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

Started by Famous Mortimer, January 01, 2022, 02:18:34 PM

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Sebastian Cobb

El Camino - pretty good but also an unneccesary tying-up-loose-ends bit of fan service.

Prince of the City - early 80's (although feels more like a gritty 70's) Sydney Lumet noir about a bent cop who rats on other cops, long but good. Incidentally the film was originally going to be a De Palma as Orion had bought the rights but Jay Presson Allen thought it was an ideal job for Lumet and managed to get dibs if the De Palma project fell through.

sevendaughters

I've not posted in here for a while! Dunno why, it's one of my fav threads.

Quote from: rjd2 on June 09, 2022, 05:14:46 PM4 Months, 3 Days And 2 Weeks  9/10

A Romanian student has a busy day ahead of her, has to help her friend go through with an abortion that is illegal from a shady person while raising money from many places most notably her upper class boyfriend who is in the dark regarding this and also wants her to join him for her Mother's birthday party that evening.

Its quite low key and their isn't many twists and turns despite the director teasing some, but nonetheless the tension is remarkable. The two most memorable scenes where the two friends barter with the increasingly agitated shady person and when our main protagonist joins the boomer party who casually taunt her with "simple people" when she discusses her background.

Great Freedom 8/10

Released last year and on Mubi, about a gay man who is in jail for homosexuality after WW2 who forms a friendship with his cellmate which lasts decades. It doesn't fall for the usual prison cliches and its more a story about friendship than anything.  Franz Rogowski as the lead is excellent, horrific to be reminded that some people somehow survived the Nazi camps and then were sent to prison to serve time for their sexual orientation.

I caught up on some of Mungiu's post 4 Weeks films and really wasn't into them. In fact I've watched quite a lot of post-Mungiu films and Romanian cinema seem to get caught up in this worthiness trap that it takes Radu Jude to break out of.

Didn't love Great Freedom, have to say. The ending is really interesting though, had a few good conversations about what that might mean. Notable that conservative critics like Armond White liked it!

Quote from: dude-1981 on July 02, 2022, 12:16:34 PMDangal - My first Bollywood film. Good fun story, sort of thing you've seen 100 times before, half an hour too long.

Saw this in the cinema, thought it was a lot of fun! I don't think the 'throw everything at the film' method of Indian mainstream cinema will ever be for me, like not everything needs to be a song and dance, but it worked for this. When you peel back the story of how successful the girls were it makes the film a bit laughable!

Quote from: Dex Sawash on July 16, 2022, 10:04:04 PMFinally saw No Time To Die today. Had avoided the NTTD megathread and now can't  be bothered to find/read it.

Ropey CGI, story a bit dull, new placeholder
Spoiler alert
007
[close]
uninspiring. Naomie Harris relegated to receptionist.

It did at least wrap up well enough to draw a line under the Craige era though.

I gave No Time to Die a solid six on exiting the cinema but like a lot of big IP films that can appear impressive at the time, I can barely remember a thing about it and that which I can remember is stupid guff. I mean the idea of Bond in 2022 is just pro-status quo hateful shit and the hints toward progressiveness is pure neoliberalism, borderline fascism even. I liked the sequence where he was twatting people running upstairs in a single take though.

Quote from: Armed Traffic Warden on July 20, 2022, 12:23:44 PMApologies 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

The Father came to mind as I was walking around yesterday, particularly THE CHICKEN line. I liked it, possibly overrated it because it was handled so well that I didn't consider that my first guess was absolutely correct. I think because it is so difficult to say what dementia looks like from the perspective of the sufferer, attempts to construct it cinematically will always lapse into some cliche, making it into a mystery....does it cheapen it somehow? I don't know!

Anyway I've watched quite a bit since I was last here. I'll keep it brief.

Somewhere Over The Chemtrails - was in Prague on the second hottest day of the year so dived into a cinema to escape the heat with something local. I doubt this will get picked up for Europe-wide run, which is a shame because I think it would go down well. Comedy-drama set in a small rural Czech village where everyone is as conspiracy theory addled as your local library's PC users. A van crashes into a fountain during the Easter party and the fire chief, the only person who could have seen the perp, says it was an Arab. The whole village goes into mob lockdown weirdness. The main character starts dousing his clothes in vinegar. Definite traces of Czech New Wave here but some modern sentimentality creeps out. Worthwhile!

