What films have you watched recently?

Haych

ICBM said:

Haych said:

Blade Runner. 

The lighting and cinematography was very good. The special effects for its time were also excellent. The artwork and design still look good even close to forty years later. 

As a film, though, utter bollocks! Slow, meandering and wearisome. 

I know it’s a cult classic and I’ll probably be hunted down like a replicant for saying so but really quite dull. 

You didn't accidentally see Blade Runner 2049 instead, did you?

No, it was the original with Harrison Ford and Daryl Hannah. The 2049 one couldn’t have been much worse though, could it?

stickyfiddle

[dons flame retardant suit...]

BR2049 is a better movie than the original. BR was groundbreaking and immensely important at the time but I'm sorry to say it hasn't aged well.

ICBM

Haych said:

No, it was the original with Harrison Ford and Daryl Hannah. The 2049 one couldn’t have been much worse though, could it?

Well, it has Ryan Gosling in it...

I'm a fan of the original, but I thought 2049 was a bit slow, meandering and wearisome, which is why I asked . And it has Ryan Gosling in it.

Haych

Ryan Gosling is ordinarily enough to put me off watching any movie. I might give 2049 a miss then

Philly_Q

I think the original Blade Runner is very well made but I've never really warmed to it.  And although I've liked all the Denis Villeneuve films I've seen, I just can't motivate myself to watch nearly three hours of Bade Runner 2049. 

Longtallronnie

I thought Ryan Gosling was brilliant in BR2049. 

Zoolooter

HAL9000 said:

Blues Brothers 2000. Having watched Blues Brothers a week or so back it was time to watch the sequel. Far better than I remembered with some real laugh out loud moments but also pretty poor in places. Worth it though for performances from Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, James Brown, BB King, Eric Clapton, etc. Band members included Steve Cropper, Eddie Floyd, Steve Winwood, Jimmie Vaughan, Clarence Clemens, Dr John, Bo Didley, and I’m sure plenty of others that I failed to spot. Only 5 or 6 out of 10 for the actual film, but probably 8 or so just for the chance to see performances by some of the greats.

Just thinking, sadly most of those icons you mention are no longer with us. 

breakstuff

I've never seen either of the Blade Runner films. While I've not gone out of my way to avoid them, I can't honestly say I've ever gone out of my way to watch them. 

Worth doing or have I dodged a bullet?

Zoolooter

Haych said:

Blade Runner. 

The lighting and cinematography was very good. The special effects for its time were also excellent. The artwork and design still look good even close to forty years later. 

As a film, though, utter bollocks! Slow, meandering and wearisome. 

I know it’s a cult classic and I’ll probably be hunted down like a replicant for saying so but really quite dull. 

Now, that is some crazy talk right there. Get the heretic ousted! 

Haych

Zoolooter said:

Haych said:

Blade Runner. 

The lighting and cinematography was very good. The special effects for its time were also excellent. The artwork and design still look good even close to forty years later. 

As a film, though, utter bollocks! Slow, meandering and wearisome. 

I know it’s a cult classic and I’ll probably be hunted down like a replicant for saying so but really quite dull. 

Now, that is some crazy talk right there. Get the heretic ousted! 

I hate Star Wars too!

And I didn’t cry when Bambi’s mother died!

EricTheWeary

breakstuff said:

I've never seen either of the Blade Runner films. While I've not gone out of my way to avoid them, I can't honestly say I've ever gone out of my way to watch them. 

Worth doing or have I dodged a bullet?

The original was iconic. Maybe people don’t get it because they’ve seen 200 films that take something from it, I can see that someone coming to it now it might not seem that amazing but it’s certainly important in terms of a certain strand of film making. 

Philly_Q

EricTheWeary said:

breakstuff said:

I've never seen either of the Blade Runner films. While I've not gone out of my way to avoid them, I can't honestly say I've ever gone out of my way to watch them. 

Worth doing or have I dodged a bullet?

The original was iconic. Maybe people don’t get it because they’ve seen 200 films that take something from it, I can see that someone coming to it now it might not seem that amazing but it’s certainly important in terms of a certain strand of film making. 

I don't dispute its status, but I felt the same when I saw it in 1982 as I do now.  Maybe its the characters (and the actors, none of whom are favourites of mine) but I don't really connect with it somehow.  It's a bit cold, a bit distant....  I'd say the same about nearly all Ridley Scott's films, he's clearly very good at what he does and whilst I find his films perfectly watchable, none of them really blow me away.

