Mr_Danger Posted January 25 Posted January 25 I remember in college we had to design an interactive dvd menu and mine was a rip off of the cover of The Tarantino Collection DVD (when he only had three films) and the theme from Assault on Precinct 13 would play in the back ground. One of his best synths and I was clearly the coolest kid in Deeside College’s media and communications BTEC. Quote
BarryOVega Posted January 25 Posted January 25 Toxic Avenger Remake well Lloyd Kaufman was right about Macon Blair getting the Troma sense of humour, the background lines were hilarious, the gore was funny and it had a better story than the original, gave it 4/5 on Letterboxd, still prefer the original for it’s charm, which I also gave 4/5 so that makes perfect sense Quote
Paid Members Lorne Malvo Posted January 25 Paid Members Posted January 25 Not a stellar weekend at the movies; Saipan - It took me about 20 minutes to accept that Steve Coogan was playing Mick McCarthy and it wasn't Alan Partridge doing a pisstake of a northener, but once I was over that roadblock I found this to be a decent watch with a really good central performance. The 'shove it up your bollocks' scene is worth the wait. Still not entirely sure why this wasn't just as one-off hour-long C4 drama though, truthfully. Mercy - As mentioned a few posts back, absolute bobbins. If you're going to cast Jay Jackson in a Chris Pratt film (as a newsreader, no less!) I'm going to immediately assume the whole film is a pisstake. Unfortunately this is deadly serious in its pro-AI bollocks. You do get to look at Rebecca Fergusons face a lot though, so it's not entirely awful. H Is For Hawk - Pretty standard 'woman overcomes grief' drama. Much too middle-class for my liking. I usually like stories set in and around academia but outside of a few scenes I got pretty bored with this fairly quickly. The History Of Sound - This is such a shame. The first hour of this is the most I've enjoyed a film in absolutely ages. Just a gentle, delicate story about two men travelling USA in the 1910s recording folk songs and falling in love along the way. I loved the vibe, the measured pace, the music. Then the second half happens and it just descends into gay-love-story trope after gay-love-story trope. Then it just goes on and on and doesn't know when to wrap it up and has about 6 endings. A massive missed opportunity unfortunately. Quote
SaitoRyo Posted January 26 Posted January 26 Road House Just a fucking great film, isn't it? Feels like it could only have existed at that exact moment in time. Ludicrous, brilliant film with a tremendous cast. Feels like there has been an explosion in the cliche factory at times, but it just works Can't believe it took me close to twenty years to revisit this one. Out of Bounds Perfectly acceptable mid-80s man-on-the-run thriller. It is very clearly a vehicle for Anthony Michael Hall to say 'Hey, guys, I'm not that nerdy kid from the Brat Pack movies anymore, OK?'. Kind of hard to take him seriously as the naive Iowa farm boy who runs into some trouble his first day in LA and hours late is stealing a bus to evade the bad guys, but hey, I like this sort of shit, so sue me. Diary of a Hitman Thought I'd like this one a lot more than I did. Laurence Fishburne plays a hitman who is going through a crisis. Everything unravels when he's asked to kill a man's wife and their newborn baby. There's a prolonged scene about halfway through that makes it very obvious this was based on a play. Fishburne is good - and Sharon Stone and Sherilyn Fenn show up in smaller roles - but the tone is very weird and it starts to drag, despite barely being 90 minutes. It has some of the worst in-film narration I can remember in it as well. Something Wild Another one I'd not seen for two decades. I remember liking it at the time and I like it even more now. The tonal shift in the middle is so well done, as it goes from lighthearted screwball farce into full-on yuppie nightmare film, all thanks to the exceptional, terrifying Ray Liotta. I know he enjoyed a lot more success with Silence of the Lambs and Philadelphia, but I sort of wish Jonathan Demme had continued to make smaller, quirkier films like this, Melvin and Howard and Marrie to the Mob, because they were fucking class. Quote
