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Posted: |
Jan 26, 2020 - 2:34 AM
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By: |
Tall Guy
(Member)
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Micmacs - 9/10
Third or fourth viewing, still a lovely but edgy and very clever film. Jean-Pierre Jeunet directs Dany Boon as Bazil, who loses his father to a landmine and as a misfit adult is accidentally shot in the head while managing a video store. Thus a perpetual victim of the armament industry, he establishes that the two arms manufacturers responsible for the hardware occupy sites facing each other, and together with a disparate band of friends that he’s fallen in with, resolves to get his revenge. Like Amelie, part of the joy is the characterisation, and it’s matched (again like Amelie) by the sinewy plot. The music is a joy, Raphael Beau and some Max Steiner harking back to Bazil’s love of old films.
A very French film, I don’t know if there’s an English dub but you have to watch it in the original language with subtitles to get the maximum atmosphere from it.
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Posted: |
Jan 26, 2020 - 1:19 PM
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By: |
Xebec
(Member)
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Wildlife
9/10
Paul Dano directed and co-written family drama set in the 1950's. I really enjoyed it. It has great acting from Carey Mulligan and Jake Gyllenhal and looks very nice. The score is by someone called David Lang, who i had never heard of before, but i really liked it. It is quite mournful and slow. it put me in mind of Jackie by Mica Levi (which i love) but more emotionally restrained. A very nice film.
Sweet Virgina
6/10
Slight but decent small town crime story that doesn't take the traditional route you'd expect. It's a short 90 mins. Jon Bernthal is good in the lead, even better is the slightly challenged, psychotic villain. I can't recall the actor's name but he's somebody i've not been a fan of in other things. He was Yossarian in that Clooney Catch-22 TV series. Anyway, he's great in this. Nice brooding score.
The Caretaker (1963)
7.5/10
Well acted by a great cast of Robert Shaw, Alan Bates and Donald Pleasance in a play i'm not a huge fan of. This might be a BBC production from back in the day. Nic Roeg does the cinematography.
Bad Teacher
5.5/10
Lucy Punch is the best thing about this sometimes half-amusing but very standard commentary.
National Security
1.5/10
Martin Lawrence is awful in this tiresome and half-hearted cop comedy
Results (2015)
5.5/10
An indie film starring Guy Pearce and Cobie Smulders about a gym owner, an employee and a multi-millionaire client.
The Birthday Party (1968)
5/10
Starring Robert Shaw, directed by William Friedkin. I found the play itself tiresome. It feels like it takes a very long time to say what it has to say, and the people don't act like people. The repetition in the dialogue, seemingly a favourite thing to do of Pinter, is wearing.
Bustin' Loose
1.5/10
Painfully rubbish Richard Pryor "comedy".
Galaxis
1/10
Bargain-bin sci-fi with Bridgette Nielsen, Craig Fairbrass, Richard Moll and Sam Raimi. The Christopher L. Stone score didn't seem too bad in places. Better than a film like this deserves.
Hanky Panky
4/10
Gene Wilder comedy-thriller with Gilda Radner, directed by Sidney Poitier. I quite liked some of the Tom Scott music, Wilder is reliable as his usual high-strung self, but the action thrills are poor.
Child's Play 3
1/10
Just poor, though the animatronics are nice to see.
Anon
4/10
Dour sci-fi film from Andrew Niccol. A killer is going around hacking into people's brains and allowing them to see their own deaths as they are killed. The brain hacker is being hunted by the cops. It's not a very interesting or thrilling thriller. Clive Owen and Amanda Seyfried are very watchable. There's some lovely brutalist architecture. and clean, composed design. The script sadly has the "way above our pay grade" line. Has the stupid trope of the hero being suspended and everybody disbelieving him despite everything they have seen and heard about the villain. It's just quite dull, and the POV visuals with the excess of information are interesting but become wearing very quickly. I'm just not really into this kind of sci-fi. I find this sort of future tech a bit boring, so it might just be me.
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Posted: |
Jan 29, 2020 - 4:32 AM
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By: |
Jim Phelps
(Member)
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Wildlife
9/10
Paul Dano directed and co-written family drama set in the 1950's. I really enjoyed it. It has great acting from Carey Mulligan and Jake Gyllenhal and looks very nice. The score is by someone called David Lang, who i had never heard of before, but i really liked it. It is quite mournful and slow. it put me in mind of Jackie by Mica Levi (which i love) but more emotionally restrained. A very nice film.
