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

[homesickalien]

Good, the bad and the ugly on channel 5 last night

Loved this film when I was young and hadn't seen it in years.  Funny, stylish and even a bit touching at times (Clint giving his poncho and  cigar to the dying soldier)  I love it.

Watched Sad hill unearthed today about fans who helped restore the final shootout location for the 50th anniversary - great too

[Small Man Big Horse]

The Comedy Of Terrors (1963) - A quite black comedy which is sometimes dark and sometimes a little pantomime-esque, as Vincent Price and Peter Lorre run a funeral parlour which is getting no customers, so they decide the only solution is to murder people. It's an odd mix of comedy styles which they just about manage to pull off, but only just, and that's mainly due to the committed performances, with Basil Rathbone especially deserving kudos for how crazily over the top but still believable his performance is as a Shakespeare quoting landlord / victim. 6.4/10

[Blumf]

Strange Brew (1983)

Red Letter Media did a re:View of it, with their Canadian pals:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRJathIYgLQ

[dissolute ocelot]

MC5: A True Testimonial

I love "Kick Out The Jams", but it turns out I don't really like much of their other stuff, and of the remaining members of the band, Wayne Kramer was the only one I was interested in listening to. At 2 hours, it was too long (but then the only people watching this are going to be fans of the band, so I suppose the length of it doesn't really matter). The stuff about Detroit in the late 60s was incredibly interesting, the rest of it a bit less so.

MC5 seems a band that would be a fascinating documentary subject with all their militant politics, legal troubles, and Detroit in general, but I'm not too bothered about the music. Sounds like I need to wait for a film that can't get the rights to any of their music.

[NoSleep]

MC5: A True Testimonial

I love "Kick Out The Jams", but it turns out I don't really like much of their other stuff, and of the remaining members of the band, Wayne Kramer was the only one I was interested in listening to. At 2 hours, it was too long (but then the only people watching this are going to be fans of the band, so I suppose the length of it doesn't really matter). The stuff about Detroit in the late 60s was incredibly interesting, the rest of it a bit less so.

The only bit of that film I can remember is one of the extras on the DVD, about the making of Skunk (Sonicly Speaking) from their album High Time, which is one of the greatest fusions of rock & jazz that exists. Amusing story from Wayne Kramer about how the British recording engineer (some of High Time were recorded in England) not understanding how the free-jazz musician friends of the MC5, especially brought over from Detroit, had utterly nailed the horn arrangement on the track. He suggested he could get some "proper" horn players to replace them in a quiet aside to Kramer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLhe5n4RQYM

[Small Man Big Horse]

Red Letter Media did a re:View of it, with their Canadian pals:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRJathIYgLQ

Thanks for that, there's a lot of interesting info there about how it all came about and the making of it, glad to see they agreed that it feels like Christopher Plummer is in a different film as well.

The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus (2009) - Doctor Parnassus (Christopher Plummer has made a deal with the devil and in exchange for immortality he has to give up his daughter Valentina (Lily Cole) on her sixteenth birthday, however the Devil proposes a bet which gives Parnassus a chance to save her, though it's complicated by her saving a suicidal bloke called Tony (Heath Ledger). The weird thing is that despite being a complicated and convoluted story line it also feels a little thin thematically, and needed a bit more depth, the character of Tony should have been developed more and given that Gilliam replaced him with three different actors there's no reason it couldn't have happened, and if it had been a little less black and white as to whether he was someone who deserved Valentina's love or not. It's still a fascinating film, visually alluring and intriguing as hell, but it's not quite up their with Gilliam's best work, yet that it gets so close does make it a tad frustrating. 7.4/10

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

I've moaned many times about my ever growing list of films on Netflix, so I decided to actually watch some of it yesterday:

Warrior (2011)
A Rocky for the UFC crowd. Tom Hardy and Joel Edgerton play estranged brothers, who find themselves unexpectedly reunited when they enter a winner takes all MMA tournament.

The leads put in excellent performances. Hardy gets the showier role (keeping things just the right side of hammy) as a resentful military veteran, all coiled intensity outside the ring and animal ferocity inside. Edgerton matches him as the more level headed brother, desperately trying to avoid financial ruin. Nick Nolte garnered an oscar nomaination as their recovering alcoholic father, whose drunken violence split the family.

