DVDs and Films You Have Watched Recently #2

[Bellenda Carlisle]

Predators I enjoyed. It had guns and it had 18 certificate Predators. Can't ask for more. I know there were a few plot holes and and a couple of 'what the fuck was that about' moments but it's certainly better than either of the AVP movies. The premise of the movie got me thinking, how awesome would Riddick Vs Predator be?

 

I couldn't stop looking at Adrain Brody's nose, they were obviously moving away from having an obvious action hero type as the hero but Brody just didn't work for me at all, would've preferred Jim Caviesel or Viggo Mortensen.

 

Walton Goggins was awesome though, I'm a huge fan of the shield and it was great to see him getting a big screen role.

[oaktree500]

The Island

 

Where the hell was i when this film came out? I remeber seeing trailors for it , but i cant actually remember it coming out.......was it straight to dvd? And if so.....WHY? I've heard good things about it and cant believe its taken me this long to watch it.

 

This film is beyond awesome, (insanely over the top still), and is a great sci-fi movie! if you dont want to know the plot (in a brief paragraph) look away now (Apologies my spoiler tags wont "insert"):

 

Basically Ewan Mcgregor lives in this futuristic tower bloc, where everybody wears the same colour clothes, eats the same food, etc etc. It even goes so far as to analyze your wee......and tell you what dietry additions you need in your system! The people who live are are told that a huge contamination has happened outside and thus they have to live in these huge towers, (although they can see outside to a nice landscape). Every now and again a "Survivour" will be brought it and because of the contamination they are like infants, hardly walking and with learning problems. The only Plus side to this life is that every week a "Lottery" is played to find somebody to move to "The Island". T his is aparently the only natural place on earth with no radiation effects, and looks quite nice also! This is where the problems begin as whilst snooping around, Mr Mcgregor finds that the tower block is actual all underground and that the island, is just a cover up for what really happens to the people that win!

 

I wont spoil it any further, as that is about the first 15-20 mins in a nutsell......and it gets much better!

 

A film that again i cant understand why not that many people have seen, and that i wil be buying on DVD to watch again in the future!

 

8/10

[Jas]

The Island

 

Where the hell was i when this film came out? I remeber seeing trailors for it , but i cant actually remember it coming out.......was it straight to dvd? And if so.....WHY? I've heard good things about it and cant believe its taken me this long to watch it.

 

This film is beyond awesome, (insanely over the top still), and is a great sci-fi movie! if you dont want to know the plot (in a brief paragraph) look away now (Apologies my spoiler tags wont "insert"):

 

Basically Ewan Mcgregor lives in this futuristic tower bloc, where everybody wears the same colour clothes, eats the same food, etc etc. It even goes so far as to analyze your wee......and tell you what dietry additions you need in your system! The people who live are are told that a huge contamination has happened outside and thus they have to live in these huge towers, (although they can see outside to a nice landscape). Every now and again a "Survivour" will be brought it and because of the contamination they are like infants, hardly walking and with learning problems. The only Plus side to this life is that every week a "Lottery" is played to find somebody to move to "The Island". T his is aparently the only natural place on earth with no radiation effects, and looks quite nice also! This is where the problems begin as whilst snooping around, Mr Mcgregor finds that the tower block is actual all underground and that the island, is just a cover up for what really happens to the people that win!

 

I wont spoil it any further, as that is about the first 15-20 mins in a nutsell......and it gets much better!

 

A film that again i cant understand why not that many people have seen, and that i wil be buying on DVD to watch again in the future!

 

8/10

 

This is Bays best movie by far. Plus ITV2/3/4 show it non stop if there's anyone wanting to catch it.

Edited September 27, 2010 by Jas

[patiirc]

The downsides to The Island is that it goes on for far far too long, has zillion plot holes and is effectively a take on Logan's Run ( which is better, much better despite its age).

 

Iam not saying it's bad.. but it does really really really drag, and what impresses first time around, makes is dull as ditch water on repeated viewing

 

Iam sure I did a review in here or the old thread.

