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Author Topic: Respond to the last movie you watched  (Read 684310 times)

Dave the Necrobumper

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #3390 on: March 30, 2019, 06:16:18 AM »
Galaxy of Terror (1981 Bruce D. Clark)

Now here is a crew I would not want to travel with. Sent on a mission to find survivors on another planet, this lot get off to a great start. The captain arrives, blasts a couple of quick questions at the 1 other person on the bridge, then announces the ship is leaving in 30 seconds. Are the crew ready? Is everything safely stored? Are the crew strapped in? Not the captain's problem. Then on arrival the lead of the away team splits them up in pairs, but there is an odd number on the team, so who does the team lead send off on their own, the nervous newbie. Amazingly they all survive, but the newbie is a wreck, so off they return to the ship, anyone check to ensure they all safely return, no way. As a final example of the crew's quality, on a later away mission one of the crew decides to go down a hole and very sensibly anchors 1 piton in to hold the rope (it fails to not surprisingly). For stupidity this crew takes first prize.

The quality of the mission crew is about the same as the quality of this Roger Corman flick. Still I had fun being annoyed their stupidity, trying to work out how badly they were ripping off Alien (and maybe even a little Jodorowsky), and it is only 81 min long.

Rating: 58 / 100 (this is a bit of a generous rating)

ProperCharlie

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #3391 on: March 31, 2019, 04:20:49 AM »
Still ill and utterly fed up of being so, still watching films.  Not necessarily good films, but watching them nonetheless. 

Volcano (1997)
An unsuspected magma pocket saves Los Angeles from decades of racial tension. A full-on 1990s disaster movie replete with slow-motion jumping, slow-motion erupting, and slow-motion emerging from the ruins of destroyed buildings covered in debris. Anne Heche is there to prove the script-writers consulted a geologist and to ensure you know that they did. Don Cheadle does some fine talking over the phone while sitting in a chair. The racism side plot is so clunky it’s beyond awful.

Diamonds Are Forever (1971) - Rewatch
Bond is contractually obliged to see this one through, so he phones it in. This is the one where they’ve finally managed to remove anything that was new or interesting from the carcass of Ian Fleming and we’re stuck with the ridiculousness and excess of a plot involving Las Vegas excess, over-cologned campy assassins, I-can’t-believe-it’s-not-Howard-Hughes and doppelcats. At least there wasn’t an invisible car. Given all of that it's oddly flat and low-key. A swansong played on a swanee whistle.

The Fog (1980)
Maritime vengeance ruins a small town’s centenary celebrations. The lonely melancholy of radio stations at night broadcasting to ships at sea and foghorns sounding along a coastline, is rudely interrupted by a meteorological horror for introverts. By day fresh, clear Pacific breezes encourage people into isolation in lighthouses and weather stations. At night, penetrating clouds of fear force them together for protection as they recoil from their pasts and the shadows that lurk there. Too real.

Trapper County War (1989)
A hillbilly grudge in the 1980s can only be settled in one way. Shooting people in slow-motion. Starting out with some good sexual tension and simmering jealousy, this erupts into the usual family gang riding around in trucks with guns attempting to murder their aggression away. For that First Blood touch, there’s a shack-dwelling veteran who’s horded bazookas and mines to create explosions for the finale. Promising more at the start, it ends up exactly as you’d expect at the end. And a criminal waste of a spike pit.

Omicidio a Luci Blu (1991) aka Homicide in a Blue Light
A killer attempts to be the real rain that sweeps the scum off the Italian-speaking New York streets. Somewhere between a macho procedural and a sexually-charged drama, this exists largely to watch its lead actress undressing or titillating her clients. Saturated in nighttime neon and puddles, it’s rarely filmed in a blue light, though it does have interesting visual touches. These include some curious computer-generated transitions between scenes. Conventional, paternalistic and almost completely unstimulating.




Guardians of the Galaxy 2 (2017)
Superpowers, lasers, godhood, guns, knowing jokes, bombs, glamour villains, etc. The usual routine. The usual plot. The usual jokes. This is not a film to watch for subtly, novelty, serenity or self-awareness. Instead, hookup your dopamine synapses, light a joint and pig out for that satisfying full feeling. Wallow in repetitive stupor with a smile. A comfort blanket for teenagers and those reluctant not to be teenagers any more. A film that sucks the vim from youth.

Suicide Squad (2016)
Another team of reprobates with skills take on another being burdened with superhuman abilities and a grudge against humanity. All that’s changed are the clothes. Underneath it’s the same power fantasy for an impotent audience made to take their dollars and to maintain their impotence. This gives nothing. No insight, no development, no message. It makes no sense. In this instance, style, verve, panache and humour are also absent. It’s empty cinematic calories being added directly to your optic nerve.