EricTheWeary

Philly_Q said:

EricTheWeary said:

breakstuff said:

I've never seen either of the Blade Runner films. While I've not gone out of my way to avoid them, I can't honestly say I've ever gone out of my way to watch them. 

Worth doing or have I dodged a bullet?

The original was iconic. Maybe people don’t get it because they’ve seen 200 films that take something from it, I can see that someone coming to it now it might not seem that amazing but it’s certainly important in terms of a certain strand of film making. 

I don't dispute its status, but I felt the same when I saw it in 1982 as I do now.  Maybe its the characters (and the actors, none of whom are favourites of mine) but I don't really connect with it somehow.  It's a bit cold, a bit distant....  I'd say the same about nearly all Ridley Scott's films, he's clearly very good at what he does and whilst I find his films perfectly watchable, none of them really blow me away.

I like the look of it, I like the ideas, I like the invention although I’m probably not very bothered about the characters. I don’t really like sci-fi as a genre ( although I get a fair bit foisted on me in terms of TV and film) but I’m okay with an interesting film that happens to be sci-fi and I think Blade Runner is that.
I wasn’t waiting decades for the sequel and it doesn’t bring much to the table, I certainly wouldn’t recommend it to anyone although I don’t think it’s terrible. 

Zoolooter

Haych said:

Zoolooter said:

Haych said:

Blade Runner. 

The lighting and cinematography was very good. The special effects for its time were also excellent. The artwork and design still look good even close to forty years later. 

As a film, though, utter bollocks! Slow, meandering and wearisome. 

I know it’s a cult classic and I’ll probably be hunted down like a replicant for saying so but really quite dull. 

Now, that is some crazy talk right there. Get the heretic ousted! 

I hate Star Wars too!

And I didn’t cry when Bambi’s mother died!

Well, I agree with you on Star Wars. Never watched one all the way through, utter garbage. All those lightsaber freaks out there should be inquisitioned Witchfinder General style.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpPIcwIV46U

DrCornelius

Jumanji II on Prime tonight. I’ve bailed out early and left wife and kids watching it. Even Karen Gillan in short shorts couldn’t keep me interested. Kevin Hart was surprisingly funny but not a patch on the original or the reboot 

Springywheel

I enjoyed blade runner a lot more second time round. 

Stratavarious

I am going through my James Bond DVD collection in order... up to the Goldeneye

Tone71

Blue Story - not great.....at all - nowhere near as good as Top Boy/Summerstown (although that isn't a film, you get me fam!)

Haych

Hangman

I gave this a go since it had Al Pacino in so thought it would be ok. 

I’m not really sure what to think of it. The story revolves around a serial killer who is hanging people around the city (which one I don’t remember) and carving letters into their chests and so also playing a game of hangman with the police. 

The plot outline isn’t bad and it has enough pace to keep the viewer involved and I didn’t come away feeling that it was a bad film or anything. 

However, the plot was also centred around the two cops investigating. The killer was on a rampage because of them and it was linked to the killing of the wife of one of them and it just had so many wouldn’t-happen-in-real-life events that it really pushed the realms of plausibility. 

Oh, and for goodness sake you’d think one of the cops would learn how to work a light switch!

While you come to expect some poetic license in film making this one took liberties even with that license. 

Cramming multiple murders and links between victims into 110 minutes is a tall order so perhaps I’m being too critical. That said, it would have been an amazing candidate to be made into a serial where more detail and more time could have been taken with the unfolding of the story. Or even a book - maybe it was a book, I don’t know?

I can’t say it was bad and don’t watch whatever you do, but if you do then just be prepared to roll your eyes a lot as things happen. 

ICBM

Kon-Tiki

Dramatised account of Thor Heyerdahl’s Pacific voyage on a raft made from balsa logs, to prove his theory that people from South America colonised Polynesia 1,500 years ago. He was a bit crazy, really - if he had been wrong there would have been no hope of survival for the crew - although it was just after WWII and most of the men had been involved, so perhaps that sort of risk-taking didn’t seem as mad as it does today.

It’s pretty well-made and quite gripping even when you know the outcome, but no more than that - just a straightforward adventure story really, and the characters don’t really develop much depth - but they’re all good actors and it’s well worth seeing if you’re interested in what happened.

Modern DNA analysis has shown his theory to be only partially correct, too - he did prove that the voyage would have been possible, and there is some residual trace of South American origin in the Polynesian people, but the majority came from Asia as the conventional theory had said all along... so he was quite lucky to be right really!

7/10