Paid Members Devon Malcolm Posted November 26, 2021 Paid Members Share Posted November 26, 2021 The Mitchells vs The Machines (Netflix) Absolutely no surprise that a lot of the people behind Into the Spider-Verse were responsible for this. Not just the best animated film of the year but one of the best films full stop. Full of great comedy and believable relationships, and a great companion piece to Ron's Gone Wrong. Livid I didn't get to see it at the cinema. The Card Counter Some follow-up to First Reformed from Paul Schrader, this. Possibly Oscar Isaac's best performance yet, a great drama about addiction, reformation and revenge. Also one of the year's best. The Courier John le Carre-esque dad film with Benny Cumberbatch playing a reluctant British spy. Very slow, not especially exciting but watchable enough. The Outside Story Really nice and funny comedy set in Brooklyn with Brian Tyree Henry in a rare lead role. Pretty gentle stuff but Henry is great in the lead and I hope he gets more like this. Enjoyed this a lot more than expected. Till Death (Netflix) Megan Fox ends up chained to her dead husband. Does about as much as you can with this concept and it's a pretty good thriller, actually. Rogue Megan Fox is pursued by terrorists and a giant lion. Not as much fun as Till Death but still not bad, even if it is about 20 minutes too long. The effects are hilariously shit. V/H/S 94 (Shudder) The first two had one really good segment in each and that was it. This one doesn't even have that. The Robocop rip-off is probably the best one but even that isn't all that good. They need to stop making these or at least get good directors to contribute something to them. Wrath of Man Apparently this is getting a Prime release in a couple of weeks after they chose not to release it at the cinema here. Can't think why! Anyway, Guy Ritchie's now miraculously made two really good films in a row but this one isn't his usual jokey crime film. Another one to add to Jason Statham's superb back catalogue. What a guy. The Killing of Two Lovers This drama about a man struggling against a violent reaction to a trial separation from his wife is getting no attention but it should be. In my top 10 of the year, it really hits hard and Clayne Crawford is amazing in the lead. Track it down. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members bAzTNM#1 Posted November 27, 2021 Paid Members Share Posted November 27, 2021 13 hours ago, TheSurgeon said: Rocky IV / Rocky vs Drago - Ultimate Directors Cut. 40 mins of new footage added, but they cut 40 mins of footage to fit it in. This cut makes it less 80's cartoony, and more like Rocky or Rocky Balboa. I need to watch it again, but after 1 watch, although the new footage was good, I think I prefer the original. Yeah I seen the trailer for it just there. Seems like they are trying to take the "80s cheese" out of it and make it like the original "Rocky". Don't fancy it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members LaGoosh Posted November 27, 2021 Paid Members Share Posted November 27, 2021 Watched Cats last night out of morbid curiosity. It's not good...it's definitely bad. But it's not the worst, most horrendous film ever like the weird public outcry suggested when it was released. It's biggest crimes are that it looks fairly cheap, James Corden is in it and it's mostly just quite boring. Definitely not "worst film ever" territory. Free Guy is way worse than this. And it's too boring to become a so-bad-its-funny cult film. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
patiirc Posted November 27, 2021 Share Posted November 27, 2021 Finally got round to No Country For Old Men. Simply phenomenonal from start to finish. Is it meant to link to Fargo in some kind of loose connection? As some of the beautiful shots of the west seemed to be framed as a counterpart to the Snow in Fargo. Stunning. Ava (Netflix) Good premise ruined by it effectively being a video game movie including Bear McCreary's Soundtrack and a series of boss battles. Sequel set up was piss poor too. Very disappointed with it. Red Notice (Netflix) , tried to hard to be Indiana Jones Tomb and the Furious Pool Woman. Had some good set bits and passed the time, not sure I'd watch it again though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members LaGoosh Posted November 27, 2021 Paid Members Share Posted November 27, 2021 (edited) 1 hour ago, patiirc said: Finally got round to No Country For Old Men. Simply phenomenonal from start to finish. Is it meant to link to Fargo in some kind of loose connection? No. Fargo is an original story by the Coen brothers while No