An Elephant Sitting Still - was in Prague on the hottest day of the year so dived into a cinema to escape the heat with a four hour Chinese film from 2018. Hu Bo was considered a protege of Bela Tarr and it shows over the run time as four central characters are stuck fast in their decaying Chinese city and long to escape for the magical promise of a distant elephant. Some of this is enchanting ultracinema and some of it does go on a bit. I'd say it should be cut (only by 45 min or so) but that was a bone of contention for Bo to the extent he committed suicide over it.

Shiny_Flakes: The Teenage Drug Lord
The Tinder Swindler
Bad Vegan: Fame. Fraud. Fugitives
Trust No One: The Hunt for the Crypto King - bundled these four recent Netflix documentaries/series together because formally and structurally and thematically they are more or less identikit productions of true crime/fraud that takes a weirdly aspirational view of what went down. They are all bad and I can see why Netflix is tanking - it is becoming like bad cable TV instead of HBO.

Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn - Another absurd tale from Radu Jude (teacher's sex tape leaks, leading to hastily convened parent-teacher show trial) whose immediate appearance suggests comedy, but scratch away the topsoil and it is laced with the darkest tragedy. There are three discrete sections all of different styles and I think all of them are excellent, though the Ambrose Bierce-like middle section is a real hoot.

The Green Ray
Pauline at the Beach
Girlfriends and Boyfriends - three of Eric Rohmer's 'Comedies and Proverbs' films of the 1980s and my first three Rohmers. I liked them all a lot and about the same amount! If you were going to be critical you could say he is remaking the same film about a sad bourgeois protagonist low on self-knowledge thrust into the carnal world. But I just love the loose, gently unspooling, adult-in-the-best-sense nature of them all. No easy resolutions - at the end of the love quadrangle of Girlfriends and Boyfriends everyone gets what they want, but we also sense it is all going to explode after the credits - but some personal transformation. Recommended!

Sunset Boulevard - magnificent film, love how it appears to be structurally similar to Double Indemnity (start at the end, work back to it) but once you move past the death we realise he isn't even the star of his own story; a celebrity is, and always will be, chump. Wilder is a king.

Don't Look Now - understand this is a contentious one around here and all the signs pointed to my LOVING it - fan of 'folk horror', Donald Sutherland, Nic Roeg, psychological weirdness, British 70s, etc - but I stopped short of that. Possibly because my DVD was a bad transfer and I couldn't hear some of the dialogue (no subs either) and I got a little confused in the middle. By the time I'd pieced it all together I felt the ending was worthy of someone like Argento rather than Roeg (who, in Walkabout, gives us one of the great conclusions). The first three minutes are three of the best minutes in all of cinema though.

Letter to Brezhnev - one of Mrs 7D's favourites - I spent a lot of it location-spotting. Saw this ages ago but I get it on its various levels now - metaphor for gayness as much as overt political comment on Britain vs Soviets and how free are we anyway etc. It's a funny and low-budget melodrama with a lot of good lines and desperate reality at the heart of it.

Lawrence of Belgravia - Lawrence from Felt/Denim/Go-Kart Mozart documentary. He's an oddball who wrote some songs! Talking heads appear! No nearer understanding him because there's nothing to understand - some musical geniuses are just also weird balls of self-delusion. Abolish all music documentaries.

Lift to the Scaffold - Assured debut from Malle about a guy interrupted during the perfect murder, which sets off a chain of events that leads to his car being nicked and used in commission of another crime while he is stuck in a lift for half the film. Stylish and some subtle politics about Vietnam here but mostly a taut thriller that probably blew a lot of American minds.

One Deadly Summer - tonally strange film that veers from oddball village comedy to mystery to rape revenge. Isabelle Adjani plays the village sexpot who seems to have latched onto her future husband for reasons other than love, and we watch it all play out in a slightly confused style. I enjoyed it, it isn't meat and potatoes stuff at all, but I can see some people thinking this a pure mess.

Sebastian Cobb

I just watched The Verdict, Paul Newman plays a washed up alcoholic ambulance chaser who gets moved by a case and takes it to trial rather than taking the money and running. Was decent. Some aggrieved lawyer must've had something to do with the subtitles as this is held on screen for about a minute at the end of the film.



dissolute ocelot

Once (2007) - very low-key Irish musical/rom-com that was popular at the time but I'd never seen (it's on Netflix now). Not loaded with drama (even in comparison with the director's later musical Sing Street, which is enormous fun but much more cartoonish), but Glen Hansard's music is pleasant, the naturalistic hand-held filming style works well, and there are some good jokes.

