What Non-New Films Have You Seen? (2023 Edition)

[Blinder Data]

The Skin I Live In (Pedro Almodovar 2011)

Only seen this the once but the feeling of disquiet and "ick" generally is unforgettable. Probably my favourite Almodovar I've seen, though it's probably atypical? Strongly recommend anybody watches this without knowing anything in advance.

[Dr Rock]

You should try Official Competition, with Cruz and Banderas, it's not an Almodovar film although feels like one to the point I thought it was when I first saw the trailer.

Thanks, acquiring it now!

[zomgmouse]

synchronic - justin benson & aaron moorhead time travel sci-fi - liked this a lot; as with pretty much all of their work there's this deep reality that grounds the fantastical conceits, and the way the two mix is quite compelling. here it possibly slides into cliché a little much but there's still enough of the awe to keep you engaged.

You should try Official Competition, with Cruz and Banderas, it's not an Almodovar film although feels like one to the point I thought it was when I first saw the trailer.

would also recommend the recent almodóvar parallel mothers, up there with his best work i think

[Dr Rock]

would also recommend the recent almodóvar parallel mothers, up there with his best work i think

Just watched that, I liked it but I don't know if I'd consider it his best. Julieta is haunting, and Broken Embraces is tops too.

[sevendaughters]

fun fact but Almodovar doesn't make bad films

[zomgmouse]

Just watched that, I liked it but I don't know if I'd consider it his best. Julieta is haunting, and Broken Embraces is tops too.

something about its wounded wistfulness really got to me i think, hugely impactful particularly at the end. women on the verge is his quintessential work though i think

WAIT i just realised i meant pain & glory. parallel mothers was very good but pain & glory was the late-career masterpiece that i was actually thinking of. i got it mixed up because cruz plays a mother in it as well

fun fact but Almodovar doesn't make bad films

tie me up tie me down begs to differ

[sevendaughters]

I like Parallel Mothers and Pain & Glory about the same. End of P&G pretty brutal.

[Dr Rock]

WAIT i just realised i meant pain & glory. parallel mothers was very good but pain & glory was the late-career masterpiece

Yes! Pain & Glory is excellent.

[Inspector Norse]

fun fact but Almodovar doesn't make bad films

No not really but I do always have this weird feeling with his films that they're not quite finished. Always leave the audience wanting more and that, but he often seems to have lots of ideas for character and atmosphere and a set-up but then nowhere to go with it.

[Inspector Norse]

Silvia Prieto Speaking of films with lots of character and atmosphere that don't go anywhere, I loved this: low-key, quirkily comic drama of a bunch of aimless twentysomethings in '90s Buenos Aires struggling to connect with themselves and others. Sweetly acted by a no-name cast (the lead Rosario Bléfari was better known as a singer in Argentina, and sadly died a couple of years ago), a timeless look at timewasting and a film that has a peculiarly optimistic slant on impulsive decisions and mistakes.

[Sebastian Cobb]

fun fact but Almodovar doesn't make bad films

Agreed, I dunno if best because it's very silly but I really like Live Flesh.

[Dr Rock]

You should try Official Competition, with Cruz and Banderas, it's not an Almodovar film although feels like one to the point I thought it was when I first saw the trailer.

Just saw it, it was great. I didn't like Penelope's hair, but it was made up for when I saw her unshaven armpit.

Worked well, if not too subtle, as a satire on actors and pretentious directors (Cruz in this case)

[Sebastian Cobb]

Nice, glad you liked it!

[Famous Mortimer]

Star Portal (1997)

Roger Corman produced this "cover version" of his 50s gem "Not Of This Earth", not the first time he's gone back to that particular well. It's possible he was offered Athena Massey, a ludicrously attractive lady who appeared in a few B-movies in the mid / late 90s before hopefully finding a less exploitative line of work, and figured this was the best way to get her to disrobe in the least trashy way possible.

Anyway, she's about to commit suicide when she's possessed by an alien, who needs to send blood back to her home planet to find a cure for a disease that's wiping them all out. But, due to her not understanding our Earth ways, she just kills a bunch of people, after having taken over the psychic store / secret whorehouse of her first victim. She's helped by a sexy Earth doctor, and there's one alien from a race of disease-wiper-outers who comes to finish off the last carrier.

Absolute bobbins, of course, but Massey is fun even when you're shouting at her to try harder at blending in, and Steven Bauer as the doctor seems like he's having a good time playing against type (he's normally a badass fighting type). 

