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

[Orang Utan]

Recently, I watched The Nomi Song and Wild Combination, which coincidentally are both documentaries about outsiders, Klaus Nomi and Arthur Russell,who moved to New York, got heavily involved in the avant-garde music/art scene and made some very strange disco music, but never got the wider recognition they needed (and deserved). And died tragically young because of AIDS.
Both docs were well researched with well chosen and articulate interviewees. I liked Wild Combination better cos I liked Russell and his friends better. When he was ill, his friends visited and supported him and his father speaks movingly of his son's final moments. Nomi's friends deserted him and it's hard to watch them justify themselves one by one.

 

[butchersapron]

It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia Season 1.
It's not very funny. Just a standard American sitcom but with loathsome douchebags running a bar. Disappointing as I was led to believe it was more than that.

You're going to feel really foolish for posting this when you're 45. Series get rolling with #2 and danny devito.

 

[Orang Utan]

They always get better in S2.

 

[Idris2002]

Stone - 1974 biker/cop action from Australia. The reach of the creative minds exceeded their grasp on this one, but it was a bit of fun all the same. Kind of makes me regret not ever having been into the joys of the open road.

Boy - 2010 early `80s comedy-drama from New Zealand. The eponymous hero is very excited when his Dad comes back from prison. . . unfortunately his Da is very much not a good role model. Bitter-sweet, with the emphasis on bitter. An almost all-Maori cast, which was interesting. gabi did you see this one?

 

[DotCommunist]

Chivalry and Treason: The 100 years war

episode 1 is on that iplayer link above. Parts 2 and three watched on youtube

Dr Janina Ramirez (a cultural historian apparently) takes us through the ins and outs. Talks to lots of historians, visits places. Enjoyed.

 

[Belushi]

Bridesmaids (Paul Feig 2011) Enjoyable Hollywood comedy.

 

[Orang Utan]

Bridesmaids (Paul Feig 2011) Enjoyable Hollywood comedy.

Some good shitting

 

[DexterTCN]

Predator. Because of the other thread I got this on Blu-Ray and watched it Saturday. It looks brilliant and is still a great action movie. I think the director did Die Hard next.

Noah. Quite a mild film from Aronofsky, a bit meh.

 

[trabuquera]

CRIME IN THE STREETS - bizarre 1956 b & w "issue movie" about what was then called 'juvenile delinquency'. Sort of interesting for being a mishmash of older, tougher, 'crime wave' sort of films and films noir, with a soppy liberal handwringing argument for the value of social workers threaded through it.

Notable for some outrageously hammy Firsta Gennarationa Fakeo Italiano accents and ethnic stereotyping and being first starring role for JohnCassavetes, who looks and acts utterly unconvincing as an 18 year old delinquent, but that might well be because he was 33 at the time! The plot's a completely unbelievable tissue of nonsense all revolving about someone NOT getting killed in the end. It sort of tries to poke away at youth culture and angst but very ham-fistedly. Adapted (not very fluently) from a stage play, and it shows.

But it IS interesting for the way it plays out all the old arguments about what to do with wayward and violent kids, questions the American Dream a bit (why must poor children suffer for The System? can everyone REALLY "get there if they try" etc?) and is an interesting snapshot of how Americans were thinking about parenthood and the 'generation gap' even before the 1960s. And some kid called Mark Rydell, who I'd never heard of, does a fantastic turn as a reptilian, camp young gang member keen for there to be as much blood spilt as possible, when he's not waving his arms around gesturing with a cigarette.

It also made me think: how many "youth crime wave" movies of later years are going to seem just as wooden in a few decades' time? It's been a while since I watched, say, Boyz in the Hood - but I wonder if in a few years' time it won't seem just as laughably, clunkily earnest as Crime in the Streets

 

[Belushi]

Zodiac (David Fincher 2007) decent thriller about the serial killer in 1970's San Francisco.

 

[Belushi]

Not a DVD but I watched Lyse Douchet's deeply moving Children of Syria on BBC2 last night.

Available on iplayer now http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b04c34bv/children-of-syria

 

[The Octagon]

The Lego Movie

Surprisingly good, loads of little background moments that bear repeat viewing I think, and the writing / voicework was great.

Will Arnett's Batman was brilliant ("I wrote this song for you, it's about how I'm an orphan" *Music in background "NOOOO PARENTS"* )

 

[Yetman]

Divergent

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1840309/

Teen movie, overuse of suspense, very much a rip off of hunger games and not as polished. Still, good if your a 15 year old girl I suppose. Which I'm not, so I didn't really enjoy it.

 

[trabuquera]

Belle du Seigneur - one of the worst things I've watched in a very long time.

Based on a French novel that's apparently very famous, about a messed-up young Jewish diplomat going off the rails because he's in love with a married woman - oh, and the Nazis are taking over Europe because it's 1937. I know nothing about the book but the movie version seemed to have selling points - French production, starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers, wierd cameo role from Marianne Faithfull, being shown on Sky Arts, etc.

