What non-new films have you seen? (2022 edition)

[Small Man Big Horse]

Alien Terminator (1996)

No aliens or terminators in it. Right at the bottom of the pile of cheap "Alien" ripoffs, which is kind of impressive given how much competition there is.

Back in the early days of the pandemic I was dating someone and as we couldn't meet up in person we'd watch bad films while chatting on the phone and mocking them, and so I saw a fair amount of absolute shit during those months, but this was by far the worst of all of them!

[Blumf]

Alien Terminator (1996)

No aliens or terminators in it

Have you tried Lady Terminator (1988)? The Terminator, but it's a lady, and also a whole load of Indonesian folklore that confuses matters in just the right way.

Should help cleanse the pallet.

[Famous Mortimer]

Have you tried Lady Terminator (1988)? The Terminator, but it's a lady, and also a whole load of Indonesian folklore that confuses matters in just the right way.

Should help cleanse the pallet.

I assumed I had, but a quick check of Letterboxd reveals I'm yet to give it a go. Nice! My favourite local bar had a "Lady Terminator" poster, but never showed it.

Back in the early days of the pandemic I was dating someone and as we couldn't meet up in person we'd watch bad films while chatting on the phone and mocking them, and so I saw a fair amount of absolute shit during those months, but this was by far the worst of all of them!

When said bar closed, we formed a Facebook Watch group and showed movies most nights of the week. I ran Tuesdays on Twitch, which was nice (although I eventually got attendance down very low with my rotten choices).

Talking recently watched bad films, "Alien Terminator" isn't quite as bad as the "Assault Of The Party Nerds" duology, but it definitely does suck.

[Small Man Big Horse]

Ladies Who Do (1963) - Mrs Cragg (Peggy Mount, sometimes reminding me of Olivia Colman if she smoked 40 a day) is a cleaner for twatty businessmen Harry H. Corbett and Jon Pertwee, and when she overhears one of their schemes and tells her lodger the Colonel (Robert Morley) he buys shares in a company and makes five thousand quid profit, eventually giving Cragg half of it, and the two team up with other cleaners who go through their boss's rubbish looking for more sure-fire ways to make money. It's not laugh a minute fare but it is very amiable material, the cast are superb and it has with a real sense of affection for its working class characters, while the ending is hugely entertaining. 7.5/10

[Famous Mortimer]

Wild Malibu Weekend

Absolutely abysmal, obviously. A bunch of awful men leer at women in bikinis, who are all there willingly to take part in "Bikini Showdown", an apparently popular "game" show. The host, particularly, is repellent, doing little but insulting the women and telling the lamest sexist jokes.

The surprising bit is the presence of a pretty excellent surf-rock band called the Ultramatics, who are lost to the mists of time (there are a couple of other bands with Ultramatic in the name, which makes searching tricky). They're in it so much, and don't remotely fit the action, that someone involved must have been a fan, or the producer was also their manager, or something.

[zomgmouse]

The Happiest Girl in the World. Debut of Radu Jude. A young woman wins a car and a chance to appear in a soft drink commercial which is plagued by production issues and familial woes. Really terrific distillation/microcosm of a whole socioeconomic situation into one simple, agonising premise.

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. Read the short story which was brilliant and it's about time I got to this classic. Terrific, Tom Courtenay in top form. Shot and edited so evocatively, particularly the final race sequence, incredible stuff. I loved it.

Outside the Law. Early silent Tod Browning crime thriller with Lon Chaney. Interestingly he remade this in 1930 with Edward G. Robinson, might be interesting to watch and compare. The first and last scenes are impressive action sequences - not just for the time but in general. Otherwise not the strongest of narratives but it's a step up from standard pulp.

