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DVDs and Films You Have Watched Recently 3 - The Final Insult


Devon Malcolm

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Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey Of Richard Stanley's Island Of Dr Moreau

I've watched this before, but could watch it every day for a year and not get tired of it. It's a documentary on the making of the abysmal Marlon Brando "Island Of Dr Moreau" movie, and it's absolutely superb. Just completely bonkers.

Most "making of" documentaries tend to focus on how hard it was to get things done - I remember watching the "making ofs" for the first two Star Wars movies with a couple of friends, and one of them (not particularly a Star Wars fan in the first place) remarking that the whole film was just, "we decided to film the next scene on the surface of the Sun. And the people who live on the surface of the Sun told us that it was the hottest the surface of the Sun had been in thirty years!". Every "making of" has to be a struggle of man vs. nature to create a masterpiece.

This one transcends this to be man vs. nature vs. man vs. man vs. man vs. man again, all to create one of the most famously awful movies ever. The dual egos and fuckery of Marlon Brando and Val Kilmer, a gloriously bonkers director, an over-ambitious script, an uncooperative studio, freak weather, and that's barely getting started.

I don't want to give too much away, but it's only about 20 minutes in when Richard Stanley says, "and that's when I resorted to witchcraft", and you're not going to find many "Making Of" documentaries where the problems affecting the production include the director's mum's house being struck by lightning, cursed hyenas, a Missing Persons case, the world's smallest man, and all of a warlock's bones melting. 

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Bad Neighbours isn't very good, is it. I don't know if I really like Seth Rogen. He was funny on those couple of Graham Norton appearances though.

The Walk is pretty good though is you can look past JGL's 'Good moaning!' French accent. Charlotte Le Bon is splendid. I think this is the first good Robert Zemeckis film since Back to the Future III.

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2 hours ago, Devon Malcolm said:

Bad Neighbours isn't very good, is it. I don't know if I really like Seth Rogen. He was funny on those couple of Graham Norton appearances though.

The Walk is pretty good though is you can look past JGL's 'Good moaning!' French accent. Charlotte Le Bon is splendid. I think this is the first good Robert Zemeckis film since Back to the Future III.

Tbf the accent of the real man was a little French parody from an actual French person.

watching it in IMAX 3D was almost vertigo inducing. Unfortunately one of his biggest flops 

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4 hours ago, Devon Malcolm said:

Bad Neighbours isn't very good, is it. I don't know if I really like Seth Rogen. He was funny on those couple of Graham Norton appearances though.

 

I quite like it. It's one of those fun easy watch R rated comedies that yeah could be better but its just fun simple stuff. It's the sequel that I despise. That has a really horrible message that could have been tweeked to be basically as fun as the first but is positive for women but instead it makes them out to be hapless idiots that can't even fit into the dumb 80s fraternity movies.

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45 minutes ago, Devon Malcolm said:

Grave of the Fireflies is cheerful, eh. Awesome film though. Not quite peak Ghibli but not far off either.

Has it been on telly recently? Channel 4/ Film4 always seem to put it on in the run-up to Christmas.

I've seen it a bunch of times and it never fails to rip my heart out.

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12 minutes ago, BrodyGraham said:

Has it been on telly recently? Channel 4/ Film4 always seem to put it on in the run-up to Christmas.

I've seen it a bunch of times and it never fails to rip my heart out.

I watched it on Archive.org, oddly, although I'm quite sure it's not public domain.

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Film4 have been playing a lot of Ghibli lately, as they tend to around this time of year. I caught Arrietty a couple of weeks back while I was in a hotel, first time I'd seen it since it came out (it was the first Ghibli I saw in a cinema).

I'd put Grave of the Fireflies easily in the top five of their movies, the only thing keeping it from being higher is that the strength of Ghibli for me lies in the imagination of Miyazaki, and as much of a genius as Takahata was, Fireflies isn't necessarily what I want out of a Ghibli movie!

Film4 are showing The Cat Returns on Friday, Ponyo on Sunday, Totoro on Christmas Day, and Spirited Away on the 30th, incidentally.

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The Predator.  The biggest peice of shit I’ve seen this year.  Starting with the main guys, looks like they are wearing bad cosplay.  The original looked so much better.  Things go further downhill with the shit plot, script and characters.  And a fucking kid.  Shite.

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Lord Of The Rings is shite, I hadn't watched it since I found it on VHS and decided to give a go on Netflix earlier but I didn't remember it being this bad. I actually felt sorry for the actors having to spew out the laughable lines they were given, and yeah I know they're likely from the book but that was crap too. The effects from the era have aged badly too, something like Legend is a much better looking fantasy film and it's far older.

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I really don't know how I feel about the LotR films any more.  I loved the first one when it came out, but the more they leant on dodgy CGI and less on optical illusions, the worse the films looked.

Plus watching them now, with all the additional scenes etc is a fucking slog, and they've aged terribly.

There so much that's good in them - some great casting, some amazing sets and locations, music... I just honestly think that Peter Jackson isn't a good director.  Or, like Lucas before him, his talent was diluted by all the money he had at his disposal.

Looking back, the whole thing would clearly have worked better as a tv series, and with some better writers.  Tolkien's dialogue is awful, it needed more work to get it into shape.

The original BBC radio version is still the ultimate take on the books - that's not aged a jot.

 

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4 hours ago, Thunderplex said:

The Predator.  The biggest peice of shit I’ve seen this year.  Starting with the main guys, looks like they are wearing bad cosplay.  The original looked so much better.  Things go further downhill with the shit plot, script and characters.  And a fucking kid.  Shite.

Yeah the autism angle was weird. The there was the editing where they would be doing one thing and then the next scene things would be completely different. They didn't finish re-shoots until mid july and it came out beginning of September and it was obviously butchered in post. Wasted opportunity

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Re: LOTR. I saw the first two at the cinema and liked them but I couldn't be arsed to see the third one. I've never had any inclination to return to them either. Peter Jackson should go back to doing stuff like Braindead.

Edited by Devon Malcolm
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4 hours ago, Thunderplex said:

The Predator.  The biggest peice of shit I’ve seen this year.  Starting with the main guys, looks like they are wearing bad cosplay.  The original looked so much better.  Things go further downhill with the shit plot, script and characters.  And a fucking kid.  Shite.

I didn't buy all the talk that this was bad. How could it be? Shane Black's back. The cast. The trailer! But no, it's a pile of shit, with a magical Rainman kid and lobotomised space dogs, not even as good as the Adrien Brody one.

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