VHS and Betamax You Have Recently Rented

[SaitoRyo]

Trackdown

A rancher's sister from Montana takes off for LA and finds out very quickly that it isn't the City of Angels she thinks it is, as she is immediately taken advantage of and abused in horrible ways. Her cowboy brother decides to track her down - it's a trackdown, folks - showing up to do the job that LA officials refuse to do. 

It's a very bleak exploitationer, with a few notable people like Erik Estrada and Anne Archer playing key roles. James Mitchum plays the vengeful brother. He's not the actor his father Robert was, but he really, really looks like him, so that's nice and distracting. 

It's alright (if not predictable) but, as I said, rather bleak. Sort of like a mashup of Death Wish and Hardcore, though not as memorable as either of those. There's a very nice copy on YouTube, for the curious.

[cobra_gordo]

9 hours ago, Dr. Alan Grant said:

Notting Hill (first watch) - loved it. Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts at their most Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts. A wonderful supporting cast too. I think I may love Gina McKee. 4/5

I love Notting Hill. It's a real comfort watch for me.

[johnnyboy]

17 minutes ago, cobra_gordo said:

I love Notting Hill. It's a real comfort watch for me.

Yes, even Ronan Keating's version of "When You Say Nothing At All" cannot stop Notting Hill from holding a special place in my heart.

[SaitoRyo]

Electra Glide in Blue

I really liked this. The sort of thing that could only really be made during the American New Wave. It's about a highway patrolman in the Arizona desert who desperately wants to be a detective. He stumbles upon what he suspects is a murder case (which seems farfetched in the moment) and gets his shot but then encounters all sorts of shadiness and corruption. 

That's what it's about, but it's not really about that. It's mainly about the cop, who is played very well by Robert Blake. There are a lot of scenes of him just doing his job patrolling the highway, which probably could have been cut to help the pacing of the film, but they somehow feel essential and it all builds to an engrossing final fifteen or twenty minutes.

Would definitely recommend this for fans of offbeat seventies crime films/character studies. It didn't deserve the critical drubbing it received when it was released and it ought to have more of a cult following now. 

[Carbomb]

2 hours ago, SaitoRyo said:

Electra Glide in Blue

I really liked this. The sort of thing that could only really be made during the American New Wave. It's about a highway patrolman in the Arizona desert who desperately wants to be a detective. He stumbles upon what he suspects is a murder case (which seems farfetched in the moment) and gets his shot but then encounters all sorts of shadiness and corruption. 

That's what it's about, but it's not really about that. It's mainly about the cop, who is played very well by Robert Blake. There are a lot of scenes of him just doing his job patrolling the highway, which probably could have been cut to help the pacing of the film, but they somehow feel essential and it all builds to an engrossing final fifteen or twenty minutes.

Would definitely recommend this for fans of offbeat seventies crime films/character studies. It didn't deserve the critical drubbing it received when it was released and it ought to have more of a cult following now. 

I watched this last year with friends, posted on this thread too, I think. Bizarrely, Robert Blake died the next week. He was...a fairly problematic person, to put it mildly. 

Have to admit he was good in this, and I really liked the film overall. It's kind of got everything - it's got that odd 70s arthouse feel, but also got good action/chase scenes, tension, light-heartedness, good cinematography making the most of the Arizona desert (making it look like one of d-d-daz' dinner plates), and they manage to pack a lot of detail into the characters in a really short space of time.

They even stick the ending. It's not what I would have gone for, but it makes perfect sense, and rounds the film off well.

EDIT: Also, being what would now be considered by modern standards to be a "short king", I really like that they make it a big part of Johnny Wintergreen's character that he's small, but bad-ass and a legit ladies' man.

Edited 21 hours ago by Carbomb

[LaGoosh]

Alien Romulus

Not good. Not good at all. A collection of ridiculous set pieces surrounded by a convoluted, overstuffed and dull story. Characters so forgettable, bland, unbelievable and one note you can barely even call them characters - angry guy, guy who swears a lot, bald girl, pregnant girl, Cailee Spaeny (who deserves so much more than this) as girl who looks sad and mostly cries and David Jonsson as the only character who you immediately form an emotional connection to but then 30 minutes in has a character change and becomes completely uninteresting afterwards. The late Ian Holm turns up via CG effects so bad I have no idea how anyone involved in the making of the film approved it. Some of the film looks pretty good but it's mostly the same grey/orange smudge that seems so popular with filmmakers these days. The aliens themselves barely feel like much of a threat and don't really do anything new or exciting for the most part. It's all so fucking pointless.

The past few years of big action/adventure/sci fi films has pretty much convinced me that Hollywood don't really know how to make these type of films anymore and audience standards are so low they're not expecting better. It's a huge shame.

I'll give it 1 out of 10. The 1 is for Spaeny and Jonsson doing their best with what they could.

Edited 47 minutes ago by LaGoosh