I Just Watched (Films)

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Raid
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Re: I Just Watched (Films)

Post by Raid » Mon Nov 07, 2022 8:35 am

I mostly want to watch it too, but it's one of those films that I need to find a space where I have both the time (it's 2hrs 30 long) and the desire to watch something that's likely not going to be much fun. I don't have much of a personal connection to the conflict, I know at least one of my ancestors died at Passchendaele, but I don't know anything about him so he's just another name. I did however tour French and Belgian sites as part of a school trip, and looking out at a sea of graves at Tyne Cot cemetary, 8000 or so of the 11000 unnamed, probably had a profound effect. People die in war, but the First World War seems to be a special case in my head in terms of senseless wastes of human life; maybe it was the tactics, maybe it was the largely pointless events that started it, maybe it was Blackadder Goes Forth's light-hearted but brutal commentary on the conflict that I watched when I was quite young.

It'll be interesting to see if this joins Schindler's List as the only other film I've been glad to have watched but never want to watch again.

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Re: I Just Watched (Films)

Post by Animalmother » Mon Nov 07, 2022 9:34 am

It really is very good but as mentioned pretty grim in places. Never read the book, think I've seen the 1930 adaption and saw the 1979 version a very long time ago. This is definitely the best version for me. It's beautifully shot and with brilliant acting from everyone. Would have loved to have seen this on the big screen.

The battle scenes are fucking brutal, no one gives an inch or shows mercy. It's down to rocks and shovels at times. The tank attack is terrifying (props for using mockup vehicles instead of cgi), everyone is filthy and exhausted looking all the time. These scenes aren't long and the film is mostly people just trying to exist and shoving food into their faces at every opportunity.

Definitely would recommend and can see being regarded as a classic in years to come.

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Re: I Just Watched (Films)

Post by Raid » Sun Nov 13, 2022 12:03 pm

The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent

Not nearly as good as I think it probably should have been. It's a film about Nicholas Cage playing Nicholas Cage, but he's been more Nicholas Cage in the films it frequently references. I wouldn't really expect a film like this to have a budget comparable to Face/Off or The Rock, but I think it needed one for the concept to work properly, because it's about an aging action star attempting to play one of his characters in real life, but it never reaches those heights and it's just a bit disappointing as a result. It's still entertaining, and Pedro Pascal is great in it.

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Re: I Just Watched (Films)

Post by Achtung Englander » Mon Nov 14, 2022 3:38 pm

saw the first half, did not go back for the second...says it all really
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Re: I Just Watched (Films)

Post by Alan » Tue Nov 15, 2022 7:42 pm

Fresh
That was great! I seen someone describe it as “White girl Get Out” which is 100% on the money
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Re: I Just Watched (Films)

Post by Lenny Solidus » Wed Nov 16, 2022 2:59 pm

Enola Holmes 2

I really enjoyed the first Enola movie, it even got repeat viewings out of myself and Christina when it first released, quite uncommon for new Netflix movie releases. The follow-up basically lacks almost everything the first had going for it and is about as forgettable a sequel as can be, with some pretty terrible writing start to finish.

Millie Bobby Brown is just trying too damn hard and I slowly grew to loathe her scenes, she comes over as unlikeable, brattish and a little entitled whereas she had much more of a reserved air about her in the first that lent more into her being ever so likeable and smart - if perhaps a little off the hook at times. Overall it absolutely pales in comparison to the first and will never get another viewing pretty much, no not even for the always delectable Mr Cavill sadly.

1 Watson out of 10.
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Re: I Just Watched (Films)

Post by Achtung Englander » Wed Nov 16, 2022 4:04 pm

well done on having the courage to even sit through the first one
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Re: I Just Watched (Films)

Post by Raid » Sat Nov 19, 2022 8:42 pm

Bill & Ted Face the Music

I really wasn't expecting to enjoy this as much as I did. I'm a big fan of time-travel fiction, and I wasn't expecting a mix of that genre with stoner humour to work, but it does. I have next to no memory of the original film(s?), but even if the acting is tedious, it carries a certain charm that's difficult to quantify. It's a film about a bunch of idiots saving time and space, like Doctor Who crossed with the Fast Show, but it works. I think it's largely down to the two actors playing Bill & Ted's daughters, who do a pitch perfect impression of what I imagine Reaves and Winters were doing in the original.

Like a band consisting of Jimmy Hendrix, Mozart and Louis Armstrong, it's somehow better than the sum of its parts.

