VHS and Betamax You Have Recently Rented

[Merzbow]

It was an even more cynical Force Awakens, it's funny how the director is now talking about how a sequel will be very different. I wouldn't be surprised if Fede Alarez was given a very strict set of points to hit by Disney which were nothing but callbacks, get people in on cheap nostalgia and waiting to see how it does at the box office before letting him do his own take (to an extent) on the franchise.

Just give all these franchises to that Denis lad, he's alright.

[LaGoosh]

Federal Alvarez isn't some visionary filmmaker. The idea that he has some unique take for the series hiding up his sleeve seems fairly ridiculous to me.

[organizedkaos]

3 hours ago, LaGoosh said:

And that's the other thing. These films are now "IP" to be exploited by their corporate owners for maximum profit with minimum effort. But the original films are unique, smart and perfectly crafted films made by real directors with vision and skill. Why can't we have that again instead of this reheated, unoriginal "content" sludge?

I guess the argument probably is that most people just don't care and film studios aren't much interested in creating anything with a legacy (unless they can franchise it). It's not even really lower standards as much as I think most people are just happy with good enough and if something happens to be great - amazing but it doesn't necessarily register. Why go to the effort of crafting a unique world, concept and characters when you can get the likeable one from The Boys, handwave a motivationand reason for him being able to do fighting and then just do some action sequences that are fun.    Look at which films get a lot of vague postivity in this thread vs the ones that tend to either be barely mentioned or start discussions 

All these things are risk/reward, why take any higher risk than you have to as to get the reward you want?  People are especially quick to dismiss stuff that's "not for them" because tastes are less adventurous due to increased access to media (along with general rise in reverse snobbery in some of these genres). The aim is not to put people off watching your film rather than try and create something great.

Obviously there's loads of really inventive interesting personal stuff being made..  It's just the genres that inherantly require more funding tend to have less of that for the reasons described (and others probably, this is a half thought!)

Edited March 12, 2025 by organizedkaos
Disco Baby (Floating Points & Red Greg Edit)

[FLips]

White House Down

Channing Tatum brings his annoying swot daughter to the White House while he bombs a job interview. The place gets taken over by the traitorous James Woods and his gang of mercenaries because he wants to nuke the entire Middle East to stop any future wars there because his son got killed. Jamie Foxx plays the president who is clearly meant to be Barack Obama and half the film feels like the director saying "look how cool Barack Obama is".

There's nothing inherently wrong with the film. The cast is good, the action is decent, there's a couple of jokes here and there and it doesn't take itself too seriously. It's about 30 minutes too long though and starts to drag towards the end. There's twists and turns where maybe there didn't need to be if you just kept it a bit simpler. Not awful but we wouldn't be in a rush to watch it again.

 

Edited March 13, 2025 by FLips

[Devon Malcolm]

14 minutes ago, FLips said:

White House Down

Channing Tatum brings his annoying swot daughter to the White House while he bombs a job interview. The place gets taken over by the traitorous James Woods and his gang of mercenaries because he wants to nuke the entire Middle East to stop any future wars there because his son got killed. Jamie Foxx plays the president who is clearly meant to be Barack Obama and half the film feels like the director saying "look how cool Barack Obama is".

There's nothing inherently wrong with the film. The cast is good, the action is decent, there's a couple of jokes here and there and it doesn't take itself too seriously. It's about 30 minutes too long though and starts to drag towards the end. There's twists and turns where maybe there didn't need to be if you just kept it a bit simpler. Not awful but we wouldn't be in a rush to watch it again.

 

Watch Olympus Has Fallen next!

[Mr_Danger]

I literally had to google White House Down yesterday because I convinced myself that Gerard Butler made two films where he had to save the president and they both came out at the same time. I think Law Abiding Citizen also muddied the memories.