For all the strong performances and gritty shooting style, however, this turned out to be disappointingly cheesy (taking the Rocky comparisons to their logical extreme, it even has a big scary Russian opponent). There's a rather crass motif of Nolte listening to a tape of Moby Dick. Everything trundles on exactly as you'd expect. Worse yet, despite a rather bloated 140 minute run time, it all feels rather slight,

Spoiler alert

with Nolte's fall back to drink being completely brushed over

[close]

.

That said, I'd be a big fibber if I said that the fight scenes didn't have me inching toward the edge of my seat (even if a complete unfamiliarity with MMA meant I didn't understand what was happening in some of them).

One gets the feeling that writer/director Gavin O'Connor earnestly believes beating each other up is a legitimate form of therapy for manly men.

Charlie Bartlett (2007)
Speaking of therapy: Anton Yelchin stars in the titular role as an absurdly wealthy teenager who is thrown out of one too many private schools and into state education. Quickly realising that being a briefcase wanker is not the way to climb the high school social ladder, Bartlett instead begins scamming his family psychiatrist, in order to sell pharmaceuticals to his fellow students.

Scriptwriter Gustin Nash also wrote the screenplay for Youth In Revolt and this has a similar feel to it. Yelchin, still a teenager himself, brings a vast amount of charisma to a character who could easily be hideously smarmy in the wrong hands. Support is provided by Hope Davis as Charlie's slightly dotty mother, A pre Iron Man Robert Downey Jr. as his headmaster/nemesis, Kat Dennings as a fellow student and Tyler Hilton as Charlie's school bully/business partner. Like Charlie, all these roles could easily go wrong, but the script and actors breathe life into them. Downey could be a one dimensional killjoy, but instead seems like a reasonable man who was teetering on the edge, even before Charlie started pushing him. As Charlie's love interest and Downey's daughter, Dennings could be relegated to little more than a plot device in the war between two men, but she resists such pigeonholing and makes a good case that she's deserving of better roles than just shrill comic relief. Hilton (a musician, whom I didn't recognise from anything else, although he apparently played Elvis in Walk the Line) has a good scene in which he's psychoanalysed by Charlie and lets his acknowledgement of the truth play out on his face.

In contrast to Warrior, despite running a scant 90 minutes, this actually felt longer than it was. Not that I was bored.

Overlord (2018)
A group of GI's parachute into France, on a mission to destroy a German radio station before D-Day commences. Once on the ground, they find that the Nazis have been up to more than more than they bargained for...

This is good fun B-movie stuff. Rumour has it that it was going to be folded into the Cloverfield series somehow, but thankfully it was spared any such meddling and left to stand on its own feet. The characters are as standard issue as their equipment: there's the wise-ass Noo Yawker, the sensitive arty one and the iron-willed French woman with whom they join forces. Jovan Adepo makes for a strong lead. Pilou Aesbeck, so bloody terrible on Game of Thrones, finds a better venue for his scenery chewing here, as a particularly loathesome SS officer. Wyatt Russell, as a bad ass demolitions expert, is his dad - he has a line late in the film that could easily be coming from Snake Plissken, if you squint a bit.

Gantz: O (2016)
This wasn't even on my list, but I saw it mentioned in one of those Corridor Crew things on Youtube, so I thought I'd check it out.

Japanese CGI animation in which dead people are resurrected by the mysterious entity of the title, in order to wage war on big freaky demons in a series of "games"... for some reason.

In terms of plotting and characterisation, this makes Overlord look like Shakespeare. The animation and design is impressive and there is some fun to be had in the action scenes, but it palls long before the endpoint. All the women have ridiculously bouncy tits, which should probably indicate the sort of mental age bracket this would appeal to.


Overall, it was a sandwich of goodness, with some rather crummy bread.

