What Non-New Films Have You Seen? (2024 Edition)

[Gulftastic]

Title for sequel: 'Fast FamIIly'
 

[dissolute ocelot]

Title for sequel: 'Fast FamIIly'
 

FasTEN your seatbelts would have been great for the last one. But they would rather have an X. Not sure if they've given up on the Furious aspect, but Six Fast, Half A Dozen Furious for 12. Or just Crank 3. I guess we should be glad they're the only family who doesn't do incest porn. Is Mission Impossible this bad?

[DelurkedToHelp]

Nomadland is a slog. I get how you can interpret it as a criticism of the American Dream or whatever but it doesn't have any bite to it. McDormand's various jobs are never that bad, she never enters in any real difficulty/danger. It's like a glorified road trip movie with "sad piano" Gervais bits as this forum describes them as.

X (2022) - it felt like there was above-average hype/praise for this but I checked the Wikipedia page while watching and saw it only grossed $15m so while that's a good return on its $1m budget, it wasn't the huge box-office smash I thought it might have been. Perhaps it's because Jenna Ortega seems to be everywhere since it came out.  It was alright, not brilliant but not crap either. I liked the effect of the van's headlight turning red when the cameraman's blood splattered on it. I thought Ortega would have had a bigger role, or one with some sort of great twist which might explain why her star appears to have risen so much off the back of this but no. The old granny's makeup was something you'd expect Knoxville or another one of the Jackass' crew to don for a prank. Her fella looked like Rob Brydon 10 20 years from now.

[Mobius]

I watched "The Matrix" last night, for the first time in 20+ years

It was actually pretty bloody good, expected it to be a load of rubbish now but it's aged pretty well. I actually haven't seen the sequels and although I understand them to be shite, I am still going to watch them to flesh this world out.

[dissolute ocelot]

Watched The Last Movie (Dennis Hopper, 1971) - it's surprisingly entertaining, although quite misogynistic at times (don't know what it is with westerns and Latin America that directors think they can treat women like shit - I've heard it claimed it's a denunciation of the morality both of the western film and of Catholic-dominated Latin America, but surely only in part). But Laszlo Kovacs does a great job photographing it, there's atmospheric music including Kris Kristofferson, a good cast (including Sam Fuller as a director), some great sequences, and lots of people getting shot. Kinda derivative of Godard, but also definitely a personal statement by a crazy person.

[Sonny_Jim]

In my last rewatch of The Matrix I found parts of it very wooden and cliched, but then I remember that's because it's Keanu Reeves and it wasn't a cliche at the time it was made.

Watched Blade Runner in 4k the other day, some of the darker interior scenes were a little bit lost in film grain but goddamn did the exterior city shots look absolutely fantastic, you could see all the little windows and everything.  Any other films people can recommend that only get better in 4K?

[checkoutgirl]

Jeremiah Johnson (1972) sees Robert Redford put his military past behind him to become a rugged outdoorsman in a Davy Crockett hat. Two thirds in he turns into a kill crazy psychopath killing injuns, which I didn't expect.

It's sort of a missed opportunity because it could be more ambitious but it also has a lot to be said for as well. Lots of location filming in the wilderness, trees and mountains. Great performance by Redford and some decent action.

It's ponderous at times but that allows you to take in the scenery and get a feel for why someone would leave society to be a trapper.

If you want Robert Redford with a dead raccoon on his head it's to be recommended.

[jfjnpxmy]

I've been ill so I've been watching plenty films innit

Edge of Tomorrow - Really enjoyed this, despite the shite name and the initial premise being bobbins. If the Mimics are invading the whole world AND they've eaten everyone in mainland Europe, why would you need a slick PR guy to "sell" people on the war? Also why are they called Mimics when they don't mimic anything? Regardless, this was a highly enjoyable action comedy, Tom Cruise sells the transition from slimy coward to war-weary murder avatar very well, Emily Blunt manages to make a thin caricature into an actual character, the big smug faced drill sergeant was great fun and

Spoiler alert

when the big blue alien graphically melts Tom Cruise's face ten minutes in

[close]

I proper gasped.

