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

Night and the City.

Jules Dassin, 1950. A rare example of a film noir set in London - and going by this evidence there should have been more like it. Richard Widmark is a small-time nightclub tout who dreams of the big time - and gets more than he bargained for when he tries to live the dream.

Gene Tierney is the love interest, and Googie Withers plays the bad girl role. And a young Herbert Lom was brilliant as London wrestling's Mr. Big.
 
Griff The Invisible, cute little romantic comedy from ozzie-land with Ryan Kwanten. Watchable, funny and confusing.
 
I watched The Impossible last night, the film based on the experiences of a family during the 2004 Tsunami in Thailand, starring Naomi Watts and Ewen McGregor. While a film of a recent catastrophe will always be a little exploitative and especially one that is about an uplifiting story can seem minimising the horror of the situation, for what it is, it's well done and gripping especially in the early part of the waves hitting the resort. It does pull the heart strings a little hard in the second half, though i have to admit it worked on me. Reading up on it, what looks like several coincidendces, did really happen that way. The film appears to stick to their story very closely apart from that the real family was Spanish while here they are British and this is an English language Spanish film. There were some complaints that the film focuses on a white family and that there are no Thai victims featured as characters, though there are a few Thai characters who help in the rescue effort who are quite heroic despite having just lost everything themselves (also documented). In the end that's the story it tells and according to those involved it is accurate.
 
Reno said:
I While a film of a recent catastrophe will always be a little exploitative and especially one that is about an uplifiting story can seem minimising the horror of the situation, for what it is, it's well done and gripping especially in the early part of the waves hitting the resort. It does pull the heart strings a little hard in the second half, though i have to admit it worked on me.
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Something about the whole idea of this movie made me really deeply queasy and for that reason I've steered clear.

Maybe I should have done the same with HARRY BROWN which I watched on 5 over the weekend and couldn't quite believe just how daily-maily its ideas are (did its makers really mean to propose that the only solution for muggers and chaotic junkies is to just stab 'em to death? and that it's OK as long as it's ex-marines who do the stabbing?). Nice filters though.

Much more worthwhile although I was expecting it to be dead boring and have to confess I've had it hanging about waiting to be watched for over a month: THIS IS NOT A FILM. Iranian director Jafar Panahi (the White Balloon, Circle, Offside, the excellent and much underseen Crimson Gold etc etc etc) is under house arrest and banned from making films for being a bit subversive and anti-governmental. So this short and scrappy exercise is his way of pushing the boundaries, getting someone else to film him as he hangs out at home, wasting or killing time, dreaming of filmmaking again, and a bunch of weird domestic detail including a pet iguana, a neighbour's nighmare dog, fireworks night and an unexpectedly dishy young rubbish-collector guy. It is really more of a weird hybrid of documentary, art exercise and straight-up provocation, it's not straightforward entertainment at all, but in the end it really is shocking and moving despite all the constraints. If you've been considering watching it but thought it woudl be over-earnest, pretentious or boring, give it a go. In its way it's one huge absurdist finger up to the Iranian regime.

and wikipedia tells me he's just had another film released which he scripted :cool:
 
trabuquera said:
Something about the whole idea of this movie made me really deeply queasy and for that reason I've steered clear.

Maybe I should have done the same with HARRY BROWN which I watched on 5 over the weekend and couldn't quite believe just how daily-maily its ideas are (did its makers really mean to propose that the only solution for muggers and chaotic junkies is to just stab 'em to death? and that it's OK as long as it's ex-marines who do the stabbing?). Nice filters though.
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Same here, I had a chance to go to a free screening at the time, which I didn't take up. I still have mixed feelings about making a film like that at all, but now that I've seen it, it works fairly well. The biggest obstacle is the "Schindler's List"-problem of telling an uplifiting story about something that was so utterly devastating. The again, if it were a total downer, nobody would go and see it. Even if it gets a little manipulative, its saving grace is that it sticks closely to the real events and doesn't exploit them for a hokey cod-spiritual piece of crap like the Clint Eastwood film Hereafter did. In the end that Spanish family had every right to have their story told and maybe its up to someone else to make another film from a different perspective

Harry Brown is a fucking awful piece of shit though with laughable panto drug dealer villains.
 
