be taking a medium sized herd of small boys to see the Hobbit and unfortunately because of that responsible adult clause, I will have to sit through the full three hours stone, cold sober.
omen - holy fuck dude that
omen - holy fuck dude that was just absolutely superb
Stay tuned for my review of
Stay tuned for my review of the Hobbit. I plan on getting really baked tonight and seeing it at midnight.
The Hobbit Pretty fucking
The Hobbit
Pretty fucking awesome.
Look for the Zionist subtext that probably didn't really exist but I noticed anyway.
OK, so I've got to the booze
OK, so I've got to the booze again, and this probably isn't a good idea (and goes against everything this thread title stands for), but the next film I am going to watch is Clash of the Empires, which was originally titled Age of the Hobbits before the suing began. I shall watch it tomorrow, with booze, and post my review here then, if I haven't passed out/killed myself.
Basically it's a thinly disguised attempt to make money from people too thick to realize that major Hollywood movies don't get released straight to DVD the day before they premiere in the cinema.
Now, unlike all of The Asylum's other movies, this one isn't technically plagiarism, as, and I quote: "Age Of The Hobbits is about the real-life human subspecies, Homo Floresiensis, discovered in 2003 in Indonesia, which have been uniformly referred to as ‘Hobbits’ in the scientific community."1
I can't wait!
[youtube]vfGk-5Fvduw[/youtube]
Quote: The Hobbit Pretty
Any movie with a mountain of gold in it is awesome.
My Movie Review, by omen Age
My Movie Review, by omen
Age of the Hobbits is the latest [s]movie[/s] combination of moving pictures and sound from The Asylum. It features people, who occasionally do things and speak words, events, which happen for 87 minutes and then stop, and places, in which the events happen. It stars Some Guy who used to be on television, in an actual television show.
OK, so it starts with some hobbits wandering about, and they get attacked by some dudes wearing plastic halloween teeth, then some more dudes with halloween teeth flying on dragons turn up at the hobbit village, and they all run round and round in circles, and no one seems to be actually doing anything other than running around in circles, because that's what the director told them to do! Now the hobbits are all played by Indonesians, and despite apparently speaking English, they are all dubbed with cheesy American accents. So, one of the hobbits gets dangled from a dragon and flown away, but she drops rocks so the other hobbits can find her. Now the rocks are supposed to be magic or something, but they're really big, and I've no idea where she hid all of them, as she's tiny! Maybe that's how they are magic? But anyway, her family follow the magic rocks, and on the way they rescue Some Guy from a wolly rhino - in a tropical rain forest! Some Guy, who it turns out is called Anthea, I think, and also turns out to be playing exactly the same character he played in his TV show, is so grateful he takes them back to his village, where his incompetent and over acting king, who has manky teeth and wears a fur hat (in a tropical rain forest!) with tiny antlers on it, has them tied to a tree, with very loose rope, which they could obviously escape from, but they don't until Anthea comes to set them free, by ever so lightly pulling on the rope. One of the warrior women from the village steps out to block them from escaping, and for some reason or other she has to walk about in her underwear for the whole movie. Also, she is the only non-American who gets to speak with her own voice, as presumably her agent put a clause in her contract saying don't dub over her voice you racists, or something. Anyway, she offers to help the hobbits as well, and they all set off together, with enough extras to get picked off along the way, to rescue mother hobbit.
At this point I ate a bag of pickled onion monster munch.
Now, much of the rest of the movie consists of wandering about in some woods a lot, and cutting to a cave where mother hobbit and some other hobbits wander about a cave a lot. Also, a giant spider spits venom (like they do) into the Underwear Woman's face which blinds her, but then she's OK again almost immediately, phew! And then Anthea gets bitten by a giant venomous lizard, and spends the next 20 minutes or so sweating and generally slowing the hobbits down, even though he's supposed to be helping them which was the whole point of his going along! So underwear Woman catches one of the halloween teeth men by whacking him in the balls with a big stick (remember that bit, it is important later!), then he trips up for no reason and smashes his head on a rock and dies. Then almost immediately one of the goodies wanders into a spikey trap, and gets stabbed by wooden spikes, which we don't even get to see! Now, there's a lot of this: people dying in gruesome ways which we don't quite get to see! So anyway, two of the hobbits sneak stealthily into the halloween teeth dudes cave, and immediately begin making loud bird noises, for some reason or other, even though they are trying not to attract attention, and the halloween teeth dudes have such lax security that pretty much all the remaining characters are able to wander freely about the cave making as much noise as they like.
