VHS and Betamax You Have Recently Rented

[gmoney]

9 hours ago, BomberPat said:

I watched Top Gun Maverick for the first time last night, and thought it was bang average.

I have no real nostalgic connection to the original, so found a lot of it cloying and irritating. The action scenes were really impressive, but every character was irritating, none of it was believable, half the dialogue was clunky exposition, and I'm just utterly burned out on not on remakes and sequels per sé but on remakes and sequels that just obsessively fetishise the iconography of the original film. The film is full of lingering shots on Maverick's jacket, or anything else you might recognise from the original film, because REMEMBER TOP GUN? 

I found it hard not to laugh out loud every time there was a photo of characters from the original film displayed on the wall - stills from Top Gun framed on the walls of Naval offices, or Maverick's locker door covered in photos of his old friends like he's a teenage girl - or every time characters in the movie recapped the events of the original in conversation; it's been thirty years, and none of these people have had a single new photograph taken, or had any of these conversations in the meantime. Outside of Val Kilmer's scene, which was at least genuinely moving though more for Val Kilmer's real life health issues than for any narrative significance, there's no sense that any of the characters from the original film had any kind of lived experience or internal life in the intervening thirty years. They just sat around waiting for a sequel. 

As three stars a movie as ever exists, genuinely do not understand all the love it got on release.

 

 

[johnnyboy]

34 minutes ago, Devon Malcolm said:

One of them's got Goldberg in it, hasn't it? How have I not seen it yet.

Goldberg is in Return, which JCVD also returned for.  II and III were retconned out of existence, as well they should have been, by The Return.  The Return itself was ignored when they started off again with Retaliation.  So if you're keeping track of this, in a six film series you have 3 films retconned out of existence.  The Return was perfectly fine, certainly infinitely better than II and III, but...

Spoiler

JCVD/Luc became human again so it wouldn't have worked for Retaliation's story.

II and III are direct sequels of Universal Soldier.

II and III are ignored by The Return, which itself is a direct sequel of Universal Soldier.

Retaliation, and subsequently Day of Reckoning, are a new line of sequels spawning from the original Universal Soldier thereby ignoring both The Return branch and the shitty cable movie II and III branch of sequels.

<Jesus Fucking Christ.gif>

Edit: II and III, if you fancy torturing yourself, are available to watch free on Plex.

Edited April 12 by johnnyboy

[hallicks]

Civil war (Dolby Cinema). I thought this was just great. The near-future dystopian America felt chillingly plausible and realistic. The characters felt gritty and had depth. The VFX was seamless, some of the best I’ve ever seen, in that, you never even saw them. It was all shot beautifully and the whole thing looked fantastic. Not too long either, less than 2 hours I think. 

[Hannibal Scorch]

On 4/13/2024 at 2:13 PM, hallicks said:

Civil war (Dolby Cinema). I thought this was just great. The near-future dystopian America felt chillingly plausible and realistic. The characters felt gritty and had depth. The VFX was seamless, some of the best I’ve ever seen, in that, you never even saw them. It was all shot beautifully and the whole thing looked fantastic. Not too long either, less than 2 hours I think. 

Couldn’t agree more. The trailer made it out to be a pretty out and out war film. So I was pleased at how different it was and quite unique for a war film. Reminded me of Sicario a bit at times with the tension and just looking beautiful despite the backdrop. Alex Garland said this will be his last directorial effort, shame as it’s probably his best.

[BomberPat]

Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning is fantastic, I really enjoyed that one, so much better than a straight-to-DVD B-movie sequel deserves to be.

If you're going to do sequels, it does what a sequel should do - it takes the basic premise of the franchise, and then looks at it from a completely different angle, so the mid-film twist comes as a genuine and brilliant surprise, and prompts a lot of questions about the concept and the series as a whole. I'll take that over the slew of modern sequels that are just swelling music while the camera lingers on a mundane object that means nothing to characters within the film but is treated with reverence because making the audience remember things from their childhood is easier than telling a good story.

[Merzbow]

I was apprehensive about Civil War, not sure if it would go down the complete cartoon Trump route but it really didn't. Trailers didn't do it justice and just focused of the admittedly amazing action but it was everything in-between that also made it such a beautiful film, one of the best lookers from a pure camera work perspective I've seen in a while.

Cailee Spaeny is a star, single handedly made Priscilla good and added so much here, too.

[mim731]

On 4/14/2024 at 6:29 PM, Hannibal Scorch said:

Alex Garland said this will be his last directorial effort, shame as it’s probably his best.

https://www.indiewire.com/features/interviews/alex-garland-clarifies-claims-retiring-directing-1234970430

He's rowed back on that somewhat, more that he's focusing on screenwriting for the next while, but not ruling out directing again in the future.

