VHS and Betamax You Have Recently Rented

[FLips]

I might have to check The Raid out. I remember a lot of people raving about it at the time.

I started Top Gun last night which I've not seen a single second of before other than hearing it was fairly homoerotic. I thought it was kind of a joke based on a few scenes or something but the second Maverick and Iceman looked at each other in class I went "oh yeah no those guys are in love".

We'll see how I get on with the rest of the film when I finish it today.

[Just Some Guy]

11 hours ago, Lorne Malvo said:

If anything, I think The Raid coming out at pretty much the same time as Dredd contributed to it not doing great. I remember the critical consensus at the time being 'Dredd is fine, but it's not The Raid!' when both are really good films in their own right. 

I was going to say the same but wondered if there is much of a crossover audience between a Hollywood blockbuster and a subtitled Thai martial arts flick!

[air_raid]

2 hours ago, FLips said:

I started Top Gun last night which I've not seen a single second of before other than hearing it was fairly homoerotic.

Playin....

Playin with the boys!!

[Merzbow]

Both were pretty niche action films with a large crossover in who'd be into them I'd say, Dredd was more a British thing than Hollywood, wasn't it Alex Garland's company that produced it?

I really need to rewatch The Raid and it's sequel, that even got a rare cinema showing here at the time. I remember people were down in it as it really tried to be clever and something deeper than what it was but I dug it.

[Devon Malcolm]

The Raid 2 is too long. There's some good stuff in there but it's at least 45 minutes too long whilst the original was a tight 100 minutes.

[Merzbow]

Gareth is back to making action films btw, Havoc should be out soon and I'm not just interested because Jessie Mei Li is in it...

[Carbomb]

1 hour ago, Just Some Guy said:

I was going to say the same but wondered if there is much of a crossover audience between a Hollywood blockbuster and a subtitled Thai martial arts flick!

Indonesian.

[davertfnewman]

Watched Chopper the other night. Good enough movie, deserving of the good reviews and study that it would've gotten at the time and Eric Bana definitely deserved the push in stardom, but a part of me was wondering if it feels less special now because a lot of the tricks used in it have been used elsewhere. Talking about stuff like the lighting and the theatricality of the staging at times.

[Just Some Guy]

52 minutes ago, Carbomb said:

Indonesian.

I stand corrected.

[LaGoosh]

I know there's one or two Rolling Thunder fans on here so I gave it a go. I was bit disappointed by it. I thought the first 20-30 minutes were interesting and was enjoying it but once the tragedy happens I found the film pretty boring. The main actor gives one of the dullest performances I think I've seen in some time and sucks the film of any energy it could have. Which is frustrating considering that Tommy Lee Jones is in the film and I couldn't help but wonder how if they had him cast as the main character how considerably better the film might have been. Additionally the actress who plays the "love interest" is fantastic, I'm pretty surprised I haven't seen her in anything else. She gives real life to a paper thin character and deserved way better. The final 10 minutes are your standard exploitation film gory shoot out and then it just ends. Meh.

There's one incredibly unintentionally funny bit where after perhaps an hour of the film convincing you the main character is a dangerous, well prepared tough guy but when he finally sees one of his targets  after what feels like a lifetime and he just kind of...runs at him and tries to tackle him but then he gets beaten up a little bit (I saw rougher looking fights in primary school) and then he immediately runs away. I can't believe it made the cut to be honest.

[Carbomb]

42 minutes ago, LaGoosh said:

Additionally the actress who plays the "love interest" is fantastic, I'm pretty surprised I haven't seen her in anything else. She gives real life to a paper thin character and deserved way better.

On the basis of what you just posted, I looked her up, and it seems you're not the only one to think that. She suddenly just quit the acting business in 1980 to become a legal secretary, and only resurfaced when Tarantino and a writer called Tom Graves tracked her down.

There's a section of her Wiki article discussing her critical reception, and there appears to be a consensus among reviewers that she was really talented, but no filmmaker made the most of her.

Given how awful the film industry has been for women, I wouldn't be surprised if the lack of acclaim from her contemporaries, combined with various sexual aggressions you just know would have taken place at the time, caused her to just think "Fuck this".

[Devon Malcolm]

Linda Haynes was a brilliant actor. Her run there in the 70s took her through some good-to-great films and she was always excellent in them. Probably her best one was The Nickel Ride, but she was a rare talent.

[gmoney]

On 2/18/2025 at 7:57 AM, FLips said:

Lionheart/AWOL: Absent Without Leave

Dipped my toes into the JCVD pool and it's pretty tepid. I thought the whole thing was fairly rubbish bar a couple of fight scenes. The dramatic performances from all involved are shockingly bad. I understand English isn't his first language but JCVD delivers his lines like Tommy Wiseau, and his trainer/booker played by Harrison Page is abysmal for nearly the entire film, though there is one small section where he settles down a bit to pretend to be a lawyer paying cheques to a widow and you kinda realise actually it's not the actor that's bad it's his script because he was decent there. At one point JCVD I assume accidentally bombs his lines and says "they're not enough tough for this" instead of "tough enough" but they just leave it in.

