What films have you watched recently?

BluesLover

On Netflix, "Once upon a time in Hollywood" - 2 and 3/4 hours of self indulgent twaddle. "Run" a good little thriller, worth watching. Nice to watch a movie that doesn't have cars somersaulting everywhere.

boogieman

In the Heart of the Sea, on Prime. 

Ben Wishaw (as Herman Melville) interviews Brendan Gleeson, who survived a whaling ship that was wrecked by a giant whale, to get the story that eventually becomes Moby Dick.

Directed by Ron Howard, some exciting action, decent effects and lots of good solid acting by stars that’ll have you saying “ooh that’s the bloke/woman from Peaky Blinders/Game of Thrones/Fear the Walking Dead”. So it should be good right? But somehow it isn’t, it comes across as Jaws with whales but not as good. I found I didn’t give a toss about any of the characters, especially the lead actor Chris Hemsworth. I did feel sorry for the various whales, albeit CGI’d, that got harpooned just for their oil. 

HAL9000

Primer - since it had been mentioned a fair bit here. Kept me entertained but I never had any real idea what was going on. I suspect it’s something that needs to be watched many many times to be able to pull all the bits together.

ICBM

The Current War

Dramatisation of the battle between Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse to establish the first electricity supplies in the USA.

If that sounds dull... you wouldn’t be far wrong. It’s a brave attempt to make a good film out of a subject that’s really only interesting to historical tech geeks, and not very much even then. Even the usually interesting Benedict Cumberbatch can’t save it - he’s badly miscast as Edison and just mumbles through it, and the attempts to inject drama mostly fall flat, or are oddly rushed and resolved too quickly. It’s also quite inaccurate if you *are* a tech geek, so I’d probably just give it a wide swerve really...

3/10

(Netflix)

paulnb57

8 days: To the moon

Just watched a recording of this film  that was on the Beeb in August

Using real voice recordings and film footage, some dramatisation and reconstruction it follows the 8 days of the Apollo 11 mission to the moon and back, very nostalgic for a chap of a certain age…

9/10

alalalkasar

Villains 
Streaming on netflix, thriller, horror, comedy, home invasion.
Good fun eye candy, a twist a minute mindless fun. The characters are straight out of a comic book and the plot is brisk and fun(ish).
7/10.

Hurling_Fruitmig

The Kid Detective.

A nerdy young teenager discovers he has a talent for solving petty crimes and is lauded by the local community until his equally young ‘secretary’ is abducted and it proves a crime too far. Fast forward 20 years and he’s still stuck in the same town tracking down missing cats until a young woman asks him to solve an actual murder. Both funny and dark this has some great performances but is let down by a dodgy title.

8/10 lost cats.

Moominpapa

Beyond Outrage (2012)  - I had meant to watch this sequel to Outrage (2010) several months ago, but finally only got to see it tonight. Fortunately it was well worth the wait. After the disappointment of the stinker that was Ip Man 4 (see my post in this thread a few days ago), this film was an outstanding sequel to the excellent original. Yakuza movies are possibly a minority interest in the UK, but if you happen to be into them and haven't seen this one, trust me you will love it. Takeshi Kitano gracefully takes a back seat in this and lets his co-stars hog the screen time. The direction & soundtrack convey the mood perfectly, and the plot is taut & twisted. Great stuff, and I can't wait to see the final part of the trilogy.

fretmeister

Dark Waters.

Very good. 8/10



Boss Level.
 2/58

rze99

Destroyer

BBC iPlayer

Nicole Kidman, performing in distracting complicated distress make-up that no doubt took 10 hours a day, is a cop gone awol/bad.  She pursues a personal revenge-at-all-costs mission for a botched heist that left her and her relationships damaged. 

Kidman is excellent once you get past being curious about the make-up. Action shifts between then and now a lot and the story is OK but not especially distinctive. If watching with younger family, there's the usual sex drugs and violence including a grubby hand job scene that may not be appreciated.

It's OK.
6.5/10

 

Shrews

Parasite 7/10

A Japanese film I watched ion a plane to Istanbul a few weeks ago. I tried to watch Crimes of Grindelwald but it wasn't doing it for me, so decided to pick something a bit different.

Basically, a poor family one by one take over a rich family by pretending to be other people than they really are. It doesn't end good.

Some nice twists along the way, but an ending that was a tad disappointing. 

Kalimna

Free Guy - 9/10

A truly ridiculous film/vehicle for Ryan Reynolds. And it shouldnt work. But it is a very entertaining slice of brain popcorn. 
Some lovely nods to well known computer games (gravity gun and portal gun, for instance), and exquisite SFX.
Reynolds plays an exagerated version of himself as a becoming-aware NPC in an open-world game managed by a nefarious Taika Waititi. Think Ready Player One meets The Truman Show.
We took our two boys, 11 and 9, to see it, and in places there were belly laughs all round. Not a film to waste brain cells on, but for joyous spectacle, certainly.

adam

Shrews

The Brest Fortress 9/10

Outstanding film about the defence of the Brest fortress attacked by the Germans as Russia get sucked into war. Multiple true stories combine.

