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

[Pink Gregory]

Old Boys - 2017

Fairly straightforward gentle comedy that's a thematic retelling of Cyrano de Bergerac set in a terrifyingly realised dusty and ancient public school where the teachers still wear capes and the head wanders around reciting Shakespeare at pupils.

Alex Lawther is the intensely dweeby student who falls for the sardonic french daughter of a teacher, who falls for the dim and boorish head boy.

Like I said, fairly gentle and straightforward; really liked it regardless.  The main trio of actors are perfectly cast - Lawther a precocious but ill-fitting dork, Jonah Hauer-King the puffed up but self-doubting and ultimately good-natured posho, Pauline Etienne the arty, disaffected and sarky teen creative.

On the whole it's perfectly fine rather than great, but I liked it a lot.  Just very likeable and doesn't outstay its welcome.

[Dex Sawash]

Watching The Mule right now. It is really great, erasing any remaining good will I had towards Eastwood. So incredibly bad, bad script, bad editing, bad racism.

[Dex Sawash]

These kids and their phones get off my drug smuggling route!
Gran Torino looks like a masterpiece now.

[zomgmouse]

Dirty Little Billy. Revisionist Western with Michael J. Pollard as a very young Billy the Kid. Like the title implies this is a very dirty, muddy film. Not bad, but not as good as I'd hoped. Gary Busey is in this also.

A Genius, Two Partners and a Dupe. Spaghetti Western with Terence Hill facing off against Patrick McGoohan and featuring Klaus Kinski in a small role at the start. This is more often than not fun and rolls along but it's a bit too long and has a few rough stretches.

Get to Know Your Rabbit. Fairly early De Palma-directed (but not written) absurdist comedy of middle-class ennui about a businessman who decides to become a tap-dancing-magician and features Orson Welles as a tap-dancing-magician-instructor.

Hibernatus. French comedy about a man from 1905 discovered frozen in Greenland who ends up being related to a government official played by Louis de Funès - probably a bit light on gags and the like but it just carries itself with such ridiculousness it's hard not to get swept up in it.

Joe. Gritty satire of America, an executive's daughter (Susan Sarandon) ODs and he kills her drug-addict/dealer boyfriend, then in his post-murder stupor happens upon a working class bigot (Peter Boyle) and the two become unlikely friends in the search for the daughter. Directed by John G. Avildsen, it's got more ideas than execution but it's still full of them and has an engaging discomfort about it.

Start the Revolution Without Me. Mistaken identity farce set during the French Revolution, starring Gene Wilder and Donald Sutherland as two sets of brothers, one rich one poor. Also inexplicably featuring Orson Welles again (credited as the narrator, but I don't think it's his voice) - as well as Hugh Griffith and Billie Whitelaw (as Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette). Has a charming madcap energy about it but doesn't quite reach the heights something like this easily could.

Also got to see this stunning 35mm double at the cinema:

Samson & Delilah. Harrowing Australian film by Warwick Thornton (who wrote and shot it too), centred on two young indigenous people in a tiny tiny town in the Northern Territory, their tribulations and fraught relationship. Just a beautiful and tragic observation of their lives. This will stay with me for a very long time.

Paris, Texas. A rewatch, but not for ages. Gained a lot more out of it this time round but still falls a little short of perfect for me. Harry Dean Stanton towers above everyone else in this, his characterisation is sublime. Precious film.

[Ballad of Ballard Berkley]

DIDN'T LIKE IT

Fair enough, but your synopsis does accurately describe the entire point of the film.

[Armed Traffic Warden]

Fair enough, but your synopsis does accurately describe the entire point of the film.