 

[Surf Digby]

On 4/12/2024 at 11:23 AM, BomberPat said:

I watched Top Gun Maverick for the first time last night, and thought it was bang average.

Apart from the last 20 minutes or so, when there was actually a bit of drama, I thought it was one of the dullest films I've seen in a long time. Far too long, and far too much of nothing really happening.

[WeeAl]

Oppenheimer 

Bit shite wasn't it? Took me three days to watch it. (Friday, Monday & Tuesday). Could hardly ever hear the dialogue with the amount of silly background music in all the conversation scenes. So many scene cuts back and forward in time. I'm not sure there was a single great scene in it, considering all the plaudits it got. The best may have been when they were discussing which cities to target in Japan. Chilling if you imagine stuffed suits selecting life and death in that manner in reality. Not one for a re-watch, sorry Cillian. 

[waters44]

Sky now have a Martial Arts film channel. Got Police Story 1, 2 and 3 recorded so it’s gonna be a Jackie Chan themed weekend I reckon 

[Devon Malcolm]

The Teachers' Lounge (cinema)

Films set in schools are usual manipulative, clichéd crap but this is one of the few that captures the complexities and challenges of being a part of the education process on any level. Anxiety-inducing and superbly acted.

The Ox-Bow Incident (Talking Pictures TV)

Magnificent western, more like a courtroom drama played out on the plains. Dark, depressing and one of the earliest westerns to be loudly critical of western mythology. Henry Fonda is one of the greatest actors of all time.

Making Mr. Right (YouTube)

Did you ever want to see John Malkovch in a dual role, playing a scientist and an android who falls in love with a human woman and pulling off some of the better slapstick comedy you could wish to see? Of course you do. This was great.

Testament (1983)

Incredibly depressing nuclear fallout drama. Would have scared the absolute shit out of me as a kid, like The Day After did, and it's still really affecting stuff today. Doesn't provide any light at all. Would make for a nice double-bill with Threads if you really wanted to feel bad.

Beyond Re-Animator

What an excellent trilogy this is. I don't think this is far below the quality of the first two, even if it's a little slow getting going. I'm going to watch them all on the same day when October rolls round.

Kronos (YouTube)

Really enjoyable old 50s sci-fi horror about a massive alien robot that tries to suck all the energy out of the earth. Like you do.

Nope

I still think this is the weaker of Jordan Peele's three films to date but only because Get Out and Us are so amazingly good. Just love the genre crossing and imagination that's gone into this.

[Loki]

Roadhouse (2024)

This didn't disappoint, great popcorn movie.  Gyllenhaal is such a weirdo but it kind of worked here even though he doesn't strike me as a natural action star.  I personally loved Conor McGregor in this, his walk was hilarious and the main fight scenes were really great.  I'm a fan of Doug Liman's work - he seems to continually evolve his style and try stuff out, the camera angles in the fights felt really fresh.  He's come a long way from Swingers!

They almost certainly won't but there's mileage in Gyllenhaal's Dalton character, you could do a few more in the style of the episodic Reacher films.  I always like the "drifter" mythos, I appreciated the fact that the script acknowledged that the story is basically a classic Western.  

Edit: oh and the music was great with some fantastic bands playing at the Road House.

Edited April 18 by Loki
well everybody knows about the bird, bird, bird, bird, bird is the word

[Magnum Milano]

5 hours ago, Devon Malcolm said:

The Ox-Bow Incident (Talking Pictures TV)

Magnificent western, more like a courtroom drama played out on the plains. Dark, depressing and one of the earliest westerns to be loudly critical of western mythology. Henry Fonda is one of the greatest actors of all time.

Thanks for this.  I'll write about it next time I make a post, but I watched 12 Angry Men for the first time last week and Fonda was amazing in that. Everything about it was incredible from the character development, the script, the performances.  Easily one of the two best films I've watched this year (the other is The Great Escape).

[Devon Malcolm]

4 hours ago, Magnum Milano said:

Thanks for this.  I'll write about it next time I make a post, but I watched 12 Angry Men for the first time last week and Fonda was amazing in that. Everything about it was incredible from the character development, the script, the performances.

One of the greatest American films of all time by one of the greatest American directors.

[Hannibal Scorch]

I should have known that I’d find Immaculate disappointing after I heard Kermode rave about it. Typical nun based horror with plot points which seem to be mentioned but soon forgotten about. Not Sydney Sweeney’s finest hour (and 30 minutes).