[Small Man Big Horse]

La Ville Des Pirates (1983) - Surrealist fantasy from director Raúl Ruiz, if this had caught me in a different mood I might have hated it, but the opposite largely applies. There's no real narrative other than a woman becomes engaged to a murderous child and then encounters a man with multiple personalities, and it's often intentionally confusing and / or dreamlike, it sometimes feels like a thousand ideas were thrown at the screen, and I'm sure a fair bit went over my head, but I did find it strangely engaging most of the time. 7.4/10

[Small Man Big Horse]

Blondie (1938) - The first of twenty eight films based on the American comic strip featuring Dagwood Bumstead, his wife Blondie, serial killer child Baby Dumpling (well, he brains at least one kid with a brick who we never see again, anyhow) and their dog Daisy. This is pretty basic stuff and it feels quite like a 50's sitcom in places, yet it's naïve innocence is strangely charming and there's a few funny moments, I only laughed out loud a couple of times but a fair amount of smiling took place. 6.3/10

[Sebastian Cobb]

House Party (1990) - Only the film Superbad could've been! Really quite enjoyed this, especially the rapping. Kid is a great lead character. Dunno how I haven't seen it before.

[Famous Mortimer]

Beach Balls

I've been watching a bit of USA Channel's "Up All Night" recently. Throughout most of the 90s, Gilbert Gottfried and Rhonda Shear would present a movie, and do little intros and outros before and after the ad breaks, sometimes skits or even interviews with the people from the movie.

This episode had Rhonda Shear in a bar, interviewing drunk men with a hidden camera in her cleavage so you could see them keep flicking their eyes downward. A good level of drunkenness is recommended for this movie, too, which is about a weirdly religious couple who go on a rally for public decency, leaving their house and their teen kids to host a party. The son and his friend are pretty nice guys by the standard of the time, so it's almost wholesome.

There are some jokes which are almost odd enough to work, but it's more something undemanding to pop on than it is something to pay attention to. The soundtrack is fun, though, being made up of the sort of hair metal songs that were designed to be played in strip clubs.

[SteveDave]

"Synchronicity"

A time travel film that sort of makes sense?

Three scientists send a flower back through time 5 days, but the head scientist jumps through too. We then see everything that happens the five days after he goes back to from 3 different perspectives.

Not as brain melting as "Primer"

[dissolute ocelot]

Phantom of the Paradise (1974) - enjoyably cartoonish cult satirical horror musical. It sometimes feels as though they forgot to film certain scenes as characters suddenly change their personality or jump from one place to another, but that gives it a sense of "anything could happen". It looks amazing in lots of different ways: weird electronic gear, modernist architecture, amazing stage costumes, great record company design (Death Records), gothic fun. There are inevitably some bits that feel a bit off today - the (sometimes) camp singer Beef is kind of a homophobic caricature. And I'd like to know whether it ripped off the Rocky Horror Picture Show or vice versa in the Frankenstein-inspired scene. Paul Williams who's written a lot of songs for The Muppets and The Carpenters does a good job writing songs that are the right amount of over-the-top, and it stands up against the vast number of other insane 70s rock spectacle movies (as well as touches of Dr Phibes). Plus a solid cast of whom the biggest names might be Williams and Jessica "Suspiria" Harper. Definitely fun for a Saturday night.

[phantom_power]

Did you know about how the original record company was called Swan Song Enterprises but they had to remove all of the references to it as Led Zeppelin's record company had a similar name? Though a couple of instances of the logo are still visible

[steveh]

The Night Doctor (2020)

From French director Elie Wajeman, who is probably best known for The Anarchists, which I quite liked. This is about a doctor working in a deprived suburb of Paris as a kind of part GP, part paramedic. Alongside his usual calls he also deals with drug addicts, prescribing opiate substitutes, with some of those prescriptions ending up with his dodgy cousin who runs a pharmacy and has a deal with a local gangster who instead ships them to Georgia. With his marriage failing, a mistress who he is thinking of leaving with and his cousin pushing him to write prescriptions for Fentanyl so he can pay his debts things start going bad.

It blends styles, more documentary in how the camera follows the doctor and the natural style of acting but in cinematography and other elements towards a modern noir, with saturated night colours and contrasting grey daytimes. I really liked this and it held my attention throughout, helped by being a taut 80 minutes.

Currently on BFI Player+.

[Famous Mortimer]

Jason And The Argonauts

The 1963 version, there's a blu-ray rip of it on Youtube and it looks great. Still every bit as much fun as I remember.

