I Just Watched (Films)

[Stormbringer]

The Passion of the Christ

Still the best film about the trial and crucifixion of Jesus ever made. I saw it in the cinema in 2004, and loved it then, but I hadn't seen it again since. Felt inspired to watch it last night, and was not disappointed. Absolutely stunning cinematography and performances throughout. Despite his well-publicised character flaws, this is Mel Gibson's magnum opus, and he deserves praise for pulling this off.

[Stormbringer]

The Ballad of Lefty Brown

The last time I saw Bill Pullman in a film was in 1996, playing the President of the United States in Independence Day.

In this Western he's an old man named 'Lefty' Brown who's worked as partner to a rancher/law-man, named Ed, for forty years in Montana. Ed is running for office as Senator in Washington and the ranch he's run all these years will be left to Lefty's care, much to Ed's wife's chagrin.

The main premise of the film seems to be that Lefty Brown is rather slow of mind and makes poor decisions and everyone (except Ed) sees him as stupid and untrustworthy...but even Ed isn't beyond admonishing him for his mistakes. From watching it, I couldn't really understand why this was the case, other than his rather slow way of speaking. He seems to be fast with a gun and has good survival instincts and forward-planning skills, as well as fierce loyalty to his friend Ed...so it's kind of sad to see why everyone seems to misunderstand him. The opening act of the film shows Lefty apparently making a 'mistake' when trying to apprehend an outlaw in a saloon, but the mistake hardly seems like a mistake to me, more that he gets caught out in an entirely unexpected way. I don't see how he can be blamed for it at all. There's some pretty decent acting throughout. Visually it's fine, but it's not Coen Brothers level. I enjoyed it more than Appaloosa, for sure.

[Stormbringer]

Cleaner

A crime 'thriller' film starring a very serious Samuel L. Jackson as an ex-cop, now janitor, specialising in post-mortem clean-up operations. I watched this film back in 2008 or something, and remembered it fondly. Parts of it had stuck in my head for all this time and I had somehow got the impression that I liked it. After attempting to watch a rather crap Western called Le Duel (starring Liam Hemsworth), I stumbled upon this again on Amazon Prime Video and thought: "Oh, why not? I remember liking that...let's give it another spin."

Well, frankly, I don't know why I enjoyed this back then. It's bland, boring and wholly undeserving of the 'thriller' categorisation. A convoluted plot where every major character is so closely tied to every other character it reminds me of something I would have written in my days at college when I studied TV production, except there are so many layers of buried and barely-explained complexity I found it really hard to follow. There's also a horrible and wholly unnecessary grainy, high-contrast grading effect across the whole thing which reminds me of one of the early Mission Impossible films. This didn't enhance the film in any way.

[Alan]

Looker (1981)
I feel like I watched this as a kid but didnt remember much. What a cool film! Strangely topical too. Its about selling your image to a computer so it can do what it wants with it. It also has a killer theme song!

Oh and it has the best, most convincing death/stunt I've ever seen. Both I and the missus sat up and went "What the fuck? Did they just toss a lady off a balcony?" and you know what, I'm not entirely convinced they didn't. The stunt looks incredible (in a hard to watch way) plus the stunt lady is in her underwear, so it seems like theres no padding other than on the car. Ive been trying to see any behind the scenes but no luck. Lass surely has whiplash at least. Hope she was well payed!

Heres the stunt -

Spoiler

Final Destination Bloodlines
Its garbage but its moderately fun garbage.

Sleep My Love
Woman wakes up on a train and has no memory of boarding. So commences a Hitchcockian tale of manipulation. Its really good!

What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?
Two sisters, one a washed up child star and one a recently paralysed adult (not that kind!) star live together. The jealous ex-child star torments her sister in an almost Misery type of thing. Stars Bette Davis and Joan Crawford who hated each other in real life and would torment each other when the cameras weren't rolling. Its funny, its suspenseful, it ticks the right boxes. Good film!

Tales From The Crypt 1972
Its fine. An anthology of linked tales. Nothing surprising but not bad.

Joker 2
Its mostly on par with the first. Certainly not deserving of the hate it got which was mostly because there were a few musical dream sequences (its not a fucking musical).

Novocaine
Jack Quaid cant feel pain but is a shit fighter. His girlfriendish is kidnapped and he goes to get her back. Its amusing enough, its silly enough. Its fine.

[Wrathbone]

Sleep My Love
Woman wakes up on a train and has no memory of boarding. So commences a Hitchcockian tale of manipulation. Its really good!

Sounds intriguing, will give that a look!

Vanilla Sky
I went in knowing very little other than it was supposedly very weird. It was indeed very weird, in a weirdly banal way. The first two thirds are boring as shit, there's a glimmer of something interesting and then you're spoon fed the explanation of what's going on. Aftwards I felt completely unmoved, as there was nothing to contemplate and it was mostly inconsequential. If there was a point to the story, it eluded me.

