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VHS and Betamax You Have Recently Rented


Frankie Crisp

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23 minutes ago, Devon Malcolm said:

The best thing about The Killer, for me, is how you slowly realise that he's actually not very good at his job for the most part. Gives it a lovely darkly comic sheen.

Absolutely, I was pissing myself laughing every time his narration was interrupted by him fucking something up.

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1 hour ago, LaGoosh said:

Absolutely, I was pissing myself laughing every time his narration was interrupted by him fucking something up.

The theory I came up with is all his bits of narration that are him spouting trivia is stuff he's heard from other people he's about to kill. Came to me during the Tilda Swinton scene when she's telling him all kinds of stuff. He's so busy reciting it all in his head that he misses his marks.

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Sting (cinema)

Good fun. Not too reliant on jump scares, some suitably disgusting deaths, and a couple of very funny characters. A family walked in to the screening thinking it was The Garfield Movie just as...

Spoiler

...the grieving widow upstairs got her stomach sliced open from the inside.

The Fall Guy (cinema)

Yeah I went again. I'm a big fan. We have failed this movie by letting it flop. If we keep letting Ryan Gosling comedies fail then he'll go back to working with Nicolas Winding Refn and nobody wants that.

The Garfield Movie (cinema)

Nothing here. Garfield never even kicks Odie off a table or packs Nermal off to Abu Dhabi.

Frantic

One of the best Hitchcock films that Hitchcock never made. I love how Harrison Ford just isn't a hero at all, he's just a clumsy dork foreigner who has no idea what he's doing. Shame it was directed by a nonce.

Gasoline Rainbow (Mubi)

Pretty nice and pleasant. Just a bunch of kids having a road trip before they have to get jobs. Take a drink every time someone says "deadass" and you'll be in hospital within half an hour.

PTU (Prime)

Superb Hong Kong crime thriller about the search for a cop's missing gun. Johnnie To has made a stack of crime and action films and they don't always work for me, however this one is really well paced and acted.

Boy Kills World

Nah, didn't work for me. The voiceover gimmick is awfully unfunny, plus that cunt Brett Gelman is in it. Bill Skarsgard handles the action really well though so I'd like to see him do some more action, only not directed by some dork trying to get a Deadpool job. Jessica Rothe from the Happy Death Day films is in it, too, always nice to see her in something, she's great.

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I watched Saw X the other day. I’m not a fan of the series but I didn’t hate this. What I do hate about the whole series is the whole “Oh but he is doing it all for good reasons against bad people”. Nah mate, he’s a serial killer like Dexter. And this film really ramps that up narrative and it’s not for me. 
 

Three Mike Castles out of five. 

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The Expendables

Other half had never seen it. It's worse than I remember. The second and third one are actually kind of fun from what I remember, when so much of this is just po-faced macho posturing. Macho posturing is what you expect, but it just doesn't have much of a sense of humour about it, whereas the sequels are at least a little more self-aware. 

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Posted (edited)

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga - I really liked it. At the moment I'm not sure if I prefer the frenetic style of Fury Road or the more epic slower pace of this, but both are great. Anya-Taylor Joy is fantastic obviously but Tom Burke was really good too.

The only negative wasn't anything to do with the film, but the actual showing had one of the worst audiences I've seen in a while. Peoples phones light up constantly, talking across aisles, answering calls. At one point the couple in my row dropped something on the floor and both got their torches out to find it! It took all of my British reserve to not lose my head. But at least it's an excuse to watch it again when it's out on streaming.

Jackdaw - This could easily have been a generic action-thriller but it has a locale you don't usually see in these type of films (it's set in the North-East) and enough good performances to make it stand out from the pack. Some of the dialogue is massively on the nose ("the road to hell is paved with good intentions" has never been said as earnestly) but I enjoyed it. Jenna Coleman as a blonde, bonk!

Gassed Up - A pretty run of the mill London gangster thriller. It's perfectly fine but you've seen it all before.

Edited by Lorne Malvo
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3 hours ago, Lorne Malvo said:

Jackdaw - This could easily have been a generic action-thriller but it has a locale you don't usually see in these type of films (it's set in the North-East) and enough good performances to make it stand out from the pack. Some of the dialogue is massively on the nose ("the road to hell is paved with good intentions" has never been said as earnestly) but I enjoyed it. Jenna Coleman as a blonde, bonk!