ALTHOUGH, when they're doing the biznizz with the spinny blades on the firing range, Tom Cruise keeps firing up range, where there's people milling around. A health and safety nightmare.

District 9 - Also really enjoyed this! I really like how Blomkamp films make wonky outlandish tech look really plausible and grimy and used. Sharlto Copley is really good as Wikus, the CGI bug monsters are really well done, Seth Efrickens being proper rekka coonts to each other is always entertaining. If I have a complaint [AND I FUCKING DO] - the scary bald headed murder merc has them at his mercy, like, twenty-five different times and never just caps them, despite the fact that they keep escaping. Fair enough he's supposed to be a sadistic fucker, but yeesh, learn from your mistakes you big rockspider, you.

Call Me By Your Name - Absolute shite, this, innit? A bunch of boring posh cunts swan around being boring and posh, and then there's a paedo and you're supposed to think that's good. Yer man Chalamet is a vat-grown Good Actor rather than an actual good actor and spends 395 fun-free minutes moping around being cunty. Armie Hammer is a great big sex weird named after toothpaste who, despite looking like a Greek god, has fuck all charisma or screen presence PLUS he wants to eat ladies what the fuck is that about. By the zillionth Meaningful Gaze Exchange I was hoping the Nigerian warlord from District 9 would come in and eat Hammer's arm, see how that cunt likes it.

Vivarium - Young couple go to a house viewing in a weird suburb, then find they can't leave the suburb, then are tasked with raising a creepy little wanker of a bairn. Enjoyable enough, although the middle third drags a bit - I get that their life is monotonous, but by showing me such great detail on that monotony I am just going to get bored and tune out. Jesse Eisenberg a rather odd casting choice as a rough, tough works-with-his-hands landscaper but eh whatcha gonna do.

10 Cloverfield Lane - Well this was cracking. Wifey has a car accident, wakes up in John Goodman's doomsday bunker, then there's Twists and Turns. Goodman absolutely runs this film,  managing to balance "lovably pathetic" and "absolutely fucking terrifying" perfectly, every time he was on screen my arse was clenching. Also shout out to

Spoiler alert

the mental woman who shows up at the airlock door and starts smashing her face against the glass

[close]

cause she absolutely acted the buggery out of it. Proper scary,

Tell ya what though - Mary Elizabeth Winstead's character is helping with the wiring. She's helping shift acid. She's doing a job of manual work - barefoot. Put your bloody shoes on, woman, there's swarf and screws and fuck knows what else lying around. Your boots are right next to your mattress ffs. Health and safety is everyone's responsibility.

Legend - The one about the Krays, rather than the one about Tim Curry being a sexy devil. It was alright, not entirely sure what [if any] point it was trying to make. Tom Hardy's a good actor but his inability to Just Talk Normal is proper wearisome, and in this film he gets to do twice as many funny voices and it got a bit grating. By minute 45 I was dancing around like Dobby, all "TOM'S DOING A VOICE, TOM'S DOING A VOICE, EVERYBODY QUIET CAUSE TOM'S DOING A VOICE". Emily Browning is well good, wonder why she's not in more stuff.

Whiplash - Didn't like this. JK Simmons is good value, and seeing Miles Teller's sneery cunt face getting skelped is always nice, but the film itself is a whole load of fuck all. Was getting well fed up of hearing the intro to Whiplash every 5 seconds, too. There needs to be a name for dramas where it's middle class cunts with no real problems making problems for themselves, and then that genre needs to be banned.

Les Miserables - You know, people [rightly] slagged Cats, but at least it was a genuinely weird and memorable disaster, where every five minutes something will make me clutch my head and go "Fuck's sake WHAT" and each rewatch yields more and more mistakes and oddities. Les Mis is Tom Hooper's real fuckup. You have Les Mis, one of the biggest and grandest musicals ever, big fucking cast, sweeping scope, action, villains, heroes, tragedy derring-do, big showstopper tunes every five minutes...and Hooper makes it boring. It's all shitty half-spoken renditions of songs ground-up written to be fucking belted out, and rather than taking the chance to make everything HUGE Hooper instead turns everything into a series of close up face shots and somehow manages to make 20 years of high melodrama seem like a book club meeting got a bit heated. Redmayne cannot fucking sing, Seyfried cannot fucking sing, Jackman can fucking sing but they keep making him do croaky talky, jesus fuck why does Helena Bonham Carter have a career, Samantha Barks should have played everyone and I really like her eyebrows.

