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

[rasta-spouse]

Is there a connection between Death Proof and that footage of Uma Thurman getting really hurt in a car during the filming of Kill Bill?

[Shit Good Nose]

Um, no.  I'm not in agreement with that.  The first half is a bit rubbish but the last half, with the car chase is fantastic; real white-knuckle stunt work that's incredibly exhilarating to watch.

There's always one.  Just like how I'm the only one that genuinely quite likes Blues Brothers 2000.

[phantom_power]

Death Proof is an accurate evocation of those grindhouse films as they were often pretty boring for the first half until the violence started

[Sebastian Cobb]

Jackie Brown is possibly my favourite Tarantino film.  I didn't care for it at all when I first watched it but it's a film which gets better and better with each subsequent viewing.

Um, no.  I'm not in agreement with that.  The first half is a bit rubbish but the last half, with the car chase is fantastic; real white-knuckle stunt work that's incredibly exhilarating to watch.

Eddie you really have form for saying something I totally agree with about film, followed by ruining it with something ridiculous.

[St_Eddie]

Eddie you really have form for saying something I totally agree with about film, followed by ruining it with something ridiculous.

And then I go and spoil it all by saying something stupid like I love Death Proof.

[Gregory Torso]

And then I go and spoil it all by saying something stupid like I love Death Proof.

I'll back you on this, Ed. I didn't love it, but I really enjoyed it and would happily watch it again. I liked how the tedium fed into the action and it's got such a brilliant ending. Better than much of Tarantino's more recent self-parodying ho-hum shit fests. Better than Django, better than the Hateful Eight. The Kill Bills are pretty shit as well, unless you've never actually seen any real samurai revenge films. That's the thing I find about Tarantino - his films are great until you watch the original, better films that he, ahem, "borrowed" from.

[Shit Good Nose]

The Kill Bills are pretty shit as well, unless you've never actually seen any real samurai revenge films.

Don't forget the 36th Chamber films as well, which he lifted entire sequences and dialogue from, even going so far as to cast Gordon Liu.  Also loads of "borrowing" from the Five Venoms films and The Crippled Avengers.

[zomgmouse]

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer. Didn't quite transfer the macabre uneasiness of the book. Ben Whishaw was too pretty to play Grenouille. But still really well-made and a noble attempt at conveying the sense of scent on screen.

Night of the Demon. A little camp but nevertheless chilling M.R. James adaptation (the original story is super creepy if you're after a short horror read). Enjoyed this.

Night of the Eagle (aka Burn, Witch, Burn!). Pretty insubstantial and scattered but not without its moments of eerieness.

The Thin Man. The Thin Plot more like but still oh so much fun. Smashing dialogue and pacing and cinematography. Pity it was a little off narratively but still a roaring good time.

The Model Couple. Cheeky satire from William Klein, imagining an average couple being scientifically monitored and broadcast on television. Absurd and acerbic towards normality and capitalism and all sorts of other subjects. Interesting that it came out so close to Albert Brooks' Real Life which I also like a lot.

Macabre (aka Frozen Terror). Daft Italian horror film. I think they made a mistake with some very heavy foreshadowing but it's still a shockingly ridiculous premise. And that final shot, oh my god.

To the Bone. Rubbish drama about a girl with an eating disorder. Starts off promising but soon gets bland and twee and introduces a wholly unnecessary romance subplot with a twit character who I initially thought was being played for laughs but he wasn't and it was all just very stupid.

Schlock. Supremely silly debut from John Landis who also stars as a massive monkey monster who's terrorising a small town. Plays with a lot of tropes and there's a shitload of terrific gags. Just a good silly time. Highly recommend this.

[St_Eddie]

The Kill Bills are pretty shit as well, unless you've never actually seen any real samurai revenge films. That's the thing I find about Tarantino - his films are great until you watch the original, better films that he, ahem, "borrowed" from.

I must confess that I haven't seen any real samurai revenge films and I do indeed think that Kill Bill is great.  I don't doubt you when you say that if I were to see the source of the influences, then the film(s) would lose their charm.  There's something awful about thinking that something you love is original and then one day watching something which you believe to be completely unrelated and realising that the thing you loved had stolen it wholesale.