 

The massive review is here

Edited September 27, 2010 by patdfb

[Devon Malcolm]

What the fuck? The Rock is far and away Bay's best film. I thought everyone knew this by now. The Island is an absolute mess.

[Egg Shen]

Bad Boys was always my favorite Bay movie...his movies offend me nowhere near as much as they do other people. You know what your gonna get before you go in so why complain? Transformers 2 was the pits though. They dropped the ball big times....and they've admitted it.

[Devon Malcolm]

Bad Boys is good fun as well. Needed more Joe Pantoliano though. But then, that goes for just about everything.

[King Pitcos]

The Island

 

Where the hell was i when this film came out? I remeber seeing trailors for it , but i cant actually remember it coming out.......was it straight to dvd? And if so.....WHY?

It was a massive flop, if I remember rightly.

[Jimmy_kahoona]

The Island

 

Where the hell was i when this film came out? I remeber seeing trailors for it , but i cant actually remember it coming out.......was it straight to dvd? And if so.....WHY?

It was a massive flop, if I remember rightly.

 

I bought the dvd from poundland a while ago.

 

hollywood blockbuster released in poundland! Desperate to scrape some cash back me thinks.

[Loki]

The Island

 

Where the hell was i when this film came out? I remeber seeing trailors for it , but i cant actually remember it coming out.......was it straight to dvd? And if so.....WHY?

It was a massive flop, if I remember rightly.

 

Because it's a terrible film, that's why. It's just another film where Ewan Mcgregor phones in a terrible performance and spoils any hope of taking the film seriously. Whilst he CAN act, I think I've seen more bad performances than good from him.

[JLM]

That's it, I'm getting Machete tonight. I was going to wait but I just can't.

 

I watched films!

 

Lake View Terrace

 

A newlywed couple moves into their new home in California. The husband is white, the wife is black. They move in next door to a police officer and his two children, played by Samuel L Jackson. He's old, he's cranky, he's an ultra-strict parent and he's also massively bigoted. This leads to tension.

 

Not entirely sure what I make of this, so here are the plus and minus points:

 

Positives:

 

+ Samuel is tremendous. Subtle menace, overt menace, humour, anger, brutalising the black kids he arrests to scare them straight, flicking between loving father and patriarchal tyrant with his kids. He has many faces and they're all pretty convincing. Credit to the writers as well, he gets to deliver some cracking stuff.

 

+ The tension and animosity builds at a really nice pace, from petty disagreements to incidents that could be far more damaging to the couple's marriage/Samuel's relationship with his kids etc.

 

+ Touches on some interesting issues regarding mixed race marriages. As well as hassle them and put strain on their marriage just by making their lives difficult, Samuel also constantly forces them to acknowledge that they're from different backgrounds when they'd previously looked past it wherever possible. They tie this in with the suggestion that the girl's father is vaguely Nation of Islam-y, so when the husband starts complaining about Samuel being a prick, she instantly gets defensive and thinks that he thinks all old-ish black men have the same views. All good stuff, and just having a black racist antagonist makes for some scenarios you don't normally see.

 

Negatives:

 

- I don't know if this is just a personal pet hate of mine and it's just a necessary device in movies, but there were multiple occasions where I was screaming at a character to say the one obvious thing that would resolve a conflict. Not in a dramatic irony sense where the viewer knows something that the characters don't, but where a character just doesn't behave like a normal human being.

 

For example, at one point the newlyweds have sex in their new swimming pool. Unfortunately for them, Samuel's kids can see them from an upstairs window and Samuel catches them watching. So, later on he has a go at the husband in private, and ends it with "maybe I'm being harsh, maybe there's some places where that's OK. And maybe that's where you should live". So the husband tells the wife later "I don't think he wants us living in his neighbourhood" and she goes "did he say that to you?" and he goes "well, no, not in so many words..." and then she gives him a big rant about transferring his father in law issues onto every black man. And I was just thinking, TELL HER WHAT HE SAID TO YOU. TELL HER THE WORDS. HE WASN'T PARTICULARLY SUBTLE. ARRRRGH. This happened too often and it was annoying.

