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

[Reno]

Vertigo is the film that shaped my interest in film more than any other after my dad gave me the book Truffaut/Hitchcock for my 13th birthday and I went in a quest to watch every single Hitchcock film. It may be because Orpheus and Eurydice was my favourite story as child and it's basically a modern update. Until its re-release in the early 80s the film was almost impossible to see in the 70s as Hitchcock had pulled it from circulation together with four other of his best films. I did however manage to see a secret screening at the Munich film museum in the late 70s and it was a genuinely life changing event for me.

While it often gets said that Vertigo is about an erotic or sexual obsession, I think it's really about a romantic obsession, even if the erotic/sexual/fetishistic reading is the more daring or attention grabbing one. What makes the obsession in Vertigo so destructive is that we so often want to change the people we claim to love and that isn't love, it's basically narcissism. I think Scotty genuinely wants to bring a woman back from the dead instead of merely turning her into a fetish object for his sexual gratification and the tragedy is that he is completely blind to the woman in front of him, who was his love all along.

I kind of resent that it has gone to be this hallowed masterpiece now, especially since Vertigo knocked Citizen Kane off the top of the Sight and Sound list. Feels so unoriginal to have Vertigo as your all time favourite film and inevitably it provokes a backlash, because a lot of people can't see what the fuss is about. I still have Marnie though, a Hitchcock film that still seems slightly controversial to claim as one of his best. It's my favourite after Vertigo though and it's a great companion piece, dealing with similar themes and Sean Connery actually is a perv in the film.

 

[Idris2002]

I must watch it again.

 

[Idris2002]

Vertigo, I mean.

My personal favourite Hitchcock though is (at the time of writing) Notorious.

 

[DotCommunist]

They Live

Quite a fun film. Now my second fave carpenter film, after 'the thing'. Satisfying gunplay, aliens, slightly subversive message. Enjoyed immensely. I think what made it was the main character being so thoroughly 'wtf' throughout. Dated but worth it, 7/10

 

[Belushi]

Gertrud (Caro Theodore Dreyer 1964) His final film, I found it stilted at first but then became absorbed in the story of an opera singer who ends up alone rather than settle for less than her ideal of what love should be.

 

[May Kasahara]

The Man With The Iron Fists. RZA's vanity project, just on the right side of enjoyably cheesy. Some good OTT fight scenes and a brilliantly flamboyant villain who seems to have based his performance on Jareth the Goblin King

 

[maya]

...

 

[DaveCinzano]

...

I love Danger 5

The schlocky 80s-mining Cannon/Glenn A Larson/Miami Vice/Donald Bellisario (etc)-style second series is even better than the Lew Grade-teefing first.

 

[Reno]

Masque of the Red Death from my Vincent Price Blu-Ray box set, looking glorious in HD.

Never Let a Me Go. I haven't read the novel but I like the film even if it seems a little too precious and wistful at times. There is something perverse how it approaches what is usually the subject of body horror films as if it was a Merchant/Ivory production and I quite like the tension between form and content.

I did wonder why this dystopian scifi tale is set in a parallel past rather than the near future. Not that it doesn't work, but for anybody who has read it, does the novel have a narrative reason for it ?

 

[Belushi]

The Birds (Alfred Hitchcock 1964) More classic hitchcock.

 

[Indeliblelink]

Corn Island [Simindis Kundzuli] (2014), a beautiful Georgian film about a man and his grand-daughter building a small shack and growing corn on one of the small temporary islands that appears in the Enguri River, meanwhile the Georgia and Abkhazia war goes on around them. Even though there is a very minimal script I found it a gripping watch, attention is held from the lovely cinematography and soundscape/soundtrack. Lovely stuff, see it.

 

[Johnny Vodka]

Never Let a Me Go. I haven't read the novel but I like the film even if it seems a little too precious and wistful at times. There is something perverse how it approaches what is usually the subject of body horror films as if it was a Merchant/Ivory production and I quite like the tension between form and content.

I did wonder why this dystopian scifi tale is set in a parallel past rather than the near future. Not that it doesn't work, but for anybody who has read it, does the novel have a narrative reason for it ?

The film is decent, but the book is a lot better - takes much longer for the 'reveal' and there's just more in it, more attachment to the characters. Left me emotionally drained (and pretty much close to tears ). I know what you mean about the setting. I don't think there's any indication of exactly when it's set, but it works!

I watched Down To The Bone, random freeview record. Excellent US indie about drug addiction - similar vibe to Beyond The Pines and Winter's Bone.

 

[Belushi]

Gran Torino (Clint Eastwood 2009) A growling, cantankerous Korea vet (channeling Gunnery Sergeant Tom Highway from Heartbreak Ridge) is won over by the conservative values of his hard working Hmong neighbours. A bit predictable but Eastwood is a good enough actor and director to pull it off.

 

[May Kasahara]

The film is decent, but the book is a lot better - takes much longer for the 'reveal' and there's just more in it, more attachment to the characters. Left me emotionally drained (and pretty much close to tears ). I know what you mean about the setting. I don't think there's any indication of exactly when it's set, but it works!

Haven't seen the film but I cried my eyes out at the book, it left me really mournful. A very good read. There's no overt reason for the setting that I can tell Reno, other than a stylistic thing - to me it seems very evocative of 50s England, the adherence to society's rules and expectations and the acceptance of a certain class structure, all of which would make it easy for people to accept and encourage the book's central premise.