[Sonny_Jim]

Emily Blunt slowly raising from the floor during their initial meeting is the only memory I have of Edge of Tomorrow and I don't want to ruin it by rewatching it.

District 9 is good, but his other film Elysium is basically like watching District 9 but having someone loudly explaining the intricacies of the plot to you.  Fair play you managed to tick off some good sci-fi films there.  Trying to think what to suggest, maybe as a swerve ball 2010: The year we make contact.  I reckon it's been massively overshadowed by it's predecessor because it's a solid movie, John Lithgow before he had to be a screaming maniac in each role.  It's a much easier watch than 2001 as well.

[checkoutgirl]

Agree about 10 Cloverfield Lane. It keeps you guessing and John Goodman is fantastic.

[Minami Minegishi]

Call Me By Your Name - Absolute shite, this, innit? A bunch of boring posh cunts swan around being boring and posh, and then there's a paedo and you're supposed to think that's good. Yer man Chalamet is a vat-grown Good Actor rather than an actual good actor and spends 395 fun-free minutes moping around being cunty. Armie Hammer is a great big sex weird named after toothpaste who, despite looking like a Greek god, has fuck all charisma or screen presence PLUS he wants to eat ladies what the fuck is that about. By the zillionth Meaningful Gaze Exchange I was hoping the Nigerian warlord from District 9 would come in and eat Hammer's arm, see how that cunt likes it.

Whiplash - Didn't like this. JK Simmons is good value, and seeing Miles Teller's sneery cunt face getting skelped is always nice, but the film itself is a whole load of fuck all. Was getting well fed up of hearing the intro to Whiplash every 5 seconds, too. There needs to be a name for dramas where it's middle class cunts with no real problems making problems for themselves, and then that genre needs to be banned.

Marry me?

I despise both of these films. How do you get on with Luca's other films?

What about Joanna Hogg?

Also, have you seen Afire from last year? It fits that genre you mention (that I also hate) but somehow I enjoyed it.

[El Unicornio, mang]

Edge of Tomorrow - Really enjoyed this, despite the shite name and the initial premise being bobbins.

Doug Liman, who said he rejected the title All You Need Is Kill because it "didn't feel like it was the tone of the movie I had made", wanted to rename the film Live Die Repeat, but Warner decided to use that just as the tagline

But yeah I liked that one as well.

[phantom_power]

Not just a shite name but THREE shite names

[dissolute ocelot]

Les Miserables - You know, people [rightly] slagged Cats, but at least it was a genuinely weird and memorable disaster, where every five minutes something will make me clutch my head and go "Fuck's sake WHAT" and each rewatch yields more and more mistakes and oddities. Les Mis is Tom Hooper's real fuckup. You have Les Mis, one of the biggest and grandest musicals ever, big fucking cast, sweeping scope, action, villains, heroes, tragedy derring-do, big showstopper tunes every five minutes...and Hooper makes it boring. It's all shitty half-spoken renditions of songs ground-up written to be fucking belted out, and rather than taking the chance to make everything HUGE Hooper instead turns everything into a series of close up face shots and somehow manages to make 20 years of high melodrama seem like a book club meeting got a bit heated. Redmayne cannot fucking sing, Seyfried cannot fucking sing, Jackman can fucking sing but they keep making him do croaky talky, jesus fuck why does Helena Bonham Carter have a career, Samantha Barks should have played everyone and I really like her eyebrows.

Russell Crowe's performance in this is astonishingly bad. Hugh Jackman is a proper multi-hyphenate who can sing and dance when not disembowelling people, but Crowe is a limited actor at the best of times (he can be surly and hit people and is sometimes good at that) and literally anyone who's ever been in a film would be better casting. I'm not sure if this was explicitly part of the 00s/10s fashion for casting actors who can't sing in musicals (see Sweeney Todd, Mamma Mia, stuff Woody Allen did, Emma Watson, La La Land, etc), but I hope that's finished now.