Mission Impossible II (2000) - has a reputation as the worst of the MIs. It's very silly, with John Woo still obsessed with face-off machines after Face/Off. But being less serious than the typical MI film isn't necessarily bad: most of the action is fun, and Tom Cruise gets to do lots of flying kicks and vehicular mayhem. (All the Mission Impossibles are currently on All4, and they're all fun if you like that kind of thing, but watching them all in a row is way too much Simon Pegg.)

Small Man Big Horse

Time After Time (1979) - It's 1893 and a drunk prostitute flirts with a guy called John (David Warner), until he says "My friends call me Jack", we hear a ripping sound which is a bit too similar to someone unzipping their flies, but oh no, it was her clothes and skin behind the noise as soon blood is everywhere and she politely dies without screaming. Then it cuts to H.G. Wells (Malcolm McDowell) giving a dinner party to which John is a late arrival, and after showing off his time machine John briefly nicks it to head off to the future / 1979. Wells follows him,
Spoiler alert
thinks John dies after being hit by a car, romances bank worker Amy (Mary Steenburgen), and ignores all of the newspaper headlines about prostitutes being mysteriously murdered, so while it hits all the rom-com tropes it feels all kinds of fucked up as the audience know Jack The Ripper is up to his old tricks / horrifying crimes. Once Wells is aware of Jack there's still some fish out of water style comedy (like his confusion over an electric toothbrush) all of which feels a bit off given that women are being viciously slaughtered, and the ending is all rather convenient and over with too quickly
[close]
. There's elements of a good film here but also a very daft one, there's not enough David Warner arguing with Malcolm MacDowell, and eh, I liked it but I'm not sure it's actually that good. 7.0/10

Sebastian Cobb

I'll give that a bash.

I watched the 2018 South Korean film Burning last night, was pretty good.

Small Man Big Horse

#966
Boku Tachi To Chûzai San No 700 Nichi Sensô (aka 700 Days Of Battle: Us Vs. The.Police (2008) - Comedy where in a small Japanese town in 1979 a bunch of teenagers decide to annoy / prank a police officer, mainly as he had one of them suspended for speeding on a bicycle,
Spoiler alert
but their plans rarely go well and the cop might just secretly enjoy their daftness
[close]
. Most of the time it's got a charming if slightly offbeat sense of humour, there's a couple of weak juvenile jokes but most of the time this is warm hearted good old fashioned daftness. 7.7/10 

Sebastian Cobb

Spasms (1983) - a variation on the theme of 'some rich cunt has an exotic animal imported that then goes HAM on everyone', good cast - Oliver Reed, Peter Fonda and a cameo from the woman who played Bridey in Videodrome, but quite dull, charmless yet simultaneously po-faced, there's much schlockier things like this that are ropier but far more fun.

Famous Mortimer

Mutant Hunt (1987)

Tim Kincaid had an interesting career. Started off making gay porn (the bits that survive of one of his, "El Paso Wrecking Crew", indicate he had an interesting visual style and wasn't just interested in cocks and bums, although he certainly liked them a lot), then had a few years where he made awful non-sexual genre fare, including getting Carrie Fisher right at the lowest point of her career.

As well as "Robot Holocaust", "Bad Girls Dormitory" and the incredibly sleazy "Riot On 42nd Street", he made this, which had some great sets and gloopy special effects, but otherwise was entirely incompetent. Cyborgs are being given some sex drug which turns them into killers, or something.

His "normal" movie career lasted through the 1980s, then he had a quiet 15 years, then he got right back on the gay porn grind, where he's been ever since. The front covers on Letterboxd are surprisingly explicit, and my favourites are the "Dad Goes To..." series, which feature an older man, normally-dressed from the waist up, naked from the waist down, with a substantial erection.

Dad Goes To College - "intergenerational gets educational!"
Dad Takes A Fishing Trip - "intergenerational was never this sensational!"


rjd2

Quote from: zomgmouse on July 21, 2022, 12:28:57 PMHooray for Sam Fuller!