[peanutbutter]

True Stories

I guess I'm in the weird position of liking Talking Heads a lot but hating the David Byrne character (which I guess also explains why I didn't like Stop Making Sense, zero desire to look at the man for an hour). Very cute and quirky and nice. Think it's possible some of the satire bits seem a bit less obvious and lame to a lot of viewers with zero context of the time they came out too, maybe.

John Goodman is solid and most of the cast look like they're having fun.


Barfly

Looks great, some of the performances are very true to Bukowski style characters but Mickey Rourke is absolutely shitting the bed in the lead role doing some kind of parody act of Brando at his worst excesses.

[Small Man Big Horse]

Jason And The Argonauts

The 1963 version, there's a blu-ray rip of it on Youtube and it looks great. Still every bit as much fun as I remember.

I watched that last year and agree completely, it was enormously entertaining stuff.

Strings (2004) - Visually stunning marionette movie where the characters are aware of the  strings that are attached to their bodies, and right at the beginning the King commits suicide by cutting his head string, hoping his son Hal can do a better job of leading the country. Hal's tricked by his evil Uncle in to thinking that the King was murdered however, so sets off to take revenge, but slowly discovers not everything is at it seems. This really is quite gorgeous to look at, there's some impressive ideas within it as well, but the script is a little on the nose, and a couple of bits were slightly laughable (the beginning of a sex scene especially) which prevents it from being something I wholeheartedly would recommend, but it's definitely worth seeking out if you're intrigued by the sound of it. 7.5/10

[zomgmouse]

Double feature of Oscar Micheaux - one of if not the first black American filmmaker (these films are from 1920):

Within Our Gates. Ambitiously attempts to address a plethora of issues of black struggle - from lynchings to suffrage to education - all revolving around a romance subplot. It's very good, though it sometimes feels like the sweeping amount of subject matter crammed into its runtime is a bit much. Certainly important and worth watching, the conclusion in particular.

The Symbol of the Unconquered. Much more engaging storyline (some might say much more straightforward), this time a Western dealing with issues of "passing" and racism in land ownership. Sadly the climax sequence in which a group of black people smash the living shit out of the KKK has been lost.

Also watched another film from 1920, The Monastery of Sendomir, by Victor Sjöstrom (who made the excellent The Phantom Carriage). Wonderfully melodramatic, most of the story is told in flashback and involves adultery and nobility and betrayal etc etc.

The Small World of Sammy Lee. Big admirer of Anthony Newley through Gurney Slade (another World, this time Strange) and he's phenomenal here. Almost seems like a precursor to The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, Newley is the host of a strip show who's massively in gambling debts. Illusorily lighthearted in tone as the tendrils of urgency close in on his spiralling fate. Brilliant film.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Barfly

Looks great, some of the performances are very true to Bukowski style characters but Mickey Rourke is absolutely shitting the bed in the lead role doing some kind of parody act of Brando at his worst excesses.

I quite liked this even if I think Bukowski is a shit. I think my favourite thing is Mac's Mum is one of the extras in the bar and still looks exactly the same.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Anyhow I watched Patti Cake$ which was alright, kind of like an 8-mile type thing but with Danielle MacDonald (The Tourist) in the leading role. Could've been whittled down a bit.

[Famous Mortimer]

Joysticks

1983 movie about how everyone was bonkers for video arcades. Very heavily influenced by Porky's, but the three main male characters are surprisingly decent for the standards of the time - they become friends straight away and spend most of their time battling the evil Joe Don Baker and his nephews, who want to shut the arcade down, rather than endlessly chasing women. As much a proto-Phone Shop as a Porky's clone, perhaps (although there is tons of nudity in it).

It has two of my favourite things in it, though - a horny grandpa, and that thing where a guy dresses up in drag to go undercover and is suddenly irresistible to men. He appears to be getting into it, but much like a dozen other things, it's a plot line that is dropped because we need to see another shot of a weird Pac-Man clone.

[Rizla]

KNIGHTS ELECTRIC (1980)

How much more eighventies can you get? The answer is none. None more eighventies.

This was shown as a supporting short, in the days when you got your money's worth from a trip to the pictures. A mad pop culture cocktail, Clockwork Orange meets the Numanoids in a street parable straight from the tabloids. Birds done up like ONJ, and a go on the waltzers. Yesterday's new wave sounds tomorrow. Gobbing, pogoing, punk and disorderly. Daniel Peacock. It's ace.