Most recently, I was irked by Inside No. 9; during one of the episodes, they play out the best scene from the film Magic (a link to said scene) word for word.  It actually made me lose a bit of respect for Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton.  I know that they like to pepper all of the work with references and knowing winks to films they love but this was the first time I'd seen them so brazenly use the words and context of another artist's work in their own script, in a pivotal and significant scene no less.  It annoyed me to think of all of the people watching that episode and thinking to themselves 'ooohhhh, that's a great scene.  Top writing there, boys'.

I'm aware that Shearsmith and Pemberton would be the first to acknowledge the reference and that they're not trying to hoodwink their audience.  However, the same can be said of Tarantino but if the vast majority of your audience remains ignorant to the reference and credits the wrong person for the scene and dialogue, then ultimately what's the difference?

Aside from anything else.  It just feels cheap to cut and paste someone else's writing into your own script.  I understand that every filmmaker takes influence from the artists who they admire but I think that you have to draw the line somewhere.

[St_Eddie]

Schlock. Supremely silly debut from John Landis who also stars as a massive monkey monster who's terrorising a small town. Plays with a lot of tropes and there's a shitload of terrific gags. Just a good silly time. Highly recommend this.

I keep meaning to check this film out.

[greenman]

Really Kill Bill is a mix of a lot of different pulp revenge films mixed in with some typical Tarantino themes, I don't think its a case of people enjoying it simply because they haven't seen what its based on. I do think its a bit uneven and rambling but still a lot of good stuff in it, my favourite actually being the section with Sonny Chiba that's arguably one of the least pulp revenge influenced dispite his background.

Paid Criterions seemingly ever increasing(although still a lot cheaper than the previous used market) prices for Ugetsu and certainly wasn't disappointed. I'v never really watched a lot of Japanese period ghost story films but this certainly had a very unique atmosphere to it besides being as good looking as I expected from Mizoguchi after The Life of Oharu. I can definitely see why Tarkovsky rated this so highly as the supernatural sections do feel very similar to stuff like Mirror or The Sacrifice.

[Small Man Big Horse]

Schlock. Supremely silly debut from John Landis who also stars as a massive monkey monster who's terrorising a small town. Plays with a lot of tropes and there's a shitload of terrific gags. Just a good silly time. Highly recommend this.

Is there any chance you could upload that somewhere, as I'd love to see it, there is a version on the pirate bay but it's 5gig which my laptop won't like, and the smaller version annoyingly isn't seeded.

[St_Eddie]

Is there any chance you could upload that somewhere, as I'd love to see it, there is a version on the pirate bay but it's 5gig which my laptop won't like, and the smaller version annoyingly isn't seeded.

5 gigs?!  Fucking Hell!  Imagine creating a file that large for Schlock!  It's not like it's a Kubrickian feast for the eyes, which demands the highest possible resolution.  It's called Schlock.  The clue's in the title.  900 MB, at most.

[Small Man Big Horse]

5 gigs?!  Fucking Hell!  Imagine creating a file that large for Schlock!  It's not like it's a Kubrickian feast for the eyes, which demands the highest possible resolution.  It's called Schlock.  The clue's in the title.  900 MB, at most.

I thought it was madness too, it's 5.47gb in total and a 1080p rip, though god knows how a film that low budget could look much better.

6 Dynamic Laws For Success (In Life, Love and Money) (2017) - Fun Coen-brothers lite comedy thriller about a fairly naive guy who becomes embroiled in a big mystery revolving around money missing from a robbery, while we get flashbacks which reveal what did happen to it. It's stylish, fun, and only let down by a slightly dodgy performance from one of the supporting actresses, but bar that it's very likeable. 7.4/10

[zomgmouse]

Is there any chance you could upload that somewhere, as I'd love to see it, there is a version on the pirate bay but it's 5gig which my laptop won't like, and the smaller version annoyingly isn't seeded.

Gladly! :)

[Sin Agog]

Been busting out some old slightly waterlogged Doovdas over the last few days.  Rewatched Duck You Sucker, Ivan's Childhood, Salvador, The Beast Must Die (Que la Bête Meure) and The Limey.