I must watch 40 guns, another of his films that is well reviewed and a rarity in that we have a female as the main heel and its Barbara Stanwyck to top it all off! I think their is a decent version of it on YT.

Hangmen Also Die 7/10

Not peak Lang and unfortunately to long.

Its Czechoslovakia where  the Nazis are ruling and their man has been killed by the resistance. The Gestapo obviously retaliate by taking numerous people hostage until the assassin turns himself in. The cast is mixed, some good work been done but sadly some wooden performances.

It has a nice enough ending which redeems somewhat even by then you are likely to be looking at your watch.

The House That Jack Built 8/10

Lars set out to trigger everyone and to be fair I was erm triggered but in a good way. Its got its flaws, maybe a little to long and some of the chatter between Dillon and Ganz is silly, but nonetheless I was engrossed by it. The ending I found a little simplistic initially has really grown on me also.

Its very odd that Dillon hasn't had a more memorable career, give something to work with and the guy is amazing.

The Offense 7/10

Tier b for Lumet with an amazing performance from Sean Connery. A police drama where Connery is a broken down yada yada police officer who kills a possible nonce and the film then explores what was the true motivation for the murder. Its not aged well and its a little hammy but 007 does a good carry job.

L'argent 8/10

The final film of Bresson which he made when 83 not a bad one to bow out on.

A counterfeit note is passed around by a load of tossers until it unfortunately lands in the hands of an innocent civilian and then his life goes all wrong. Its not peak Bresson, but its enjoyable enough and the ending is a genuine wtf moment in a good way. Only 80 mins long also .

dissolute ocelot

Quote from: rjd2 on August 02, 2022, 04:14:12 AMHangmen Also Die 7/10

Not peak Lang and unfortunately to long.

Its Czechoslovakia where  the Nazis are ruling and their man has been killed by the resistance. The Gestapo obviously retaliate by taking numerous people hostage until the assassin turns himself in. The cast is mixed, some good work been done but sadly some wooden performances.

It has a nice enough ending which redeems somewhat even by then you are likely to be looking at your watch.
Humphrey Jennings' The Silent Village is the only film you need about Heydrich/Lidice. Brilliant stuff.

Quote from: rjd2 on August 02, 2022, 04:14:12 AMThe House That Jack Built 8/10

It's fab, innit? :D Comparing the empty narcissism of the killer to his own work as a director was a cute little wink.
Loved it so much. I remember writing a big rant on some forum about it's rottentomatoe score and how critics were so wrong when it came to horror films in general.

I was gonna start a thread about decent serial killer films, but I got cold feet.
I really like this one, The Golden Glove, and Tony spring to mind.

Artie Fufkin

Bridge On The River Kwai - 1957
This isn't the bridge you're looking for!
Brilliant stuff.
Haven't seen it in ages.
Colonel Saito (Sessue Hayakawa) & Colonel Nicholson (Alec Guiness) are both as mental as each other. Absolute mad men.
Spoiler alert
My favourite scene, was when Mrs Fufkin and I were both mocking the awful "attacking vulture" effects, only to then find out it was actually a kite. Hilarious.
[close]

Quote from: sevendaughters on July 31, 2022, 10:45:28 AMDon't Look Now - understand this is a contentious one around here and all the signs pointed to my LOVING it - fan of 'folk horror', Donald Sutherland, Nic Roeg, psychological weirdness, British 70s, etc - but I stopped short of that. Possibly because my DVD was a bad transfer and I couldn't hear some of the dialogue (no subs either) and I got a little confused in the middle. By the time I'd pieced it all together I felt the ending was worthy of someone like Argento rather than Roeg (who, in Walkabout, gives us one of the great conclusions). The first three minutes are three of the best minutes in all of cinema though.

When I rewatched it recently I found this interview interesting: https://lwlies.com/interviews/nicolas-roeg-career-dont-look-now-bad-timing-performance/

Mainly for how he saw John and Laura's smiles and focussed on making a film about a 'happy family':

QuoteSex, whether you like it or not, we all know that it's the prime force of life. There is no other reason to be here. It's quite curious in many films you only see the meeting, the flowering of sex. You hear all the intrigue about how, 'oh, she loved the other guy at the party'. It's not about a happy marriage. The first stage of recovery – here, from the loss of a child, who was made by you-know-what – would only be a reminder, and that's why it's wonderful when Donald smiles at the end of it. It was an affirmation of their love.