I watched this recently too. I didn't like it very much and I didn't understand why it turns into a buddy comedy at one point, but Jenna Coleman is absolutely ace in it. All those years wasted on Doctor Who, though.

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2 minutes ago, Devon Malcolm said:

I watched this recently too. I didn't like it very much and I didn't understand why it turns into a buddy comedy at one point, but Jenna Coleman is absolutely ace in it. All those years wasted on Doctor Who, though.

It felt very uneven everytime Thomas Turgoose was involved and the later plot development with that character was almost a jump the shark moment, but it just about worked for me. I'm one of those geeks who still thinks motorbikes are really cool though so that may have worked in its favour.

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One of the perks of being sofa-bound ill is I can just put on whatever film I want to in that moment without any care for connecting themes or quality. I just take the remote and browse Sky, Netflix or whatever and more or less randomly stumble on things. I could do that when I'm not ill, I know, but I don't. Anyway this is what I watched yesterday.

Thor: Love and Thunder. Load of toss. 

Barbie. Some really fun stuff here, but ultimately this felt like Mattel eating their cake while very much still having it. 

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs. Had a great time. 

Rashomon. It's always interesting to see something you've seen parodied countless times. Sometimes it lessens the original, but it didn't here, mainly because the parodies don't quite do it accurately. Great.

Spy Hard. Talking of parodies. So very tired, in places hopelessly dated. Can say I didn't laugh few times though. 

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More dispatches from the sofa.

Crank. Somehow never got around to seeing this. Great fun, obviously, but I was struck by how shit this looks. Filmed with digital HD cameras, sometimes it looks like a student film. I don't think I knew this was a fairly low budget hit, so fair play. They more than made up for in the fun and invention stakes.

Videodrome. Loved every little thing about it. 

Bottoms. Very funny, very enjoyable. 

Pitch Perfect 3. Lessons in how to kill a franchise. I really liked the first two of these, and I understand there's a limit to how many stories you can tell about acapella singing competitions, but i don't know that ham fisting a shitty action plot and military propaganda into what was a series mainly for homosexuals was wise. Even John Lithgow doing an Aussie accent can't save this. 

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12 minutes ago, gmoney said:

Crank. Somehow never got around to seeing this. Great fun, obviously, but I was struck by how shit this looks. Filmed with digital HD cameras, sometimes it looks like a student film. I don't think I knew this was a fairly low budget hit, so fair play. They more than made up for in the fun and invention stakes.

The sequel's even better!

 

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Robot Dreams is somewhat excellent. Animation is gorgeous and incredibly detailed with a setting that's a bit Richard Scarry does After Hours. Somewhat heartbreaking in it's lovelyness, I think it'd make an interesting double feature with Past Lives

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The Watchers (cinema)

Absolute shite. Walked out after an hour. Somebody stop the Shyamalans, they can't keep getting away with this.

Hit Man (Netflix)

Not too disappointed I missed this at the cinema. Enjoyable and quite funny but not much to it and its tone doesn't work after a while. The usual overrated Linklater stuff.

North by Northwest (cinema!)

Still obviously one of the greatest movies ever made. And one of the funniest too.

The Big Combo (YouTube)

Arguably the best American noir that isn't as well as known as it should be. Gorgeous to look at and Richard Conte is one of the best character actors of all time.

Revolver 

Its reputation for being total fucking nonsense is well earned. It's alright for the first half but then disappears up its own arse. Even Jason Statham can't save it, that's how shit it is.

Bull (Film 4)

Neil Maskell as a violent criminal again but unlike Kill List, this isn't directed by a total drongo. Horribly violent and even though the ending is terrible, a pleasingly nasty crime thriller.

Serial Mom

Gloriously daft and hilarious satire of suburbia. I really need to watch more John Waters. One of the best things I've watched this year.

The Kid Detective 

Wasn't sure about this first time round, absolutely get it now. Black comedy crime films are notoriously hard to get right but this does it. Adam Brody should be a huge star 

Hackers

Really stupid and tons of fun. Matthew Lillard is the best.

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