[Small Man Big Horse]

The Miracle Of Morgan's Creek (1943) - Trudy (Betty Hutton) goes dancing with some soldiers who are heading off to war the next day, but then after drinking a glass of lemonade can't remember anything until the morning, where she realises she's married and pregnant, with no idea who the father is. So, um, yeah, this is a very weird set up where someone is date raped but it's kind of ignored and the rest of the movie's played for laughs as her friend Norval (Eddie Bracken), who has been in love with his entire life, promises to marry her so she can live a respectable life. Doing so is complicated and convoluted b

Spoiler alert

ut eventually there's a happy ending, even if it's a film which is built on a very dodgy premise indeed

[close]

. I've no idea what director Preston Sturges was thinking, but, um, ignoring the elephant in the room it's otherwise an enjoyable affair, it lags a bit in the middle but is otherwise often quite funny. 7.2/10

[chveik]

from Preston Sturges, I'd also recommend Hail the Conquering Hero and Unfaithfully Yours. very enjoyable comedies

[zomgmouse]

Just saw Brüno. Outrageous of course. Very very very funny.

I haven't yet, but I will. The only other thing I know him for is his Mr. Oizo stuff.

My favs are probably Rubber and Reality, but Wrong is also brilliant.

[Sin Agog]

Just saw Brüno. Outrageous of course. Very very very funny.

My favs are probably Rubber and Reality, but Wrong is also brilliant.

I rewatched Bruno a few days ago- it is fun and definitely much more pro-gay than I remember.  Cohen does reheat an awful lot of ideas, though.  The climactic, much-talked about sequence of Borat 2 was pretty much the 'zact same scene as the one with Ron Paul in Bruno.

Anyway, gonna deep dive in some Altman movies I never got around to  Got Quartet, Five and Dime, The Company, and Health all queued up.  Finally caught up with California Split yesterday, and it really is his most talk-overy film ever.  Maybe the focus on addiction and down and outers means it's a tad more sombre than The Long Goodbye in the perfect hangout film stakes, but it's close.

[PeasOnSticks]

Unrelated (2007)

First Joanna Hogg film I've seen, and I was impressed. A 'Euro' feel to it (not just because of the setting), and a number of quite clear stylistic influences, but very well done on the whole. Kathryn Worth plays the lead role and is excellent.

Bunch of posh types holidaying in a villa in Tuscany is hardly a premise to draw you in, but it's really just the backdrop to a character study of a person existing on the periphery of things. And Hogg manages to bring to light the human animal in all her characters, regardless of their privilege and the opulence of their surroundings. 4 bags.

[frajer]

House of Wax, the 1953 version (although sadly only in 2D as I don't have a 3D Blu-ray player to bring this technicolour glory into my front room).

Thought this was a cracker. Nice and lean, and genuinely spooky in parts. It doesn't mess around either, opening with a prolonged punch-up in a burning building that seems to have been filmed by having the two actors flinging each other about in an actually burning set. They don't make 'em like they used to.

Vincent Price shines, of course, and it's nice to read that playing this sinister rogue is what revitalised his career. Phyllis Kirk makes for a great strong female lead whose character takes the initiative to uncover Price's schemes, even if by the end she's starkers and relegated to the damsel in distress role.

There are also some hammy sequences with a ping-pong playing street entertainer clearly only included so he can wallop his 3-Dimensional balls out into the auditorium (steady) but these all add to its charm. Can't speak for other versions but the HMV Premium blu-ray even keeps the old intermission card in.

A thoroughly lovely Saturday night watch.

[zomgmouse]

The climactic, much-talked about sequence of Borat 2 was pretty much the 'zact same scene as the one with Ron Paul in Bruno.

In a way yes, except the butt of the joke in Brüno was meant to be Brüno himself whereas in Borat 2 it was Giuliani.

Anyway, gonna deep dive in some Altman movies I never got around to  Got Quartet, Five and Dime, The Company, and Health all queued up.  Finally caught up with California Split yesterday, and it really is his most talk-overy film ever.  Maybe the focus on addiction and down and outers means it's a tad more sombre than The Long Goodbye in the perfect hangout film stakes, but it's close.

HealtH is sorely underseen (presumably because it was virtually unavailable for yonks) and it's a blast, and I feel like Quintet is very much underrated; a slow and melancholy existential loiter. The Company was very very disappointing however.

