[Poohbah (Gsq)]

This week I re-watched Hard Core Logo. I could talk about how much I love that film (and how much I would expect not to love that film) for days, but I won't. So you can be pleased about that.

I have just finished watching Rubber. Which is about a tyre (Robert) that can kill people with the power of its mind. Sometimes it is very slow, but it's worth sticking through those bits because it is also brilliant. It is massively strange and silly and I love the Sheriff character. I also love the opening bit about how things in films (as in life) happen for no reason. And so when at many points in the film I found myself asking 'But why....?' I would then chuckle and think 'No reason!' Also I love the split realities in the film. It reminded me a bit of the ending of Monty Python and the Holy Grail where they get arrested and suddenly you think 'hang on, are they trying to tell us that the whole film was set in the modern day?' I mean, it's not actually a lot like that at all. But it is what it reminded me of. £4.80-something well spent.

[Rachel Rose]

We watched a heartbreak of a movie last night. Human trafficking with UN involvement. The Whistleblower. I came away deeply sad/angry stunned at the world we live in. What bothers me most is the thought that things like this really happen. Somewhere out there women are being kidnapped, raped and brutalized. And there seems to be no way to stop this. It's a big money operation. My heart aches. There must be something we can do.

[joinee_doug]

Women of the Prehistoric Planet – 1966
Wendell Corey, John Agar, Merry Anders, Irene Tsu
A roving spaceship lands on a strange and distant planet with strangely earth-style plants and animals and finds remnants of a previous ship.
Totally misleading title – this is like a boring, extended (Kirk-era) Star Trek without the action. Just don’t expect very much. Stuart Margolin, later of ‘Rockford Files’, is in it too.

When Women Had Tails – 1970
Senta Berger
A sexy, tailed cavewoman is discovered by 7 horny cavemen.
Italian pre-hysterical sex farce. Great bad dubbing and Stooges-quality sound effects. Berger is pretty hot, but this is only very interesting in how completely crap it is. Music by Ennio Morricone.

[Worm]

The Girl With A Dragon Tattoo (Daniel Craig version)

Enjoyable, and a pretty good following of the book, but I'm really not sure this needed to be remade, as it was very similar to (although not as good as) the original Swedish version.

It certainly didn't exceed the original in any way, and in several ways was slightly too flashy and 'hollywood'

Definitely worth seeing if you haven't seen the original, but if you have - this isn't really going to bring anything new.

This post has been edited by Worm: 06 February 2012 - 09:41 AM

[Lethal Biddle]

 Worm, on 06 February 2012 - 09:39 AM, said:

The Girl With A Dragon Tattoo (Daniel Craig version)

Enjoyable, and a pretty good following of the book, but I'm really not sure this needed to be remade, as it was very similar to (although not as good as) the original Swedish version.

It certainly didn't exceed the original in any way, and in several ways was slightly too flashy and 'hollywood'

Definitely worth seeing if you haven't seen the original, but if you have - this isn't really going to bring anything new.

They did the same thing with 'Let The Right One In'. Holywood has the attitude that huge swathes of it's target audience won't watch foreign films. Unfortunately they are correct & so they remake films for them. But that just makes me look at these unecessary remakes & think "this film was made ESPECIALLY for idiots", which kind of disgusts me & makes me not want to watch them at all. Even though there's a chance they might be fine interpretations.

[Timothy Goose]

 Worm, on 06 February 2012 - 09:39 AM, said:

The Girl With A Dragon Tattoo (Daniel Craig version)

Enjoyable, and a pretty good following of the book, but I'm really not sure this needed to be remade, as it was very similar to (although not as good as) the original Swedish version.

It certainly didn't exceed the original in any way, and in several ways was slightly too flashy and 'hollywood'

Definitely worth seeing if you haven't seen the original, but if you have - this isn't really going to bring anything new.