cobra_gordo Posted January 26 Posted January 26 Afterburn. Absolute dogshit. Big Dave is so much better than this. Badly acted, bad script, effects look shit. Only positive was them heavily featuring the French town of Saint-Quentin which meant I got to drop a fact on my wife that it's twinned with Rotherham. Music And Lyrics. As I've mentioned before, give me all the rom-coms in the world, I bloody love them. Is this anything higher than a 6.5 out of ten? Probably not. Do I still love it, find it a comfort watch and quote from it regularly with Mrs Gordo? You're godamn right I do. Relies heavily on Hugh Grant being Hugh Grant but also has a great turn from Kristen Johnston and Brad Garrett is always great Quote
WyattSheepMask Posted January 26 Posted January 26 On 1/24/2026 at 11:39 AM, Devon Malcolm said: No Other Choice (cinema) Another cracker from Park Chan-wook. Not *quite* up to the standard of Decision to Leave and The Handmaiden and maybe slightly too long, but much funnier than I was expecting and brilliantly acted. A great time. Just been to see this today and really enjoyed it. Well acted, beautifully shot and can’t wait to see it again. I enjoyed it more than Decision to Leave , which I found to be pretty slow going even by Chan-Wook standards. Haven’t seen The Handmaiden though. Quote
Paid Members FLips Posted January 27 Paid Members Posted January 27 Road House Off the back of Saito’s post I stuck this on. It’s just cheesy good fun. Great soundtrack, unexpectedly violent and rapid fire day/night cycle pacing keep it ticking to a very unbelieveable except for in this movie ending. It’s like a spoof of Bar Rescue. My only letdown is that Terry Funk doesn’t play a bigger part. Quote
Paid Members Devon Malcolm Posted January 27 Paid Members Posted January 27 Finally got round to completing my Oscars for 2025. Spoiler tagged for length and, let's face it, interest:- (I've copy / pasted it from my Letterboxd so fuck knows how the formatting will look). Spoiler BEST PICTURE Flow Happyend Hard Truths Late Shift The Mastermind Ride Away The Seed of the Sacred Fig Sentimental Value Sorry, Baby Weapons BEST DIRECTOR Eva Victor (Sorry, Baby) Gints Zilbalodis (Flow) Kelly Reichardt (The Mastermind) Mike Leigh (Hard Truths) Mohammad Rasoulof (The Seed of the Sacred Fig) BEST LEAD PERFORMANCE Barbie Ferreira (Bob Trevino Likes It) Eva Victor (Sorry, Baby) Fernanda Torres (I'm Still Here) Josh O'Connor (The Mastermind) Kieran Culkin (A Real Pain) Leonie Benesch (Late Shift) Lyndsey Marshal (Restless) Marianne Jean-Baptiste (Hard Truths) Renate Reinsve (Sentimental Value) Shahana Goswami (Santosh) BEST SUPPORTING PERFORMANCE Amy Madigan (Weapons) Ana Sophia Heger (She Rides Shotgun) Delroy Lindo (Sinners) Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas (Sentimental Value) John Leguizamo (Bob Trevino Likes It) Michele Austin (Hard Truths) Nicholas Hoult (Nosferatu) Odessa A'Zion (Marty Supreme) Sunita Rajwar (Santosh) Wunmi Mosaku (Sinners) BEST ANIMATED FILM Elio Flow Kpop Demon Hunters Predator: Killer of Killers Zootropolis 2 BEST DOCUMENTARY The Golden Spurtle The Perfect Neighbour Predators Sly Lives! (aka The Burden of Black Genius) Tata BEST SCENE Delaying going on stage (Sentimental Value) End scene (Bob Trevino Likes It) Fight (Splitsville) Opening montage (Ladies and Gentlemen - 50 Years of SNL Music) Playing with fire (Ballerina) Sammie's number (Sinners) Submarine (Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning) Tank flip (Sisu: Road to Revenge) Thomas meets Count Orlok (Nosferatu) "Would you like a sandwich?" (Sorry, Baby) BREAKTHROUGH ARTIST Eva Victor (actor, writer, director - Sorry, Baby) Joshua Erkman (writer, director - A Desert) Ryan J. Sloan (writer, director, editor - Gazer) Tessa Van den Broeck (actor - Julie Keeps Quiet) Tracie Laymon (writer, director - Bob Trevino Likes It) BIGGEST SURPRISE The Assessment A Desert Gazer Predator: Killer of Killers Splitsville MOST DISAPPOINTING FILM Memoir of a Snail Oh, Canada Ponyboi Predator: Badlands Sunlight WORST FILM The Astronaut Lovers The Bayou Bone Lake Compulsion Eddington Fear Street: Prom Queen Going Places Oh, Canada Shadow Force The Sound WORST PERFORMANCE Aaron Taylor-Johnson (28 Years Later) Anna-Maria Sieklucka (Compulsion) Giulia Gorietti (Compulsion) Guy Pearce (The Woman in Cabin 10) Rami Malek (Nuremberg) MOST ADMIRABLE PERFORMANCE IN A NOT VERY GOOD FILM Blu Hunt (The Dead Thing) Danielle Deadwyler (The Woman in the Yard) Deragh Campbell (Matt and Mara) Riley Keough (Jay Kelly) Sonequa Martin-Green (My Dead Friend Zoe) Quote
SaitoRyo Posted January 28 Posted January 28 Disturbing Behaviour Within the first couple of minutes I was thinking 'Huh, this looks and sounds an awful lot like an X-Files episode', so I wasn't exactly shocked when the opening credits showed me that Mark Snow did the soundtrack (it was obvious tbf) and David Nutter directed. I didn't know any of that going in, and it's not exactly a great film by any means, but I absolutely love The X-Files, so I was glad to sit through what was essentially a 78-minute-long episode, albeit one without Mulder and Scully. As far as the plot goes, it's basically The Stepford Wives for late-90s teens. There's supposedly a much longer director's cut out there - the studio enforced significant changes during production - which is meant to be a whole lot better. I'd probably watch it. Quote
Mr_Danger Posted January 29 Posted January 29 Train Dreams. Or as I like to call it The Life of a Valentine NPC From Red Dead Redemption 2. I expected the melancholy but I didn’t expect it to be a fairly easy watch. Really enjoyed it. Just a man in the woods being a logger for most of his life. Doesn’t drag and whilst the sad bits are sad it’s not overwhelmingly grim or dark. Quote
Paid Members johnnyboy Posted January 29 Paid Members Posted January 29 Dora the Explorer² Watched both of the live action Doras. The first I had seen in the cinema and had loved it, but sadly Mrs JB had missed out so we watched it together this time. You'll doubly love it if you had kids into Dora as some of the humour is definitely aimed at the parents who suffered through Dora's adventures. (Who is she talking to?) The second one was a straight to streaming job. No Eva Longoria or Benicio del Toro money for this so it's an entirely different cast. Was it a sequel, or a continuation of kind? No, it's a reboot. Dora has almost as many origin stories as Batman. Not as knowing as the first, with a Goonies and Indiana Jones-lite vibe. Come the hour mark you'd be hard pressed to remember which live action Dora you were watching. It's VERY similar to the first film, like copy it but don't make it too obvious you've copied it when submitting a hastily scrawled regurgitation of your mate's Geography homework similar. If you only ever watch one, watch the first one. If you feel like watching two, the second one is thoroughly harmless and more enjoyable than most of Disney's animation to live action output. Quote
Paid Members FLips Posted January 29 Paid Members Posted January 29 Big Trouble in Little China I watched this a couple of years ago and said it was OK but the pacing was off and some of it looked straight to DVD. What an idiot I am. Maybe due to being more familiar with Carpenter's style of film now, or maybe just because I was completely wrong to begin with but this is brilliant fun. Loved it second time around. Quote
