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

[Shit Good Nose]

I'm afraid I have no interest in seeing any of them - I really just want older stuff with a bit of grit.

The first (Soderbergh) Ocean's IS worth it - great little caper.  The second and third each have their charms, but far from essential so I would say to you to leave them be.  But I have absolutely no qualms with strongly recommending the first one, even to a doubter.

[Puce Moment]

The first (Soderbergh) Ocean's IS worth it - great little caper.  The second and third each have their charms, but far from essential so I would say to you to leave them be.  But I have absolutely no qualms with strongly recommending the first one, even to a doubter.

I saw some of it once at a friend's house and I found it to be so overbearingly smug and ever-so happy with itself that I pretty much vowed never to see it. The tension just isn't there for me in those Hollywood smiles.

[shagatha crustie]

Titanic, the 90s one with Kate and Leo and that. Not seen it for over a decade and was ready to put the boot in, but honestly thought it was brill. 'Epic' done properly, doesnt feel like anything near its 3 hours. Superb pacing and editing which makes the spectacle and the catastrophe really effective, rather than just expecting the big visual scale to do the work on its own. Some shocking dialogue of course, but hey, its a melodrama.

[rjd2]

The Taking of Pelham 123
Obviously, the original. It has aged so well - and NYC just looks so amazingly grotty. The music kicks in at the credits with that stomping, driving beat that mirrors the tension of the heist. I'm looking around for really good, pre-Oceans heist movies, particularly from the 70s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:1970s_heist_films

I've not seen them all obviously, but from the above I would recommend....

dog day afternoon
charley varrick
the getaway


I watched Tell No One for the first time in a decade last night. A French film where a man 8 years after his wife is murdered gets odd emails he suspects are from his wife. Its an exhilarating film to say the least.

[rjd2]

Ha Puce just reminded me to finish Le Cercle Rouge a 70s French thriller which from all accounts is an absolute classic heist film set in the 70s.

I turned it off very early a few months ago because I was unhappy with my glasses (scratched and old) and wanted to stop watching films with subtitles until I got them replaced.

[chveik]

Le Cercle Rouge is great, the heist scene is particularly realistic.

[Puce Moment]

This is wonderful - cheers chaps. I will be all over that now - although Dog Day Afternoon is an absolute staple in this house. I must watch it at least every year.

I'm going to do Le Cercle Rouge tonight!

[zomgmouse]

Some more great heist films, some a bit earlier than 70s, some later, but still:

Rififi
The Asphalt Jungle
Plunder Road
Bob the Gambler
The original Widows TV series (film was meh)
Big Deal on Madonna Street
Sneakers
Sexy Beast
Croupier
Nine Queens
The Ealing ones (The Ladykillers, The Lavender Hill Mob)
Armored Car Robbery

Seem to recall The Score and Ronin were pretty decent

More of a con one but The Sting is amazing

[zomgmouse]

Past week or so:

Hell Drivers. Decent British truck thriller with Stanley Baker uncovering some corruption involving Patrick McGoohan and William Hartnell, good driving scenes and gritty tone but otherwise fairly standard fare.

Couple of Altmans (been slowly making my way through his filmography): Prêt-à-Porter: unfairly maligned, not a masterpiece but full of his usual intertwining snippets of comic brilliance. The Gingerbread Man: incredibly off-brand for Altman as he directs a Grisham-penned thriller involving a lawyer and an unravelling intrigue, it starts off okay but lost me as it went on (though Duvall was clearly having a fun time here).

Ash Is Purest White. Really incredible film by Zhangke - I watched A Touch of Sin recently as well which was great but I loved this a lot more. So much pent-up yearning and heart and feeling.

Capricorn One. Quite an underrated (I think?) conspiracy thriller, goes in some surprising directions. Very entertaining.

Watching a few Greenaways: The Falls (very amusing, feels like something Llinás might have been inspired by, even Chris Morris somehow; essentially a series of loosely-connected fictional dossiers all somehow connected to birds), The Belly of an Architect (not his best work but a lot to enjoy, a middle-aged man falling out of life and into an obsession, almost an inevitability), Drowning By Numbers (absolutely goofy! I mean Greenaway is batty at the best of times but I think the attempt at a "real" setting makes the surreal bits pop out a bit more).

The Bigamist - 50's noir about a bloke that ends up having a double life. Directed by and staring Ida Lupino. She did a cracking job at both roles.

I liked this but I like The Hitch-Hiker the most of her films. Outrage is really good as well.

[Puce Moment]

Ha Puce just reminded me to finish Le Cercle Rouge a 70s French thriller which from all accounts is an absolute classic heist film set in the 70s.

