VHS and Betamax You Have Recently Rented

[Chest Rockwell]

Your be hard pressed to name a single actor that hasn't made a shit film for a big payday when at the height of their fame. It's very rarely a career killer. 

[LaGoosh]

The Order - the true story it's based on is pretty interesting. The film is quite dull however. Jude Law plays generic obsessed cop with a dark side you've seen a bunch of times and Nicholas Hault is very unconvincing as a charismatic Neo Nazi leader. Some good action sequences but absolutely nothing to really draw you in.

[Devon Malcolm]

41 minutes ago, LaGoosh said:

The Order - the true story it's based on is pretty interesting. The film is quite dull however. Jude Law plays generic obsessed cop with a dark side you've seen a bunch of times and Nicholas Hault is very unconvincing as a charismatic Neo Nazi leader. Some good action sequences but absolutely nothing to really draw you in.

I liked this film but you're right about Hoult, he's quite badly miscast. He does his best with the role but it never works.

[TheBurningRed]

Uncut Gems - Saw a lot of talk about it on here a few months back so finally got round to watching it. Loved it. Didn't think I'd enjoy an Adam Sandler movie as an adult. So good that I watched it again a few days later.

Millers Girl - Shite. Not much more to say other than that.

Woman of the Hour - The story of serial killer Rodney Alcala who appeared on The Dating Game in 1978 after he had already murdered at least five women. The film focuses on his crimes and Anna Kendrick's characters life before she met him on the game show. A strong debut at directing for Anna Kendrick. 

Companion - People fuck robots. It was predicted back in 2014 and now its happening in this movie. Great performances from Jack Quaid and Sophie Thatcher. Some great dark humour in this also. Did not realise Rupert Friend was in this until after.

Sonic The Hedgehog 3 - Idris Elba is even bad at voice acting. Keanu Reeves joins the cast to play Shadow. Jim Carey plays Dr Robotnik and his father in a very Jim Carey performance. An easy watch.

Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy - Renee Zellweger walks around pulling a face with her eyes half closed. Now a widow and a mother of two, Bridget is getting back into the world of dating. This was actually much better than I expected it to be. It was the funniest one yet. Bridget's on screen daughter is a star. And Leo Woodall, what a hunk.

Under Paris - There's a shark in the Seine. Somehow that disgusting river doesn't kill it. They better hope they can do something with that shark before the triathlon starts. Because that would be a disaster. If you're a fan of shit shark films, you'll love this.

 

Edited February 28, 2025 by TheBurningRed

[johnnyboy]

If anyone is going to see, or has seen, The Last Showgirl then this documentary complements it beautifully.  I'd probably watch the movie first.

Spoiler

Other showgirls talking like Pamela Anderson's character about how they felt in the costumes and under the lights and lamenting about the shows closing.

 

[SaitoRyo]

The Package

Solid political action thriller starring Gene Hackman and Tommy Lee Jones. Other familiar faces like Dennis Franz, John Heard and Pam Grier show up in supporting roles. Nothing earth-shattering here, but a well-directed conspiracy film that chugs along at a decent pace. 

Once Bitten

Incredibly 80s comedy-horror (though there's not really much horror) about a hot vampire countess who wants to suck the life (and maybe more) out of virgin Jim Carrey, who hams it up (duh) in an early role. Dumb but fun. Incredibly 80s, for those who like synth pop soundtracks and questionable social politics. 

[Devon Malcolm]

I'm Still Here (cinema)

The hype is very well earned, especially for Fernanda Torres in the lead. Her performance is sensational. Extremely well made if largely recognisable. The final 15 minutes are particularly good.

Flight Risk 

Very bad. Marky Mark understands the assignment and it's pretty brisk but also unforgivably dumb. Topher Grace is incredibly annoying.

Trespass

Not the shitty Nicolas Cage one, obviously. I've watched this so many times now and it's never not a great time. The cast is wild, too, they all looked like they had a time of it making this.

Wild River (1950)

Elia Kazan's drama about a government agent who has to try and persuade the final resident of a valley that's about to be flooded to move. Kazan might have been a McCarthy rat but he was one of the best filmmakers of his generation and this might be his best. The ending is stunning.

Fired Up!

I thought this was very funny and I don't care who knows it. Just a complete idiot cheerleader comedy with relentless dumb fuck jokes and humour and a really good cast. You might like this one, @SuperBacon

Hands Over The City

Italian political drama about the attempts of a land developer to keep bad publicity from his front door after one of his apartment blocks collapses. Amazing how all of this is still pertinent today, especially in the post-Grenfell world. Really, really good.

I also watched a few Gene Hackman films. Needless to say The French Connection is still one of the greats of 70s cinema, French Connection II is very decent as well, Narrow Margin one of the better train thrillers, Night Moves is an excellent neo-noir, and Enemy of the State one of the best actioners of the 90s. He was awesome in all of them, obviously.

