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

[Beats & Pieces]

In the Heart of the Sea.

Too self-consciously attempting to reference a constructed, and entirely mythic 'American' identity (the literary Hawthorne / Melville dualism), and let down by a very bad application (but undoubtedly expensive) of CGI. Some interesting religious (Christian) themes and imagery employed too.

 

[Beats & Pieces]

Legend.

Good performance by Tom Hardy - the film is Tom Hardy, although Emily Browning provides a suitably supportive role.

 

[Nanker Phelge]

Finished season 1 of Misfits. The knack of getting the best out of fairly crude and juvenile humour by overdosing it in attitude makes this show work. It's a bit like episodes of the monkees. It's not really about stories and plots....they are just loose frameworks to give these characters a universe to show off a bit.

It's silly, but it's good silly.

 

[Reno]

Looking The Movie, which fittingly wrapped up the excellent HBO series about a group of gay friends in San Francisco which got cancelled far too early.

Tallulah, Netflix movie about a young drifter who steals a baby from a rich woman who is clearly unfit to be a mother. There are a few Sundance friendly indie movie tropes, but the film just about works thanks to excellent work from its three lead actresses, Ellen Page, Allison Janney and Tammy Blanchard.

 

[DotCommunist]

Finished season 1 of Misfits. The knack of getting the best out of fairly crude and juvenile humour by overdosing it in attitude makes this show work. It's a bit like episodes of the monkees. It's not really about stories and plots....they are just loose frameworks to give these characters a universe to show off a bit.

It's silly, but it's good silly.

nathan is a personal hero. Story does come in later, a rather neat time travel tale that manages to avoid paradox

I watched batman vs superman and it was fucking shit. Decent enough alfred. Batfleck was rubbish. Superman was rubbish. Too long, too dark and even the fights were not so good al

 

[seventh bullet]

Sicario on Netflix. Interesting to start with then became a bit silly, but the later night vision/thermal imaging knife and gun fight in a tunnel was great. Nice score, but I did have my headphones on.

 

[DotCommunist]

tried twice with sicario and not made it past ten mins. Just poor.

I need something good.

 

[Beats & Pieces]

tried twice with sicario and not made it past ten mins. Just poor.

I need something good.

A friend of mine had a similar experience, eventually managed to sit through it and found it utterly depressing. I quite liked it!

 

[seventh bullet]

tried twice with sicario and not made it past ten mins. Just poor.

I need something good.

For me it started out as a pretty good thriller.

 

[starfish]

Penultimate episode of Bloodline. It has its flaws but i like its leisurely pace.

 

[redsquirrel]

I'm watching S4 of Orange is the New Black and got two more episodes to go. Far better than S3, but I feel the series would work better if the episodes were be shorter. A Network episode length of 42 minutes would move things along more briskly than the streaming 50 to 60 minutes.

The series of The Girlfriend Experience had it's problems but the decision to go for 30 minute episodes was a very smart one, hopefully some others will take notice that you don't have to hour long eps.

 

[rubbershoes]

Beasts of No Nation. A child falls in with a group of rebels led by warlord Stringer Bell. There's a strong lead performance from Abraham Atta. String's accent veers between central Africa and south London.

Good soundtrack, beautifully shot and well worth a watch.

Give it a go DotCommunist

 

[Orang Utan]

The series of The Girlfriend Experience had it's problems but the decision to go for 30 minute episodes was a very smart one, hopefully some others will take notice that you don't have to hour long eps.

Yeah, it works really well with Transparent

 

[DotCommunist]

found Star Trek TNG on netflix so started at season 6, cracked open the weed and made a session of it. Theres a brilliant 2 parter that reminds you what utter fascist bastards the Cardassians are, a thing that can be muted by DS9 sometimes. Proper cunts. Tortured the fuck out of Picard

 

[DotCommunist]

Beasts of No Nation. A child falls in with a group of rebels led by warlord Stringer Bell. There's a strong lead performance from Abraham Atta. String's accent veers between central Africa and south London.

Good soundtrack, beautifully shot and well worth a watch.

Give it a go DotCommunist

I've seen it. The machete scene where the bloke is begging for his life was raw. Good film, not pleasant tho

 

[Beats & Pieces]

The Last Samurai

 

[Reno]

The Last Samurai

Liked, didn't like ?

