What films have you watched recently?

west

DrCornelius said:

Philly_Q said:

DrCornelius said:

King Kong on iPlayer . Simply brilliant , a fantastic story and all crammed into 90 minutes

1933 version, I hope?

Yep and as @earwighoney points out , it skips along with a nice tight story and no bloating at all.

Refreshing !

Check out "the most dangerous game " 1933 filmed at the same time  on the same sets as king kong with fay wray  its got a great vibe and makes a cool double bill  ....

paulnb57

Covenant on Prime
Latest offering from Guy Ritchie

Not what I was expecting at all, but well worth a watch

Philly_Q

Escape Room: Tournament of Champions (Netflix)

Six people on a New York subway train find that their carriage is actually the first in a series of deadly escape rooms... all have  survived similar situations before, but will any of them make it out this time?

I have definitely seen the first Escape Room film, and although I remember almost nothing about it, I'm pretty sure it was better than this.  It's like a sort of PG-rated version of Saw, all the characters rushing around trying to avoid death by solving preposterous "puzzles" at ludicrous speed.  Despite the frantic pace, the 90-minute film actually seems to drag, perhaps because nothing makes any sense and there's never a feeling that the story is leading anywhere.

Not recommended.

chillidoggy

”Living”

On Amazon Prime, starring Bill Nighy as a civil servant mired in drudge who discovers he’s not got long to live, and wonders if he can make the most of his time.

Bill’s a national treasure, one of my favourite actors, and he gives a superb performance as always. It’s not a ‘happy’ film, but it’s atmospheric with some tension.

9/10. 

DrCornelius

west said:

DrCornelius said:

Philly_Q said:

DrCornelius said:

King Kong on iPlayer . Simply brilliant , a fantastic story and all crammed into 90 minutes

1933 version, I hope?

Yep and as @earwighoney points out , it skips along with a nice tight story and no bloating at all.

Refreshing !

Check out "the most dangerous game " 1933 filmed at the same time  on the same sets as king kong with fay wray  its got a great vibe and makes a cool double bill  ....

Nice one , sounds like a plan .

coincidentally King Kong was the first film that my local art deco cinema (Plaza Dorchester) showed when it opened . They have posters in the foyer and the original projector on display too

Haych

Last night we tried 6 Underground, a silly action movie from a couple of years ago. The opening action sequence was a bit much for Mrs Haych and me and it got turned off. I think I tried once before to watch this and remember turning it off for the same reason at the same point about five minutes in. 

 We then watched The Family, a 2013 black comedy with Robert De Niro and Michelle Pfeiffer. De Niro is a mafia boss turned FBI informant who is hiding from the mob in witsec in rural Normandy. 

He and his family must try to adapt and seem normal to locals and obviously they fail massively in every respect. It’s quite good, I certainly enjoyed it more than the garbage above. 

BigBearKris

Haych said:

Last night we tried 6 Underground, a silly action movie from a couple of years ago. The opening action sequence was a bit much for Mrs Haych and me and it got turned off. I think I tried once before to watch this and remember turning it off for the same reason at the same point about five minutes in. 

Same here - and I tried during lockdown, where all kind of crap TV got watched. 

I find Ryan Reynolds absolutely unbearable. Not a great actor, neither funny. 
He may be a nice guy, and part of Wrexham cinderella story but he makes any film with him in unwatchable. 

rze99

Amulet

Movie 2020
Suspense/Horror/occult
Not one for the kids

Directed by Romola Garai, the action tracks a former soldier Tomaz, played by Alec Secareanu, at two periods  in his life one, his past where he is a soldier in a nameless war serving as a forest border sentry point when he comes across a buried amulet, and then later, suffering from severe PTSD, as an illegal immigrant in London. 

After being concussed and robbed of his cash, he is taken in by a Nun (Imelda Staunton) to live rent free for labouring in a delipidated and filthy old house. Living in the house is a quiet and pretty young woman looking after her dying mother who lives at the top of the house and who regularly wails out in pain.

