VHS and Betamax You Have Recently Rented

[Devon Malcolm]

Yeah, Julia Garner is such a great actor. Loved her in Ozark and she was amazing in a film called The Assistant from a few years ago.

[DavidB6937]

Yeah out of anyone from Ozark she was absolutely the one to deserve massive success. Seeing her in two successful and diverse movies in the cinema right now is amazing. Really excited for her career. Hope she gets to continue the balance of big Hollywood blockbusters and more unique ones. I think she has so much more to offer than the Marvel type projects would give her.

[Carbomb]

3 hours ago, DavidB6937 said:

Yeah out of anyone from Ozark she was absolutely the one to deserve massive success. Seeing her in two successful and diverse movies in the cinema right now is amazing. Really excited for her career. Hope she gets to continue the balance of big Hollywood blockbusters and more unique ones. I think she has so much more to offer than the Marvel type projects would give her.

I thought the guy who played the cartel boss was pretty good - terrifying. And the guy who played the PI, Mel - not amazing, but fairly charismatic, and did the grizzled-but-suave thing quite well. 

[Onyx2]

Yeah I couldn't resist the new War of the Worlds. What an absolute stinker!

If this had actually been released December 2020 we might have nodded and gone "OK, fair play, they made a film with the restrictions they had and it was OK". But releasing it in 2025 with no concessions is utter dogshit.

Ice Cube is complete garbage. His kids are super annoying. The plot is more Independence Day than War of the Worlds {spoiler for 126 year old book)

Spoiler

Did they just ignore the 'normal virus' thing? And just went with boring old digital virus thing? Or did I just lose interest and miss them catching colds?

And listening to endless Teams notifications gave me enormous distraction as I was watching it while working. I had to keep checking which machine was pinging.

Do yourself a favour and watch the episode of Modern Family 'Connection Lost' which is the same premise (alright no aliens) from 2015 and at 22 minutes much more palatable: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connection_Lost

[Bellenda Carlisle]

Weapons was great, I'm glad I knew nothing going in except what was on the poster as I had no idea what to expect and my assumptions were all wrong anyway. I assumed it would be a very heavy cerebral horror film, then for the first 20 minutes I questioned if it was a horror film at all and realised I might he wrong and it was a drama, then it started adding horror elements, then eventually some funny horror, all the while filling in the mystery in a really pleasing way with a sayisfying end. I loved the pulp fiction like ensemble structure, it worked so well for this film.

Bring Her Back was a deeply unpleasant watch, just a nasty film. I loved every minute of Weapons but I can't say I actually enjoyed a single second of Bring her Back, i felt like I was enduring it as opposed to watching it. That's not even a criticism, I haven't been so horrified by a horror film in a long time but I will never watch this film again.

Smurfs 2025 aka Rihanna is Smurfette I was fully expecting this to be the worst smurfs movie yet based on what I'd seen of it but I was pleasantly surprised and thought it was actually the second best one. My "dream smurfs film" would be wholly set in fantasy medieval Europe and this definitely wasn't that, it was more like Smurfs × DreamWorks Trolls × Into the Spiderverse, featuring cross universe traveling, different animation styles and was much more experimental than I expected. The Smurfs themselves were pretty classic and timeless which i liked and their life in their enchanted forest was pretty standard before the film got all crazy. They did go to the modern "real world" which is what I always dread but it was done in an interesting almost tasteful way, the clash of styles so extremely jarring in parts though that it was bizarre to watch and felt like too many concepts crammed together. It does also have James Corden singing an entire song as a Smurf so be warned.

Naked Gun this was fun to watch at the cinema, wasn't amazing or anything but it feels like forever since I've seen a quick fire comedy like that, all I wanted from this film was constant jokes. Not all the jokes land or are hilarious but the ratio is fine and I properly laughed a good 5 or 6 times. I would have liked to have seen less of the jokes in the trailer but that's pretty standard 

Happy Gilmore 2 I watched this as a palate cleanser after getting home from Bring her Back. Apart from the bizarre decision 

Spoiler

For Happy to be directly responsible for his wife's death

This was a pretty fun and lighthearted watch, I'm not precious about Happy Gilmore so I thought it was fine, it was ridiculously referential to the first film and I could have done without all the clips from the old one throughout to remind you, as if it wasn't already extremely noticeable how much it wanted to remind you of the original. I hated the plot motivation of sending his daughter to ballet school but I thought the sons (including MJF) were hilarious and endearing and I liked the running gags of Happy hiding his booze and the heel's breath stinking. There was a scene where the heel is going into some restricted area and the entry scanner has a breath recognising key system, when the heel breathes on it to enter, the scanner says "fart recognised" and let's him in, it was so stupid but it creased me up.

