What DVD / Video did you watch last night? (pt3)

[Idris2002]

Tracker.

A 2010 New Zealand and UK co-production, starring Ray Winstone as an Afrikaner man hunter, and Temeura Morison trying to get back to the land of his fathers in Aotearoa's south island. He finds this difficult, as there is a price on his head, and Winstone intends to collect it.

As the casting suggests, this is very much an Odd Couple film. There's also a strong streak of hokum, and a big dose of "a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do".

Apart from the ending, which is a bit of a cop-out, it's all pretty well done, and I'd give it 8 out of 10. The NZ scenery is predictably amazing. If mountain ranges like The Remarkables were the only thing that made you tolerate the Lord of the Rings, you could probably get some enjoyment out of this one.

Like most of the movies I see these days, it's available on youtube, or at least it was when I downloaded it.

Question: how many more non-western westerns are there? I mean, flicks that use all the tropes of the western genre, but aren't actually set in America's Old West.

 

[TruXta]

Question: how many more non-western westerns are there? I mean, flicks that use all the tropes of the western genre, but aren't actually set in America's Old West.

Lots of Asian westerns I'd guess. Australian? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Australian_Western_films

 

[Captain Hurrah]

Question: how many more non-western westerns are there? I mean, flicks that use all the tropes of the western genre, but aren't actually set in America's Old West.

Been watching a few Soviet ones recently (or Western-like, in that such films influenced the directors), set in early twentieth-century Central Asia. Here and here.

 

[Reno]

Question: how many more non-western westerns are there? I mean, flicks that use all the tropes of the western genre, but aren't actually set in America's Old West.

The German Heimat film was a popular genre, mostly from the 40s and 50s, which used a lot of Western tropes. They were about rural farming communities and conflicts and they were tied to their Alpine landscape just like the Western was to its terrain.

Australia has made quite a few Outback Westerns, like The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (my favourite Aussie film ever), The Proposition and Red Hill.

 

[DaveCinzano]

Question: how many more non-western westerns are there? I mean, flicks that use all the tropes of the western genre, but aren't actually set in America's Old West.

How about Utu? Another NZ one.

 

[Firky]

Ted

Pretty bad, got a couple of smirks here and there but meh.. Not my humour.

 

[Me76]

Ill Manors.

Found it operatic and sick making at different times. But found the last 30 minutes disconnected from the rest of the film.

 

[rubbershoes]

Attack the Block Alien invasion comes up against south london mandems.

Bits of it were amusing

 

[Garek]

I watched half an hours worth of The Crying Game. What god awful load of Yankee schmaltz.

 

[Frances Lengel]

Rec 3 - Was alright, didn't fit in with the first two though.

 

[Mapped]

Ted

Pretty bad, got a couple of smirks here and there but meh.. Not my humour.

i read some quite good reviews when it came out. I've got it to watch tomorrow night

 

[Thimble Queen]

Chernobyl Diaries was proper shit.

Cockneys vs Zombies weren't much cop either but had amusing moments.

 

[Reno]

I watched half an hours worth of The Crying Game. What god awful load of Yankee schmaltz.

What about this film is "Yankee" apart from one US actor who croaks 20 minutes into the film.

 

[Johnny Vodka]

Attack the Block - great fun
Conspirators of Pleasure - er, interesting

 

[Me76]

Training Day. I had forgotten a lot but it's not as good as I remember.

 

[Garek]

What about this film is "Yankee" apart from one US actor who croaks 20 minutes into the film.

It seemed aimed at an American audience am I wrong? All the "highly charged", "emotional" scenes with more strings playing than you could shake a stick at just said to me American.

 

[Reno]

It seemed aimed at an American audience am I wrong? All the "highly charged", "emotional" scenes with more strings playing than you could shake a stick at just said to me American.

There is a point to why the film overdoes the romantic yearning at the start. Half way through one of the most famous plot twists in cinema history subverts everything you have seen before and then it becomes a rather transgressive film for its time.

 

[Garek]

There is a point to why the film overdoes the romantic yearning at the start. Half way through one of the most famous plot twists in cinema history subverts everything you have seen before and then it becomes a rather transgressive film for its time.

Well maybe I will give it another chance. I think I have a suspicion what the twist might be. The first bit just didn't grab me.

