Movies you've just watched

[DEL]

The Final Countdown 1980 - Kirk Douglas & Martin Sheen.
Philadelphia Experiment time travel story back to Pearl Harbour. Good footage of 1980 USS Nimitz and fighter jets of the time.

The Jerky Boys 1995 - Finally tracked this one down. Bombed so hard that I couldn't find it for 20 years
But not so bad fo a hastily put-together piece. Not a patch on the excellent original tapes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wF_xbCQuxA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQ1F6EjQXeY

[Aleksei]

Just watched Spring
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3395184/

This is a sci-fi with no A list actors that actually worth watching.

[options]

Point Break

strangely became much more enjoyable once I realized (about 20 mins in) that the first Fast and The Furious flick essentially stole this movie completely and replaced the surfboards with souped-up cars. I think the xXx series can also trace some of its lineage back to this.

more bonus points for being the only film I've ever seen that namechecks Calvin and Hobbes.

[Ixmucane2]

Foxcatcher

A great study of weak and wounded characters breaking down under the social pressure of "American values". All scenes bleed sadness, angst and evil, with no relief until the end credits tell that John DuPont died in prison.
Steve Carell and Channing Tatum are particularly impressive, while Mark Ruffalo, although particularly good, doesn't depart much from his typical nice guy characters.

[Vexorg]

Cinderella (2015): ***1/2

Another "Dragged to it" movie with my Fiancee and a couple of friends. That said, they didn't manage to epically screw it up the way they did with Maleficent, but at the same time it's basically just a live action version of the Disneyized Cinderella story, and there's not really much to distinguish it from the animated version of the same story. The original Cinderella is fairly low tier on my list of classic animated Disney movies (My favorites would probably be Peter Pan and 101 Dalmatians.) No real reason to bother with it unless you're taking your daughter.

[GaijinPunch]

Just watched Spring
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3395184/

Horror, Romance, Sci-fi.
Hmm...

I will check it out.

This is a sci-fi with no A list actors that actually worth watching.

Did you try Coherence yet?

The Jerky Boys 1995 - Finally tracked this one down. Bombed so hard that I couldn't find it for 20 years
But not so bad fo a hastily put-together piece. Not a patch on the excellent original tapes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wF_xbCQuxA

I saw this in the theater.

[Shepardus]

Just finished The Tale of Princess Kaguya, after having put off viewing it for quite some time. One of those rare moments when you think you've hyped up something in your mind too much and it's inevitably going to disappoint, except it doesn't and ends up being even better than you imagined and it feels so good.

...excuse me while I go play some Imperishable Night.

[PC Engine Fan X!]

Finally checked out the action-thriller genre flick that goes by the name of Everly that clocks in at a modest 1 hour and 32 minutes long. This is one of those action shoot 'em up films that never let's you down leading you to wonder what'll happen next. The curvaceous actress Salma Hayek (whom hails from Mexico) gets top billing as the main character known as Everly. It hasn't been released on the silver screen as of right now but will eventually get the big theatrical screen release later this year. If you've watched the action shoot 'em up movie of Smokin' Aces 1 combined with some unforgettable characters reminiscent of the Kill Bill film series, Everly sorta has the same premise with the exception of all the attention and focus on the Everly character herself -- why is everyone out to get her? Watch it and find out the real reason why that is so.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[GaijinPunch]

City of God

[blackoak]

Point Break
strangely became much more enjoyable once I realized (about 20 mins in) that the first Fast and The Furious flick essentially stole this movie completely and replaced the surfboards with souped-up cars.

Never thought I'd say this, but now I want to see the Fast and the Furious, hahaha.

I've watched too much recently to list, but last night I saw Godard's Breathless for the first time. Not as impressed as I'd hoped I'd be. The editing techniques lead to interesting moments and I like the overall devil-may-care tone, but it's just not a very engrossing story. I like the other French New Wave I've seen (Blow-up and 400 Blows are great), so maybe Godard would be more interesting with some other material.

Saw Fassbinder's World on a Wire (part 1) too. Cool movie, reminded me of Primer in some ways. The dated aesthetic will probably turn most people off (contrast with the mostly-timeless 2001), but I would like to see more "idea" sci-fi like this. Stanislaw Lem's works in particular.

[KindGrind]

City of God

Thoughts?

[drauch]

I've watched too much recently to list, but last night I saw Godard's Breathless for the first time. Not as impressed as I'd hoped I'd be. \.

Always glad to hear another person not fall on their knees and worship this film. I don't hate it by any means, but I think it's one of the most overrated films in world cinema. I certainly appreciate it for what it did, but I don't think breaking new ground is synonymous with masterpiece, which is the attitude you'll often see in film aficionado circles. The entirety of the French New Wave is really hit or miss for me, really.