[Small Man Big Horse]

Zombie Girl The Movie (2009) - A documentary about twelve year old Emily who is trying to make a feature length film, it's a curious affair, the first third sees Emily talk about her love for films while her parents are extremely supportive, but unfortunately as she lives in Austin, Texas, Harry Knowles pops up as a talking head far too often. The second two thirds are a mixture of her Mother's increasing frustration and Emily proving herself to be full of ambition but unsurprisingly making mistakes and there's just not enough substance to make a documentary about the family. It tries to be dramatic about minor tiffs between the Mother and Daughter which ultimately feel a bit silly as there's so little depth, and the amount of detail it goes in to on the editing side makes it quite dull viewing, and even at 89 minutes it's far too long and it only needed to be 45 minutes. Still, on the plus side she is still making films today, so at least the story has a happy ending. 5.0/10

[Small Man Big Horse]

Due to the above I also watched this today:

My Sucky Teen Romance (2011) - The third movie from Emily Hagins, who was the subject of Zombie Girl The Movie as she made her first film aged 12 / 13, this is a much more professional effort and if you caught it on Netflix bar the occasional dodgy piece of acting you'd presume it was from someone much much more experienced. It's more fun than I thought it'd be too, there's the odd clunky bit of editing and the script has a few weak points, but there's a fair few decent jokes and it knows not to take itself seriously. 6.4/10

[Famous Mortimer]

Undercover (aka Undercover Heat), 1995

Another in my Athena Massey mini-season, this one is another very well-trodden plot. Undercover cop starts working in a brothel...and starts to like it! The banter between her and her cop buddies is painful, but everything else is rather good. You've got Meg "Extremely Light Blue Eyes" Foster as the madame, Rena Riffel as one of the other ladies, the same year she made "Showgirls", and Jeffrey Dean Morgan as the madame's right hand man. He has a bit of a unibrow which I can't believe no-one on set told him to take care of, looks like a standard 90s douchebag, and gives very little indication he'd go on to much bigger and better things.

It was directed by Gregory Dark, who made his name with hardcore porno before spending most of the 90s with a side-hustle, directing fairly mainstream thrillers under the name "Gregory Hippolyte". Some time around the millenium, he started doing music videos, too, so he's perhaps the only person to have done both grot and a Britney Spears video.

I realise this isn't the first time I've mentioned in a review "spent ages doing hardcore pornography".

[Dr Rock]

Blow Out

Fantastic stuff. All the good bits of "Blow Up" and "The Conversation", plus a shady political group accidentally hiring a serial killer to just discredit a Presidential candidate. De Palma is great.

Just watched this, crackin fim, Travolta has some cool duds.. but at the end

Spoiler alert

has he just given up? He said he had a copy of the sound recording, does the woman's death put him off trying to expose the truth?

[close]

[Famous Mortimer]

I think it's most likely

Spoiler alert

he knows that the "government" has won and the only thing he has to look forward to if he keeps trying to expose the truth is death. He looks like a completely broken man in that final scene.

[close]

[Dr Rock]

Yeah

[phantom_power]

I think it's most likely

Spoiler alert

he knows that the "government" has won and the only thing he has to look forward to if he keeps trying to expose the truth is death. He looks like a completely broken man in that final scene.

[close]

Spoiler alert

Yeah he is just completely dead inside. Using the death scream of the woman in the shitty horror film shows how numb he is to it all now

[close]

[Famous Mortimer]

Transformed (2005)

While it's too ugly-looking and cheap to be really up there in the pantheon of so-bad-it's-good classics, it's certainly very very bad indeed.

Presumably funded by a Filipino church in the US, this has an 8 year old overdosing on cocaine in the first ten minutes, a chubby middle-aged man teaching police about pressure points, and hero roles for Leo Fong (late 70s) and Fred Williamson (late 60s). Williamson is drenched in sweat after a very gentle fight scene, and Fong never does enough to break a sweat, disappearing through a bright light near the end. If I was director of a movie, I'd make myself a super-powerful angel too!

The cheap video camera they used to make this makes everything look like a home movie, and the hum of the onboard microphone grates after a while. But the stuff they capture is so odd! The female Pastor kicking ass is easily the best thing about it (she could have, just about, headlined stuff better than this, but was a non-actor with this as her only role) but there's plenty of other stuff to enjoy - mostly the nonsensical plot and unusual "acting" choices by everyone.

The great Stack Pierce, veteran of many Fong movies, is the crooked Mayor, but (one tossed off line of dialogue in the final fight aside) it's like the movie forgets he's the villain and leaves him alive and untouched at the end. Perhaps he wasn't available for filming so they just didn't bother?

One for the advanced class of bad movie appreciation, perhaps.

[Artie Fufkin]

Well I watched Bullet Train

It was pretty crap. Everyone talked like a Marvel cunt. There was a million plot holes. One of the characters would not shut the fuck up about Thomas the Tank Engine which was interminable.

I would have put Jason Statham in it. Would have made it better.

I loved this. Sorry. Maybe it's because I have a bit of a man crush on Brad?

Spoiler alert

And, of course. always nice to see Sandy pop up.

[close]

I gave it a firm 4 out of 5.
Nothing life changing, of course. Like a bloodthirsty Ocean's Eleven, maybe.
I loved how it was shot.

