What Non-New Films Have You Seen? (2021 Edition)

[Dex Sawash]

Black Hawk Down 2001

Who hovers at a low altitude over a built up area where there's going to be RPG's around.

Idiots.

Technically well made guff from Ridley Scott I would have enjoyed a lot more aged 13.

Did they do the "STAY AWAY FROM THE CANS" gag from The Jerk in the film?

Spoiler alert

when a couple guys are pinned down behind the helichocter wreckage and the freedom fighters are shooting at it

[close]

For some reason I read the book and that's the only thing I remember.

[Blumf]

And even weirder is this sketch from the Oscars that features Robocop, Ed-209 and Pee Wee Herman. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETFHeMSIMGc

Why is Robocop firing lasers? No, no, no! Can't buy into this at all, completely ruined it!

[Neomod]

Did they do the "STAY AWAY FROM THE CANS" gag from The Jerk in the film?

Spoiler alert

when a couple guys are pinned down behind the helichocter wreckage and the freedom fighters are shooting at it

[close]

For some reason I read the book and that's the only thing I remember.

I don't recall, but there is a bit of them all watching the "STAY AWAY FROM THE CANS" scene  on VHS

[Small Man Big Horse]

Treasure Planet (2002) - Disney takes the classic tale and transport it in to space, in what's surprisingly one of the best adaptations of Robert Louis Stevenson's pirate related antics. The mix of traditional animation and the odd burst of cgi often works effectively and it's quite a beautiful film to look at, while it moves at a great pace and the characters are fun to spend time with, this was a bit of a flop upon release but it really didn't deserve to be. 7.6/10

[Blue Jam]

When Charlie Brooker was on the Rule Of Three podcast he chose to talk about Airplane! but said he almost chose Robocop. I wish he had. After listening I went and watched Robocop on Netflix and it was as much of a comedy as he said, and not having seen it for year I hadn't remembered it as a comedy at all.

[George White]

Cleaner and Deadman - by Jess Bryden
Stars: Tira Akina, Josephina Alvarez, Art Balligui Eva Jade Blacker
mdb.com/title/tt6643240/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_1
JR Obremski Films' Hawaiian noir with Playboy's CJ Miles and Lost's Arlene Newman-Van Asperen

Also Kevin and Perry Go Large. As much a time capsule of 2001 as the Confessions films were of the 70s.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Something that stuck with me on K&P was how due to product placements or whatever, every house in their street had a Ford Focus in the driveway. At the time I thought it looked cheap and brazen but now I see it as a quite good Malvina Reynolds-esque comment on suburban aspiration.

[olliebean]

When Charlie Brooker was on the Rule Of Three podcast he chose to talk about Airplane! but said he almost chose Robocop. I wish he had. After listening I went and watched Robocop on Netflix and it was as much of a comedy as he said, and not having seen it for year I hadn't remembered it as a comedy at all.

A lot of Verhoeven's films are like that.

[Small Man Big Horse]

The Time Machine (1960) - Adaptation of H.G. Wells' much loved novel, as George (Rod Taylor) has invented a time machine but when he shows a tiny working model of it to his friends they just mock him, in what's a slightly dry opening twenty minutes as we get an awful lot of exposition. Once George is off on his travels it's much more fun thankfully, especially as it accurately predicts the first and second world wars and that nuclear bomb that exploded in 1966 destroying much of the world, and George then decides to have a overnight stay in the year 802,701. While there he meets a bunch of childlike humans called the Eloi, including the unfortunately named Weena which means that when George is running around shrieking her name it sounds like he's shouting "Weiner" a lot, and the fact that the rather old George fancies Weena when she was played by a seventeen year old actress is rather off.

Spoiler alert

George is also quite difficult to like as he's often stroppy, getting annoyed with the Eloi for being sociopathic and boring but also irritated with the underground Morlocks as they're cannibals, but fortunately saves the day by teaching the Eloi how to be violent and murderous.