Duck You Sucker/Fistful of Dynamite might well be my favourite Leone, even if it begins with his favourite theme of uptight wimmen secretly enjoying being raped by swarthy barbarian dick.  Why so many fucking good movies have to include that grotty theme, I don't know (see also Sonny Chiba's Street Fighter movies), but luckily it's a small part of his most visually and maybe narratively experimental movie.  I would understand and sympathise with anyone who says Rod Steiger was miscast as the unwitting Mexican revolutionary here, but his pudgy round face and verbose style goes together perfectly with Coburn's cavernous features.  Gorgeous score, two leads who palpably change each other for the better over the course of the movie, and some genuinely harrowing scenes (the way that camera pans over those firing squads in the death pits as the train enters the shot is pure cinema).  Really should have gone with the French title, though: Once Upon a Time in the Revolution.  Apparently Leone was running under the misguided impression that 'Duck, you sucker' was a thing that Americans commonly said.

I feel like the parents of any child actor are taking an awfully big gamble with their child's wellbeing, and that especially applies to those of the titular character in Ivan's Childhood.  It's probably one of the most complicated parts I've seen any kid thesp take on- he's got to make you wonder if he's an innocent child naif pretending to be much more hardened and grown-up than he really is, or a genuinely war-damaged, prematurely matured kid with tiny fragments of innocence still shining through.  I'd happily watch hours more terrifyingly tense scenes of him and the grown-up soldiers tiptoeing through gorgeous shadowy, swampy hellscapes on 'the other side of the river'.  I guess Tarkovsky said he wasn't that big a fan of this in Sculpting in Time, and it is a bit less narratively pure than some of his other films, but it's still gorgeous.  The child actor later came back for Andrei Rublev, where the director employed tactics that verged on the sadistic in order to elicit a good performance out of him.

Salvador was one of those films I weirdly glommed onto in my teens.  I guess I hadn't seen much, and when something that felt genuinely dangerous and vital entered my sphere, I really took to it.  It even inspired a phase of hunting down frontline journalism to read.  James Woods, despite in real life being a paranoid, right-wing germaphobe, was great at this point of his career.  He really had a particular knack for making you think he was thinking the dialogue he was saying, rather than just garbling out a script.  It was weird seeing this and Duck... so close to each other, both having multiple scenes of mass executions and dead bodies galore.  It sounds like Stone really, genuinely whipped up a storm onset in order to capture the chaos and political unrest of the time- sending out fake, pro-fascist scripts to the military in order to film their tanks and planes etc.  And I think that's why it's easily my favourite film of his.  It feels more dangerous than just a movie.

Took out The Beast Must Die from a Chabrol box-set as I remember that clicking with me the most.  It's about a writer, whose young son dies in a reckless hit and run, doing everything he can to track down his killer, the brutish patriarch of a fractious petit bourgeois family, at which point it becomes a really interesting character drama with multiple allusions to Greek tragedy.  The ending is a bit pat, but apart from that Chabrol was such a fucking tight purveyor of mini-Hitchcocks at this phase of his career.  Icy but totally compelling.

And The Limey's still good and Stamp's great in it, but then I had a vague memory of there being something interesting about the commentary so put that on afterwards.  Easily one of the best commentary tracks- it's the screenwriter, right from the beginning, laying into Soderbergh for fucking with his script, robbing it of all back-story and emotional depth, and even calling many of his directorial choices shit and hackneyed.  Soderbergh takes it in good humour at first, but then gets increasingly piqued and eventually says things like, "Well, maybe you can do things the right way when YOU direct a movie." I remember the Altman/screenwriter commentary track on The Player being similarly bristly, but this one's way worse.  Writers definitely get the fuzzy end of the lollipop in Hollywood, but props to Soderbergh for handling things so graciously in that recording booth.  Bet he was thankful the movie was only an hour and twenty minutes long by the end of recording that track.

[McChesney Duntz]

Salvador was one of those films I weirdly glommed onto in my teens.  I guess I hadn't seen much, and when something that felt genuinely dangerous and vital entered my sphere, I really took to it.  It even inspired a phase of hunting down frontline journalism to read.  James Woods, despite in real life being a paranoid, right-wing germaphobe, was great at this point of his career.  He really had a particular knack for making you think he was thinking the dialogue he was saying, rather than just garbling out a script.  It was weird seeing this and Duck... so close to each other, both having multiple scenes of mass executions and dead bodies galore.  It sounds like Stone really, genuinely whipped up a storm onset in order to capture the chaos and political unrest of the time- sending out fake, pro-fascist scripts to the military in order to film their tanks and planes etc.  And I think that's why it's easily my favourite film of his.  It feels more dangerous than just a movie.