Country is an incredibly faithful adaptation of a book. Edited November 27, 2021 by LaGoosh Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members BomberPat Posted November 29, 2021 Paid Members Share Posted November 29, 2021 I went to a Nicolas Cage all-night marathon at the Prince Charles Cinema - 8.30pm kick-off, 8.00am finish. Film one was The Rock. This is probably the one I was most hyped for; I love it, and haven't seen it in years. It's ridiculous fun and holds up, and it's probably the only film of the night where Cage is completely outshone, because Sean Connery is fantastic throughout. As far as action movies go, it's as fun a romp as any, and the "breaking into Alcatraz" concept is still really fun, as is Connery as an old pseudo-James Bond. Can't fault. Second up was Con Air. I hadn't watched this in so long that I'd forgotten most of the movie, and how much fun it was. Probably the actual highlight of the whole thing. The scheduling meant that we got two movies in a row that open with flag-waving montages playing tribute to the US military, with limited if any importance to the actual plot, and two movies in a row that feature characters talking about escaping to "non-extradition countries"; must have been something in the water in the late '90s. Nicolas Cage's accent in this film is certainly an acting choice. I found clean shaven Danny Trejo quite difficult to look at. Tonally, this movie is all over the place - action, pathos, comedy, just thrown in completely at random. Steve Buscemi is a super scary serial killer, who ends up played almost exclusively for laughs. Nicolas Cage's best mate is a sympathetic character that's meant to provide the heart at the centre of the movie, as Cage refuses to leave him behind, but he's also a bloke being relocated to a maximum security prison, so he's probably not a nice guy, is he? John Cusack is great in this. Some of the maddest, most brilliant chase scenes and action sequences going. Brilliant. Third was Face/Off. I wasn't giving this one my full attention - I only watched it a month or so ago, so I had set this one aside as my time to try and get some sleep in, though I didn't manage it. It's ridiculous, full of plot holes, poorly structured, and John Woo-tastic. John Travolta's family keep really weirding touch each other's faces. I don't care how advanced your magic medical physical restructuring is, you can't fit Nicolas Cage's face on John Travolta's skull. At one point in the film, Travolta's character is having the face transplant technology explained to him - it's all super secret, and he's never heard of it before - and they explain that they use a special mould of his skull; something the doctors apparently already have, despite him never having met them or heard of the technology before. Structurally, the biggest problem the film has it that it can't really escape the emotional beats of Hollywood action movie storytelling, which means that when Nicolas Cage is the baddy, the FBI agents are heroic good guys trying to stop him, but when Nicolas Cage is the goody and FBI agents are storming the building that he's in with all his mates, the FBI agents are generic mooks to be gunned down by the "hero", and the emotional beat comes from the death of a violent drug dealer, because for now they're mates. In a film about identity, revenge and loss, you'd expect some kind of narrative symmetry or special significance to how the villain is eventually vanquished, but instead he gets shot with a harpoon after a speedboat chase. Castor Troy is the most made up name in history. The fourth film, after an exclusive clip from The Unbearable Weight Of Massive Talent, was a MYSTERY MOVIE, so we didn't know what it was going to be until it started rolling. It turned out to be Ghost Rider which is, of course, abject shit. All the villains are shit, Nicolas Cage plays Johnny Blaze as if he's constantly half asleep, the story barely makes any sense. At one point, it's explained that the main bad guy can't set foot on hallowed ground. In the very next scene he's standing in a church, and that idea never comes up again. Ghost Rider has a skull for a head, but can still whistle, despite not having any lips. The female love interest is one of the worst written characters I've ever seen in a movie. The only good thing about this is Sam Elliott's voice being so good that I don't even care that he spends the entire movie saying nothing but lazy exposition. And finally, Mandy. I'd never seen this before, and all I really knew about it was that it was apparently "crazy" - but depending on who you're talking to, "crazy" could mean anything from