VHS and Betamax You Have Recently Rented

[Devon Malcolm]

Dune (cinema)

So yeah, it's really good. As expected, with it being Denis.

Spoiler

But I personally hate this way of doing cinema, where it's little more than a set-up for a sequel or a part 2. I'm really disappointed that Villeneuve would take this route, he doesn't even really try and have it stand on its own. Just make a fucking TV series.

Would have preferred Blade Runner 2050 though.

[LaGoosh]

On 10/20/2021 at 3:43 PM, Devon Malcolm said:

The Borderlands 

Wouldn't expect any horror film with Gordon Kennedy (yes, that one) to be any cop but this really was. Probably didn't need to be found footage in nature but the story's well built and the ending is great. Kennedy was really good too, bizarrely!

Absolutely love this movie. Had little/low expectations going in and was very surprised. A very creepy well made movie with realistic characters and performances that you really buy into. A little horror classic I think.

[BrodyGraham]

Enjoyed Dune up to a certain point without falling in love with it.

I think everyone expected it to be a visual and technical marvel and it is. Every scene has a whole bunch of shots that you could frame and put in a gallery, the production design and sense of scale is stunning and it sounds tremendous. Like Blade Runner 2049, when it all clicks it's almost hallucinatory and the performances are good to great across the board. Chalamet and Rebecca Ferguson are particularly good, but the standout is Jason Momoa, who is basically a big movie star charisma bomb in an icy field of underplaying. Which is sort of the problem. The dialogue in the movie functions more as exposition than it does to illuminate the characters. On top of which the big grandstanding epic shots seem to be matched by super tight, personal shots, either of faces showing off the subtlety of the performances or the detail of the production. The middle ground between those two ranges feels either lost or swamped. 

It all feels more intellectually rather than emotionally satisfying.

It's excellent, it is. I just admire it more than I like it.

 

 

[ReturnOfTheMack]

Infinite.

Maybe the worst film I have seen as an adult.

[pitseleh]

I saw Dune yesterday and I felt like I only got half a film. Once you get over that it's just part one of an epic story and not just the first film in a series, it's a damn fine film. It looks fantastic and the sound design filled me with both total awe and drend when it needed to. The film hammers a lot of important information over your head during the first hour and the story can be hard to follow at times, but I enjoyed this a lot and the 2 1/2 hour flew by. I can definitely see myself liking this more on a rewatch, something that will be essential before watching the second part. 

I watched two very different films tonight. First up was The Seventh Victim. It's an enjoyable film noir/horror hybrid from the 1940s that dealt with themes of satanic cults, suicide and lesbian lovers. Sadly, the film was heavily edited on release and it felt like that we are missing a lot of important scenes that would make this mystery movie feel more cohesive. The first third sees a sister navigate New York City as she tries to locate her missing sister. It builds up everything nicely, but it's not too long until the plot goes all over the place. This was good overall, but it's depressing to know that it could have been much better if people weren't so prudish back in 1940s.

The second film I saw tonight was Spy Hard. Yes, that Bond spoof with Leslie Nielsen playing the main role. I watched this as I've seen Airplane! and the Naked Gun series countless times and I fancied to watch another comedy with Nielsen in it. This ran out of steam pretty quickly and I was soon wishing this would end. There's definitely a handful of jokes that got a chuckle out of me, but there's also many lazy 'jokes' where they would just reference something that was popular at the time. Ray Charles making a cameo as a bus driver caught me off guard, as did Hulk Hogan turning up in his full WCW garb. Nielsen does what he can and there's enough Naked Gun-style jokes here to make it not feel like a complete waste of your time. This was like watching Family Guy. It's 90% crap and the story doesn't matter, but it will make you laugh here and there, especially if you've got a few beers in your system. 