Definitely top-drawer Stone (that and Talk Radio, personally speaking), but I can't watch it now without wondering if Woods thinks it has a happy ending nowadays.

[St_Eddie]

Been busting out some old slightly waterlogged Doovdas over the last few days.

Cor!  I bet you have, you dirty old bollocks.

[Small Man Big Horse]

Top Knot Detective (2017) - Fake mockumentary about a supposed Japanese tv show from the early nineties that became a huge hit in Australia. Features lots of ridiculous footage from the series which affectionately parodies the more outrageous samurai tv series and films, as well as behind the scenes info and talking heads which flesh out the story of it's slightly crazy creator, writer, director and star Takeshi Takamoto and how he went from being an unknown to a mega star and then, well that'd give the ending away but it's an impressive work, with more depth than you might imagine, and it's something of a must see. 7.8/10

Schlock (1973) - John Landis's first film is all about a big ape (or, to be precise, the missing link) turning up in the US and going on a murderous rampage, until he meets a girl and falls in love with her. The narrative is thin and it feels like a collection of sketches rather than a cohesive whole, but it's a fun, silly movie with a lot of laughs. It runs out of steam a little just before the finale and becomes less inventive, but the ending is strong and it's mostly really enjoyable. 7.1/10

[Blinder Data]

The Stranger (1946)

Pretty straight film noir-style thriller from Orson Welles. Characteristic directorial flourishes from the big man (lovely use of lighting and shadows, long tracking shots, etc.) but the film as a whole felt rather slight for me. Wiki seems to suggest that before studio involvement more was to be made of the opening South America which seemed much more interesting than the boring town most of the film is set in. All a bit inconsequential and dull in the second half, unfortunately. I couldn't work out what was preventing Edward G Robinson's character from confronting Welles.

I also discovered it's out of copywright. Cheers a bunch Netflix, really making that monthly fee worthwhile!

[zomgmouse]

The King Is Dead!. More recent Rolf de Heer film, about a couple who move in to a house but realise their neighbours are noisy drug dealers. Doesn't really find its feet and there's a couple of funny moments but it's all kind of shaky.

[Small Man Big Horse]

The Hudsucker Proxy (1994) - I hadn't seen this in about twenty five years and wasn't sure how I'd get on with it as I'm not that fond of the Coens anymore but I loved it a great deal, it's a sweet, affecting and very funny comedy about the hubris of success and how not to act when everyone around you is proclaiming you to be the next big thing. Tim Robbins has never been more likeable (and that's saying something), Paul Newman is superb playing against type as the bastard of the piece and Jennifer Jason-Leigh is sublime as the fast talking journalist who feels like she's just walked off the set of a fifties screwball comedy. Playful, inventive and incredibly fun, it might just be my favourite film of theirs. 8.1/10

[St_Eddie]

The Hudsucker Proxy (1994) - I hadn't seen this in about twenty five years and wasn't sure how I'd get on with it as I'm not that fond of the Coens anymore but I loved it a great deal, it's a sweet, affecting and very funny comedy about the hubris of success and how not to act when everyone around you is proclaiming you to be the next big thing. Tim Robbins has never been more likeable (and that's saying something), Paul Newman is superb playing against type as the bastard of the piece and Jennifer Jason-Leigh is sublime as the fast talking journalist who feels like she's just walked off the set of a fifties screwball comedy. Playful, inventive and incredibly fun, it might just be my favourite film of theirs. 8.1/10

It's got Bruce Campbell in it too!  Great film, though not my favourite Coen Brothers film by any means.  That honour would go to either Blood Simple, Barton Fink, The Big Lebowski or Fargo, I reckon.  It's kind of impossible to pick between them.

[Small Man Big Horse]

It's got Bruce Campbell in it too!  Great film, though not my favourite Coen Brothers film by any means.  That honour would go to either Blood Simple, Barton Fink, The Big Lebowski or Fargo, I reckon.  It's kind of impossible to pick between them.