There's absolutely zero stakes either. The film starts with JCVD's junkie brother being torched alive in an alley and by the time he even goes AWOL from the French Legion his brother is obviously toast and his murderers are in jail. So he's made it to America and is involved essentially in bum fights for no reason. His Brother's widow wants nowt to do with him so really he could just stop and the film could end there but he keeps fighting anyway and when she gets a taste of the big money she finally comes around to him but now it's too late, he's booked in a rigged big fight against Atilla, an unbeatable monster.
By the end of the film you're kinda rooting for JCVD but not for his goals and aims, just for him in general because he's spent the entire film brainlessly being manipulated by everyone he's crossed paths with. The last fight with Atilla is really good though and it does an OK job of wrapping the film in a happy ending if you can accept he isn't just being mugged off.

This is I assume an Amazon thing where they've used AI to subtitle but it is by far and away the worst subtitling job I've ever seen on anything. It really struggles because JCVD is Belgian, his French Legion handlers are both German and his trainer for lack of a better way to describe it is a very stereotypical African American streetwise tramp so I would say 70% of the subtitles were completely wrong. The worst offenders were changing english to french for no reason, and once where they said it was "Lionheart fighting Nutella" instead of Atilla. There was also a bit where it's playing a song called No Mercy and subtitles none of it or even mentions it's playing except when it says No Mercy a bit louder than usual once and the subtitles randomly declare "no mercy" as if someone said it. There's a part during the end where they're happily laughing but there's like 3 or 4 of them doing it and the subtitles freak out and the bottom third of the screen fills with HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA.
People losing their jobs for this. If you were deaf you wouldn't having a clue what was happening at all.

Best bits:

• 2 minutes of fight hype and JCVD punches a guy clean in the dick and wins. Air leaves the crowd like Undertaker's streak just ended
• Brian Thompson is in it. Always happy to see him
• Atilla fight is booked well. Classic David vs Goliath. Even JCVD's booker has bet against him which is refreshing for a film like this.
• He runs the fights like it's Street Fighter (not the movie) with each opponent having their own costume and stage, including a bum under a bridge, a scotsman in a parking lot brawl, and some hunk at a pool party. Could have done more with it tbh.

Overall there are redeeming qualities but there's a lot of nonsensical guff to wade through to get to the end.

I'm not that keen on Lionheart. Bloodsport and Kickboxer are the top tier early JCVD films for me, and they're basically exactly the same as Lionheart but more fun. I've got a massive soft spot for Cyborg as well, but it's not exactly a good film. 

[Mr_Danger]

I remember rewatching AWOL as an older teen and being really disappointed at the memory vs reality of it. I don’t think I’d even chance a rewatch  of other childhood favourite The King of the Kickboxers such is memory so dear to me. It did inspire that shit Great Khali bamboo cage though I suppose.

[Devon Malcolm]

The Monkey (cinema)

It's fine. It was always going to be a comparative disappointment after Longlegs because the original story is crap but Perkins does his best with it and it's a good laugh. Cast are great (especially Theo James and Tatiana Maslany) and the deaths splendid. About as much as could reasonably asked for of this.

Heart Eyes (cinema)

Decent comedy-slasher that forgets its sense of humour near the end. The middle section is great though and there are some genuinely funny moments, just a shame the last 20 minutes are crap. Really like Olivia Holt though, hope she does some more of this sort of thing.

Dog Man (cinema)

Dreamworks' animated output is largely pretty good and this is no exception. Shame about Ricky Gervais doing one of the voices but it's funny and the story is quite sweet, especially at the end.

Coma (1978)

Still absolutely love this. Michael Crichton was a really enjoyable director. I have watched this many times now and I enjoy it every single time.

Some Voices (Film Four)

Surprisingly sensitive and brilliantly acted drama about a schizophrenic man who tries to start a romance with an abused woman and patch things up with his brother. Some of Daniel Craig and Kelly Macdonald's best work in this, a shame it disappeared on release back in 2001.

The Dead Thing (Shudder)

A promising psychological horror that goes nowhere in a very poor last half an hour. Extremely horny and Blu Hunt could be one to watch but ends up being a waste of a good idea.

Judgment Night

I watch this at least once a year and always have the best time with it. Can't believe I forgot to double bill it with Trespass like I normally do.

The Protector

The scintillating last hour makes you forget the ridiculous first half an hour or so. Tony Jaa arguably at his absolute peak. Took me way too long to watch this.

Edited February 21, 2025 by Devon Malcolm