Well this was right up my fucking street, so thank you.

Past week or so:

Ash Is Purest White. Really incredible film by Zhangke - I watched A Touch of Sin recently as well which was great but I loved this a lot more. So much pent-up yearning and heart and feeling.

Oddly, I didn't really enjoy A Touch of Sin much - not sure why. But I saw Ash is Purest White earlier this year on the big screen and it was a real treat. Incredible filmmaking.

[Sebastian Cobb]

I liked this but I like The Hitch-Hiker the most of her films. Outrage is really good as well.

Aye, it was paired with that, great stuff. I've been meaning to see more of her work.

[Blumf]

I'm looking around for really good, pre-Oceans heist movies, particularly from the 70s.

The Friends of Eddie Coyle is on Talking Pictures TV this weekend (Sat. 2100h), not exactly a heist film, but might fit the bill.

And...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:1970s_heist_films
...
charley varrick

That! Definitely that.

[Sebastian Cobb]

The Friends of Eddie Coyle is on Talking Pictures TV this weekend (Sat. 2100h), not exactly a heist film, but might fit the bill.

Ooh! I'll be on that.

[Puce Moment]

Bit late for a separate thread I think - soz Neil.

Great suggestions here.

[rjd2]

I went on a mini Mitchum binge recently, Cape Fear, Night Of The Hunter, Out Of The Past and yeah The Friends of Eddie Coyle,,,what a CV that is.

Obviously am aware he may have done other good films outside those 4!

[Smeraldina Rima]

The Taking of Pelham 123
Obviously, the original. It has aged so well - and NYC just looks so amazingly grotty. The music kicks in at the credits with that stomping, driving beat that mirrors the tension of the heist. I'm looking around for really good, pre-Oceans heist movies, particularly from the 70s.

Supermarkt is a 1974 Roland Klick film starring Charly Wierczejewski and Eva Mattes that was on Mubi and might still be in one of the libraries. The Mubi synopsis: '18-year-old Willi lives on the streets of Hamburg, always on the run. While being involved with small-time crook Theo, who makes him work the streets, he falls in love with sex worker Monika, and the two begin plotting a great robbery on a supermarket's money transporter.' According to another summary, the cinematographer Jost Vacano invented one of the earliest versions of the steadicam or the "Joosticam" on set to follow Willi around.

Trailer

Lobby Cards:






The theme music is a hybrid Krautrock-Americana song by Marius West and Peter Hesslein called "Celebration". One of the best lyrics is: Well I know some day I'm gonna find a shore/ where sunny sunshine's free of charge. I don't know why but this line isn't in the version of the song released as a single.



Celebration / Overdose

[rjd2]

Well this was right up my fucking street, so thank you.
.

Its also quite crimey and from same director but Le Samouraï is also a classic.

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/le_samourai

[zomgmouse]

I went on a mini Mitchum binge recently, Cape Fear, Night Of The Hunter, Out Of The Past and yeah The Friends of Eddie Coyle,,,what a CV that is.

Obviously am aware he may have done other good films outside those 4!

Great CV! He also absolutely belts in The Yakuza and The Big Steal

[Sebastian Cobb]

Last night I watched the directors cut of Die Sieger (The Innocents), a quite gritty and bleak police thriller following an officer of a swat team who ends up chasing a colleague who is supposed to be dead, it turns out he's working (along with police superiors) to cover up the fact a load of politicians were in the pay of organised crime. It was really good, a nice throwback to the classic 70's paranoia films like Three Days of the Condor. But in 1994 you can tell it was asking some questions about a new dawn of German politics that Germans probably didn't want to be asking.

[Small Man Big Horse]

Lucy (2014) - One of the most ridiculous films ever as after Lucy (Scarlett Johansson) is forced to become a drug mule the drugs leak in to her stomach and that leads to her brain unlocking it's full potential and she can do amazing things like telepathy and using the internet really fast. On the downside it's undoubtedly pretentious, Lucy's use of her powers is ill thought out and extremely inconsistent, (

Spoiler alert

at the end she could have used her powers to save a huge amount of people from dying but decides not too for some unknown reason

[close]

), while the dialogue is often hilariously bad, but there's some fun action scenes, it sure does look pretty and visually there's some nicely odd psychedelic sequences. 6.3/10

[Blumf]

A completely dumb film, but like you say, a fun ride. Wish they'd pushed the action-powers/psychedelic stuff a bit further, could have nailed it down as a real visual feast.

A similar film, Johnny Depp's Transcendence (2014), took a more serious route, but still ended up dumb. Lucy was at least more fun.

