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What Non-New Films Have You Seen? (2020 Edition)

Started by Small Man Big Horse, January 01, 2020, 05:03:07 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

chveik

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on November 10, 2020, 07:08:13 PM
Similarly I started watching Pulse at the weekend, which is a bit like Ringu but it's a cd to go on the internet that's cursed instead, I wasn't in the mood and sacked it off though. Seemed to have potential.

I love it, one of my favourite horror films (and I'm no horror buff)

Famous Mortimer

Pandora's Box

That vague feeling that hits you when you've seen 20 Don "The Dragon" Wilson movies but no Louise Brooks ones. Well, a mate of mine mentioned in passing that he's seen 215 of the Sight And Sound top 250, and when I checked (via Letterboxd) I noticed that I'd only seen 76. So, time to rectify that.

It's marvellous, if a little baggy here and there - for such a slight story, it doesn't need more than 2 hours. There's at least one character I'd cull...but this is small potatoes.

NoSleep

The thing that most strikes me about Pandora's Box is the range of different acting styles, from the very hammy and theatrical from some performers, whilst Louise Brooks and certain other members of the cast seem quite modern (i.e. way ahead of their time).

My favourite Pabst film, however, is The Threepenny Opera. Top film.

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

Quote from: Pink Gregory on November 10, 2020, 07:04:18 PM
Ringu
More of a thriller than a spooky film, which I was surprised by; but as expected, very, very good.  I enjoy the simplicity of 'she looks at you and you DIE'.  In many ways it's quite bare bones but remains effective.
I just can't go with the premise of that film. I paid a hundred and thirty pounds for my telly. If some cunt wrecks up the screen crawling through it, I'd be ruddy furious.

Quote from: SteveDave on November 10, 2020, 03:19:32 PM
Witness

I did that Leonard DiCaprio meme from "Once Upon A Time In Hollywood" when Viggo Mortensen turned up in this.

They could've strung the boss is the real bad guy but the hero doesn't know it thing out a bit longer I reckoned but overall very good. Nice there was no happy ending/boning just some forceful kissing by a big bird table.

yeah, I caught that one over the first lockdown. Really enjoyed.

SteveDave

The Mosquito Coast

Our Harrison Ford season continued last night with this. Helen Mirren's character is just called "Mother" Hmmm. I liked it best when the Fat Boy blew up with the militia men inside it.

Famous Mortimer

Edge City
Alex Cox's student film, not the smoothest-flowing narrative, partly because he shot it over three years in a variety of styles. But it's pretty good nontheless.

I wish Alex Cox could have found the midpoint between Hollywood and zero-budget stuff like that "Bill The Galactic Hero" thing he knocked out (which I mentioned a few pages back). I feel like he could have been a Soderbergh sort of director.

Dex Sawash


Arctic w/ Mads Mikkelsen recommended by dead-ced-dead in the Depp's a wrongun thread.
Better than Snowy Plane Crash with Idris Elba and a lady.
Snowy Plane Crash with Nazis was maybe better than both.


Sebastian Cobb

I watched the Deadwood film. It didn't really work, just a whistle-stop tour of characters with very little scheming that made the show great.

SteveDave

Regarding Henry

Night 3 of the Harrison Ford season brings us this. A bit mawkish but overall 6/10.

Menu

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on November 12, 2020, 09:29:31 AM
I watched the Deadwood film. It didn't really work, just a whistle-stop tour of characters with very little scheming that made the show great.

Ah no. I keep putting it off because I want to see the series again before I watch it, ala Twin Peaks. I've been very apprehensive it won't be of the same quality.

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

Quote from: SteveDave on November 10, 2020, 03:19:32 PM
Witness

I did that Leonard DiCaprio meme from "Once Upon A Time In Hollywood" when Viggo Mortensen turned up in this.

They could've strung the boss is the real bad guy but the hero doesn't know it thing out a bit longer I reckoned but overall very good. Nice there was no happy ending/boning just some forceful kissing by a big bird table.
My folks must have taped this off the telly, because I watched it loads of times when I was young. The scene in which someone gets buried alive in a grain silo may have contributed to my claustrophobia.

Does anyone else think it's odd that a film which celebrates the rustic charms of the Amish lifestyle has a synth based score?