[...]

For me, Don't Look Now is about expressing love in a different way. I remember that I wanted to show something at the end – I can tell you now because it's been out for 30 years! – in a scene where Julie's on the funeral barge, and the two older sisters are with her. We arrived at the set and Julie had a lot of make-up on and a veil. She also had this little tube with an acidic substance in it, and when you blow it, it makes you cry. Make-up wanted to see a stained cheek. I saw this scene and just thought, they had a wonderful family life, and the sisters were weeping in the background, and I thought, that's fine from them. But I'd really like to have something step up, and finish on a moment that was beyond the obvious. You see something that would be a secret in Julie Christie's head. So I said, 'put the vale up, and when you're stood on the bow of the boat. I want you to smile. Undefeated, like Queen Christina!' I remember Julie said, 'Oh God, Nic! Are you crazy?' I think it's fantastic. It's a big fuck you to fate. It's saying that the love they had couldn't be topped. Fantastic.

I think Laura's smile would sometimes be interpreted differently, as showing her connection to the sisters and the confirmed connection to the dead child, relieved of John's refusal to believe her and his own premonitions.

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: Small Man Big Horse on August 01, 2022, 05:37:42 PMTime After Time (1979) - It's 1893 and a drunk prostitute flirts with a guy called John (David Warner), until he says "My friends call me Jack", we hear a ripping sound which is a bit too similar to someone unzipping their flies, but oh no, it was her clothes and skin behind the noise as soon blood is everywhere and she politely dies without screaming. Then it cuts to H.G. Wells (Malcolm McDowell) giving a dinner party to which John is a late arrival, and after showing off his time machine John briefly nicks it to head off to the future / 1979. Wells follows him,
Spoiler alert
thinks John dies after being hit by a car, romances bank worker Amy (Mary Steenburgen), and ignores all of the newspaper headlines about prostitutes being mysteriously murdered, so while it hits all the rom-com tropes it feels all kinds of fucked up as the audience know Jack The Ripper is up to his old tricks / horrifying crimes. Once Wells is aware of Jack there's still some fish out of water style comedy (like his confusion over an electric toothbrush) all of which feels a bit off given that women are being viciously slaughtered, and the ending is all rather convenient and over with too quickly
[close]
. There's elements of a good film here but also a very daft one, there's not enough David Warner arguing with Malcolm MacDowell, and eh, I liked it but I'm not sure it's actually that good. 7.0/10


I enjoyed this but it it's definitely a film when you're in the mood for an easy watch. Mary Steenburgen was adorable in it and I find it quite funny about a decade later she played a functionally similar role alongside Christopher Lloyd.

Small Man Big Horse

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on August 03, 2022, 02:03:28 PMI enjoyed this but it it's definitely a film when you're in the mood for an easy watch.

That's how I felt, and tonally it's so odd as you've essentially got a fish out of water rom-com mixed with a disturbing thriller and there are times it really jars, like when Wells and Amy are having a lovely fun date but the camera lingers on a newspaper with the headline "Another Woman Torn To Fucking Pieces Really Horribly I Mean Jesus What Kind Of Insane Monster Did This!!!!!!!!" (or words to that effect).

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on August 03, 2022, 02:03:28 PMMary Steenburgen was adorable in it and I find it quite funny about a decade later she played a functionally similar role alongside Christopher Lloyd.

Ha, hadn't thought about that but yeah, you're absolutely right there!

Inspector Norse

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on August 01, 2022, 07:52:29 PMI watched the 2018 South Korean film Burning last night, was pretty good.

I'll raise your pretty good and say it's one of the best films of the decade! It raises so many questions and has such an incredible feel and psychogeographical sense.

Quote from: sevendaughters on July 31, 2022, 10:45:28 AMI've not posted in here for a while! Dunno why, it's one of my fav threads.

I caught up on some of Mungiu's post 4 Weeks films and really wasn't into them. In fact I've watched quite a lot of post-Mungiu films and Romanian cinema seem to get caught up in this worthiness trap that it takes Radu Jude to break out of.

Didn't love Great Freedom, have to say. The ending is really interesting though, had a few good conversations about what that might mean. Notable that conservative critics like Armond White liked it!

I've seen Beyond the Hills and really struggled with it. 4 Weeks is extraordinary though.