EDIT I say none more eighventies, but it does strike me that there is a lack of representation of 2-Tone or reggae in the mix, fashionwise or musically, and nor is there much non-white representation on screen in general, which seems a shame. I know very little about the film so couldn't really comment. Still.

[zomgmouse]

Watched the Orson Welles version of Macbeth ahead of the Coen one and fuck me what a foggy oomph that film is. Everything's so gloomy and is filled with such bravado and angst. The delivery of the "tomorrow" speech sent me into shivers. Nails the opening and ending particularly, the middle has some dragging moments but overall by far a knockout. Posted about the Coen one in the relevant thread but I was sorely unimpressed especially after watching this first.

Then also watched Claude Chabrol's The Colour of Lies which is on MUBI at the moment. Pretty decent one of his small-town mysteries, a lot of tension bubbling under the placid relationship drama.

[Small Man Big Horse]

Watched the Orson Welles version of Macbeth ahead of the Coen one and fuck me what a foggy oomph that film is. Everything's so gloomy and is filled with such bravado and angst. The delivery of the "tomorrow" speech sent me into shivers. Nails the opening and ending particularly, the middle has some dragging moments but overall by far a knockout. Posted about the Coen one in the relevant thread but I was sorely unimpressed especially after watching this first.

Then also watched Claude Chabrol's The Colour of Lies which is on MUBI at the moment. Pretty decent one of his small-town mysteries, a lot of tension bubbling under the placid relationship drama.

I saw that in my early twenties when I was absolutely obsessed with all things Welles, and enjoyed it just as much as you did. I'd recommend his Othello too, the blackface element is really unfortunate and problematic, but if you can get past that it's a pretty great film.

[Small Man Big Horse]

The Trouble With Harry (1955) - Hitchcock comedy thriller where after discovering a body near some woods a bunch of people think they're responsible, and the deceased keeps on being buried and then dug up again for increasingly spurious reasons. It starts off well but around the half way point loses its way, there's some quite forced romantic subplots and it gets tediously repetitive, while the ending doesn't make a whole bunch of sense

Spoiler alert

unless the town doctor decides never to speak of the matter again

[close]

. 5.0/10

[Enrico Palazzo]

Anyhow I watched Patti Cake$ which was alright, kind of like an 8-mile type thing but with Danielle MacDonald (The Tourist) in the leading role. Could've been whittled down a bit.

Her maw singing from the crowd at the end was maximum cringe.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Aye. I think I was just letting it wash over me at that point.

[Small Man Big Horse]

Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles (2018) - Dramatisation of Luis Buñuel's filming of Land Without Bread, which is occasionally intercut with footage from the documentary. While the backdrops often look impressive the character animation looks like it could have been drawn with an Amiga 500 and makes the Doctor Who missing episodes look good in comparison, and though it tries to explore Buñuel's relationship with his father, his rivalry with Dali, how manipulative his film making could be and his fascination with death, it feels like a quite simplistic take. 6.0/10

[zomgmouse]

I saw that in my early twenties when I was absolutely obsessed with all things Welles, and enjoyed it just as much as you did. I'd recommend his Othello too, the blackface element is really unfortunate and problematic, but if you can get past that it's a pretty great film.

Ah yes I'm sure I'll get around to it once I've read the play!

[dissolute ocelot]

Our Ladies (2019-ish) - underwhelming attempt to get all the cliches of Catholic schoolgirls into a movie, with a sideline of 90s nostalgia, as a bunch of schoolgirls from the Scottish Highlands make an improbably timetabled journey to Edinburgh to sing in a choir competition. You see lots of Edinburgh which is nice for Edinburgensians (including The Kenilworth pub), and the rest of it is around Fort William, which is also pretty (aside from actual Fort William which is a shithole). A couple of well-directed sequences, but otherwise it's really superficial with characters never beyond one-dimensional stereotypes. It generally feels like a bunch of middle-aged men making a mildly pervy film in which schoolgirls talk about sex all the time. Plus there's an actual cancer girl straight out of all the films about pretty girls with cancer and pixie-cuts.