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

[butchersapron]

Jimmy's Hall - Ken Loach's latest. Insipid and at times flat out embarrassing. It's supposed to be the story of Jimmy Gralton but it's really Wind that Shakes the Barley part 2 crossed with kicking Bishop Brennan up the arse - Bishop Brennan here being the real Bishop Brennan and the ACA (for those who don't know the Army Comrades Association/Blueshirts was a proto-facsist group) and Brennan's arse is Communism. Every bad part of Loach's history is here - the hectoring earnestness, the long-windedness and the the treating the audience like historical illiterates etc. The last half hour of this film is the worst i've seen from him on this score - uninspiring speech after uninspriring speech. All the good bits of Loach's work, stuff that usually makes an appearance in even his small films - Navigators for example - the humour, the sense of accuracy, the warmth, the energy and optimism the collective nature of both the actors and the characters they play - all missing here and made even worse by the utterly lifeless performance of the actor playing Gralton. An utter shambles i'm afraid.

 

[Voley]

Just watched Cross Of Iron by Sam Peckinpah this afternoon. Really enjoyed this. Strong class war theme as James Coburn's disenchanted officer-hating soldier gets attacked from all sides on the Russian front. David Warner was good in it, too, as an officer who was beginning to wonder wtf the point of the whole exercise was while sticking to his orders. Loads of trademark Peckinpah slow-motion-explosions-and-people-flying-through-the-air that you see copied by so many other people. Good film - I liked that it was a couple of hours, too. Gave it time to make its point without having to hammer it home. It's been a while since I watched a Sam Peckinpah - I always really enjoy his stuff.

 

[Sprocket.]

Whilst clearing some old stuff out found a DVD I thought I had lost years ago, one of my favourite French films.
I watched it last night and still enjoyed it.
Coup de Torchon (Clean Slate)1981.
Brilliant setting in 1938 colonial Africa of Jim Thompson's POP. 1280.
I recommend seeing it if you haven't already.

 

[DexterTCN]

Gravity.

First time I've watched it since the cinema (3D of course).

It's still bloody good on blu-ray, quick too...barely 90 minutes. Now I want to see it in 3D again.

 

[The Boy]

Across 110th Street (1972). Could have sworn this was a revisit, but turns out it had passed me by. Good+.

 

[passenger]

Anuverhood so funny 8/10
Inbetwenners 2 surprised at how good it was 7/10

 

[trabuquera]

Our Children (A perdre la raison, or something, in French) - devastatingly grim and well acted claustrophobic-family-domestic-nightmare tale. Bit Haneke-ish but not quite that cold in approach, not too long and not lingering too much over the misery. Bleak as, but really worth watching imho - as a childless person. this might be a lot harder to watch if you are a parent. But it's an extraordinary film.

 

[starfish]

We watched The Hairdressers Husband earlier. French film about a man who's ambition as a young boy was to marry a hairdresser & does so. It was a funny, moving & quite thoughtful little film.

 

[Idris2002]

Woodstock, on blu-ray.

A bunch of smelly hippies roll around in a muddy field in upstate New York. Rather than building a new society, their festival (like Glastonbury after it) was one of those rituals of inversion, or carnival, that actually affirms the values of the society in which it occurs, and which it only pretends to oppose. That said, some of the music was good, and in some cases, very good. And it was a good bit of documentary making as well.

Interesting contrast with contemporary America: almost no fat people visible in the crowd scenes.

 

[Grandma Death]

Margin Call. Excellent movie about the collapse of a trading firm prior to the economic meltdown. Outstanding movie

 

[Indeliblelink]

Mountains on Fire [Berge in Flammen] (1931) - about the fighting on the frontline that ran through the Dolomite mountains in WWI. The acting and script aren't up to much but the battle and climbing sequences on the mountains are great even on the ropey quality version I watched.

 

[Belushi]

Into the Wild (Sean Penn 2007) pretty good film based on the true story of a young American man who dropped out and ended up starving to death as he tried to survive in the Alaskan wilderness.

 

[belboid]

American Interior.

The film of the app of the album, not to be confused with the book. Gruff Rhys goes in an exploratory investigative tour of the US following the tour of John Evans, who was himself on the hunt for the mysterious lost Welsh tribe who actually founded America. Along the way he (and his felt John Evans) meets some interesting and amusing people who fill Gruff in on local history and te possibilities of there having been a lost tribe. And he meets some people who are clearly bemused at what they thoughyt were going to be 'ordinary' Gruff Rhys gigs. Entertaining stuff, works better than Separado.

