The Films You Watched Thread VI: The Undiscovered Movie

[Neon Ignition]

Pearl
The prequel to X which was released earlier this year. Mia Goth gets some real moments to chew up the scenery this time and there's a very distinct attempt to make this a very different type of film than its Texas Chainsaw inspired original though I'm not in the camp that considers this to be the better film. There are certainly scenes within this that are much better than the original including a long dialogue section late on but it's a bit overdone in places and never really lands the right tone for the story it's telling.

[QualityChimp]

Woovember watches.

Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart to Hades (1972 via DVD)
"Watch an action film directed by Kenji Misumi to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Lone Wolf and Cub and the 60th anniversary of Zatoichi"
3rd film in the series. You know what you're getting into when you watch these films.
Still great fun finding out who Ogami Itto is going to cleave in twain in this adventure.
The answer is ninjas, hired hands, rapists, shamed samurai, warlords and about 1000 soldiers in the finale.

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Bruce Lee: A Warrior's Journey (2002 via DVD)
"*Watch an action film starring Bruce Lee to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Fist of Fury and The Way of the Dragon"
Fascinating documentary about Lee's transition from unknown foreigner to international phenomenon.
Worth the price of entry alone to hear about the (relatively) recently discovered notes by him about Game of Death and then the rediscovered footage re-edited.
Fascinating to hear his philosophy on martial arts being about adaptation, rather than rigid katas and routines, applied to the fighting in the finale.
I genuinely enjoy this footage. It's got a really interesting pace where the fighters are trying to work each other out at an almost leisurely pace. Just makes a nice change from frenetic camerawork, but it's by no means not thrilling.

[Finsbury Girl]

Finally got around to watching Prey quite enjoyed it, definitely the best predator movie since 2.

[QualityChimp]

Not sure where to drop this, but this could be a fascinating watch:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jamiebenning/not-your-average-joe-0

"He designed the shark for Jaws, “discovered” Devils Tower for Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, and provided the dystopian world for Escape From New York. His name is Alves, and he’s "NOT YOUR AVERAGE JOE".

As part of Filmumentaries™ continuing film history and preservation quest... this is a documentary about production designer Joe Alves and his journey through four decades of the movie industry. With interviews from some of the biggest names in Hollywood, we will look at the influence and the impact his incredible archive of work has had."

[Baseley09]

Pearl
The prequel to X which was released earlier this year. Mia Goth gets some real moments to chew up the scenery this time and there's a very distinct attempt to make this a very different type of film than its Texas Chainsaw inspired original though I'm not in the camp that considers this to be the better film. There are certainly scenes within this that are much better than the original including a long dialogue section late on but it's a bit overdone in places and never really lands the right tone for the story it's telling.

Watched Pearl a few weeks back unbeknown to me that it was a prequel to X, so got round to X last night. Nail on the head with the Texas Chainsaw vibes, highly enjoyed it, creepy moments, some good deaths, what wasn't there to like.

[Finsbury Girl]

Hell or High Water - a slow burn but worth it. A surprisingly nuanced performance from Ben Foster, after the first little bit I expected the same old character from him bit boy did he prove me wrong. Also great performances from Chris Pine and Jeff Bridges, oozing menace.

->Open Spoiler<-

that last scene where he comes to the property, so bloody good

Great film.

[Neon Ignition]

The Rite
Not helped by watching Prey for the Devil recently which is a similar story told less slowly. Hopkins bosses around teaching a guy about exorcisms. Incredibly dull trudge of a film.

Strange World
Disney's new film essentially exists to reaffirm that the animation house can't pull off sci-fi. You've seen everything before with this one, it's not bad merely bland and forgettable.

[QualityChimp]

A few more over the last week, mainly for Woovember, apart from the first on:

Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021 via NowTV)
I bloody loved this. I really wish I'd been able to see this at the cinema without all the spoilers,

->Open Spoiler<-

but I wanted my son to have seen the original Tobey Maguire and the two Andrew Garfield films to give it some context and I just feel we're always on the backfoot with these shows! Managed all but Amazing Spider-Man 2, so he knew most of the enemies.
I thought it was brilliant. Not so sure about the conflict with Doctor Strange as I felt he was partly to blame for doing a forbidden spell and just going straight into it without asking Peter a few questions, but making it feel like it was all his fault because he's "just a kid".
Some emotional punch, too, with the reworking of "great power" and the resolution of hang-ups the other two had.

