What films have you watched recently?

Brio

Oh God! I'd forgotten that. You bastard.

SteveRobinson

County Lines (iPlayer)

It's a gritty, sometimes harrowing drama about a 14yo loner groomed into county lines despite the best efforts of his mum, school and social services.

7/10 would recommend

Shrews

The Last Tree (Film 4)

Young boy grows up with his foster mum in the countryside but then his mum gets him back and they go to live in a tower block in London. She's strict and abusive and beats him with a stick if he doesn't do the housework. His father has disappeared, thought to be in Lagos. So basically he's lost a foster mum he loves, all his mates from his old school, and now has an abusive parent who he doesn't know that well.

It then shoots forward in time to him being in his teens and trying to work out his future, with exams looming, but with a life of crime being on the doorstep and tempting for a kid struggling to gain some respect from his peers, his mother, a girl he fancies and himself, he has to choose one way or the other.

Some excellent acting, not sure why it was buried away at 2am in the morning, as the acting alone deserves a bigger audience.

A solid 7/10. I kept dozing off and missing chunks so perhaps more like an 8.

ewal

Blonde (Netflix)

I had the house to myself on Saturday evening, so decided to watch this. What a heap of crap - I got about a quarter of the way through, then went to play guitar instead.

2/10

Philly_Q

Zack Snyder's Justice League

It's probably about four years since I watched the Joss Whedon'ed theatrical cut of Justice League, but I do remember that I didn't understand the plot, and there were scenes in which Superman looked very strange because they'd CGI'ed out his moustache...

Zack Snyder's sort-of director's cut is a very different beast.  It's twice as long as the theatrical version, and initially feels more like a TV mini-series, with lots of extra padding and some really weird musical choices.  There's some terrible Xbox-looking CGI... but none of it is on Henry Cavill's upper lip.  The plot is - as far as I can remember - exactly the same as before, but now I can understand it.  The characters, especially Cyborg, are much more fleshed-out, Flash and Aquaman are less irritating, and so long as you're prepared to go along with the deadly serious mood the whole thing works much better.  I enjoyed it.

Philly_Q

Holiday (2018)

Michael, a Danish drug dealer, takes his entourage, including his much younger girlfriend Sascha, on holiday in the Turkish Riviera.  When Sascha befriends a Dutch yachtsman, bad things happen...

I didn't know before I watched it, but this film apparently caused a stir on its release because it features a very graphic rape scene.  However, this is an art-house effort shot in an extremely flat, un-cinematic style which works in two ways... on the one hand the whole thing feels very dull and uninvolving, but on the other hand the matter-of-fact presentation makes me think more about what actually happens in the film.  It's a difficult watch, I can't say I'd recommend it, but it's interesting.

Philly_Q

By way of contrast to the above...

Pinocchio (2022) and Pinocchio (1940)

The Disney live action/CGI remake.... Why?  Just why?  It's absolutely dire and utterly pointless.  It probably cost tens of millions of dollars, but it feels like some kind of awful am-dram pantomime based on the 1940 film, with none of the charm.  The new characters and plot tweaks are unnecessary (and sometimes ridiculous).  Tom Hanks is dreadful.  Joseph Gordon-Levitt does a weird impersonation of Cliff Edwards (I always thought it was Sterling Holloway) as Jiminy Cricket.  I know I'm not the target audience... but it's just shit.

On Saturday I'll be watching Guillermo del Toro's take on the story, so this is homework.

Offset

Tailgate (2019, Shudder).

Dutch road-rage-chase thing.  I started with fairly low hopes but was pleasantly surprised.  This is a tense, well-paced thriller with a scary psychopath who is hunting down the main protagonist - a  man and his family who tailgated him on a motorway.  Obviously low budget but I thought it was well done and the tension really ramps up as events spiral out of control.  One weak point is that the guy being hunted is an unlikeable jerk, but that's a minor point.  Otherwise, not a bad way to while away 90 mins on a Saturday afternoon.

6.5/10

Shrews

The Pebble and The Boy (Prime)

There was lots of promise in this one, but fell flat for me. 

A kids dad (who's a mod) dies. He doesn't live with his dad and doesn't seem to know a great deal about him, but gets left his house and a Lambretta.  So the kid decides to ride all the way to Brighton from Manchester to scatter his dad's ashes.

For me, it just went from one ridiculous scene to another, but memorable enough in it's own way. Not enough was made of the music IMO, could've done a lot more with it.

The twists towards the end were pretty good, but not that believable.

5/10

Philly_Q

Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio (2022)

The World Premiere, no less... although it'll be on Netflix in a couple of months.

Apparently del Toro has been wanting to make this for many years.  It's a distinctly darker take on the story, set in Mussolini's Italy, but still suitable for a family audience if your kids aren't too fragile... Beautiful stop-motion animation.  The emphasis here is not on Pinocchio wanting to be a "real boy", but on Geppetto learning that you should love people for who they are, not who you want them to be.

Philly_Q

Old People (Netflix)

German horror in which a group of senior citizens suddenly go crazy and start murdering people.  Honestly, this is one of the worst films I've ever seen.  Oh my god, it's phenomenally BORING.  Why?  Maybe it's because there are no likeable characters to give a flying fuck about and there's zero explanation of what's happening.  Fucking garbage.  Do not watch it.