Not dissimilar in some respects to Hereditary, Midsommar and Men, there is a quiet suspenseful terror with a touch of folk horror and malign forces mixed with David Cronenberg style grotesquery. The movie weaves in multiple moral and occult themes heaping them upon one another to the point where they break down and then finally into wild vivid hallucinogenic batshit weirdness. 
It takes a long time to get into its journey, but once the plot development speeds up the weirder and darker the movie gets.
The less you know before watching the better.

7/10

Blueingreen

Harry Potter.  Rewatched all the films in order now they're on Netflix.  I would guess anybody with even the slightest interest in them knows them by now so maybe not too much to say.  A mixture of the good (highly inventive myth-making, distinctive characters, often great visuals, good scores if you like your film music full of cod classical swelling strings etc) and the not-so-good (some ropy acting, sentimentality, some clumsy use of CGI for "atmosphere", pushing the mumbo jumbo too far at times, and the narrative pacing sometimes sags in the later ones especially. And the first two in particular are kid's films).  Probably score them all somewhere between 6.5 and 7.5 but as escapist entertainment you can just let wash over you they hit the spot if you're in the right mood.  Good for a duvet day if you're down with a bug or similar.

Philly_Q

Blood & Gold (Netflix)

In the last days of World War II, Heinrich, a German army deserter, is left to hang by a group of SS soldiers but is rescued by Elsa, who lives on a nearby farm with her brother.  The SS are heading to Elsa's village in search of stolen gold, and Heinrich and Elsa get caught in the dispute between the SS and the local villains.

Despite the 1945 setting, this is basically a spaghetti western... nothing too deep, it's just an entertaining, violent action movie where the good guys are good and the bad guys really deserve what's coming to them.  I enjoyed Peter Thorwarth's previous film, Blood Red Sky, and I enjoyed this too.

Emp_Fab

Offset said:

^^ Well I think I know enough about the film now not to bother watching it...

Well, you could have walked out half way through my critique, but you chose to stay until the end!

Haych

Living (Prime)

Set in 1950s London.  Mr Williams (Bill Nighy) is the head of a bureaucratic planning department in London City Council, where the atmosphere is glum and where applications just seem to be pushed round in a perpetual circle of red tape and not-my-department before being filed for all eternity.

He doesn't seem to be known well by those who surround him or have a very fulfilled life until the day he takes an uncharacteristic early finish to visit his doctor where he is given the news that he has only months to live.

He spends the few days AWOL and the remainder of his short life with renewed impetus.

It's a slow paced film and one gets the impression that's done deliberately, to mimic the pace of the protagonists own life, especially when it comes to his career.  That doesn't make it at all boring, though.  It drags you in, in a way that only a British film like this can.  But action there is not and while the story is not complicated it does demand your full attention just to absorb the mood of the era, the subject and the characters.

It's also a wonderfully crafted film given the bleak nature of the story.  Bill Nighy is perfect and puts on a wonderful performance as the stiff upper lipped, stoic and yet very gentle and misunderstood Mr Williams.

I found it to be very moving and I'd be lying if I said I didn't leak a tiny bit from the eyeballs.

It seems crude to give a film like this a score, I can think of no reason to not award top marks but I will only state that I would recommend it to anyone.

Offset

Emp_Fab said:

Offset said:

^^ Well I think I know enough about the film now not to bother watching it...

Well, you could have walked out half way through my critique, but you chose to stay until the end!

Much better to start off your critique with 'Warning - contains spoilers' and then I wouldn't have started reading it in the first place!

Emp_Fab

Fair point.  I suppose it's a bit late to add it now.

Think of it this way, I saved you an hour and a half of wasted time  

Offset

Emp_Fab said:

Fair point.  I suppose it's a bit late to add it now.