Famous Mortimer

#1512
Irma Vep (1996)

Given that Maggie Cheung is one of the world's most beautiful women, can act, and can do a proper posh English accent (she was brought up in London), it's pretty weird she was never in any big Western things - her list of English-language credits is pretty tiny.

But anyway. This is Cheung playing herself, hired for a remake of "Les Vampires" in France by a washed-up director for no apparent reason. She pretends to not understand a word of French, but while checking in at her hotel, she speaks it perfectly (she's fluent in real life, too, smart fucker). She does stuff in a tight leather outfit while the film crew has all sorts of inter-personal shenanigans. It's got a bit of "Day For Night" in it.

Apparently it was made in a few weeks for little money; I think it was heavily featured in some movie magazine when I read it in 1996, so it stuck in my head without me being bothered enough to ever watch it until now. I'm obviously an idiot, as it's great.

Oh, and I just discovered that Assayas is doing a remake of it for TV. https://www.indiewire.com/video/olivier-assayas-irma-vep-tv-series-a24-1202230899/ It might be good?

Sebastian Cobb

#1513
Quote from: Menu on November 12, 2020, 06:11:52 PM
Ah no. I keep putting it off because I want to see the series again before I watch it, ala Twin Peaks. I've been very apprehensive it won't be of the same quality.

Yeah, I did the same, although paused for about a year so finished off the last 6 r so.

It's worth a watch but it was an elongated episode 10 years later, when you consider a good arc lasted longer than that.

And  the scene at the end where people sang a song and two prostitutes danced outside as snow fell was unforgivable really.

rjd2

I know it was by accident, but the ending of season 3 Deadwood actually worked pretty well for me and holds up to this day.

The film itself wasn't that essential, yes it was nice to see the characters again, but it all felt a bit rehashed when compared to the tv series.

Nowhere enough of Al also and was a little annoyed we got no Brian Cox.

However when you consider Milch's alzheimers, how his career fizzled out and his money issues then despite how inessential it felt ,  then yeah can't get to annoyed about it.

Sebastian Cobb

I thought series 3 ended with a fire but it didn't. I must be going loopy.

dissolute ocelot

Quote from: NoSleep on November 10, 2020, 08:38:31 PM
The thing that most strikes me about Pandora's Box is the range of different acting styles, from the very hammy and theatrical from some performers, whilst Louise Brooks and certain other members of the cast seem quite modern (i.e. way ahead of their time).

My favourite Pabst film, however, is The Threepenny Opera. Top film.
Pandora's Box is a wonderful mix of the ancient and still fresh. But it's a lot more modern than Brooks's Diary of a Lost Girl, which is also great but pure sentimental Victorian melodrama where an endless stream of horrible things happens to poor Louise. Germany in the 1910s and 20s must have been an insane mix of modernity and fat mustachioed Prussians eating sausages.

Small Man Big Horse

The Rebel (1961) - As I'm working my way through CaB's 85 Greatest Comedy Films* that I haven't previously seen, and will probably annoy many by claiming that though fun this Tony Hancock satire on the art world isn't all that. It does have some strong moments but is about half an hour too long, and a few of the gags about arty pretentious types are a bit lazy and haven't aged well. 6.4/10


* https://www.cookdandbombd.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,63958.msg3321187.html#msg3321187

Menu

Quote from: rjd2 on November 12, 2020, 09:47:49 PM
I know it was by accident, but the ending of season 3 Deadwood actually worked pretty well for me and holds up to this day.



I agree actually. I was disappointed when I read it wasn't the ending that Milch wanted. Am obviously more disappointed that we didn't get a fourth season. All that stuff with the fire brigade was obviously leading somewhere.

Sebastian, I think you're remembering the ending to the never-filmed Season 4. I think it was a fire that burned down the actual Deadwood, but I might have misremembered that.

Small Man Big Horse

The Court Jester (1955) - Danny Kaye stars in this complex farce where he has to pretend to be a jester so that the Robin Hood-esque The Black Fox can invade the castle and the kill the new, illegitimate king, though the plot is far more complicated than that. It's a really fun work, probably 20 minutes too long and it sags around the half hour mark, but the final 40 minutes are enormous fun. 7.6/10

rjd2

The Strange Love of Martha Ivers ,,,top notch if slightly campy Noir with Barbara Stanwyck as the lead playing a similar sort of role as she did in Double Indemnity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YVgCiu00P4

4/5

gangs of wasseypur (2 parts) 5 hour Hindu epic following a family over 6 decades in an organised crime feud . It flies by, excellent soundtrack and quite engaging but not sure I have any interest in ever rewatching it.