[close]

It's occasionally melodramatic and boy is George fond of giving speeches, but overall it's a fun yarn even if certain aspects have dated a little. 7.4/10

[Egyptian Feast]

I met Rod Taylor when I was a kid. He came to the local Folk Festival one summer (late 80s-early 90s) and must've opened some event or other, but mostly spent his visit getting shitfaced. They put him at a table outside the pub in the town square one evening to sign autographs. I mentioned I liked him in The Birds as it was the one film of his I'd seen, to which he replied "Oh yeah? Well, I FUCKING HATE PIGEONS!" and roared with laughter. I was dead impressed and wished I was old enough to hang around to see where his evening would go from there.

[Small Man Big Horse]

I met Rod Taylor when I was a kid. He came to the local Folk Festival one summer (late 80s-early 90s) and must've opened some event or other, but mostly spent his visit getting shitfaced. They put him at a table outside the pub in the town square one evening to sign autographs. I mentioned I liked him in The Birds as it was the one film of his I'd seen, to which he replied "Oh yeah? Well, I FUCKING HATE PIGEONS!" and roared with laughter. I was dead impressed and wished I was old enough to hang around to see where his evening would go from there.

Ha, that's a great story!

[PlanktonSideburns]

Moonstruck

Must've been a slow year at the Oscars. Although upon the film's conclusion I did check and it turns out that "Robocop" won an Oscar that year too.

In it's defence, I did really like how much Cher and Olympia Dukakis looked alike and Nicolas Cage appearing to be acting like he was in a totally different film for most of it.

Waaat Moonstruck is great stuff.

Cheer going to the basement to confront minatour nick cage but ends up shagging him instead, and who can blame her? What's not to like

[famethrowa]

Just watched Coal Miner's Daughter (1980) on TV. Fascinatin! Total Dewey Cox-style cliches throughout, but I guess it was new at the time. Loving the names attached to it, top Roy Mallard impressionist Michael Apted directing, Ellen Griswold as Patsy Cline, tubthumper Levon Helm as her grumpy old da (the wrong kid died!) and the never-funny Minnie Pearl as herself. And Tommy Lee Jones sounding like yer mumbling guy from King of the Hill...

[Small Man Big Horse]

The Subjects (2015) - A group of people (including Mythic Quest's Charlotte Nicdao, which is why I watched it) are involved in a drug test where after taking a pill they're locked away together for eight hours, initially they just bicker and annoy each other, but slowly they gain strange and unusual abilities. Set in one location it's a claustrophobic affair, and one of the main characters is a sexist homophobic cunt who really is quite annoying, but it has fun with its concept for a while

Spoiler alert

before ending in a very disappointing and even slightly annoying manner. Though it is worth sticking around for a song from Nicdao during the end credits which explains what happened to her character and which is quite amusing (and she's great in it throughout),

[close]

but it's not enough to save the movie. 5.4/10

[zomgmouse]

The Third Murder. Kore-eda from a few years ago. Feels much unlike his usual tone but still retains his beautiful compassion. Subdued legal thriller. I liked it but far from his best.

Sonatine. Haven't really seen much Takeshi Kitano (besides Ryuzo and the 7 Henchmen). What a splendid ennui peppered with violence. Kitano has such an expressively expressionless face. The ending stunned me. This is special.

Then delving into Gakuryû Ishii, never seen his films before. Described as the "godfather of Japanese punk cinema". Started making films when he was just a teenager (makes me jealous really).

"Panic High School". A short later developed into a feature, looking at a school shooting. Feels quite modern, though shot on 8mm.

The Solitude of One Divided by 880,000. Simple, tragic tale of a very lonely man, isolated and living along in his apartment, studying for exams. Stylistically quite different from the above, much more restrained and personal.

Attack! Hakata Street Gang. Loose, lofi look at smalltown street gangs, provides a nice almost ethnographic representation, mainly focussing on one gang escaping a bank robbery. Intense rocknroll soundtrack. But sadly not very engaging on the whole.

Panic High School (feature version). The expansion works quite well as it focusses on the events and situation behind the school shooting, beginning with a student's suicide and dealing with student pressure/youth disillusionment/the education system/cultural values - most of the film's runtime is devoted to the aftermath of the shooting/attempt at capturing the student perpetrator. Perhaps a little simplistic/caricaturish, but solid. Soundtrack makes it feel a little Italo-crime. Quite impressive.

Look forward to watching his next film Crazy Thunder Road one day.