[PJ Hannah B-R]

 Lethal Biddle, on 13 January 2012 - 11:59 AM, said:

Black Swan:
Meh. I think my expectations were too high for this. Vincent Cassell wasn't as interesting as he usually is & all the hype about it being really dark was obviously the babbling of people who don't really know the potential depths of darkness that can be reached. It was a lot more tame than I was expecting & I felt that it would have been much more interesting to witness Nina's descent into mania if she hadn't been so damaged to begin with. It all felt predictable, right down to the final twist.

Yep. Total horror by numbers. It gets top marks for the bit where she spins round and round and her wings appear. That's it.

[joinee_doug]

 Lethal Biddle, on 06 February 2012 - 11:15 AM, said:

They did the same thing with 'Let The Right One In'. Holywood has the attitude that huge swathes of it's target audience won't watch foreign films. Unfortunately they are correct & so they remake films for them. But that just makes me look at these unecessary remakes & think "this film was made ESPECIALLY for idiots", which kind of disgusts me & makes me not want to watch them at all. Even though there's a chance they might be fine interpretations.

Yup. Unless you bother to go to the one or two places in town that bother to show the originals, the attitude is (in dialect), "Wull, Ah paid 10 bucks fer mah ticket ann anuther 10 fer mah popcorn ann snacks...Ah don' wanna hafta READ annythin; whudda they expec'? 'Sides, them forrin ones usually got some titty in 'em an' Ah don' wunt the kids seein' that."

[joinee_doug]

World Without End – 1955
Hugh Marlowe, Nancy Gibbs
American astronauts time-warp into a post-apocalyptic world.
Filmed in CinemaScope and Technicolor, this still features the standard “future” sets and giant, lumbering spiders. Not that remarkable except for the divided societies of an evolved civilized enclave having to ward off de-evolved mutants and the women are all beautiful and much younger than the men somehow, and have costumes designed by Alberto Vargas.

Day the World Ended – 1956
Richard Denning, Lori Nelson, Mike Connors
Conflict in a survivalist cabin in a post-apocalyptic world.
A varied group converge on a remote cabin, and once they figure their position, have to work together.
Another Roger Corman moneymaker, this was made for $65,000, and the production values are not all that less than “World Without End”. The group is a retired sea captain, his daughter, a geologist, a dying radiation victim, a wiseguy and his moll, and a prospector and his burro. They fight off the invading mutants, and it ends pretty much as you’d expect.

Spoiler

The twist is that since the movie starts with the end of the world, it ends with "The Beginning".

[joinee_doug]

The Three Faces of Eve - 1957
Joanne Woodward, Lee J Cobb, David Wayne
Psychiatrist discovers that his female patient has three personalities.
Oscar for Joanne playing a housewife/party girl/sophisticate. Decent Hollywood "psychology" picture - Woodward is good, but much of the rest is uneven or ordinary. The event that may have triggered the problem is pretty weird, though, which is good; definitely out of the ordinary.

Gregory's Girl - 1979
Gordon John Sinclair, Dee Hepburn, Clare Grogan
Awkward teenager develops a crush on the new striker.
The box says, "Smoldering teenage passion explodes into a lovers game of musical chairs". I love that this film is much more reality-based that almost every teen rom-com that followed. It's about that time of life where romance (and a lot of life) is mostly fakery and conjecture - that period from roughly 15 or so until, oh, about 70-75 ...
I also love the little (must be) self-amusements that Bill Forsyth put in - the Fly-Mos. the wandering penguin, and my favorite, when our hero steps out of the house, inexplicably greeted by a quiet horde of toddlers playing.

[Rachel Rose]

Take Shelter

An amazing film. I kept rooting for this guy. I wanted him to be right.

The final spoken words gave me massive chills. Simple yet powerful.

Anyone who likes quirky, sci fi, end of the world psychological thrillers will like this.