Then I ate a mince pie.
So it turns out the halloween teeth men want to eat the hobbits after making them wander about the cave, and their queen even kills one, but it looks more like attempted cannibalism to me, as although they keep talking about eating them, you never once see them eating anything! Then we get the money shot, as someone (I didn't see who) throws a spear through the halloween teeth queen's eye, and you actually get to see it go in the eye and out of the back of her head! (So like why couldn't we see all the other gore, hmmmn!?) So then, for no reason at all, the incompetent king from earlier with the tiny antlers turns up with some warriors to save the day, and he's killed straight away, as he's rubbish. Underwear Woman whacks a guy in the nuts with a big stick again, but this time nothing happens, and the guy just says "coconuts!" so she stabs him in the face instead. (This is the pay-off for the previous nut-whacking gag.) Oh, and the big battle scene consists of a bunch of men waggling sticks back and forth like its a sword fight in a school play, or something. No one actually tries to hit each other, they just keep hitting each other's weapons! And the goodies basically wipe out the halloween teeth men, and then after they've all been wiped out Underwear Woman looks into the camera and shouts "I will avenge you brother!", even though everyone's already dead! Then one of the hobbits, for no apparent reason (at that time), in the aftermath of the battle invents a musical instrument, made from a coconut and two horns, which looks coincidentally like a bow, and also, unrelatedly, invents a small sharpened stick. One of the halloween men gets up, and the quick thinking hobbit shoots him in the head with his makeshift ukulele bow and arrow. So it turns out that hobbits invented the bow an arrow, after all - which is the big reveal at the end!
Right at the very end, Anthea says to the hobbits in dramatic fashion: "May your descendants live for 10,000 years!" Which is somewhat ironic, as the movie, we are told at the beginning, is set 12,000 years ago, and the hobbits are supposed to have died out around 12,000 years ago. So presumably just after the titles roll, the hobbits walk around a corner and are all eaten by a dinosaur, or something, even though dinosaurs died out millions of years ago, but it's not like this movie is striving for accuracy or anything.
Top that, Peter Jackson, with your big budget, well written script, special effects, and actors.
In summary: Hawksridge Cider, £2 for two litres, 4.2% by volume, best served chilled, and comes with free alcoholism.
Soapy wrote: Look for the
Soapy
ahhh... marijuana
ALPHABET CITY.
ALPHABET CITY.
And Life Without Principal, a
And Life Without Principal, a Cantonese noir about the financial crisis, banks purposely misleading people investing and working a soul destroying job doing it. Probably the realest film about the crash.
Dredd 3D in 2D (to show
Dredd 3D in 2D (to show solidarity with cyclops).
I liked Sylvester Stallone's performance, but you couldn't see his face - he shoulda took his helmets off so you could see his face! That's what the fans paid to see, damnit! Also, where the hell was Rob Schneider? A Judge Dredd film isn't a Judge Dredd film unless its got Rob Schneider gurning into the camera and capering about like he's having an embolism or something. Hey! Give the public what they want to see, Hollywood, you assholes!
[youtube]ZxYA6duF-9E[/youtube]
Back to the Future: Part
Back to the Future: Part 2.
Things I learned from this film: 1) It's only two years to go before we get flying cars! Yay! 2) Analog TV will make a come back, for some reason. 3) It had more plot-holes than I remembered. 4) Still good though.
Just watched 'There Will Be
Just watched 'There Will Be Blood'. Amazing film about an oil hunter in California around the turn of the 19th/20th century. The performance by Daniel Day Lewis is incredible. Seriously, you have to see this film.
I saw thuppaki (Tamil film)
I saw thuppaki (Tamil film)
7 Psychopaths, written by
7 Psychopaths, written by same guy as "In Brugges". Fun but not great film. Somewhat disconcerting because American characters talking like Irish (ie the screenwriter). But probably the best role I've ever seen Christopher Walken in, funny, scary and over the top all at the same time.
(No subject)
[youtube]-YRvDh-T6UY[/youtube]
The Flight of the Navigator.