4/10

[Sly Boots]

On Saturday went to see the new Fantastic Four, thought it was pretty good actually.

[Wrathbone]

Dark City

All I'd heard about this was that it had striking similarities to The Matrix (which came out a year later) and in many ways was its stronger philosophical cousin. After watching it... ehhh, it's decent, but most of the time all I could think of was how much better The Matrix is.

The similarities are conspicuous: both involve a chosen one in a dystopian world where reality is fundamentally not what it seems and the secret truth is enforced by sinister, identikit agents with mysterious powers. Apparently The Matrix even re-used some sets and props from Dark City, and the visual tone shares the same green tint over everything. It's not really a fair comparison, though, as The Matrix had double the budget and made the absolute most of it.

The difference in how the films feel is stark. The Matrix was a revolution in cinema that ushered in a new era, and while the leather trenchcoats quickly became an embarrassing neckbeard fad, it's easy to forget that when it came out The Matrix was seriously fucking cool. Dark City by comparison feels stuck in the past, clinging to a kind of 1980s noir/cyberpunk mishmash that doesn't entirely pay off and at times comes across as more Howard the Duck than The Terminator. It is decidedly not cool: instead of Keanu Reeves you have Rufus Sewell struggling to maintain an American accent; instead of Agent Smith you have Richard O'Brien hamming it up as a pale-faced alien; instead of bullet-time you have mind-powers, portrayed by the person in question leaning forwards a bit while a cheap ripple effect emits from their forehead. And for some reason you have Keifer Sutherland playing a mad scientist, in perhaps the worst casting choice they could possibly have made. Don't get me wrong - I love all these actors and their performances are great (except for Sutherland - no idea what was going on there), but the result is a film that closes out a style of filmmaking, whereas The Matrix presented a whole new one.

I did enjoy it, there's a lot to like. It's just... not The Matrix. If it had been made 10 years earlier, I think it would have been celebrated far more.

6/10

[Rusty]

Sinners

A tale set in (I assume 1920-1930s). Two brothers return to their home town and - well, that's where I struggle a bit. I thought they were back to reconcile and settle down but they're assholes.
The acting is great, the setting is well realised, the cinematography is also great. The change of pace halfway through is welcome but the slow stuff at the beginning is nice to sit through. To be honest the change halfway would have been better left out. I feel this could have been a powerful film about family, racism and forward thinking futures.

The ending was also weird (don't assume the film is over as there's a post credit)

Having said all that I think I could watch it again in a few years.

[Stormbringer]

Vanilla Sky
I went in knowing very little other than it was supposedly very weird. It was indeed very weird, in a weirdly banal way. The first two thirds are boring as shit, there's a glimmer of something interesting and then you're spoon fed the explanation of what's going on. Aftwards I felt completely unmoved, as there was nothing to contemplate and it was mostly inconsequential. If there was a point to the story, it eluded me.

4/10

Watched this in 2006 and it screwed with my head so hard I felt like my mental health (which was atrociously poor at the time) went down a couple of notches. Even though I am much better now, I would likely never watch it again.

[Hatredsheart]

I agree with this guy totally, this was DIRE. I lasted 20 mins.

[Stormbringer]

It's such a good book; why can no-one make a decent film from it?

I think the main problem is, everyone tries to do some kind of twist or spin on the original, rather than just sticking with the Wells script.

[Stormbringer]

Gangs of New York

First time I've seen this since the cinema visit in 2002. Wow, what a long time ago. At the time, I didn't know anything about history and I barely understood what was going on at all. With the benefit of twenty-three years' life experience and learning, I had a better grasp of things, but still found much of it baffling.

I remember finding it rather bloated and 'all over the place' back then...turns out that hasn't really changed. There's so much going on to try and adequately capture a snapshot of a lost era of NYC's history. I found much of it irritating (honestly, I don't care all that much about squabbles between poor immigrants in filthy streets) but Daniel Day-Lewis' character, Bill the Butcher, is absolutely fantastic. I'd say DDL carries the weight of this film on his shoulders. His performance is stunning throughout, and I was really just watching it for him. He didn't disappoint.

[Wrathbone]

I do like Gangs of New York, but it is a structural mess. The first half is a lot better than the second half, too. And some of the accents (Cameron Diaz) are laughable.

[Stormbringer]

I don't know, I liked the second half better. It felt tighter, like all the threads were coming to something. The first half often felt like some sort of Baz Luhrmann-style musical at times.

[Stormbringer]

True Romance

1993 classic, directed by Tony Scott, written by Quentin Tarantino. It's such a beautiful film; one of my absolute favourites. Everything about it is so good.