What films have you watched recently?

ICBM

SPECTRUM001 said:

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

As in having the acting ability of a fence post, which always goes further into the ground than you expect?

SPECTRUM001

ICBM said:

SPECTRUM001 said:

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

As in having the acting ability of a fence post, which always goes further into the ground than you expect?

Ahh - I get where you are going, but those blank looks and mumbles are pretty darn good.

It’s like my favoured one or two chord Krautrock - once you are lost in the ‘depth’ it can be quite an experience.

Lodious

Nomadland, thought it was really moving 7/10, which lead me to watch....

The Rider (Chloé Zhao's first film). Amazing. 8/10. 

Edit, it was her second film. Pretty amazing backstory too. 

ICBM

Rebecca

New version of Daphne du Maurier’s classic novel originally filmed by Hitchcock. That’s a fairly optimistic thing to do...

It’s quite well made but really just goes through the story by numbers and ends up looking more like an expensive TV movie. As usual, Armie Hammer does his best impression of a redwood, Lily James overacts spectacularly, Kristin Scott Thomas is brilliant, Sam Riley is very good and Keeley Hawes is in it.

6/10

(Netflix)

Greatape

Been rewatching old 90's/noughties stuff on Disney - Sideways, Grosse Point Blank, The Life Aquatic

freakboy1610

Unhinged

The road rage movie! So bad it was riveting. I'm surprised that Russell Crowe agreed to appear in this pile of poo. Unbelievable!

bobblehat

Rogue One/ Star wars

Been trying to get my daughter to watch Star Wars since she was little and she finally caved in and agreed to watch it last week . (She's now 25).  I saved her the pain of having to watch Episodes 1-3 and we jumped straight into Rogue One to get the back story for Episode 4. 
Rogue One - This has been touted by many as the best of the latest Star Wars Franchise. I thought this too but having watched it again I'm not so sure. Its good but there are few issues that I must have overlooked. The most obvious is the dodgy CGI Peter Cushion and Princess Leia. These are really jarring , I can see why they wanted to put them in there it really badly done and takes you out of the movie when they are on screen. 7/10

Star Wars (Late Review    - I must have seen this movie 50+ times and I'm a big fan. However ,watching it again last week left me a little sad. It has aged really badly . Some of the acting was laughable especially Darth Vader , and his outfit looked quite comical. The light saber battle was woeful too. I could go on..   5/10

I guess the lesson here is not to watch the latest movies back to back with the originals.  My daughter enjoyed them both and that's good enough for me. 

fretmeister

bobblehat said:

Rogue One/ Star wars

Been trying to get my daughter to watch Star Wars since she was little and she finally caved in and agreed to watch it last week . (She's now 25).  I saved her the pain of having to watch Episodes 1-3 and we jumped straight into Rogue One to get the back story for Episode 4. 
Rogue One - This has been touted by many as the best of the latest Star Wars Franchise. I thought this too but having watched it again I'm not so sure. Its good but there are few issues that I must have overlooked. The most obvious is the dodgy CGI Peter Cushion and Princess Leia. These are really jarring , I can see why they wanted to put them in there it really badly done and takes you out of the movie when they are on screen. 7/10

Star Wars (Late Review    - I must have seen this movie 50+ times and I'm a big fan. However ,watching it again last week left me a little sad. It has aged really badly . Some of the acting was laughable especially Darth Vader , and his outfit looked quite comical. The light saber battle was woeful too. I could go on..   5/10

I guess the lesson here is not to watch the latest movies back to back with the originals.  My daughter enjoyed them both and that's good enough for me. 

As awesome as SW is - the sabre battle really is 2 old geezers poking each other with sticks.

Fortunately someone re-imagined it.

bobblehat

Very Cool. If only George Lucas could have done that instead of adding a very dodgy looking CGI Jabba.

SRich

Page Eight / Turks & Caicos / Salting the Battlefield

Watched these pretty much back to back on a very rainy day and some enforced lack of mobility..............it occurred that the elevating budget on Johnny Worriker's trilogy didn't bring exponential benefits................clearly the Page Eight screenplay held the essential ingredients the other two didn't hold and they didn't increase the appeal despite the the stellar cast.    

Nighy's a cool dude no matter what you throw at him though. 

goldtop

SRich said:

Page Eight / Turks & Caicos / Salting the Battlefield

Watched these pretty much back to back on a very rainy day and some enforced lack of mobility..............it occurred that the elevating budget on Johnny Worriker's trilogy didn't bring exponential benefits................clearly the Page Eight screenplay held the essential ingredients the other two didn't hold and they didn't increase the appeal despite the the stellar cast.    

Nighy's a cool dude no matter what you throw at him though. 

Agree on almost all of that. We just finished watching it, too. Strange writing to have pt3 go nowhere.

As for Nighy, he has one habitus - he's everyone's favourite uncle, whether he's doing meerkat anthropomorphism, henpecked husband or 'fairy' spy. I do quite like it, but his 'angry' is rubbish.

SPECTRUM001

goldtop said:

SRich said:

Page Eight / Turks & Caicos / Salting the Battlefield

Watched these pretty much back to back on a very rainy day and some enforced lack of mobility..............it occurred that the elevating budget on Johnny Worriker's trilogy didn't bring exponential benefits................clearly the Page Eight screenplay held the essential ingredients the other two didn't hold and they didn't increase the appeal despite the the stellar cast.    

Nighy's a cool dude no matter what you throw at him though. 

Agree on almost all of that. We just finished watching it, too. Strange writing to have pt3 go nowhere.

As for Nighy, he has one habitus - he's everyone's favourite uncle, whether he's doing meerkat anthropomorphism, henpecked husband or 'fairy' spy. I do quite like it, but his 'angry' is rubbish.

