I Just Watched (Films)

[Snowy]

John Wick: Chapter 4

I think this may actually be my favourite ever piece of action cinema, finally replacing Fury Road. It's stunning. Snowy offered to watch it together over voice chat, and I declined as I don't tend to watch films with chatter, but all he'd have heard was riotous laughter from my side. The choreography doesn't once drop below the level of "staggeringly good" - even just the amount of effort they put into the double-tap kill-confirming is astonishing. It has the grace of Crouching Tiger with the precision of, well, any Jackie Chan film. It's really quite astonishingly good.

Largely sums up my experience of watching it (although Chris my offer was actually intended as a text chat, I also wouldn't want to talk through a film, plus most of what you heard from me would also have been explosive laughter)!

I had my niggles, but they are almost irrelevantly minor. The whole concept is utterly batshit loopy and in each film they layer on more and more craziness. Every now and again my brain would rail at it until I told it to be quiet. The armies of identically dressed enemies made it feel like a video game (as did the awesome sequence with the Dragons Breath shotgun filmed from above - very Hotline Miami). Traffic looping off the Champs-Élysées and around the Arc de Triomphe at what looked like about 90mph. The folks in the nightclub continuing to dance while John and pals engage in close-range shootery and axe-swinging right next to them. The complete lack of any rozzers in any of the locations despite extended gunfights and car chases. The layering of more and yet more customs, rules etc stemming from the High Table. All completely off the charts nuts. I messaged Chris while watching to say I wished that it actually had a coherent storyline, that it felt a bit like a Manga film (which I have always struggled with storytelling-wise) but having watched the whole thing it did actually work for me.

The choreography of it all was incredible too. That they can make a 3 hour long action movie with that many close-up fight scenes, all perfectly shot, without it ever getting tedious must have taken so much time and ability it boggles the mind.

Laughed my arse off all the way through, and am now contemplating a 1-4 playthrough.

[Animalmother]

That video is almost as impressive as the film itself. The CGI is near flawless, my brain never considered that they didn't film it on location...which would obviously be impossible!

Imagine working in the Paris morgue that night when about 200 bullet riddled bodies start piling in

[Wrathbone]

I watched a couple of classics for the first time this weekend.

Cool Hand Luke
Thoroughly enjoyed this. I can’t think of a single step it put wrong and it feels churlish to even try. The way it maintains a light, irreverent tone while dealing with some truly disturbing events is exemplary and perfectly delivered by Newman and co.

10/10


Rebel Without a Cause
Also excellent, if a little dated in places now. James Dean’s performance is on point and I found the action truly tense, so I can only imagine what an impact it had in the 1950s. The 4k transfer is spoiled a bit by blurry scene transitions, which I’ve never encountered before and presumably must have been a limitation with the source. Once the fade in/out is done, it looks pretty good.

8/10

[Sly Boots]

Cool Hand Luke is one of my favourite films! Haven't seen it for years, but the big scenes still stay with me. Glad you liked it!

[Mantis]

Just caught John Wick 4 myself. Really not sure how they're going to top that one if they do get the green light for a 5th. They seem to up their game every time when it comes to the choreography and just general scope of the action, pretty bonkers now to think that the first one is actually quite restrained in comparison given how visceral it seemed when it came out.

It's beautifully shot too. Some of the staging and frame compositions are just beautiful. It's all very silly but I don't care because it's like some weird art house action movie. The scene with the Dragon's Breath shotgun might be one of my all time favourite action sequences, so brilliant.

[Wrathbone]

Cutthroat Island

A mediocre, occasionally fun swashbuckler that’s too slow and mostly charmless.

The most entertaining thing about it happened in pre-production with the initial casting of Oliver Reed as Mordechai Fingers, where upon meeting Matthew Modine he grabbed him by his shirt, punched him and demanded to know if he was a spy. He later got in a bar fight and mooned Geena Davis. Strangely enough they fired him.

[Alan]

Talk To Me
If you’re looking for a new film for Halloween this is actually really good! It’s about teens that are using 90 second possessions to get high. I know that sounds like a new Cheech film but it’s played straight and well done. Scary is always a stretch but it has some command over building dread which most modern horrors don’t even attempt. Very low expectations but I enjoyed the ride.

