Films You Have Watched

[wakka]

It should be his title and he should get a special name colour. A lascivious purple.

[Dogg Thang]

Yes please!

[QualityChimp]

Yes please!

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[Finsbury Girl]

Kill Bill Vol 1 - hadn't watched it in ages, still my favourite QT film. Absolutely brilliant.

[QualityChimp]

I watched Apocalypse Now (1979 via BBC iPlayer)
Basically, it's a guy on a boat, talking to himself for 4 hours, then a living cow gets chopped up.

I mean, this is a classic and has loads of memorable moments and lines and looks gorgeous, but I don't revere it as much as some.

Kill Boksoon (2023 via Netflix)
This was decent, but not astounding.
Gil Boksoon is an agent for a shadowy organisation of assassins, but things start to unravel when people start breaking the rules and people are trying to kill her!
Worse than that, she has the emotions of a adolescent daughter to try to understand!

I found the pacing was off with this, with some slower sections dragging the film down.
The mother and daughter leads are both great, though and Jeon Do-yeon as Kill/Gil is great.
There are some really inventive action sequences though.
Kill is taking out a Yakuza boss and it's next to a railway bridge on a rainy night, so you get the reflections of the action in the puddles and as a train goes by, there's a zoetrope effect.
Another sequence has two agents fighting multiple attackers either side of a rollershutter door and the camera rotates around to catch both sides of the action.
Boksoon is a master strategist and she can imagine how a fight will turn out and which actions will cause her death and there's a clever sequence where she's trying to beat a particularly tough enemy and there are multiple versions of them fighting as she tries to work out how to win.

Worth a watch for action fans.

Here she takes down the top-of-the-class trainee with just a marker pen:

[Atticus]

I watched Apocalypse Now (1979 via BBC iPlayer)
Basically, it's a guy on a boat, talking to himself for 4 hours, then a living cow gets chopped up.

I mean, this is a classic and has loads of memorable moments and lines and looks gorgeous, but I don't revere it as much as some.

It didn’t always resonate with me but it’s grown on me over the years. I always look away during the cow bit.

[wakka]

I find it a difficult one to get my head round in many ways. I really like it but there’s a hell of a lot in there and I actually feel like I need to give it much more time and energy to understand what everything is doing. Unmatched vibes though. I’d like to sit down and watch the doc about it’s making actually.

I was reading a Reddit AMA with a Vietnam vet the other day and interestingly he said that Platoon was much truer to the real life Vietnam experience than Apocalypse Now. Which I guess makes sense considering some of the wacky stuff that goes on in the latter.

[Nu-Eclipse]

Body Heat is pretty good too I reckon. It's basically Double Indemnity, but dripping in 90s erotic thriller sweat.

Lawrence Kasdan must be one hell of a director to make a film with a 90s feel in 1981!

Seriously though, Body Heat is a classic. William Hurt and Kathleen Turner's chemistry is ridiculous.

[fuse]

Apocalypse Now is on the long, long list of films that I feel I should watch at some point, but I can't say I'm in a huge rush to do so - mainly because the list of war films I've enjoyed is very, very short, but also because I remember being massively underwhelmed when I read Heart of Darkness.

Watched Air last night, which is the story of Nike's basketball division going in pursuit of Michael Jordan. Don't worry, I won't spoil what happens! As someone who's very much into that 80s/90s era of basketball there were some details where I got to feel in on the joke for once (so rare with a sports film!), and the soundtrack does not let you forget this is set in the 80s for one gosh darn minute, but there is also no escaping that this is not a basketball movie or even the story of Michael Jordan - it is very much a movie about licensing a shoe. There's a clearly conscious decision to omit Michael from the film as much as is possible, and yet there's also this one line they use a lot about "a shoe is just a shoe until you step into it" which... kind of sums up what they've done the movie, by omitting the context that would make 90% of watchers care about it.

[wakka]

Lawrence Kasdan must be one hell of a director to make a film with a 90s feel in 1981!

Seriously though, Body Heat is a classic. William Hurt and Kathleen Turner's chemistry is ridiculous.

Damn, had it in my head as a way later one!

Don't worry, I won't spoil what happens!

I thought about watching this one but it just feels like it's going to be so gd predictable. Lot of funky musical montages and some snappy walk 'n' talks and in the end they release the shoe and it's a hit.

Closing credits is like, fade to black, white text on screen 'Since the release of the Jordan 1 in 198x, more than 50 million shoes have been sold'

'It remains the greatest selling basketball shoe of all time'

'michael jordan still wears them every day'

*music* 'A Ben Affleck film'

I'm not spoilering this cuz I made it up.

[Nu-Eclipse]

Watched Air last night, which is the story of Nike's basketball division going in pursuit of Michael Jordan. Don't worry, I won't spoil what happens! As someone who's very much into that 80s/90s era of basketball there were some details where I got to feel in on the joke for once (so rare with a sports film!), and the soundtrack does not let you forget this is set in the 80s for one gosh darn minute, but there is also no escaping that this is not a basketball movie or even the story of Michael Jordan - it is very much a movie about licensing a shoe. There's a clearly conscious decision to omit Michael from the film as much as is possible, and yet there's also this one line they use a lot about "a shoe is just a shoe until you step into it" which... kind of sums up what they've done the movie, by omitting the context that would make 90% of watchers care about it.

I went to see Air at the cinema a while back and I enjoyed it for the most part. Probably shouldn't have been a full theatrical release though. Just being an Amazon Prime Video Original would've been enough, I feel.

Worth noting that the significant lack of MJ in it is likely down to the man himself being notoriously iron-fisted in terms of controlling the licensing of his brand and image.

[fuse]

Yeah you've pretty much nailed it

The timing of it releasing around the same time as the Tetris movie is particularly amusing to me, as it feels like all of those sensationalisms and exaggerations they added were out of fear of becoming a movie like Air. Even if they'd both played their stories straight-laced (sorry), I'd argue Tetris has the more intrigue, so it's interesting to see them play out this way.

[Finsbury Girl]

Apocalypse Now is one of my faves. Was of a time where film makers took risks.

love this scene



Nowadays the film would end in a dodgy fast cut fight ala Solid v Liquid in Metal Gear Solid starring Chris Hemsworth as Willard and the Rock as Kurtz.

[wakka]

Yeah, it's honestly hard to imagine a major release like this today. It's peak United Artists, just before it all fell apart thanks to Michael Cimino!

[QualityChimp]

Yeah, the experimentation is definitely a bygone era and was interesting to watch.

A film I've had the urge to rewatch for a while and tick off from my bucket list movie poster, but hasn't been on streaming platforms is The Shawshank Redemption (1994 via BBC iPlayer), but I spotted it on there last night and jumped on it.

It's such a fantastic film, isn't it?
It works on so many levels.
One thing that struck me last night was that it feels like the film is in sections, similar to Andy's stretch in prison and something from a decade ago feels like ancient history whilst doing time.

Has anyone here not seen it? If not, just treat yourself.