[joinee_doug]

Les Miserables – 1935
Fredric March, Charles Laughton, Cedric Hardwicke
Rags-to-riches story of a petty thief.
Best-regarded of the versions – good cast, performances and pacing. It doesn’t bog down, and set things out nicely. It doesn’t really get mired down in subtext or heaviosity, but at least it gives you a nice full film experience; it clocks in at about 1-3/4 hours. Apparently it varies some from the novel, but not enough to go ape about. Excellent picture – Hollywood could actually turn out the classics once upon a time. For those keeping score, Laughton made two other pictures that year; Mutiny on the Bounty, and Ruggles of Red Gap, both very much worth seeing and classics in their own rights.

Simon of the Desert – 1964
Written/directed by Luis Bunuel
Simon, solitary (Spanish-speaking) stanchion-stander, stood six years, six months, six days steadfastly.
As a pillar-stander, Simon is tempted by the Devil (in female guises) several times. It’s an odd film with several interesting facets, but at 45 minutes, it’s only about half there due to lack of funding, and it ends rather abruptly with Simon contemplating Atomic Rock ‘n’ Roll in a mid-1960s disco. This copy also suffered from white-on-light subtitles (shouldn’t be a problem for Spanish-speakers, though).

This post has been edited by joinee_doug: 26 February 2012 - 11:02 PM

[joinee_doug]

The Girl on a Motorcycle - 1968
Marianne Faithfull, Alain Delon
New bride leaves her husband behind for a rendezvous. With Death!!
The young Marianne Faithfull naked in a fur-lined leather catsuit. Riding a big motorbike. Cheated out of multiple Oscars.
(If you grow bored of the simplistic plot, make a game of counting up the hackneyed production techniques and marvel at the stock footage. The bar's not set too high, but it IS better than Mick's "Ned Kelly".)

But really: Marianne - fur-lined catsuit - big motorbike. Think about it.

This post has been edited by joinee_doug: 08 March 2012 - 01:23 AM

[joinee_doug]

Gorgo - 1961
Bill Travers, William Sylvester
A prehistoric monster is captured off the Irish coast and brought to London to be exhibited to crowds at a funfair. Boffins realize that this is merely a 50' toddler, and that his parent has tracked his scent over the water. A 200-foot Lady Gorgo shows up to lay waste to London. Not really too bad for the genre, but not much else you can do with it.

Project Moonbase - 1953
Donna Martell, Hayden Rourke Written by Robert Heinlein
In future 1970, an astronette and crew are stranded on the moon by a Commie saboteur.
Originally made as a serial, but edited down to a short feature (63 min). I like a lot of the early Future films - rocket ship attire is T-shirt, shorts, and a bathing cap helmet. Offices have cordless phones, but the office is still Mid-Century or Art Deco; Men's suits are still early-1950s, and Brooklyn still had a baseball team, an anachronism that plays a key part in the plot (the Dodgers moved to LA in 1958, way before the 1970 setting). But there is a female president of the US, and Donna, pretty cute in her T-shirt and shorts, gets married on the moon via satellite. The Feel-Good Hit of Spring!

[GJ Dandy David]

I rewatched The Help over the weekend. I still think it's a very powerful movie with some fantastic individual performances. We also watched Easy A last night (my flatmate's choice). It wasn't too bad and it was another pretty decent performance by Emma Stone. I think I may developing a bit of a crush on her...

[joineecleary]

The most recent four things I watched:

The Devil Inside, a exorcism/found footage movie that made me shout at the screen. There is almost nothing good about it.
Dreams of a life, a 1h30 documentary that was recently on at a few cinemas.
Re-watched A Schoolgirl's Diary (1972), a North Korean film which is notable for having shared distribution with France.
Re-watched Notorious (1946), a Hitchcock film with his most hilarious cameo ever. It sort of annoyed me that the actors didn't really seem like people.

I've written a bit about the first three:
http://williamwozzec...9/dreamsofalife
http://williamwozzec...ilinside-review
http://williamwozzec...diary-dprk-2007

Next three things I want to watch are Hunger Games, Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, and My Homeland (1949) if I can find a subtitled copy : )

[Lethal Biddle]

 GJ Dandy David, on 21 March 2012 - 11:26 AM, said:

We also watched Easy A last night (my flatmate's choice). It wasn't too bad and it was another pretty decent performance by Emma Stone. I think I may developing a bit of a crush on her...

