Films Recently Watched

[dingformung]

Borgman

 

A mysterious guy living in a hidden cavern in the woods gets runned off by christian exorcists and tries to gain ground in the city. Very weird film with deadpan humor. I liked it a lot

[Nebraska]

 

this was mind-blowing. it's a sort of (fake?) documentary/travelogue/home movie of a guy called sandor krasna who travels from france to guinea-bissau to japan. there are other countries shown like iceland, cape verde, and the united states (san francisco) though it's unclear when during the itinerary these places are visited. in fact, the whole film is about time and memory and presented in a fractured but very poetic way and other times, playful and surreal.

 

also, fantastic use of music

 

head damagingly surreal out of ten

[tec]

That bit with the giraffe though.

[watmmisdead]

Me and earl and the dying girl.

10/10

one of those movies you still think about a week later. 

[Lada Laika]

Me and earl and the dying girl.

10/10

one of those movies you still think about a week later. 

 

Rad, glad to hear this. Missed it when it was in theaters and have been too lazy to check out because I'm afraid it's going to be twee af / John Green lite. 

[Nebraska]

That bit with the giraffe though.

 

that pissed me off. i honestly would've hated this film if marker had filmed it, but the footage is credited to some lowlife. i didn't get the point of that scene either

[keanu reeves]

 

That bit with the giraffe though.

 

i honestly would've hated this film if marker had filmed it

 

 

why?

[tec]

Because that would make him a cunt?

[dr lopez]

la la land -  I watched singing in the rain a couple days ago (a day before debbie reynolds died dang) and I guess was in the mood for whatever this was. pleasantly surprised. there's life in me yet when it's schlocky musicals that are well shot and costumed. "that's entertainment" type shit but done not in a "look at the nostalgia" way that is so hot right now. gosling continues to troll audiences and the entire film business by appearing as gosling in every fucking movie but he clearly tried with the piano and the singing and the dancing. A for effort gosling, you beautiful idiot. emma stone carries the film entirely with her weird but attractive face. some clever set pieces in this one that keep it from dragging too much but like all films in the last 5 years it goes on 20 min too long.

 

john legend in mustard turtleneck / 10

[may be rude]

quiz show is good. crazy how they made all those actors look younger

[watmmisdead]

a man called ove

 

9/10

 

the grumpy Ove has a aura that reminds me of gandolfini

Edited January 2, 2017 by Ayya Khema

[caze]

I watched Un Prophete last night, and before that Catch Me Daddy.

 

Amazed I manage to hold off on watching the former for so long, really great film (only other film of the director's I've seen was The Beat That My Heart Skipped, which is also very good, he's got a new one out too Dheepan, which I should check out).

 

The other one was pretty good too, bleak realism with what I'm guessing was mostly non-professional actors, mostly doing a pretty good job - the guy making the milkshakes the main hilarious exception; story was basically a gangster/honour killing combo with a bunch of yorkshire and pakistani folk chasing around the moors - very very bleak, with a couple of genuinely disturbing scenes. 

Catch me Daddy also had an amazing DVD cover/booklet/DVD pause screen, very memeish.

[Suffocate Peon]

Assassin's Creed

 

Saw this the other day, got in ten minutes after it was scheduled to start, where there was just a black screen and about 20 people in their seats just...waiting. We waited a few minutes, before my brother went to ask for it to start, and it did with no trailers, adverts, this film is rated etc, it was quite nice actually to not be fatigued with stuff before you get to the feature. But it didn't fill the screen, it was windowboxed, which is more offputting than I would have thought, and then I sat, distracted -can it be switched, this was on the biggest screen usually used for 3D- thinking when would be the best moment to ask for it to be fixed, so I went just as new characters were being established, then struggled to understand who key characters are. But I got the gist of the film ! I was just a bit pissed I couldn't get into it fully.

