VHS and Betamax You Have Recently Rented

[BomberPat]

High Fidelity

25th anniversary screening, with live Q&A with Nick Hornby and Stephen Frears. 

First time watching it in years, and if anything I loved it even more than I did the first few times. Everything is just pitch-perfect. Hornby made a point that, for all his concerns about them moving the setting from London to Chicago, if this had been made as an indie British film it would never have worked because they wouldn't have had the budget to do the soundtrack right, so it wouldn't have felt true to itself, and it's hard to argue - the record shop and Rob's flat feel so genuinely lived in and well-observed, and the choice of music, and the records and posters used in the set design, go a long way there.

Mostly, though, the emotional arc of the story just resonates with me a lot more now than when I last watched it. I think this is a rare thing, in a romance film that rewards rewatching at different stages in your life. As a music-obsessed teenager when I first saw it - and one who worked in a record shop, no less! - and with no real sense of how healthy relationships worked yet, I had a lot more sympathy for Rob in the first half of the film at his most tragic, with all the "it's not what you're like, it's what you like" stuff, and people building their personalities around the stuff they're into as if that's the most important thing. This time around, it had never been clearer what an absolutely tragic, pathetic prick Rob is for most of the film, but in a way that makes you root for him to get better and figure it out, and then the resolution being that relationships are just things you have to work at and put some effort into rather than something to fix you and make everything right, is a much more satisfying ending in my late 30s than it was in my teens and twenties. 

There's a point in the film that always just felt like background colour, but is actually really close to the heart of it, when Dick starts dating a girl he meets in the shop. Because in their first interaction, he's recommending her stuff to listen to based on what she already likes. Earlier in the film, Dick's talking about making a tape for Rob, and Rob's not interested. But the point there is that while they're all elitist muso snobs, Dick isn't gatekeeping, he actually wants to share his knowledge so that more people can enjoy what he's into, and his starting point with his girlfriend is to build on her tastes. Whereas when Rob first meets Laura, he offers to make her a mixtape based on her liking one song that he's played.

I've used the analogy of the end of this film many times in the last couple of years, that Rob learns that the art of making a good mixtape should be in compiling a list of songs that they will like, rather than a bunch of stuff you want them to like. I've used it on podcasts, for the question of "what match would you recommend to someone who's never watched wrestling before?" - well, it depends on the person, and what their tastes are, and where they're coming from, so there's no single right answer; if you think there is, then all you're doing is projecting your tastes on to someone else.

[SuperBacon]

@BomberPat I can't tell you how jealous I am of that. Its one of my all time favourite films (and books)

COSBY SWEATEEEEEEEER.

[Devon Malcolm]

The Shrouds (cinema)

Fair play to David Cronenberg for still being active but this really is a bore. None of the excesses or eccentricities of his usual films, just a plodding storyline that goes nowhere and one of the most nondescript endings I've seen. Crap.

Elio (cinema)

A real shame it's fucked it at the box office but hardly a surprise considering Disney's arseing around with Pixar films. Cute and harmless, occasionally really funny, some good voice work - it's Pixar, you can't go wrong.

Chicken Town (cinema)

British comedy starring John Shuttleworth himself as an elderly drug dealer! Some funny scenes and harmless enough even if the story is all over the place.

The Amateur

Half-decent action thriller that unfortunately has Rami Malek in the lead being as unconvincing and weirdly charmless as ever. Some good scenes here and there, though, and at least it understands its lead character's limitations.

Marching Powder

A couple of funny moments - that were both in the trailer. Nick Love is a terrible filmmaker but Danny Dyer and Stephanie Leonidas do their best. Not good at all.

Brick (Netflix)

Rubbish German thriller about inhabitants of a block of flats who wake up to find a mysterious wall has surrounded their building. One of those ideas that sounds good but the execution is shite. An obvious Netflix film.

Clown in a Cornfield

Mediocre slasher that inevitably goes to shit late on and has to crowbar some tedious generation clash stuff in there. Just give us some fucking murders, nobody cares. A couple of enjoyable deaths, though.

Deep Cover (2025) (Prime)

Surprised this is getting positive reviews even though I enjoyed it to a degree. Orlando Bloom is the revelation here - he's never been good in anything but he's easily the funniest thing in it. Stick it on in the background.

Diablo

Scott Adkins' latest actioner, a really enjoyable thriller with a good ending and a couple of cracking fights with Marko Zaror. Hope they deliver on that ambiguous ending with a sequel.

Nixon

As usual from Oliver Stone, flawed but a brilliant watch. Incredible cast and probably Anthony Hopkins' best ever performance. Not quite as good as JFK but not far off, and I think that says a lot.

Good Burger

He's a dude, she's a dude, we're all dudes.

Zathura: A Space Adventure

Not sure how I'd never got round to watching this. Enjoyed it a lot though, even if I spent most of it hoping Josh Hutcherson would die. Shame it tanked at the box office, you could have got a cracking franchise out of it.

Day of the Outlaw 

Brilliant western about a small town invaded by a gang of Confederate gold bandits. A rare snowy western, as well, makes it all look stunning and the final half an hour is incredible especially.

Caché (cinema)

One of my favourite films of all time has had a bit of cinema re-release recently and it was a great experience to see it on a big screen. Even more so listening to the reaction to *that* scene. One woman genuinely screamed, it was awesome. Michael Haneke's best ever.

