Films Recently Watched

[Guest boo]

Jupiter Ascending

 

Considering it's his first screenplay, Jaden Smith did a really good job on this.

Dunno what the fuck happened with text there but it was cool

[eugene]

^lol

 

the retreival (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2635006/) - 4/10 - too scripted and predictable, very cheap tv look. offers nothing new besides the unorthodox premise which the film doesn't capitalize on.

Edited February 5, 2015 by eugene

[usagi]

I just skimmed over the premise for Jupiter Ascending and I have to say that Mila Kunis as a "down-on-her-luck janitor" is the most improbable, unbelievable shit ever.

[Schlitze]

The Theory of Everything 9/10

My appreciation of James Marsh continues. Quite simply the best director in Britain, Shadow Dancer was very under-rated.

[cwmbrancity]

best director in Britain? thats quite a claim.....Peter Greenaway by a mile, + Ken Loach, Mike Leigh, Ben Wheatley, Shane Meadows plus many others........

 

Redmayne can join F Gump, Rainman, that 1 with Eric whatshisface as Rocky Dennis,,,,a-ha Mask, Billy Bob in Sling Blade, Nell w/Jodie Foster, Dead Man's Shoes, DDL in My Left Foot

[tec]

The Theory of Everything 9/10

My appreciation of James Marsh continues. Quite simply the best director in Britain, Shadow Dancer was very under-rated.

 

Just seen he is doing a film on Donald Crowhurst next, if you are intrigued watch the documentary Deep Water, ideally go in blind if you aren't familiar with Crowhurst, it will be fascinating.

Edited February 6, 2015 by tec

[eugene]

big hero 6 - i realize im not its target audience but i would probably hate it if i was 13 too. it's just the dullest, on-rails-disney-movie screenwriting with zero imagination as far as story develops, it feels like there's a template of acceptable, sterile, "no-risks-that will potentially-challange-our-audience-in-any-way" and completely predictable g-rated disney film that they recycle over and over with new films while changing only the general premise. utter wank.

[YEK]

Labyrinth- david bowie , jennifer connelly, art by brian froud, good times

[usagi]

Shame. excellent.

[Squee]

Fassbender's dick is pretty big.

[MadameChaos]

Robocop 8/10

 

wasn't expecting this to be any good as i grew up with the originals, however was pleasantly surprised and felt the film was in keeping with originals.

 

 

PS he gave me the 'orn

[Silent Member]

madam pls.

[MadameChaos]

[MadameChaos]

Fassbender's dick is pretty big.

 

[beerwolf]

Watched The Warriors the other night, second viewing since last seeing it about 100 years ago.

 

Classic cheese and very tasty indeed/10

[usagi]

Fassbender's dick is pretty big.

 

I was more surprised at the full-frontal from Carey Mulligan. and the general overabundance of bush, wtf... does nobody shave down there?

 

Watched The Warriors the other night, second viewing since last seeing it about 100 years ago.

 

Classic cheese and very tasty indeed/10

 

The Warriors is awesome.

[Business]

The Theory of Everything 9/10

My appreciation of James Marsh continues. Quite simply the best director in Britain, Shadow Dancer was very under-rated.

Shadow Dancer was really good, also really like The King. Marsh is hugely underrated, IMO.

[cwmbrancity]

Shame = style>content

[sunshine recorder]

the box trolls -pretty entertaining 7/10

[Suffocate Peon]

Big Eyes

 

I preferred the article I read about the real life story, and i preferred imagining what Tim Burton's film would be like as opposed to the one I watched. Biopics to me always seem precious, and films based on true events merely a run through of those events without illuminating them.

 

The best scene in the film is when Margaret Keane starts seeing big eyes everywhere while at the supermarket. Imagine that, keep that image stored because the film won't improve on your imagining of it. It's actually not badly executed, but it's still all so soft and wet and meek and too brief to make a real impression. It should be her nightmare. I don't feel it. I didn't feel much, It didn't seem like Tim Burton's heart was in it.

 

I think Tim Burton missed an opportunity to return to his BeetleJuice and Edward Scissorhands phase. I think the film should have been so incendiary and frenzied that the paintings would have been the dullest thing in it. I wanted the American suburbia of Scissorhands with the hands-on surrealness of Beetlejuice.

 

When I read the article I imagined Walter Keane to be fierce and brutal and domineering and really expected Christoph Waltz to be both charming and sinister, but he's sort of unbelievably false and then laughably false, and not actually scary. He'll turn up suddenly in some of the film's worst scenes and switch from liar to tantruming liar. It's pretty hopeless sometimes. Christoph Waltz is so hollow and one dimensional and actually annoying by the end of it that it kills the actor's schtick dead, i don't think i can watch him do his thing again after this. The film is so blunt and he's the bluntest thing in it.

 

Their husband and wife relationship is portrayed more evenly as I expected, Margaret jokes about how Walter is going to come up with a convincing lie about why he's painting children, she says 'oh you've painted yourself into a corner now', and he says 'you want heating this winter, help me out'. There's not enough tension or drama there.