[GaijinPunch]

City of God

Thoughts?

Very good. Extremely well narrated. Although I was distracted by a more turbulent than normal flight. The movie had already put me in a state, and the turbulence compounded it. Thank God it was before this recent crash. I'd say it lived up to it's reputation.

[BIL]

Foxcatcher dark, skin-crawlingly discomforting and keenly tragic with a cringemaking sense of folly; enjoyed. Carell did a fine job inhabiting a sort of mutant Alan Partridge, gone hideously malevolent yet still unmistakably pathetic. No idea how usefully or accurately this reflects the real events, but as tragic drama it's capable. Bonus feels if you too are a big bro. Loved Ruffalo's performance and character as much as I detested Carell's.

[Ixmucane2]

Blackhat

I expected a story about hackers, but I got a relatively well made action movie where hacking is only a specific criminal enterprise, like drug import in Miami Vice or bank robberies in Heat. The transition of good guys from nerds to action heroes is relatively well managed but it simply shouldn't happen.

Regarding actual hacking, some elements are realistic (e.g. payloads on USB sticks, plug them in and you're screwed), some are clever (e.g. special hard disk enclosures for accessing a contaminated radioactive disk while keeping it sealed up), some are dumb (e.g. provoking the enemy by chat, both ways), some are jokes (e.g. impossible IP addresses and some things in source code), and too many are appalling (e.g. the magic NSA software to guess missing data from a damaged hard disk, as opposed to narratively inappropriate but realistic advanced technology to extract data from it in a lab).

Fun facts:

• When a Chinese-American goes to Hong Kong, she has no trouble at all getting fake documents and other semi-criminal services.
• While travelling with a prisoner in their custody, U.S. Marshals prefer a hands-free, trust-based approach.
• You can walk up to certain facilities, open a trapdoor, reach safety-critical machinery, do what you want and leave without meeting a single guard. However, such places are considered worth hacking into.
• The guards of some "highly secure" web hosting company are very easily distracted and they don't seem to believe in locked doors.
• A true gentleman doesn't worry for his safety until both his bodyguards are dead. Running away would be unsporting conduct.

[CHI]

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo 2011... after watching this, I have to watch the originals... I don't know about you, but me thinks this is a damn good remake
Breakfast At Tiffanys 1961
Bloodline 1979
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo 2009
The Girl Who Played with Fire 2009
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest 2009... the actress in this has a better dragon tattoo though

[Aleksei]

Did you try Coherence yet?

Oh yeah, I sure did, I really enjoyed it. I also had a nice, theoretical conversation about it too.

Studio Ghibili's When Marnie Was There had a pretty predictable but enjoyable story. The scenery was top notch as always.

[Vexorg]

Penguins of Madagascar: ****

I have to admit I'm something of a sucker for this particular series, if for no other reason than the fact that these are just good ADD movies. Random, pointless, and full of cheap gags. Perfect for a night of mindless entertainment.

[lilmanjs]

Man of Iron
Yup, one of the better Shaw Brothers movies that isn't Wuxia related or takes place in a historic time period, though doesn't take place in the present 1972 in which the movie was released. I enjoyed the action, and the story was decent, but I was lazy. I ended up suffering through a not so good english dub that was being shown on the El Ray Network. I wonder how much they spent to get the rights to show these Shaw movies because its a shame all of them are english dubbed. Should have gone upstairs and watched it, but instead I was lazy.

[GaijinPunch]

Did you try Coherence yet?

Oh yeah, I sure did, I really enjoyed it. I also had a nice, theoretical conversation about it too.

Cool -- need to watch it again. Apparently not on BluRayz in the US. I don't really like buying digital either.

[drauch]

Man of Iron
Yup, one of the better Shaw Brothers movies that isn't Wuxia related or takes place in a historic time period, though doesn't take place in the present 1972 in which the movie was released. I enjoyed the action, and the story was decent, but I was lazy. I ended up suffering through a not so good english dub that was being shown on the El Ray Network. I wonder how much they spent to get the rights to show these Shaw movies because its a shame all of them are english dubbed. Should have gone upstairs and watched it, but instead I was lazy.

Are all of them dubbed? I thought a good chunk of them were subbed as well. I don't have cable, but I stopped by my parent's pad and switched it over once and noticed some subs on King Eagle.

[Obiwanshinobi]

The Beast by Walerian Borowczyk. Quite a bit of sexploitation, isn't it? As expected of a director empowered by detail, there's no going around details about it. See, this...



...is not just about any nude; it's this. And it's one of the very first shots.
The film's most certainly based off the same Prosper Mérimée novella Lokis. A Manuscript of Professor Wittembach as the 1970 Polish Lokis movie.