Offset

Philly_Q said:

Old People (Netflix)

German horror in which a group of senior citizens suddenly go crazy and start murdering people.  Honestly, this is one of the worst films I've ever seen.  Oh my god, it's phenomenally BORING.  Why?  Maybe it's because there are no likeable characters to give a flying fuck about and there's zero explanation of what's happening.  Fucking garbage.  Do not watch it.

I NEARLY watched this a couple of nights ago.  On this basis I'll keep it as one I nearly watched.

Philly_Q

Offset said:

Philly_Q said:

Old People (Netflix)

German horror in which a group of senior citizens suddenly go crazy and start murdering people.  Honestly, this is one of the worst films I've ever seen.  Oh my god, it's phenomenally BORING.  Why?  Maybe it's because there are no likeable characters to give a flying fuck about and there's zero explanation of what's happening.  Fucking garbage.  Do not watch it.

I NEARLY watched this a couple of nights ago.  On this basis I'll keep it as one I nearly watched.

I had partaken of strong drink when I wrote that "review", which might have played a part...  But the film was awful, something about it reminded of M Night Shyamalan at his absolute worst.

Incidentally @Offset, I saw Tailgate at Frightfest a couple of years ago - it must have been 2020, the year it was an online-only event.  I really liked it, but I think there was something about the ending which annoyed me, although I can't quite remember now.

I think the killer gets away with it (?), and he was such a horrible arsehole I really wanted him to get his come-uppance.

fretmeister

Philly_Q said:

Offset said:

Philly_Q said:

Old People (Netflix)

German horror in which a group of senior citizens suddenly go crazy and start murdering people.  Honestly, this is one of the worst films I've ever seen.  Oh my god, it's phenomenally BORING.  Why?  Maybe it's because there are no likeable characters to give a flying fuck about and there's zero explanation of what's happening.  Fucking garbage.  Do not watch it.

I NEARLY watched this a couple of nights ago.  On this basis I'll keep it as one I nearly watched.

I had partaken of strong drink when I wrote that "review", which might have played a part...  But the film was awful, something about it reminded of M Night Shyamalan at his absolute worst.

Incidentally @Offset, I saw Tailgate at Frightfest a couple of years ago - it must have been 2020, the year it was an online-only event.  I really liked it, but I think there was something about the ending which annoyed me, although I can't quite remember now.

I think the killer gets away with it (?), and he was such a horrible arsehole I really wanted him to get his come-uppance.

Isn’t MNS at his worst just normal MNS?

The only reason he isn’t the worst director that ever lived is because of the existence of Uwe Boll. 

Philly_Q

fretmeister said:

Isn’t MNS at his worst just normal MNS?

The only reason he isn’t the worst director that ever lived is because of the existence of Uwe Boll. 

I think his first few (successful) films were good.  They've suffered in hindsight because now everyone knows the twists.  The Visit was alright too.  Most of the others are shite.

Keiko

Piranha 3DD. 1/10 - Watch it if you like films with random pairs of boobs flying around every now and again. However be aware most of them are not even real ones, just those ridiculous ones you might see in 90's porn that look like footballs. There is nothing else really appealing about it.

axisus

Idiocracy (Netflix). Comedy with Luke Wilson. I usually like him so I thought I'd give it a go. Utter garbage. After 20 minutes I had to bail. Maybe it improved but I couldn't face the fact that it might not.

The Royal Tenenbaums. A Wes Anderson film. I'm a big fan of Wes's films, they are character driven oddities. I suppose I think of them as gentle comedies in that you don't laugh out loud, but they give you plenty of wry smiles. Loved it. An all star cast with Gene Hackman on great form. 8/10

Rushmore. Another Wes Anderson film! Once again ticking all the usual 'Wes' boxes. A fascinating vignette of a few intermingled lives. Winner of 16 awards! Bill Murray on great form as is a very young Jason Schwartzman. 8/10

Note: Royal Tenenbaums also won loads of awards - 11 from 46 nominations.

I will be watching the other Wes Anderson films on Disney+ pretty soon!

axisus

Keiko said:

Piranha 3DD. 1/10 - Watch it if you like films with random pairs of boobs flying around every now and again. However be aware most of them are not even real ones, just those ridiculous ones you might see in 90's porn that look like footballs. There is nothing else really appealing about it.

3D you say? [Marks in little book of films to watch when the wife is out].

axisus

I've been into young Tom Hanks films recently, I'm having a bit of an 80s thing. I found one I hadn't seen before - the man with one red shoe. It was amusing enough, but it kind of failed a bit in that for the whole film his character doesn't know what is going on, so he's kind of out of the loop of the whole story. For this reason it definitely failed a bit, had something of a disconnect. It was still quite fun though. There is this one scene where his pal's wife fancies him. It's Carrie Fisher, and she comes into his apartment looking like a slightly frumpy but also sexy librarian, next think she's in leopard skin undies bouncing around on the bed with him trying to make things happen. Phew! I won't lie, I thought that she was so hot and beautiful, I sneaked back and watched that scene again later! Film 6/10, Carrie Fisher scene 8/10.

On the subject of Carrie, I never realised that she was so small! I just looked up her height - 5'1" 

bobblehat

Blonde -Netflix   

Nearly switched it off twice as it was so frustrating to watch. There's a decent film in there somewhere but you have to put up with a lot of unnecessary arty bollocks.