 

The article I read made me picture a scene where Margaret is literally holed up in the attic/basement painting for 16 hours a day while Walter is living a celebrity lifestyle, I imagined their lives contrasting to the point where it becomes so sharp it is comical and unbelievable, but it doesn't go there. I imagined a scene where he's surrounded by girls at the pool outside their house, and the camera slowly pans through the rooms and walls of their expensive house before reaching Margaret in her squalor.

 

The film's reluctance to move into a more outlandish interpretation of the story doesn't mean it is subtle and well judged, just bland. I think Walter's face should have become more contorted the longer the film went on, his nose growing as the lie did, it becoming redder and sharper as he felt a stronger desire to grasp on to it. Him as an ogre, her as the princess locked up in her cell. Maybe that sounds rubbish, all told.

 

Apparently, the court scene was more outrageous than as portrayed in the film, and when you've got Christoph Waltz, having got to the point he's representing himself, asking himself a question then running up to the stand to answer it, over and over, it makes you think, what else happened, and why on Earth would you back away from the full strangeness of the reality?

 

4/10

 

 

Tokyo Tribe

 

This is a film where a grandma appears playing the decks and raps 'nobody is gelling any sheep tonight' and after checking other subtitles available you don't know if it is one misspelling or two or in fact none.

 

Given that I've been looking forward to seeing this since August, it's a massive disappointment. I didn't find it all that much fun. When I read about the premise, I expected the last 30 minutes of Why Don't You Play in Hell? stretched over 90 minutes, The Warriors and Streets of Rage influenced but with rapping in between. I wanted it to be my new favourite film. I wanted epic street fights, 30 man brawls between all these gangs and then everyone would just stop and start rapping, and then fight again, rap, fight, rap, fight. End. Best film ever.

 

The whole film feels like one big build up to a fight that never actually happens. There's a small scuffle. There's fights in between. But it doesn't deliver satisfying long fight sequences that are exciting and intense and I'm going to have to watch Rumble in the Bronx again for my street fighting fix. Or Big Trouble in Little China. The rhymes are really weak, music plays in the background throughout for about 50 minutes non stop, so it carries you through the film despite nothing actually happening. It just suggests something will, about 283 times.

 

The film opens with one long shot, Gasper Noe-like in how it rises and swirls around, but really the whole film feels like one long shot, and in Love Exposure i found that quite captivating, the kind of drunk hand held style, but in this I grew tired of it. And both films feel artificially extended, there isn't enough content to justify the lengths. Visually it's both wonderful? and (wonderfully) garish, and shares some similarities with Guilty of Romance in the fluorescent hues. It didn't need to be ambling and indulgent, it needed to be pulpy and fun. It didn't need the near constant sexism and people trying to rape any woman in their sight, it only needed to suggest they were baddies and needed to be beaten up.

 

There are fun moments, the man wearing a sideways mohawk, the cgi tank, the beat boxing girl servant. You could make it look like the best film ever in a cleverly edited trailer. I take whatever I can with Shion Sono, the surreal oddness can be enough sometimes, but being bored, struggling to stay awake in the afternoon and finding it tedious is the worst thing.

 

6/10

[QQQ]

I have no idea what the happened in Inherent Vice but I enjoyed it.

[Schlitze]

This was impressive, but the horror aspect is kinda overshadowed by the brilliantly scathing dissection of the loathsome hipster schtick. An actress who would do anything to get to the big time goes for a couple of auditions with some otherwordly producers who send her mind wandering into the sky about the possibilty of getting the lead in their upcoming horror film 'The Silver Scream' and break free of the hipsters who she feels are holding her back. The reality is she serves burgers and fries at a resturant and hangs out with some real ironic self absorbed doucebags who, in true hipster fashion believe that they're part of the film world too. We're introduced to them at a party where one of them is talking Poe lyrics over an electropop beat. They spend their days sitting around around taking photos with retro camera's and talking about non-existent scripts they have in the pipeline, it starts to grind down the aspiring actress, after a couple of successful auditions inspired by positive feedback from the casting agent she quits her waitress job only to come crawling back, where the tolerant boss (Pat Healy) tells her ''Look, i know we're not self aware and ironic enough for you, but this is my thing, do you want to be part of that?''. Depressed to be back where she started, she talks to the loser from the party who said he had a script, she meets him at his defunct RV which he lives in (it has a little library inside and a couch outside on a path) and they agree over ecstacy that she'll star in his film, knowing that he's a boring cliche with thick rimmed glasses a showreel like a pile of used toilet roll. Having previously being warned by the producer of 'The Silver Scream' that hipsters are talentless nobodies who sit around talking about doing things and try to make people believe they are part of something they're not and will never amount to anything apart from their shit part time jobs, she finds herself at a crossroads, does she make a sacrifice? Or does she stay hip?

[usagi]

that poster is rad.

[YEK]

just got back from jupiter ascending. holy crap that was bad. way too much content crammed into a movie, special effects over the top, acting crap, and that mila kunis, i could give a shit about her.

 

on the flip side, some cool imagery, , some of the story, and those hover boots... word.

[logakght]

Perfect Blue. Overrated. 8/10