[gmoney]

Went to see a couple of the Steve McQueen BBC produced films that came out last year. First up was Mangrove about the real police harassment and trial of the black owner of the Mangrove restaurant in Notting Hill and some of his friends and associates in the late 60s to early 70s. It's an infuriating and upsetting story, very well told as you'd expect from the director. Cast are all really good, stand outs were Letitia Wright, Malachi Kirby (as Darcus Howe) and Alex Jennings as an absolute cunt of a judge. Oh and Gary Beadle is in it, whom I love. 

Second was Lovers Rock which much more of a mood piece, about one house party in 1980s. I thought this was absolutely fantastic, you genuinely feel like you're there at times. I've had VR experiences that were much less immersive than this.  

These are both available on iplayer, along with 3 other films he somehow managed to knock out around the same time, which are also supposed to be very good to great. 

Edited October 23, 2021 by gmoney

[Mr_Danger]

Dune looks and sounds fantastic. It’s exactly how I imagined everything from the book and it’s cast perfectly. It’s just, it ticks through all the story beats and ends without much suspense. The story is tropey as fuck so you feel like you’ve seen it all before, it just doesn’t usually look and sound so bloody good. 

[SuperBacon]

1 hour ago, gmoney said:

Second was Lovers Rock which much more of a mood piece, about one house party in 1980s. I thought this was absolutely fantastic, you genuinely feel like you're there at times. I've had VR experiences that were much less immersive than this.  

Said it before on here (I think) but that shot where the tracks drops out, and the party goers are all singing Silly Games, is the most immersive thing I have seen in years. You really feel like you are in the party. Incredible film making.

Also, the Kunte Kinte Dub bit as well.

The whole series was superb but Lovers Rock was by far my favourite. 

[Hannibal Scorch]

The French Dispatch - A Wes Anderson love letter to old fashioned travel articles and journalism. The 3 stories don’t weave particularly well, but the film is up there as his most beautiful. Your enjoyment will rely mostly on how you like his other films, but I had a great time.

[Devon Malcolm]

The Boss Baby 2 (cinema)

There's a bit where the Alec Baldwin voiced baby says that one of his biggest fears was being shot. Eek. Otherwise, even more insane and exhausting than the first one.

[Lorne Malvo]

My film-viewing took a massive hit over the summer but I'm getting back on track and have caught up with a fair few new releases;

Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings was typical MCU fare. A really strong first half with some great fight scenes and likeable performances let down by a CGI mess of a finale. Doing a fight scene on a bus a few months after the excellent Nobody is really unfortunate timing too. Cinderella is nowhere near as bad as I'd expected. It helps that most of the cast are in on the joke and know it's a bit naff so play along accordingly. Really strange cast though, with the likes of Rob Beckett and Romesh Ranganathan popping up alongside Minnie Driver and Pierce Brosnan. James Corden is the worst part as you'd expect. Gunpowder Milkshake is pretty high on the list of these stylish action films that have came along in the wake of John Wick - not quite at the level of Nobody but well worth a watch all the same. Karen Gillan is as watchable as ever.

Kate came out the same week as Gunpowder Milkshake and the plot is eerily similar, but it's not as strong. It seems to descend into generic action plotting the further along it goes. It's not bad and Winstead is always worth watching but if I had to watch this or Gunpower Milkshake again it doesn't stand up. Malignant is pretty boring for an hour then becomes wildly entertaining to the point where the last act saves the entire film, I'd happily welcome a sequel that embraces the madness for the whole running time. I found Herself to be really gruelling emotionally at parts and life-affirming at others - really strong film and perhaps might be in my top ten of the year. Clare Dunne is incredible.

If you don't like sentimentality then you'd hate The Starling. I have a soft spot for these Sunday evening type films though and thought Melissa McCarthy and Chris O'Dowd do some good work. The whole central metaphor doesn't work and is over-laboured but I quite liked it despite it's shortcomings. I found The Guilty to be a really uncomfortable watch given recent police-related incidents here and in the US. It's also never as absorbing as it should be and proves that Training Day was a bit of a fluke. I hated the first hour of Annette then found myself being won over by it, and by the end they'd got me emotionally. I reckon I'd love this on a second viewing. The soundtrack has already had a few playthroughs since too.

