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

DexterTCN said:
Another Earth.

Very impressive sub-scifi film. It's so well done it almost seems like a book sometimes. I don't know if it has a twist at the end, it might have, it might not. Not sure.

It was written and directed by the same guy, sometimes that's rubbish, sometimes it's great but they only have one movie in them, sometimes blah blah. This, by the law of averages, is the best thing Mike Cahill will ever do.
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This is where it might be worth pointing out that Mark Carhill co-wrote the film with Brit Marling, the lead actress. I thought Another Earth was a bit of a missed opportunity and while it was interesting, it's very much a beginners film with it's central dilemma being a bunch of Sundance approved indie movie cliches.

blah blah....
 
I think the beginners aspect appealed to me a lot. Indie also appealed, as it obviously was. Certainly wasn't hollywood or genre or zeitgeist or anything else, it was like Monsters or (that film where it's an insecty thing taking people into the tunnel by the houses).

I want films like this.
 
DexterTCN said:
I think the beginners aspect appealed to me a lot. Indie also appealed, as it obviously was. Certainly wasn't hollywood or genre or zeitgeist or anything else, it was like Monsters or (that film where it's an insecty thing taking people into the tunnel by the houses).

I want films like this.
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I preferred both Monsters and Absentia to Another Earth, which was just a little too self-consciously "indie" while also being rather banal in it's melodramatic redemption story line. I liked to shots of the looming "earth" in the sky and the ending was quite good.

But yes, one of the up-sides of digital film-making is that it doesn't cost a lot of money and people with ideas can get their films made without a lot of funding. Monsters was more or less funded by a credit card and Absentia was a Kickstarter project.

Two more ultra-low budget guerilla genre/art films I recently liked were the giallo homage Amer and the retro-futuristic Beyond the Black Rainbow. Both are a little more abstract and experimental.

:edit: Brit Marling's second writer/actor genre collaboration has just arrived via Lovefilm and I will watch that later on.
 
DotCommunist said:
Hitlers Britain

A docu about hitlers plan for how he would have run britain after a successful invasion. Loads of wild speculation by talking heads, but the gem of it was when they got to the end and started having talk from the Auxiliary Units and you had kindly old grandad sorts saying 'well of course we weren't given a life expectancy of more than 25 days once the Germans had landed'

And this absolute gem from a bearded old man wrt a .22 sniper rifle 'It was the most beautiful and best made weapon I've ever handled'

Another bald headed raptor of a pensioner proudly boasted 'we had the only active, government funded resistance network in place before the nazis landed. Even the French Resistance were after the fact, we were waiting before that even happened'

CRUSH THE BOSCHE etc
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I like the sound of that. Is it the History Channel one that's on YouTube? (I'd link but my phone's awkward for stuff like that.)
 
I watched a film the other day called Dreams of a Life on 4od, about the lady who was found dead in North London in 2006. It was a really good and very affecting film, dealt with a difficult subject matter (mostly) without overinvading her privacy, I've been thinking about it on and off since then. Used an unusual mix of talking heads and reconstruction in a very effective way.
 
Watched Mad Max 3 last night. Worst of the lot. Terrible film. Tina Turner rubbish acting. The end turned into a children's film with some of the antics. :rolleyes:

Part 2 has always been the best for me.
 
Sometimes people simply don't like a sequel because it does something different. Internet consensus demands to trash it, but I find Mad Max 3 underrated. Turner is rather good and just because a film features children doesn't make it a "children's film"
 
what's different about part 3? Underlying theme is still same. It's just shite. And the bloke who produced the first two died so that may explain why it is crap compared to the two before it. Some parts I thought I had mistakenly stumbled into a Goonies film.
 
thriller said:
what's different about part 3? Underlying theme is still same. It's just shite. And the bloke who produced the first two died so that may explain why it is crap compared to the two before it. Some parts I thought I had mistakenly stumbled into a Goonies film.
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On the whole producers don't have much creative control, writer-directors do and George Miller was the creative force between all three (soon four) films. It was his brainchild. The three Mad Max films are quite different in tone, surprised you didn't notice. The first one is about society falling apart leading up to the apocalypse, the second one is soon after the apocalypse and the third film is about society putting itself back together some time later and therefore it is a more hopeful film thematically than the other two. And what I like about the trilogy is that they are three very different films while telling one consistent story.

The film was hugely popular and very well received at the time, but since then the Internet has ruled it uncool. I read identical complaints on forums again and again (OMG, it has children in it, its like a children's film ! Tina Turner is terrible !), which makes me wonder if this isn't another case where people simply follow the most popular opinion instead of looking at the film with an open mind.
 
Reno said:
which makes me wonder if this isn't another case where people simply follow the most popular opinion instead of looking at the film with an open mind.
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Don't be such a patronising arse.