[DavidB6937]

44 minutes ago, Bellenda Carlisle said:

It does also have James Corden singing an entire song as a Smurf so be warned.

You almost had me interested there and then you ruined it completely.

[FLips]

The only time I’d be keen to see James Corden with a blue face is if he was being throttled.

Edited August 13, 2025 by FLips

[SaitoRyo]

Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry

This was very much a stuntman's film, given the most impressive things about it are the various car chases, near misses and crashes (of which there are many). Peter Fonda and Susan George are both quite insufferable as the bickering one night stand lovers who are fleeing the cops after Fonda and Adam Roarke (who is very good in this) rob a supermarket. Vic Morrow is a highlight as the renegade police Captain who is going to play by no one's rules but his own to catch them. 

The Taking of Pelham 123

This was very much an actor's film. Everyone in it looks like a leather handbag, a ham hock or a deep-fried bollock. Which is a good thing and this is a good film. Great acting, great score and a very engaging premise that is executed very well. A standout 1970s New York film. 

[Mr_Danger]

Weapons is great and an absolute must see before it’s spoiled. I won’t say anything other than between this and Barbarian I feel like Zack Cregger has watched every horror I loved as a kid and implemented little parts of them all. Resident Evil next for him and he’s already said it won’t be based on any of the game stories as they’ve already been done so he’s already got my money for that one.

[SpiritOfTheForest]

Reading folk chatting about this new War of the Worlds reminds me of a little Canadian movie called Pontypool. It's been a good 15 years since I've seen it but I remember enjoying it - the premise is it's a zombie film but, instead of showing us the chaos, the film centres on a local radio station and all we have to go on are the news reports coming in and the subsequent radio broadcasts of the crew - I might need to try and track it down again myself. 

[Mr_Danger]

36 minutes ago, SpiritOfTheForest said:

Reading folk chatting about this new War of the Worlds reminds me of a little Canadian movie called Pontypool. It's been a good 15 years since I've seen it but I remember enjoying it - the premise is it's a zombie film but, instead of showing us the chaos, the film centres on a local radio station and all we have to go on are the news reports coming in and the subsequent radio broadcasts of the crew - I might need to try and track it down again myself. 

Shudder through Amazon. Watched it a year or two back on there. It might have been free with adverts at some point. Really decent little horror film. I think horror more than any other genre benefits from a shoe string budget.

[Devon Malcolm]

Yeah, Pontypool is awesome. Really unique. It was supposed to have been the first of a trilogy but Bruce McDonald couldn't get funding for them.

[SaitoRyo]

Stormy Monday

As a proud Geordie born and raised on the mean streets of Newcastle Upon Tyne, I'm preodisposed to liking this, an eighties neo-noir set in my beautiful home city. 

But it has so much more than wonderful shots of The Toon. It also has Melanie Griffith. And Tommy Lee Jones. And Sean Bean. And fucking Sting (the tantric sex enthusiast, not the wrestler). And it has a lot more that makes it well worth seeking out, but I'll let you discover those for yourselves.

Plus, the film itself lasts 88 minutes, which is the scientifically-proven perfect film runtime. I had a great time with this. 

Edited August 15, 2025 by SaitoRyo

[Merzbow]

Together

I would have no issue with so much of the run time being based around the relationship problems of the main couple if it wasn't so half arsed and both of them being completely unlikable, there's a good idea there between the issues and the body horror but it never fully clicks. The body horror alone is very well done, really fucking icky with some amazing contortionism thrown in too but the glue of the narrative never fully holds it all... together.

[JoeManco7]

Nobody 2

No Clark Griswold, but like National Lampoon's Nobody Vacation. 

A very good sequel. If it does good business then hopefully they make at least one more film (The Nobody Trilogy!). If they do then I hope they don't go even more high concept with something like 'Nobody in Space' and maybe do something more dramatically with how one of the characters continues on with their life wherever they will be after what happens in this film:

Spoiler

Hutch Mansell gets one of his finger's cut off and it is then swallowed by some fish

 

Edited August 15, 2025 by JoeManco7
correction