Sweet Virgina
6/10
Slight but decent small town crime story that doesn't take the traditional route you'd expect. It's a short 90 mins. Jon Bernthal is good in the lead, even better is the slightly challenged, psychotic villain. I can't recall the actor's name but he's somebody i've not been a fan of in other things. He was Yossarian in that Clooney Catch-22 TV series. Anyway, he's great in this. Nice brooding score.
The Caretaker (1963)
7.5/10
Well acted by a great cast of Robert Shaw, Alan Bates and Donald Pleasance in a play i'm not a huge fan of. This might be a BBC production from back in the day. Nic Roeg does the cinematography.
Bad Teacher
5.5/10
Lucy Punch is the best thing about this sometimes half-amusing but very standard commentary.
National Security
1.5/10
Martin Lawrence is awful in this tiresome and half-hearted cop comedy
Results (2015)
5.5/10
An indie film starring Guy Pearce and Cobie Smulders about a gym owner, an employee and a multi-millionaire client.
The Birthday Party (1968)
5/10
Starring Robert Shaw, directed by William Friedkin. I found the play itself tiresome. It feels like it takes a very long time to say what it has to say, and the people don't act like people. The repetition in the dialogue, seemingly a favourite thing to do of Pinter, is wearing.
Bustin' Loose
1.5/10
Painfully rubbish Richard Pryor "comedy".
Galaxis
1/10
Bargain-bin sci-fi with Bridgette Nielsen, Craig Fairbrass, Richard Moll and Sam Raimi. The Christopher L. Stone score didn't seem too bad in places. Better than a film like this deserves.
Hanky Panky
4/10
Gene Wilder comedy-thriller with Gilda Radner, directed by Sidney Poitier. I quite liked some of the Tom Scott music, Wilder is reliable as his usual high-strung self, but the action thrills are poor.
Child's Play 3
1/10
Just poor, though the animatronics are nice to see.
Anon
4/10
Dour sci-fi film from Andrew Niccol. A killer is going around hacking into people's brains and allowing them to see their own deaths as they are killed. The brain hacker is being hunted by the cops. It's not a very interesting or thrilling thriller. Clive Owen and Amanda Seyfried are very watchable. There's some lovely brutalist architecture. and clean, composed design. The script sadly has the "way above our pay grade" line. Has the stupid trope of the hero being suspended and everybody disbelieving him despite everything they have seen and heard about the villain. It's just quite dull, and the POV visuals with the excess of information are interesting but become wearing very quickly. I'm just not really into this kind of sci-fi. I find this sort of future tech a bit boring, so it might just be me.
Over what time span did you watch all of these films? I hope these are just fragmentary recollections of when you saw those films down the years.
If not, then your viewing habits are Howard Hughesian in their twisted sickness.
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Over what time span did you watch all of these films? I hope these are just fragmentary recollections of when you saw those films down the years.
If not, then your viewing habits are Howard Hughesian in their twisted sickness.
I figure the prison library is well-stocked.
That made me laugh!
You know xebec is stuck on ice station zebra and these are their only videos!!!
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Posted: |
Jan 29, 2020 - 11:12 PM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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1917 (2019) - 8/10
A fairly basic story is greatly enhanced by some excellent cinematography by Roger Deakins, a well-crafted score by Thomas Newman, and showy (but not in my opinion gimmicky) direction by Sam Mendes. Oh, and also some incredible production design of all manner of World War I battle terrain, from seemingly endless trenches, to a massive underground bunker, to a heavily cratered no-mans-land, to an eerie abandoned bombed-out city and an isolated destroyed farmhouse. All this is thankfully presented in natural color, rather than being artificially drained out. The film is constantly visually stimulating.
Viewers obviously differ as to what they think of Mendes' conceit of filming the picture in such a way as to make it appear as if it is a single unbroken shot. If I hadn't been aware beforehand of what he was attempting, I wonder if I would have caught on to what he was trying to do, or just have figured that the camerawork was exceptionally fluid. There are a few points in the film where the picture goes to black, and which act as cuts, so I may not have noticed much out of the ordinary. I'll never know. Some people though, seem to take the style as an incredible act of narcissism on the part of Mendes.
Where the film comes up a little short is in the acting and story departments. The two main protagonists (Dean-Charles Chapman and George MacKay) start out as a bit of a bickering couple, but soon settle into fairly emotionless portrayals of the "let's just get this over with" kind. They aren't aided by a screenplay that has them traipsing all over the countryside, but makes them more observers than participants in what's going on around them. There is however, at the film's midpoint, a fairly unexpected development that changes the picture's focus somewhat. Bottom line: this is picture to see.
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