For me it felt rushed. Peter Panish and not as gritty as the previous 2.
 
Love Bite - load of tosh - seriously do not waste your time. Timothy Spall is completely wasted in it - teens in a made up seaside town ( Clacton pier is featured heavily) get eaten by werewolves, but only if they are virgins. Unfortunately the missus liked it.
 
Can't Hardly Wait.


Good for spotting millions of people who've been in other stuff. And generally enjoyable.
 
The Sound of my Voice, Brit Marling's second lo-fi science fiction (or not) indie film after Another Earth, both of which she co-wrote and starred in. It's about two aspiring journalists who infiltrate a cult similar to the Heaven's Gate cult, to expose the leader (well played by Marling) who is a young woman who claims to come from the future and says she has information that is vital to the survival of mankind. While evidence mounts that she is a fraud, there is one thing that may say otherwise. It meanders a little in the first half but then I thought it became genuinely gripping. Overall found it more involving and entertaining than Another Earth, even if it lacked that film's visual hook and has a conclusion that some may find frustrating.

I also tried to watch the 90s film of The Puppet Masters, but it was rubbish and I kept nodding off. With next to no effort put into characterisation, it felt like a later episode of an X-Files style TV show where I'd missed the set up. Donald Sutherland had already done this type of film with the much better 70s Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
 
Then I watched I Love You, Man (2009). Which made me laugh (out loud) quite a lot and from the start. So that's a win for stressed out, premenstrual, stoned viewing.
 
The Bird with the Crystal Plumage - more stylised stalk and slash from Dario Argento. A funky, cool young buck tracks down a serial killer after witnessing an attempted murder.

Lots of blood and madness, sexy victims, stylish cinematography and bizarre euro-characters that Italy seem to be masters at putting on the screen.

Oh....and a good Morricone score.

What's not to like?
 
American Mary. A trainee surgeon enters the world of body modification & strip clubs. Needless to say theres a fair amount of blood & guts & gore.
 
Stitches - err well, what can be said other than i have no idea why Ross Noble agreed to do such a load of tat. A clown comes back from the dead to finish the party he died at 6 years later. Dunno which was worse really this or love bite -they weren't even so bad that they were good they were just shit.
 
How I Spent My Summer Vacation (or Get the Gringo as called in the US) basically a Mel Gibson actoner with Mel back to doing what he does best....playing a good bad guy in a jam and smart mouthing and shooting his way outta trouble....

....it was actually a lot of fun, but, like lots of actioners, the last 15 minutes of boring gunfights and explosions and, erm, action, got silly and offered a poor and obvious resolve to an otherwise enjoyable romp.
 
I agree.

The Bridesmaid - late Chabrol adaptation of a Ruth Rendell story, it has lots of the Chabrol's (and Rendell's) interests in it but that's certainly no bad thing. It's rather good, with some very nice minor touches - like a policeman stepping in dog shit as he follows the lead. Chabrol really was the film making equivalent of the Fall - mining that same stream of ideas but not simply repeating it, and still producing great work after 30/40 years.

A View of Love - Another French thriller, this one set with the experiences of children in Algeria as the background. Not bad, it has Toni Servillo in it which is a plus and it's done competently enough but the plot is nothing new and the Algeria stuff is handled in a pretty facile manner - both from the political and story point of view.
 
Reno said:
I think it is.
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It has some great performances. Grier and Forster in particular, Fonda too. De Niro? I'm not sure. He plays an idiotic loser really well but what's the point? He's De Niro, give him something to do. Jason Mewes would have been better.

Keaton? I never saw the point of Keaton, why do people think he can play a cop or superhero? I know Tarantino likes to show off his ability to get the best out of people but there's nothing to get out of Keaton...he's inane filler and is not convincing as a man in charge of an ATF team. Kevin Pollack could have done it much better and that's off the top of my head.

The music is not as good as Kill Bill or Pulp Fiction, either.

I enjoyed JB but I've watched all of QT's stuff recently, it's better than IB but basically lacks excitement.
 
The Sidney Pollack film Bobby Deerfield, Al Pacino stars as an American racing driver living in Europe. I watched this to get me in the mood for the start of the F1 season but there's hardly any racing in it, instead it's a rather flat romantic drama.
 
Skyfall
First Bond film I've seen for years. It was good, very good in fact. Recommended.

End Of Watch
The gimmick was that this was filmed as though the protagonists were filming themselves for a project. The outcome was grimly predictable after a while. It was recommended to me, but I didn't particularly like it that much.
 
The last 3 episodes of Underbelly - a great series - sort of an Aussie Wire - based on the Melbourne Gang Killings of the 1990s - 2000s
 
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