As an aside it’s nice that the teens aren’t just 99.99% FHM models (is FHM still a thing?). They just look like normal, kind of weird looking teens.

[Rusty]

The Equalizer 3

There's something about an aged Denzil that just feels right for the character.

However the film is a sack of shit. No jeopardy, no real consequences, Denzil is unstoppable, Dakota Fanning is wasted as she does nothing for the whole film apart from take a phone-call.

I loved the first one, tolerated the second. It needs to stop now unless they can write something better.

[Raid]

The scene with the Dragon's Breath shotgun might be one of my all time favourite action sequences, so brilliant.

I'd forgotten to mention that when I reviewed it. It's absolutely going to feature in "best shots ever" lists.

[Achtung Englander]

Rebel Without a Cause
Also excellent, if a little dated in places now. James Dean’s performance is on point and I found the action truly tense, so I can only imagine what an impact it had in the 1950s. The 4k transfer is spoiled a bit by blurry scene transitions, which I’ve never encountered before and presumably must have been a limitation with the source. Once the fade in/out is done, it looks pretty good.

8/10

I grew up with this film, saw it so many times as a teenager, not seen since. I might rewatch this time as an adult to see if still has impact.

[Wrathbone]

I think it does. Times and attitudes have clearly changed in 70ish years, but it does a great job at portraying the visceral terror of watching teenagers come at each other with switchblades and guns, with their sense of indestructibility (and exactly how false that is). It's still completely relevant today.

[Alan]

Five Nights At Freddie’s
No.

[Lenny Solidus]

Malignant

First things first, Annabelle Wallis. Though she may have been introduced to many as nothing more than eye candy in Tom Cruise's awful The Mummy reimagining, I will begin by saying that this woman acts her arse off in this movie. Every scene and every single realisation, she sold me through and through. Very often I was reminded of some of Angelina Jolies much older darker works minus the beautiful blonde hair Annabelle normally sports. And is there any other way to properly describe this movie other than even for James Wan it is as mad as a bag of cats - but in the best way possible, is that even a convenient expression?

Spoiler

The entire premise behind who Gabriel is might not sound all that clever but once the finely tuned drips begin to stem into something much more significant I was moving closer and closer to the edge of my seat. Though I do feel that the actual reveal was a little bit too forced in nature, I was still pretty mesmerised by the whole thing. How powerful Gabriel is combined with the insane movement the character gets up to with Wan purposely doing his best to hide many of the physical oddities that would immediately give the game away for the full finale hand in hand with some downright amazing camera tracking and stunt work, much of which honestly floored me. Ok and yes some often very odd looking cgi admittedly due to the very nature of Gabriel's actual design. It almost enters a near dark superhero fare at some points.

Even just the opening intro and music had me pumped for what I thought was about to be a pretty straight forward character study type affair - carefully introduced to us with so many hints of what was going on with Madison and this movie for me is Wan proving once again that he can flip to and fro from the action and horror genres and still deliver something truly unexpected.

I've seen a lot of disappointing movies recently, The Conjuring 3 ironically placed on that list, so it was nice to have something such as this that not only surprised me and kept me guessing drawing in all the threads I did catch on to and yet still managed to make me feel so very conflicted with it in terms of - well watch it and you will understand. I also gave it a direct second watch on another night so that I could properly study all the pieces of information that were fed to me.

8.5 out of 10

A surprise to be sure, but a welcome one.

[Alan]

Enys Men
I believe this was try hard wank. Almost no dialogue just a lot of try hard wank.

[Wrathbone]

Shiva Baby

Weird one. A Jewish university student goes to a funeral for some extended family member and discovers her sugar daddy and her ex-girlfriend are there. Cue every Jewish family trope in the book and much awkwardness.

It's not bad - it's certainly watchable (through my hands at times), but it's not funny enough to be a comedy and it's too meandering and lacking in purpose to be a drama. It's only 77 minutes, so it's worth a watch if you get the opportunity, but it's hard to give it a solid recommendation.

6/10