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

Usual Suspects. For about the 30th time.

Superlative, even though if partly by accident. Baldwin's performance is magnificent even though he didn't mean it and was incapable of it.
 
Bones season 5. Formula driven american mind mush, police/forensic show.

Ripper street seasons 1 and 2, BBC trying hard to do a victorian police/historical drama based in and around whitechaple.

Good kill, fact based movie about UAV pilots and the psycological stresses of blowing terrorists up on the say so of the CIA.

5TH wave, aliens/resistance fighters etc.
 
extra dry said:
Bones season 5. Formula driven american mind mush, police/forensic show.

Ripper street seasons 1 and 2, BBC trying hard to do a victorian police/historical drama based in and around whitechaple.
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If you think both of these series are crap, then why do you watch them ?
 
Well messed up the quote system there what I am trying to say is,

I just get stuff recommended then give my honest opinion. Not easily impressed but willing to watch most stuff.
 
Reno said:
I recently rewatched this and think the entire film is still fantastic. Bob Fosse's best as far as I'm concerned, I even prefer this over Cabaret.
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The only thing that stops me from agreeing is the odd changes in film quality. It seemed at various points to swap between film and video, and to use bluescreen in really odd situations. It might well just have been the quality of the transfer, or the four bottles of wine, but it kept looking really odd, and took me out of the moment
 
belboid said:
The only thing that stops me from agreeing is the odd changes in film quality. It seemed at various points to swap between film and video, and to use bluescreen in really odd situations. It might well just have been the quality of the transfer, or the four bottles of wine, but it kept looking really odd, and took me out of the moment
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Huh ? There is no video at all in this, that would not have been viable for a feature film during the 70s and 80s. Did you download a crap torrent ? High speed film stock in the 70s could get grainy at times, but many films had that gritty, semi-documentary look then. There is absolutely no use of blue screen or of any other optical effects either.

I watched the Criterion blu-ray and the film looked beautiful, so it was the four bottles of wine.
 
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Reno said:
Huh ? There is no video at all in this, that would not have been viable for a feature film during the 70s and 80s. Did you download a crap torrent ? High speed film stock in the 70s could get grainy at times, but many films had that gritty, semi-documentary look then. There is absolutely no use of blue screen or of any other optical effects either. I watched the Criterion blu-ray and the film looked beautiful.
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I think of you in a grainy resolution. A fuzzy Mark Kermode, if you like...
 
Reno said:
Huh ? There is no video at all in this, that would not have been viable for a feature film during the 70s and 80s. Did you download a crap torrent ? High speed film stock in the 70s could get grainy at times, but many films had that gritty, semi-documentary look then. There is absolutely no use of blue screen or of any other optical effects either.

I watched the Criterion blu-ray and the film looked beautiful, so it was the four bottles of wine.
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Me dads DVD. Should have been decent, but was...a bit weird.
 
Invitation to a Gunfighter - 1964 melodramatic western with Yul Brynner, Pat Hingle. Yul is called out to deal with a rebel but has a identity crisis. George Segal, William Hickey & that annoying souther sherrif from Bond films appear.
 
The Coen's "Hail, Caesar!" which is entertaining and has a couple of great scenes (especially a parody of On the Town, involving dancing sailors, which gets increasingly homoerotic) but overall it's feels slight and episodic, without much narrative momentum.

Gave up on American Horror Story again. Still rubbish.
 
trabuquera said:
Dragon Blade (2015) - has all the ingredients of a laughably enjoyable piece of rubbish (Ancient Romans meet Early Chinese on the Silk Road for a punchup? Jackie Chan? John Cusack? Massively overpaid Hollywood stars just slumming it for the travel? I'm in!) but it just doesn't work on any level. It's not bad enough to be entertainingly camp (even Adrien Brody affecting a cod-English Depraved Aristocrat accent and flowing hair doesn't go far enough), it leaps about in time and place for no reason at all, the 'humour' is painfully weak and the 'cute kid' character is so grating you wish they'd strangled him at birth. There's not enough myth or magic - no dragons, unfeasibly long eyebrows or vengeful hermaphrodites. It has all of the rubbishness of Shaw Brothers / Golden Harvest / other cult HK cinema but without any of the bonkers folksy charm.