sub-Adult Swim contrived wackiness to anything less straightforward than a linear three act structure, to the earliest works of Jodorowsky. It sort of fell somewhere in the middle of all of that. If I had to choose, I probably wouldn't have opted to watch this movie at 7.00am. The use of colour throughout is brilliant, and the lighting and camerawork is really the star of the movie. The first act was really reminiscent of David Lynch - I don't like people using Lynch as a byword for "weirdness" in cinema, as it's usually inaccurate, but the use of artificial light, long, lingering close-ups, and uncomfortably slow fades from one scene to another (or fading from one scene into the same scene) was Lynchian in the purest sense of the word. I kind of lost interest by the time it got to the bulk of the movie, though - that might have been the conditions I was watching it under, but when it just became an endless run of revenge killings, I didn't really care how creative or wacky each kill was, because it wasn't taking the story anywhere. And the story didn't go anywhere, it was just a run of Nicolas Cage killing characters we'd never really given that much reason to care about other than that they were absolute rotters. Nor did it ever really feel like there was ever any level of threat - it was just Cage killing over and over again. I got a laugh out of the big long chainsaw, though. It's good, I'm glad I watched it, doubt I'll ever go out of my way to watch it again, but if I do, it probably won't be at 7.00am after being awake for around 20 hours, having sat through four other films, and desperate for a piss. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Factotum Posted November 30, 2021 Share Posted November 30, 2021 PIG was a great recent Cage performance. Hit me weirdly hard in the gut. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members chokeout Posted November 30, 2021 Paid Members Share Posted November 30, 2021 Odd films and order for a Cage Marathon but I assume they were specifically going for his later action hero stuff? Whoever thought putting Ghost Rider as a surprise needs speaking to. You could have easily popped in Snake Eyes or Gone in 60 seconds for a far better experience Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Devon Malcolm Posted November 30, 2021 Paid Members Share Posted November 30, 2021 They should have replaced Mandy too. What a terrible film, that is. Should have put Color Out of Space on. (Or Honeymoon in Vegas) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Hannibal Scorch Posted November 30, 2021 Paid Members Share Posted November 30, 2021 (edited) I AM MORON Edited November 30, 2021 by neil Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keith Houchen Posted November 30, 2021 Share Posted November 30, 2021 Given that he’s suing for libel regarding those allegations, I hope he doesn’t stumble across your post. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Hannibal Scorch Posted November 30, 2021 Paid Members Share Posted November 30, 2021 7 minutes ago, Keith Houchen said: Given that he’s suing for libel regarding those allegations, I hope he doesn’t stumble across your post. Well no one is suing me about any allegations so i'll be alright. But you can't pick and choose here. Look at the speaking out thread where people are boycotting companies based on allegations made about wrestlers, but film directors get a pass?  Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keith Houchen Posted November 30, 2021 Share Posted November 30, 2021 No, but if he sees your post the forum runs a very slim chance of being shut down and you being added to the suit.  It’s not about a free pass either, look at Polanski and Allen. They’ve been lambasted on here as has the Jeepers Creepers nonce, Harvey Weinstein and Walt Disney, even Mel Gibson. I think you’ve missed my point. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Hannibal Scorch Posted November 30, 2021 Paid Members Share Posted November 30, 2021 4 minutes ago, Keith Houchen said: No, but if he sees your post the forum runs a very slim chance of being shut down and you being added to the suit.  It’s not about a free pass either, look at Polanski and Allen. They’ve been lambasted on here as has the Jeepers Creepers nonce, Harvey Weinstein and Walt Disney, even Mel Gibson. I think you’ve missed my point. Good job I didn't say their name then. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keith Houchen Posted November 30, 2021 Share Posted November 30, 2021 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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