I wrote about Great Freedom here; my feeling on the ending was that while I understood the ideas they were going for, it was too bleak and sleazy and risked undermining the whole film: like you say, giving the conservatives a bit too much to work with.

sevendaughters

Quote from: Inspector Norse on August 04, 2022, 11:57:51 PMI wrote about Great Freedom here; my feeling on the ending was that while I understood the ideas they were going for, it was too bleak and sleazy and risked undermining the whole film: like you say, giving the conservatives a bit too much to work with.

May as well post the thing I wrote about Great Freedom. Context: I saw as part of the shortlist for the European University Film Award, which I was administering a portion of (screening the shortlist to students).

QuoteOnline conservatives continually complain about an absence of reasonably mainstream and considered art (rather than Kevin Sorbo films or memes or comic strips that engage with talking points in the most shallow way possible) that isn't liberal or left-leaning at its core. They're too blind to realise that their complaints are their own distinct artform, one which they have perfected in recent years.

That will be why they have overlooked a film like Great Freedom, which presents right libertarian thought with a veil of progressiveness. The clue is there in the title. Thing is, it's an LGBT story, and we have to remember the base-level homophobia that exists in your common-or-garden conservative.

Ostensibly a prison drama over three separate time frames, centred around various iterations of gay love within the walls of a mid-century German jail. Attempts to read this film by mainstream sources have denied a certain tendency within the film, or at least framed it as ambivalency. The Guardian suggested the ending is one of realising "freedom [...] has been available from within", while the LA Times suggests that deliberately making oneself a recidivist shows how love can "transcend the brutality of any unjust law." What is it that inspires such purpleness?

To be fair, Robert Abele of the LA Times suggests nuance by indicating the 'bittersweet' quality of the ending. Hans is released after years of incarceration for soliciting (though this began as mid-war round up of a 'degenerate', imprisonment continued long after 'liberation'). He notes the conservative and heavily-surveilled environment he spent his formative sexual development in has given way to a Dionysian semi-public free-for-all. He exits the scene, grabs some cigarettes (the brand he smoked with his true love in prison), walks outside, hoys a brick through a jeweller's window, and awaits the inevitable.

Hans' disgust in this scene is impossible to deny. Meise's camera, which in jailhouse sex scenes was intimate and comforting and encouraging, becomes grotty and phobic. The men aren't beautiful caged birds: some of them are fat and hairy and unclothed. You can imagine the director of photography pinching their nose and squinting as the scenes were shot. A deadpan moment where Hans and a prison boyfriend reject defection to the East, realising they would rather be persecuted capitalists than free communists, only underscores the point: this is a film about moral indignation at What We've Become As A Society. If it was a Twitter user it would have a Greek classical statue as its avatar.

Venerable conserva-nerd and all-around trout Armond White does his time-honoured thing of almost getting it and yet missing by miles in his review:

...Meise tells more than the history of oppression. Great Freedom is conceived as a reorganized history of homosexual consciousness. That makes it a fascinating corrective to contemporary gay politics, such as the way mainstream media sell Pete Buttigieg's speciously idealized progressive gay image. (Buttigieg himself uses the Obamaesque word "anodyne.") Meise goes back to the character of gay experience before it was a sanitized political tool.

White always shows his arse because he has to link artistic particulars to public figures who represent no greater constituency than their own power and vanity. But his review does at least recognise that the greatest beneficiaries of historical radicalism can easily become tomorrow's lazy conservatives.

The problem is that Great Freedom suggests this conservatism and ignorance in one show of debauched sexuality, contrasted with years of enforced chastity and surveillance as noble struggle. It is a weak and trite conclusion at the end of an uneven film. Fassbinder and Waters and Almodovar and plenty more besides have shown us with real care that you can remain radical and enjoy the flesh. Great Freedom isn't bittersweet. It is just bitter.

The students liked it and thought it a powerful message about the repression of LGBT lives.

