VHS and Betamax You Have Recently Rented

[Magnum Milano]

Tyrannosaur (2011) (All 4)

Written and directed by Paddy Considine.  Paul Mullan plays Joseph, someone with severe anger issues, who ends up befriending Hannah, played by Olivia Coleman.  He initially thinks she's got this perfect, ideal life, but everything is not all cracked up as it seems.  I've not heard of or seen Paul Mullan in anything before and he is great, but Colman is simply outstanding and puts in an incredible performance.  It is pretty dark in places and the initial scene of Joseph taking his anger out on his pet dog (all obviously not seen) did make me consider to switch it off there and then but I'm glad I stuck with it.  Eddie Marsan is also really good in this.

[SaitoRyo]

8 hours ago, Magnum Milano said:

Tyrannosaur (2011) (All 4)

Written and directed by Paddy Considine.  Paul Mullan plays Joseph, someone with severe anger issues, who ends up befriending Hannah, played by Olivia Coleman.  He initially thinks she's got this perfect, ideal life, but everything is not all cracked up as it seems.  I've not heard of or seen Paul Mullan in anything before and he is great, but Colman is simply outstanding and puts in an incredible performance.  It is pretty dark in places and the initial scene of Joseph taking his anger out on his pet dog (all obviously not seen) did make me consider to switch it off there and then but I'm glad I stuck with it.  Eddie Marsan is also really good in this.

Easily one of the most powerful films I've ever seen at the cinema. Need to give it a re-watch but also don't know when (or if) I'll ever be in that mood. 

Some stuff I watched recently. 

The Honkers

Decent early 70's fare starring James Coburn, playing an ageing rodeo cowboy who just wants to have a good time and ends up alienating his wife, son and best friend. Kind of aimless but in an enjoyable way. Slim Pickens plays the best friend/rodeo clown and is also really good. 

Probably would be better remembered if it didn't come out around the same time as Junior Bonner and J.W. Coop, two better-reviewed rodeo-centric films. I haven't seen the latter but intend to. 

Murphy's Romance

Nice small-town tale about a woman (Sally Field) who leaves her husband and decides to open a horse ranch in Arizona with her son (a young Corey Haim). She meets a quirk, older druggist, excellently played by James Garner, and things are going great until the deadbeat ex arrives on the scene. 

It's lovely, mostly powered by the chemistry between Field and Garner. Directed by Martin Ritt, who also made Hud and Hombre. 

Lovin' Molly

Shite. Expected a lot more, but it's just not very good. 

It's a Sidney Lumet film based on a Larry McMurtry novel and has Anthony Perkins, Blythe Danner and Beau Bridges in it. None of them are up to much in it, going through the motions of what is a shoddy productio

Spans about four decades but feels like not much happens. The makeup and production to show the ageing process is just atrocious, too, even for the time. 

Love at Large

Cracking little romance/mystery by Alan Rudolph, a man whose films I need to watch more of. 

It's basically a private investigator/mistaken identity film with a heavy noirish influence. Tom Berenger, Elizabeth Perkins, Ted Levin and Anne Archer are all in it and all really play their parts well. 

Neil Young is also in it but, well, yeah. He's in it. 

Well worth checking out, if you want a piece of genre cinema that is fun and breezy. Leonard Cohen and Warren Zevon on the soundtrack help. 

Comes a Horseman

Another one where you expect more based on who made it and who is in it. 

It's technically fine and the performances are decent, but it just underwhelms slightly, as a lot of the revisionist westerns from this era have a habit of doing.

Made by Alan J. Pakula and starring Jane Fonda, James Caan, Jason Robards and Richard Farnsworth, it's gritty and believable but the narrative isn't terribly engaging and the last fifteen or so minutes feel a little jarring and not in keeping with the rest of the film. 

Also pretty grim knowing a stuntman died being dragged by a horse and that they kept the footage in (though it cuts a split second before the fatal blow). 