I also watched Operation Mincemeat (2021) as Mrs Fufkin's niece is an extra in it. We think we spotted her.
It was ok, for that kind of thing. Firth & Macfayden(?) were both great in it.

[Sex Festival Organizer]

Pig (2021), directed by Michael Sarnoski, starring Nicolas Fucking Cage, Yeah! (wish he'd actually change his name to that, as it would be more fitting).

I've never understood all the grief poor old Nic has been getting. Sure, he's done a lot of crap movies, but in my opinion he's always worth watching, even in proper dreck, and with the right material he *shines*. As in this one, where he plays a down on his luck former fancy chef with a deep and abiding love for his truffle-snuffling pig, which gets pignapped by ne'er-do-wells. Laughs, drama and thrills follow, and I especially liked that the film, courtesy of Cage, takes the time to deliver a scathing critique of fancy modern cooking and its deconstructed dishes, espumas and meat-gluing with transglutaminase bullshit. Give me a properly cooked peasant dish made with good ingredients any day of the week. That's proper food, that is! A strong 7/10, and best watched with an oaky Chardonnay.

[Dex Sawash]

Hustle and Flow a bit of a mess but not bad in places.

[bgmnts]

Aguirre, Wrath of God.

I believe Herzog is considered a genius director, and that is for people who understand the intricacies of filmmaking to say, not cinema laity like me.

However, I will say this film was both, somehow, weirdly grounded and minimalist - almost dull - whilst also being quite surreal.

I will say I was brought out of the film a few times due to being absolutely fucking petrified for the cast, especially the opening scene with them single filing down a Peruvian mountain. I presume it was all filmed on location in the actual amazon and it was terrifying to watch.

I do feel it's a different - and more arguably more truthful - approach to portray the cruelty of enslavement and power with the nonchalance that Kinski does, rather than the over dramatic torture porn you get in a lot of films like that deal with those themes. There is a moment when the Amazon rises and a poor chained slave is found drowned, and Aguirre just picks him up and drops him back down in the water like an inanimate object. That stuck with me.

I do think a lot of the work was done by the composer as well, and it was haunting and all that.

[Dr Rock]

tie me up tie me down begs to differ

I LIKE Tie Me Up Tie Me Down!

I'm So Excited on the other hand...

[dissolute ocelot]

Belle (2021) - Japanese animated movie that's basically Beauty and the Beast in the Metaverse. There are a lot of plot strands, not all of which go anywhere, but it's about a teenage girl still grieving her mother's death who creates a new identity in an online world, becomes a singing superstar, deals with her issues, helps others, and meets a beast who lives in a castle. It's not quite a musical but there are songs in a vaguely Disney idiom. Despite early on being so disjointed it's almost like a sequence of random TikTok videos, it comes together in a properly moving way.

It looks amazing with a mix of animation styles: the online world is a billion times better than Mark Zuckerberg's version and full of crazy avatars and space whales, while the real world is more conventional 2D anime. But there's also a nice scene that depicts teenage gossip in the style of a hex-based wargame. I watched the Japanese-language version, but also saw some of the English dub which seems pretty good and has rerecordings of the songs.

Honeymoon in Vegas (1992) - Nic Cage romcom in which he vies with the older professional gambler James Caan for the love of Sarah Jessica Parker. It's less stupid when you're actually watching than it sounds in precis, but it's still less plausible than The Flintstones In Viva Rock Vegas. The Elvises are good, and Cage is fun, but it's not especially funny, and I didn't really care who SJP picked. It's better than the vaguely similar Indecent Proposal, but nowhere near the standard of Moonstruck (which despite its over-the-top style displays some knowledge of actual human beings). (On Amazon.)

[zomgmouse]

Watched the Soviet comedy Operation Y - essentially a series of three half-hour sketches/shorts involving a young man called Shurik getting involved in situations. Some great moments including the very opening scene, but it seemed a little slow in others.

I LIKE Tie Me Up Tie Me Down!

I'm So Excited on the other hand...

i like I'm So Excited!!!!

NO ACCOUNTING FOR TASTE

[El Unicornio, mang]

Sophie Scholl: The Final Days (2005)

German film which was nominated for an Oscar for best foreign film. As the title implies, this is all about the moment Sophie Scholl, a student who was part of a movement called The White Rose which distributed anti-Nazi leaflets, is captured by the Gestapo in 1943 and the next couple of days of interrogation and trial before she, along with her friend and brother, are beheaded.

There's no flashbacks, no "action", it's two hours of her saying her piece and Nazi guys (including infamous judge Roland Freisler, who can also be seen in newsreel footage after the Hitler assassination attempt trials being an absolute raving lunatic in the courtroom) grilling her, but it's riveting. Her Christian beliefs are shown sporadically, they were an important part of who she was, but it never overpowers the narrative.

One of the true heroes of WWII and had a cool haircut.