Films You Have Watched

[Baseley09]

Oh man, you quit before Kirsty Alley turns up looking hot or Gene Simmonds starts shooting homing bullets and launching acid cyber-spiders!

I bet Baseley09 likes Runaway!

You bet, another cool Crichton one is Looker, first film to show a cgi person if I recall correctly even if it is briefly on a computer screen!

[fuse]

Watched Society of the Snow (Netflix), which was not really enjoyable as such, but decent. I've never watched Alive (they're based on the same real-life event) but feel I've culturally osmosed enough of it, and from a look around the general feeling seems to be that this is better focused on telling the story without inserting hot acting properties of the time and sensationalising details. It certainly does a good job of putting you right with them in the struggle, which feels like the right way to do things.

Also caught Blood Simple in the cinema on the weekend too, which is one of the Coen films I'd not seen before. I can't say I was super impressed - you can see how it's got ideas they'd continue to explore in later films, just in spite of it looking quite nice, it moves pretty slowly and the characters it gives you are all pretty flat. Final set piece was really good though, and redeemed it somewhat for me.

[QualityChimp]

You bet, another cool Crichton one is Looker, first film to show a cgi person if I recall correctly even if it is briefly on a computer screen!

I used to think the song "Luka" by Suzanne Vega was about this film.
I was incorrect.

I went to the cinema to watch Abigail, which wasn't remotely scary but was a real blast.
If you don't know the premise, I think you'd have even more fun, but it's pretty heavily promoted in the trailers, so you'll probably know.
However, the basic story is that some criminals are hired to kidnap a billionaire's daughter, but things don't go to plan...

I laughed throughout and enjoyed the plot strands coming together, leading to a final, gory resolution.

[Atticus]

I used to think the song "Luka" by Suzanne Vega was about this film.
I was incorrect.

[Atticus]

I eventually got round to watching High Tension this week (aka Switchblade Romance). It's centres around a home invasion in a French farmhouse and as the title might suggest it's a tense old affair. Which I loved. It seems to be no secret that

->Open Spoiler<-

the twist leaves many cold ... spoils the film entirely for some as it's hard (not impossible) to make sense of what you've just seen ...

but I had a great time watching and thought it was a lot of fun.

[Dogg Thang]

Yeah, the thing in your spoiler soured the entire movie for me.

[wakka]

I'm gonna check out Looker by Crichton, that sounds really cool.

I watched House of Games (1987)last night, which is David Mamet's first film. This one gets a ton of love from people online, but honestly I thought it was just okay. The basic premise is that a clinical psychiatrist meets a conman and starts to participate in a series of swindles with him, but realises she's getting sucked in too deep.

For me it's let down most of all by a predictable plot. I hate predictable plots. It's such a typical 'con' movie. The Mametspeaky dialogue is also pretty wooden in places. I just didn't really FEEL anything as it goes along. Stuff kind of just happens.

There are much better films about conmen than this for my money, namely The Sting and Mamet's own The Spanish Prisoner, which he made a decade later.

[prinnysquad]

Snowball (1960)

Dennis Waterman plays a kid who arrives home late and explains to his fraught mother, and father (Gordon Jackson), that he was refused entry onto the bus, and had to walk 4 miles home. Their busybody neighbour writes to the local rag about it, causing a snowball of events with troubling circumstances.

Quality little kitchen sink drama about the danger of accusations and the impact they can have. Immaculately performed and economically paced, the tone shifts from flippant to genuinely uncomfortable as the film progresses. It concludes in a reasonably brave way, that, while satisfying, is unsettling.

8/10 for a British B movie with something to say.

[Neon Ignition]

The Terminator
We only let the kids see the last half hour, they weren't that interested and so we saved them the build up and exposition as well as Hamilton's exposure. The last half hour caught their attentions though, we've done 25 minutes of Terminator 2 as well given the tone dials down with this franchise fast but will need to return to it as again the slow start lost them.

Late Night with the Devil
Not with the kids Dastmalchian pretty much carries the film hard with other performances varying from fine to hokey. The style is decent but it too does a lot of heavy lifting for a film that mostly goes in very soft and also outstays its welcome with the extended finale.

[Yakumo]

Neon Ignition for a moment I read that as " saved them FOR THE build up and exposition as well as Hamilton's Exposure". 😅

[Neon Ignition]

Anyone But You
The recent rom-com where two people hate each other but pretend to be a couple. That central premise is maintained for a hot minute, the film runs incredibly low on jokes and as a cynic might expect, seemingly exists purely so a studio can jam two people it hopes are up and comers onto the poster of a film that doesn't cost too much to make.

[fuse]

Also caught Blood Simple in the cinema on the weekend too, which is one of the Coen films I'd not seen before.

PictureHouse have carried on revisiting Coen Brothers films, so this Sunday I crossed another off my list in Raising Arizona, which was a very different beast tonally. Lets you know right upfront that it's going to be very silly, and well, it was. Decent amount of laughs, and though most of them are at its characters expense, and reaching beyond that, arguably at the stereotypes they present, it does manage to keep its heart in the right place. There is a scene with John Goodman where he's doing a thing but is just shout-screaming at the one pitch for about a minute and well, I enjoyed that on a very simple level very much.

[QualityChimp]

I watched Renfield (NowTV) and I really enjoyed it.
I'm not a massive Cage fan. He seems to shout in most of his films, but this was an OTT film, so it worked.
Some surprisingly decent action sequences, and I snort-laughed at the bit where Renfield (Nicholas Hoult) attacks some enemies whilst being "heavily armed".

Honey, I Shrunk The Kids (Disney+). My daughter wanted to watch Wish with me, but I wasn't fussed and she's seen it at least once already!
Had a mooch and HISTK was listed, so we watched that and she loved it.
I think it's the first time since the cinema for me, so watching with adult eyes gave it a very different perspective and the neighbour dad has some serious issues to deal with, but so do all the characters.
Nice that it was layered for the grownups as well as the fun adventure for the kids.

https://dejareviewer.com/2023/03/28/honey-i-shrunk-the-kids-is-about-bigger-things-than-i-remembered/

[Lebowski]

I really enjoyed Renfield, I think it's one of them overlooked films which is really well cast funny, gory and like you say some really decent action scenes.

[Brad]

Godzilla -1

Pretty much perfect. Loved it.