[Hannibal Scorch]

Nobody (on-line) Bob Odenkirk kicks ass with support from Doc Brown (not the rapper) and Rza (the rapper). It’s not exactly a John Wick rip off as the trailers suggested, and it’s less then 90 minutes. Worth a watch but don’t go in expecting another John Wick. The story isn’t up there for me, but there is some great stunts and creativity throughout.

[Devon Malcolm]

23 hours ago, Hannibal Scorch said:

Nobody (on-line) Bob Odenkirk kicks ass with support from Doc Brown (not the rapper) and Rza (the rapper). It’s not exactly a John Wick rip off as the trailers suggested, and it’s less then 90 minutes. Worth a watch but don’t go in expecting another John Wick. The story isn’t up there for me, but there is some great stunts and creativity throughout.

Just a couple of weeks until this is out at the cinema and I'm clinging on to resisting watching it until then.

[bAzTNM#1]

"Billy the Kid and the Green Baize Vampire". Probably the only musical film out there about vampire snooker players. British film with Phil Daniels (PARK LIFE!) in it. 80s British films were sometimes very weird.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_the_Kid_and_the_Green_Baize_Vampire

[DavidB6937]

2 hours ago, bAzTNM#1 said:

"Billy the Kid and the Green Baize Vampire". Probably the only musical film out there about vampire snooker players. British film with Phil Daniels (PARK LIFE!) in it. 80s British films were sometimes very weird.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_the_Kid_and_the_Green_Baize_Vampire

That sounds amazing. I hope there's a song in it called Big Stake.

[BomberPat]

On 5/22/2021 at 7:37 PM, chokeout said:

Army of the dead. 

Dogshit. 

For the final few holding on to the notion that Snyder is a genius who has been hamstrung by studio interference, here's a film written, produced and directed by him and once again he proves he can't pace a film but can do a decent 3 min music video at the start for the titles. 

Agreed 100%.

The pacing is absolutely abysmal. He introduces an arbitrary sense of peril by bringing a countdown timer forward a day (because zombies aren't scary enough, obviously), and then no one acts with any kind of renewed urgency whatsoever. We're told that Big Dave has nine minutes to accomplish something, but it doesn't stop him from having a long chat rather than just getting in the fucking helicopter and leaving. You can explain on the way, Dave!

The zombie tiger scene is awful, the characters are all one-note clichés, and nothing really feels like it matters. The villain's motivation is some back of a fag packet writing that doesn't add up at all.

The best part of the entire film is that three minute music video. It has a better narrative than the actual movie. The worst part is that, by having the bulk of the story set after the "Zombie Apocalypse", and after all the central characters have already met and been through the whole zombie thing, is that Snyder clearly thinks that counts as character-building. He acts as if the characters have a history that we should be invested in, and we just don't know them at all. There are at least two scenes where Batista and his daughter just flat out explain their relationship, at length, rather than trusting the audience to just figure out a very simple dynamic. Because telling the audience there's drama is the same thing as there actually being drama, right?

I audibly sighed when I saw the 2.5 hour run time when we started watching it. Maybe there's a good 90 minute movie in there somewhere. Or at least a 90 minute movie that I'd be more forgiving of. Also, it just didn't know how to fucking end. One scene that should have been left implied was drawn out at excruciating pace, and what should have been at most a minute long stinger or mid-credits scene just seemed to drag and drag. 

That we're getting at least two prequels and probably a sequel to this already is madness.

[LaGoosh]

A 90 minute heist movie set in Vegas during the initial outbreak of a zombie apocalypse would probably have worked quite well. But as always Snyder goes for the longest, dullest and most dreary option.

[Devon Malcolm]

I quite enjoyed parts of it but I can't disagree with any of the criticisms. I thought the cast were a lot of fun and seeing Big Dave headline a film as big as this is always a treat. If one of the prequels / sequels gets handed off to someone else, that's when we might see this sort of premise worked through better.

