Return of the RECENT VIEWING

..and why not?
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driftin
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Re: Return of the RECENT VIEWING

Postby driftin » 09 Jan 2019, 12:22

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Bird Bobbins.

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Snarfyguy
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Re: Return of the RECENT VIEWING

Postby Snarfyguy » 09 Jan 2019, 16:24

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Directed by George Clooney and written by the Coen Bros., Clooney and some other guy, this is kind of a mess. Two intertwining stores never really cohere and the movie can't seem to decide whether it's a black comedy or some kind of Hitchcock/Lynch mashup.

The Levittown ethos under examination is neither effectively satirized nor realistically rendered and the kitschy design elements overwhelm with their superficiality. The lead characters aren't sufficiently unlikable to qualify as anti-heroes a la Bonnie and Clyde; they're just creepy and dull. The whole thing has all the subtlety and nuance as John Waters directing a re-make of Saw.
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Re: Return of the RECENT VIEWING

Postby pcqgod » 09 Jan 2019, 16:33

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A Star is Born (2018)

He is an emotionally-damaged country-rock singer who drinks himself into a stupor to make himself feel better and she is a hyper talented tough cookie who doesn't take crap from anyone in a humdrum job, and I can't make myself care a bit about either.

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Mary, Queen of Scots (2018)


There's a lot to entertain the viewer here, from the eye-candy of scenic landscapes, dramatic castles and striking costumes, to the political intrigue and the complex relationship between the doomed-by-her-name Queen and Elizabeth I. I was expecting it to be very "Game of Thrones" influenced, but it's actually a bit more restrained. There's one battle scene in the movie and it seems pretty much bloodless as a Civil War battle recreation. I felt that some of the events in the movie could have been portrayed more dramatically, and it seemed to lack a great cathartic moment.
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Darkness_Fish
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Re: Return of the RECENT VIEWING

Postby Darkness_Fish » 13 Jan 2019, 21:13

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Really, really good, I thought. I didn't have very high expectations despite the good reviews, especially given the really uncertain start. However, it really grew into its theme, a proper Spinal Tap for vampires.
Like fast-moving clouds casting shadows against a hillside, the melody-loop shuddered with a sense of the sublime, the awful unknowable majesty of the world.

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Re: Return of the RECENT VIEWING

Postby ` » 14 Jan 2019, 09:07

Darkness_Fish wrote:Image

Really, really good, I thought. I didn't have very high expectations despite the good reviews, especially given the really uncertain start. However, it really grew into its theme, a proper Spinal Tap for vampires.


Is that the Kiwi movie? If so, it was on BBC the Hallloween before last and was very, very funny indeed.

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Snarfyguy
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Re: Return of the RECENT VIEWING

Postby Snarfyguy » 14 Jan 2019, 15:16

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I wasn't too hung up on this not being as good as the original because I don't even like the original in the first place.

This suffers from all the usual defects: too long, dud story, rote musical numbers (nobody is going to be singing these songs in 60 years, I'll tell you that). Lin-Manual Miranda comes across well, and a few set pieces threaten to elevate the proceedings, but it's mostly a series of mis-fires.

None other than Dick Van Dyke, aged approximately 110, has a remarkable cameo in which, dancing, he leaps from the floor onto a desk. I thought it had to have been faked somehow, but apparently he really did that. I had no idea he was still alive!

Anyway, while I was afraid it would never end, my seven year-old didn't want it to, and that's what counts, I guess.
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Re: Return of the RECENT VIEWING

Postby Neige » 14 Jan 2019, 18:55

Darkness_Fish wrote:Image

Really, really good, I thought. I didn't have very high expectations despite the good reviews, especially given the really uncertain start. However, it really grew into its theme, a proper Spinal Tap for vampires.



That's brilliant... I hear they're making a series from it in the US.
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Re: Return of the RECENT VIEWING

Postby Jimbly » 14 Jan 2019, 23:02

Marathon Man. I hadn't seen it years. I had forgotten most of it apart from the major plot points. Really enjoyed the gritty New York setting. This must have one of the last movies to show that side of New York. Any others that came after.

Hoffman and Dear Dear Larry were brilliant but I'd forgotten how good Roy Scheider was. He was really underrated and should've had better roles. Although he did drop a clanger rejecting The Deerhunter.
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Re: Return of the RECENT VIEWING

Postby ` » 16 Jan 2019, 08:27

Stan and Ollie (Sorry have tried posting poster via Photobucket but it keeps refusing to upload the images from IMDB and Pinterest)

Excellent little movie about Laurel and Hardy's final tour of the UK. Reilly and Coogan are spot on in the leads and there are some lovely recreations of moments from Way Out West, County Hospital and Music Box. Essential if you love L&H as almost everyone with a sense of humour must surely do.

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Tom Waits For No One
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Re: Return of the RECENT VIEWING

Postby Tom Waits For No One » 17 Jan 2019, 00:05

caramba wrote:Stan and Ollie (Sorry have tried posting poster via Photobucket but it keeps refusing to upload the images from IMDB and Pinterest)
.