 

- For some reason the wife turns into a total dickhead mid way through. I think the idea is that they have their own underlying issues that aren't related to this, and they're only being compounded by Samuel's meddling ways. However, the director/writer's idea of marital tension = wife is being a bitch. Bit of casual misogyny there, gotta love it. There's a side plot where she wants a baby and he wants to wait, so she stops taking contraceptive pills and just doesn't tell him. Then gets pregnant, then gets angry when he's not psyched about it. She's meant to be a sympathetic character and there seemed to be no need for this at all.

 

- It absolutely loses its shit during the final act, in almost exactly the same way as Red Eye. Except it's not quite as thoroughly gripping as Red Eye up until the point where madness sets in.

 

I dunno. I enjoyed watching it because all of Samuel's scenes were golden, the premise was interesting and there are some good points in amongst the muddle, but by god does it have its flaws.

 

Erm, three out of five maybe?

 

I mostly wanted to rant about the failure to communicate like a real human thing and see if anyone has some good examples of it in other films.

 

Havoc

 

Well this is pretty mediocre. That said, I don't care, because I love Anne Hathaway to a legitimately unhealthy degree. I could just stare at her giant eyes for weeks at a time. So yeah, the quality of the movie loses a lot of relevance when she's the lead. Especially when she has sex scenes. Goodness me. Erm, so there are these rich white kids who act like poor black kids pretending to be rich black men and decide to slum it with poor hispanic guys for a bit and it turns out to be a bad idea. Joseph Goron Levitt is in it playing a fairly obnoxious wigger, which is pretty awesome, but then he's always pretty awesome. He says stuff like "I'd die for that girl, and I WILL kill for her, that's mah WORD!". He appears to be having a great time, so that's fun. There's also an interesting and intellectual guy who films things and asks people why they do things. He's like their CONSCIENCE MAAAAN. It's shit, but Bijou Phillips and Anne Hathaway and JGL made it watchable for me. Probably wouldn't recommend it otherwise.

[Egg Shen]

you bought The Island in Poundland? haha brilliant, i'll have to take a look in there, what else did they have? i got some half decent movies in Home Bargain for a

[Devon Malcolm]

The Island

 

Where the hell was i when this film came out? I remeber seeing trailors for it , but i cant actually remember it coming out.......was it straight to dvd? And if so.....WHY?

It was a massive flop, if I remember rightly.

 

Because it's a terrible film, that's why. It's just another film where Ewan Mcgregor phones in a terrible performance and spoils any hope of taking the film seriously. Whilst he CAN act, I think I've seen more bad performances than good from him.

 

I think if you look down his filmography, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that if it's a Hollywood thing, he'll be shite in it. If it's British or indie, he'll be great. I don't think it's helped that most of the Hollywood stuff he has gone for has been largely uninspired stuff.

[Surf Digby]

Today whilst perusing a used DVD stall on our indoor market, I saw the spine of a DVD called "Rock 'n' Roll Highschool". At first I rolled my eyes and moved past it, thinking it was some shitty Jonas Brothers type affair from kids that think wearing braces over a shirt and playing guitar automatically qualifies them as rock 'n' roll, but I went back to it as I suffer from Daily Mail syndrome, where I like to read things that I know will annoy me. It reminds me that I'm alive.

 

Okay, firstly, this was made in 1979, so is definately no Disney/Nickelodeon shite.

 

Secondly, it's basically High School Musical as written by The Ramones. That's right, it's a musical, in a highschool (in the late seventies, all frisbees and cheerleaders), and it's got The fucking Ramones in it.

 

 

As an added bonus, the lady on the DVD stall couldn't find the disk, and gave me a lengthy view down her top as she was searching for it. I'm neither proud nor ashamed of this, just appreciative.

 

Also, DVD extras? Additional footage of The Ramones.

Watched this again with the commentary track. As with Cannibal: The Musical and Drive, commentary tracks are always more enjoyable when the people talking clearly love the film.

This was a low, low budget film, so there's some excellent tales of their cost cutting ways (eg: selling tickets to the concert scene, so all the extras actually paid to be in the movie ), and Rob Bottin being paid $50 for his entire contributions (including a pinhead prosthetic that The Ramones stole and took on tour with them).

