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

[Blumf]

The Bikini Carwash Company 2

Is this part of the Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants expanded universe?

[Famous Mortimer]

Is this part of the Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants expanded universe?

I wish more companies would do this, like having all the Hallmark Christmas movies be set in the same world, or something.

[El Unicornio, mang]

Rambo I-IV

I'd somehow never seen any of these so thought I'd treat myself over the past few days. The first one is objectively the best but it's pretty dour and I think I enjoyed the mindless entertainment of the next three more. The village destruction scene in Rambo (2008) is genuinely horrific (I watched the extended cut, not sure if it's more graphic), even more so knowing it's pretty much based on reality.

[Billy]

The Sound of Music

One of those that, watching for the first time as a 32 year old in 2021 on a faded laptop screen, doesn't have the nostalgic/cinemagic attachment attached like it does for so many so it was inevitable it was going to leave me a little cold, if enjoying the cinematography and hearing the non-Big Brovaz original of Favourite Things/non-Gwen Stefani original of Wind It Up (not the Prodigy song). It was certainly more than just Julie Andrews singing on mountains for three hours which was all I really knew about it before, and I genuinely didn't know what was going to happen to the Von Trapps so it not ending with everyone horrifically murdered (even the

Spoiler alert

father

[close]

survives!!) was a nice moment.

Both my mum and girlfriend find it utterly unbelievable I've never seen it before, for both it's a huge thing from their childhood - it was the first film my mum saw at the cinema, around the turn of the 70s as it played on and off for years. Wait until they find out I've not seen Titanic...

[dissolute ocelot]

The Sound of Music

...
Both my mum and girlfriend find it utterly unbelievable I've never seen it before, for both it's a huge thing from their childhood - it was the first film my mum saw at the cinema, around the turn of the 70s as it played on and off for years. Wait until they find out I've not seen Titanic...

In many ways a fine film, with some great scenes sticking it to the Nazis, but as it is (feels) about 16 hours long I think requiring anyone to watch the whole thing is a bit much. Definitely one of those films to watch little and often. Since it's basically 2 separate films stuck together (Maria melting the Captain's stony heart, and then the Anschluss/singing contest bit.)

[olliebean]

I wish more companies would do this, like having all the Hallmark Christmas movies be set in the same world, or something.

Netflix are doing it with a load of their Christmas movies, aren't they?

[EOLAN]

Another one who did first watch of Sound of Music.

Liked Plummer's cynical performance that helped balance out the saccharine nature of rest of film.

[rjd2]

Hands Off the Loot

Was on holidays to Canada (lol)and watched the above on Mubi. A really slick French crime thriller from back in the day. The lead is remarkably manly.  Very entertaining.

Bob le flambeur up next which I am looking forward to, Melville was so good at crime films.

[zomgmouse]

Hands Off the Loot

Was on holidays to Canada (lol)and watched the above on Mubi. A really slick French crime thriller from back in the day. The lead is remarkably manly.  Very entertaining.

Jean Gabin is one of the greats, particularly for "hardened French criminal" types, but also just in general. He reminds me of a French Spencer Tracy in a way. Terrific in the Jean Renoir-directed French Cancan and Grand Illusion.

[rjd2]

Thanks!

I was recommended Port Of Shadows here which he also is in which is a noir which I need to get around to.

Have you seen that or En Cas de Malheur which on googling looks interesting?

[zomgmouse]

Thanks!

I was recommended Port Of Shadows here which he also is in which is a noir which I need to get around to.

Have you seen that or En Cas de Malheur which on googling looks interesting?

Haven't seen or heard of the latter, but the former is on my watchlist; Marcel Carné is spectacular.

[joaquin closet]

All I really know about Carné is that he was incessantly bashed by the Cahiers lot... Can any knowledgables explain what that was all about?

[Famous Mortimer]

The Hills Have Eyes 2
Not bad. Well, not great either.

[zomgmouse]

All I really know about Carné is that he was incessantly bashed by the Cahiers lot... Can any knowledgables explain what that was all about?

I think they took issue with his flights of fancy and past-dwelling romanticism when the Cahiersers were all into realism and here-and-now-ness. But I could be misremembering.

[chveik]

because he's shit

[Pearly-Dewdrops Drops]

All I really know about Carné is that he was incessantly bashed by the Cahiers lot... Can any knowledgables explain what that was all about?

Presumably they were just being contrarian upstarts. They hated quite a few genius directors from the more classic era of film.

For my money, Children of Paradise is far better than anything anyone from the French New Wave ever made.

[zomgmouse]

Did a whole day of watching Babis Makridis' films today:

His short "The Last Fakir", based on a Luis Sepúlveda story which I would like to read, is quite a marvellous, minimalist, darkly funny character study of a magician forced into a career of cheap tricks.

L. Debut feature. Liked it the least out of all that I saw today but still liked it (though it goes a bit haywire towards the end). Follows a man living out of his car.

Pity. A lawyer is addicted to grief; his wife is in a coma and his grief is what fuels him. My favourite of the stuff I've seen. Comes together really touchingly.

Birds (or How to Be One) is a "documentary" of sorts, a philosophical contemplation on the nature of birds and our connection to birdhood as humans. This was on MUBI (as I believe the other two features are, I just didn't watch them there).

Makridis' two narrative features are co-scripted by Yorgos Lanthimos' frequent collaborator Efthymis Filippou, and it shows. Very reminiscent of the whole "Greek weird wave".

[SteveDave]

Lake Placid

I really liked this despite Bridget Fonda and Bill Pullman having no chemistry and Brendan Gleeson's voice sliding all over the place. Oliver Platt was suitably mental as was Betty White and, for a 1999 film, the CGI was quite good. It was just "Jaws" with a big crocodile though.