4/5

rjd2

Echo 2019

56 separate stories in one film all ranging between 1-2 minutes set in Iceland at Xmas. Lovely snapshots of daily life and despite some so short their is so much depth to some of the brief tales.

4/5

Small Man Big Horse

Time Bandits (1981) - A poorly paced fantasy affair where a bunch of little people who used to hang out with God have stolen a map which lets them travel through doorways in time. It has its moments and is quite funny from time to time, but sometimes it drags out a joke for far too long (especially when it comes to Napoleon and his height obsession), it's short on sympathetic characters, and while big on spectacle it's strangely mundane a fair amount of the time, though at least the final half an hour delivers. 6.3/10

Small Man Big Horse

Snatchers (2019) - Sara (Mary Nepi) is a peppy high schooler who's ditched her nerdy old friend Hayley (Gabrielle Elyse) and hangs out with the cool kids, but her ex Skyler (Austin Fryberger) doesn't seem to want anything to do with her because she won't sleep with him, and so she does the insane thing and lets him screw her that very evening. Which was always going to be a bad idea at the best of times, but it's especially awful  this time around as the next day she's vomiting and having awful mood swings, and the day after that it looks like she's a week off giving birth at best. Before you can say "Hey, this sure does sound like a teen comedy take on Alien" she's dragged poor old Hayley to a clinic, and a creature bursts out of her vagina and kills the two professionals present. Not quite enough blood and gore ensues, and it's fine, mostly fun, with a decent enough script, though it would benefit from a bit more gore and stronger performances if it's something that'll ever be remembered for longer than a couple of days after you've watched it. 6.4/10

zomgmouse

Dear White People. Brilliantly done, funny and searing and endearing in equal measure.

Quote from: Small Man Big Horse on November 14, 2020, 05:25:41 PM
Napoleon and his height obsession), it's short

Small Man Big Horse

Quote from: zomgmouse on November 15, 2020, 04:00:44 AM
Dear White People. Brilliantly done, funny and searing and endearing in equal measure.

I need to see that as I've heard many a good thing about it - have you seen the tv series out of interest, and if so is that worth watching?

The Wrong Box (1966) - Farce with a fantastic cast including Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Peter Sellers, Michael Caine, Ralph Richardson and Tony Hancock (though the latter is wasted) it's all about Cook and Moore desperately trying to fraudulently win a huge amount of money in Victorian England, though everything of course becomes enormously complicated. I enjoyed the first sixty minutes a great deal, it has a nicely weird sense of humour, Sellers is particularly fantastic, and the dialogue was really strong, but the ending is so average that it lost it a point and I can't help but feel frustrated by the fact that it showed so much promise but then failed to deliver upon it. File under "Films which are fine for a lazy Sunday afternoon", then, but it came so close to being something very special that I'll be forever slightly annoyed by it. 6.7/10

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

Quote from: Small Man Big Horse on November 15, 2020, 02:49:38 PM
have you seen the tv series out of interest, and if so is that worth watching?
Very much so.

Menu

Quote from: Small Man Big Horse on November 14, 2020, 05:25:41 PM
Time Bandits (1981) - A poorly paced fantasy affair where a bunch of little people who used to hang out with God have stolen a map which lets them travel through doorways in time. It has its moments and is quite funny from time to time, but sometimes it drags out a joke for far too long (especially when it comes to Napoleon and his height obsession), it's short on sympathetic characters, and while big on spectacle it's strangely mundane a fair amount of the time, though at least the final half an hour delivers. 6.3/10

I'm a big fan of Terry Gilliam's work as a director but I find Time Bandits, Jabberwocky and that bit at the beginning of The Meaning of Life really tough going.

zomgmouse

Quote from: Small Man Big Horse on November 15, 2020, 02:49:38 PM
I need to see that as I've heard many a good thing about it - have you seen the tv series out of interest, and if so is that worth watching?

Haven't yet seen it but plan to immediately on the strength of the film.

zomgmouse

What Have I Done to Deserve This? - early period Almodóvar, really strong and evocative, eccentric characters (as is expected) and touching on dark and sexual themes (as is expected).