I think Mark Kermode makes out that fans of the game are critical of how the modern day stuff is presented in terms of the metal arm that hoists him up, but I think the issue is more that you get the impression from the trailers that most of the film will take place in 15th century Spain, but it's more like maybe 20% of the film takes place there (or feels like it), and it's the way it's horribly and jarringly done, so you're always taken back to Fassbender in his metal arm when you just want to be immersed for just a few minutes in this genuinely beautifully shot world. Fassbender is sliding down tiles, cut back, doing a wall jump, cut back, leaping down a hole, cut back, climbing up a scaffolding, cut back, it's like if you thought Paul Greengrass' hyperactive camera work and editing was bad then this is like the next step. The pattern follows so instead of being involved in the suspense, the action, you're half there, half waiting to be pulled away. That's the frustration, and with the choppy editing it just reduces those assassin scenes into being secondary, and I don't think you have to be a fan of the game (I'm not, I only played the second one for a few hours so I'm not invested in the games) to be disappointed at how they approached it. It's deliberate, I know, they want to remind you you're not really there, but ultimately watching an assassin in 15th century Spain is more appealing and is its unique selling point, and you can re enforce it with other scenes, but I think they got the balance badly wrong here. It's weird when a film keeps pulling back to Fassbender simulating actions as though it needs them to sell the 15th century action, as opposed to a necessary element they needed to sell the credibility of the whole concept. What could have been a cool visually stimulating filmic flourish becomes ruinous.

I think it would have been more effective allowing the assassin parts play out for chunks and then just as you forget, pull it back in the most interesting way. So every 10 minutes, rather than 10 seconds.

I can see why it got a kicking from critics, the mixture of a far fetched story that can be reduced to getting hold of an item which will do such a thing, coupled with how serious it takes itself. It flies through its running time, but it tries so hard to be dramatic based on what you're told rather than what actually occurs during the film. It's really stunning visually though, throughout, but I think you've got to be really into the modern day setting to forgive that it's undermining its potential to be uniquely thrilling.

I need to give it another watch with subs. Probably a 4/10, meaning a 'disappointment'. There's got to be a difference between expecting something to be what it didn't choose to be, and being disappointed it didn't fulfill the brilliant aspects it had in its grasp.

[Suffocate Peon]

The Accountant

spoiillers

lol I put this on and my dad, who'd seen it before, was watching something else on his tablet on the sofa, and he noticed I kept on winding the film back, and became aggravated or actually genuinely pissed off at my perceived criticism of the film's confused way of telling its story. Like, the the main character, the accountant splits his work up with ordinary work and criminal work, and he has a mysterious woman on the phone who he hires to find jobs for him and act as his all round aid, so when she phones him up the first time and targets a job that's presented in a thriller-ish way, you expect it to be a criminal job and not an ordinary job, and really I'm still confused at what they were trying to do there. As a reviewer said on a podcast, why doesn't he just do legit work for good causes? He's pretty modest with his money (except the armoury of weapons, but then he only needs them for the dangerous stuff), and seems simple enough to earn enough through the pure accountancy challenges, nor does he have a family to support and doesn't appear to be saving up money for a holiday to Disneyland. Like, the film completely fails to make sense of his need to do dangerous criminal work besides that his dad toughened him up as as kid and he befriended an ageing veteran criminal in prison who showed him the ropes, both funny clichés it decides not to avoid.

Still early on, it jumps around a bit, from character to character, and then suddenly we go all the way to Switzerland, so you think; wow, this is an international thriller, this accountant is hired by criminals and has just targeted a scientist specializing in robotic arms, who is a pretty big deal, on the front of magazines big, how does this next bit play into things?

So Switzerland, to a car park, you're shown a man briefly appear like he can't find his car, then he's like; 'goddammit there it is'. Was his car moved or did he just forget where he parked it? He opens the passenger door and climbs over to the driving seat, I assume because the car is so closely parked to a wall that he can't open the driver door. A second later another man opens the passenger door and climbs inside. 'What the fuck do you think you're doing? Do you know who I am?' says the first man. If this happened to me I'd probably be scared, but I'm not a millionaire CEO of a company who it's revealed this guy is, and it's just an odd thing to say. If it's just a random criminal who is trying his luck then he wouldn't know of the power of this man. But if it's a skilled criminal who picked him out then it was obviously intentional, so..er, yeah they know who you are, that's the point. CEO man says something about the criminal's employer must know his kidnap insurance and then the criminal reveals himself to be a hitman, a man hired to give a message, apply pressure, and be threatening with it.

