What films have you watched recently?

phil_b

The Equalizer and the Equalizer 2

I remember the TV series and thought Holywood might ruin a charming idea like they normally do so I was not expecting to much.

The only thing the movie share with the TV series is the title they are very different.

I really enjoyed them both and worth a watch if you are an action movie fan.  not very realistic but still entertaining 

Weaver85

Watched Mulholland Drive for the second time, mainly to decipher the plot (ha!). What an awesome mindf**** of a movie. Surreal, disturbing and darkly comic in parts.

Haych

The Three Musketeers

The 1993 version, since there are so many to choose from.

What a wonderful film, a perfect blend of action and comedy with a great cast, assuming you forgive the casting of Chris O'Donnell.

Tim Curry and Oliver Platt are in their element and are arguably the reason it's such a great film.

OK, it's not a masterpiece of filmmaking but it's still wonderfully entertaining.

I'm sure there was a scene cut from the film I saw last night.  Can't find any reference to it on the information super highway so perhaps I'm getting confused with a different film.

goldtop

bobblehat said:

Love and Monsters  - Enjoyable scifi action romp. Nice idea for a movie and probably could have been better 7/10 (Netflix)

I tried, but it was a bit charmless - I was hoping for something that had some of the spirit of Stranger Things. The "I'm a loser" spiel at the beginning made me dislike the main character immediately.

Got about 40 minutes in and then left it. So 1/5 for me. 

Lodious

Sound of Metal

Good performances by Riz Ahmed and Paul Raci, but TBH, I didn't like it as much as I'd hoped. Interesting idea for a movie, but I didn't really connect with the characters. 

6.5/10

Logie

Nomadland. Beautiful film, sad and joyous in equal measures.

rze99

Things Seen and Heard. 

2020 Netflix

Young family move from NYC to upstate old Farmhouse in an area of academics and old rural and then start experiencing standard haunted house things, mostly the young anorexic wife and sweet kid at home while smarmy bullshit unfaithful hubby is art professor at work. 

Is there a resident lady ghost helping wife deal with wanker Hubbie (literally) or is she going a tad bonkers without any food?  

Should be suspenseful but it doesn’t quite work as well as it should because this is all rehash and hokey nonsense with no invention. The sex is rubbish too. Disappointing. 

5/10

boogieman

The Gorgon. Hammer Horror with Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. Hammy acting, wobbly cardboard sets, really terrible special effects. 

Wonderful! 

Haych

Shadow Conspiracy

A mid/late 90s thriller staring Charlie Sheen, Donald Sutherland and Linda Hamilton in the main roles.

Sheen is a special assistant to POTUS who is warned there is a conspiracy at the highest level of government by a professor in the last seconds before he's assassinated.  He then has to go on the run so he is also not killed by the same assassin.

The only two people he seems to be able to trust are his boss (Sutherland) and an old girlfriend (Hamilton) who just happens to be a journalist and just happens to have written the same conspiracy theory in a previously published article using the same assassinated professor as her source..

It's basically one big chase where Charlie Sheen seems to consistently get away from the same assassin by the skin of his teeth at the last second throughout the film.  He's also wearing the same suit from almost start to finish and, which despite everything (including a swim in a storm drain), never seems to look too badly creased or dirty as a result.

The assassin is an action man look-a-like who wears a ridiculous full length down-to-the-floor raincoat and can still run like Lindford Christie and who despite shooting several people at point blank range never gets a speck of blood on his almost white Mackintosh.

Charlie Sheen is okay, but just okay.  Linda Hamilton is a bit better but is only there to make the plot work (see above) and is otherwise superfluous, and Sutherland has been given a role which seems to bore him, and I can't say I blame him.

There is definitely a mood about films made in this era, which is the only good thing I can really say about it as I quite like the way similar (and better) films of its era feel.  The score, though, is dreadful - again, something of the era, with overly dramatic, and thoroughly jarring, annoying, music throughout any of the tense scenes.

Oh, and the plot twist - about as subtle, and obvious, as a large container ship wedged in a highly important but very narrow channel of water.

Looked promising in the write up but lived up to none of the expectation.

2/10

On Disney + if you really have too much time and absolutely nothing to do.

Haych

Kill Me Three Times

Australian black comedy. The only name I recognised among the cast was Simon Pegg, who plays a hitman for hire, everyone else I’ve never seen or heard of before - oh, apart from Brian Brown, yeah, he’s in it too. 

Plot revolves around a girl who everyone seems to want dead, and who everyone thinks is dead after the first part of the plot. It starts midway through the story then goes back in time to earlier in the day before carrying where the first part ended. 

