Reservoir Dogs.
Mr Orange's leather coat's still the best thing about it!
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Reservoir Dogs.
Mr Orange's leather coat's still the best thing about it!
Stayed up late to watch 'Twilight Zone: The Movie'
The Bourne Identity (Roger Young, 198-eight)
These two films were made as a tv mini-series and are more closely related to Robert Ludlum's book, in which a CIA agent -David Webb- undergoes plastic surgery to look like a notorious pathological killer who served in Vietnam called Jason Bourne. The aim is to assassinate high ranking politicians and claim them to be the work of Carlos the Jackal in an attempt to coax the Jackal out of hiding and kill him. In one attempted assassination at sea Bourne is shot, and washes up on the shore of the south of France having lost his memory but with a Swiss bank account tattooed on his body.
These two films bear no relation to the -by comparison- dazzling version by Doug Liman with Matt Damon. Instead, Richard Chamrberlain, who was in his early 50s when the films were made, spends most of his time looking bewildered and confused, even when he finds out who he is. His attempts to have sex with Jaclyn Smith are risible even if she doesn't look that bad for a 40-something. A slew of English actors pretending to be French sounding like they stepped out of a lost episode of 'Allo 'Allo make even this cheap production look amateurish ditto Peter Vaughan with a vaudeville German accent. It is fitting that Jaclyn Smith is in this as the films are pitched somewhere between Charlie's Angels and a discarded episode of Columbo. At one point the action is supposed to take place in Paris but the cars in the street have Marseille licence plates. I wanted to see it to compare it with the later version, but I didn't think it was this bad. It really is dire. No wonder Chamberlain retired to Hawaii. I discovered he was gay in the early 70s long before he came out, and when he still had a career, but he never could act. I found myself intruding on that photo shoot he did on the terraces of the South Bank complex, when he had his hair permed and looked like he wanted someone younger than the photographer. I was not aroused, and went on my way.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094791/...f_=tt_ov_st_sm
The Equalizer, pretty good.
Sex Tape.... It's OK. For a few laughs. And a bit of escapism.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fQvyfn3wbE
Stavros, how can we be sure you're not letting this very personal encounter with Richard Chamberlain get in the way of your otherwise impeccable artistic judgment?:)Quote:
Originally Posted by Stavros
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIxMMv_LD5Q
fantastic.
Two of the AA nominations which caught my eye, Interstellar for Best Sound Editing and Best Sound Mixing.
As Stavros mentioned in an earlier post, the sound in this movie was awful. I guess Nolan was trying to do some artsy-fartsy thing with sound and the Academy seemed to have bought it.
I just saw The Boy Next Door. Ridiculous movie , but I just like looking at Jennifer Lopez. Got to see her in panties and bra, but it's messed up that they showed the guys butt, but they didn't show hers. LOL She looks amazing for a 40 year old woman.
The Maze Runner
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwwbhhjQ9Xk
Perfect for the whole family!
I know this is the thread for movies but I am not sure if there is an active tv show thread. Just started watching Veep with Julia Louis Dreyfus..the show was created by Armando Iannucci who also directed the movie In the Loop. The interesting thing is he's a Brit who created a show about an American vice presidential candidate and her bumbling, incompetent staff. I have no way of knowing if it's realistic, but I think it's hilarious. Highly recommend.
The Odd Angry Shot
Australian SAS in Vietnam.
Very well told, and a realistic picture of the operational story, with a couple of really well researched and shot jungle patrol segments...
http://www.hungangels.com/vboard/sho...ighlight=showsQuote:
Originally Posted by broncofan
;)
I watched 30 minutes of Inherent Vice then had to punch out. Joaquin Phoenix is a mumbling incoherent annoyance (Walk The Line, The Master, Her) who basically emotes through his nostrils and the surrounding cast can't prop up his lazy shit. I wish the Hollywood world would stop trying to force us to believe that we 'just don't understand his genius'.
LUCY - With Scarlett Johansson and Morgan Freeman. Pretension and failure on an epic scale. If you decide to endure the last twenty minutes of this hopeless mess you will regret it.
I'm enduring it as we speak...love it...but then...Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy W
I love Scarlett J.