[SteveDave]

The Killers

I was a bit distracted but it was a good caper. The young boy who goes to warn Swede that two men are after him went on to be Uncle Owen in Star Wars. Time wasn't kind to him.

[Famous Mortimer]

La Moustache

Bloke who's had a moustache his entire adult life decides to shave it off, and everyone behaves as if he's never had one. Other things in his life start changing subtly.

The plot, initially, feels a bit like an episode of "Tales Of The Unexpected", but the atmosphere of it, the music (from Philip Glass) and the interesting, slowly developing plot make it way more than that. Vincent Lindon, a handsome motherfucker too, gives a really good central performance, and...I'm still not sure about the ending. I'm going to ponder it some more though. Very good movie, highly recommended.

[Small Man Big Horse]

Christmas in July (1940) - Jimmy (Dick Powell) is tricked by three work colleagues in to thinking he's won a competition to come up with a slogan for a coffee company, even though said slogan "If you can't sleep at night, it isn't the coffee - it's the bunk" is clearly a shit one which people only pretend to understand / agree with. Due to a poorly run company the winning cheque is issued, and Jimmy goes on a shopping spree, but of course soon it's discovered that he didn't win, and chaos ensues. A tight 67 minutes, this is an amiable enough effort from Preston Sturges though it's the flimsiest film of his that I've seen so far, the first half takes too long to get going, and it only becomes really enjoyable in the second part. I wasn't that taken with Dick Powell's surly lead either, though Ellen Drew as the romantic interest is decent at least. 6.4/10

[Menu]

Christmas in July (1940) - Jimmy (Dick Powell) is tricked by three work colleagues in to thinking he's won a competition to come up with a slogan for a coffee company, even though said slogan "If you can't sleep at night, it isn't the coffee - it's the bunk" is clearly a shit one which people only pretend to understand / agree with. Due to a poorly run company the winning cheque is issued, and Jimmy goes on a shopping spree, but of course soon it's discovered that he didn't win, and chaos ensues. A tight 67 minutes, this is an amiable enough effort from Preston Sturges though it's the flimsiest film of his that I've seen so far, the first half takes too long to get going, and it only becomes really enjoyable in the second part. I wasn't that taken with Dick Powell's surly lead either, though Ellen Drew as the romantic interest is decent at least. 6.4/10

I wish more films were 67 minutes long.

[dissolute ocelot]

Shampoo (1975) - It's occasionally funny and sort of fascinating (amazing clothes, mediocre hair, why doesn't Warren Beatty die in a motorcycle crash riding around without a hat on?). But this is possibly the first time I've ever agreed with Roger Ebert - basically a lot of morally-dubious (but not evil, just rather pointless and ordinary) people getting their comeuppance, there's stuff about Nixon's election which isn't connected in any way but is trying to pretend it has political significance, and nowhere near funny enough to be an actual comedy. (Although Ebert ends his review with snobby digs about hairdressers, so it's OK, we can hate him again.)

Also really for the TV category, Alan Clarke's Baal and Stars of the Roller State Disco (both 1982-ish; David Bowie as a nihilistic German banjo-player; the unemployed youth of Britain forced to rollerskate in a gigantic metaphor), which both have major flaws, but the thought of this sort of mad shit on 1980s TV on a Tuesday night in Thatcher's Britain really lifts the spirits. It's also fun playing spot the future star, with everyone from Zoe Wanamaker to Gillian Taylforth to Shane Meadows regular Perry Benson. Also, only about 70 minutes each.

[phantom_power]

Working my way through the Rocky films and have a few thoughts:

Has any film series consistently (up to 4 at least, that's as far as I have got) started each film with replaying the end of the last one?

Paulie seems to serve no purpose apart from be an abhorrent little testicle in a pork pie hat. It is almost as if Stalllone is making a comment on hangers-on and parasitical relatives.