[SaitoRyo]

5 minutes ago, Devon Malcolm said:

I also watched a few Gene Hackman films. Needless to say The French Connection is still one of the greats of 70s cinema, French Connection II is very decent as well, Narrow Margin one of the better train thrillers, Night Moves is an excellent neo-noir, and Enemy of the State one of the best actioners of the 90s. He was awesome in all of them, obviously.

I desperately need to see Night Moves. Will get on that sooner than later. 

Just watched Waking Up in Reno, a comedy/romance road trip movie with Billy Bob Thornton, Patrick Swayze, Charlize Theron and Natasha Richardson. Is it good? Well, not especially, no, but I was very much in the mood for it and enjoyed it a lot. Breezy, easy movie that has a few funny moments and gets you in and out in about 87 minutes. 

[FLips]

Rollerball

Set in the distant and unfathomable future of 2018, it sees James Caan as Jonathan E, the star of a sport called Rollerball which is a violent rollerderby style game played with a metal ball, motorbikes and spiked gloves.
2018 is dystopian in that weird tacky 60s/70s way where everything is a smooth white and orange but also the houses are still decorated with wood panels and all the text looks like a novelty alarm clock. Look at a film like Blade Runner for an example on how to make it feel like the future, and not this which always comes across as what people in the 70s think the future will look like but also never moving on from 70s aesthetics.
The society is actually closer in concept to what we seem to be approaching now with the likes of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, where corporations govern society and essentially do what they want, convincing people it's for the best. This includes moving all of the world's knowledge to a digital library that they control and edit to their liking, and stealing Jonathan E's wife because an executive wanted her.

Jonathan E has been the crowd favourite single star of Rollerball for the last decade but for reasons unknown the executives in charge want him out of the sport. They set up a big Jonathan E TV special for him to announce his retirement but he's more interested in why he's being forced out and refuses to quit.
In an effort to stop him digging but also force him out, they begin altering the rules of the game to essentially have no rules in an effort to firstly make him change his mind, and if that doesn't work then kill him.

It's a tale of two halves for Rollerball. The Rollerball sequences themself take up a lot of screen time and rightfully so because they're phenomenal. Heavy hitting, physical and realistic action sequences where you feel like you're not only watching a real game but that they're actually playing it. When the violence gets high, it still grounds itself in reality with mostly punches and kicks, people getting hit with the steel ball, and scrappy fights. It really is good stuff that's aged incredibly well and shot brilliantly.

The other half, the stuff outside of Rollerball has good ideas but poorly executes them, or holds it's cards too close for too long so a lot of the important reveals or moments come too late in the film. The first 3/4 of the film could have used the ideas and concepts to really pad it out.
The biggest reveal is actually really good but again comes too late in the film, that Rollerball was made by executives with intentionally confusing rules and an awkward unnatural arena to play it in to discourage individuality and show that singular effort is futile. They hate Jonathan E because nobody was meant to be good at the game and nobody was meant to be bigger than it, so they want to force him out in case he accidentally causes an uprising against the executives.

There's a whole section at a viewing party to watch Jonathan's special that must go on for 30 minutes and has executives firing this exploding pistol at trees. I think they were going for some sort of metaphor or imagery but it doesn't work. The script is pretty rough around the edges too, with some of the dialogue feeling like they shot it once and called it a day. The pacing is all over the place.

On the whole though worth a watch for the Rollerball sequences alone, but with a better director to guide the bits between you might have ended up with an all time classic film here because it has some good ideas and James Caan does a good job even with the bad script.

[Devon Malcolm]

Yeah, I never really got into Rollerball either, despite the cracking concept. Norman Jewison was a very good director but he never made anything else close to the theme of Rollerball, so he probably wasn't the right guy for the role. I reckon Michael Crichton would have done wonders with it.

[SaitoRyo]

F/X

A movie special effects wizard is hired by a government agency to fake the assassination of a mob boss, but things are not as they seem and he soon finds himself on the run and trying to evade the baddies. 

I quite liked this, even though it wasn't the type of film I thought it was going to be. Some good action sequences, a twisty narrative and Brian Dennehy playing a grizzled cop who doesn't care about the rulebook or hierarchy or any of that fucking bullshit. 

I also enjoyed the scenes showing how special effects work and are applied, as I'm a nerd for stuff like that.

[Chest Rockwell]

Oh wow. That's a flashback! I have never seen the first one but I enjoyed FX2 a lot as a youth and haven't thought about it for about 30 years. 

[SuperBacon]

FX2 is absolutely fantastic, a film from my childhood that me and my sisters would seemingly watch all the time (Ghost, Serial Mom, An Officer and a Gentleman, Cocktail being others)

I love Bryan Brown.

[SaitoRyo]

Glad to hear that F/X 2 is worth a watch and I'll probably get around to it eventually! 

[Chest Rockwell]

Serial Mom was a 12 in France, where I was living at the time. We went to the cinema for that with my grandma expecting something more family friendly. We left the cinema when the boy was having a wank and I've never seen the rest of it.