We watched that the other week. Also not my choice. In fact, I thought it was going to be shit & it wasn't which made me quite enjoy it. Low expectations really improve an average film.

[Lethal Biddle]

Blue Valentine:

Really quite good. Timmy recommended it because of his Ryan Gosling crush... But he's not entirely wrong. This & 'Drive' more than make up for how shit 'Lars & The Real Girl' was. 'Crazy Stupid Love' & 'Half Nelson' to go.
It's a very slow tragedy, almost torturously suspenseful at times, even though you know what's going to happen most of the way through. It's just a really sad fly on the wall observation of two people falling out of love, broken up by flashbacks to the intensity of the romance when they got together. I enjoyed it while I was watching it, but not immensely. It was only at the very ending when it all hit me & I realised how powerful it was. Good film.

[joineecleary]

I saw The Hunger Games on Friday. I'll post my review once I've tidied it up.

[joinee_doug]

Spider Baby - 1964
Lon Chaney, Carol Ohmert, Sid Haig
The family chauffeur watches over a trio of demented inbred orphans.
The conflict arises when other members of the family arrive to lay claim to the run-down estate. Another Corman classic, made for $65,000 in 12 days, director Jack Hill makes the most of the set and his actors. The creepiness of the plot is offset by a little trademark black humor, as the low budget makes creativity a necessity. Corman carved out his own niche of low-budget classics heavy on implication (in the filmmaking) and sensationalism (in the plots and promotion) and in the process gave directors like Jonathan Demme, Francis Coppola, Ron Howard, et al a foot in the door. Lon Chaney sings the title song here and Mantan Moreland has a small part as delivery man/first victim.

[Joinee Hathorn]

I finally got around to watching Senna (thanks to Sky Atlantic).

I fully echo all comments of, it's a must watch. It is. It's great. I never really liked Senna, I presume that the European media was a bit pro-Prost and anti-Senna, but now I'm definitely pro-Senna.

[Platinum Joinee West]

 Joinee Hathorn, on 29 March 2012 - 07:58 PM, said:

I finally got around to watching Senna (thanks to Sky Atlantic).

I fully echo all comments of, it's a must watch. It is. It's great. I never really liked Senna, I presume that the European media was a bit pro-Prost and anti-Senna, but now I'm definitely pro-Senna.

We watched this too. Had no idea about any of the people involved as I have absolutely no interest in racing whatsoever. But it was fantastic. I may ave gotten dt in my eye at several points. Especially ratzenberger for some reason...

[Lethal Biddle]

Crazy, Stupid Love:

Pretty damn good! I didn't have high expectations, but thoroughly enjoyed it. Pretty funny & a bit beautiful & a bit sad. And Ryan Gosling is HOT. I mean, I would totally #!$& him in this film. Wow.

[joinee_doug]

Dillinger - 1945
Lawrence Tierney, Elisha Cook, Jr
Straightforward gangster pic of Big John, through to his demise outside the Biograph Theater in Chicago.
Early Lawrence Tierney film, one of many hoodlum movies of his checkered career. Nothing too special about this; he's probably most known for his role in Reservoir Dogs.

[joinee_doug]

Black and White in Black and White

The Defiant Ones - 1958
Tony Curtis, Sidney Poitier
Two convicts, distrustful of each other and manacled together, flee a Southern chain-gang.
Lots of Oscar noms, won a few, and established Poitier as a star. Pretty decent, if heavy-handed. I'm not a big Curtis fan, but he's more subtle here in one of his better performances. Also stars Lon Chaney, Claude Akins, Whit Bissell.