It is, of course, bonkers.
I have no issue with that. The Rum and Coke is helping :-)
I watched 'The Golden Dream' last night and think it is a magnificent film. In turns it's joyous and thoroughly devastating, an incredible 'on the road' human story about a group of Guatemalan kids trying to make their way up to the promised land of the USA. It feels almost documentary in its execution, beautifully scripted and shot and wonderfully naturalistic performances from the principles. I couldn't recommend it highly enough. It's the best thing I've seen in a long time and a wonderful alternative to the Hollywood popcorn driven drivel. If you don't feel for these kids and have a wrench in your guts, you have no guts, if you don't have a tear in your eye at the end of this, you're a better man that me. (maybe not?)
http://www.imdb.com/...3/?ref_=nv_sr_1
Was it that lovely one on Hawthorne a couple of blocks up from 'The Barley Mill'? That used to be my local. Really nice homely gaff at the time (1993-4)
I have not seen many films in the last month as I watched every episode of all six seasons of Homicide: Life on the Streets (1993-1999) one after the other.
However, now back to regular films and
Nightcrawler (Dan Gilroy 2014)
Jake Gyllenhaall must be the most under-rated actor in American films these days, he always puts in an intelligent performance in interesting films, not least as a creep in this film. He rarely blinks in the entire film, and is superb as an absolute egotist whose only moral imperative is to improve his situation regardless of other people, a strategy that leads to devastating results in a film in which the pursuit of some kind of existential recognition of value as a person is linked to uncensored footage of crime scenes where the footage is linked to what the broadcasters think the public want to see, the ratings, and thus the revenue. A disturbing, cruel film but one filmed with eerie lighting an make up, at times Gyllenhaal looks like a spectre. Recommended
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8kYDQan8bw
Quote:
Originally Posted by Stavros
Good for you. That's one of the best police dramas ever made, and one of my favorite shows ever. The people responsible for creating Homicide went on to make The Wire for HBO.
Imitation Game
It's about Alan Turing, the British mathematician who is a founder of the theory of computation and mathematical logic in general, who wrote on the question of whether machines can think (inventing the Turing Test which the Voight-Kampf test alludes to in Blade Runner), helped break the Enigma code in World War II and was convicted of being gay in an age when there was a law against it (for which he was sentence to chemical castration and was probably the motivation for his eventual suicide). The movie focused on his codebreaking days at Bletchley and his conviction for engaging in sex with a male prostitute.
It was worth the ticket, but it struck me in places of being unfair both to Turing and co-workers. (He probably wasn't quite as stereotypically aloof and his co-workers probably weren't quite so daft as I think the movie makes out.) One of the interesting things about breaking a code is figuring out how to use the information to which you're now privy without letting the enemy know you've broken their code. Apparently the best strategy is to let a lot of bad things go down even if you know ahead of time that they're going to happen. The movie led me to believe that it was Turing who was making these sorts of decisions (or at least recommending them directly to MI6 bypassing the hierarchy of command) based on statistical analysis. It may have been true, but it strikes me as being somewhat beyond the pay grade of a code breaker. So I wasn't so sure in the end what was true and what wasn't.
One of the other brilliant minds at Bletchley Park, but not movie material-Quote:
Originally Posted by trish
"But it was Harry Hinsley who, at the end of April 1941, identified the Enigma system’s fatal flaw. The same codebooks used on German U-Boats were also aboard their unprotected trawlers. These trawlers, transmitting weather reports to the Germans, also received naval Enigma messages. Hinsley helped initiate a programme of seizing Enigma machines and keys from German weather ships, significantly aiding Bletchley Park’s breaking of German Naval Enigma."