To be fair, one could accurately surmise the point of any film; it doesn't inherently make it enjoyable to everyone - not that you're saying it should

[Armed Traffic Warden]

Working my way through some films on Netflix with my family.
 I Am Mother
   Competently made and an intriguing concept. Sadly I felt it lacked clarity of purpose in driving it's themes coherently home. I enjoyed the constant threat of it 'going Alien'. Watchable but ultimately unfulfilling. 5/10

 Love and Monsters
  One of those pleasant films that knows it's level and plays in its own sandpit very nicely. Consequently though it's never going to be anything more than enjoyable. Recommended to people looking to come down from Stranger Things as it has a very similar feel and anyone looking for a no cares monster film that doesn't take itself seriously. 7/10

[Armed Traffic Warden]

Apologies for multiple posts; pressed post prematurely. It's my wife I feel sorry for.

  The Father
  A great film. Succeeds in disorienting its viewer, despite knowledge of its subject matter. Leaves enough "so why was...?" questions to enable informative discourse afterwards which I imagine is intended. It's probably obvious to I say but Hopkins falling apart into "I want my mummy" (or whatever the exact iteration of the line is) is heartbreaking and strikes close to home for someone who has seen it all firsthand. 8/10

  Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

  I vaguely recalled enjoying this as a teenager on release. I can now definitely say I enjoyed it. Personally I found the B plot involving Dunst et al largely uninteresting; though, I appreciate that without it the main plot would lack necessary context and contrast. 7/10

Elysium

 Hmmm. Bit of a 101 in how to take a good idea and hide it and any message the original screenplay might have had behind explosions and cliches. Matt Damon does well with what little he's given. Jodie Foster's character, despite being the 'big bad' has her death tossed away like an afterthought and serving no real purpose. I might have read some message into that had there clearly being a barren desert in place of any narrative intent. 4/10

Fatherhood

  Kevin Hart does Ok. Nothing new to say as a film. Passed the time but not particularly engaging. The definition o an average film. My wife liked it. She fancies Hart. I see a correlation.
— Just saw Netflix description "heartfelt drama (hmmm, maybe) with a lot of humour" - no. 5/10

[rjd2]

Scandal Sheet 8/10

Slightly daft but highly engaging thriller/noir? which at only 80 mins is an engaging watch. An editor has lowered the tone of a supposedly respectable newspaper chasing money and his new idea is a date night where he recognizes someone very familiar.



The Naked Kiss 8/10

More 50's Noir!

Touring escort meets a rather sleazy cop and they do what adults do. However our lead very quickly tries to leave the life of vice to work with handicapped kids and then falls in love with the town success story. Its much more subversive than I thought a film from the fifties would be however and is only slightly let down by a rushed finale.

Black Book 7/10

Verhoeven delivering one of his most crowd pleasing films set in WW2 Netherlands where the resistance fight the Nazi's, our lead aka Melisandre from GOT who as a Jew is tasked with seducing head of the Gestapo. Its one of his most accessible films, but nonetheless it had plenty of twists and maintained a decent level of tension all the way through.

[zomgmouse]

Lust in the Dust. Maybe the first Paul Bartel film I"ve actively enjoyed? I guess Death Race 2000 was kind of fun. I'm just still sore over how disappointed I was by Eating Raoul, it seemed like exactly my kind of film but just felt flat and unfunny. Anyway, this spoof camp Western stars Divine and Tab Hunter (just post-Polyester) and has some very funny moments, and other not so funny but still entertaining moments. The plot if you wish to call it that involves some missing gold and a small town full of misery. Enjoyable.

he Naked Kiss 8/10

More 50's Noir!

Touring escort meets a rather sleazy cop and they do what adults do. However our lead very quickly tries to leave the life of vice to work with handicapped kids and then falls in love with the town success story. Its much more subversive than I thought a film from the fifties would be however and is only slightly let down by a rushed finale.

Hooray for Sam Fuller!

[phantom_power]

Hukkle (2002) - Hungarian minimalist film with practically no dialogue. It appears there is no plot and it is just a slice of life of a small village in Hungary but as it goes on a plot unfolds more through inference than being shown. A pretty unique film that I still haven't properly digested or worked out if I liked or not. It reminded me a bit of Roy Andersson but without the locked-off camera, pale face paint and dialogue

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

Ad Astra (2019)
Watching it now. I can't hear a fucking thing anyone says! I would crank up the volume, but then I'd be deafened by all the other sounds/music (plus ad breaks). I think it's trying to be a sort of Apocalypse Now thing, but with daddy issues instead of PTSD.