Odds Against Tomorrow - 1959
Harry Belafonte, Robert Ryan
An ex-con tries to put his bigotry aside for one big bank job.
This has an excellent title sequence, and slowly builds into really solid picture. I don't think I've seen Ryan where he doesn't play a miserable bag of s**t, but he's always solid. Like Lee Marvin, one of the more liberal actors in Hollywood who got good roles contrary to his character. Also features Ed Begley, Shelley Winters, and Gloria Grahame. Really well done, but kind of craps out at the end.


Basic summary of both: "Two men, one black, one white, find they must put aside their prejudices and work together to achieve their mutual goal."

This post has been edited by joinee_doug: 13 April 2012 - 09:24 PM

[Rachel Rose]

We saw My Week With Marilyn last Friday and tonight is Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy with Gary Oldman.


I really liked Marilyn, but since I love Judi Dench and Derek Jacobi, I would have enjoyed it for them alone.

[GJ Dandy David]

Coyote Ugly was a pretty easy watch, enjoyed that one and really liked the actress that played LIl.

[Joinee Hathorn]

Attack the block Loved it, the cast are really good.

[joinee_doug]

The Raven - 1963
Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre, Vincent Price, Jack Nicholson
Directed by Roger Corman, written by Richard Matheson
A retired conjurer finds himself in a war with another 15th c. magician, over a woman.
Silly but entertaining "treatment" of Poe's classic (in name only, really); Karloff and Lorre are past their primes, but still quite good. They have fun with it, Lorre especially - apparently he ad-libbed much of his part. Kind of scattershot, but still fun - Price is good and it's fun to see Nicholson when he was starting out.

[Joinee Hathorn]

The Wrestler, not really what I was expecting, but really what I should have been expecting... it is a Darren Aronofsky after all! Mickey Rourke is really excellent in it, not at all what I expected.

[Hebba Homemaker]

Jonah Hex - kept waiting for this movie to start... then it ended. Really rather disappointing especially considering John Malkovich and Michael Fassbender(until now, never seen him make a bad movie choice) were playing the bad guys. It was a DC Comic apparently and possibly it relies on too much pre-knowledge but it just lacked everything for me, and even supposedly sexy Megan Fox couldnt save it for him.

I have my week with Marilyn sitting so may have to give it a whirl if Rachel likes it
TTSS was good but a bit full on for me, its one of those films I think you have to be in the mood to sit and concentrate on nothing else for the duration, something I find I am less and less inclined to do.

[joinee_doug]

The Land That Time Forgot – 1975
Doug McClure, Susan Penhaligon
Survivors of a torpedoed ship are taken to Caprona, the land that time forgot.
Set during the First World War, there is some effort to preserve the antipathy between the ‘guests’ and the crew of the U-boat. Doe-eyed Susan alternates between concerned and cute and fits pretty well here. Trivia : Early on in her career, she was flatmates with Peter Hammill of Van der Graaf Generator.

The People That Time Forgot – 1977
Patrick Wayne, Doug McClure, Sarah Douglas
An expedition sets out to find McClure’s character from the first movie.
Silly, forced sequel that lacks even the logic of its predecessor. One of the people that time forgot learned English from McClure, and evidently, Time remembered intermittently, as there are groups of people at different levels of development. There’s a “romance” of sorts jammed in there between Patrick (John’s son) and Sarah, as well. Forgettable, if you bother to see it in the first place.

[Rachel Rose]

Friday night we watched Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Tears were shed. Lovely, touching movie.


I just finished watching Mission:Impossible, Ghost Protocol.

Hmm. Those chase scenes were loooooooooooooooooooooooooooong. And loooooooooooooooooooooong.

But, there was the amazing presence of Simon Pegg, so all is forgiven.


Except the length of the chase scenes. Especially that sandstorm crap. What a load!

[GJ Drought]

Avengers assemble

Never thought id say this, but straight into my top ten! as action/comedy goes its just amazing, and has done all the egos justice!