[frajer]

'Who's Harry Crumb?'

Never knew much about this other than it was supposed to be crap, but Amazon Prime were pushing it, I love John Candy and this love had been bolstered by rewatching Planes, Trains and Automobiles and Home Alone over the Christmas period. Thought I'd give it a watch as surely there'd be a few easy chuckles in it.

Nope. What an absolute honking pile of hackneyed shit. It's a star vehicle for Candy (which should be a good thing) but he is massively irritating as a smug private eye who doesn't get stuff right but inexplicably gets results, which would be an ok conceit for a comedy, except the film regularly forgets this and so he's just thick and spends a lot of screentime getting it wrong to little or no impact, or humour.

He does a lot of pratfalls but the direction is so staid they're never amusing and you're often just left wondering 'is he alright?' but if you were a passerby you probably wouldn't even care enough to go up and ask. Also at one point he browns up to go undercover as an air conditioning repair man, even though he doesn't need a disguise (and definitely not a racist one) and it's exactly as bad as you'd think.

A few bonus points for Annie 'Ghostbusters, whaddya want?' Potts being decent in it but other than that an absolute waste of their time and mine. Basically posting this to warn others off it.

[jonnyunitus]

In my last rewatch of The Matrix I found parts of it very wooden and cliched, but then I remember that's because it's Keanu Reeves and it wasn't a cliche at the time it was made.

Watched Blade Runner in 4k the other day, some of the darker interior scenes were a little bit lost in film grain but goddamn did the exterior city shots look absolutely fantastic, you could see all the little windows and everything.  Any other films people can recommend that only get better in 4K?

The Shining and Mulholland Drive are two that immediately spring to mind, both look stunning

[Clownbaby]

The Lure

I kept going past this on Netflix and should have just watched it straightaway, because I really liked it. It's a Polish campy, eerie horror musical that felt like a strange combination of Splash, Let The Right One In and Hedwig & The Angry Inch, if you can imagine that. Not what I was expecting at all, and judging by reviews I've read, not everyone's cup of tea. Two mermaid girls seduce a family band who play in a sleazy cabaret, and become part of the band, overshadowing them as the act everyone wants to see, because they're sexy mermaid girls. It's a sort of retelling of the Little Mermaid, not a perfect film, but very beautifully shot, with a strange, sticky atmosphere.

[checkoutgirl]

Love Story (1970). Yip, that one. Ryan O'Neal died a few weeks so I immediately downloaded this. So popular apparently Ali McGraw's character's name became the most popular in America.

O'Neal and McGraw play star crossed lovers in college in Cambridge Massachusetts. O'Neal is the heir to a fortune and a huge mansion but wait, the dad doesn't approve of his missus.

The plot is as old as time but I was charmed by the leads. To the point where the cheesy "Love is..." line even got me. Must be going daft in my middle age. Or maybe the psychological effects of covid fucked my brain sufficiently to enjoy this film.

If you're looking for some PG romance this is fine.

[convulsivespace]

Les Miserables - You know, people [rightly] slagged Cats, but at least it was a genuinely weird and memorable disaster, where every five minutes something will make me clutch my head and go "Fuck's sake WHAT" and each rewatch yields more and more mistakes and oddities. Les Mis is Tom Hooper's real fuckup. You have Les Mis, one of the biggest and grandest musicals ever, big fucking cast, sweeping scope, action, villains, heroes, tragedy derring-do, big showstopper tunes every five minutes...and Hooper makes it boring. It's all shitty half-spoken renditions of songs ground-up written to be fucking belted out, and rather than taking the chance to make everything HUGE Hooper instead turns everything into a series of close up face shots and somehow manages to make 20 years of high melodrama seem like a book club meeting got a bit heated. Redmayne cannot fucking sing, Seyfried cannot fucking sing, Jackman can fucking sing but they keep making him do croaky talky, jesus fuck why does Helena Bonham Carter have a career, Samantha Barks should have played everyone and I really like her eyebrows.

