What films have you watched recently?

Reggaebass

Watched The Adam Project yesterday, a good sci fi film I thought, great acting from the little boy and a good story 

Tone71

Just rewatched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - 9/10

Really great film, I always think Jim Carrey is best when playing a straight role or at least one where he isn't pulling faces.

Philly_Q

boogieman said:

Hellraiser 3. I love the original, but this isn’t fit to lick its boots. Really suffers with the 90s digital look but worse than that, some (most actually) of the acting is appalling. Avoid. 

It's one of those franchises where the quality dropped exponentially (...if you can indeed drop exponentially as well as grow exponentially) after the first film.  First is really good - although riddled with flaws, but they somehow work in its favour.  Second is a mess but still benefits from decent actors and some good ideas.  All the others are garbage.

Greatape

Presently watching 'Three Days of the Condor' on Netflix. Only half an hour in, but I'm in for the duration. Pleasingly retro and yet passes muster for the modern palette. 

SPECTRUM001

The Scapegoat - 2012 (Netflix)

Matthew Rhys and Andrew Scott star in this easy going adaptation of a Daphne du Maurier yarn.

It is kind of Agatha Christie meets The Prince and the Pauper meets Strangers on a Train - and completely crap, but quite watchable if you like a postwar period TV drama.

5/10

Haych

Aliens

Still one of the best sci-fi horrors ever made. 30-odd years after it was made it still pushes all the buttons. 

11/10

DesVegas

The Adam Project. New I think on Netflix.

Ryan Reynolds and Marc Ruffolo. Quite meh, I said to the wife that i'd seen that film a few times before and she said yeah, with the same actors too.

Time travel, cloaking devices and lasers but never really felt anyone was in danger and nothing new bought to the table. 

A better film than I could make though.

Meh points out of wowzers

Philly_Q

DesVegas said:

A better film than I could make though.

Ah go on, don't be so modest!

Blueingreen

Brief Encounter. 1945.  Probably around the 6th time I've watched this.

I'm not a particularly big David Lean fan.  I love this film and the Bridge Over the River Kwai.  But the glossy epics he's best known for - Lawrence of Arabia, Dr Zhivago, A Passage to India - leave me cold.  The Dickens adaptations are good but not quite my thing.

This is much smaller scale and all the better for it. A tale of a bored upper middle-class English housewife who falls in love with a posh doctor in the era before stiff-upper-lip and sexual repression started to give way to something freer in the 50s and 60s.  It could only have been made around the time it was because its power derives from the way that it anticipates the change between one moral landscape and another without taking sides. The same film made 15 years later would have been a lecture about the damage done by emotional repression.  This one doesn't reject the possibility that self-denial may be the decent choice.

It's also an atmospheric study of what suburban life was like not so very long ago - tea rooms in train stations, the Boots lending library when it was still used by the well-heeled, string quartets in cafes.

Not all of it works.  There's kind of chorus of minor working-class characters suggesting that the lower orders are able to lead more sensual lives without the agonies of conscience suffered by more refined, cultivated people that I think is patronising and a little snobbish.  The buttoned-up fastidiousness of the middle class characters can lead to moments that seem unintentionally comic now.  But I still think it stands up as one of the great British films.  9/10

Brio

Arabesque. 1966 spythriller comedy romp with Sophia Loren and Gregory Peck.
Dated but entertaining but really achingly of its time.
Glad I watched. Won't do so ever again. I think the last time I watched it was 50 years ago ...

Stratavarious

Dune.. The new one.    4/10    Just tedious and flat.

The 1984 David Lynch one is just a better piece of movie entertainment with sharper dialogue and better set design.

CavemanGrogg

Adam Project, not as good as his seminal work The Green Latern, but watchable

axisus

Greatape said:

Presently watching 'Three Days of the Condor' on Netflix. Only half an hour in, but I'm in for the duration. Pleasingly retro and yet passes muster for the modern palette. 

I plan to rewatch that, haven't seen it for decades so I remember very little, but I love the 70s film vibe.

axisus

Haych said:

Aliens

Still one of the best sci-fi horrors ever made. 30-odd years after it was made it still pushes all the buttons. 

11/10

If I have one issue with Alien, it's that the little alien scene has not held up so well over time. The whole John Hurt bit is brilliant, but the thing looking around and whipping off the table not so good. My oldest daughter is into horror stuff generally and I told her she should watch it (when she turned 18). Honestly she almost died laughing at that scene! 

But that aside, what a brilliant film. The whole look and feel, the story, the cast, the atmosphere. A real groundbreaking movie, has to be one of my favourites of all time. I read the book before seeing the film, often films disappoint after reading the book first, but Ridley Scott got everything spot on to be honest (although a good scene or two didn't make the film).

axisus

Blueingreen said:

Brief Encounter. 1945.  Probably around the 6th time I've watched this.

I've never seen it, but your write up is good! One to look out for I guess ...

axisus

Stratavarious said:

Dune.. The new one.    4/10    Just tedious and flat.

The 1984 David Lynch one is just a better piece of movie entertainment with sharper dialogue and better set design.

Surprising review. Most people love it, and my bro who has been a big fan of the books since he read them in the 70s thinks that it is a brilliant interpretation. Still, all opinions are valid.

Blueingreen

axisus said:

Blueingreen said:

Brief Encounter. 1945.  Probably around the 6th time I've watched this.

I've never seen it, but your write up is good! One to look out for I guess ...

It's available on BBC iPlayer just now.  Warmly recommended if it sounds like your thing.

axisus

OK so not the sort of thing that you guys would watch probably, but I'm a fan of musicals generally so I decided to go for Spielberg's rehash of West Side Story which is on Disney+

It's a strange thing to do, revisiting such a classic movie. To be honest it is a bit of a fail before even starting when the original won 10 Oscars! Still, for whatever reason, Spielberg wanted to do it. It is up for quite a few Oscars actually, but I don't see it getting 10.

Anyway, I enjoyed it, for me it is a worthy update. I think that the direction is a lot more dynamic, and I prefer the modern acting, which seems more like a film and less like a filmed stage show. The respective gangs look a lot more rough & ready and the 'set pieces' were well done. OK, I'll be a heathen and say it, I prefer it to the original.

I'd probably give it 7.5/10. I liked it, but there are other musicals that I like a lot better.

Danny1969

Under the silver lake 

Very strange and quite long film done in a neo-noir style. If you like films that are a bit strange open to interpretation then this is a good one, I loved it. Probably should be an 18 though rather than a 15

Reggaebass

A couple of old time classics,
The Warriors 
The long good Friday, Bob Hoskins played a great part