[BomberPat]

Wild Zero

Fucking ridiculous. A barely competently plotted Japanese B-movie, in which a rock and roll fan is gifted a magical whistle he can use to summon the band Guitar Wolf in his time of need, and he falls in love with a girl he saves from a horde of zombies at a petrol station. There's also a Yakuza arms deal going on, and a creepy unscrupulous music impresario trying to get revenge on Guitar Wolf for abandoning him and shooting off his fingers, and some UFOs. The plot twist in the romance story hasn't aged brilliantly, but is still handled better than most films would manage it 25 years later, particularly Guitar Wolf's exclamation that love knows no borders, nationality or gender. Guitar Wolf himself has two modes - silent brooding, and screaming about rock and roll, with nothing in-between. The plot barely exists, scenes tend to just end without much resolution, and it has no idea what genre it's meant to be. Five stars.

[SaitoRyo]

That'll be Day of the Outlaw added to my list of stuff to watch then, @Devon Malcolm!

[Devon Malcolm]

48 minutes ago, SaitoRyo said:

That'll be Day of the Outlaw added to my list of stuff to watch then, @Devon Malcolm!

You can't beat Robert Ryan and Burl Ives either, two of my favourites.

[cobra_gordo]

Jurassic Farm 7: Mission To Moscow. As somebody else has already said, it's a solid 6 out of 10 summer action film that I will one million percent be watching again. I had good fun, it's got some fantastic set pieces and plenty of tension and scary bits. A solid monster movie.

But.

It's not Jurassic Park. All I was thinking about in the cinema was how it's such a different beast to the original. I couldn't tell you a single character name if you asked me now and yet I remember going in to the cinema age 8 and everybody knew the dinosaurs names before the film started because of the hype, let alone who the characters were. I knew what the dilophosaurus was way before it was time for Dennis Nedry to get nommed. I'm going to put that down to the marketing, not the autism.

It just feels like it's been diluted down to "Here's a cool sequence to go after that other cool sequence", wandering from set piece to set piece like you're going through Crystal Maze zones. They've missed the less is more approach completely and just crammed as many mental, high octane sequences in as possible, like they were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should.

Also some of the CGI is janky as fuck, almost video game like at times- I'm looking at you Awesome T-Rex In The River scene.

[BomberPat]

I haven't seen the new one yet, and I don't think it's possible to put the genie back in the bottle, but there's no sense of wonder in the later Jurassic Park/World films, which is what made Jurassic Park great. But nor is there any real attempt to reckon with that - Jurassic World had potential, by starting from a point where the park's been open a while and dinosaurs just aren't a novelty any more, but they never really addressed the human element of that, it was just an excuse to invent a new dinosaur. And inventing new dinosaurs misses the point of why Jurassic Park works.

[cobra_gordo]

6 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

Jurassic World had potential, by starting from a point where the park's been open a while and dinosaurs just aren't a novelty any more

I remember posting on here at the time that I could have happily watched at two hour film of just wandering around the functioning park looking at the dinosaurs.

[Lorne Malvo]

7 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

But nor is there any real attempt to reckon with that - Jurassic World had potential, by starting from a point where the park's been open a while and dinosaurs just aren't a novelty any more, but they never really addressed the human element of that,

I don't mind the new trilogy - it's a bit 'modern blockbuster by numbers' but they're fine - but I never bought this aspect of it. 

People are still amazed by elephants and monkeys (and rightfully so!), there's no way people would be bored of dinosaurs after 10 years or whatever.

[FLips]

Picked up a few more DVDs at CEX my last couple of trips out. Due to hammering through the Miami Vice and Kojak Boxsets and playing Elder Scrolls Online during all the time outside of that I haven’t had chance to watch any yet!

Mortal Kombat (1995 I think?) £2
Hard Target £2
Caddyshack £1.50
Black Dynamite £1.50
Unforgiven £1.50
Tombstone £1.50
Cop Land £1.50
Nightmare on Elm Street 1-6 Collection £6
Moonstruck £1.50
Murder by Death (Wife’s choice, said it was good and has Columbo in it) £5
Three Amigos £1.50

On a side note we also found my wife’s copy of Our Miss Fred, the old Danny La Rue wartime comedy. In a very minor claim to fame her Grandad was an extra in it, playing a background Nazi who ad-libbed a massive HEIL shout that scared the shit out of the other actor and they kept in the film.

[johnnyboy]

On 7/14/2025 at 12:00 PM, cobra_gordo said:

Also some of the CGI is janky as fuck, almost video game like at times- I'm looking at you Awesome T-Rex In The River scene.

PS1 cutscene rappelling too!

If there's another one of these can we please knock the "here's an even more insanely vicious hybrid dinosaur" shit on the head unless it is played for laughs e.g. a T-Rex with gigantic breasts that squeaks like a guinea pig.

Spoiler

The D-Rex was just the Rancor model from Star Wars with an extra set of tiddly T-Rex arms.

And yes, I did give myself a pat on the back for noticing a name on a school bus B-)

Spoiler

Crichton.  Sorry ladies, I'm taken.

 

[cobra_gordo]

Am I right in assuming all we really want is Jurassic Park: Trapped On An Island With Just Velociraptors or Jurassic Park: There's A Load Of Velociraptors In Meadowhall In Sheffield And We're All Fucked

[Merzbow]

Jurassic Park: By That Lad Who Did The Last Godzilla In Japan

[FLips]

Would have saved William H Macy a load of bother if he had Find my iPhone.