[St_Eddie]

Lake Placid

I really liked this despite Bridget Fonda and Bill Pullman having no chemistry and Brendan Gleeson's voice sliding all over the place. Oliver Platt was suitably mental as was Betty White and, for a 1999 film, the CGI was quite good. It was just "Jaws" with a big crocodile though.

I really like this movie.  It's charming.  They never thought to have Jaws transferred to a wild-life sanctuary at the end of that movie, now did they?  Admittedly, Lake Placid does somewhat try to eat its cake and have it too, by having two alligators, one of which is saved and the other of which is blown to pieces, but still I appreciated the gesture.

[dissolute ocelot]

I think they took issue with his flights of fancy and past-dwelling romanticism when the Cahiersers were all into realism and here-and-now-ness. But I could be misremembering.

Carné seemed to annoy lots of different people.

For the New Wave, Carné was seen as part of a tradition of literary, old-fashioned French cinema, with its focus on historical drama, the influence of novels and plays and scenarists over directors, linear storytelling, good taste, the psychologism of the 19th century novel, and lack of formal experimentation. This was unfair on Carné as the French "tradition of quality" that the Cahiers du Cinema guys raged against was more a matter of the later 1940s and 1950s. Carné was probably more conventional than Renoir, whose films seem to reject traditional ideas of human motivation and heroes and villains, but there is plenty that's modern in them. And a Carné film like Hotel du Nord with its black humour has a lot in common with Truffaut or Malle. But each generation must insult the last.

He was also disliked in some quarters for being pessimistic; there's a school of thought that downbeat fatalistic movies like Quai des brumes led to France's capitulation and surrender in the war; Renoir called him "counter-revolutionary". Of course, his focus on troubled, doomed masculinity is now part of what makes him so great to modern critics.

Here's a Truffaut essay on classic French cinema which sets out the position. Truffaut is also scathing on Carné for copying American crime films, which is a little bit ironic considering Truffaut's own films.

[SteveDave]

Alistair 1918

A friend recommended this to me. We're no longer friends.

A documentary crew are making a film about the homeless people in LA. They find a man with a Northern accent wearing a WWI uniform sleeping rough. He claims he's from 1918 and arrived in LA through a vortex. The crew set him up with somewhere to live and contact a French doctor with an "Allo Allo" ackzent to help send him back. It's obvious it's been made for no money but Christ alive. Avoid.

[Custard]

Gosford Park (2001)

As 'er indoors loves a good old fashioned murder mystery, I thought this might be good.

It's not very good. It's actually incredibly slow and boring, and takes forever to even get to the murder, let alone solve it.

To add the final drizzle of piss to the top of the shit cake Stephen Fry turns up as the inspector. Can't stand the man. I don't even really know why. Just this supreme irrational hatred

The cast is way too big and very starry, with Charles Dance, Clive Owen (playing Clive Owen), Helen Mirren, and many other recognisable types off British telly, but it's almost an insult to have them there when the material is this tedious. Richard E Grant doesn't look like he wants to shout and cheer and fist-pump the air with this one

Check it out on a very, verrrry slow Sunday. Or if there is literally nothing else

[amputeeporn]

Gosford Park (2001)

That's so funny - I loved it. Just mesmerised by Altman's (admittedly slick) reinterpretation of his own rhythms in that setting. All the overlapping sounds and words, the sweep of it. One thing, though - I went in thinking it was just a period piece and had no idea there was a mystery involved, so maybe for me that gave it an unexpected charge?

[Dr Syntax Head]

Under the Silver Lake. Batshit crazy sort of detective film from the director of It Follows. If The Big Lebowski is stoner noir then this is prozac noir. Not sure how much of it is resolved, how much really happened and whether there was any real resolution but it had a unique atmosphere and was very compelling. Left me thinking about it a lot afterwards as well, and wanting to explore what the themes and ideas were. Apparently there is a very active subreddit on the film which I will need to check out

2 3rds of the way through this and I think it's great. Beautiful to look at and fuck knows what's going on. A pound shop Mulholland Drive maybe but still good. Was 'The Songwriter' Max Martin? (not a genuine question)

[Mobius]

Watched that movie "Good Time" last night, really enjoyed it. Those Safdie Brothers are doing good work!

[zomgmouse]

That's so funny - I loved it. Just mesmerised by Altman's (admittedly slick) reinterpretation of his own rhythms in that setting. All the overlapping sounds and words, the sweep of it.

Same here, I found it very wryly funny and engaging, leaning into its pace.

[rjd2]

2 3rds of the way through this and I think it's great. Beautiful to look at and fuck knows what's going on. A pound shop Mulholland Drive maybe but still good. Was 'The Songwriter' Max Martin? (not a genuine question)

I have not seen it for a while so I can't help which is not ideal but I had a similar view of the film.

I do recall the reviews however were incredibly sneery and patronising, the Kermode review especially was bollocks.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pcl3GAOyJSk


For what its worth It Follows was fine but nowhere near as worthwhile.

[kittens]

watched ali g indahouse last night. fuckin shit movie. didn't get it. like they all must have known it was shit and really bad and stupid. what was it. it wasn't satire. was it just 'chavs are dumb' or was it 'this is what you think chavs are like, and that means you're dumb'. there were plenty of lines in it that i vividly remember being used in playgrounds at the time to bully kids.
i wonder how they convinced borat to sign on for his cameo

[kittens]

just realised the titular 'house' ali g is in is probably the house of commons

[shagatha crustie]

It is pretty funny when he gets noshed off by his dog though. It is pretty funny, come on it is pretty funny.