http://thebloxwichtelegraph.com/2012...harry-hinsley/
I think The Wire ranks as the best of the American tv drama series of recent vintage, the kind of drama that the UK no longer produces comparing in the past a narcotics-related 1980s drama series Traffik (remade by Steven Soderbergh as a feature film, Traffic) and the BBC nuclear power drama Edge of Darkness was brilliant. Since then UK drama has produced nothing of substance. I liked seeing some of The Wire actors in the series but I think the impetus of the series faded in the sixth series and it was never the same without Melissa Leo and Andre Braugher. I was never sure about Al Giardello's Sicilian family background, or the bi-sexual Bayliss even though he never seemed to have a girlfriend, and it is a great pity to see a talent like Andre Braugher in the juvenile rubbish of Brooklyn Nine-Nine.Quote:
Originally Posted by maxpower
Divergent (Neil Burger, 2014)
I see this as being one of those films which occupies the same niche as The Hunger Games, and The Maze Runner. An autocracy established after some devastating war, divides society into manageable blocs, be it the productive (or non-productive) sectors in the Hunger Games, or the social groups of Divergent. The idea that social order is best managed through the strict demarcation of social groups is at least as old as Plato's Republic, can be found in some form in Hobbes' Leviathan, and is clearly needed in Orwell's 1984 and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. In the latter two novels, as in the films the key figure is a rebel, with the two films opting for a young woman as the rebel and would-be saviour though neither starts out with this intention.
In both films, a regime of violence, we are led to believe, can only be challenged and overthrown by violence, a grim post 9/11 scenario which seems to have added weight in the face of IS even though the record of using military force against military force in recent times is not good.
It is hard to know if there is a Christian evangelist agenda in these films although it does seem to be there -both heroines are it seems destined to lead, while both opt not to engage in sexual intercourse at any level, suggesting a level of purity that is linked to a redeemer figure being in some way apart from the others.
There are too many cliches and plot holes in Divergent to make it anything other than light entertainment, and though she is as tall as Jennifer Lawrence, and just as pleasing to look at, Shailene Woodley lacks charisma, which Lawrence has in abundance. The male lead, Theo James is an English actor with a terrible American accent, as is also the case with Kate Winslet- why Americans can't be hired for these roles is beyond me.
You can take the Divergent test here, if you want, but as I came out Divergent I think most people would too.
http://divergentthemovie.com/aptitudetest
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sutgWjz10sM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Stavros
I second this but with fewer big words ;)
watched Divergent the other night...as above.. But some nice muscles in it too :)
Cx
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukAb-ymiiY0 i feel pride and shame i was part of this scean
blackout were shit when they produced there own songs the old mix albums of hard house and hardcore mixes where good shit
Pretty much agree with everything being said about H:LotS, Imitation Game and Divergent. Thanks for the review on Nightcrawler, I'll have to catch that as I agree about Gyllenhaal being under-appreciated. Although I'm guessing part of this is by design as he's chosen some interesting movies to be a part of and hasn't, to date, opted for the easy buck by being cast as the lastest comic book hero.
Stavros, thanks for your earlier rec of Mr Turner. A very good movie.
Citizenfour (2014 - currently on HBO)
No matter what your opinion of Edward Snowden is, especially in regards to the complicated politics of his NSA revealings, you will likely have a different opinion of him after seeing this documentary.
Laura Poidras intuited beforehand that what Snowden was about to hand her and fellow famous web-journalist, Glenn Greenwald, was going to be huge. So she got Snowden to agree to allow a camera to roll through the entire process. And the result is pretty fascinating. Snowden seems like the classic ordinary man (think of any character played by Jimmy Stewart) who stumbles upon all this NSA spying, struggles with the morality of it all, and then makes a very calculated decision to sacrifice himself, with eyes wide open, by revealing this NSA program. Although Snowden doesn't dive into the specifics of what he foresees as the rest of his life, it can be inferred that he's ready to spend it in exile in a place like Russia, or perhaps a worse country; or, alternatively, be captured by the US or its allies and spend most of the rest of his life behind bars. I realize a lot of people feel he's a traiter or gloryhound or just a plain idiot, but the guy has guts.
Just watched Skeleton Twins with Bill Hader & Kristen Wiig.
A bit depressing but damn good!
http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/i...skeletontwins/
Quote:
Originally Posted by Odelay
He was at one time strongly considered for both Spiderman and Batman. The one easy-buck movie he did star in, Prince of Persia, bombed terribly.