The Flight of the Navigator. On telly today, one of my favourite childhood films.
zero hour, the film on which
zero hour, the film on which airplane! is based. a B movie, it has its own drama, but it's hard to watch without comparing every scene with the spoof (which is much more elaborate a movie, btw)
(No subject)
[youtube]_Ywu_o_0dms[/youtube]
Red Belt - shite Saw - shite
Red Belt - shite
Saw - shite
Django Unchained. Awesome.
Django Unchained. Awesome.
fnbrill wrote: Django
fnbrill
Second this
la chispa de la vida Really
la chispa de la vida
Really liked it. Won't say much about it because I don't want to spoil the story, but watch the trailer as it doesn't really ruin anything.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2I45RrYNP2o
Les Misérables. Absolutely
Les Misérables. Absolutely amazing, and is friendly towards communism and anarchism, for a Hollywood film anyway.
I posted on this thread
I posted on this thread previously about the film THERE WILL BE BLOOD. It's a truly incredible film in which the main character personifies how cold and focused capitalism can be.
I just wanted to flag up the fact that anyone in the UK can see this film tonight at 11 o'clock on BBC2.
SEVEN PSYCHOPATHS - actually
SEVEN PSYCHOPATHS - actually pretty funny
Webby wrote: I posted on this
Webby
Haha you Brits are pretty late on this one. Really great soundtrack by Thom Yorke btw.
Thom Yorke? I've seen this
Thom Yorke? I've seen this fillm 3 times and didn't realise! Doh!
Soapy wrote: Webby wrote: I
Soapy
Close - Jonny Greenwood, also from Radiohead.
Also one of my absolute favourite films.
I don't know if anyone has
I don't know if anyone has every seen this thing called Wizard People Dear Reader? It's hilarious.
[youtube]GlPaOoHIU34[/youtube]
sabot wrote: fnbrill
sabot
Thirded.
fnbrill wrote: Django
fnbrill
I like the way you post, boy.
I watched online the 2 part
I watched online the 2 part film We The Living (Noi vivi) based on Ayn Rand's novel. It was not the original 1942 lengthier film version though (which was loyal to the first version of her book). Perhaps that's why I didn't find the story, which takes place in the Soviet Union, to be crazy in its ideology at all, or because I just was watching the movie and not trying to do a Zizek analysis.
Do your other interests
Do your other interests include poking your eyes out with forks?
Silkwood on the tele, about
Silkwood on the tele, about Karen Silkwood, the union activist who was first poisoned and then found dead in suspicious circumstances, having been a whistleblower on the unsafe conditions of the power plant where she worked.
Quote: Sten wrote: sabot
Sten
Quadrupled.
You forgot to add it was a
You forgot to add it was a nuclear plant! (More precisely a "fuel fabrication site".)I first saw the film when I was about 11. It totally freaked me out. Great film.
Mission: Impossible – Ghost
Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol - oh my Kropotkin, it's so bad. But I had to watch something to get me through the flu.
Zero Dark Thirty. Politics
Zero Dark Thirty. Politics aside, it's a decent film, albeit far too plodding and melodramatic. The siege is impressive though, something on the scale of the Heat bank robbing scene.
Slavoj Zizek's done a good article suggesting the film's neutrality on events is just as bad as supporting them. http://www.egs.edu/faculty/slavoj-zizek/articles/zero-dark-thirty-hollywoods-gift-to-american-power/
I watched Unthinkable the
I watched Unthinkable the other night. An American citizen converts to Islam (Michael Sheen) and decides to plant nuclear bombs in cities in response to U.S. foreign policy. Samuel Jackson plays a contractor/interrogator and Carrie-Anne Moss plays an FBI agent.
I've only ever liked Samuel Jackson in Pulp Fiction, but his performance in this one was so good that it will definitely make it into my (very short) Sam Jackson movies to watch list. The film also has very light undertones regarding the implications of consequentialist ethics and how an agent that understands his/her role within this framework would behave.
fleurnoire-et-rouge
fleurnoire-et-rouge
I don't think beers would have helped, this was pony. He's about as cynical and brooding as a pack of Maltesers. The next Bond film had better have him writhing about in his sick, calling his ex-girlfriend who won't pick up and crying in the mirror. Otherwise fuck off and don't bother.
Ethos wrote: I watched
Ethos
I'd have let Jackson torture the shit out of Sheen's kids. There's a rather ironic line in there about the US being better since democracy/Jackson would go on trial afterwards.
