VHS and Betamax You Have Recently Rented

[Chris B]

29 minutes ago, LaGoosh said:

Coffy - a good, sleazy fun time. I've never seen a film where 50% of the scenes somehow manage to engineer someone getting their tits out. Pam Grier's acting is awful but also weirdly endearing, and it doesn't hurt that she is possibly the most sexy human to ever exist in history in this. My first blaxploitation film. Trashy, cheap and crude but I enjoyed it for what it what was. I'm going to check out a few more.

Blacula is worth a look - in the various books about horror films I read growing up, it was always kind of slagged off, and treated as absolute crap. So I was surprised when I watched it and found it an absolute belter. Of its time, obviously, but William Marshall is tremendous in it, and it's got one shot in particular (the morgue scene) that has really stuck with me. In hindsight, it's pretty obvious that the writers I was reading just didn't care for Blaxploitation stuff. 

[DavidB6937]

Just rejoined Mubi for a few months. Any recommendations? Been off about a year or so probably.

[SuperBacon]

3 minutes ago, DavidB6937 said:

Just rejoined Mubi for a few months. Any recommendations? Been off about a year or so probably.

Perfect Days. Maybe my favourite film of last year.

[Hannibal Scorch]

Love Hurts felt like a throwback to 90’s Hollywood Jackie Chan movies. Ke Huy Quan is obviously good, but a flimsy script, dull story and long breaks between the (well choreographed) fights means the swift 83 minute run time drags. 1.5/4.

Edited February 7, 2025 by Hannibal Scorch

[Mr_Danger]

Shame there’s been such bad reviews of that, the Short Round comeback has been one of the best things in Hollywood these last couple of years. Hopefully it’ll be just a minor setback.

[Devon Malcolm]

2 hours ago, DavidB6937 said:

Just rejoined Mubi for a few months. Any recommendations? Been off about a year or so probably.

The Worst Person in the World and the Three Colours films are on there now, too.

Hard Truths (cinema)

Just in case you needed any more evidence that Mike Leigh is one of the greatest British filmmakers of all time, here's another brilliantly acted extremely funny and extremely sad comedy-drama about everyday life. The last half an hour of this is incredible. Marianne Jean-Baptiste and Michele Austin not getting Oscar nominations are all the proof you need that they're shit.

You're Cordially Invited (Prime)

Will Ferrell still isn't funny, Reese Witherspoon is still propping up stuff that should be beneath her. Just not very funny despite an excellent comedy cast (Jimmy Tatro and Meredith Hagner deserve better than this) even if it's largely inoffensive.

Scanner Cop 1 and 2 (Prime)

I was never a fan of Scanners - but I'm a fan of these! Good quality, fun, DTV sci-fi horror actioners, they should have made seven more of these.

Cloud (2024)

Kiyoshi Kurosawa made three films last year. Good news for the human race. This isn't quite as good as Chime but if you like Kiyoshi (and I do more than just about anything else) then there is so much to grasp on to here. Loopy and chilling as ever.

The Doom Generation

Only the second film I've seen from Gregg Araki but this didn't work for me anywhere near as well as Mysterious Skin. Occasionally threatens to be great but never really settles on what it wants to be.

Barbarella

As boring and stupid as I always suspected it would be. I'm just allergic to this sort of 60s kitsch Euro-junk, even with Jane Fonda looking like Jane Fonda.

Looney Tunes: Back in Action

Joe Dante's one of the great Hollywood filmmakers. Amazing how he got hold of $70 million of Warner Bros. money and used it to take the piss out of them while making a brilliant homage to Looney Tunes. Even Jenna Elfman is quite likeable in it.

The Bone Collector (Film 4)

Pretty boring with an unnecessarily awesome Angelina Jolie performance. I often forget how good she is. Shame the rest of this wasn't.

In the Aisles

Nicely observed German drama about people working in a supermarket. Lovely last half an hour, awesome performances from Franz Rogowski and Sandra Huller. Worth finding (I saw it on German Mubi).

Edited February 7, 2025 by Devon Malcolm

[Hannibal Scorch]

21 minutes ago, Mr_Danger said:

Shame there’s been such bad reviews of that, the Short Round comeback has been one of the best things in Hollywood these last couple of years. Hopefully it’ll be just a minor setback.

I was genuinely delighted when he got the Oscar. What a comeback! But yeah it was disappointing, but I don’t think will derail him. 

[johnnyboy]

On 2/7/2025 at 9:07 PM, Hannibal Scorch said:

Love Hurts felt like a throwback to 90’s...

Just like white dog shit.  An absolute mess that didn't know what it wanted to be so ended up being a shambles where you get to hear everyone's boring expositional internal monologue.

I'm not angry, just really disappointed.

