I Just Watched (Films)

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Achtung Englander
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Re: I Just Watched (Films)

Post by Achtung Englander » Fri Nov 15, 2019 8:18 am

6 Days Its on Netflix

It was OK 6/10 (did you see what I did there !)

Based on the events around the 6 day siege at the London Iranian embassy. I remember this as a Kid. I was 6 at the time and I remember seeing it on TV. My dad had an office in London on Cromwell Road and I recall seeing the burnt out embassy for years later. I think it got refurbished like 6 or 7 years after the siege.

Anyways - the film is pacy but it lacks depth. It is also pretty heavy on the SAS bit of it and almost next to nothing on the hostages or the psychological aspect of the terrorists.

The music is the best bit of the film, reminded me a lot of Hans Zimmer's Dunkirk (although this film released before that one)
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Wrathbone
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Re: I Just Watched (Films)

Post by Wrathbone » Fri Nov 15, 2019 8:58 am

Is it as good as the first episode of Ultimate Force, which is essentially the Iranian embassy siege with Ross Kemp raising his eyebrow at everything?

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Re: I Just Watched (Films)

Post by Stormbringer » Fri Nov 15, 2019 12:21 pm

I saw it sometime last year on Netflix; I did enjoy it, but felt like it didn't have enough character development for Jamie Bell.
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Re: I Just Watched (Films)

Post by Raid » Sat Nov 16, 2019 11:28 pm

El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie

If I can suggest something; don't do what I did and watch the entirety of Breaking Bad as preparation for this, as all it'll do is disappoint you. El Camino isn't *bad*, it's just nowhere near as good as it could have been. The film serves as an epilogue to the series, but just doesn't go anywhere interesting.
Spoiler
I get the feeling that the production team were trying to do Breaking Bad but years of producing Better Call Saul have softened their edge a little. BCS exists in a more realistic universe than BB, and the less fantastical setting seems to match that of El Camino. Jesse was a pretty underused character in the last series of BB, relegated to downtrodden whipping boy to Walt's master criminal, and while this film could so easily have remedied this, it just doesn't really add anything to his conclusion. With the exception of scenes featuring Badger and Skinny Pete, the entire first half of the film could have been replaced with Jesse opening the glove box of the titular El Camino and finding half a million dollars stashed inside. There's barely any retribution, no grand plans afoot, if the narrative of this film had taken place during Breaking Bad, it would have taken up a third of an episode at most.

There was so much they could have done here. Maybe Jesse could have been hunting for Walt's lost 70 million dollars, perhaps with the aim of trying to rectify the mistakes of his past. Rather than focusing on Skylar and Marie, we get half an hour of a clearly much older Todd which comes to nothing as we already know his fate.
Breaking Bad is, in my opinion, one of the greatest pieces of television drama ever produced. All this film really does is end the saga on a whimper rather than the bang it originally went out with.

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Re: I Just Watched (Films)

Post by Wrathbone » Sun Nov 17, 2019 9:28 am

Tolkien

Mixed feelings about this. As a partial biography it's fine, it's enjoyable and it has some superficial insight. It thinks it's being cleverer than it is, though, and it only skims the surface of Tolkien's influences. The most astonishing exclusion is any sort of connection between his writing and his catholocism, which were inseperable when it came to his secondary creation. The film is far more interested in pushing the horrors of war as his primary influecnes. Obviously those experiences had a fundamental impact on him and his writing, but the film goes in that direction because it makes for more visually evocative cinematography, not because it gets to the truth of the man.

The other problem is Nicholas Hoult as Tolkien. He does the best he can, but he's the wrong choice for the role. He's too Hollywood (despite being British) and fails to capture that quintisential hobbity aspect of traditional English life that Tolkien embodied. Hoult instead goes for Generic Academic, which is dull and disappointing.

A reasonable but heavy-handed and ocassionally misleading film.

6/10

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Re: I Just Watched (Films)

Post by Stormbringer » Mon Nov 18, 2019 12:03 pm

Catholicism*

¬_¬

My mum saw it and made very similar remarks. I don't think I'll bother watching it myself. To be honest, I'm not as interested in the man himself as I am his world.
Between tedium and fright
Such is the song of the nether world
The hissing of rats
And the jarring chants of angels

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Achtung Englander
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Re: I Just Watched (Films)

Post by Achtung Englander » Mon Nov 18, 2019 2:34 pm

Games playing : Bioshock (Remastered) / Total War Britannia / Dirt 4

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Re: I Just Watched (Films)

Post by Stormbringer » Fri Nov 22, 2019 11:18 pm

I attempted to watch The Mummy tonight -- the one with Tom Cruise.