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Give a shit or be a shit.

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Re: Return of the RECENT VIEWING

Postby ` » 17 Jan 2019, 11:19

Tom Waits For No One wrote:
caramba wrote:Stan and Ollie (Sorry have tried posting poster via Photobucket but it keeps refusing to upload the images from IMDB and Pinterest)
.



Image



Cheers, TW. Have you seen the film? It's very good.

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Re: Return of the RECENT VIEWING

Postby Tom Waits For No One » 17 Jan 2019, 11:31

I have and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Two great performances from Coogan and Reilly.

I remember my Dad telling me, as a kid who was obsessed with L&H as they were shown on the telly, that he watched them perform at The Queens in Newcastle, the first 'stage performance' scene in the film.
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Re: Return of the RECENT VIEWING

Postby clive gash » 17 Jan 2019, 12:07

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I’m not sure how well known the story is outside of the US but try not to find out too much before seeing it.

Crushing.
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Darkness_Fish
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Re: Return of the RECENT VIEWING

Postby Darkness_Fish » 20 Jan 2019, 19:10

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Ultra-low budget horror thing about a long-missing family member, and the neighbours who may just be practicing witches. One third Rear Window, one third Rosemary's Baby, one third British folk horror. I didn't buy into it at the start, largely due to how cheap the look and feel is, but it makes use of that aesthetic, and as far as suburban witchcraft goes, this is pretty good.
Like fast-moving clouds casting shadows against a hillside, the melody-loop shuddered with a sense of the sublime, the awful unknowable majesty of the world.

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Darkness_Fish
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Re: Return of the RECENT VIEWING

Postby Darkness_Fish » 20 Jan 2019, 21:17

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Our Sunday evening family film. Arthouse classic.
Like fast-moving clouds casting shadows against a hillside, the melody-loop shuddered with a sense of the sublime, the awful unknowable majesty of the world.

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Snarfyguy
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Re: Return of the RECENT VIEWING

Postby Snarfyguy » 22 Jan 2019, 16:53

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Passable teens-on-the-run thing. This has been done much better. Mercifully short, at least.
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Snarfyguy
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Re: Return of the RECENT VIEWING

Postby Snarfyguy » 25 Jan 2019, 15:16

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By turns amusing and sad, this is relatively unsentimental as far as guy-in-a-wheelchair/addiction recovery narratives go, and Joaquin Phoenix, Jack Black and Jonah Hill (not to mention Udo Kier, Kim Gordon and Carrie Brownstein (!)) are all very effectively deployed.

Even so, it can't entirely avoid cliché, there's too much padding and I found the main character essentially unlikable and unsympathetic.

Also

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This is pretty strange, even for Terrence Malick, but I'm only halfway through, so we'll see.

ON EDIT: I spent most of this trying to 1) figure out who the characters were and 2) parse multiple, shifting timelines, at least one of which appeared to run in reverse. There was some gorgeous imagery and it probably even makes sense, so it might be worth a re-watch now that I've sort of gotten the lay of the land, but I'm not 100% certain I'm going to make it a top priority.
Last edited by Snarfyguy on 28 Jan 2019, 21:04, edited 2 times in total.
GoogaMooga wrote: The further away from home you go, the greater the risk of getting stuck there.

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GoogaMooga
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Re: Return of the RECENT VIEWING

Postby GoogaMooga » 27 Jan 2019, 03:46

Wow... Tried to watch Annika Berg's award-winning feature debut, "Team Hurricane", from 2017. I lasted exactly six minutes. My eyes hurt. My head hurts. Had I gone on much longer, I'd probably have had an epileptic fit. With "Team Hurricane", a teen-age punk chick flick, Annika Berg shouts, "Fuck you, rulebook!", and bombards the senses, throwing everything and the kitchen sink into a wild, neon-colored, kaleidoscopic, stroboscopic, mash-up ride of an Instagram-casted visual diary. Eight teen-age grrrlz are holed up in their about-to-be-closed youth club one summer, bonding over this and that and everything in between. It's chatroom hell come alive for 96 minutes, of which I lasted six. If you are old enough to have been visually alienated when MTV was launched in 1981, I suggest you forget all that happened since, and give "Un Chien Andalou" another spin. File under: generation gap.

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Re: Return of the RECENT VIEWING

Postby The North Yorks Moors » 28 Jan 2019, 09:31

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On Netflix. One of the best football documentaries I've seen.

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Snarfyguy
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Re: Return of the RECENT VIEWING

Postby Snarfyguy » 31 Jan 2019, 14:25

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An oddball noir, more concerned with formal cinematic playfulness than crime and violence. Montgomery casts himself as a rather dull and dislikable anti-hero on a doomed mission to blackmail a crime boss in New Mexico, where there's plenty of sleazy local color. An ingenue, an avuncular G-man, a femme fatale and a grubby sidekick all do their parts to good effect.

It has a kind of familiar feel to it, perhaps because cinematographer Russell Metty also did Touch of Evil.
GoogaMooga wrote: The further away from home you go, the greater the risk of getting stuck there.


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