Think of it this way, I saved you an hour and a half of wasted time  

I'll take that positive from it :-)

paulnb57

Philly_Q said:

Blood & Gold (Netflix)

In the last days of World War II, Heinrich, a German army deserter, is left to hang by a group of SS soldiers but is rescued by Elsa, who lives on a nearby farm with her brother.  The SS are heading to Elsa's village in search of stolen gold, and Heinrich and Elsa get caught in the dispute between the SS and the local villains.

Despite the 1945 setting, this is basically a spaghetti western... nothing too deep, it's just an entertaining, violent action movie where the good guys are good and the bad guys really deserve what's coming to them.  I enjoyed Peter Thorwarth's previous film, Blood Red Sky, and I enjoyed this too.

We enjoyed it too

Offset

paulnb57 said:

Philly_Q said:

Blood & Gold (Netflix)

In the last days of World War II, Heinrich, a German army deserter, is left to hang by a group of SS soldiers but is rescued by Elsa, who lives on a nearby farm with her brother.  The SS are heading to Elsa's village in search of stolen gold, and Heinrich and Elsa get caught in the dispute between the SS and the local villains.

Despite the 1945 setting, this is basically a spaghetti western... nothing too deep, it's just an entertaining, violent action movie where the good guys are good and the bad guys really deserve what's coming to them.  I enjoyed Peter Thorwarth's previous film, Blood Red Sky, and I enjoyed this too.

We enjoyed it too

We watched B&G last night.  Not perfect but we really enjoyed it.  A solid 6.5/10.

SRich

Philly_Q said:

Blood & Gold (Netflix)

In the last days of World War II, Heinrich, a German army deserter, is left to hang by a group of SS soldiers but is rescued by Elsa, who lives on a nearby farm with her brother.  The SS are heading to Elsa's village in search of stolen gold, and Heinrich and Elsa get caught in the dispute between the SS and the local villains.

Despite the 1945 setting, this is basically a spaghetti western... nothing too deep, it's just an entertaining, violent action movie where the good guys are good and the bad guys really deserve what's coming to them.  I enjoyed Peter Thorwarth's previous film, Blood Red Sky, and I enjoyed this too.

Also watched after this recommendation. Thoroughly enjoyed it. One observation was that some of the characters (eg Elsa and her bruv) looked digitally enhanced in some shots…..I don’t have a knowledge of what they do in Post, but it gave it a feel of unreality.

chillidoggy

Haych said:

Living (Prime)

Set in 1950s London.  Mr Williams (Bill Nighy) is the head of a bureaucratic planning department in London City Council, where the atmosphere is glum and where applications just seem to be pushed round in a perpetual circle of red tape and not-my-department before being filed for all eternity.

He doesn't seem to be known well by those who surround him or have a very fulfilled life until the day he takes an uncharacteristic early finish to visit his doctor where he is given the news that he has only months to live.

He spends the few days AWOL and the remainder of his short life with renewed impetus.

It's a slow paced film and one gets the impression that's done deliberately, to mimic the pace of the protagonists own life, especially when it comes to his career.  That doesn't make it at all boring, though.  It drags you in, in a way that only a British film like this can.  But action there is not and while the story is not complicated it does demand your full attention just to absorb the mood of the era, the subject and the characters.

It's also a wonderfully crafted film given the bleak nature of the story.  Bill Nighy is perfect and puts on a wonderful performance as the stiff upper lipped, stoic and yet very gentle and misunderstood Mr Williams.

I found it to be very moving and I'd be lying if I said I didn't leak a tiny bit from the eyeballs.

It seems crude to give a film like this a score, I can think of no reason to not award top marks but I will only state that I would recommend it to anyone.

A much more comprehensive review than my previous effort! Totally agree, it’s a superb film, and I rate it highly.

DesVegas

Transformers Rise of the Beasts. Absolutely top stuff.. it's funny, you can tell what's going on unlike the other transformer films and LOTS of laser cannon fire and explosions.. 9 out of ten.. saw it at the cinema and there was a preview of Grand Turismo which looks super ace too