What films have you watched recently?

Mattharrier

Hancock had a great premise - what if Superman was an arsehole - and starts off well, and then draaaaaags for a while. And then takes a massive right turn, and then the finale is pretty cool. Basically a good idea that gave rise to two great sequences, and had a naff middle to stitch them together.

It's been done in comics much better - Irredeemable by Mark Waid being one good example, and Powers being an even better one.

I recently watched Almost Famous again, which led me (via some Wikipedia and IMDB browsing) to watch Empire Records and Dazed and Confused, both of which I somehow never watched. Both were entertaining enough, but it's really, really weird watching people like Ben Affleck and Matthew McConaughey at the very beginning of their careers, and it was somewhat distracting.

Soundtracks were decent, though.

Greatape

bobblehat said:

Greatape said:

'What Drives Us'

I despise the RHCP, but turns out Flea is a sweetheart. 

I really enjoyed it , I keep giving Lars the benefit of the doubt but he really is an arsehat of the highest order !

Turns out Brian Johnson does an excellent 'voice of the BBC', also.

phil_b

Not exactly a film but watch TIME staring Sean Bean on BBC iplayer

very good but not an easy watch

Blueingreen

Letter from an Unknown Woman (Max Ophuls 1948).  Modern audiences will have a problem with the basic premise - that a woman's love so strong that it transcends everything (including the relative indifference and unworthiness of the man she's in love with) is an indication of nobility of character, even when its consequences are highly destructive - is a relic from the Romantic era and must have felt old fashioned even in 1948.  Most people watching will spend at least some of the time thinking the heroine would do well to bloody wise up.

Allowing for that, the film has loads to recommend it.  The atmospheric portrait of upper middle class Vienna is wonderful - it's in black and white and gorgeously photographed.  Joan Fontaine is a little too old for the role (she's 30 and meant to be a besotted teenager at the start of the film) but turns in an excellent performance;  Louis Jourdan is just as good.

Available in iPlayer if anybody thinks it sounds like their cuppa. 9/10

LastMantra

Mystery men. 

Was fun. You'd need to like stiller but there's plenty of other stuff going on.

Kind of felt like there wasn't anything new here. Even though it's definitely going for an off the wall vibe. Fun characters, I loved the "cutlery" guy   

It was my kind of thing really but...well...could have been a bit better.

ICBM

The White Tiger

Indian rags-to-riches drama. I was expecting a slightly humourous ‘how I made myself the man I am today’ tale with some light relief along the way, but this is a seriously dark story which rings true in a quite disturbing manner... perhaps I should have read the book first.

Highly recommended, but not at all an easy watch or the usual Hollywood path to redemption.

9/10

(Netflix)

VimFuego

Project Power, a sinister international organisation develops a drug that gives you a random superpower for 4 mins, then tries to sell in. It was kinda OK, some fun violence and gore.

I'm in a relaxed kinda mood, so I'll give it 6/10. 

Greatape

'Stop Making Sense' is on Prime. If you haven't seen it, do. It's a minor shame that Belew wasn't in the band at the time, but it's still great.

Greatape

VimFuego said:

Project Power, a sinister international organisation develops a drug that gives you a random superpower for 4 mins, then tries to sell in. It was kinda OK, some fun violence and gore.

I'm in a relaxed kinda mood, so I'll give it 6/10. 

Spoiler: prawn. Or rather, shrimp.

Haych

Ice Road

Liam Neeson disaster/action movie. 

A mine explosion in northern Canada traps 26 men underground. To free them a 30 tonne wellhead is needed to be trucked over harsh frozen terrain. 

A convoy of three trucks departs with the required equipment along with a saboteur who is working for the mine company and whose job it is to make sure the equipment doesn’t arrived so all the men die so the truth about the explosion doesn’t surface. 

Some reasonably tense action sequences but otherwise a load of bollocks. Watch if you have to but I give you fair warning it’ll be a waste of your time. 

3/10

goldtop

2036 Unknown Origin (Netflix) It's 2001 reimagined (or ripped-off), with a cameo appearance from The Borg. Lead actress is actually quite good (she has to be as there's hardly any other cast), but it's obviously a cheap film and the plot has some pretty daft twists before resolving into a silly ending. 2/10

not_the_dj

Godzilla King of Monsters (Prime)

laughable rubbish. One good performance from the young daughter, the rest of the cast were either hamming it up or wooden and cliched.

CGI was ok but a loose grasp on physics. 

Still it’s a movie about massive monsters treading on cities and hitting each other so realism isn’t on the agenda, but I enjoyed it a lot less than Kong Skull Island. 

Haven’t seen the latest, I’m happy to watch these as part or a streaming package but wouldn’t pay to see any individually. 