[Small Man Big Horse]

Evil Alien Conquerors (2003) - Written and directed by Chris Matheson, one of the writers of the Bill and Ted trilogy, this sees aliens Du-ug (Chris Parnell) and My-ke (Diedrich Bader)  transported to Earth as they've been given the job of destroying the planet. It's a fish out of water comedy, if the fish are arrogant and stupid, and it's pretty funny, clearly very low budget and perhaps a little repetitive, and it's one of those films I could understand someone being incredibly irritated by, but I liked it well enough. 6.3/10

[dissolute ocelot]

We Have Always Lived In The Castle (2018) - one for fans of gothic mysteries and retro fashions who have Amazon Prime: based on Shirley Jackson's book, it's almost an update of The Fall of the House of Usher set in Kennedy-era America. Basically, the Blackwood family are rich and unpopular - seemingly so even before someone poisoned Mr and Mrs Blackwood with arsenic in the sugar bowl and the older daughter was acquitted of their murder. Everyone who remains is damaged: uncle Crispin Glover in a wheelchair still having conversations with his dead brother; the younger daughter trying to cast spells and reciting lists of poisonous mushrooms; the older daughter trapped in the kitchen. Then Sebastian Stan arrives as a paragon of preppy manhood. As with a lot of Jackson, the message is that people are disturbing and evil. But also feminist undercurrents. The art direction is beautiful, particularly things like fabric patterns and wallpaper. Director Stacie Passon and her cast do a good job of controlling the tone, keeping everything heightened but not too over the top. Just the right amount of over the top.

[Small Man Big Horse]

Steamboat Bill Jr. (1928) - The second Buster Keaton movie I've watched lately though it wasn't as good as the previous one, The General, if only because the first half is only quite amusing, some sequences are very funny (the title card "No jury would convict you" made me laugh especially hard) but some of the slapstick is a little familiar. The finale involving a hurricane and absolute chaos feels like it's from a different movie as well, though it's packed with incredibly stunts and over ninety years on it still impresses. 7.4/10

[Dex Sawash]

Bad Company 1972 Civil War draft dodger flees west and joins up with Jeff Bridges.
Bridges is really good but film is just ok. Remember really liking this when I was a kid.

[Dex Sawash]

Norbit the worst 26 minutes I have ever viewed.

[SteveDave]

Stuber

Dave Bautista is a cop who's just had laser eye surgery but still has a case to crack. Kumail Nanjiani is an Uber driver who's down on his luck. Hilarity should ensue but it doesn't really. The twist is given away too early to create any tension at the end.

[PlanktonSideburns]

Norbit the worst 26 minutes I have ever viewed.

Who was it that said this was his favourate film the other day?

[Small Man Big Horse]

Sixty Million Dollar Man (1995) - Stephen Chow stars in this cartoonish silliness which includes a number of spoofs of US movies like Pulp Fiction and Lethal Weapon, in a movie which has a vague storyline about a guy who is blown up after he dates the woman a Triad boss is interested in, and (eventually) attains incredible powers, though it's less about plot and trying to throw in as many gags as possible. Not every joke lands and there's the odd dodgy one, but the majority do, it has some amusingly naff effects and is nicely weird in places too. 7.5/10

[Dex Sawash]

Who was it that said this was his favourate film the other day?

Searched and found the Kermode quote in a post from 2007

Norbit - "If you paid to see Norbit, look deep inside yourself. Look deep inside yourself and take the same amount of money you paid to see that movie and give it to a good cause because believe me, you're karmically unbalanced if you paid to see that film."   

[zomgmouse]

Doing a bit of a Kiyoshi Kurosawa binge (still can't get Cure out of my brain), picking one from a few different eras:

Sweet Home. Boasts the unusual angle of being released alongside a video game of the same name. In the film, a TV crew arrive at a large possibly cursed mansion to film a documentary about the painter who lived and died there. Slowly nightmares, madness and deaths begin to plague the crew. Definitely a camp sort of spooky but there's some real creepy thrills in here as well.