[Mr_Danger]

I heard the fella who played the safe cracker is directing one of the prequels. His character was by far my favourite. 

[BomberPat]

2 hours ago, LaGoosh said:

A 90 minute heist movie set in Vegas during the initial outbreak of a zombie apocalypse would probably have worked quite well. But as always Snyder goes for the longest, dullest and most dreary option.

The Vegas aspect was probably the most disappointing part of the whole thing - it's a great potential setting for a zombie movie, and by rights should have practically been a character in its own right. The opening sequence featured zombie Elvis impersonators and showgirls, and was full of colour and fun, the actual film was just generic post-apocalypse city, where the casinos and hotels may as well have been any non-descript tower block. It feels like the only reason they used Vegas was to justify there being a tiger, and to have it plausibly near to Area 51.

[chokeout]

I'm not one for ripping plots to pieces but the more i think about it the less sense the whole film makes (spoilers ahead)

Spoiler

 

They need to go in to do a heist....although they don't. Its just a ploy so they can get get a zombie head......which they get right by the entrance....literally right by where they started with minimal input from the team. They could have paid them to just do that and be in and out in 10 minutes

They arent allowed to fly in...because reasons

The whole of the finale is based around his daughter being a dumbass and trying to save her friend.....but because of reshoots we can only assume she dies in the helicopter crash at the end because there's zero mention of her.

They have to break into a safe and avoid traps despite being hired by the guy who owns the safe who could just tell them the code

They hire a guy because he's good at trickshots. He does no trickshots

Zombie leader can't be stopped because he has a little metal hat which stops bullets. When he removes the hat they decide not to try and shoot him any more

Zack Snyder throws shit at a wall so he can talk about it coming in the sequel / directors cut™

• Huge pile of zombies that come to life when it rains....which never happens
• Robot zombies
• potentially aliens?
• A guy carrying a huge buzzsaw which is never used, The Snyder equivalent of Itchy and Scratchy going to the fireworks factory

 

 

 

Edited May 27, 2021 by chokeout

[BomberPat]

4 minutes ago, chokeout said:

I'm not one for ripping plots to pieces but the more i think about it the less sense the whole film makes (spoilers ahead)

  Hide contents

 

They need to go in to do a heist....although they don't. Its just a ploy so they can get get a zombie head......which they get right by the entrance....literally right by where they started with minimal input from the team. They could have paid them to just do that and be in and out in 10 minutes

They arent allowed to fly in...because reasons

The whole of the finale is based around his daughter being a dumbass and trying to save her friend.....but because of reshoots we can only assume she dies in the helicopter crash at the end because there's zero mention of her.

They have to break into a safe and avoid traps despite being hired by the guy who owns the safe who could just tell them the code

They hire a guy because he's good at trickshots. He does no trickshots

Zombie leader can't be stopped because he has a little metal hat which stops bullets. When he removes the hat they decide not to try and shoot him any more

Zack Snyder throws shit at a wall so he can talk about it coming in the sequel / directors cut™

• Huge pile of zombies that come to life when it rains....which never happens
• Robot zombies
• potentially aliens?
• A guy carrying a huge buzzsaw which is never used, The Snyder equivalent of Itchy and Scratchy going to the fireworks factory

 

 

 

All of this. Furthermore;

Spoiler

• The villain's henchman turning on the others to leave them there to die, because the zombie head "is more valuable than the money". Great, but surely what's even more valuable is the zombie head and an extra five million dollars? And maybe not pissing off the only people that might be able to help you get out alive in the first place? He basically turns on them because that's what villains in this sort of movie do, not because there's any logical motivation. 
   
