What Non-New Films Have You Seen? (2019 Edition)

[phantom_power]

I watched the first half an hour of the new Tomb Raider but had to turn it off as it gave my eyes cancer and reduced 60% of my brain capacity. Never has a potentially great idea been treated so badly. We don't need all that backstory, especially when it is done so shittily. Imagine Raiders of the Lost Ark starting with 20 minutes explaining why Indy became an adventurous archaeologist. Why does modern Hollywood think we need all this character explanation up front rather than having it drip-fed throughout the film in the ways the character behaves and interacts with others?

A Tomb Raider film should start with Lara Croft doing some awesome tomb raiding and go from there. I don't give a fuck if she did some bike courier work before then.

[St_Eddie]

I watched the first half an hour of the new Tomb Raider but had to turn it off as it gave my eyes cancer and reduced 60% of my brain capacity. Never has a potentially great idea been treated so badly. We don't need all that backstory, especially when it is done so shittily. Imagine Raiders of the Lost Ark starting with 20 minutes explaining why Indy became an adventurous archaeologist. Why does modern Hollywood think we need all this character explanation up front rather than having it drip-fed throughout the film in the ways the character behaves and interacts with others?

To be fair, the opening to Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade essentially did that.  However, to be even more fair, that's a good movie and Tomb Raider is not.

[greenman]

It did manage to do that and still remain essentially the same kind of adventure film though.

[bgmnts]

Assumed the character was just a squaddie trying to play with the big boys, perhaps tried to get in the SAS but failed, so went private. As for what happens to him, nobody cares, because he's too stupid and cowardly to do anything, and everybody knows it.

I suppose that makes sense, he just doesn't fit in at all and it makes him interesting to me. I want to know how he even was contacted.

[Blumf]

I suppose that makes sense, he just doesn't fit in at all and it makes him interesting to me. I want to know how he even was contacted.

Thinking about it, you could probably make a good character study of him. A grim Shane Meadows style thing, examining the toxic masculinity of such a person; following his life from childhood, through the army, private military, and out the other side as a nightclub bouncer, still a blow hard but deep down knowing he's a nothing.

[Shit Good Nose]

Car chase aside, I've never understood how or why Ronin has always been rated so highly.  "Frankenheimer's best film for years" doesn't cut it, nor is it saying very much...

[greenman]

Car chase aside, I've never understood how or why Ronin has always been rated so highly.  "Frankenheimer's best film for years" doesn't cut it, nor is it saying very much...

I think it helps that it was the last De Niro film that was well liked and indeed that its the kind of thing that naturally has a very wide appeal, well made spy thriller with some snappy dialog and a good cast even if nobody is likely to have it down as a masterpiece.

I actually used to work with someone a bit similar to Spence in a WIlkinsons warehouse for a couple of years, much nicer but looked a lot like Bean and was always talking up his competence and attempts to get in the SAS although admitted he never had.

[bgmnts]

Desperado.

It still is great, possibly has my favourite intro scene to a film ever. It's up there, anyway.

The shot of Buscemi stubbing out his fag for ages to get the gang's attention whilst Dire Straits Six Blade Knife plays.

There is something Rodriguez and Tarantino who get storytelling, speeches and dialogues right in their films.

[Shit Good Nose]

Tarantino who get storytelling, speeches and dialogues right in their films.

Only cos he steals plagiarises borrows from homages other better films, directors and writers.

[bgmnts]

Only cos he steals plagiarises borrows from homages other better films, directors and writers.

Really? I mean I understand plot and directing being homages but I honestly thought the dialogue, which is basically what I go see a Tarantino film for, was his trademark.

[Shit Good Nose]

He's lifted entire chunks of dialogue from films and then just peppered them with random and unrelated pop culture references to change it up a bit.  He's also completely ruined films where he's contributed to the script (I'm thinking Crimson Tide's utterly pointless "where the fuck did that come from and why!?!?!?" moment).

He's the least original A-list writer and director of the last 30 years, and the fact he has such a major career offends me, whilst most of the films he's lifted almost wholesale (Kill Bill 1 even steals framing and entire sequences from several 70s Hong Kong martial arts films) remain ignored to this day.

I honestly don't think he has an original bone in his body.


That said, I still think Pulp Fiction is properly brilliant, and Jackie Brown isn't bad.  The rest can fuck right off.

[bgmnts]

Predator 2.

Still fucking ace.

Predator 3 needed to be Danny Glover and Arnie relaxing on holiday, both retired from the police and military, then teaming up to fight a Predator. Why it wasn't that I don't know.

Maybe Predator 5 can do that.

[Shit Good Nose]

Predator 3 needed to be Danny Glover and Arnie relaxing on holiday, both retired from the police and military, then teaming up to fight a Predator. Why it wasn't that I don't know.

Cos....



......wait for it.....



......wait.......




......cos.......





.....honestly, it'll be worth it......


......wait........






........cos...........









Danny's too old for this shit.


B'BOOM!!!!!!!!