You Were Never Really Here (2017)
Joaquin Phoenix is traumatically, quietly raging on the inside. The plot involving the sexual interests of powerful men, is secondary to the picture Lynne Ramsay is painting of extreme trauma from the inside of a victim’s head. Nearly all the violence is skipped. Forgotten instantly by a damaged mind as he roves hallways with a hammer, seen only by CCTV. The silence surrounding the violent acts past, present and imagined is only occasionally pierced by a cry. There are no tears, only wide eyes that see only what’s being remembered. Troubling and tough.

Mechanic: Resurrection (2016)
Jason Statham proves his adeptness at everything apart from avoiding large cattle prods. Being a fan of on screen competence this is quite the draw - however the suspension of disbelief required at every single stage of this film is far beyond my abilities. Given how good he is at everything, I’m unsure why he gave up on his first attack on the boat. And where does he get all of his amazing toys? Plain ridiculous if well shot and paced. Also an overdue shout out for the joys of communist architecture.

Shorts of the Week

1/57: Versuch mit synthetischem Ton (1957) aka 1/57: Experiment with Synthetic Sound (Test)
Something or someone out there is trying to communicate with us. Perhaps it’s the director. Hard, grey noise scraped across a malfunctioning condenser microphone, transmitted on a narrow frequency band over a distance of several thousand miles of mixed weather conditions. Alien cacti, blurred scissors and a wall. There’s a message here and Kurt Kren does a fantastic job of making it utterly alien. This summons memories of the Cold War. Secrets, distance and urgency grasped from the airwaves.  Link

Colour Rhythm (1942)
Rhythm and hues. Abstract dancing shapes we’re instructed to watch without a musical soundtrack - the colours and shapes create their own rhythm. A boy is it colourful. Complex abstractions do indeed move and oscillate to an unheard beat, this truly is a musical composition in colour. Oskar Fischinger’s geometrical composition is exact, complex and fast. Each frame contains such a depth of detail that work to make it all dance so effortlessly is daunting. Exquisite.  Link

Canada Vignettes: The Egg (1979)
An egg fears for its structural integrity. What promises to be a minor piece of claymation, suddenly becomes something much stronger with an unexpected zoom out in the final shot. You’d expect a joke about the nature of an egg and what it is to become. Instead we get a more profound comment on the lengths we will go to in order to preserve the status quo and the fear we have of change. It manages to say more in its minute of runtime than most films say in a couple of hours. Scaffolding and eggs as metaphors for a lifetime. Link





Junior

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #3392 on: March 31, 2019, 08:29:40 AM »
I watched Color Rhythm in an animation class recently. It was very cool to see on a movie theater screen.
Check out my blog of many topics

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1SO

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #3393 on: April 03, 2019, 03:00:52 PM »
completed my last batch of five.



The Book of Eli (2010)
★ ★
The look of the film is wonderfully stylized by Don Burgess (Aquaman, Contact), like the whole world is both moldy and rusted out. Too bad the story is so overly-simplistic that it becomes an empty exercise in style. The film effectively derailed the careers of the promising Hughes Brothers and it's easy to see why. Also, the twist ending (which I knew going in) is constantly cheated on, with a number of visual shots that make no sense because they want to hide the surprise.


The Other Guys (2010)
★ ★ ½
As a comedy it's the mess I expected, though perhaps even more wildly hit-and-miss. (It's as good as Lord Miller's Jump Street films and as bad as Will Farrell at his worst.) Way too many characters and too much story to tell, though this is the key film if you're wondering how Adam McKay went from Anchorman to The Big Short.

Corndog

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #3394 on: April 03, 2019, 03:15:31 PM »
Don't go chasing discoveries
Please stick to the classics and the canonicals that you're used to
I know you're gonna have it your way or nothing at all
But I think you're moving too fast
"Time is the speed at which the past decays."

1SO

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #3395 on: April 03, 2019, 03:24:21 PM »
Then, I wouldn't have watched Joy
And Five-Year Engagement wouldn't get no love from me.
And I couldn't tell you 'bout
Now You See Me 2
So don't you holla at me.

Sam the Cinema Snob

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #3396 on: April 03, 2019, 03:26:08 PM »
Just watch whatever you feel like, dude.

Corndog

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #3397 on: April 03, 2019, 03:35:47 PM »
I wasn't really trying to tell 1SO to stop his project, I just wanted to try to be clever about The Other Guys.
"Time is the speed at which the past decays."

1SO

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #3398 on: April 03, 2019, 03:41:14 PM »
That was one of my favorite running jokes. Keaton sells it completely. Strange that it didn't start until the film was almost half over. Usually a running gag is paced throughout, but it's like they shot in sequence and once they hit this idea they never went back to space it out more.

Sam the Cinema Snob

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #3399 on: April 03, 2019, 05:27:11 PM »
I don't remember that joke at all.