 

[Beats & Pieces]

I quite like it as a piece of entertainment, Timothy Spall's accent is very amusing and Zimmer's score is very effective too.

 

[Orang Utan]

The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre
John Huston directing a fabulously twitchy and sweaty Bogart as a drifter in Mexico and his greed for gold.
Fucking ace. Such great performances and a great story. The ending is fantastic.

 

[Voley]

Ted 2. A few giggles. The weed names bit made me lol. Wouldn't mind trying 'Here Comes Autism.' The sperm bank bit was amusingly gross too.

 

[butchersapron]

The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre
John Huston directing a fabulously twitchy and sweaty Bogart as a drifter in Mexico and his greed for gold.
Fucking ace. Such great performances and a great story. The ending is fantastic.

Written by a violent anarchist insurrectionist of course. Which adds something i feel.

 

[Reno]

"Tab Hunter Confidential", about the 50s teen idol and what it was like to be a closeted gay film star in those days. Not bad, but a little on the superficial side. Hunter comes across as very likeable though.

"Kung Fury", which is the greatest thing ever for about fifteen minutes and then runs out of steam even at a length of half an hour. Still worth seeing though.

Watched both on Netflix.

 

[QueenOfGoths]

Coincidentally Reno Tab Hunter featured in "I Am Divine!" which we watched last night. Very interesting, amusing, bittersweet and sad

 

[Reno]

Coincidentally Reno Tab Hunter featured in "I Am Divine!" which we watched last night. Very interesting, amusing, bittersweet and sad

I watched that recently as well. Good fun!

 

[QueenOfGoths]

I watched that recently as well. Good fun!

I gather both films are by the same director, must look up "Tab Hunter Confidential"

 

[Reno]

I gather both films are by the same director, must look up "Tab Hunter Confidential"

Yes, he seems to have cornered the market in documentaries about gay film makers and stars.

 

[Orang Utan]

Written by a violent anarchist insurrectionist of course. Which adds something i feel.

Certainly - there's a good bit with the old prospector outlining very clearly the labour theory of value.
My dad was telling me about B Traven, who sounds like a very interesting fellow. He also wrote a book called Death Ship about stateless refugees.

 

[trabuquera]

Blood Ties (2013) - yet another movie set in the early 70s, with a good (cop) brother and a bad (gangster) brother and a lot of lapels and a lot of classic pop and a lot of nasty 1970s hair (on everyone), which can't rescue a clichéd and pretty grubby dabbling in wannabe-Mean Streets crime saga. Even a dream cast - including Clive Owen, Billy Crudup, Marion Cotillard, Mila Kunis, Zoe Saldana, Matthias Schoenaerts, and James Caan - can't rescue it. About the only thing to recommend it (kind of) is the unrelieved brutality and plenty of killings of innocent bystanders, so there's no idolising the scumbags.

The Bastard Executioner (TV series) - Kurt Sutter tries to do medieval gore and everybody loses. I'm quite partial to medieval gore and to some of Sutter's work so this should have panned out well. Instead it's just painfully relentlessly bad. Leering and exploitative and tacky ; it doesn't look right or sound right (it's supposedly medieval Wales, yet nobody sounds even the teeny tiniest bit Welsh and everything's brightly lit and clean). Has all the aesthetic and the depth of a cheesy self-published Tolkein fanfic. At least no dragons though. But I won't be wasting any more time with it, and given my huge appetite for historical schlock that's a sign of just how bad it is.

Barry Lyndon (1975) watching it again I'm less distracted by how much I hate all the characters, and the overall symmetry of the design and shape of the film come through more. Still astonishing-looking and the pacing is just so confident in taking its time and unspooling the story at will. For a Baroque romp, though, I felt it lacked a bit of a spark of essential life - more of the bawdiness and filth of the real 18th century and its literature. A few fart jokes would have livened things up nicely AND they would have been completely period-appropriate

 

[Idris2002]

I've got to say, trabuquera , that although I see where you're coming from with regard to Blood Ties, I thought it was much better than you give it credit for. The eventual fates of the characters, I thought, were not what you'd expect from a by-the-numbers clichéd movie. You're right about the grubbiness, especially the killing of the innocent bystanders.

 

[starfish]

I watched The Third Man yesterday as it was on the telly. What a great film. A true classic.