Films You Have Watched

[fallenangle]

Rewarded last night by staying up to watch Lola 2024 on Film4.

Really enjoyable little sci-fi tale done on a budget but with a great central theme about the dangers of technology and how it can have unforeseen consequences. Executed imaginatively as a period 'found-footage' docudrama and set during WW2 it deals with the lives of two sisters who create an amazing tool for helping the war effort.

Just seeing the term 'found-footage' usually puts me off as it has been done to death but I'm so glad I found this film. It is engaging and intriguing from start to finish.

Ignore any negative reviews you may come across, they have no idea what they're talking about. This is a good example of how you can do low-budget sci-fi and do it well.

[Baseley09]

Sounds interesting thanks for the heads up.

[QualityChimp]

Nice one. May check that out.

Just looked and it's available on the Channel 4 app, but it's not streaming anywhere else at the moment.

[wakka]

Last night I watched two films about sociopaths from 1990. Not deliberately, that's just how it worked out lol

Miami Blues

This is a really cool film. A mysterious guy - a young Alec Baldwin - lands at Miami airport and before he's out of the terminal he's discreetly nicked someone's suitcase and mortally wounded an annoying Hare Krishna. A strange triangle of love and frenemyship emerges between him, a prostitute (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and a cop investigating the attack on the Krishna. Cool music, cool visuals, some bangin' fits and a quirky tone that hovers between thriller and comedy. Highly recommend, this one.

Reminded me of an Elmore Leonard novel, and it is in fact based on a book (though not by Leonard), the first in a series about the (mis)adventures of the cop character.

Bad Influence

James Spader's a clean cut nerd and a high flyer in his investment career. When he meets a slick stranger - Rob Lowe - his new friend convinces him to start acting more decisively and aggressively in life. At first the results are positive, but soon the advice takes a darker, more manipulative tone.

This film is SO cool in the first half and I loved it. It's a really good depiction of a damaging friendship with a narcissist who seems like they have your best interests at heart while only serving themselves. In the second half it simply takes things too far for me, and becomes a more generic 90s thriller with Lowe as a much less believable individual (and some hard-to-fathom decisions by the protagonist).

Worth watching, though.

[Atticus]

***maybe slightly spoilery but not really*** Finally got round to watching Joker: Folie à Deux. Having heard the large amount of negativity my expectations were fairly tempered ... but I was still in the mood for it and hoping those guys could never really drop the ball that spectacularly, could they? Okay, it's a little bit too long. And maybe it could have done without Steve Coogan taking me out of the experience. But I liked it. Phoenix is always incredible to watch, the Loony Tunes intro was so good and the musical numbers throughout were really enjoyable and the production unbelievable. I think what might have turned audiences off was the same perspective of pretty much everyone (except Arthur) in the film ... they just want Joker. Yet he wants to be loved and accepted for his ordinary self. It's a brave dedication to the character they created and a huge risk for a £200million sequel ... but I admire that they avoided a more obvious route and made something different and original. there's not enough of that around these days. It's as dark as the first film but in a less obvious way. The absurdity of it actually feels more rooted in the traditional, more comic-book Batman world than the first film. It's not perfect by any means but I don't think it deserves all the hate.

[fuse]

Anora is pretty good but largely owing to Mikey Madison in the role rather than anything that the story gives us, which is really minimal and entirely anchored around this one highly questionable relationship. I can get behind the confidence in letting your cast have these long, tense, shouty scenes, and even the slow pacing when a particular plot point gets curiously drawn out, but after hearing it held up as this nuanced, humanist portrayal of a sex worker, I felt it came up short on actually developing the character in support of that.

Also a little underwhelmed by The Wild Robot, primarily because having watched Flow recently, the two could not be at further ends of the “show, don’t tell” spectrum, with this feeling like it needed to instruct me directly on how I was meant to respond to every little thing along the way. I’m on board with the art style here but found its message a bit weak, and that it really faltered towards the end.

I shan’t mince my words, I thought Gladiator II was bollocks. It sure is impressive to look at, but the plot is shaky, so much of the action is really (REALLY) ****ing silly, and the repeated calls back to the first film are sloppy. One of those where you can’t help but to despair at the waste of time, talent, and money.

[Nu-Eclipse]

BlackBerry (Matt Johnson, 2023)

I'd wanted to see this one for a while and finally got around to doing so. A comedy-drama telling of the history of Research In Motion (RIM) and how their iconic BlackBerry brand of mobile phones went from success to failure.

I do feel like this is what you would mostly get if The Social Network and The Kids in the Hall combined, and that's not a bad thing.