It was so bad I gave up after about 25 minutes.
Between tedium and fright
Such is the song of the nether world
The hissing of rats
And the jarring chants of angels

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Re: I Just Watched (Films)

Post by arqueturus » Sun Nov 24, 2019 2:40 pm

Captain Marvel.

So very very dull.

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Re: I Just Watched (Films)

Post by Animalmother » Sun Nov 24, 2019 2:54 pm

Little Monsters

Australian zombie film, very funny and very sweary :lol:

Devils Rejects

Finally got around to watching this lunatic soup of a film. As one would expect from something made by Rob Zombie its OTT all the way with exaggerated acting and violence. Can't say I enjoyed it but was still worth a watch. Roll on 3 From Hell.

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Re: I Just Watched (Films)

Post by Achtung Englander » Wed Nov 27, 2019 5:18 pm

Mea Culpa

A French film on Prime. Pretty decent action thriller if not wholly predictable

7/10
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Alan
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Re: I Just Watched (Films)

Post by Alan » Sat Nov 30, 2019 10:38 am

Last Christmas
Utter tripe. The worst christmas film I can remember. It thinks it's cute, smart and thoughtful but it fails on every single front. It even fails at "A christmas movie based on George Michael music" because is it fuck! Other than the title track the use of George's music is just inappropriately smattering it throughout. Someone heard Last Christmas and thought - "shit I can exploit the shit out of that dead guy that people love!". It even fails at the help the homeless angle by having the first thing we see the homeless people doing is stealing food from other homeless people! Man, fuck this film. Bag of dog shit. Old dog shit, not fresh dog shit that is kind of comforting and warm in this cold weather when you scoop it. Old, cold, dead dog shit. With pee.

The Good Liar
There are a LOT of long reaching logic jumps but I'd be lying if I said that Mirren and McKellen didnt make it an enjoyable watch. Ridiculous final act but its an ok journey there.

Frozen 2
I like Frozen. Good if overplayed songs, nice animations and an ok story. This one feels like it was made for DVD and they upped it to cinematic release near the end. Theres one decent song, the story isnt terribly interesting and didnt really care a huge amount about what was going on. Heck I struggle to remember what most of the plot was actually about only a few days later. I'm sure it'll make a billiontrillion dollars but much like Maleficent 2 its a poor shadow of the first film.
A man who could tell more truth and eat fewer pies.

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Re: I Just Watched (Films)

Post by Achtung Englander » Sun Dec 01, 2019 9:39 am

Us

What utter bilge. How this got high recommendations from critics is beyond me. Yeah the acting is very good and the first 30 minutes is excellent but wow when the main plot kicks it I think my brain lost some cells. Utter crap. A real let down from the guy who gave us Get Out.

2/10

Free Solo

An interesting film on what drives a young guy to climb one of the most dangerous rocks on the planet with no ropes. The film is seriously let down by some of the editing decisions. They spent 1/2 the time focusing on his girlfriend and oh boy was she annoying. Its all about her. Who fucking cares. If the film concentrated on the final rock climb when he did it without ropes and spliced that in with flashbacks with preperations, how they got the camera shots, the history of El Capitain (how is it formed etc), the history of solo rock climbing and who died and how their families feel about rock climbing. Things like that. Oh no we get a cute blond with relationship anxiety issues.

Check this cool 360 degree video on YouTube.

5/10
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Re: I Just Watched (Films)

Post by Stormbringer » Wed Dec 04, 2019 12:37 pm

Started watching The Irishman on Netflix last night. It's very long! I watched the first half (or perhaps third?) of it last night. Very good acting and cinematography and very slick editing overall. However, I found the story almost impossible to follow. It seems to require that one already understands the history of America in the 1950s and 60s and also that one understands how mafia families worked and operated at the time. Neither of which I do.
Between tedium and fright
Such is the song of the nether world
The hissing of rats
And the jarring chants of angels

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Re: I Just Watched (Films)

Post by Wrathbone » Wed Dec 04, 2019 2:09 pm

Have to say that for all Martin Scorsese's ignorant bluster about superhero films being meaningless frippery, I have no interest whatsoever in yet another overlong, redundant DeNiro film about some gangster bollocks or other. I hope the irony of The Irishman's de-aging technology being developed for the MCU isn't lost on him.

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