I don't see him as an action hero, and I am not surprised about Prince of Persia, it was dire.Quote:
Originally Posted by maxpower
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (David FIncher, 2011)
This was broadcast on tv last night. I was aware of the reputation of the book, did not previously know that there are two film versions, one Swedish, this one sort-of American. I am not a fan of most of Fincher's films, and this is just as bad as his others (eg, Fight Club). There is a story, and not an interesting one, and a sub-plot, even less interesting. As is often the case in murder mysteries, the truth is facing the investigators but they can't see it. Add in all the usual tropes about religion and mass murder (Christianity masquerading as Islam?), the rich and the powerful, and yawn. I shall be polite and make no comment on the 'acting'. Let's just say that when it comes to Sweden, there was Ingmar Bergman, and Ingrid Bergman, and leave it at that.
Continuum (Richie Mehta, 2013)
For some reason this film is known in Canada and the USA as I'll Follow You Down, which is probably a good way to kill a movie before its been released. The film concerns a physicist who works out the theoretical possibility of travelling through time via a wormhole, builds a time machine on the basis of the theory, and travels back from the year 2000 to Princeton in 1946 in order to tell Albert Einstein that he has worked out the theoretical possibility of travelling through time via a wormhole and has built a time machine and.... Unfortunately, an unforeseen event -in addition to the fact that Einstein is not at home when called upon and the brilliant time-travelling professor doesn't go to his office on campus- means that he cannot return to the year 2000. Disconsolate, his wife commits suicide, but twelve years later, his son, who is, yes you guessed it, a genius physicist, inherits his father's papers from grandad (also a brilliant physicist or mathematician, as if that mattered) and works out the theoretical possibility of travelling through time via a wormhole, builds the machinery that can do it, and travels travel back to Princeton in 1946 and tell his father to Go Home Now, dad! Then something happens which is a spoiler so I won't reveal it, but it does rather confirm this as one the least satisfactory time-travel films I have seen, although Looper was on television last night and I gave up after half an hour because it is incomprehensible or just plain stupid.
To say the film has plot holes more improbable than worm holes may be a fact of physics and/or cosmology. For example, Professor Dad who seems to have no students, no lectures and other than his father-in-law no colleagues, has a large basement room in Princeton in which he can build a time machine without anyone on campus knowing, neither cleaners nor security staff. His family live in Toronto -and why not? Everyone in this film is brilliant, and nice, because everyone is nice in Canada. But why anyone would want to travel as far away as possible from Gillian Anderson I don't know. Another dvd for the charity shop.
The Foxcatcher
This film outlines the relationship between the eccentric billionaire John Dupont and the celebrated American wrestlers Mark and Dave Schultz. While it is an interesting real life drama, it does not make for a very good film. If you know how this story ends because you've read about the real life characters, the movie only provides very slow, occasionally tense build-up to that ending. Steve Carrell's strong performance as John Dupont does not justify sitting through two hours, where the only thing that really happens you can read about in the newspaper articles from that time.
On the weekend: Batman Begins... which is quite good:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=vak9ZLfhGnQ
Louis CK Hilarious
A Most Wanted Man (Gunther Bachmann, 2014)
A spy caper taken from a book by John Le Carre and set in Hamburg. A competent film that doesn't flag, but which doesn't really catch fire either. That the main focus of the film spends most of his time muttering or flying paper aeroplanes into plastic partition does not give depth to this tepid movie. In fact, towards the end of it I realised I could not remember the name of it, and doubt I shall remember much about it in the weeks and months to come.
:clover:
I just saw Furious 7 . This is just about the most ridiculous movie I have ever seen. In the beginning Dwayne Johnson ( The Rock ) falls out of a 6 story window and lands on top of a car with the woman he's holding falling on top of him andhe survives, with just a broken arm. This scene was realistic compared to the rest of this movie. I've seen Looney Toons that made more sense than this film. I didn't expect much, but I am a big fan of Michelle Rodriques and I also heard that Thai martial arts star Tony Jaa was in it. Jaa's scenes were not up to par with his work in On Bak, etc. Vin Diesel has to be the worst actor in the world. Oh well, it'll make a ton of money and I guess I'm getting old, but I just don't get it. Sad about Paul Walker though. At least he doesn't have to be in crap like this anymore.
on DVD, Django unchained, for the 10th time. don't mind, i love it.
Just watched Fury. It was ok.