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What Non-New Films Have You Seen? (2017 Edition)

Started by zomgmouse, January 01, 2017, 10:32:18 AM

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zomgmouse

Thought I'd start up a new list/discussion thread for the new year[nb]I didn't post for the second half of last year due to not having a good Internet connection and the backlog of posts grew too large for me to make any so I thought I'd wait till 2017 and here we are.[/nb].

So: what films not released recently have you been watching?

I've started my year with:

Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion
Super bizarre women-in-prison exploitation film. Truly terrific shots and sequences here and the use of colour is intriguing. Can't wait to check out the sequels.

and

My Name Is Nobody
Very fun spaghetti western but a bit of a mess really. Some hilarious scenes and a lot of very good action but it's all over the place as a whole. But enjoyable nonetheless.

Steven

Blood Punch from 2013

A surprisingly decent low-budget horror about a meth cook trapped in a log cabin which I'd recommend, but for fuck's sake don't watch the trailer as it gives away the twists in the plot. Why are the people who make film trailers so bad at this of late?

Buried from 2010.

The whole film is Ryan Reynolds trapped inside a coffin. `Nuff said.

Children Of Men from 2006.

Yeah, I know. But I've put off watching this one for years because I've seen the plot done elsewhere in Sci-Fi, it was better than I expected but still a lot of post-Orwellian Alan Moore comic type of fare with a fair few annoying cliches. Worth a watch though.

I also watched the Evil Dead 2013 remake after putting it off at the time as it even the concept of remaking it seemed like a bad idea. It's surprisingly decent and fairly nasty and enough different to warrant watching, though basically they could have easily not had it as a remake but people like to abuse a franchise name for guaranteed bums-on-seats, don't they Ridley?

The Hills Have Eyes 2006 remake is decent  and fairly brutal too, a fair few scares in it and a few interesting changes in the story compared to the original.

Herbert Ashe

Quote from: zomgmouse on January 01, 2017, 10:32:18 AM
Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion
Super bizarre women-in-prison exploitation film. Truly terrific shots and sequences here and the use of colour is intriguing. Can't wait to check out the sequels.

Absolutely. I gave them watch a few months ago - and the 2nd one is amazing, better than the first.

As for the rest - never dared watch them, only ever read that it's very much diminishing returns thereafter so didn't want to spoil the impact of #1 & #2.

bushwick

Possession by Andrzej Żuławski. Been meaning to see it for years and it didn't disappoint. Crazy psychological fever dream of a film.

garbed_attic

Ann Turner's Celia (1988)

A dream-like, rather awkward film with a child protagonist with anti-social tendencies. Also, a meditation on orthodoxy and the nature of justice. Contains a big rabbit. Very much my kind of film.


Nil By Mouth (1998) - absolutely the most well-acted film I've ever seen.  Career-best performances from Ray Winstone, Cathy Burke and the under-rated Charlie Creed-Miles.  It's more like watching a fly-on the-wall documentary than fiction at times.  I still have to fast-forward over that scene every time though...

Sam

Do you mean this bit?

http://youtu.be/QiA7eRQLohU

The comment under the video 'that'll teach her not to play pool with Peter' - if written ironically, as I hope - is hilariously bleak.

I haven't seen the film but it looks like the bleakest thing ever made.

Yes, that's the fella.  The fact that she's eight months pregnant doesn't exactly help matters

LanceUppercut

I wrote off buried. As I thought 1 person 90 minutes in a box couldn't be more boring , God how i was wrong great thrilling film.

zomgmouse

Quote from: Herbert Ashe on January 01, 2017, 12:11:40 PM
Absolutely. I gave them watch a few months ago - and the 2nd one is amazing, better than the first.

As for the rest - never dared watch them, only ever read that it's very much diminishing returns thereafter so didn't want to spoil the impact of #1 & #2.
I want to watch all of them! The last 2 might be batshit in a bad way but I still want to experience that for myself. I have been transfixed by the idea of this series.