 

[Reno]

The Spanish psycho-thriller Sleep Tight by Jaume Balaguero, clearly the more talented of the two co-directors of [Rec] and [REC]2.

For once it's a film about a psycho whose main thing isn't to kill or physically torture people. Cesar can only be happy when he makes other people deeply unhappy. As he is the caretaker of a posh apartment building, who has access to his tenant's flats, he has plenty of opportunity to ruin lives and goes about it in various inventive ways.

Excellent, a proper suspense film, very stylish and with a nasty sense of humour. If they remake it for Hollywood I can already see how different the ending will be. Loved the nasty little girl who may be the only one who is his match.

http://uk.imdb.com/title/tt1437358/

 

[Reno]

We Are the Night. German vampire film set in contemporary Berlin and trading on the city's history and perceived cool, which attempts a bit of a feminist spin on the genre. Not great, but also not as terrible as most contemporary German horror films.

Its main asset is star Nina Hoss as the leader of an all female vampire 'family' who just made a new recruit. She is may be the most high profile German actress at the moment, thanks to the films she does with Christian Petzold (Barbara, Jericho, Yella), which are among the few current German films to get wider international acclaim, so I was surprised she'd be in something like this.

 

[DexterTCN]

The other night I watched Perfect Sense, with ewan mcgregor and eva green.

Whole world loses sense of taste, then smell, then hearing, then sight. Fucking depressing.

Followed by a BBC4 doc about the moon, which is apparently going to kill us. Wonderful.

 

[Yetman]

i read some quite good reviews when it came out. I've got it to watch tomorrow night

Not sure why, I expected much more from McFarlane but it does have a very hollywood feel to it, which is good, but the humour could have been a bit more subtle. Still worth watching though

 

[Mapped]

Not sure why, I expected much more from McFarlane but it does have a very hollywood feel to it, which is good, but the humour could have been a bit more subtle. Still worth watching though

Might stick it on tonight. Mrs is very keen on watching it.

 

[TruXta]

We Are the Night. German vampire film set in contemporary Berlin and trading on the city's history and perceived cool, which attempts a bit of a feminist spin on the genre. Not great, but also not as terrible as most contemporary German horror films.

Its main asset is star Nina Hoss as the leader of an all female vampire 'family' who just made a new recruit. She is may be the most high profile German actress at the moment, thanks to the films she does with Christian Petzold (Barbara, Jericho, Yella), which are among the few current German films to get wider international acclaim, so I was surprised she'd be in something like this.

Any reccs for decent German horror from the last 20-25 years? I think the last one I saw was the Nosferatu with Klaus Kinski IIRC.

 

[Reno]

Any reccs for decent German horror from the last 20-25 years? I think the last one I saw was the Nosferatu with Klaus Kinski IIRC.

Not really. It's all rather poor which is a shame, considering the Germans were so groundbreaking in shaping the horror genre in the 20s. German mainstream commercial film-making tends to be rubbish on the whole. The zombie film Rammbock (also known as Siege of the Dead and Berlin Undead) is the best of a poor bunch. Anatomy from a few years back was very successful, but I didn't rate it. I checked out the Dario Argento homage Masks a couple of weeks ago, which was also rather poor.

Over the last decade France, Spain, Scandinavia and surprisingly enough Belgium have been the European countries to make some decent horror films.

 

[TruXta]

Cheers, Reno. I've got a bunch of stuff from the last 10 years or so on my HD just waiting for that perfect night...

 

[Orang Utan]

Any reccs for decent German horror from the last 20-25 years? I think the last one I saw was the Nosferatu with Klaus Kinski IIRC.

don't bother with Urban Explorer. that's not German though I suppose, just set in Berlin

 

[butchersapron]

Any reccs for decent German horror from the last 20-25 years? I think the last one I saw was the Nosferatu with Klaus Kinski IIRC.

Hororry'
The Child i Never Was. Have a look at Michael as well.

edit: bugger, second is austrian,

 

[TruXta]

Hororry'
The Child i Never Was. Have a look at Michael as well.

edit: bugger, second is austrian,

Fuck, those look grim. Cheers anyway, guv.

 

[Reno]

Hororry'
The Child i Never Was. Have a look at Michael as well.

edit: bugger, second is austrian,

I hated Michael. Poor Michael Haneke wannabe which does everything as expected from that sort of film.