Jay Baruchel's Mike Lazaridis was far better than I thought he would be and Glenn Howerton's depiction of Jim Balsillie steals the show with its energy, entertainment value and a hilariously epic quotable line near the end.

Ultimately an enjoyable fiction-loosely-based-on-reality take on the pre-iPhone era of smartphones.

[Neon Ignition]

Austin Powers in Goldmember
Still good fun and I guess the fact hat it's hard to come up with many other solid stablemates for these highlights how much they really brought an end to this kind of comedy. Still underlines just how hard a miss Spectre was that it stole a plot point from it.

Nosferatu
Feels like the director is emerging for me into a kind of Christopher Nolan style situation. The film mostly looks great bar some scenes and shots where modern cameras are undermining the shot by making it look a bit low budget/a set, the cast are great too. You could freeze frame most of the film and it would look great... and yet... it's boring as ****. Just absolutely no sense of suspense, horror etc. I found the same was the case with his first film The VVitch, which is well regarded but was dull as dishwater. It's a shame as the trailers really sell them but I'm starting to think him attempting that Labyrinth sequel is a mistake even if the idea was solid.

[QualityChimp]

That description of Blackberry sounds loads better than the boring story I'd expected. I'm much more likely to check it out now, cheers.

About 3 hours into Nosferatu and I was ready for Blade to appear.

[wakka]

I watched the Blackberry movie on a plane a while back when it was newly out. It's an interesting story, especially if you're interested in that kind of technology/business history, and yeah Glenn Howerton from Always Sunny is brilliant in it.

[Nu-Eclipse]

That description of Blackberry sounds loads better than the boring story I'd expected. I'm much more likely to check it out now, cheers.

Worth it. The comedy-drama styling of it works well and I was surprised that it had a two-hour runtime because it didn't feel long at all.

[Finsbury Girl]

Hmmm. I may check out the Blackberry movie now. I have fond memories of my crackberry back in the day. I got extremely good at 2 thumb typing.

Anyway decided to watch Memento over the weekend. Hadn't seen it in years. Was even better than I remembered. Had a good laugh at the meme "don't believe his lies" scenes.

[QualityChimp]

Took a few goes, but I watched F/X (Prime), where a special effects artists is hired by the feds to fake a death on a mob boss who is testifying against them, so the mob stop trying to kill him. However, the plans go wrong and he ends up on the run, using his knowledge of movie effects to outwit his pursuers.

Bryan Brown is the likeably Aussie effects guy, being pursued by Brian Dennehy as the grizzled cop who suspects there's more going on, but those pencil-pushing desk jockey bosses are reigning him in.

This is one of those films we must've taped off the telly and watched a load of times when we were kids.
Probably the TV edit as I don't remember all the swearing as a kid!
It's actually a decent thriller with nice twist as he's trying to MacGuyver his way out of his situation before MacGuyver was a thing.

Then I settled down and watched The Hateful Eight (Prime), which I've not seen since the cinema.
Yeah, what a treat. It's like an Agatha Christie whodunit, but through the Tarantino lens, with the premise of what if The Thing was a Western?

I'd forgotten that excellent monologue from Samuel L. Jackson as he talks about one of his kills.

Special mention to that exemplary score by Morricone.
I know everyone knows, but it actually uses some songs that were originally planned for The Thing, plus a few tracks that are also on that soundtrack.

Obviously. the myriad of slurs always feel uncomfortable to hear, but it fits the era.

[Atticus]

Memento is a belter. Not seen it in a while. I must leave myself a message to watch it again. I re-watched The Hateful Eight a year or so back. I enjoyed it enough at the cinema but that second watch I absolutely loved.

[wakka]

I watched Zone of Interest, which is the recent film about the commandant of Auschwitz's family life outside the camp.

This is a really good film. It's very much a slice of life, in some ways about any ordinary, affluent German family in the early 40s. The interior of the camp itself is never shown. Instead it lurks relentlessly and inexorably - the barbed wire topped wall directly abutting the idyllic home and garden the commandant's wife and children enjoy, and, most horrifyingly, a continual grinding background hum of the death factory, punctuated by periodic gunfire and screams.

Against that monstrous backdrop, ordinary life goes on. Children are chided to pull their socks up, family friends visit for coffee, the commandant and his wife pillow talk about the events of the day.

It's a fascinating, disgusting juxtaposition. It feels really timely, as an examination of how people can become inured to totally psychopathic brutality and think of it as normal. As minorities are dehumanised on a political and cultural level by Trump's America, it's a reminder that this is the natural conclusion.