[Devon Malcolm]

Black Bag (cinema)

Pretty good old-school spy drama, very much carved out of the tradition of John Le Carré. Excellent cast, all bringing something approaching their best, especially Tom Burke. Another solid Steven Soderbergh offering.

One of Them Days (cinema)

The script might not be as funny as it could be but SZA and Keke Palmer have tons of chemistry in the lead and it's an easy-to-watch and enjoyable comedy that only a bastard would hate.

The Brutalist

Absolutely fucking not. Mortifyingly boring, feels like a deliberate attempt to piss its audience off with sheer tedium, just a miserable experience in more ways than one. I never want to see another Brady Corbet film ever again.

The Net (Film Four)

I found out the reason why it took me to this week to finally watch it - because it's utter shite.

The Big Lebowski (cinema)

Officially the UKFF's Favourite Film until that misjudged Black Panther business a few years ago. Don't know why it was doing the cinema rounds but obviously had to see it again, it's the best.

Aftermath (2024)

Solid little DTV actioner about a bunch of terrorists who somehow capture a whole bridge full of cars hostage. Enjoyed this and its high levels of utter implausibility.

A Time to Love and a Time to Die

Brilliant WWII romantic drama set on the German side. Thoroughly bleak and hopeless for the most part but also beautiful and well acted. Douglas Sirk's films are a slightly acquired taste but I do love them.

Sicario (BBC iPlayer)

I hadn't watched it for at least 2 years but I saw it on the iPlayer so I had to. One of the best films of the 2010s.

Us

As is this. Maybe the best horror film of the whole century.

Inheritance (2024)

Enjoyable thriller which, for some reason, was shot on iPhone and it doesn't add a single thing. Doesn't matter too much, it's still quite entertaining and Phoebe Dyvenor is really good again.

Julie & Julia

Lovely comedy-drama biopic which one of Meryl Streep's more tolerable performances, and definitely her funniest. One of those where you might be fairly sure you'll hate it but you will be wrong.

Spy Game

A rare Tony Scott misfire. Just too long and convoluted and lacking his usual action chops. I'll let him off though, he rarely let us down. I still miss him a lot.

Air Force One

I really must double-bill this with Executive Decision one day, that would be a great day guaranteed.

[Carbomb]

20 hours ago, Devon Malcolm said:

A Time to Love and a Time to Die

Brilliant WWII romantic drama set on the German side. Thoroughly bleak and hopeless for the most part but also beautiful and well acted. Douglas Sirk's films are a slightly acquired taste but I do love them.

Yeh, Sirk has an ability to really bum you out while masterfully telling a story. All That Heaven Allows a classic example of that (and their remakes, Werner Fassbinder's Fear Eats The Soul, and Todd Haynes' Far From Heaven do the same, but in their directors' respective ways).

Edited March 15, 2025 by Carbomb
David Bellion

[FLips]

Running Scared
Gregory Hines and Billy Crystal star as a pair of buddy cops on the verge of retiring to Florida but use their 30 day notice period to try and put a criminal they've been chasing behind bars for good.
I'd readily admit that outside of his voice roles in Monster Inc and Howl's Moving Castle I hadn't seen anything with Billy Crystal in until I watched City Slickers the other week and now this and I've thought he was excellent in both of them. Hines and Crystal have some really fantastic chemistry in this and bounce off each other really well.
The plot though leaves a lot to be desired. Jimmy Smits plays the bad guy here and while I like Jimmy Smits he's nothing more than a McGuffin here as the pair of them unsuccessfully chase him around the city. But other than being a criminal and actively trying to stop them, he never does anything consequential to the plot, and in fact as the police chief Dan Hedaya points out they could both just retire and the police could deal with it without them.

It's got a few good laughs and the pair of them keep the move flowing nicely but the action isn't up to much compared to similar movies like Beverly Hills Cop, there's also the side plot with Crystal and his ex-wife which leaves a bad taste in the mouth as she realises she's not over him and cheats on her own off-screen fiance to get back with Crystal and then fobs him off at the end with a "who?". Poor guy.