And it shows:



Then there's remarkable how most (!) actors appear to be into it. Think Hell Comes to Frogtown. Also, hairdo fashionable nowadays appeared back then, seemingly innocent.



It's not Lithuania anymore, it's "France" now, but what France is it? Some English dialogue here is like taken straight form a skin flick and I don't mean just articulation; the writting's just as, um, credible. Did I mention most servants are black?



So the bride came from "England" this time, and girl, is she a lass.



Most astonishingly, when the furry costume dude arrives, it does not break the (willing) suspension of disbelief. It's a nice looking film through and through, academic way. ALL music heard in this one are Scarlatti tunes played on a harpsichord, like, all of them.
I could go on, but you see the picture.

[drauch]

I personally find The Beast to be a bit of a mess. You can really tell what was the original short film (the infamous beast fuck scene) and what was made much later to create the full feature film. The short film matter is amazing, but the rest is just so drab and boring. That and pulsating horse vaginas.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Does fall apart in the end, but for a more complete experience I send anyone to the original movie Lokis.

[Vexorg]

A couple of recent ones:

The Imitiation Game: ***

An overly serious biopic of Alan Turing and the cracking of the German Enigma code during World War 2 and his subsequent prosecution for homosexuality. Nothing particularly stands out about it, although Benedict Cumberbatch does a pretty good job in the lead role. Then again, it seems like Benedict Cumberbatch is in just about everything these days. At this rate, he's going to start starring in elementary schools' sixth grade plays on his days off when he's not busy filming summer blockbusters...

Into the Woods: **

From a technical standpoint this was pretty well shot, and most of the actors were pretty decent. But from a story and plot standpoint, this was just a confused mess (which seems to be par for the course for a lot of adapted-from-Broadway stuff.) Basically, they took a bunch of different fairy tales (Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel and Jack and the Beanstalk, accidentally drop them on the floor, picked up all the pages out of order and turned that into a script. The result makes absolutely no sense a lot of the time, and most of what happens just ends up seeming completely random. Then again, I'm a little surprised Disney actually used the "wicked stepsisters get their eyes pecked out by birds" version of the Cinderella story (not much of a spoiler really since it's just a very minor plot point,) although it should be noted that basically nothing here has anything to do with the Disney versions of anything even if it is a Disney film.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Basically, they took a bunch of different fairy tales (Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel and Jack and the Beanstalk, accidentally drop them on the floor, picked up all the pages out of order and turned that into a script. The result makes absolutely no sense a lot of the time, and most of what happens just ends up seeming completely random. Then again, I'm a little surprised Disney actually used the "wicked stepsisters get their eyes pecked out by birds" version of the Cinderella story (not much of a spoiler really since it's just a very minor plot point,) although it should be noted that basically nothing here has anything to do with the Disney versions of anything even if it is a Disney film.

Disney may be trying to repent of their past.
Speaking of fairy tales, The Beast I mentioned before anticipates the famous Bettelheim book as a collection of psychoanalytic motifs: helical ("spiral") staircase and other such blatant service is in almost every scene. Comes as no less exploitative than all of the nudity. Now I need to watch Ivan the Terrible and see for myself if it's anything alike in that respect (I read Eisenstein was very much into psychoanalysis).

[JBC]

The Signal, which is unbelievably stupid & juvenile in almost every single way.

When you go in blind it keeps you guessing the whole time but once all is revealed looking back will just make you laugh at it's absurdity. It's odd because the movie isn't offensive in any way but I'm left feeling unclean for sitting through to the end. I'm kind of mad too, like the same kind of mad you feel when you meet someone so weak it disgusts you.

Makes science fiction look bad. Not a lovable bad either.

[Xyga]

Talking about sci-fi, I've finally watched some bottom-of-my-list, decades-procrastinated stuff;

Dark Star
Silent Running

Well, I kind of enjoyed both for the cute and clumsy 70's silliness, oddly mixed with yet untainted treatment of actual sci-fi themes.
Raw, cheap retro sci-fi -> still superior to expensive 21st century crap.

[Ixmucane2]

Furious 7

Continuing the disappointing trend of Fast and Furious 6, the series has abandoned its roots in the car enthusiast world (tuning, races, stunts...) devolving into mainstream action movie genre, where cars are a means and not an end (for example, Toretto deliberately wrecks the black Dodge Charger that was almost a member of the family and other cars), characters are larger-than-life heroes, and problems are unimaginatively solved with heavy firepower (and, this time, non-car-related high tech gimmicks).
Action scenes are as spectacular as ever, but misguided; it's apparent that the director doesn't love cars (according to some websites, he drives a Prius).

[JBC]

Pulp Fiction.

I've seen it a million times but not in awhile. I really love the 'Vincent Vega & Marcellus Wallace's Wife' segment. Makes me miss having a life.