Sebastian Cobb

The Housemaid (1960) - Bleak South Korean melodrama about an upper-middle class family, the man of the house is a pianist and plays the piano for the choir of a bunch of factory women (apparently post Korean War downturns meant women got live-in jobs at factories), one of them fancies him but has her mate write him a love letter and she gets kicked out of the factory and eventually tops herself, the one that fancies him then goes to his house for piano lessons, which he puts on because his wife is pregnant and working in the day then sewing all night so they can afford their new two-story house. In her exhaustion they decide to ask the piano student to find them a maid and she brings in her mate who is a cleaner from the factory. After the funeral of the one who topped herself, while the piano teacher's wife is visiting her parents the piano student makes a pass at the bloke, who kicks her out. Then the maid seduces him. She falls pregnant and the piano teacher's husband convinces her to lob herself down the stairs to miscarry, which she does. Then the piano teacher's wife has her kid, which angers the maid who argues over it. She tricks their other son into thinking he's poisoned, who falls down the stairs and dies. Then blackmails them about forcing her to have an abortion and the son's death, the wife encourages the husband to do as she says to stop them losing their social status and the maid insists the husband sleep with them. Things get worse and fall apart until the husband and the maid enter into a suicide pact by poisoning (after the wife and daughter both attempt poisoning the maid but get outsmarted and foiled by her), as they're both dying the husband ditches the maid and then crawls to his wife and apologises for the sorry situation and dies beside her.

Mad eh? There's some good stuff about class in there, and how the maid is treated like shit (despite being pretty awful herself) and the family just doing all sorts of stuff to protect themselves. Apparently it was a big influence for Parasite. It's on Mubi if anyone's interested and is a subscriber.

It does have one big flaw and that's
Spoiler alert
the stupid fucking fake-out ending where it cuts back to the husband who's been narrating the story to his wife and family and jolly breaks the fourth wall and goes "see this could happen to anyone"!
[close]

Sebastian Cobb

Trouble Every Day - American couple honeymooning in Paris, the husband is a bit weird, there's some flashbacks to show he worked in medical R&D in partnership with a French lab and a doctor who has quit and moved out the way and is now a small-time GP keeping his head down, he looks after his wife who he keeps locked in the house during the day, it's transpired she's become feral and seduces people then bites them and drinks their blood like an unconventional vampire. The American is looking for him.

It's grim and ok-ish but the plot spreads in a few directions and raises lots of questions it doesn't really bother to answer, some films are great (e.g. Burning) because of this, but in this case I feel there's something missing and it all just feels a bit thin on the ground.

Mobius

I watched Brazil last night

It was a lot of fun! I feel like I need to read up on it to understand the motifs or whatever though, probably went over my head. Loved the look of it.

I never thought I'd see Robert De Niro and Madge from Benidorm in a movie together.

Sebastian Cobb

Although it wasn't all that long ago I saw it for the first time, I felt compelled to watch Mona Lisa again tonight. I know it's bleak as fuck but Hoskins makes it really enjoyable.

the science eel

Wings Of Desire last night. Almost* unbearable, interminable, pretentious nonsense.






*Peter Falk

Egyptian Feast

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on August 07, 2022, 10:08:30 PMAlthough it wasn't all that long ago I saw it for the first time, I felt compelled to watch Mona Lisa again tonight. I know it's bleak as fuck but Hoskins makes it really enjoyable.

I'd have happily watched Hoskins and Coltrane bullshitting with each other for another 90 minutes.

Savage Three (1975) Joe Dallesandro and a couple of his colleagues from the data centre are bored with their humdrum existence so go on the rampage every evening, upping the ante from football hooliganism and trucker stabbing to rape and forklift murder. The cops initially suspect a political motive, but no, they're just cunts.

Unpleasant but interesting poliziotteschi where the antagonists are middle-class office drones rather than the usual feral street scum. The lovingly filmed 1970s computer equipment was fascinating (at one point the cop on the case asks Joe to help him work out a pattern in the pools numbers, and when rebuffed points out the big computer has a whole 2MB of processing power left for his task).

The theme tune, which repeats every time Joe and the lads are about to cause trouble, had firmly wedged itself in my head by the end.



Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: Egyptian Feast on August 08, 2022, 12:17:21 PMI'd have happily watched Hoskins and Coltrane bullshitting with each other for another 90 minutes.
The scenes where he doesn't really know what he's doing and is waiting for Simone to finish with a client are great too. I creased at one of them where the hotel staff know why he's there and are purposefully ignoring him when he wants a drink and he just bellows "ARE YA WORKING HERE OR JUST BREAKING IN YOUR SHOES?".