I think Rocky IV might be the film version of Born In The USA, something that on the surface seems like a celebration of yee-ha America but is actually a satire. Creed's entrance is so over-the-top, and there is so much focus on Drago's confusion by it all that I think the film might actually be critical of the spectacle, and sympathetic to the Russians and the cold war bullshit. Or maybe I am just imbuing a cheesy 80s yank-fest with a subtlety it doesn't deserve

Each film gets more ridiculous as Rocky gets richer and more divorced from reality. This could just be a function of sequels or another subtle comment by Stallone.

I think, in summary, that I might be giving these films too much credit

Oh, and the series as a whole is about 40% montage and 15% flashback

[Blumf]

I think, in summary, that I might be giving these films too much credit

Joins us next week where phantom_power examines the debate about Dialectic Materialism within the oeuvre of actor Vin Diesel.

[phantom_power]

although, having now finished IV, Rocky does give a "we are all alike really" speech at the end that proves at least some of what I have said

[Artie Fufkin]

I re-watched Almost Famous (2000) the other day. I love this film. The main actors; Billy Crudup, Patrick Fugit & Kate Hudson are so good. And some lovely cameo's from Frances McDormand, Phillip Seymour Hoffman & Kyle Gass from Tenacious D as a fucked-up DJ who I'd forgotten all about.
A based on fact movie about Cameron Crowe going on tour with a just starting to make it band 'Stillwater', who are based on Zepellin/Allman Brothers/Eagles/Lynyrd Skynyrd, I believe, and falling in love with a groupie.
A really nice 'feel good' film, where everything kind of works out in the end, I guess.

[rjd2]

Once Upon A Time In Anatolia 4/5 (USA Mubi)

exhausting film but highly immersive. Premise is a doctor, prosecutor, murder suspect along with the police drive through the night looking for a body. Their is no "twists" or moments of violence, it just crawls along as we get to know more about the characters and their various flaws in their mundane lives. Its a hard sell obviously.

Queen Of Hearts 4/5 (normal Mubi I think)

A wealthy middle ages lawyer going through a mid life crisis has her life turned upside down when her son in law comes to stay, they hit it off. Its The lead fights for justice in her day job but outside the office its a different story. Disturbing but also quite good.

[Menu]

Once Upon A Time In Anatolia 4/5 (USA Mubi)

exhausting film but highly immersive. Premise is a doctor, prosecutor, murder suspect along with the police drive through the night looking for a body. Their is no "twists" or moments of violence, it just crawls along as we get to know more about the characters and their various flaws in their mundane lives. Its a hard sell obviously.

It's not quite as hard work as it sounds. It's still essentially a detective story. I really liked it. I think there were moments of comedy too.

[rjd2]

Yeah I was tired when I watched it so its probably a bit harsh to say its that grueling.

Have you seen The Wild Pear Tree?

[EOLAN]

Rear Window

Unlike everyone else in the world; I just really hate this film, my opinion further hardened after this rewatch. Although I have enjoyed many parodies of it through the years.
Grace Kelly just leaves me cold and is playing a rather unlikable superficial character; which would be hard to make likable. Just very stultifying and adding to the suffocation of a sub-par Jimmy Stewart.
Preferred if the murder didn't actually happen and they were antagonising an innocent man, and it was Stewart who turned psychotic with Stockholm syndrome.
Did laugh at the Jimmy Stewart mannequin being dropped to the ground at the end.

Anyway; every one else in the world loves it so you should watch it. 

[Ballad of Ballard Berkley]

Quite a big spoiler in that review.

[Egyptian Feast]

from Preston Sturges, I'd also recommend Hail the Conquering Hero and Unfaithfully Yours. very enjoyable comedies

I love most of his work, but Unfaithfully Yours is one of my favourites. The tonal shifts in his earlier work are nothing compared to this! It's wonderfully deranged and it's a surprise he got away with some of it (though at this stage of his career it wasn't much of a surprise that it flopped and he never made a decent film again - his final two movies are best avoided).

Don't miss The Lady Eve either SMBH! Henry Fonda doing painful looking pratfalls that make my ankles wince every time I watch it is enough of a reason to catch it, but it has plenty of other stuff going for it too. Glad you're enjoying his stuff.

[McChesney Duntz]

The Lady Eve may well be the perfect movie. I love all of Sturges' Paramount work, but that is a cut above. I envy you your first viewing.