John Wick (2014 via BR)
"Watch a film directed by a stunt performer"
I've seen this loads, so I watched this with the commentary on by the co-directors, which I'll be honest, was just OK. They spent a lot of the time picking holes at what was going on on-screen, rather than doing much technical talk or even behind-the-scenes tales.
The film itself is still mint, obviously.

A View To A Kill (1985 via BR)
"Watch a James Bond film/a film starring Dolph Lundgren"
Not the best Bond, but I needed to watch one and this has Lundgren as a Russian henchman, so chose this.
I've not seen it for flippin' yeeeears, so it was nice to go back to. I'd forgotten loads of it.
However, I watched it with the Roger Moore commentary. He starts by saying it would be just a few observations and memories as it was about 20 years since he'd made it and forgotten a lot, so I feared it would be a bit rambling ("Of course, I was verrr drank", but it wasn't at all, it was lovely.
Firstly, he's got loads of great stories and little titbits about the film and secondly, he had a mind like a steel trap, remembering everyone's names from the main cast, to people like the extras wrangler and the Mayor of San Francisco.

A couple of my fave stories was him saying how when filming at the Eiffel Tower, the lifts were out and Cubby Broccoli wanted lunch, so the two of them walked down and then their legs were burning for days after.

There's a scene with Moore, Walken, Jones and Roberts and between takes, Grace Jones and Tanya Roberts would go to their handbags and get a mirror out and reapply their lipstick. Moore got fed up of this, so he stole their lipstick and mirrors. Then they did another take and the pair produced another lipstick and mirror, so he nicked those too. Then they got even more out and he didn't know they could have so many lipsticks and also not notice he'd been stealing them.

Lundgren was dating Grace Jones, at the time, and he asked the stills photographer to take some snaps of him doing some boxing poses. It was on the strength of those promos that he got the job as Ivan Drago in Rocky IV.

Finally, he recalls the tale where he was a bit of a prankster on-set, so to get revenge on him, in the sex scene with Grace Jones, she drops her robes and climbs into bed, but as she dropped her robe in caught on her "dick" and jumped in with him, but the prop team had given her a massive strap-on dildo!

Really recommend checking this out if you have the discs as it was a lovely couple of hours in the (virtual) company of a legend. There are some nice extras too, like the awful Duran Duran video and some multi-angle scenes like the car chase.

Showdown in Little Tokyo (1991 via Archive dot org)
"Watch a film starring Brandon Lee/Starring Dolph Lundgren"
Pretty sure I'd seen this, but couldn't remember any of it, so maybe not!
There's a good film trying to get out, but doesn't quite get there.
There's an interesting flip of the classic "fish out of water" buddy-cop trope by having the Westerner knowledgeable in the ways of Japan, but the guy with Asian heritage is clueless. Lee was a bit wasted in this, being the straight man and a bit of a dick. Lundgren gets all the best scenes and he's bloody ripped and oiled up in this. There are some decent big-budget action scenes, but I think there's one moment where Lee throws more than one punch and kick without it being edited to hell. A mile away from his dad's footage in GoD I watched the other day.

RRR (2022 via Netflix)
Love how Woovember pushes my safety zone and watched this really good actioner.
My fear was they'd be bursting into song every 5 minutes, but there are only about 3 and they fit perfectly.
I struggled at first because it was a bit silly as the action was OTT (1 cop with a stick vs. a whole mob), but when I realised everything was OTT, I just vibed with it and ended up enjoying it.
Had to split this 3hr+ behemoth over a couple of days, though.

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Southern Comfort (1981 via YouTube)
Not sure how I'd missed this as I love The Warriors, by director Walter Hill and I love Deliverance and this seems to be influenced by both. I'd say there are some others too, but it was pretty tense throughout as the home guard soldiers on a training mission get picked off by the Cajun locals they piss off.
The end sequence is particularly tense, when it feels like they've escaped the swamps, but something feels off and that creeping dread, like The Wicker Man gives you stomach knots.
Thought this would be a lot more colourful, based on my time in the swamps in Deliverance and Red Dead 2, but this has a really muted palette and some foggy scenes, practically drained of colour.
Soldiers armed with blanks sent into a jungle they don't know, picked off by the locals that do is a pretty clear allegory for the Vietnam War, but it's not heavy-handed with it.