Looks nice tho.

I was quite looking forward to seeing this, but it never hit the cinemas near us (and I was too lazy to seek it out by other means). Having finally watched it, it wasn't quite what I was expecting. I knew from the trailer that there was a car chase on the moon, but it was quite a bit more violent than I thought it would be. It seemed awkwardly placed between an action movie and the sort of contemplative '70s style sci-fi that it's very obviously imitating.

Overall, I think I liked it, but I'd probably need to see it again to be sure.

The plot was a bit silly. Was it really necessary for Pitt to go all the way to Mars, through moon bandits and SPACE BABOONS just to read a message? Could he not have done that on Earth, or got someone else to do it? His dad probably wouldn't even recognise his voice after 30 years.

It did look rather nice, didn't it. It did some of the same visual ideas as Blade Runner 2049, with the heavy colour tints, but less dull. The scene when he meets Ruth Negga on Mars - with everything all orange and then the light sweeps away - has really lodged itself in my brain.

I didn't have a problem hearing the dialogue. I'm not sure whether the voiceover was all that necessary, or just another Apocalypse Now (or Heart of Darkness) thing.

Spoiler alert

I wish the space baboons had been on the moon. "Moon baboon" is fun to say.

[close]

[Sonny_Jim]

I Am Mother

I remember thinking this was alright and then getting extremely angry and shouting at the screen toward the end of this.  Can't remember exactly why though.  Reading the plot synopsis it was probably when:

Spoiler alert

Hilary Swank gets bumped off

[close]

[Armed Traffic Warden]

I remember thinking this was alright and then getting extremely angry and shouting at the screen toward the end of this.  Can't remember exactly why though.  Reading the plot synopsis it was probably when:

Spoiler alert

Hilary Swank gets bumped off

[close]

SPOILERS BELOW - edited as forgot to spoiler protect post. Sorry.
It was an odd one. It seemed like no one new what the point of the story was.
  As is the super AI who decided to wipe out humanity to start again is persuaded that one person, who it's taught will be enough to start over and build a brave new world. It makes no sense seeing as so much of what drives humanities ills is how we deal with power and each other socially and the AI has no idea how the main character will act when confronted with these. Let alone all the new people she will bring up. The AI is not played as being stupid. It really fucked what had been an intriguing film. Maybe I've missed something and the ending's great but it just seems to undermine everything it set up.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Triangle (2009) - A slightly less good Timecrimes, but on a boat.

[Armed Traffic Warden]

Clue Wonderful film where it seems like everyone is having a whale of a time. I've seen it before and my family and I love it. Curry is one of those actors who, when I look at their IMDb, I wish they'd done more. He always delivers, if nothing else, an eye catching performance. That said, this film is all about the ensemble. 9/10

[samadriel]

Clue Wonderful film where it seems like everyone is having a whale of a time. I've seen it before and my family and I love it. Curry is one of those actors who, when I look at their IMDb, I wish they'd done more. He always delivers, if nothing else, an eye catching performance. That said, this film is all about the ensemble. 9/10

I just rewatched this a few weeks back,  and it's brilliant.  I don't really know why I loved it when I was a kid, but I wasn't wrong, it's great fun. I was surprised that the all-three-endings version doesn't feel repetitive; the last ending is a crescendo after the more modest first two.

[Small Man Big Horse]

Hukkle (2002) - Hungarian minimalist film with practically no dialogue. It appears there is no plot and it is just a slice of life of a small village in Hungary but as it goes on a plot unfolds more through inference than being shown. A pretty unique film that I still haven't properly digested or worked out if I liked or not. It reminded me a bit of Roy Andersson but without the locked-off camera, pale face paint and dialogue

That's been sitting on my hard drive for a long time now, I really enjoyed the same director's Taxidermia and Final Cut: Ladies & Gentlemen, so I'm not sure why I haven't seen it but hopefully will finally get my arse in to gear now.