[Steve Justice]

That's it, I'm getting Machete tonight. I was going to wait but I just can't.

 

I watched films!

 

Lake View Terrace

 

A newlywed couple moves into their new home in California. The husband is white, the wife is black. They move in next door to a police officer and his two children, played by Samuel L Jackson. He's old, he's cranky, he's an ultra-strict parent and he's also massively bigoted. This leads to tension.

 

Not entirely sure what I make of this, so here are the plus and minus points:

 

Positives:

 

+ Samuel is tremendous. Subtle menace, overt menace, humour, anger, brutalising the black kids he arrests to scare them straight, flicking between loving father and patriarchal tyrant with his kids. He has many faces and they're all pretty convincing. Credit to the writers as well, he gets to deliver some cracking stuff.

 

+ The tension and animosity builds at a really nice pace, from petty disagreements to incidents that could be far more damaging to the couple's marriage/Samuel's relationship with his kids etc.

 

+ Touches on some interesting issues regarding mixed race marriages. As well as hassle them and put strain on their marriage just by making their lives difficult, Samuel also constantly forces them to acknowledge that they're from different backgrounds when they'd previously looked past it wherever possible. They tie this in with the suggestion that the girl's father is vaguely Nation of Islam-y, so when the husband starts complaining about Samuel being a prick, she instantly gets defensive and thinks that he thinks all old-ish black men have the same views. All good stuff, and just having a black racist antagonist makes for some scenarios you don't normally see.

 

Negatives:

 

- I don't know if this is just a personal pet hate of mine and it's just a necessary device in movies, but there were multiple occasions where I was screaming at a character to say the one obvious thing that would resolve a conflict. Not in a dramatic irony sense where the viewer knows something that the characters don't, but where a character just doesn't behave like a normal human being.

 

For example, at one point the newlyweds have sex in their new swimming pool. Unfortunately for them, Samuel's kids can see them from an upstairs window and Samuel catches them watching. So, later on he has a go at the husband in private, and ends it with "maybe I'm being harsh, maybe there's some places where that's OK. And maybe that's where you should live". So the husband tells the wife later "I don't think he wants us living in his neighbourhood" and she goes "did he say that to you?" and he goes "well, no, not in so many words..." and then she gives him a big rant about transferring his father in law issues onto every black man. And I was just thinking, TELL HER WHAT HE SAID TO YOU. TELL HER THE WORDS. HE WASN'T PARTICULARLY SUBTLE. ARRRRGH. This happened too often and it was annoying.

 

- For some reason the wife turns into a total dickhead mid way through. I think the idea is that they have their own underlying issues that aren't related to this, and they're only being compounded by Samuel's meddling ways. However, the director/writer's idea of marital tension = wife is being a bitch. Bit of casual misogyny there, gotta love it. There's a side plot where she wants a baby and he wants to wait, so she stops taking contraceptive pills and just doesn't tell him. Then gets pregnant, then gets angry when he's not psyched about it. She's meant to be a sympathetic character and there seemed to be no need for this at all.

 

- It absolutely loses its shit during the final act, in almost exactly the same way as Red Eye. Except it's not quite as thoroughly gripping as Red Eye up until the point where madness sets in.

 

I dunno. I enjoyed watching it because all of Samuel's scenes were golden, the premise was interesting and there are some good points in amongst the muddle, but by god does it have its flaws.

 

Erm, three out of five maybe?

 

I mostly wanted to rant about the failure to communicate like a real human thing and see if anyone has some good examples of it in other films.

 

Totally agree with you there. My main gripe was I was just waiting for it to pick up pace and kick off, but it never really happened. I thought it was going to after some scenes but then just slowed down again (the scene in the bar for example). It was very much 1 step forward, 2 steps back. Because of this I found that it dragged, and I just completely stopped caring about any of the characters (even the kids who must have felt like Nazi POW's).

 

Shame, because I really wanted to like it.

 

I hope you enjoy Machete and that we haven't built it up too much for you.