[Captain K]

Beloved (Les bien-aimés)

Caught this just because it was what was on at the local indie cinema, and I knew I liked Catherine Deneuve, but without knowing anything about it. So I had no idea before watching it, but this is almost a musical! It manages to have more standard scripted parts than songs, so doesn't feel like Moulin Rouge, for example, but has plenty of lengthy in-the-plot scenes that are just sung. It works. The soundtrack has its own pace that adds a bit of space for the characters to explain things to the audience without the dialogue being rushed. And when the chorus gets repetitive, it's nice to be able to concentrate on the faces without having to read the subtitles! The song choices are quite witty, one of them owing something to the Smiths' "Heaven knows I'm miserable now" for example.

The whole thing is very French, with plausible, gritty (but always well-dressed!) characters. At first, the central character is a woman who almost casually becomes a prostitute. We are looking back into her life, and watch her grow older over many years. Then for a while the attention moves to her daughter, and to some extent her issues with her absentee father. Later we see both of them together, with the daughter grown-up, and as they look back to events and people of the past, we end up with the mother character on screen in two of her "ages" at once; the present-day one able to watch the past one. There's a good bit of breaking the fourth wall in the way they look out at us, too, but it's never for comic effect. In fact, the empathy that builds up is used very effectively, in a hard way, later on. Can't say more without spoilering that. But they develop the themes of family, love, and loyalty.

One lovely touch is that the daughter is played by Chiara Mastroianni, who's the real-life daughter of Catherine Deneuve -- who plays her mother! So the chemistry is just right.

Melancholy, but I loved it.

[joinee_doug]

If you haven't seen it already, Cath is pretty good in this one as well, from nearly 50(!) years ago...

[joinee_doug]

Five Easy Pieces – 1970
Jack Nicholson, Karen Black
The black sheep of a musical family journeys home to visit his ailing father.
Plot-wise, there’s nothing much that stands out, but it’s an excellent character-study film with great performances by some actors just then hitting in Hollywood that would go on and do more, including Ralph Waite and Sally Struthers. Toni Basil also gets a credited role, and Tammy Wynette’s “Stand By Your Man” and “D-I-V-O-R-C-E” are featured.

the famous diner scene- (Toni's the short-haired girl in the back seat)

[joinee_doug]

Mothra - 1962
Beautiful, 6"-tall twin girls (the Alilenas) guarding a sacred egg, are abducted from Infant Island by an unscrupulous showman. Big mistake.
The girls (played by Yumi and Emi Ito, 'The Peanuts') travel in a small gilded carriage and are able to translate different languages. The story's not terribly complex, but filmed pretty well and parts have a kind of David Lynch-like feel. There is also bonus maniacal laughter from the villain and his chief henchman. Really quite something.

[Jon Cassidy]

Hey all sorry I've not been here in ages. I've got some great news! I managed to meet Danny for a radio interview!.

Tell me all what you think of it and be honest please!

Lethal Biddle, on 01 March 2008 - 01:35 PM, said:

Meh.

John Rambo was ok. Better than II & III, but that's not saying much. I still think the best option is to watch First Blood & then pretend the others don't exist in what I like to call "the Terminator 3 technique".

Shoot Em Up was better but still not great. Good for some mindless silly action, but it did feel a number of times like it was just trying to be Grosse Point Blank & failing.
[EDIT] - Actually, having re-watched Shoot Em Up a couple of times I've decided it's awesome. I clearly had sense-of-humour-itis when I first watched it because as a mindless pisstake of all things twee & actiony, it's brilliant.


Juno however was awesome, great acting, great script, a great character piece & a fantastic soundtrack.

[EDIT] - More recently I've watched:

Taxidermia - Excellent I thought. Really rather disturbing in parts & quite odd, but very, very funny for it. Nice idea of following three generations (sort of) of a family.

Innocence - Interesting & quite clever. But I wouldn't really say it was that entertaining. I doubt I'll ever want to watch it again.

The Cottage - Meh. Typical 'lost in the wilderness with a nutter' horror movie. With the slight advantage of English wit & irony.