And count me in as another Clue fan, it was a rare film that my Sister and I bonded over as teens, and when I watched it a few years back I loved it just as much, and sometimes still find myself singing "I am your singing telegram" when visiting friends as they open the door, though sadly not one of the bastards has shot me dead yet.

[Sebastian Cobb]

My American Friend - nice little noir with Dennis Hopper in Hamburg and Paris. Wim Wenders always makes me want to visit Germany.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Copland - quite good police corruption thing where Sly Stallone is a lowly sheriff dealing with a bunch of corrupt cops, has a great cast with Ray Liotta, Harvey Kietel, Edie Falco, Robert Patrick and De Niro.

[Armed Traffic Warden]

Passengers
 I was enjoying it a lot until they went with a KaBLAmOO ending that resolved the drama in an unsatisfying, 'he saved her so everything is fine now' Hollywood way.
  I thought I might be surprised my an interesting, moral, ethical and emotional ending and instead got fast tracked to the 'happily ever after' minus any character development via 'wow look at those explosions, I hope the hero doesn't DIe!!'
  Sorry to labour the point. I'm disappointed. 30 minutes away from being an intriguing, involving sci-fi drama. It wasn't brilliant up until then but it was heading for an 7-8/10.
5/10

[Sonny_Jim]

Yeah Passengers spends about 30 seconds on 'Ooh, what are the moral implications of waking someone up knowing that you are dooming them to a fate you've chosen' and 1h 40m on trying to be a space rom com.  Needs to be remade with low/no budget and less star power.

Even though it's a bit shit, I quite enjoyed Mission 88 because it's low budget sci-fi that tries to do a lot with very little.  Basically the opposite of Passengers.  Although TBF unless you are a Casper Van Dien fan give it a swerve.  I mean, it's perfect casting for the role because the character is essentially 'friendly but thick army man', but I found him mildly grating after a while.  3.5/5

Oh and whilst I'm rattling off low budget sci-fi:

ARQ is one of those single room sci fi mind benders.  Not bad 3/5.

Prospect with yer man Pedro Pascal is another low budget one that doesn't feel the need to explain everything and I really loved the aesthetic of the space ship interiors. 4.5/5

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

I thought Passengers was a decent enough film myself. Was it just a victim of overPratturation?

I saw an interesting suggestion that it should have begun with Jennifer Lawrence waking up, thus making it a big shocking twist when she finds out what Pratt did. I remember a lot of people saying his crime was tantamount to murder, but it's closer to kidnapping - her life hasn't been cut short by his actions, but she's forced to spend the rest of it with him against her will. It's still a terrible fate and perhaps the film goes too easy on him overall, but I thought it explained his frame of mind more than adequately. With a few script tweaks, it could work as an allegory for what can happen when society's systems leave people isolated.

[Famous Mortimer]

I thought Passengers was a decent enough film myself. Was it just a victim of overPratturation?

I saw an interesting suggestion that it should have begun with Jennifer Lawrence waking up, thus making it a big shocking twist when she finds out what Pratt did. I remember a lot of people saying his crime was tantamount to murder, but it's closer to kidnapping - her life hasn't been cut short by his actions, but she's forced to spend the rest of it with him against her will. It's still a terrible fate and perhaps the film goes too easy on him overall, but I thought it explained his frame of mind more than adequately. With a few script tweaks, it could work as an allegory for what can happen when society's systems leave people isolated.

From my memory, the movie is a little too kind to Pratt, but I'm not sure that film would have been made with stars of that magnitude any other way.

[Armed Traffic Warden]

I thought Passengers was a decent enough film myself. Was it just a victim of overPratturation?

I saw an interesting suggestion that it should have begun with Jennifer Lawrence waking up, thus making it a big shocking twist when she finds out what Pratt did. I remember a lot of people saying his crime was tantamount to murder, but it's closer to kidnapping - her life hasn't been cut short by his actions, but she's forced to spend the rest of it with him against her will. It's still a terrible fate and perhaps the film goes too easy on him overall, but I thought it explained his frame of mind more than adequately. With a few script tweaks, it could work as an allegory for what can happen when society's systems leave people isolated.