I mentioned some time ago how much I adored Page Eight - and have watched it many times.

But the two follow-ups in the trilogy were indeed a disappointment. I didn't initially say anything here, so as not to prejudice opinion - but sadly, neither have the subtlety, story or script of their pater.

I also think the dynamics between Bill Nighy, Michael Gambon, Saskia Reeves (the early "page eight" summit meeting - brilliant scripting) etc etc  (there must be a good ten quality hitters in the cast) are just incredible.

Blueingreen

To Catch a Thief.  Surprisingly for a huge Hitchcock fan (seen most of his better known films several times, read most of the bios etc) I saw this for the first time fairly recently.  My impression had always been of a 3rd tier Hitchcock, and it looked like the kind of entertainment I would have thought was a bit dated and corny when I was young: good looking, middle-aged, rich people; expensive clothes, boats, jewels; posh Mediterranean resort; cat burglers.  So I more or less deliberately avoided it.

But tastes change.  And 2nd or 3rd tier Hitchcock starts to take on more appeal when you've seen the best ones loads. At least it will be fresh. So I gave this a try and almost predictably really liked it - so much so that I've just watched it for the second time, just a few months after the first.

The plot is preposterous and the film treads a fine line between glamour and silliness, slipping over to the wrong side quite often.  But it doesn't really matter.  Cary Grant is at the top of his game, Grace Kelly is gorgeous and the supporting cast is excellent.  It's absolutely ravishing to look at.  50s tropes that that would have seemed hokey to me when younger now look charmingly period.  And if it's not quite top notch Hitch right it gets close enough often enough for it to deliver lots of the familiar pleasures, just with a more consistent lightness of touch. 9/10

VimFuego

Baby Driver, some excellent performances all round, one of the best soundtracks I think I've ever heard (the soundtrack was kinda another character, it was that central to the plot) and I was gripped by the plot to the end. What ruined it for me was the ending, without too many spoilers, this guy was involved in numerous armed robberies in which people, including police officers, were murdered and the courts let him off with a slapped wrist. In reality they'd have thrown the death penalty at him so hard his corpse would still be twitching from old sparky to this day.

phil_b

Shot caller

An office bound family man  gets arrested and sent to prison after a car crash causing the death of his friend and is found to be driving under the influence. He then finds himself amongst hardened criminals and has to play by their rules to survive in prison.

Fairly entertain prison movie but the plot twist at the end makes it worth the watch

AlbertC

The King (2019) - 6/10

Henry V, Agincourt, Shakespeare - all familiar storylines from other interpretations - e.g. BBC's Hollow Crown series. Quite watchable stuff but nothing particularly new or original. The fighting and battle scene's are quite good at putting across what a melee it probably was and how knackering it must be with all that armour on. Cast is okay but no real standout performances.

rze99

City of Tiny Lights (2016) iPlayer   https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1966385/ ;

A kind of British Asian noir private detective London drugs terrorist gangster mystery. Yep.

Prostitute hires hard drinking lonely Asian PI to investigate disappearance of another prossie. Gets into a lot of sticky bother with the hard men and people that aren't what they seem to be. Quite a good cast with some names.

Good central performance. Pace is a bit off at times and it loses it's way a bit. Let down by two things 1. badly done flashbacks. They just didn't work at all. 2. I guessed what was going on so the mystery  wasn't so mysterious.

6/10

HAL9000

Quantum of Solace - I recall seeing it at the cinema and thinking it was awful, and probably the worst Bond film ever made. However, it was on TV the other week so I thought I’d give it another go. To be honest it was nothing like as bad as I’d remembered. Sure, like most Bond films the fight scenes were overblown and the plot had holes than a Swiss cheese, but it actually held up far better than I’d expected. A slightly reluctant 6/10.

ICBM

All Is True

Kenneth Branagh directs and acts William Shakespeare in his last years, with Judi Dench and Ian McKellen, written by Ben Elton and based loosely on some known historical evidence about him.

It could have been overly worthy and pretentious, but in fact it’s very well done - Elton’s writing is sharp and mostly in modern language, and the acting is as you would expect from performers with a deep love of Shakespeare’s work - Branagh (almost unrecognisable at first) and McKellen especially are brilliant, Dench overdoes it a bit but is still good. The story is perhaps a bit too deliberately ‘Shakespearean’, but works and is probably plausible, and the period atmosphere is almost flawless despite the modern script - oddly, there’s actually one bit which jars slightly because it’s too old-sounding.

8/10

(Netflix)

chillidoggy

SPECTRUM001 said:

goldtop said:

SRich said:

Page Eight / Turks & Caicos / Salting the Battlefield

Watched these pretty much back to back on a very rainy day and some enforced lack of mobility..............it occurred that the elevating budget on Johnny Worriker's trilogy didn't bring exponential benefits................clearly the Page Eight screenplay held the essential ingredients the other two didn't hold and they didn't increase the appeal despite the the stellar cast.    

Nighy's a cool dude no matter what you throw at him though. 

Agree on almost all of that. We just finished watching it, too. Strange writing to have pt3 go nowhere.

As for Nighy, he has one habitus - he's everyone's favourite uncle, whether he's doing meerkat anthropomorphism, henpecked husband or 'fairy' spy. I do quite like it, but his 'angry' is rubbish.

I mentioned some time ago how much I adored Page Eight - and have watched it many times.

But the two follow-ups in the trilogy were indeed a disappointment. I didn't initially say anything here, so as not to prejudice opinion - but sadly, neither have the subtlety, story or script of their pater.

I also think the dynamics between Bill Nighy, Michael Gambon, Saskia Reeves (the early "page eight" summit meeting - brilliant scripting) etc etc  (there must be a good ten quality hitters in the cast) are just incredible.

Helena Bonham Carter is smoulderingly hot, though.