Plus the scene where he tastes the fizz he was forced to buy, spits it out and asks one of the strippers in the staff area making a brew if he could have one and she just tells him to piss off.

Famous Mortimer

The Extendables (2014)

Brian Thompson is one of those instantly recognizable action actors, who's worked with everyone. He provides an introduction for this, which he also wrote, produced and directed, and he talks about all the crazy stories he heard or witnessed while working with Schwarzenegger, Stallone, JCVD and Seagal. He says every story in this movie is true, just the names have been changed.

I'd have much rather read a book about his undoubtedly fascinating career, with all his anecdotes in it, rather than this, a micro-budget effort set largely in one large room, where Thompson plays Vardell Duseldorfer (VD, hahaha), a former action star turned Governor turned embarrassment, who's trying to resurrect his career.

Nothing seems to happen for any reason, it's just a boring unfunny shambles. Any names you recognise in the credits list are usually just in one scene, where they filmed in their own homes being interviewed about VD, or on the phone with him - Kevin Sorbo, Martin Kove, Mark Dacascos and Patrick Warburton are the main ones (Craig Kilborn was apparently in it too, but I got bored and turned it off before he showed up). 

No-one learns anything or changes in the slightest. No laughs or funny situations are provided.

Sebastian Cobb

My experience of seeing that film was being sat next to a pissed-up Mackem on a train for Aberdeen (I was going home, he was going offshore), he shoved it on and was having to ride the volume control between gunshot and dialogue, about 10 minutes in he passed out blocking the keyboard and treated the carriage to about half an hour of non-stop gunfire and garrote noises, I was watching it while people looked on in anger, had his head not been in the way I'd have paused it, but he was a big lad, I didn't want to upset him.

Blumf

Bloodshot (2020)

It's another Vin Diesel in a power fantasy film, whoopee!

US soldier gets killed and resurrected with fancy high tech. So, we've all seen it before, from The Six Million Dollar Man, through Robocop, via Universal Soldier, etc. etc. (It's closest match, story-wise, is probably with Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning (2012), which is a much more interesting film) So, nothing particularly new, but I won't complain about that.

Does it work in it's own terms? Well, it's not terrible, there are worse Vin Diesel films (Babylon A.D., looking at you, except I won't, ever again). The plot plods along, the usual array of people being pointlessly aggressive arseholes, as you get in these dumb films. Effects work is a bit turn of the century, getting into Polar Express territory in places. But the story holds up well enough, some obvious twists, and some of the characters are decent; Lamorne Morris does a fun turn as a expert hacker tech genius trope. Overall, doesn't feel as punchy as it should do. The between action bits drag a bit too much, but the action itself is good enough.

Looking for a no-brains-required action flick to have on in the background? Here's an option. 5/10


Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

Quote from: Blumf on August 10, 2022, 07:57:05 PMBloodshot (2020)

It's another Vin Diesel in a power fantasy film, whoopee!

US soldier gets killed and resurrected with fancy high tech. So, we've all seen it before, from The Six Million Dollar Man, through Robocop, via Universal Soldier, etc. etc. (It's closest match, story-wise, is probably with Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning (2012), which is a much more interesting film) So, nothing particularly new, but I won't complain about that.

Does it work in it's own terms? Well, it's not terrible, there are worse Vin Diesel films (Babylon A.D., looking at you, except I won't, ever again). The plot plods along, the usual array of people being pointlessly aggressive arseholes, as you get in these dumb films. Effects work is a bit turn of the century, getting into Polar Express territory in places. But the story holds up well enough, some obvious twists, and some of the characters are decent; Lamorne Morris does a fun turn as a expert hacker tech genius trope. Overall, doesn't feel as punchy as it should do. The between action bits drag a bit too much, but the action itself is good enough.

Looking for a no-brains-required action flick to have on in the background? Here's an option. 5/10
I watched it a couple of weeks ago and was going to say much the same - but couldn't be bothered. I started out fully expecting to change channels after 20 minutes, but it held my attention for the duration. Pretty piss poor punch-ups for the most part.

The "turn of the century" comment seems apt as Diesel seems to be stuck in that era. I saw a video of him geeking out on the set of Guardians of the Galaxy and thought he could be a really likeable screen presence, if he weren't so committed to playing a nu metal kid's idea of the coolest, toughest bloke in the world. I guess he knows which side his bread is buttered though.