The Films You Watched Thread V: Dead Men Watch No Movies

[Neon Ignition]

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark
Reviews were pretty spot on for this, it's okay but too shallow and cheesy for adults and too dark for kids. Kind of fails to satisfy both ends.

[Neon Ignition]

Crawl
It'd been recommended alongside horrors but isn't one as it turns out so Halloween viewing was bust. This is a low budget Raimi produced film that's about survival. It follows a young woman who's spent her childhood training to be - conveniently - a competitive swimmer. She and her sister can't get in touch with her Florida resident father and a Class 5 Hurricane is bearing down where he lives. So, she drives out to check in on him and eventually discovers him injured beneath his house in the crawl space, trapped by a vicious alligator. The rest of the film is them trying to escape and survive gators as well as the Hurricane itself. It doesn't have the effects budget it needs but like anything Raimi gets involved with it doesn't leave the cast unscathed which stops it feeling too safe either. There's an air of high class direct to TV movie about it but it was solid enough considering what it is.

[fallenangle]

Must be shark based survival horror week on Film 4.

After The Shallows they showed a similarly themed film last night I'd never heard of before: 47 Meters Down.

Competent but predictable.

[Dogg Thang]

I watched Jaws this weekend. Hadn’t seen it in over a decade. It is a masterclass in directing. A superb film so brilliantly put together. The characters are excellent, how they are slowly introduced is perfect and every shot is fantastic. I love those scenes where everyone is talking over each other but are framed perfectly so we know where our attention should go. I don’t think they do that in films any more.

I also watched Insidious which was recommended to me ages ago but, at the time, wasn’t on Netflix. It’s trying to be Poltergeist and, for the first 40 mins, it all felt so familiar like I had seen it all before. I could predict every beat. And then the guys came to the house and I remembered that, actually, I have seen it before. I don’t remember watching it at all but, yep, I had seen it. It’s not bad. It does succeed at being a sort of modern day Poltergeist but the creepy bits are very hit and miss because they are sort of thrown at us randomly throughout the movie. But yeah, not bad. Are the sequels any good?

[Neon Ignition]

Insidious: Chapter Two is fairly good, I think a little better than the first and wraps itself well around the events of the first film. Chapter III is much more disjointed and then Chapter IV is largely naff. Once you've seen the second film you've seen all you really need to.

Treasure Planet
Long time since I last saw this, it was okay but misses all the Disney charm and again reeks of the wilderness years when the studio suffered.

[Dogg Thang]

Thanks, I'll give the second film a go.

[Neon Ignition]

Forgot to add two more watched at the weekend as I scanned over pre-1970 films and remembered 2 I watched several times as a kid but not since:

The Quiet Man
From back in 1958, John Wayne moves from Pittsburgh back to a small town in Ireland where he clashes with one of the big wigs in town whilst also trying to woo his sister. Follows their getting married and struggles until a final fist off. Nice sense of humour and whilst it features 'old sensibilities' about the sister she holds her own a fair bit too which makes for a fun three way clash between them. Despite being just over 2hrs long with mostly dialogue to carry it the film remains quite an easy watch.

Yankee Doodle Dandy
Dialling back even further to 1942, James Cagney's film about the life of George Cohan is also a film that's quite an easy watch even if it's overtly heavy on its pro-USA themes.

[fallenangle]

Watched Paper Moon again yesterday again. It gets better with each viewing. 1973, the b/w photography and lighting make this look as fresh as daisy but also perfectly in period with the film story itself. True film making art.

Maybe it has been digitally remastered or reprinted but there are few early 1970s films I can think of that I've seen since which look as good, even Peter Bogdanovich's other 1970s b/w classic The Last Picture Show.

[Zaki]

Sergeant York - I've loved this film since I was a kid. It's the film Hacksaw Ridge wanted to be (still enjoyed that too).

[JazzFunk]

Anyone know if HIGH RISE is on UK Netflix at the moment? Fancy watching it tonight but can't check Netflix right now.

[QualityChimp]

Anyone know if HIGH RISE is on UK Netflix at the moment? Fancy watching it tonight but can't check Netflix right now.

Amazon Prime, mate.

https://www.justwatch.com/uk/movie/high-rise

As is Free Fire:

https://www.justwatch.com/uk/movie/free-fire

I regularly use that Just Watch site to see if something streaming. Normally I'm disappointed though!

[teddymeow]

Sing: From Illumination of Despicable Me and Minions fame (heh, heh, bottom). The tale of a koala (Matthew McConaughey) trying to save his theatre by holding a talent contest / making a new show. Looks amazing in 4k / HDR and the voice cast and songs are great. Kids loved it too.

Rocket Man: Weird musical (not really a biopic) with Taron Everton as the titular non-astronaut. Was funny because he sings an Elton song in the aforementioned Sing as an anthropomorphized gorilla. It was brilliant - so brilliant that the wife actually didn't look at her phone for the entire duration!!!

The Rock: Michael Bay's best film. Connery, Cage, Biehn, 'splosions, swearing, so many quotable lines. Just superb!

[Atticus]

Nightbreed - felt quite nostalgic watching this again ... probably because it's very much of its time. Great creature flick packed with practical effects and old school techniques. Never seen the Cabal cut, probably never will, but the director's cut was very good ... noticeably different to the theatrical, even after all these years.

[Neon Ignition]

M*A*S*H
We began our 70's run with this classic comedy and I expected the early 70's to be a rough ride but... didn't enjoy this at all. I can appreciate how in 1970 it would have been highly relevant to audiences but viewed fresh in 2019 it just seemed to be completely void of much plot or comedy.

Airport
The other film we watched, the disaster movie about a bad day at an Airport. This was also quite a bad watch, mostly because it's aged so poorly. Just under two and half hours long and the only bit of action is in the closing 10 minutes which is very small scale. Another instance where for audiences of the time this would build tension but these days the film is instead very character focused which should be good but really it's lots of 70's era old men perving on young women outside their marriages.

[Asura]

Airport
The other film we watched, the disaster movie about a bad day at an Airport. This was also quite a bad watch, mostly because it's aged so poorly. Just under two and half hours long and the only bit of action is in the closing 10 minutes which is very small scale. Another instance where for audiences of the time this would build tension but these days the film is instead very character focused which should be good but really it's lots of 70's era old men perving on young women outside their marriages.

But this genre gave us Airplane! which more than makes up for any of its sins.