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Re: I Just Watched (Films)

Post by Wrathbone » Sat Nov 19, 2022 11:01 pm

Agreed. I’m a huge fan of the first two films, having grown up watching them, so I went into FtM expecting to tolerate it at best. It’s no masterpiece, but it’s fun, it’s funny and it rounds off the wider story well enough.

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Re: I Just Watched (Films)

Post by Sly Boots » Sat Nov 19, 2022 11:07 pm

Damn, might have to try rewatching it, I thought it was pretty bad, almost boring actually.

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Re: I Just Watched (Films)

Post by Sly Boots » Sat Nov 19, 2022 11:08 pm

Meanwhile, tonight I watched Palm Springs with Andy Samberg, thought it was really good. Had put off watching it mainly because I'd assumed it was some kind of sappy romantic film, but it's not really.

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Re: I Just Watched (Films)

Post by Alan » Sun Nov 20, 2022 12:49 am

Man I hated FTM so much. I had actually just shown the first two to my better half just before it and she loved those and hated FTM too. I actually ranked it down with Requiem For A Dream in my short list of movies I actively hate.

So
Munsters 2022
We made it till Count Orlok started dancing and we gave up. It’s painful how much it’s trying to capture the magic of the original but in doing so it feels both forced and fake. It’s cheapness doesn’t feel camp and cute, it feels cheap. It just doesn’t work. I do like Rob a lot but man he’s been putting out stinkers for a while. I love Corpses, Rejects was fine as was his first Haloween remake but everything else is just bad. You can see what he’s trying and you can feel his reverence for the subject/genre/source but it just doesn’t work.

On a more positive note…

The Silencers (1966)
So in the 60’s Dean Martin had a run of 4 movies that are basically him being James Bond and if the first one is anything to go by they are fantastic! Over the top womanising, daft gadgets, ridiculous plot - it has it all. We laughed our way through the whole thing, it’s fun times!

I guess the copyright has expired because you too can have the pleasure of watching it on YouTube!



The bit with the bed and the pool at the start :lol:
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Re: I Just Watched (Films)

Post by Raid » Sun Nov 20, 2022 11:40 am

I expected to hate Face the Music, I was prepared to switch it off and watch something else were that the case. I thought the constant "woah, dude" dialogue would annoy the hell out of me, particularly when it's coming out of the mouths of two quite old looking men thirty-plus years after it was acceptable to speak like that. But it never grated, even when the two daughters show up speaking in exactly the same way. I think if the film had, even for a second, highlighted that this was an absurd way to act and speak in 2020, the spell would have been broken, but it continues to take it's ridiculous concept very seriously for the entire runtime.

It's the absolute opposite of most time-travel fiction that I enjoy. Nobody cares about rules or consequences (with the exception of the crux of the plot), they snatch famous musicians out of history, they hand 1920s Louis Armstrong a smartphone showing a recording of 1960s Jimi Hendrix, and Armstrong simply seems to enjoy the music rather than reacting to the magical technology or the fact that he's never heard an electric guitar before. At one point...
Spoiler
most of the main cast are literally killed and go to hell, Bill and Ted doing so on purpose just so they can re-join the other characters, but rather than ponder the ramifications of this, they get Death to join their band and they all ascend back to Earth in a flying van.
It's just utterly silly but it all plays out with such conviction that it somehow works. If you consider it critically for even a moment it's probably a terrible film, but it caught me in the mood to enjoy it and instead I was grinning throughout.

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Re: I Just Watched (Films)

Post by Alan » Sun Nov 20, 2022 12:51 pm

You should watch the other ones, the 2nd film is mostly them dead bargaining with death and finding a way out of hell. That whole part in 3 was just callbacks, same guy that plays death too, Bill Sadler who you may also know as the bad guy in Die Hard 2 :mrgreen:
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Re: I Just Watched (Films)

Post by Animalmother » Tue Nov 22, 2022 11:20 am

28 Weeks Later
Hadn't watched this in a long time and stuck it on in a whim last night. I forgot how strange this film is, extreme facial close-ups, shaky running cam, night vision and some brutal violence. People die some really unpleasant deaths in this. Then there's the hilariously gory helicopter scene to top it off. On the whole an entertaining film and it's a real pity they didn't make any more of them.
Spoiler
Image
Also when it came out Idris Elba, Rose Byrne and Jeremy Renner would have been relatively unknown actors at the time.

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