EricTheWeary

Out of Blue

On iPlayer

James Caan and Toby Jones in supporting roles; presumably falling behind on their mortgages that month. Brief appearance of Cissy Strut too ( the instrumental, not a stripper name). Based on a Martin Amis novel. Very nice ending credits song by The Church. 

Imagine The Big Bang Theory rewritten as a crime thriller, set in New Orleans and all the jokes taken out.

Philly_Q

EricTheWeary said:

Out of Blue

On iPlayer

James Caan and Toby Jones in supporting roles; presumably falling behind on their mortgages that month. Brief appearance of Cissy Strut too ( the instrumental, not a stripper name). Based on a Martin Amis novel. Very nice ending credits song by The Church. 

Imagine The Big Bang Theory rewritten as a crime thriller, set in New Orleans and all the jokes taken out.

You're not selling it...

Actually, I've just googled it and realised I saw the last 10-15 minutes a couple of weeks ago.  I'd been sound asleep with a belly full of Chinese takeaway and woke up to see Patricia Clarkson apparently playing a very unlikely cop... I had no idea what was going on.  But yes, I remember liking the end credits music.

EricTheWeary

Philly_Q said:

EricTheWeary said:

Out of Blue

On iPlayer

James Caan and Toby Jones in supporting roles; presumably falling behind on their mortgages that month. Brief appearance of Cissy Strut too ( the instrumental, not a stripper name). Based on a Martin Amis novel. Very nice ending credits song by The Church. 

Imagine The Big Bang Theory rewritten as a crime thriller, set in New Orleans and all the jokes taken out.

You're not selling it...

Actually, I've just googled it and realised I saw the last 10-15 minutes a couple of weeks ago.  I'd been sound asleep with a belly full of Chinese takeaway and woke up to see Patricia Clarkson apparently playing a very unlikely cop... I had no idea what was going on.  But yes, I remember liking the end credits music.

I think it has one review on IMDB just saying how terrible it is. Apparently the original novel Night Train is fine and this is a meandering adaptation although if it relies on as many unlikely coincidences as the plot of the film does it must have something else going for it. 
I vaguely know The Church exist ( existed?) so maybe checking them out is the best thing I can get out of this.
 

Longtallronnie

The Lighthouse with Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson. 

Had an interest in it, given my job and although it’s obviously set in the past there was a familiarity about it. Never gone quite as batshit mental as they did but have gotten close!

Excellent performances from both of the actors in a frankly bizarre film but I kinda like bizarre films. Doubt I’ll watch it again but I glad I finally got round to it. 

Re-watched Cast Away, having recently listened to the Lord of the Flies audiobook, I was on a bit of a stuck on a deserted island trip. I don’t know why but I never like the idea of a film with Tom Hanks in it, until I watch it and remember how brilliant he is. WILSON!!

Moominpapa

The Outpost (2020)   -  based-on-a-true-story war film centred on a USAF forward base in Afghanistan in 2009. Military genius situated this base in a valley surrounded by mountains, so basically a sitting target for the Taliban. The film is a reasonable mix of character studies and firefight action. The battle scenes are well done, and it's hard to accuse the film of being gung-ho for the Yanks given the amount of decorations that were in fact handed out to the soldiers who took part in the battle (including two Medals of Honour for living servicemen).

Haych

Primer

A very low budget film from 2004 about a group of young scientists who, after clocking off at their day jobs, continue working after hours from a garage in the hopes of making something that will earn them some big money.

There seems to be a bit of a rift between the four guys and two continue work on a project without the knowledge of their friends and colleagues.  They work on some contraption whose intended purpose is never fully explained, but through which they inadvertently discover a way to travel through time, which of course they use to play the stock market.

The acting is quite awful and the photography very low key - which is actually one of its more appealing factors.  The plot seems to have legs but the story telling and character dialogue is too vague to make out what is actually happening.  I had to read the plot synopsis on IMDB to fill in the blanks.

The core idea of the film could be really good in the hands of somebody who knows what they're doing, a bunch of decent actors and a budget bigger than what I paid for my last car.

I tried to stick with it but despite its initial promise it became just too tedious to watch.

I'll give it 5/10 simply because I liked the grainy, almost bleached photography which gave it a very different feel and because the idea was worthy of a better attempt.

On Prime.

Offset

I made the mistake of watching Amazon's 'The Tomorrow War' last night.  It was truly dreadful - appalling acting, zero plot, dull pacing and the usual US syrupy father-daughter schmaltz chucked in for good measure.  I knew it was going to be brain-dead before I watched it, but sometimes I fancy something cerebrally non-taxing to pass the hours as I self-isolate with a glass of vino.  But this was SO non-taxing I wanted to pare my nails rather than pay attention.  Proper drivel - avoid.  1/10. 

fretmeister

Greatape said:

'What Drives Us'

I despise the RHCP, but turns out Flea is a sweetheart. 

His bio "Acid for the Children" is worth a read. To say he had an unusual upbringing would be a massive understatement!