• The woman they went back to save not even getting a mention after the helicopter crash was hilarious. It's one thing to have an ending that basically resolves nothing, because sometimes that's how you end a zombie movie - the zombies win. It would also be fine if there were some intentional ambiguity. But this was neither - it was an entire plot point being needlessly jettisoned because it had served its purpose of getting Batista and his daughter in the same place, and added needless faux-tension from a literal ticking countdown clock. Not that we were ever given any reason to care about that woman's safety in the first place, given that we spent no time with her and no character was established beyond "has kids", but at least pretend we were meant to be invested in whether they got her out or not.
   
• They establish that multiple characters in their crew had never killed a zombie before, which other than one bit of bad comedy from the safe-cracker, proves to be an utterly pointless bit of detail as they're all perfectly adept at shooting them in the head and knifing them without a second's thought, all expert marksmen to a man. God forbid they use that point to instil any actual drama in this thing.
   
• The little bits of political "satire" - mostly early on, but also the quote from the President that setting off a nuclear bomb would be "really cool" - was shit and heavy-handed, even by the standards of both zombie movies and Zack Snyder.
   
• There's a point where Cruz does this whole impassioned "it wasn't about the money, it was about you" speech to Batista's character and it's just completely unearned. They've barely interacted in any meaningful sense through the whole movie, but suddenly we're expected to care about their relationship and think that it's really significant? Show don't tell, Zack.
   
• The bit where the tiger kills the villain was ridiculous overkill. I get that it's going to be narratively satisfying to have that happen - it's the T-Rex inadvertently saving the day in Jurassic Park, you have the iconic (or that's what they're hoping) creature kill the baddy, because the audience are going to love the zombie tiger. I'm sure it tested well with focus groups. But what that sort of scene needs is the villain realising the creature is there, turning around, getting pounced out, cut to black. Instead we get a prolonged sequence of the zombie tiger having magic superhuman strength that sends the bloke flying across the room at the slightest touch, and which just fucking drags.
   
• Speaking of dragging - we saw Batista get bitten by a zombie. We know what happens next. But no, we have to have another heart-to-heart between him and his daughter to explain what's happening just in case you missed it. A scene that just would. Not. End. Same goes for the other guy somehow managing to get out of the locked vault and escape the city, make it all the way to the nearest airport, and have travelled the better part of four hours to Mexico City before he starts turning into a zombie. That could have - and should have - been a thirty second to a minute stinger scene, and it felt like it just kept going. And, to make it worse, the start of it was set to fucking Zombie by The Cranberries. Such an inane, tone-deaf song choice. 
   
• I was absolutely convinced that the "desiccated zombies come back to life when it rains" thing would play out in the third act; a sprinkler system would be set off or something, and suddenly there'd be more zombies than they'd reckoned with. But no, it was fucking meaningless. Every attempt at world-building went nowhere, and it's depressing that you're probably right that it was just there to pad out the sequels.
   
• Snyder clearly thought he was really clever calling the safe Götterdämmerung. Really smart reference, that. So smart that he also made sure to have the safe-designer's name be "Wagner", have the safe-cracker explain the reference and what it meant, have him then talk about "death or rebirth" when the safe finally opened, and have Siegfried's Funeral March playing when it's opened. Because what's the point of being smart if you can't hammer it over everyone's head so that they know how smart you are? The Ready Player One approach to references.

 

[SuperBacon]

Zack Snyder: rent free in all of your heads

Rewatched Pulp Fiction last week and it was the first time I ever noticed just how bad Tarantino's acting is. It completely took me out this time around. 

Also: Why are those lads eating burgers at 7am? Does Big Kahuna not have a breakfast menu?

What kind of party is Winston Wolf at, at 8am in full tux?

Also watched The Running Man again. Still 11/10 and I'm incredibly surprised they have never remade it.

[Mr_Danger]

12 minutes ago, SuperBacon said:

Also: Why are those lads eating burgers at 7am? Does Big Kahuna not have a breakfast menu?

Genuinely inspired me to start having my Double Sausage and Egg on a cheeseburger bun instead of a muffin in Maccies. You can also order a Sprite instead of a hot drink, no one tell’s you this when you’re learning adulting.