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DVD's and Films You Have Watched Recently

Guest DJM

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KFR42 Community Regular

KFR42

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Just got the national lampoons vacation boxset for a tenner. Ive always loved those films.

 

 

 

 

Anyone seen the sequel to the Xmas one, based around Eddie & Katherine? Is it any good?

 

nah man, its bad...

 

if you're a Vacation fiend like myself it would be worth renting just to give it a view...Cousin Eddie is still Cousin Eddie at the end of the day, but it just aint the same without him playing off Clark's every move.

 

Although from what Ive heard its the only one where they have a returning actress playing the daughter!

 

What was up with them changing the actors and actresses playing the kids in every film?

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ukedge87 Rising Star

ukedge87

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See No Evil, Hear No Evil - 1989

 

Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor team up again, with a film in which Dave Lyons (Wilder) a deaf small time newsagent is thrown together with Wally Karue (Pryor), a blind unemployed New Yorker. Due to circumstances out of their control, they are both witnesses to an organised crime murder (carried out by a Kirgo aka Kevin Spacey), which they are accused of committed. Whilst being tracked by the NYPD, and trying to seek vengeance to the real murderers, they try and clear their names.

 

This film, throws together a winning combination without a great script or a clever idea. Yet it just about manages to pull it off. As usual Pryor does his very funny, yet routine, schtick but with a interesting concept, being that he is blind, and Wilder serves as the straight man who he bounces back off very well. Whilst this makes for some very funy scenes (the bar fight in particular is halirious), it doesn't manager to hide the fact that the script is water thin, and at times it appears to be grasping at straws in terms of its narrative.

 

Spacey as Kirgo has the worst English accent I've ever heard, but he pulls off the deliberately over-cliched role very well - and shows just a tiny amount of his bright future potential.

 

This film is a very average comedy - you could say disapointing considering its cast and writers - yet it is entertaining enough. However, I would personally recomend that you watch Stir Fry Crazy instead.

 

The French Connection - 1971

 

Alain Chanier is a dapper businessman from Marseilles, France, who is in reality a drug lord working on a big score - to sell $32 million worth of 89% pure heroin to New York City. But his potential buyer - small-time hood Salvatore Boca - is being tailed by two undercover NYC cops, James "Popeye" Doyle (Gene Hackman) and Buddy "Cloudy" Russo (Roy Scheider). The more Popeye and Cloudy dig, the closer they get - to where Chanier agrees to an attempt on Popeye's life that results in a brutal train hijacking and automobile pursuit, and eventually to a showdown between police and mobsters outside the city.

 

This film is renowned as the original 'cop buddy' film - and while that may be true - it's not to say this film is the definite 'cop' flick.

 

I was expecting a classic, cult film - yet I was left with a gritty yet poorly shot segment of a NYPD narcotic investigation. Its as blunt as that - don't expect any subtext or themes, the film appears to do exactly what it says on the back cover.

 

Don't get me wrong, Scheider and Hackman are both brillant in the roles (I would almost say it was Hackman's finest outing), however not even that, or the beautfiul photography, can hide the blatant lazy script (i.e. when they are looking for drugs in the car, Russo suggests first-off where the junk may be, - and surprise surprise he's right). Nor does the exhalirating events of the second hour, excuse the sleep inducing pace of the first.

 

I would not be ignorant enough to suggest that this film does not deserve a place in cinematic history, yet I would challenge its iconic, and cult like, status.

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ukedge87 Rising Star

ukedge87

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Twelve Monkeys

 

An unknown and lethal virus has wiped out five billion people in 1996. Only 1% of the population has survived by the year 2035, and is forced to live underground. Convict James Cole (Bruce Willis) reluctantly volunteers to be sent back in time to 1996 to gather information about the origin of the epidemic (who he's told was spread by a mysterious "Army of the Twelve Monkeys") and locate the virus before it mutates so that scientists can study it. Unfortunately Cole is mistakenly sent to 1990, six years earlier than expected, and is arrested and locked up in a mental institution, where he meets Dr. Kathryn Railly, a psychiatrist, and Jeffrey Goines (Brad Pitt), the insane son of a famous scientist and virus expert.

 

Directed by the master of dystopian visions, Terry Gilliam, Twelve Monkey bombards the audience with a complex, yet digestable, film - which unlike it's fellows in the genre, is also heatwarming. Bradd Pitt and Bruce Willis enter career altering roles, which demonstrate their immense talent and no doubt paved their way for future roles.

 

The direction and photography of everything from the set pieces to the 1996 Philidelphia are breathtaking, to the point where the viewer is fully imerged in the film, becoming part of the concept - yet still being aware enough to fit the jigsaw plot together.

 

This film is a true classic and my favourite Gilliam film (although Brazil is very close), I think it will go down in history as one of the best sleeper hits of the 1990s. It has certainly paved the way for future films of a similar films (just look at the clear resemblances to Gilliam ideas in films such as Children Of Men).

 

Also if you pick up the DVD, the additional documentary film 'The Hamster Factor' is a very insightful view not only into Gilliam's film but the entire Hollywood studio proccess.

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Garrett Enthusiast

Garrett

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Boxing Helena: directed and written by Jennifer Lynch (David Lynch's daughter). A surgeon (Julian Sands) is obsessed with his fiery ex girlfriend Helena (played by Twin peaks star Sherilyn Fenn) so when she gets run over, he kidnaps her, hacks off her legs, and then later her arms. Despite losing her limbs, Helena still manages to verbally castigate the doctor at every oppertunity. And then it turns out it was all a dream (seriously). Most people would say Lynch only got to make this movie because of nepotism, and judging by how crap this film is I would probably agree. It might sound like a david lynch film, but it's very conventionally shot, and the script isn't particularly witty ( boxing helena could have had the makings of a great dark comedy but it tries too hard to be serious). If she was going to rip off her father she could have at least done a better job.On the bright side, It's not actually that gory (all the amputations take place off screen.) and Sherilyn Fenn is occasionally funny as Helena. It's a very OTT performance, fitting in with the whole movie.

Edited by Garrett
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