Copshop is a fine throwback action thriller with a standout performance from Alexis Louder. It was a little more restrained in parts than I'd expected but always good fun. Respect was your bog-standard musical biopic which hits all it's notes in the order you'd expect, offers nothing new at all and relies on Good Acting to see you through. Really really boring. Hollywood can stop making these about 15 years ago. As someone whose never watched The Sopranos, I thought The Many Saints Of Newark was really strange. There seemed to be lots of little things that went nowhere which I imagine were just there to pop the fans of the show, and it's as if David Chase didn't really know which storyline he wanted to focus on. It's probably not fair to judge it having never seen the show but regardless, I thought it was rubbish.

Lastly, I really admired Dune but I can't say I liked it. It just didn't hook me emotionally - as gorgeous and as well-acted as it was, I didn't care about any of the characters or where they're going to end up. Then again, I felt the exact same way about Blade Runner first time I watched that so maybe this will grow on me.

[Devon Malcolm]

1 minute ago, Lorne Malvo said:

Gunpowder Milkshake is pretty high on the list of these stylish action films that have came along in the wake of John Wick - not quite at the level of Nobody but well worth a watch all the same. Karen Gillan is as watchable as ever.

Caught this at the cinema, thought it was really enjoyable. Really surprised they're doing a sequel considering almost nobody has seen it but I can't wait.

1 minute ago, Lorne Malvo said:

I found The Guilty to be a really uncomfortable watch given recent police-related incidents here and in the US. It's also never as absorbing as it should be and proves that Training Day was a bit of a fluke.

Have you seen the original? I went all the way to Sheffield to see it at the cinema and it was well worth it. Can't say I expect the remake to be much cop but I'll watch it before the end of the year. The original's currently streaming on All4.

1 minute ago, Lorne Malvo said:

Copshop is a fine throwback action thriller with a standout performance from Alexis Louder.

Yeah, she's one of the breakout stars of the year. An odd film in a lot of ways and you can tell it was shot during Covid restrictions but it's the best thing Carnahan has done since Narc.

[pitseleh]

I had a great time with The French Dispatch. It is the most Wes Anderson Wes Anderson film yet. You could make the argument that a lot of Anderson's films are all style and no substance, and there are times that I was worried that this was getting too artsy for it's own good, but all three stories won me over with their charm and comedy. Every actor put in a hell of a shift here. Bill Murray is only in this for 10 minutes or so, but it's still great to see him even if he doesn't add too much to the overall picture. 

I spent this rainy afternoon watching The Searchers and I wasn't overly impressed. The only John Wayne film that I had seen before this was Stagecoach and I had a lot of fun with that. Sadly over a decade and a half has passed since that film released and John Wayne looks washed-up. He reminded me of a bloated, racist uncle here, and he wasn't likeable in the slightest (actually not many of the characters were). There's a lot of racist and sexist stuff here too. The pace felt all over the place and the scenes back at the ranch really started to bore me. The film at least looked gorgeous and the action scenes were good when we got one. I think I'll stick to Sergio Leone to get my western fix from now on. 

 

[Lorne Malvo]

59 minutes ago, Devon Malcolm said:

 

Have you seen the original? I went all the way to Sheffield to see it at the cinema and it was well worth it. Can't say I expect the remake to be much cop but I'll watch it before the end of the year. The original's currently streaming on All4.

 

I didn't even know the Fuqua one was a remake! I'll get the original checked out at some point to see how they compare.

Happy to hear there's a Gunpowder Milkshake sequel coming too. I'll keep my fingers crossed for Nobody 2, but it's all gone quiet on that front.

[Devon Malcolm]

8 minutes ago, Lorne Malvo said:

I'll keep my fingers crossed for Nobody 2, but it's all gone quiet on that front.

I suppose it depends on Bob Odenkirk's health. It did well financially and critically, so I think whether he feels up to it or not may dictate whether we get another one.