Quote from: bushwick on January 01, 2017, 01:26:16 PM
Possession by Andrzej Żuławski. Been meaning to see it for years and it didn't disappoint. Crazy psychological fever dream of a film.

Yessss. A great film. You should check out Žuławski's The Devil. Among my absolute favourites that I saw last year. An incredible whirlwind of mania.

Sam

Green Room.

Really good, but 2nd half not as strong as the 1st and the subplots could been tidied up or excised.

zomgmouse

Steamboat Bill, Jr.
The final storm sequence is impressive genius, a frighteningly audacious feat of physical comedy. The rest of the film feels scant on gags and the few decent bits are far too spread out. Overall quite good but not my favourite Keaton work.

Steven

#12
Mike Leigh's Naked from 1993.

I enjoyed this as I like dialogue heavy films, and Thewlis spits out words like a gatling gun. A really grubby wank-flannel of a film full of putrid grime and wit in desolation, wandering about the night from character to character bleeding into Sartre's notion of hell being other people, but more in this case hell being yourself as perceived through your criticism of other people in Johnny's mind. I'm not sure if we're meant to find Johnny a protganist as he's a bit of a misogynistic bully and quietely violent, though is sort of redeemed through being the victim of violence himself. He hates women but finds his life controlled by them, left limping back to Manchester, presumably on one leg.

Roman Polanski's The Tenant from 1976.

A really creepy psycho-sexual horror about obsession and paranoia. There is some humour though in the absolute horror the main character experiences, and the ending is so darkly grusome that it does pre-empt a Chris Morris Jam sketch.

The Box from 2009.

Interesting premise but that's from a short story that was also adapted into a Twilight Zone episode, where this movie goes with that premise though is to another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of utter unmitigating shite.

Quote from: zomgmouse on January 02, 2017, 02:22:47 PM
Steamboat Bill, Jr.
The final storm sequence is impressive genius, a frighteningly audacious feat of physical comedy. The rest of the film feels scant on gags and the few decent bits are far too spread out. Overall quite good but not my favourite Keaton work.

Which is your favourite?

Quote from: Steven on January 02, 2017, 03:21:10 PM
Roman Polanski's The Tenant from 1976.

A really creepy psycho-sexual horror about obsession and paranoia. There is some humour though in the absolute horror the main character experiences, and the ending is so darkly grusome that it does pre-empt a Chris Morris Jam sketch.

This is my favourite Polanski film. You're right the ending is like that Chris Morris sketch. You might enjoy Patrice Leconte's Monsieur Hire with Michel Blanc in the main role with it being another obsession apartment film. He has a small role in The Tenant too.

I saw a few other apartment based films recently. The Apartment made me interested to see more Billy Wilder films. It has an amazing classic look and a brilliant cast. The Odd Couple also with Jack Lemmon but not directed by Wilder is not as impressive stylistically but it's still good, especially when the two English sisters are involved. Both The Apartment and The Odd Couple benefit from having catchy theme tunes that keep everything moving along. Also watching half of Cactus Flower from that era of comedies they all use failed attempted suicide after a romantic disappointment as a plot device. Le Père Noël est une ordure is a French Christmas farce (with the cast from Le Splendid) set in an apartment that's used as a Samaratans type service. The American remake with Steve Martin makes everything too nice and takes away the best part of the ending where they feed a dead body wrapped in christmas present boxes to the animals at a zoo.

Howj Begg

Possession bu Zulawski is marvellous, and I' m going to rewatch it.

My watching of recent weeks has been:

Culloden (Watkins): Basically an examination of how the poor and marginalised always get fucked in war, and the rich and powerful leading them always contrive to win even when they lose.

Le Mepris (Godard): touted as the best Godard film, not even close. Still brilliant though. Bardot is excellent. Godard is overly restrained for his first big budget picture, which isn't so good.

The Ruling Class: Insanely OTT satire, which works on a number of levels. Everyone should see this. O'Toole is Jesus.