And it was dire. Really truly dire in almost every way but the notable direness being:

Performances: JRM gives it the roarish posh Irish sneery Henry VIII treatment, AGAIN, while supposed female lead Natalia Vodianova can't convey emotion in any language. (I read they got her to redub all her dialogue to try and introduce some sort of acting, but it didn't work.) She's wonderful looking but mostly just wanders around looking baffled. As well she might because:
Script : also dire - disjointed, unrealistic, stilted, and obviously uncomfortable for most of the Europudding actors to attempt speaking it
Characters: nobody likeable - or even all that interesting
Look: Amazingly, given the rest of this mess, it's lavishly done and the plot entails lots of hopping about from one luxury classic hotel or Swiss mansion to another. So it looks great - but so great, when everything else is so crappy, that it ends up seeming like one long business-class promo film on the Five Star Hotels Of Europe.

And lastly: Sex / morals - well beyond dire and into horrible, offensive, misogynist rubbish territory. Lead character's a nasty, domineering, controlling, pathologically jealous, inexplicably bad-tempered, deceitful, unfaithful type who rapes & beats female lead several times during the narrative, because he's so sensitive and full of feelings and all messed up. And of course she snivels a bit, but stays with him and never considers any other option - because she's just a cardboard cutout of a character and not a real person at all. eeeurgh.

 

[maya]

Lair of the White Worm- Pretty awful, but some lols. Peter Capaldi was OK(ish) throughout.

Son Of Rambow- Enjoyed this. Liked how they sort of twisted the story a bit every time you thought you knew what was going to happen next. Also loved how they'd often 'brought to life' some of the nerdy kid's doodles by animation and little films-within-films and how you'd get a peek into his notebooks and the little flip animations he'd been drawing on the book pages and so on... Made me smile anyway.

 

[stethoscope]

Philomena.

 

[DexterTCN]

American History X.

A reasonable commentary on racism in America, Edward Norton is very good as a young man who develops into a nazi through the influences of father figures in his life. Someone dies at the end, I was wrong about who it would be and my daughter was right.

Could have been a bit better, could have been a lot worse.

 

[skyscraper101]

12 Years A Slave - good acting but the film was pretty slow and predictable.

 

[DotCommunist]

eps 1-4 of The Shield over the last few days. That Vic really is something else.

 

[butchersapron]

Hard to be a god. 12 years in the making version of the Arkady and Boris Strugatsky novel. Blimey. The most muddy film ever made. Possibly the most realised otherworld as well. But i just didn't know what was going on. I think this needs immediate rewatching. I have another version of this from a few dceades back that looks a tad different as well.

 

[Belushi]

Sleepy Hollow (Tim Burton 1999) An enjoyable enough adaptation of the Washington Irving tale.

The Black Dahlia (Brian De Palma 2006) A terrible adaptation of the James Ellroy novel.

 

[Yetman]

Captain America - The Winter sl,.xzzzzzzzzzzz

 

[belboid]

The Social Network.

Hadn't improved since I first watched it, in fact even more lines stood out as being 'tat sounds good, but means absolutely nothing.' Entertaining enough tho

 

[DotCommunist]

'Spartacus:Vengeance'

moar eps. Excellent stuff. When mutilating the corpse of a roman soldier by carving latin into his arse:

'Spartacus, you leave his cock to the sun?'

'No. I send message'

 

[The39thStep]

Lone Survivor: pretty harrowing stuff about four American soldiers who set out to take out a Taliban leader but every thing goes wrong. As usual no understanding of why the Taliban are fighting but does at least portray some Afghans in a positive light. Always get the feeling in these films that it doesn't really matter what the cause is its just the individual bravery. Worth watching though.

 

[DaveCinzano]

Lone Survivor

It's Bravo Two Zero meets Behind Enemy Lines, only without an amiable lead like Owen Wilson or Sean Bean pretending to lick shit off his fingers. Very competently photographed falling-down-hill scene though.

 

[The39thStep]

It's Bravo Two Zero meets Behind Enemy Lines, only without an amiable lead like Owen Wilson or Sean Bean pretending to lick shit off his fingers. Very competently photographed falling-down-hill scene though.

I think I was very nearly sick when they repeatedly crashed into the rocks .

 

[DaveCinzano]

I do love how all these tales of special forces derring do seem to involve Our Boys being foiled by lonely goatherds.

 

[DotCommunist]

Moar 'Shield'

bastards for not telling me about this. I've sat through episodes of syfys Dominion (Anthony Head, hang your head) ffs, when this good stuff was just already out.

 

[Belushi]

'Eccentricities of a Blonde Haired Girl' (Manoel de Oliveira 2011) Short but intriguing Portuguese morality tale.