[Small Man Big Horse]

A completely dumb film, but like you say, a fun ride. Wish they'd pushed the action-powers/psychedelic stuff a bit further, could have nailed it down as a real visual feast.

A similar film, Johnny Depp's Transcendence (2014), took a more serious route, but still ended up dumb. Lucy was at least more fun.

I'm with you on both fronts, and yeah, if they'd lent it to the insanity and made it even sillier it would have been much better. But it is at least often fun, whereas Transcendence was painful stuff that I hated with a passion.

[Small Man Big Horse]

Opening Night (2016) - Topher Grace is a former actor who hates musicals, which might be a problem as he's working as a stage manager on one opening this very night on Broadway. I'd been recommended this as a must see musical but it's not really a proper musical, more of a rather slight satire of Broadway that has a couple of original songs in it, but they're few and far apart and though fine they're not that great, and elsewhere it's occasionally a bit of a jukebox musical and I'm not fond of those. Perhaps if I hadn't been expecting a traditional musical I might not have been felt so let down by it, and I liked a few parts, Anne Heche, Brian Huskey, Zach Cregger and Paul Scheer's roles especially, but overall it was only okay and nothing more than that. 5.8/10

Also, as an aside, Kether Donohue is prominently billed and in it for a blink of an eye, while according to the credits Peter Serafinowicz supposedly plays a character called Waldo and I didn't spot him once, not even when I skipped through the movie afterwards trying to find him, and he's not listed on imdb either so I can only presume he was cut from the movie, and it's weird they didn't remove him from the credits.

[greenman]

Lucy (2014) - One of the most ridiculous films ever as after Lucy (Scarlett Johansson) is forced to become a drug mule the drugs leak in to her stomach and that leads to her brain unlocking it's full potential and she can do amazing things like telepathy and using the internet really fast. On the downside it's undoubtedly pretentious, Lucy's use of her powers is ill thought out and extremely inconsistent, (

Spoiler alert

at the end she could have used her powers to save a huge amount of people from dying but decides not too for some unknown reason

[close]

), while the dialogue is often hilariously bad, but there's some fun action scenes, it sure does look pretty and visually there's some nicely odd psychedelic sequences. 6.3/10

The first half of this I really liked besides the Freeman TED talk nonsense, Johansson selling the kidnapping and loss of humanity really well even if some of the situations and lines are rather silly. When it gets to Paris though I found it a lot less interesting, turns into a sub matrix action film without much focus although I spose the visuals at the end are nice.

[Hand Solo]

Didn't realise The Mudge Boy was on Netlix. Amazing coming of age movie.

[Dex Sawash]

Midway (2019) very very bad.
Never remake a film if the original had Pat Morita.

Nusicaa and the something something.
Nagsworth promised me loads of "grubby balloon knot" . Someone must have inked in some leggings in my rip.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Last night I watched Relaxer, set in 1999 during fear of the y2k bug someone is set the challenge of getting to level 256 on Pacman. It's set in one room and the protagonist doesn't leave the sofa, he's not allowed by the terms of the challenge. It was stupid and great. I really like Joel Potrykus' minimalism.

[Inspector Norse]

Lost in Translation I'd somehow managed never to see this. Didn't think much of it in the end: it came across a bit contrived and idealised, slightly condescending (and on occasion plain racist) in its treatment of the Japanese, while the characters were too self-absorbed despite a few nice moments in the middle when they cut loose. Nice woozy atmosphere and soundtrack.

Mad Max: Fury Road I'd never seen any Mad Max film before and the idea of cars going fast and blowing up in the desert for two hours didn't really appeal but this was absolutely fantastic. Hugely imaginative in the world it builds, and it's so rare these days that a film can have chaotic action sequences like this where you can actually follow (mostly) what's going on. A blast from start to finish.

[PlanktonSideburns]

Thomas crown affair (non brosnon one)

Faye dunaway acting like fuck, good stuff. Mqueen character, fuck you man.

Oooh I'm so rich everything is boring now, watch me fly this plane in a  sad way

You deserve to be in jail, for pure lack of ambition.

Great sounding honking rollicking 70s jazz garbage soundtrack, verging on the mickey mousing side of things

Great looking film, plot was clarksonesque drivel

4/10

[Small Man Big Horse]

In The Shadow Of The Moon (2007) - Buzz Aldrin, Mike Collins, Alan Bean and nearly all of the astronauts who went to the moon apart from Neil Armstrong talk about their experiences of travelling there, as we get the backstory to events too. Fascinating to watch and hear, and the footage of the moon itself is breathtaking. 8.0/10