Ace in the Hole (Wilder): Kirk Douglas as a sonofabitch asshole. Very cynical lols. It makes very few concessions for a Hollywood flick.

Hitler: A Film from Germany: 5 hrs into this 8 hrs monster.

Electric Boogaloo: story of Cannon films: fun. You couldn't pay me to watch any of the films mentioned in it though. Maybe the breakdancing one and Cassevettes.

Horror: 10 Cloverfield Lane, Lake Mungo, Autopsy of Jane Doe, Green Room: all pretty good.

thenoise

The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn (2011) - finally caught up with this, which I didn't see at the Cinema due to my dislike of the 3D gimmick.  I like Tintin and the Unicorn saga is one of my favourite comics, and I love Joe Cornish of course, but this is a very loose adaptation indeed.  It looked quite pretty I suppose, although I think traditional animation would have been fine (will it look dated in years to come after the computer animation/3D fads have passed by?).  The Canadian cartoon from 1991, which I loved, was very watered down in a number of areas compared to the comic, including Haddock's alcoholism.  In this film it is ramped right up, Haddock is barely holding it together for much of the film, an absolutely out of control drunken mess.  Which is nice.
I hope the sequel is a bit closer to the source material.  If it ever comes.

Van Dammage

Beverly Hills Cop. I really like this film (seen it multiple times) but reading about it afterwards I saw that it made more money than both Ghostbusters and Temple of doom back in 84. Can someone older than me possibly enlighten me about this? Have I been severely underestimating Eddie Murphy's popularity back in the 80's? To me it just feels mind boggling that it made that much money.

#17
THIS PAST WHILE I HAVE MOSTLY BEEN WATCHING:

The Beaver Trilogy, which was legitimately, strangely moving in a way I can't really articulate. Rubin and Ed director Trent Harris takes a filmed meeting with local Olivia Newton John impersonator "Groovin' Gary" and fictionalises it twice, once with Sean Penn and then with Crispin Glover. Together they form a glorious picture of this wonderful and bizarre individual whilst simultaneously being self-aware about the nature of such a project (
Spoiler alert
Harris portrays himself in both fictionalised versions as an exploitative opportunist, which suggests mixed feelings about his treatment of Gary
[close]
). I don't know what to say, it just... kinda really fucked me up because
Spoiler alert
Gary's enthusiasm was just so lovely even if his "impersonation" is kinda terrible, and it really feeds into both my anxieties of making a fool of myself and the fact that even the strangest/amateurish stuff can have genuine heart behind it
[close]
. Also Crispin Glover is brilliant in it (the first documentary segment being filmed in the late 70s and the latter two being the mid 80s, pre-empting Glover's Rubin somewhat).

I've seen more films of course but I can't really bring myself to write about them sadly: also, I realise this isn't a very coherent or insightful post so my apologies.

zomgmouse

Quote from: Steven on January 02, 2017, 03:21:10 PM
Mike Leigh's Naked from 1993.

I enjoyed this as I like dialogue heavy films, and Thewlis spits out words like a gatling gun. A really grubby wank-flannel of a film full of putrid grime and wit in desolation, wandering about the night from character to character bleeding into Sartre's notion of hell being other people, but more in this case hell being yourself as perceived through your criticism of other people in Johnny's mind. I'm not sure if we're meant to find Johnny a protganist as he's a bit of a misogynistic bully and quietely violent, though is sort of redeemed through being the victim of violence himself. He hates women but finds his life controlled by them, left limping back to Manchester, presumably on one leg.

This is a very frightening and confronting film, one of my first Leigh films that I saw. The blue tone really cements how great Leigh's colour work is - or at least how great Dick Pope's colour work is. Thewlis needs to be in a lot more, I was glad to see him in Anomalisa. In my mind Johnny is a protagonist but a pitiable one - maybe this makes him an antihero. He's probably the most difficult of Leigh's characters to unravel.