[Blumf]

Predator 5 is going to show us, that like humans, not all Predator's are hunters, some are just tourists and we'll get to see their equivalent of a dolphin encounter where a bunch of fat, bored, middle aged hippy Predators visit a beach and fondle the humans.

[Shit Good Nose]

Predator 5 is going to show us, that like humans, not all Predator's are hunters, some are just tourists and we'll get to see their equivalent of a dolphin encounter where a bunch of fat, bored, middle aged hippy Predators visit a beach and fondle the humans.

Porn parody.

[Cuellar]

I watched The Predator on a flight recently. There was one line that MUST have been sarcastic. A sexy lady scientist accidentally tranquilizes herself, and the gang of rag-tag psychologically damaged soldiers that our hero has fallen in with rescue her and hideout in a motel. She's conked out on the bed, of course, and our hero and another soldier are outside by the pool, drinking and smoking etc. Our hero, gallantly, asks whether she'll be safe in there (with the unstable killers). The other soldier says, and apparently it's taken at face value, something along the lines of:

"What, an unconscious woman, alone with American soldiers? Yeah, she'll be absolutely fine"

Now. I'd just finished watching that massive Vietnam War documentary on Netflix, and reading about their exploits in the book Kill Anything That Moves. I'm not saying ALL American soldiers are murderous rapists, but....

[bgmnts]

Funnily enough i'm listening to Dan Carlin's Supernova in the East part 2, all about the horrid things the Japanese did during WW2 and he starts off by discussing the abhorrently evil things the American soldiers did in Vietnam.

I think he mentions the My Lai massacre specifically. It's all pretty common knowledge though, humans are shitbags.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Last night I watched Wim Wenders' The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick. It was good but a bit strange.

[chveik]

I think he mentions the My Lai massacre specifically. It's all pretty common knowledge though, humans are shitbags.

there are different levels of shitbaggery.

[St_Eddie]

there are different levels of shitbaggery.

Indeed.  I'm classified as level 3.6 on the shitbag scale.  There are worse shitbags than me.  For example, Mark King is a level 4.2.

[hedgehog90]

Last night I watched Wim Wenders' The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick. It was good but a bit strange.

I'm going to watch Wrong Move in a minute.
I've really enjoyed Alice in the Cities, Kings of the Road, The American Friend and Paris, Texas, so I'm pretty confident I'm gonna dig this too.
I've also got The State of Things, Tokyo-Ga and Buena Vista Social Club lined up for future viewing.
After those I'm not sure there's anything else of his that interests me... unless you can convince me to watch this film about nervous goalkeepers trying to prevent big hard footballs from touching their hot juicy goals (assuming the title is a laboured metaphor for fucking).

[zomgmouse]

Got to see the full big proper long extended final director's cut restoration version of Once Upon a Time in America in a cinema yesterday. A couple of scenes they added in definitely felt like they shouldn't have been there but it was nice to see them nonetheless. It's a breathtaking film. Though I'm still uncertain about the rape scene and the film's treatment of it.

[zomgmouse]

I'm going to watch Wrong Move in a minute.
I've really enjoyed Alice in the Cities, Kings of the Road, The American Friend and Paris, Texas, so I'm pretty confident I'm gonna dig this too.
I've also got The State of Things, Tokyo-Ga and Buena Vista Social Club lined up for future viewing.
After those I'm not sure there's anything else of his that interests me... unless you can convince me to watch this film about nervous goalkeepers trying to prevent big hard footballs from touching their hot juicy goals (assuming the title is a laboured metaphor for fucking).

Wings of Desire and the sequel Faraway, So Close! are both excellent, the former in particular is one of my absolute favourite films ever.

[Shit Good Nose]

Though I'm still uncertain about the rape scene and the film's treatment of it.

It was made in the early 1980s by an Italian man in his 50s who was born in the 1920s.  Current Western thinking should not be applied because it wasn't made six months ago by a woke San Franciscan 25 year old.

[zomgmouse]

It was made in the early 1980s by an Italian man in his 50s who was born in the 1920s.  Current Western thinking should not be applied because it wasn't made six months ago by a woke San Franciscan 25 year old.

There's been so many much better and more meaningful depictions of rape on film before this...

[Sebastian Cobb]

Wings of Desire and the sequel Faraway, So Close! are both excellent, the former in particular is one of my absolute favourite films ever.

And the 4.5 hour Until the End of the World.

And as for the goalie one, I'd have to take night classes to learn how to care less about football, but I still enjoyed it.

[Ferris]

Blow Up

'60s swingin London flick about a photographer and some things that happen. I thought it was a big bag of shite.

[Ballad of Ballard Berkley]

Blow Up

'60s swingin London flick about a photographer and some things that happen. I thought it was a big bag of shite.

Why?

[EOLAN]

Never heard of 'The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick' but for the title alone it definitely seems worth a watch. Not sure it can live up to the high intense focused expectations I have built for it now.

[Phil_A]

Why?

Because of all those BLOODY BITCHES no doubt