Two new characters introduced, new information about the dodgy, morally dubious practices of man 1, as hitman punches him a few times. The point of the scene, as you wouldn't know, is to set up the hitman as a major recurring character, sort of like Bourne when you had the hitman played by Karl Urban. The information is irrelevant, the CEO guy being threatened is irrelevant, so it's purely a stand alone, self contained scene, that's used to show the personality of the hitman, and the kind of work he does. Perhaps, in retrospect, me knowing this now like the writers knew it then, it could have been different, like you show the hitman first, and you cast in shadow the threatened guy. Like in Splinter Cell the game, from...2002? Where you're in a car park and a guy takes a leak in a corner and you sneak up and grab hold of him and Michael Ironside says some stuff in a cool way, and you feel awesome. Or like in Leon, where he takes put all those guys out in the beginning, like a ninja, because besides it being cool and cinematic if you're delivering a threat you've got to be frightening, show you're to be taken seriously. And besides it being more frightening to be holed up in a room with a gun, heavily breathing and you feel the cold metal of a knife press against your throat, the hitman invisible to you, it's also beneficial living a quiet life in New York not to reveal to gangsters and rich powerful people your identity.

So, here's how that scene should have played out; establish the hitman is important, but give him mystery by not revealing his exact features. Make sure he's the focus, not the guy being threatened, make sure the detail he provides is as irrelevant as it turns out to be. Would a hitman even sit next to a guy in a car and then plant his gun down? The guy is a CEO, he might have spent years training in ju jutsu, in his free time. Reveal your face? Maybe the CEO doesn't like being threatened, maybe he sends out a hit on you. All you get from the scene is that the hitman is played by a fairly well known actor and as such might be important, and that he's cocky and knows how to karate chop someone in the throat. Ultimately though, you don't come away thinking he's frighteningly sharp and tough, so if he has more scenes where he inevitability comes up against Affleck, then it's not an exciting proposition.

Despite all this, as Mark Kermode says, it's a mess but an enjoyable mess. It just completely fails to wring out as much from its attempts at suspense, and excitement as it could.

But the film is nowhere near as boring as this review, or as badly written, that you can be sure of.

[watmmisdead]

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1204340/

Tyrannosaur (2011)

 

8.75/10

[dr lopez]

got to see mononoke [subs] at the local cineplex for its 20th anniversary. wow what a treat. an epic film that ticks all the boxes. probably the "best" miyazaki although spirited away has more kooky visual charm. totoro is most special to me but this one is so beautiful and rich. i could die happy if i managed to make something as powerful as this- once... but miyazaki-san has done that probably a dozen times. what a man.

 

edit: the dubbed version is also really good im remembering. john di maggio as the body guard is great. just seems like bender.

Edited January 6, 2017 by dr lopez

[caze]

the girl on the train, entertaining enough yarn, but goddamn those were some of the dumbest motherfucking cops ever seen in the history of cinema.

[Lada Laika]

Just watched Raiders of the Lost Ark and Last Crusade. I used to think Crusade wasn't just second best but actually a good film, but holy shit, it's just Raiders as a cartoon. Raiders was made early enough that it still had that New Hollywood edge to it, and is fun but still has elements of stakes and danger while maintaining a consistent tone. Last Crusade is a fucking cartoon.

 

I haven't seen Temple of Doom in years but I doubt it's aged well, and I barely made it through Skull even with Rifftrax. So I guess there's only one good Indiana Jones movie, imo.

[dr lopez]

temple of doom is so racist lol

[Suffocate Peon]

James Richardson of football weekly guardian podcast-90s football Italia-BT sport champions league host-Jimbovision youtube film reviews fame reckons that Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is better than Temple of Doom, but it's an impossibility given 80s practical effects > 00s cgi effects.

[Guest bitroast]

temple of doom is a great film! 

last crusade is fun but it definitely has the On Stage vibe to it that kind of diminishes the films authenticity and makes it feel more like an indiana jones teenage mutant ninja turtles movie or something. i mean, they're all pretty great in their own ways but i think for me personally Temple of doom slides in second place. 

[Squee]

I'm gonna say something controversial... The Last Crusade is the best of the 3 Indy movies that exist. Crystal Skull doesn't exist.

[dr lopez]

best indy movie is spaghett and the quest for the golden treasure

[cwmbrancity]

James Richardson of 90s football Italia

 

 

the mainstay of many a sunday afternoon pickled comedown session, sadly missed

[auxien]

Into The Forest started out good but really fizzled after the first half. Was beyond bored the last quarter of the film. Two dead chickens out of ten.

 

 

Biggest villain in the movie is mold! BE SCAREd!