 

[trabuquera]

Nightcrawler - Jake Gyllenhal and Renee Russo both creepy as all get-out playing some of the human vultures of Los Angeles local news, cruising the freeways for images of death and mayhem to feel the city's appetite for stories about (the right kind of) crime. It looks fine - neon noir but not so stylised it's overdone, frames looking like updated Edward Hopper paintings at times. The script bangs home the agenda (that you should FEEL HORRIFIED AND BAD) about their activities a bit too obviously at times and it lacks dramatic tension in places imho. Very nice to see Riz Ahmed getting a juicy supporting role in something like this - his American accent's not bad either!

 

[krtek a houby]

Finished Daredevil on Netflix. Roll on season 2!
Rush - does what it says on the tin. Must be the only Ron Howard film I've actually enjoyed.
Chronicle - now that's a proper superhero film. Nods to Lovecraft, Alan Moore and Grant Morrison, too, if I'm not mistaken.

 

[Belushi]

Tyrannosaur (Paddy Considine 2011) Unrelentingly grim directorial debut with two great performances from the leads, Olivia Coleman in particular.

 

[Ranbay]

Unfriended which was better than I thought, Skype bulling internet teen horror

 

[Yetman]

Get Hard, Ferrell in another comedy which is a lot better than the rotten tomatoes reviews would have you believe

 

[Nine Bob Note]

sunday night: the dark knight rises, now my favourite of the Nolan trilogy. ledger is great in tdk, but i prefer the joker as Nicholson played him, whereas hardy IS bane.

Monday night: the Guy Richie Sherlock film. not bad, but its not the tv version.

 

[krtek a houby]

sunday night: the dark knight rises, now my favourite of the Nolan trilogy. ledger is great in tdk, but i prefer the joker as Nicholson played him, whereas hardy IS bane.

Monday night: the Guy Richie Sherlock film. not bad, but its not the tv version.

Even the telly version

Isn't the proper telly version

 

[Maharani]

Barfly made me feel out of sorts. Loved it though.

 

[sojourner]

We are currently racing through Star Trek the Next Generation, Season 2.

The fella got me into bits and bobs of it on Freeview, and I became so completely enamoured of it I bought S1 and we watched it in a few days! Thank god there's fucking loads of it, and then apparently Deep Space Nine

 

[DotCommunist]

Herclues

the Rock is hercule. Jon Hurt is in it and Lovejy. Total guff but funny. Its on netflix trabuquera you'd like this I think

 

[belboid]

The Killing of Sister George

Still a bona fide classic that should be seen by everyone.

 

[marty21]

I've been watching North and South - an 80s American Civil War drama starring Patrick Swayze - it's on YouTube - never heard of it before - not enough war shenanigans yet - it starts in the 1840s when Swayze goes to West Point to become a soldier person - and becomes pals with a yankee - then there is lots of stuff about how the Yankees don't understand Southern Ways - David Carradine as a nasty slave owner - and British Upstairs/Downstairs star Lesley-Anne-Down as a Southern Belle married to evil slave owner Carradine but in love with nice Southerner Swayze. Lots of Cameos from Elizabeth Taylor, Robert Mitchum, Gene Kelly, and Johnny Cash as John Brown!

It's not great but strangely addictive

 

[Maharani]

I've been watching North and South - an 80s American Civil War drama starring Patrick Swayze - it's on YouTube - never heard of it before - not enough war shenanigans yet - it starts in the 1840s when Swayze goes to West Point to become a soldier person - and becomes pals with a yankee - then there is lots of stuff about how the Yankees don't understand Southern Ways - David Carradine as a nasty slave owner - and British Upstairs/Downstairs star Lesley-Anne-Down as a Southern Belle married to evil slave owner Carradine but in love with nice Southerner Swayze. Lots of Cameos from Elizabeth Taylor, Robert Mitchum, Gene Kelly, and Johnny Cash as John Brown!

It's not great but strangely addictive

I remember watching this when it first came out...at least I remember bits of it.

 

[trabuquera]

Hercules

the Rock is hercule. Jon Hurt is in it and Lovejy. Total guff but funny. Its on netflix trabuquera you'd like this I think

Thanks DotCommunist - I think you may know me too well. Already watched, enjoyed and guffawed at this one. It's great fun. Think I remember being surprised by how much swearing there was for a massmarket US product for the youth market. (It has Ian McShane in it so I suppose the profanity grew infectious...)

 

[DotCommunist]

Thanks DotCommunist - I think you may know me too well. Already watched, enjoyed and guffawed at this one. It's great fun. Think I remember being surprised by how much swearing there was for a massmarket US product for the youth market. (It has Ian McShane in it so I suppose the profanity grew infectious...)

Should have known you'd been on a hercules film like a dog on spilt chips. It always amazes me watching some fantasy or sci fi b movie and who should appear? Jon Hurt. Every time.

 

[trabuquera]

Jon Hurt: I swear that man is either maintaining a very large and demanding family, or a humungous drink/drug/designer fashion habit, or he is aiming to just buy all the things and leave the largest estate of any actor in history. is there ANYTHING he won't do? surely he must have paid off the mortgage by now? And he's so distinctive and recognisable as well - total character actor rather than method chameleon. Still works. Relentlessly. It must be the gravitaaaaas!