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[Neon Ignition]

RRR (2022 via Netflix)
Love how Woovember pushes my safety zone and watched this really good actioner.
My fear was they'd be bursting into song every 5 minutes, but there are only about 3 and they fit perfectly.
I struggled at first because it was a bit silly as the action was OTT (1 cop with a stick vs. a whole mob), but when I realised everything was OTT, I just vibed with it and ended up enjoying it.
Had to split this 3hr+ behemoth over a couple of days, though.

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I've been meaning to watch this for a while, Era has a thread running dedicated to action films and there's a fair few decent looking foreign made films popping up in it to add to my pending list.

[wakka]

Great impressions QC.

Southern Comfort sounds like an interesting one and it's a new one on me. I'm always a bit mixed on the ultimate quality of Walter Hill's output but his stuff is generally well worth watching.

[QualityChimp]

The thing is, for me, with film you can watch a "bad film", but it's still adding to your knowledge of cinema and get something from it.
None of these were bad, but sometimes the viewer has to adjust their preconceptions. I know I did.

Southern Comfort isn't as good as The Warriors or Deliverance, but is its own thing and is definitely tense as the soldiers start falling apart and are just as much danger to themselves as their predators. That washed-out look really gave it its own personality.
Rather than Deliverance's synopsis of a happy starting boating vacation turning into a pain in the arse, this starts off with the troops at odds with each other.

RRR is ridiculously melodramatic, but that's looking through Western eyes unused to this style of filmmaking.
I think knowing it's going to be OTT in everything, helps accept that it's a movie.
Like when Tarantino says Kill Bill is the kind of movie-within-a-movie that Clarence and Alabama would see in True Romance, RRR feels the same way, just a thrilling version of a story without trying too hard to adhere to reality.

It's up to the viewer to decide if they dislike that or can enjoy the fantasy in bright colours and in slow-motion.

[wakka]

The thing is, for me, with film you can watch a "bad film", but it's still adding to your knowledge of cinema and get something from it.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean the thing with film is that the time commitment is way lower than a bad book or bad videogame. It's one reason where I'm always more drawn to film over TV - to a fault, because I end up missing good TV series - because you're knocking the whole thing out inside two to three hours and you're done.

I do think, as well, that sometimes those 5 out of 10s or 6 out of 10s can be more interesting or instructive than something where it's just been smashed out of the park on every level. You can kind of unpick it more in your head and it can be very demonstrative as to why something which is a clear 9 or 10 out of 10 actually is so good.

Southern Comfort isn't as good as The Warriors or Deliverance

Yeah I can imagine. Thing is as well, when you like watching films and you've seen the classics like those two plenty of times, you kind of need to start digging into the reeds (or in this case the Louisana swamp), a bit more. And that's no bad thing!

[QualityChimp]

Agree with everything you've said there.
I think each medium has its own strengths and weaknesses.
A book lets you imagine your own world, but can't do a jump-scare, for example.

I like how a TV series can use the extra runtime to flesh out the characters, but I'm also aware that it can be used to bloat a series, rather than add to a story - usually leading to the dreaded mid-season cancellation!

A film is great way to spend a couple of hours without necessarily having to have seen loads of other films in preparation.
I've really enjoyed seeing films from around the world and from different eras, like a snapshot of that time.

I know Hollywood is prone to remaking 10s for obvious financial reasons, but I think it would fare better taking 5s and remaking them.

I've also enjoyed having my preconceptions smashed and ended up really enjoying RRR, Southern Comfort and Game of Death 2, for example.

[fuse]

Stuck on The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent last night. It's an odd film, and though I feel like the blend of genres is a bit of a mess, it did get a few good laughs out of me. Goes a bit too hard on the meta jokes, but the Cage / Pascal chemistry worked well. In general I love Sharon Horgan, but to my mind she was a very odd casting choice.

[fallenangle]

Made the mistake of watching Force 10 From Navarone the sequel to the The Guns Of Navarone.

Worse than I remembered, the type of not quite cheap sequel made in the 1970s with a couple of actors from the original and everything else second division or just down right bad.

Even the opening titles are bad: typical 1970's cheap, garish font against black and white background photos half of which look like they're of US soldiers from the Vietnam era (armed with M16 assault rifles and M60 machine guns) even though a WW2 film.

Despite being a GB production it has all the qualities of one of those ghastly East European WW2 films of the same period purpose made for bad post-dubbing into a dozen different European languages and then copied, badly onto grotty film stock as cheaply as possible.

How this movie can have been given some middling reviews at the time and since defies belief.