Can Dialectics Break Bricks?,
Can Dialectics Break Bricks?, a film about class struggle of the proletariat against state-capitalist bureaucracy done via kung-fu cinema. It was made by the French underground group the Situationists in 1972. I highly recommend it for its revolutionary content, unique delivery, and humour.
It mentions many libertarian socialist thinkers and revolutionaries.
The Working Class Goes to
The Working Class Goes to Heaven (La classe operaia va in paradiso).
A disciplined, Stakhanovite worker, after losing a finger in a factory accident, becomes aware of his alienated condition and starts supporting direct action.
Critical of both the unions (who are preoccupied only with maintaining the status quo and winning small 'victories') and the radical students (lost in their fetishism of abstract theory).
wojtek wrote: I'd have let
wojtek
Schadenfreude!
SPOILERS:
I liked how that scene illuminated the shit morality the other characters had: Torture one guy? Sure. Slit his wife's throat? Pfft, go for it. Torture his kids? What kind of monster are you?!
argo it didn't "take me back"
argo
it didn't "take me back" but alan arkin is worth watching in anything.
Sten wrote: A disciplined,
Sten
Reminds me a bit of my friend Chris. Then again he was like that before he lost his pinkie.
Loses his finger to the machine, boss calls asking him to come back into work on the day of surgery.
Looper. What actually is this
Looper. What actually is this genre called 'sci-fi'? I mean, fact is stranger than fiction, it would be more appropriate to name it ' sci-fact ' ? The propositions of any fiction are nothing more than a real factual desire for change, it is a psuedo-metaphor for revolution, a work of détournement..
HG Wells did this 100 years ago, then Butterfly Effect, Looper was still an interesting repeat of an age old meditation, that of cause and effect, moral obligations, the things that make us human, some dry wit mixed with a self-absorption in ones own identity.
I downloaded '1492', Ridley
I downloaded '1492', Ridley Scott's historical masterpierce, I love the experience of discovery, of being surprised, and therefore savouring a sensual experience, like a peasant that first tastes caviar and champagné, or holding a high powered rifle, these things belong to heroes, which we are all capable of being, we need the will, but I have scars as my passport, these are experiences that cannot be,,,deleted,,,hah,, I told a Catholic priest who loved my spirit and wanted to make a priest out of me, in the 70's, but I enjoyed sandoz lsd and pink rock cocktails mainlined, I mixed with the rabble, they were my bothers and sisters, society had become so dreary,to go out into the ocean without any system was freedom or death, but it was noble atleast, and required no cleaning up, hah! This is Columbus's spirit, the nuance that Ridley Scott imparted to an interpretation of a much politicized cultural historical clash is always going to invite critiques of neo-colonialism,,, is that term almost obsolete?
Just watched Rebellion in
Just watched Rebellion in Patagonia. Really depressing film about the FORA being massacred in the 1920s. Think an Argentine Land and Freedom but with fewer trots, and no women, and where no one gets away.
Zero Dark Thirty. Everyone
Zero Dark Thirty. Everyone (mostly the media) made such a big deal about it that I decided to pay the $1.75 to watch it. My liberal friends refuse to even go near it, so I don't know how the "general public" felt about this, but I think that if you have a soul you'll come out thinking that everyone who is anyone when it comes to U.S. foreign policy is a psychopath; people willing to do exactly what their enemy does, and then some, for "God and country" (that phrase is actually in the movie). In the end the rah-rah-rah, flag waving, quasi-fascist (or perhaps blatantly fascist) ideology ends up backfiring.
Ethos wrote: Zero Dark
Ethos
Maybe fitting then that this dude with downs syndrome was suffocated to death by pigs at one of the screenings. http://thepeoplesrecord.com/post/43367912794/police-murder-man-movie-theater-for-disobeying
Soapy wrote: Ethos
Soapy
I wish I could say I was surprised... Thanks for the link, though.
Just saw Compliance. Don't
Just saw Compliance. Don't know what to make of it.
Ethos wrote: Zero Dark
Ethos
Those are some cheap ass tickets.
Kick Ass 2 - actually pretty
Kick Ass 2 - actually pretty funny
Agent of the Fifth
Agent of the Fifth International
Redbox, baby. ;)
Its a rental service? I
Its a rental service? I thought you went to the theaters.
Agent of the Fifth
Agent of the Fifth International
Yeah, it's a kiosk where you rent movies. I ain't paying $10+ to see some state propaganda. I get my state propaganda the ol' fashioned way: by getting it hammered into me at school.