Quite clever and things don’t make total sense until towards the end. 

Quite unnecessarily bloody in parts. I can accept that as the kind of film it is some characters are going to get shot, stabbed and murdered but don’t see why it needs to show graphic portrayal of the violence. It adds nothing to the story at all. 

Anyway, personal preferences on violence aside it’s a decent film and has an interesting soundtrack as well as being shot in a very pretty location. 

7/10 

On Netflix. 

SPECTRUM001

boogieman said:

The Gorgon. Hammer Horror with Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. Hammy acting, wobbly cardboard sets, really terrible special effects. 

Wonderful! 

We’ve watched a couple recently - at the right time, those old Hammer productions do hit the spot !

SPECTRUM001

Rocketman 

There have been a few reviews on here of Rocketman - I finally got to see it earlier in the week. What a disappointment.

I thought Taron Egerton did quite a good job, and Jamie Bell and Stephen Graham were great. But what could have been a fascinating story about Elton and the UK Music Industry was basically a long advertisement for his songs.

Not sure why I thought it would be anything different, however I got quite bored quite quickly. Also, it is a musical -  not a good start...

4/10

EricTheWeary

The Mitchells vs the Machines.

Animated film made by Sony for Netflix.

I guess it’s a family film (probably not for very young children) that romps along. I quite enjoyed it, the schmaltz factor a bit overdone would be my criticism. 

boogieman

SPECTRUM001 said:

boogieman said:

The Gorgon. Hammer Horror with Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. Hammy acting, wobbly cardboard sets, really terrible special effects. 

Wonderful! 

We’ve watched a couple recently - at the right time, those old Hammer productions do hit the spot !

Yeah, agreed you have to be in the mood to watch them. I think I like the Hammer/Amicus horrors because they’re very much a part of my youth. Friday nights were always go to the pub, takeaway on the way home and a horror film on the telly. If it had Vincent Price or Peter Cushing in, so much the better. 

SPECTRUM001

boogieman said:

SPECTRUM001 said:

boogieman said:

The Gorgon. Hammer Horror with Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. Hammy acting, wobbly cardboard sets, really terrible special effects. 

Wonderful! 

We’ve watched a couple recently - at the right time, those old Hammer productions do hit the spot !

Yeah, agreed you have to be in the mood to watch them. I think I like the Hammer/Amicus horrors because they’re very much a part of my youth. Friday nights were always go to the pub, takeaway on the way home and a horror film on the telly. If it had Vincent Price or Peter Cushing in, so much the better. 

Yes indeed - now I am getting nostalgic !!

Have to admit that my teenage self also hoped for the odd glimpse or two as well !

EricTheWeary

French Connection II 

On Disney ( slightly incongruously maybe given the amount of swearing and drug references). 

Very much a vehicle for Gene Hackman who appears in nearly every second. Fine as Hackman is it’s a bit of a mess and a disappointing follow up to the 1971 original and its centre piece chase sequence. 

Grangousier

Finally got round to watching Shazam! Interesting that the best of the DC movies is an unabashed kids movie that's lots of fun and essentially an 80s movie (Big crossed with Stand By Me, maybe). A hundred times more fun than Batman V Superman: Dust of Jaundice.

SPECTRUM001

First Man - 2019

I was looking forward to this one - the combined story of Neil Armstrong’s role in the Apollo moon landing.

Starring Ryan Gosling - who I have always rated as having a lot of depth.

However...it seemed to be a pretty pointless film. You don’t really learn much about Armstrong other that he seemed to be quite highly strung, and the obvious struggles that the program went through before reaching the goal.

Finally, some basic FX.

And that’s kind of it.

3/10

SteveRobinson

Nomadlands (Disney+)

Slow gentle but engaging film set at the time after 2008 financial crash, about people made homeless, leading a nomadic life on the road, traveling across the USA from job to job.

Most of the characters are played by themselves - the real nomads - which was a great touch. 

Lots of parallels I thought with Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath.

boogieman

SPECTRUM001 said:

First Man - 2019

I was looking forward to this one - the combined story of Neil Armstrong’s role in the Apollo moon landing.

Starring Ryan Gosling - who I have always rated as having a lot of depth.

However...it seemed to be a pretty pointless film. You don’t really learn much about Armstrong other that he seemed to be quite highly strung, and the obvious struggles that the program went through before reaching the goal.

Finally, some basic FX.

And that’s kind of it.

3/10

I didn’t think it was that bad, but I couldn’t figure out if Armstrong really was that emotionless or whether it was Gosling’s acting. I’m not a fan of his to be honest.