You may or may not be surprised to know that there is no Actual History in this at all; it groans under the weight of every possible variety of anachronism (technological, cultural, linguistic) and none of them are deliberate. The only thing at all which is genuinely interesting, is the insight it gives you into current Chinese perceptions of what Westerners might be good for. In this bizarre parallel universe, the Chinese find the Roman centurions hairy, shouty and only a little bit good at fighting, but by gum they can draw up a construction plan, do great maths, and get a fortress stronghold built in a fortnight - useful little barbarians that they are. The ironic reversal was almost definitely not intended. (There are amaaaazingly long animated sequences of all the gears and cogs and stuff.)

Spot the crudely-stitched in "message for Xinjiang" propaganda ("Here in Silk Road we are 36 nations, we must cooperate and love each other to keep safe!") as well. Also, the Romans burst out into patriotic song - in Latin! - leaving the proto-Chinese characters impressed by their teary-eyed nationalist karaoke. PROJECTION MUCH?
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Against my own better judgement, and your own flashing-lights-and-screeching-klaxon review, I had a crack at this last night. I just wanted something mindless to chunter along in the background - but this went so far beyond mindless that I thought my brain had folded in on itself.

Cusack increasingly has the look and air of an uninsured stroke victim fretting about making mortgage payments; Brody acts as if he was shot with a Thorazine dart one morning whilst queuing for his skinny latte before being bundled off to wardrobe - every so often his dead eyes blink what could be Morse code for H-E-L-P-M-E. And the 'cute kid', well, we're talking Golden Child levels of awfulness.
 
The Nice Guys.

A not-bad-for-what-it-is comedy thriller set in 1977 Los Angeles. The McGuffin is a porn movie whose stars keep disappearing and dying. Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling are the washed-up ex cop and ex thug who are hired to find one of the runaway stars of this flick. There's also a connection to air pollution and auto industry corruption.

Crowe is starting to look like Orson Welles - and in a big way, if you know what I mean. If I was a Hollywood actress, I'd be fucking raging about the fact that he can get away with being a roly-poly barrel on legs, while hollywood actresses of all ages have to subsist on a mineral water and lettuce based diet.

Like I said, though, not bad for what it is. The recreation of the 1970s was done pretty effectively. Even the inclusion of a cute kid as Gosling's daughter didn't prove entirely disastrous.
 
Reno said:
The Coen's "Hail, Caesar!" which is entertaining and has a couple of great scenes (especially a parody of On the Town, involving dancing sailors, which gets increasingly homoerotic) but overall it's feels slight and episodic, without much narrative momentum.
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It was good, but it never lived up to the promise of that early scene in the script conference. And the dancing sailors scene was good, but not as good as On the Town.

It also made me think that Coen bros were saying that the blacklist was right, and the Commie writers got what was coming to them.

I would totally watch All the Way to Uruguay, though.
 
Idris2002 said:
The Nice Guys.

A not-bad-for-what-it-is comedy thriller set in 1977 Los Angeles. The McGuffin is a porn movie whose stars keep disappearing and dying. Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling are the washed-up ex cop and ex thug who are hired to find one of the runaway stars of this flick. There's also a connection to air pollution and auto industry corruption.

Crowe is starting to look like Orson Welles - and in a big way, if you know what I mean. If I was a Hollywood actress, I'd be fucking raging about the fact that he can get away with being a roly-poly barrel on legs, while hollywood actresses of all ages have to subsist on a mineral water and lettuce based diet.

Like I said, though, not bad for what it is. The recreation of the 1970s was done pretty effectively. Even the inclusion of a cute kid as Gosling's daughter didn't prove entirely disastrous.
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Everything Shane Black does feels like it's been written by someone who does way too much coke.
 
Idris2002 said:
It was good, but it never lived up to the promise of that early scene in the script conference. And the dancing sailors scene was good, but not as good as On the Town.

It also made me think that Coen bros were saying that the blacklist was right, and the Commie writers got what was coming to them.

I would totally watch All the Way to Uruguay, though.
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The original stage show of On the Town is better than the film!

The film's political message seemed muddled. The Coen's are arch caricaturists and there is a lack of generosity when it comes to their characters. Everybody comes out a fool or a heel. Fargo is the rare film of theirs where I felt they actually liked their main character.
 
Reno said:
The original stage show of On the Town is better than the film!

The film's political message seemed muddled. The Coen's are arch caricaturists and there is a lack of generosity when it comes to their characters. Everybody comes out a fool or a heel. Fargo is the rare film of theirs where I felt they actually liked their main character.
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Frances McD. probably reminded them of their mum.
 
Finally got around to watching all (I've seen bits before) of Welcome to the Dollhouse.

So very, very painful. And good. I'm going to get a copy for when The Boy is that age and thinks his life is tough. :)
 
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