Now in modern day Belarus, if you don't know the history then it's worth looking up and indeed the city with its epic memorial a great place to visit.

In the west we know a little of the Russian involvement but in the main concentrate on our involvement with the Americans. Likewise in Belarus the opposite is true. For example my girlfriend has never heard of The Great Escape, Dam busters or The Imitation Game.

But, how I'd reached the age of 54 without knowing the incredible story of Brest is a bit sad for our education system really!

This film brings it to life almost perfectly. If you like war films then go and seek it out. 

andyp

Kalimna said:

Free Guy - 9/10

A truly ridiculous film/vehicle for Ryan Reynolds. And it shouldnt work. But it is a very entertaining slice of brain popcorn. 
Some lovely nods to well known computer games (gravity gun and portal gun, for instance), and exquisite SFX.
Reynolds plays an exagerated version of himself as a becoming-aware NPC in an open-world game managed by a nefarious Taika Waititi. Think Ready Player One meets The Truman Show.
We took our two boys, 11 and 9, to see it, and in places there were belly laughs all round. Not a film to waste brain cells on, but for joyous spectacle, certainly.

adam

Totally agree. I knew very little about it but we went with our two sons yesterday and all loved it. Some really funny bits and it was very well done. It’s not an Oscar candidate, but it was absolutely brilliant fun.

Kalimna

andyp said:

Kalimna said:

Free Guy - 9/10

A truly ridiculous film/vehicle for Ryan Reynolds. And it shouldnt work. But it is a very entertaining slice of brain popcorn. 
Some lovely nods to well known computer games (gravity gun and portal gun, for instance), and exquisite SFX.
Reynolds plays an exagerated version of himself as a becoming-aware NPC in an open-world game managed by a nefarious Taika Waititi. Think Ready Player One meets The Truman Show.
We took our two boys, 11 and 9, to see it, and in places there were belly laughs all round. Not a film to waste brain cells on, but for joyous spectacle, certainly.

adam

Totally agree. I knew very little about it but we went with our two sons yesterday and all loved it. Some really funny bits and it was very well done. It’s not an Oscar candidate, but it was absolutely brilliant fun.

Indeed - the whole 'Dude' scene

Philly_Q

Guns Akimbo

Daniel Radcliffe plays a nerd who trolls an online gaming channel which livestreams real-life death matches.  The game's organisers kidnap him and set him loose on the streets, a loaded gun stuck to each hand, with an assassin on his trail... 

This goes for a manic, frantic, hyper-real sort of atmosphere - like Scott Pilgrim meets Crank - but fails pretty badly.  "Interesting" subplots are introduced then thrown away instantly, the guy playing the main villain is particularly weak and not even the presence of Samara Weaving can save it.

AlbertC

BluesLover said:

On Netflix, "Once upon a time in Hollywood" - 2 and 3/4 hours of self indulgent twaddle. 

 I'm not the biggest Tarrantino fan (post-Jackie Brown) but I quite liked this in the end, although I did wonder where it was all going for the first half. It's a strange re-writing of a bit of Hollywood history, I'll grant you that. There's some good scenes, and it looks great as a period piece. They must have spent a fortune closing off parts of LA and having age-correct cars as background traffic. 
I wonder what exactly was behind the ridiculing Bruce Lee? 

AlbertC

Shrews said:

Parasite 7/10

A Japanese film I watched ion a plane to Istanbul a few weeks ago. 

Sorry to be a pedant but it's a South Korean film 

Greatape

Philly_Q said:

Guns Akimbo

Daniel Radcliffe plays a nerd who trolls an online gaming channel which livestreams real-life death matches.  The game's organisers kidnap him and set him loose on the streets, a loaded gun stuck to each hand, with an assassin on his trail... 

This goes for a manic, frantic, hyper-real sort of atmosphere - like Scott Pilgrim meets Crank - but fails pretty badly.  "Interesting" subplots are introduced then thrown away instantly, the guy playing the main villain is particularly weak and not even the presence of Samara Weaving can save it.

How does he pee?

They never consider this, villainous game organisers. 

ICBM

Bitter Lake

Adam Curtis documentary about Afghanistan and how we got into the mess - made just before Trump was elected but still highly relevant now.

Somewhat overlong in parts and with less weight than it probably should have given the running time, and typically for Curtis some of the unexplained and randomly inserted footage is irritating as well as unsettling, but the main narrative explains a lot of the reasons why we got where we are now, in some cases quite shockingly... particularly regarding the involvement of the Saudis.

Worth watching if you're even slightly interested.

8/10

(BBC iPlayer)