[FLips]

Under Seige

It's Die Hard on a boat and it's class. Star-studded too, with Tommy Lee Jones and Gary Busey making up a pair of cracking baddies alongside Colm Meaney. Steven Seagal is flanked by a Playboy girl who jumps tits first out of a cake, Ken from Street Fighter: The Movie, and Tuco from Breaking Bad.
In that perfect 90-100 minute runtime where it never outstays it's welcome, it's got great action, gruesome kills and everyone is out there chewing up scenery. They front load the film with way too much exposition about how good a cook he is to the point that they go out of their way to burn his pies and spit in his soup as if we care about that at all.
Steven Seagal is unintentionally hilarious the entire time, taking himself super seriously while he relentlessly kills grunts, seductively whispering all of his lines and very rarely popping out a cheeky one-liner. It's like everyone is in on a joke but him and he thinks it's all real. He doesn't even have time for the Playboy girl as the second she pops out the cake he's like "put your tits away this is serious, here is an MP5 machine gun and this is how you switch from automatic to semi-automatic now crack on".
Brilliant.

Top unnecessarily violent kills:

• Slow Motion stabbing a guy twice in the armpit made me flinch
• Snapping a dude's back over the corner of a table saw, then kneeing him in the balls - pushing his head upwards into the saw
• Dropping a full steel girder straight through a guy
• Thumbing Tommy Lee Jones' eye out, stabbing him directly in the head and then needless smashing the corpse's head through an exploding monitor

Under Seige 2

Rumours were this one isn't as good and let me tell you that's bollocks. It's brilliant also. This one is Die Hard on a train.

This one he replaces the Playboy girl with his teenage neice and black streetwise porter, covering all the sidekick bases in one fell swoop. Yet again he barely has time for either of them other than instructing them how to end a man's life as he sulks around the train violently offing mercs.
Another top notch cast too carrying Seagal's lifeless body through the film including Kurtwood Smith, Eric Bogosian and the unbelievably great Everett McGill. Jonathan Banks does a great usual turn as grumpy henchman, and a keen eye will spot Mikey Palmice from The Sopranos.
The action like in the first one is fab, culminating in a high speed head-on train crash right out of a Tomb Raider game with Steven Seagal running up the train from an explosion front to back.
At one point the baddies blow a passenger jet up because someone paid them $100 million to do it because their ex wife is on the plane. Mad. There's no real investment in them until they find out Casey fucking Ryback is on the train and they all shit themselves in a panic.

Top unnecessarily violent kills:

• Guy gets thrown in front of the train, mangling him into mince
• Seagal makes a glass bomb with a cocktail shaker and coconut oil and has a guy catch it, eviscerating him
• Covers a stairs in lighter fluid then shoots a guy point blank with a flare gun, immolating him as he tumbles down the stairs
• Slams the door shut on a guy's fingers hanging on to a helicopter, chopping them all off and making him fall hundreds of feet into an exploding ball of fire

2 Bonus kills: Man falls off cliff and bounces off the rocks, woman judo flipped out of a helicopter and bounces off a moving train.

----

I only watched the first one as an ironic "let's watch this shit Steven Seagal film" but actually loved it so much I took a chance on the sequel and loved that too. I think they're both as good as each other and the short runtimes on both would happily see me double bill them again. 10/10.

He also ends both films with a hand to hand knife/judo fight and they're both shit. Here's gifs of them:

Shocking. I laughed my arse off through both of them.

Edited February 11, 2025 by FLips

[Carbomb]

I used to like Seagal films, then quickly grew to hate them as I realised he just jobs out everyone. There's no peril or threat at all really. Even Bruce Lee sold for Chuck Norris.

[Bellenda Carlisle]

All of Seagal's films before Under Siege are worth watching. Marked for Death and Out for Justice are my faves. He's got a few fun ones after as well but dozens of bottom of the barrel ones.

[johnnyboy]

On Deadly Ground with Segal and Michael Caine in has a viewing side quest where you can try and work out how much kiwi boot polish they used to turn Caine's hair or syrup that shade of black.  It's 190 on the McManus scale.

[SaitoRyo]

Bad Times at The El Royale

This was alright. Not great or anything. Felt like it should have been better, but it's just a bit long for what it is and the pacing isn't great. I liked the setting and it's got a cracking soundtrack and everything, but it never quite comes together like you expect it to. 

[LaGoosh]

Yeah it's a frustrating film because all the ingredients are there for something really great but for some reason it just doesn't quite work.

[SaitoRyo]

37 minutes ago, LaGoosh said:

Yeah it's a frustrating film because all the ingredients are there for something really great but for some reason it just doesn't quite work.

I remember really wanting to go see it at the cinema when it came out but never got around to it. As I said, there were bits of it I really liked, but when the film finish I was left feeling let down. 

I've seen a bunch of Tarantino/Coens inspired films from the 90s/early 2000s that were a lot more enjoyable overall.