I watched Looper the other day. Quite enjoyed it apart from the fact that I wanted the kid to get bumped off.
 
Maniac - remake of Maniac, Bill Lustig's notorious early 80s genre piece that i only know by reputation but will now be seeking out. Can't really make my mind up on this one, so won't say more until i see the original. Fantastic soundtrack though.
 
Sightseers. Damned fine, and I think I've visited all those murder sites :cool:

My only criticism - they were on the bleeding Honister Pass while pretending to look at the Ribblehead Viaduct, they're like 80 miles apart with all he Lake District inbetween! Shocking. Oh, and they'd never been in Yorkshire when she sent the postcard.

Perfect ending tho
 
Idris2002 said:
Gene Tierney is the love interest, and Googie Withers plays the bad girl role. And a young Herbert Lom was brilliant as London wrestling's Mr. Big.
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By coincidence I watched Laura also starring Gene Tierney. I was supposed to go see it at the cinema, but couldn't make it so decided to re-watch it on DVD - definitely stands up to repeat viewing. Not my absolute favourite Preminger, that has to be Anatomy of a Murder, but still a great film.
 
Yetman said:
It's A Serbian Film, but a fanny ass version of it.
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I just included that in an edit as an afterthought, though the films were made at the same time, so Kill List can't have copied it.

I'd say A Serbian Film is the "fanny ass" version though, if you think about it.
 
Reno said:
I don't think so, especially as the end was more Race with the Devil than The Wicker Man. There are also parallels to the end of A Serbian Film, though that's probably co-incidental.
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haven't seen either of those others
 
Chained by Jennifer Lynch, perpetrator of the notoriously awful Boxing Helena. I thought I'd never watch another film of hers and the terrible font of the title sequence almost made throw in the towel but as low budget horror films about serial killers go, it was actually pretty good. It's about a homicidal taxi driver who abducts a mother and her young son. He kills the mother, but keeps the boy as a slave and it becomes about their increasingly complicated relationship as the boy grows up. Despite the horrible things the film depicts, there is a refreshing lack of cynicism here which generally is part and parcel of this type of film. It's a well made film, more conventional than what her dad does and nowhere near in the same league but it looks she's turned into a decent director after all.
 
Reno said:
Chained by Jennifer Lynch, perpetrator of the notoriously awful Boxing Helena. I thought I'd never watch another film of hers and the terrible font of the title sequence almost made throw in the towel there but as low budget horror films about serial killers go, it was actually pretty good. It's about a homicidal taxi driver who abducts a mother and her young son. He kills the mother, but keeps the boy as a slave and it becomes about their increasingly complicated relationship as the boy grows up. Despite the horrible things the film depicts, there is a refreshing lack of cynicism here which generally is part and parcel of this type of film. It's a well made film, more a conventional straightforward horror films than what her dad does but it looks she's turned into a decent director after all.
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Decent little film i thought. Not great, but at least was interesting and asked a few questions.
 
I started The Wire season 4.
From the start, I'm sensing something terrible is about to happen.
Only on episode 1, and already, the tension starts - definitely an improvement from series 3 (which was good though a let down from season 2).
 
butchersapron said:
Maniac - remake of Maniac, Bill Lustig's notorious early 80s genre piece that i only know by reputation but will now be seeking out. Can't really make my mind up on this one, so won't say more until i see the original. Fantastic soundtrack though.
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Watched this last night. It didn't really work for me and I'm a bit surprised by the good reviews this good. The original is a film I never cared for and I had similar problems with this, in that I simply didn't care about the psycho and his trauma. That problem is made worse by the first person camera approach used here, which got tiresome when used for an entire film. The only film which made this work is Enter the Void, by having the character die and therefore freeing up the camera. The soundtrack is the only really good thing about it.
 
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