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

redsquirrel said:
I didn't think Luke Cage was as good as the hype and Iron Fist isn't as bad as some of the reviews but it is far worse than Luke Cage/Jessica Jones. Though Jessica Henwick is pretty good in it.
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I had given up on Luke Cage to be honest, but for some reason decided to go back to it. It was not that well written, loads of plot holes, or just plain weak plotting, but I enjoyed it towards the end.

I'm not all that convinced by Colter as an actor, and he was sluggish in the action sequences.

Misty and Claire Temple were my fave characters from the show.
 
T2 - Trainspotting.

Nostalgic as fuck. The 1970s distorted imagery of childhood, flashes of the local social club, gave me proper goosebumps.
Pretty much everything in this movie made me sad, makes me think of the city I left behind.
Was good.
 
Watched Stakeland, and Stakeland 2, which were passable zombie apocalypse flicks. They did a lot with not much, and it was mainly a character driven story with action thrown in.

Also watched Captain Phillips, which was an entertaining ride. Paul Greengrass is good at wringing tension out of a scene, and getting great performances from even minor characters. Hanks was thoroughly believable, and when he was acting scared he looked really scared.
 
Eastern Promise(s). An excellent crime film, russians and chechens in london, Vigo Mortensen starring, it's really good. Cronenberg directs but it's not like his mad stuff.

Stranger than Fiction. 3rd time I've watched this. Mix Emma Thompson, Will Ferrell (yuk) and Maggie Gyllenhall into a film about an author with writers' block whilst one of the characters in the book carries on with his 'life'. Distressingly Will Ferrell is the best thing in it, I mean...he's actually great in this. Opinions vary.

Zodiac. Fincher at the top of his game, the cast on good form, you don't even notice all the cgi. A story about the hunt for a serial killer that looks like All The President's Men crossed with....hmmm...maybe 7even? Brilliant.
 
Legend in which Tom Hardy proves that there's a limit to even my appetite for him, or more accurately his hammy histrionics. Only a very narrow notch above standard LondonLive 'tales of the great villains' wannabe gangsta stuff; it tries and mostly fails to cast a more de-mythifying, downbeat frame over the whole story but it still hero worships the Krays (brawlings and bottlings and beatings to death set to catchy 60s hits, what where they thinking...) . Sweet sweet Tom Hardy can't act realistically against most other thesps so making him try and play both twins against himself in CGI was a step too far. Left a bad taste in my mouth.

Lucy Scarlett Johanssen kicks humanity's butt as she becomes a one-woman Singularity with drug-induced 100% use of her human brain. Witless Luc Besson nonsense without even his usual sense of style; there are bits of quirky French/art/hiphop on the soundtrack and French actors with interestingly lumpy faces, and AI philosopher-character Morgan Freeman's evolution slideshows are nicely done, but this also contains some of the stupidest 'science' ever to feature in science fiction. Just trashy, but not toxic.

The Americans season 4 - if you can look past the pro-Yankee-imperialist spin of the politics (yeah, sure, KGB not nice, but WERE THEY REALLY that brutal ...) and the inherent ridiculousness of some of the setup (would even lifelong Soviet moles really talk to each other in American English?) this continues to be one of the best things on the tellybox. Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys both keep doing amazing work in exploring these characters' internal dilemmas through subtle face, manner, gesture stuff, and even the stupid and Russian-atmosphere-free flashbacks can't ruin things. Proper cliffhangers on many eps, too.
 
A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night. Gorgeous to look at and listen to, several engaging performances, somewhat pretentious and a bit thin.
 
Gold - Matthew McConaughey puts in a great performance as a prospector in this film about the Bre-X mining scandal (details changed for legal reasons). Good soundtrack if you like New Order.
 
Lemmy the movie. Loved it. Some weird bits mind haha, but most of it was ace and had me laughing. Loved the scene with the towel turban after the show - I can't think of many rock n roll people who would do that.
 
About 5 episodes of Hand Maid's Tale.
It's very silly. Lots of willy bashing in a mainstream and what-if sort of way.
Not as deep as it thinks it is but enjoyable.
 
Europa Report (2013) - worthwhile, low-budget, low-key, low-fame sci-fi - with some real actual science in! No recognisable actors and very little cgi/sfx. Things all go pearshaped, in classic style, for the small crew of a launch exploring one of Saturn's moons. They commit many of the usual gaffes leading to DOOM (overconfidence, cackhandedness, desperation to GO GET THOSE SAMPLES whatever the risks...) but it's done with an unusual amount of logic, and more respect for how research is actually done than you normally see in scifi. At least nobody takes their helmet off in an entirely untested alien environment. Nice one, but it's not going to be much fun for anyone not already interested in space flicks.

The Homesman (2014) - bleak and weird Western, directed by and starring Tommy Lee Jones, whose eccentric-rogue character isn't nearly as interesting as that of brave, practical, admirable spinster played by Hillary Swank. Sort of feminist in its depiction of the horrors of frontier life for women, but the narrative dodges about a LOT and meanders into a sort of deadend imho. Very watchable, well acted, nicely art directed, but not as compelling as some reviews made me think it might be.

Gods of Egypt (2016) Oh my. Worst film of 2016 hands down ... it OUGHT to be full enough of gleaming CGI gold, shimmering linens and godly bling to be a trashy enjoyable camp classic. Instead it's just a lump of incoherent, noisy, clanging yet BORING nonsense. If you watched this in a double bill with Dragon Blade you might implode your brain trying to figure out which is worse. When you have Nikolai Coster-Waldau playing the ancient Egyptian god Horus (no, really), no leading roles for black (or even brown) people, a random white-boy mortal for 'human empathy' and ethnic whitewashing is still the *least* problematic thing about the film, there are problems. Director Alex Proyas lost the plot here, a well as his previous talent. Only bright spots in it are Elodie Yung (painfully beautiful to look at though she can't act for toffee) and Chadwick Boseman (giving a hilariously OTT screaming-camp posh Black British English characterisation of the god Thoth. Even though for some reason they pronounce that "Toth". ) Just don't bother.
 