 

[The Boy]

22 jump Street. Dreadful, but it made me laugh like a twat. Had been a long day, tbf.

 

[DaveCinzano]

Just getting into Old School. Okay, so it's rather old-fashioned, bit slow going, but it's very likeable.

Impeccable pairing of Bryan Brown as a rogueish ex-con (Lennie Cahill) and Sam Neill as a constipated retired detective (Ted MCabe), who are pushed together by circumstance to work together to discover just what happened on the 2001 Sterling Nickle armoured car robbery, which cost Lennie his liberty (and his $300k cut) and landed Ted in hospital for five months with a bullet in the chest.

It's billed as a show where they ‘investigate old crimes’, but it's not an Aussie Odd Couple twist on New Tricks; its a single narrative with a shit-tonne of sub-plots, and lots of character work. If it resembles anything, it's The Fugitive or The Incredible Hulk - chasing after that one elusive thing that will sort everything out, that last jigsaw piece, the missing Macguffin.

 

[Orang Utan]

The first twenty five minutes of Howard The Duck.
Even worse than I remembered. Had to can it.
It does have the most disturbing moment in cinema though.
At the beginning, Howard is removed from his planet of humanoid ducks and dragged through the walls of several apartments, including a lady duck in the bath:

A duck with tits? How? What? Eh?

 

[rubbershoes]

Into the Wild (Sean Penn 2007) pretty good film based on the true story of a young American man who dropped out and ended up starving to death as he tried to survive in the Alaskan wilderness.

The book's good too. It gives much more of the background, as you'd expect

 

[rubbershoes]

The Raid

Possibly on odd choice to watch on my way home from a course on head injuries

 

[DexterTCN]

The Raid

Possibly on odd choice to watch on my way home from a course on head injuries

It's good though, eh?

 

[DaveCinzano]

The Raid

Possibly on odd choice to watch on my way home from a course on head injuries

You could've had...

• The Big ECG
• 3:10 To Tumour
• Salem's Clot
• Skull Of Rock
• Concussion Of The Dead
• Migraine Man
• Funny Bonce

Best I could come up with at short notice, soz

 

[rubbershoes]

It's good though, eh?

Yes. Most excellent.

The person on the train next to me was watching my screen.

Even though it was subtitled, he was missing out by not being able to hear.

 

[rubbershoes]

You could've had...

• The Big ECG
• 3:10 To Tumour
• Salem's Clot
• Skull Of Rock
• Concussion Of The Dead
• Migraine Man
• Funny Bonce

Best I could come up with at short notice, soz

You shouldn't have

Really.

 

[belboid]

Gloria - a Chilean movie, evoking both the Cassavetes movie and the song (not the good one) of the same name, from last year about a fifty-something woman looking for love once her kids are grown up,and the trials she goes through with a similarly aged guy, who cant quite stop his grown up kids running his life. Poignant and funny that's beautifully shot and played, with a subtext of how the shadow of Pinochet and the past still hangs over Chilean society. Great stuff.

 

[Orang Utan]

This:
Victory Over the Sun (eng subtitles):

Never a dull moment! I have no idea what is going on. I couldn't work out how to switch on the subtitles the first time round, but am still none the wiser second time round, wirb subtitles. It's brilliant though - a new production of a 1913 Futurist Malevich opera.

 

[DexterTCN]

The Fault In Our Stars.

A teen movie about cancer with love and death and heart-ache.

Actually very good. Some light humour, some dark humour, well-acted and a good narrative. You will most likely cry.

 

[Idris2002]

A bit of the IT crowd, and then the recent George Clooney/Sandra Bullock vehicle Gravity - which was really good, and which I would recommend unreservedly. What are you going to do if you find yourself in low earth orbit, and things have gone spectacularly shit shaped? Not one to watch if you're scared of heights, though.

 

[T & P]

A Million Ways to Die in the West. Not the funniest comedy in cinematic history, but perfectly enjoyable on a rainy Sunday. Some good cameos too.

 

[8115]

I'm watching High Hopes by Mike Leigh. It's absolutely brilliant.

 

[nastybobby]

Automata

Watchable, but completely indebted to Bladerunner. I expect it explores similar themes to 'I Robot' as well [haven't seen I Robot], there's probably only a few ideas you can examine in a [fairly mainstream] film about robots becoming sentient. It's well acted and doesn't look cheap and pulpy. Tim McInnerny's in it, haven't seen him in anything for years!

 

[Idris2002]

20 minutes of Steve Coogan pet project Saxondale. Turned it off after that. Like a supporting character from some other show had somehow other managed to wangle his own vehicle.