It was fine. I think I've seen more films with Joe "Ralphie Cifaretto" Pantoliano in them in the last week or so than I have in my lifetime. This, Goonies, The Fugutive. He's bloody everywhere apparently. Jon Gries and Steven Bauer make up their rival police team and Larry Hankin completes the set of "He's in this too?" playing the character you probably imagined when I said Larry Hankin was in this.

The Big Lebowski
I've had this on DVD for a while now and Devon's review had me intend to finally watch it.

Neither of us thought it was that good, to be honest. I completely get the plot is sort of "there is no plot and stuff just happens to The Dude" but that didn't make that good a film for us. The Dude is funny in bursts but watching him mumble and stumble his way through the film repeatedly just making things worse was infuriating, and Walter was completely insufferable for the entire thing. It felt like a personification of one of those dreams where you punch in slow motion or run but you're stuck to the spot.
Half the stuff happening in the film doesn't even need to be there, like the whole bowling thing and Jesus leads to absolutely nothing, Donny randomly dying of a heart attack, and The Dude gets tricked into impregnating someone and it's like eh whatever when really that's a pretty serious subject to just randomly throw into your film.
Not to compare it to The Room, but a lot of the plot was like that scene from The Room where the mother declares "I got the results back, I definitely have breast cancer" and then it's never mentioned again.

That being said, it wasn't without merit. Some of the dialogue was really funny and some of the side characters like the Germans and Phillip Seymour Hoffman were great.

Some of you will probably scoff at the comparison I'm about to make but it reminded me a bit of Napoleon Dynamite which I thought was shit the first time I watched it because it also has very little plot or point and the characters just exist in their own world. I imagine I'd find this better a second time around with lowered expectations and an acceptance it's a film where you're not really meant to figure out the mystery because there basically isn't one. I get what it was going for, but when you watch it for the first time with basic expectations of a plot and a competent protagonist then it's pretty disappointing.
 

[SuperBacon]

6 minutes ago, FLips said:

Neither of us thought it was that good, to be honest

[davertfnewman]

Weird one for a Sunday morning, but got the time: just watched Blue Velvet for the first time. The perfect mix of leisurely and something happening all the time so you can't look away, even when the things on screen are so horrible that you want to. Jeffrey Beaumont soon took his earring out and went to work for the FBI under a pseudonym as well.

[FLips]

13 minutes ago, SuperBacon said:

I deliberately didn't put that in my review so one of you could use it.

[Chris B]

1 hour ago, FLips said:

I imagine I'd find this better a second time around with lowered expectations and an acceptance it's a film where you're not really meant to figure out the mystery because there basically isn't one. I get what it was going for, but when you watch it for the first time with basic expectations of a plot and a competent protagonist then it's pretty disappointing.
 

Very much this, I think. The first time I watched it, I liked it, but there was an element of "was that it?". But that's often the reaction when you're judging something against other expectations rather than engaging with it as it is in total - when I engaged with it later, already aware what it was,  I loved it, and I find it hugely rewatchable. I find it funnier on rewatches too.

One detail I adore, and it may have been someone here who pointed it out years ago, is that the Dude has so few original thoughts. So much of what he says or even dreams is immediately influenced by things others have said or done.

Except hating the fucking Eagles, of course.

 

[Devon Malcolm]

Add me to the 'didn't care for Lebowski first time round' club. Actually that's been the case with a few Coens' films - Miller's Crossing, The Hudsucker Proxy and Barton Fink to name but three.

[Mr_Danger]

I remember growing to love The Big Lebowski. The lack of plot caught me off guard in what was a film that was always highly recommended yet I knew not much about.  Fortunately I was all in on The Dude and it’s a film I enjoy a bit more each time on  rewatches. Watching Jeff Bridges chewing his cheeks and squinting his way through the second series of The Old Man has me bang up for a Lebowski rewatch.