Vengeance. Nic Cage starring revenge flick based on a Joyce Carol Oates book. I suspect it strays a fair distance from the novella after having read some reviews.

The film wasn't too much more than an update of Death Wish. Cage was quite restrained. Don Johnson plays the hot shot lawyer that negotiates the rapists freedom, and he is very entertaining in the role. The redneck rapists are suitably horrible.
 
I Believe In Miracles.

Documentary about Notts Forest conquering Europe in the late seventies.

Tony Woodcock's hair. :eek: Still in the shock.
 

Deserter (2002) - dull Foreign Legion bobbins set in Algerian conflict, 1960. Confused and random (for some reason near-nonentity Paul Fox is the star, as a naïf young Englishman who joins up for a bit of adventure and finds out he doesn't want to kill Arabs after all, while Tom Hardy FOR IT IS HE does a bit of twitch 'n growl as the supposed villain, a semi-crim hard nut who bunks off to join the OAS and try to keep Algerie Francaise.) It's apparently based on a real life memoir and it takes some sort-of-interesting turns - you think it's going to be full-throated hero-worship of the mission civilatrice but in fact it veers into rather straightfaced explanation of why the colonialists need to go, etc.) Seeds of something interesting there, but it's filmed and 'dramatised' with a tin ear and a clumsy hand. TV movie territory and nothing more.
 
Blood Drive episode three

this is supposed to be grindhouse homage yet I have yet to hear many curse words and there has not been a boob in sight. Feeding people face first into an engine that eats them and watching the blood spray- fine. Nudity and profanity- ooh no.

I've got The Ninth Gate set for tonight, missed it at the time. Directed by massive nonce polanski
 
The Lost City of Z- I read the book about two years ago and it was a cracking read . An English Army bloke gets transfered to map out the border between Bolivia and Brazil which because of thge value of rubber trees in the forests is in dispute.This area and others in the Amazon are pretty much the last areas of the globe not to have been mapped and are full of natives who have never seen a European since the Conquistadors. Whilst there he is told by the Indians of a lost city and finds evidence of civilisation . Obssessed he returns spending two years or so each trip in appalling conditions.He defends the equality of the Indians to the Royal Geographical Association who funded his trip but is howled down as it doesnt fit in with their racism and greed for minerals and gold . He undertakes one final trip with his son but never returns.
The film is beautifully shot, its quite slow paced but its a fascinating story, worth watching and nobody knows what happened to him.
 
City of Tiny Lights- flawed but nevertheless engrossing private eye yarn set in modern day London with a bit of a twist. Riz Ahmed plays Tommy Aktar a private eye who is asked to investigate the disappearance of a Russia prostitute. At the same time his investigation unravels his past relationships are also unravelled and the two become merged. Tense and claustrophobic, infuriating at times it just about holds together and its one of those films that after seeing it I would probably watch it again if it turmed up on TV .
Ahmed should be the next James Bond btw.
 
4 eps of Dark Matter

quite good. A group wake up on a ship in space with no idea who they are or what their ship is. They name each other in the order they woke from stasis, 1-6

its not as good as The Expanse but its still pretty good so far
 
Prevenge

Alice (Sightseers) Lowe writes, acts and directs in a black comedy about a woman whose unborn child is telling her to kill as bunch of people. Very funny in places, deliciously dark, with some cracking supporting characters (Gemma (Yara Greyjoy) Whelan in particular). Not quite as masterful as Sightseers, but well worth ninety minutes of your time.
 
Been watching episodes of Lewis. I loved Morse, and Endeavour, but Lewis really isn't that great...and it's Kevin Whatley that lets it down for me. The Fox kid is interesting enough (despite being the 'Morse' replacement). I am on season 6 and only after all that time do the characters start to interact in a believable way.

The plots are, as usual....bonkers...but fun.
 
Recently . . .

Charade.

Starry-eyed ingenue Audrey Hepburn teams up with debonair Cary Grant to find out exactly what happened to her husband, before his dead body was thrown from the Geneva-Paris train. If you like AH you'll like this, even though CG was just on the verge of being too old for this sort of role.

Around the Block.

Christina Ricci is a young American teacher who finds herself educating inner-city Australian kids in the ways of Willy Shakespeare. That's just a subplot really - the main one follows the young Aborigine kid who is torn between his (white) father's life of crime and its siren call, and the example of his (Aboriginal, killed by the cops) uncle's black consciousness theatre career. There's nothing here we haven't seen before, but it's all very well done, even if Ricci's role is obviously tacked on so that they could get the funding by brandishing an American star.

Set in the tough but proud Sydney area of Redfern.

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

Jane Russell steals an entire movie from under the nose of co-star Marilyn Monroe, who in her turn takes the dumb blonde thing to new heights of idiocy. Interesting for a truly creepy turn by a child actor, which feels like something out of David Lynch.
 
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We Kill the Old Way - no accounting for the taste of visitors when they say lets watch a film at 12.30 am . Retired gangster returns from Spain to team up with other geriatric gangsters to avenge his brothers killing by a 'street gang'. Sort of British version of the Expendables really. Utter shite only watchable if you are really drunk and can't be bothered to turn the TV off in case you offend people staying at your house . Apparently there's a sequel and I noticed that one of the writers used to author books on football hooliganism. Nice little earner .
 
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