The Films You Watched Thread VI: The Undiscovered Movie

[fuse]

Bonus points for having a character called @fuse and people saying things like:
"Fuse! Don't **** with me!" or "Shut the **** up, Fuse!"

Sounds a bit too much 'art imitating life' for my liking.

[QualityChimp]

It's taken me all week to get through Raging Fire (2021 via NowTV) for a variety of reasons, but I've really struggled to get into it in loop.

It's Benny Chan's last film (Who Am I?, New Police Story) before he died from cancer. He fell ill during production and finished the film but was too ill to partake in the promotion.

Donnie Yen is Cheung Sung-bong, a cop who won't bend the rules for anyone, including team members that beat a suspect to death and bent brass insisting he drops charges with bribes. This affects his career as he's forced to take a backseat in missions he's planned for years.

When his disgruntled team leave jail, they plan some big heists using their insider knowledge, leaving Cheung Sung-bong torn between the law and honour.

There are a couple of great sequences in this. There's a shootout in abandoned mall that has a couple of FPS moments (I'd just been playing WWZ!), a foot chase through some slums and the finale fight.

There's a lot of melodrama along the way and people and cops dying because the brass want to spite Cheung Sung-bong seems a bit of a stretch.

Deffo worth watching if you're up for an action cop thriller and can cope with the melodrama as Yen is his usual formidable self in this.

[wakka]

Sounds pretty cool.

Starship Troopers

Rewatched this this week. I love this film. It's just so funny how Verhoeven hired soap opera actors and then clearly never told them it was a satire. The earnestness of the performances, the day-glo, 50s style fakery of the effects, the Nazi-style uniforms - it's beautiful. One of the most brilliantly subversive films ever made.

It does drag slightly in the last third though. They should've cut 20 minutes.

I watched it on the UHD, which was good actually. Not one that you must rush it out and buy immediately, but a definite uplift over the BD.

Uncut Gems

Another rewatch. Love, love, love this film. One of my absolute favourite films. So much propulsive energy. It's addictive for me to watch. I want Howie to keep pushing it, keep taking bigger risks, keep spinning more plates, and he does. And it has an aesthetic which is just to die for.

I watched this in UHD on Netflix, where it looks pretty good. Not as good as when I saw it in the cinema projected on proper 35mm though </brag>.

[fallenangle]

Starship Troopers is one of the great sci-fi movies. Its well made in every department but its satirical tone has not been matched or even attempted to be matched in any other sci-fi movie I can think of. Do you want to know more?

Pity that the two sequels although not entirely awful did away with most of the satire. Somebody clearly misunderstood that key element which made the original so much fun to watch.

[wakka]

I was actually thinking of watching all of the sequels to Verhoeven movies to see just how radically they miss the point of the original. Might be a fun project

[fallenangle]

The third one is the most radical departure and gets particularly odd but I won't spoil it for you.

A thing of note is that one of the 'stars' is Jolene Blalock - who you might have seen playing T'Pol the Vulcan in Star Trek: Enterprise.

[teddymeow]

This week:

One Shot - was okay. I know [MENTION=10111]QualityChimp[/MENTION] really likes it so thought I'd give it a go.

Terminator: Dank Fart - absolute ****e!!! Give up, Hollywood.

The Batman - awesome!!

[fallenangle]

Yes, I saw that final (?) Terminator film last week too - not completely awful but they've bled the franchise dry now and it does indeed need a long rest.

[Finsbury Girl]

The Gray Man- extremely average with superhero movie-esque ridiculous action sequences where highly trained black ops soldiers with sniper rifles cannot hit the side of a barn. Captain America was just ridiculous. Some CQC was good but mostly overly slow and telegraphed. 5/10

[Neon Ignition]

Thor: Love and Thunder
Nothing new was out and had a morning to kill so rewatched this in an empty IMAX screening. Knowing the beats helped it play out better on the second viewing but it still generates zero feels for plot points it should have landed much stronger.

[fuse]

Crossed one off the list that's been there probably longer than any other; Cinema Paradiso. Thought I knew roughly what to expect, and while it delivered the joy of cinema in spades, it was really the emotional heft of the latter third of the film that stood with me and that I wasn't expecting. Cried a lot.

I'm not often one for quotes, but "I don't want to hear you, I want to hear about you" got right under my skin.

[wakka]

Cinema Paradiso is a lovely film.

[Atticus]

Recently watched The Proposition ... a gritty, grimy Aussie western starring Guy Pearce and Ray Winstone. The proposition, as you discover minutes into the film, is made to captured crim (Pearce) to kill his more dangerous older brother in order to save his (more helpless) younger brother from the gallows. It's hailed as a bit of a poetic masterpiece, written by Nick Cave and directed by John Hillcoat ... and while it's undoubtedly an engaging character study I found it a little bit forgettable. But not as forgettable as ...

Fractured. A psychological thriller b-movie starring Sam Worthington, who, following a bit of an incident, has to take his wife and daughter to the hospital on their way home from a family visit and things start to go a bit weird. It's all a bit Twilight Zone, keeps you guessing, but by the end you're just not that bothered. Daft and disposable.

[QualityChimp]

Not heard of either of those!

I watched Crying Freeman. I got it for £1 from CEX earlier in the year because I've never seen it.
Turns out I might have as I remembered some bits.
However, despite the presence of Mark Dacascos, it's pretty poor.
The Director and him teamed up for Brotherhood of the Wolf, which is better, but this is just a strained love affair between hitman and target. The action is really underwhelming too because every moment of action is in slo-mo.

Every. Single. Fight.

I also watched Prodigal Son, but I'll write about that in the Fu thread.

[Neon Ignition]

Never Hike Alone
We watched the Ghost Cut which splices the three fan made youtube films into one. The whole thing is a fan made Friday the 13th film but instead of camp based kids it follows individual hikers who find themselves stumbling into the remains of Camp Crystal Lake which the local law enforcement have struck off the map and where Jason still remains. For a youtube effort it's very well done and whilst it's not really 'there' in terms of delivery its close enough with its own little takes on the concept. In October a sequel will be arriving which the newest short suggests will benefit from more developed filmmaking skills from its maker.