One of my favourite Hollywood musicals from recent years precisely because the lead actors aren't particularly good singers and thus don't ruin it with the hammy Broadway warbling that is a curse on the genre. Great movie.

[madhair60]

watched Edge of TOmorrow. it was ok

[Tarquin]

The Mothman Prophecies (2002)
Shocked me that this was as late as 2002. About as X-Files as you can get. It wasn't very good.

Little Shop of Horrors (1986)
A directors cut that is hugely different. Loved it in '86 but I would've been booing with the test audiences if I'd seen "this". Now it's a great curio. The slow eating of Audrey is a great "what the hell were you thinking" scene. Then a parody of Patton followed by shot after shot of plants smashing through buildings.

Think this one tops Kingdom of Heaven for the most different directors cut until (will never happed) the World War Z cut appears.

[rjd2]

Fists In The Pocket 8/10
A lot going on here.
The lead portrayed brilliantly by Lou Castel is a teenager with epilepsy who has a very complicated relationship with his middle class family. He loathes his mentally challenged brother and blind mother, lusts after his scheming sister and is envious but also protective of his hugely successful brother who holds the family together.

Its not really a film of twists and turns , more a character study of so many odd people and of course the absurdities of families. Very gothic looking , a banger of a soundtrack from Ennio Morricone also helps.

Women On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown 8/10

This is very early and silly Almodovar and immense fun. Soap actress is dumped by  a Lothario as she plots revenge her day is interrupted by a lot of absurd people. He has made more meaningful films, but at less than 90 minutes its very easy to recommend.

My Name Is Joe 8/10

A Loach film I only hear of the other week. Peter Mullen as a sincere but broken alcoholic haunted by previous mistakes, falls in love but as always in these scenarios, he can't escape his past.

Its quite moving, has some funny soccer scenes, the supporting cast most notably David Hayman smash it, but tour de force from Mullen is what makes it a must watch.

[Sebastian Cobb]

My Name is Joe is incredible. It's not my favourite Loach (that probably goes to Land and Freedom), but it's very strong and well made, I always found the scenes between Joe and Sarah as things developed really nice and heartfelt. Louise Goodall should've gone further after it imo.

Although looking at IMDB she's in this which I never knew existed and must track down at once: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0168446/

[El Unicornio, mang]

Little Shop of Horrors (1986)
A directors cut that is hugely different. Loved it in '86 but I would've been booing with the test audiences if I'd seen "this". Now it's a great curio. The slow eating of Audrey is a great "what the hell were you thinking" scene. Then a parody of Patton followed by shot after shot of plants smashing through buildings.
.

Also noteworthy that the original 1960 film is public domain

[sevendaughters]

The Mothman Prophecies (2002)
Shocked me that this was as late as 2002. About as X-Files as you can get. It wasn't very good.

Low playing over the final credits is weird too - well, a shitty remix of them.

[Mobius]

The Matrix Reloaded wasn't as good as the first one. There was some cool action scenes though.

The ghost twins/key maker car truck chase on the freeway was fairly sick

I can't believe it ended with a "to be concluded" though, I bet people weren't happy about that at the time.

[Bad Ambassador]

It was widely publicised that it was a two-part film with the halves released six months apart, and with a trailer for part 3 after the credits.

[Blumf]

Yeah, we were more unhappy with the film being stupid, than the expected TBC at the end. Then, six months later, we were even more unhappy with the utter nonsensical thrown up on screen.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Don't want to be mega-contrarian or owt but quite surpised how the matrix is seen to 'not look dated' I reckon this [decade old] criticism of it is kind of on the money really.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/7b7kje/the-matrix-is-dated-and-embarrassing

[Blumf]

Don't want to be mega-contrarian or owt but quite surpised how the matrix is seen to 'not look dated' I reckon this [decade old] criticism of it is kind of on the money really.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/7b7kje/the-matrix-is-dated-and-embarrassing

The Matrix suffers from being yet another goddamn movie where evil computers want to destroy the planet. Sorry, but in 2014, we're all much more aware that it's not technology that will destroy us, but the wealthy industrialists who seek to wield it for their own personal gain

Yeeeeah, nah, stopped reading there.