For me it's between Hudsucker, Fargo and Big Lebowski, I used to adore Barton Fink and saw it many many times but on the last occasion it didn't quite do it for me. That might be due to overwatching it though, and I do plan to give it another shot soon as it's now been ages since I last saw it. What do you think of their most recent work, out of interest? I used to adore them but haven't completely enjoyed one of their movies since O Brother, Where Art Thou?, I've liked some of their more recent films but just haven't found them as satisfying.

[greenman]

Millers, Lebowski and No Country for me.

[St_Eddie]

What do you think of their most recent work, out of interest? I used to adore them but haven't completely enjoyed one of their movies since O Brother, Where Art Thou?, I've liked some of their more recent films but just haven't found them as satisfying.

I didn't care for O Brother, Where Art Thou? personally.  I especially hate that sepia toned cinematography.  Having said that I've only ever watched it the one time, when it first came out, so I really should give it another shot.

In terms of the films which followed; I thought that The Man Who Wasn't There was very good, though it's not a film that I feel much need to revisit too often.  The Ladykillers is awful and easily the worst Coen Brothers film that I've seen.  I'll stick with the original, thanks.  No Country for Old Men had its moments (namely Javier Bardem) but on the whole it left me a little cold.  I found True Grit to be a snooze fest, though not objectively bad in any way.  Inside Llewyn Davis was interesting but kind of forgettable, I thought.  Hail, Caesar! tends to get a bad rap but I really enjoyed it.  It's a lot of fun and I enjoyed the tie-in with Barton Fink (Capitol Pictures).  I'm always down for a film about the film industry, as it's a fascination of mine.

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs was very good and probably my favourite Coen Brothers film post-The Big Lebowski.  I'm a sucker for anthology films.  I'd certainly agree that their most recent work isn't in the same league as their past works though.  I think that we may have past the point of peak Coen Borthers material.  Having said that, their films are always worth checking out.  They remain two of my favourite filmmakers.

[thenoise]

BBC Radio 4 put together a pretty fantastic drama on the making of this a few years back. It may have been called The Conqueror Worm. Something tells me it was. As you probably know, the film was released in the US under that title to fool folk into thinking it had something to do with Edgar Allan Poe. Anyway I used to have a copy of the radio drama on an old hard drive but the hard drive has long since withered away to nothing. It might be on YouTube or something, mind.

(A quick google reveals that no, it wasn't called The Conqueror Worm or anything like it, it was called Vincent Price And The Horror Of The English Blood Beast and it is on YouTube. Here It Is.)

On Price's performance. A famous story from the shoot - a story that is often repeated, it's certainly in that radio drama, and may well be apocryphal, I don't know - has it that Michael Reeves - who really didn't want Price in the role at all, he had been pushing pretty hard for Donald Pleasence - had confronted him on set one day to tell him to tone it down a yard or two. His performance was far too much. This wasn't any silly old trashy old horror film they were making.

As the story has it, Price sniffed and stretched out his sleeves and replied "My boy, I have made 34 films. What have you made?"

"Two good ones," said Reeves.

Apparently Price thought this was just the most fantastic bit of back-chat that he'd ever heard and the pair of them got on like a pair of old goats for the whole of the rest of the shoot.

I first heard that story in the final episode of the amazing Ch4 documentary series Eurotika (all of which is recommended, and first turned me on to the dubious charms of Eurohorror and sleaze etc.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Orul7pxZAZwry

The follow up series Mondo Macabro was even more fascinating (although less readily available online).

[Sin Agog]

Witchfinder General's so goshdarned good, in't it?  I first saw it while living in Manningtree, Matthew Hopkins' old haunts.  Inspired me to track down that wee witch-hunting manual he wrote, which is the most odious, ropey shite I've ever cast my eyes on.  Fun read.

Did anyone ever see Michael Reeves' other two films?  Vaguely remember seeing some clips of bubbly, colourful viscera on a Reeves featurette, but have no idea if they're actually any cop.

[thenoise]

She Beast is pretty dreadful.  Yet to see the Sorcerers.

[Sin Agog]

Sounds like Reeves was stretching the truth when he said two good ones, then.  The Sorcerers looks right up my alley, though.  Recently had a triple Karloff/Lewton night with The Body Snatcher, Isle of the Dead, and Bedlam, and I'm now convinced Boris was a properly underrated actor.  This was his last movie other than Targets!

EDIT: It's on DailyMotion in three parts if you're innerested.