Quote from: Smeraldina Rima on January 02, 2017, 05:16:46 PM
Which is your favourite?

My favourite feature that I've seen is The General (I've not seen that many) and my favourite shorts are The Goat and Cops, from memory.

Quote from: Steven on January 02, 2017, 03:21:10 PM
Roman Polanski's The Tenant from 1976.

A really creepy psycho-sexual horror about obsession and paranoia. There is some humour though in the absolute horror the main character experiences, and the ending is so darkly grusome that it does pre-empt a Chris Morris Jam sketch.
Quote from: Smeraldina Rima on January 02, 2017, 05:16:46 PM

This is my favourite Polanski film. You're right the ending is like that Chris Morris sketch. You might enjoy Patrice Leconte's Monsieur Hire with Michel Blanc in the main role with it being another obsession apartment film. He has a small role in The Tenant too.

Mine too! It is also among my favourite films of all time. I've only seen it the once but would love to revisit it. I like that Polanski isn't credited. Isabelle Adjani is amazing in this and it's great to see Shelley Winters doing what she did best at that stage in her career. Plus beautiful cinematography by Sven Nykvist.

Quote from: Smeraldina Rima on January 02, 2017, 05:16:46 PM
I saw a few other apartment based films recently. The Apartment made me interested to see more Billy Wilder films. It has an amazing classic look and a brilliant cast.

Quote from: Smeraldina Rima on January 02, 2017, 05:16:46 PM
failed attempted suicide after a romantic disappointment as a plot device

See also: Bedazzled.


Quote from: Smeraldina Rima on January 02, 2017, 05:16:46 PM
I saw a few other apartment based films recently. The Apartment made me interested to see more Billy Wilder films. It has an amazing classic look and a brilliant cast.

Quote from: Howj Begg on January 02, 2017, 05:29:06 PM

Ace in the Hole (Wilder): Kirk Douglas as a sonofabitch asshole. Very cynical lols. It makes very few concessions for a Hollywood flick.


Smeraldina Rima you should check out Ace in the Hole if you haven't already. And both of you should see Sunset Boulevard - "very few concessions for a Hollywood flick" applies tenfold to this, and is even more satisfying because it's about Hollywood. Wilder could be sweet but he was a very acidic filmmaker who unearthed darkness in every film he made.

Quote from: Howj Begg on January 02, 2017, 05:29:06 PM

The Ruling Class: Insanely OTT satire, which works on a number of levels. Everyone should see this. O'Toole is Jesus.


Yes! I love the fact that nobody took him seriously when he was preaching peace as Jesus but started respecting him once he was spouting cruel punishments as Jack the Ripper. A plethora of great lines.

zomgmouse

Quote from: A Car With No Doors on January 02, 2017, 08:33:54 PM
The Beaver Trilogy

I really, really want to see this! It's been sitting on my laptop to be watched for a while.

Dex Sawash

Quote from: Van Dammage on January 02, 2017, 07:21:59 PM
Beverly Hills Cop. I really like this film (seen it multiple times) but reading about it afterwards I saw that it made more money than both Ghostbusters and Temple of doom back in 84. Can someone older than me possibly enlighten me about this? Have I been severely underestimating Eddie Murphy's popularity back in the 80's? To me it just feels mind boggling that it made that much money.

I was born in 1965 and american so Murphy is the comic of my later youth. His stand up films (VHS!) were  watched at house parties and quoted often. Soundtrack to Cop sold a lot of records. He replaced Richard Pryor as america's favorite black person. (Pryor probably replaced OJ in late 70s)

Ambient Sheep

Quote from: Steven on January 02, 2017, 03:21:10 PMThe Box from 2009.

Interesting premise but that's from a short story that was also adapted into a Twilight Zone episode, where this movie goes with that premise though is to another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of utter unmitigating shite.

Indeed.  It's funny, this film has been discussed on here twice now recently, shame it didn't get a thread of its own... I guess nobody wanted to make a thread for a film that almost everybody hated.