I agree that it did a good job setting up the concept of a person doing something selfish and reprehensible yet also understandable in the circumstances. The problem for me came in having nothing to say as to how you move past that dilemma; indeed IF you can at all. I thought the cast were fine but the film just throws away it's own premise so pointlessly. It's odd because it's clearly not a film anyone would have thought 'this'll bring the kids in' about so why not follow through on the concept rather than back out and do a paint by numbers Hollywood ending. It was never going to be a deep analysis of the human condition but it could had something worthwhile to say.

[zomgmouse]

What a Way to Go!. Seen mixed reviews for this but I found this incredibly inventive and whimsical, particularly the sections that replicated/parodied film styles. Plus what a joy to watch this all-star cast: Shirley MacLaine, Dean Martin, Paul Newman, Robert Mitchum and Gene Kelly... and it looks fantastic, so bright and colourful.

Penn & Teller Get Killed. The comedy magic duo star as themselves amidst layers and layers of fake and real assassination attempts. The final theatrical release of Arthur Penn, an interesting choice for this. It's fun.

Straight to Hell. Alex Cox pulling out magic in a desert. Feels like Tarantino and Rodriguez owe their entire careers to this film. Might be better on a rewatch, it's somehow sparse and dense at the same time.

Burning Palms. A very pre-Happy Death Day Christopher Landon directs this anthology of sex and violence. Sadly despite a couple of ok moments it's largely not very good at all.

My First Mister. Charming comedy-drama with Leelee Sobieski as a troubled teenager who meets Albert Brooks' repressed middle-aged man and they strike up a friendship. Somehow despite the somewhat cliché, somewhat hokey sentimentality it got to me, some fantastic writing and Brooks pulling in a wonderful performance.

[Sebastian Cobb]

I've had Straight to Hell in the pile for a while but haven't got around to it.

Last night I watched The Sinful Nuns of St Valentine, sleazy 70's Italian Nunsploitation spin on Romeo and Juliet essentially.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

I agree that it did a good job setting up the concept of a person doing something selfish and reprehensible yet also understandable in the circumstances. The problem for me came in having nothing to say as to how you move past that dilemma; indeed IF you can at all... it's clearly not a film anyone would have thought 'this'll bring the kids in' about so why not follow through on the concept rather than back out and do a paint by numbers Hollywood ending.

I wouldn't be surprised if the ending was originally intended to be more ambiguous, but it's not too hard to see why some studio bigwig would think it had broad appeal and push for something more uplifting: Two hot young stars in a slick looking sci-fi romance with a bit of action mixed in. Just paper over that whole pesky moral grey area with a last minute "happily ever after" voiceover and you're set (never mind if it undermines the theme of the whole film and sends a dodgy message).

[SteveDave]

Time After Time

After seeing Malcolm McDowell post a tribute to David Warner, we watched this last night. It felt a bit like Robert Zemeckis directing a TV movie. But in a good way. I enjoyed David Warner's sly "Ninety years ago I was a freak. Today I'm an amateur"

Also, one of his San Francisco victims made me laugh my head off by saying "Holy shit! Flowers!" as she opened the door to him.

[dissolute ocelot]

Rififi (1955) Classic heist movie. Problematic because Jean Servais plays a miserable bastard thief who brutalises a woman for no good reason. But the famous half-hour heist sequence is indeed excellent, and nicely mundane - no phony ratcheting up tension, lots of worrying how they'll get all the dust off their clothes. The preparations are also very well done, such that you almost believe you could rob a jeweller after watching it. At the end it goes a bit expressionistic which is also fun although apparently not to everybody's taste. Plus, nice Parisian locations, the night-club performance is cool (although I'm still not entirely sure what "rififi" is), and the cast is full of interesting-looking international people, even if there's nothing very surprising or psychologically insightful. Very entertaining apart from the occasional brutality which sadly is very much of its time.