VHS and Betamax You Have Recently Rented

[Chili]

7 minutes ago, Devon Malcolm said:

The Police Academy code is 1.

For the true sadists it's 1, 2, 4, 6, 3, 5, Moscow. Or the 1st one seven times.

[davertfnewman]

The editing of movies reminds me of my Christmas '95 ITV copy of Flash Gordon, which isn't exactly American History X but still got stuff like Klytus' eyes and tongue running out and the bit where the guy's goggles are taken off and it's nothing but wires instead of eyes, which kills the rest of them, snipped out.

[Statto]

Because they're both bloody terrifying, that's why!

[SaitoRyo]

Miami Blues

What an odd film. The tone is all over the place, as is Alec Baldwin's manic performance. Fred Ward is good, as is Jennifer Jason Lee (?) but it is a bit of a mess overall. There were parts of it I liked, but I thought it would be better.

[FLips]

Miami Vice

I’m up to the end of Season 4 of the TV series and while 1-3 were mostly excellent, 4 has been hit and miss so far with the misses being very shaky.

Decided to try this modern reboot which was off to a shocking start by casting Colin Farell as Sonny which just doesn’t work at all. Then they film it on some awful grainy letterbox camera, don’t set it in the 80s and basically try to distance themselves from the TV show as much as possible. We weren’t feeling it and turned it off after maybe 15-20 minutes. Could be a fine film, but 2010s gritty reboots aren’t our thing.

Edited June 14, 2025 by FLips

[Carbomb]

When I went to see it at the cinema, I found I was able to enjoy it as a bit of style-over-substance frou-frou - sort of a filming version of a smoke-and-mirrors wrestling match. It's a bit of nothing, really.

I will say I did enjoy the filming style - it's very Michael Mann, and had that glassy lighting style that I really liked from Collateral.

[davertfnewman]

The Exorcist is my favourite movie, so with Cruising, The French Connection and To Live and Die in LA under my belt, I watched Sorceror last night. One to watch again, interesting start with basically no English dialogue for the first quarter of an hour as the four main characters are established, then off to South America to get them transporting some dodgy explosives to suppress a fire. Very much in the William Friedkin style, almost documentary in establishing shots, including the font for the credits, then some disorienting visuals towards the end that are both beautiful and scary as the hero gets to the end, but not without challenge.

[METAL ON METAL]

On 6/14/2025 at 9:04 PM, FLips said:

Miami Vice

The only film I’ve ever fallen asleep during at the cinema.

Accidentally nodded off about 30 mins into it, woke up and turned my head to see my mate also asleep - so I just decided to go back to having a nap. Woke up again during the credits.

The 30 minutes or so I saw were incredibly bland.

[davertfnewman]

My film to fall asleep during was Green Zone - had hay fever flaring up and took a Piriton tablet, then accompanied my mate to the cinema to see it with him. Pill kicked in, could even doze off during the explosions.

[Chest Rockwell]

I feel asleep during the Watchmen movie, for the whole section of Dr Manhattan's back story. Then said to my mate after how good it was that they decided to cut all that as it would have made the film drag; genuinely didn't realise I'd nodded off for that long and thought I had just spaced out for a couple minutes. 

[BomberPat]

Other half got a Mubi free trial, and other than a 1930s Popeye short, the first thing I watched on it was Grand Theft Hamlet.

I hadn't realised that the bulk of the film was them trying to set up the production, rather than it just being them putting on Hamlet in GTA: Online - so there are points where it just feels like watching a Twitch stream, and I wonder if some of the praise it got for being a revolutionary unique bit of film-making came from people who have just never watched a gamer stream before. It drags in places, and a lot of it is luvvies being luvvies and talking about acting, but luckily I am all for that, so I enjoyed it. It's also very funny watching people try and earnestly perform a play in a video game environment where at any minute someone might just run in with a rocket launcher and blow them up. A testament to the human urge to commit to a very silly bit.

[SaitoRyo]

The Thomas Crown Affair

The Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo one, which I always thought looked like an X-Files VHS when I saw it in the video shop because of their slight resemblance to Mulder and Scully and the design of the packaging. 

Anyway, I thought this would be some cold romance based on promotional material I'd seen and my own assumptions, but it really wasn't. I didn't know it was directed by John McTiernan, but you can tell it's one of his in the early heist scene. 

Speaking of scenes, the big sex scene almost made me burst...

...out laughing with how comical it was. Shagging all over a mansion in wonderfully gratuitous, incredibly jarring fashion as THIS plays on the soundtrack. Anyway, not a terrible film by any means, but not great or anything (outside of the steaming hot sex scene, of course).

[lanky316]

4 hours ago, BomberPat said:

Other half got a Mubi free trial, and other than a 1930s Popeye short, the first thing I watched on it was Grand Theft Hamlet.

I hadn't realised that the bulk of the film was them trying to set up the production, rather than it just being them putting on Hamlet in GTA: Online - so there are points where it just feels like watching a Twitch stream, and I wonder if some of the praise it got for being a revolutionary unique bit of film-making came from people who have just never watched a gamer stream before. It drags in places, and a lot of it is luvvies being luvvies and talking about acting, but luckily I am all for that, so I enjoyed it. It's also very funny watching people try and earnestly perform a play in a video game environment where at any minute someone might just run in with a rocket launcher and blow them up. A testament to the human urge to commit to a very silly bit.

Honestly was thrown by the plaudits it was receiving. I did enjoy it but it's not the first, nor after this will it be the last, time that people have done something like this in GTA Online so in the end I was surprised at just how massively people were talking it up. It was hardly as clever or ambitious as for example William Shakespeare Presents : Terminator The Second in what they were trying to do. As I said, I liked it and applaud their commitment to the bit but to see the coverage it was getting I was expecting more than what it actually was.

[LaGoosh]

Warfare - technically well made I suppose but completely bereft of anything that makes any film good. No characters, no story, no stakes or tension. By the end I was so bored I kind of wanted the terrorists to win. Utterly pointless. I have no idea why this film even exists.

[Carbomb]

The only film I've ever seen that didn't really have any main characters and was about high political stakes is State of Siege (État de Siège) directed by (and starring) Yves Montand. It's really good, and it's difficult to pinpoint how it's able to maintain such an engrossing story without specific, identifiable protagonists. You do end up rooting for the "terrorists" in that one, but that's not too difficult, as the villain in it is the American "cultural attaché" who's really there to help destabilise the South American country he's in from his HQ in the American embassy.