You can find the most recent discussion here, in which I promptly link back to the other, slightly earlier, discussion, which funnily enough was in the 2016 version of this thread... :-)

So far, every Verbwhore who's commented seems to hate it, apart from Bad Ambassador.

Steven

Quote from: Ambient Sheep on January 03, 2017, 08:39:41 AM
Indeed.  It's funny, this film has been discussed on here twice now recently, shame it didn't get a thread of its own... I guess nobody wanted to make a thread for a film that almost everybody hated.

You can find the most recent discussion here, in which I promptly link back to the other, slightly earlier, discussion, which funnily enough was in the 2016 version of this thread... :-)

So far, every Verbwhore who's commented seems to hate it, apart from Bad Ambassador.

I'd watched The Box before the recent discussion of it here, so that didn't taint my opinion, I'd been watching a bunch of the old 60s Twilight Zone episodes so looking for films with a similar oeuvre. It's bad, really bad. I think I've seen the Button, Button inspired Twilight Zone as a kid, need to watch that at some point to remind myself where they go with it. Bit of a The Monkey's Paw deal if I recall.

Regarding Polanski's The Tenant, there was a four-hour miniseries a couple of years ago reimagining Rosemary's Baby which takes from both that film and The Tenant. One of the other apartment movies about paranoia/obsession also is obviously Rear Window, but I doubt I'd need to promote that one!

Bad Ambassador

If it's any consolation, I was genuinely shocked that I found The Box to be anything other than total shit.

Watched You're Next and The Heat over the weekend. The former was not scary and the latter was not funny.

Van Dammage

Quote from: Dex Sawash on January 03, 2017, 07:52:49 AM
I was born in 1965 and american so Murphy is the comic of my later youth. His stand up films (VHS!) were  watched at house parties and quoted often. Soundtrack to Cop sold a lot of records. He replaced Richard Pryor as america's favorite black person. (Pryor probably replaced OJ in late 70s)

Ahhhh that makes sense. I rewatched a few of his films lately (Trading Places, Coming to America) and he's just as funny as I remember. I really need to check out 48 hours soon.

Gulftastic

Million Dollar Baby. I knew it didn't have an happy ending, but fucking hell, Clint.

Dex Sawash

Quote from: Van Dammage on January 03, 2017, 05:04:07 PM
Ahhhh that makes sense. I rewatched a few of his films lately (Trading Places, Coming to America) and he's just as funny as I remember. I really need to check out 48 hours soon.

48 Hours is the first movie i recall that was a mashup of genres comedy and violence (cop film).

^There is a Birth of a Nation joke in there somewhere

SteveDave

The Girl With All The Gifts

A zombie film where the zombies are caused by spores (or sutin) and they're trying to make a cure out of some kids. Starring Glenn Close (who at first I thought was doing a Yorkshire accent), Gemma Arteton (lovely) and Paddy Considine (sleepwalking)

6/10

Dr Syntax Head

Because of being back to work and my sleep is fucked [nb]essentially 3am for everyone else is around 10pm for me in my mind[/nb] I looked around amazon [nb]i've finished netflix[/nb] and watched two films i'd not heard of.

The Frame. I found it weirdly haunting despite the obvious religious element. It unsettled me in the same way Triangle and Timecrimes did. Worth a watch if a little too long.

The Shelter. 5 people stuck in a nuclear shelter designed for only two people. Yeah the ending twist [nb]if you can call it that[/nb] is pretty obvious quite early on it's an entertaining strangers in a room movie. The last scene being a little haunting and reminding of the
Spoiler alert
russian sleep deprivation experiment locked in a room creepypasta
[close]
. Worth an hour 45 minutes of your time I reckon.

zomgmouse

Maniac (1980).
I posted about this in the horror thread also but this film was great. A very seedy atmosphere. Reminded me of The Driller Killer a little bit.