Pulse. Fucked. This film is fucked. No no no no no no. Just absolutely cursed. Holy shit on a manicured baseball. Completely haunted inside and out. A thousand noperinos. Get it away from me. 10/10. I feel like this taps into something intangibly embedded into anyone who grew up with early mainstream internet - beyond just oozing uncanny, unsettling eeriness from its every frame. Fucking hell. I think Cure is still better but this is a top tier horror. Immensely poetic at its core - yearning, loneliness, connection

Daguerrotype. Sort of like a modern gothic mystery-horror about a photographer's assistant who falls in love with the photographer's daughter. Sadly I don't think it fully embraces its themes of art and vision and memory etc and the story doesn't really play out or engage that well as a result.

and his latest film (should probably have its own thread) Wife of a Spy. Period drama set in the 40s wherein the titular wife begins to suspect her husband is the titular spy (and also having an affair). Loyalty, trust and truth are explored through narratives of national identity. Entertaining but doesn't quite spark.

What this has shown me is that from beginning to present Kurosawa has had an ardent knack for fusing image and meaning. A truly singular cinematic voice.

[zomgmouse]

Empire of Passion. Nagisa Oshima seems to be popping up a lot for me. This is the film he made after In the Realm of the Senses, and while some elements seem like a retread it's definitely its own entity. Tale of a woman and her lover who kill her husband, who comes back to haunt them as a ghost.

Blue Christmas. Curious film about a UFO landing which causes the blood of people who see it to turn blue and the conspiracy and frenzy that occurs as a result, nationally and even internationally. Incredibly allegorical of course and played fairly straight. It's quite good.

Sebastiane. Never seen any Derek Jarman before this. I don't think I really got into this unfortunately. But I'm interested enough and have planned to watch Jubilee soon with a friend.

[Small Man Big Horse]

Sebastiane. Never seen any Derek Jarman before this. I don't think I really got into this unfortunately. But I'm interested enough and have planned to watch Jubilee soon with a friend.

I really loved Wittgenstein, Edward II and Blue but haven't seen any other Jarman, which is odd and something I must rectify.

Pocahontas (1995) - Disney takes us back to the good old racist days of the 17th century where Native Americans were called savages by the English and treated appallingly, but luckily for them that doesn't apply with lovely old John Smith (Mel Gibson, and yes, separating the art from the artist when he's all but the opposite of his character was a little difficult for me) who falls for Pocahontas, who in this version of the tale hangs out with a raccoon and a hummingbird who provide light relief for the younger members of the audience. There's a couple of decent songs and though the moralising is a bit heavy handed the

Spoiler alert

way it ends unhappily for John and Pocahontas (but well for Percy the Dog and the raccoon)

[close]

impressed, but it's a film I wasn't really charmed by, it's fine but only that. 6.7/10

[Dusty Substance]

Watched 2014's Cold In July last night. A film I'd never heard of until yesterday but found it in a charity shop for 10p, saw the many four star reviews and various accolades, noted that it's set in 1989 and the comparisons to John Carpenter, Tarantino, Coens and Drive.

Put the DVD on last night and was hooked from pretty much the first scene. There's a great deal to enjoy - All round terrific performances, atmospheric synth soundtrack, at least three twists that aren't just plot twists, they're also genre twists as the film starts as one thing and turns into something quite different by the end. A real nice gem of a film.

Was surprised to learn that it was from the writer/director team of Stakeland - A film which I don't recall being much good at all.

[Small Man Big Horse]

Watched 2014's Cold In July last night. A film I'd never heard of until yesterday but found it in a charity shop for 10p, saw the many four star reviews and various accolades, noted that it's set in 1989 and the comparisons to John Carpenter, Tarantino, Coens and Drive.

Put the DVD on last night and was hooked from pretty much the first scene. There's a great deal to enjoy - All round terrific performances, atmospheric synth soundtrack, at least three twists that aren't just plot twists, they're also genre twists as the film starts as one thing and turns into something quite different by the end. A real nice gem of a film.

Was surprised to learn that it was from the writer/director team of Stakeland - A film which I don't recall being much good at all.

Ah, that sounds interesting, I didn't mind Stakeland either so will definitely give it a go at some point.

[Dex Sawash]

I have to rewatch Cold in July, I recall liking it. Maybe it will erase the memory of how bad the Hap and Leonard tv series was. I really like Joe Lansdale's writing.