SaitoRyo Posted January 30 Posted January 30 Phoenix A nice little gem of a late-90s crime thriller that I stumbled across on Tubi. Ray Liotta is a decent enough cop who is up to his arse in gambling debts and resorts to desparate measures when the walls start properly closing in on him. There's nothing particular 'new' here, but it's a solid, noirish hour and forty-five minutes in a world of shady characters who populate late-night diners, dive bars and strip clubs. Liotta is the standout, but the rest of the cast is nothing to sniff at, either, as it's got Angelica Houston, Tom Noonan, Daniel Baldwin, Anthony LaPaglia, Brittany Murphy, Giovanni Ribisi, Giancarlo Esposito and Jeremy Piven, too. Very, very 90s, but the director (thankfully) doesn't turn this into yet another incredibly violent, overly-talky post-Tarantino effort. It's better than that. Quote
Paid Members Devon Malcolm Posted January 30 Paid Members Posted January 30 Shelter (cinema) If you like Jason Statham films very much then you will like this very much. I like Jason Statham films very much and liked this very much. Saipan (cinema) Enjoyable enough with a great impression by Éanna Hardwicke and a good one by Steve Coogan. No point in complaining about the liberties it takes with the facts but it more or less sticks to what we know. Not essential but a good watch. The Wrecking Crew (Prime) The Big Dave / Jason Momoa buddy action film is a good one, I'm pleased to report. More violent than it needs to be but a really good laugh. Wouldn't mind a sequel to it at all, especially if Morena Baccarin comes back. Die My Love Wouldn't have generated such a loud fuss if it didn't have two A-list stars in the lead and would have been treated as the well-made drama about post-partum mental health that it is. Not Lynne Ramsay's best but still very good. Friendship Can't do cringe comedy, especially not on this scale. I gave it a go but I just couldn't. Nothing against anyone here or who likes this but I can't do it. Alpha I think this is a slight backwards step for Julia Ducournau after Titane but it deserved better treatment than it got. It's definitely undeveloped in places and doesn't help itself with the non-linear setup but it's still more than good enough to deserve reappraisal. Golshifteh Farahani is brilliant. A House of Dynamite Obviously it's politically noxious in the same way Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty was. And the viewpoint setup of the same set of events renders the final third pointless. But tense at the beginning, certainly, and the big cast are in good form. Pillion Strikes me that Harry Melling has now had it off with Anya Taylor-Joy and Alexander Skarsgard in stuff he's been in. He's doing alright for himself. Superb, funny comedy-drama about a dom / sub gay relationship with a cracking ending. Really good. Young Mothers The Dardenne brothers branch out slightly from their usual social realism dramas for a more portmanteau approach here, covering the lives of five young women and girls at a shelter in Belgium. Well acted, sad but also lovely in good measures. There's Still Tomorrow Notable for beating Barbenheimer at the box office in its home country in Italy, you can see why this film is so important to Italians. A tough but essential story on the subject of domestic abuse and post-war social politics in Italy with some bizarre but fun stylistic flourishes. It's really good. Quote
Members SuperBacon Posted January 30 Members Posted January 30 2 hours ago, Devon Malcolm said: Die My Love Wouldn't have generated such a loud fuss if it didn't have two A-list stars in the lead and would have been treated as the well-made drama about post-partum mental health that it is. Not Lynne Ramsay's best but still very good. I didn't care for the actual film that much but Lawrence is incredible. The most accurate portrayal of bipolar I've ever seen, she was just mesmerising. 2 hours ago, Devon Malcolm said: Friendship Can't do cringe comedy, especially not on this scale. I gave it a go but I just couldn't. Nothing against anyone here or who likes this but I can't do it. I love Tim Robinson more than anything, but this was just OK. It could've been an I Think You Should Leave skit to be honest. Quote
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